Geometry of Trauma

He went down beside the pole that held a martin house. The shock kicked him right out of his body. All the normal physiological responses went offline...he felt no pain, did not smell the new-mown grass, did not taste the blood in his mouth, did not hear the shouts of the neighborhood kids as they played their games. All he saw was the pole and the martin house and the sky.

All normal patterns of thought shut down. It did not seem odd that his entire world had shrunk to a patch of sky interrupted by a birdhouse on a pole. He didn't even understand that what he saw was the sky and a birdhouse on a pole; he was only aware of them as pleasing geometric shapes.

And he understood that if those shapes went away, all would be darkness.