The Bishop

The bishop disguised himself as frogs, but his eyes gave him away. It’s always the eyes. They are thresholds. A frog’s eyes have nictitating membranes, filters, fine skins that give them away. The bishop has endless corridors of thoughts. That’s how he is detectable. Whether he enters on white clouds, whether he has his unheavenly host with him—Arms and Legs—whether he smiles or talks like a cat. His thoughts have the sound of footsteps. They boom, self-contained bombs that ping like pianos.

Arms and Legs—one is made of wire and muscle, the other of blood and dogspeed—have no minds. They have been hollowed out. When the bishop pays their salaries, they can do nothing but eat the money. The pills they fed me were self-contained bombs that rang like bells. Who gave them the power? Was it the chemical structuralists, who constructed the pills through formulation?

I’ve been gone for many winters. Their grip on me has faded. The punctures have closed like irises. Sealed doors that keep out the light that flows from their nostrils. In that way, now that the punctures have closed, I am safe from the bishop. The chemical structuralists can’t find me in their notebooks or computers. I have become invisible to them. Radar drips from me like smoke. I leave no trail. I leave no scent.

The bishop is always luring me, but his eyes give him away. He can take the form of frogs and crows. I can see they are him. He sleeps in meters on the side of streets, on top of buildings, within wires. When the bishop lived inside the hospital, when Arms and Legs tried to convert me, tried to turn me to a gas they could bottle and bag, I knew I was a different species. I’ve become three different species, each more alive than the last.