day—her voice just off from what the note is, vibrating in near-key. The note, as quickly, is diminished. The color of the house itself remains the same. The air around my head a helmet.
I approach the car.
]
]
]
The man inside the car is not my father but still the car smells like my father’s truck: crushed cigars and wet and dirt and cracking foam.
The man inside the car is facing forward, at the windshield, with both hands gripping the wheel, and still I feel his burned eyes on me as I slide across the skin-toned seat in silence and I close and lock the door. Though from up close outside, the windows appeared opaque with clay mold, from inside out, the front façade of my parents’ house is still apparent, holding still. The car’s glass seems even larger from behind it, whole flat planes that show not an inch of the reflection of my head or chest and eyes.
The man inside the car appears obese in sudden places, oblong globes of flesh bulge off along his spine, at his right knee, near his kidneys. His clothes are white. His hair is gone. A small tattoo along the vein bulge in his left neck is the tattoo I meant to get last year— I think this thought and feel it exiting my mind .
We go. By going I mean the terrain outside the car begins to scroll around us, leaving, though this is the only signal that the car itself can move. It seems to sit silent with us in it—no control panel, no LCD—the man does not move his arms to steer.
All the ashtrays in the car are overflowing though now the car does not smell at all like smoke—liquid Downy, wet dog, bending metal—the smells shift immensely when I blink. The ash is also at my ankles, in my pockets, on my lap. The man’s not smoking, but the air is, gentle fissures pouring through cracks in the upholstery from outside—as if the whole outside is burning underneath us, though through the glass the sky seems fine.
The seat feels deep and open all around me, yawning to fit my body in the dry cavern of its cloth. I relax, sit back. There is the man there beside me in the car. Though he is not my father, he has certain of my father’s features: gone eyes, stern lips, white beard, the cheeks and forehead he gave me in our blood. He still has not at all moved his head—though he is breathing. There are pustules on his arms.
I open up my mouth to speak and instead hear a moist note—something toned from deep down in my lungs. It burns. My cheeks go saggy. I become wet around my crotch. The harder I make strain to eject words out, the more colored the air gets, shifting shitty. Stinking: piss, then weapons, lice, then a low light. Rubber libraries. Eons. Dice.
I can only sit still by not trying.
The man who is not my father speaks.
- Do you remember
He stops. His voice is small and sandy, like something rubbed out from between two long human hairs. The main vein running at the globe-edge of his skull’s frame stands out winking. His concentration comes from none. I open up my mouth again and he is speaking.
- when you and Jason R. and Bradley R. and Samad A. made Darrell C. stand underneath the monkey bars in the mudfield behind East Valley Elementary and then took turns swinging down from both sides to kick his chest and stomach one after another until he turned bright white and could not breathe. You all talked him out of going to get help from the teacher by patting the cough out of his back and saying he was cool.
I see my pants are ripped a little. In the side mirror I can no longer see our house, inside of which the computer where I’d been typing is still typing. My mother in the next room asleep in her bed upside down.
That I could never get over coming back to that house, and likely never will.
By now we’ve passed the church on our same street I once believed was literally the house of god—god being my friend Adam’s father, the minister who stood before us and spoke out or sung from books in words I did not understand. How I would not
I approach the car.
]
]
]
The man inside the car is not my father but still the car smells like my father’s truck: crushed cigars and wet and dirt and cracking foam.
The man inside the car is facing forward, at the windshield, with both hands gripping the wheel, and still I feel his burned eyes on me as I slide across the skin-toned seat in silence and I close and lock the door. Though from up close outside, the windows appeared opaque with clay mold, from inside out, the front façade of my parents’ house is still apparent, holding still. The car’s glass seems even larger from behind it, whole flat planes that show not an inch of the reflection of my head or chest and eyes.
The man inside the car appears obese in sudden places, oblong globes of flesh bulge off along his spine, at his right knee, near his kidneys. His clothes are white. His hair is gone. A small tattoo along the vein bulge in his left neck is the tattoo I meant to get last year— I think this thought and feel it exiting my mind .
We go. By going I mean the terrain outside the car begins to scroll around us, leaving, though this is the only signal that the car itself can move. It seems to sit silent with us in it—no control panel, no LCD—the man does not move his arms to steer.
All the ashtrays in the car are overflowing though now the car does not smell at all like smoke—liquid Downy, wet dog, bending metal—the smells shift immensely when I blink. The ash is also at my ankles, in my pockets, on my lap. The man’s not smoking, but the air is, gentle fissures pouring through cracks in the upholstery from outside—as if the whole outside is burning underneath us, though through the glass the sky seems fine.
The seat feels deep and open all around me, yawning to fit my body in the dry cavern of its cloth. I relax, sit back. There is the man there beside me in the car. Though he is not my father, he has certain of my father’s features: gone eyes, stern lips, white beard, the cheeks and forehead he gave me in our blood. He still has not at all moved his head—though he is breathing. There are pustules on his arms.
I open up my mouth to speak and instead hear a moist note—something toned from deep down in my lungs. It burns. My cheeks go saggy. I become wet around my crotch. The harder I make strain to eject words out, the more colored the air gets, shifting shitty. Stinking: piss, then weapons, lice, then a low light. Rubber libraries. Eons. Dice.
I can only sit still by not trying.
The man who is not my father speaks.
- Do you remember
He stops. His voice is small and sandy, like something rubbed out from between two long human hairs. The main vein running at the globe-edge of his skull’s frame stands out winking. His concentration comes from none. I open up my mouth again and he is speaking.
- when you and Jason R. and Bradley R. and Samad A. made Darrell C. stand underneath the monkey bars in the mudfield behind East Valley Elementary and then took turns swinging down from both sides to kick his chest and stomach one after another until he turned bright white and could not breathe. You all talked him out of going to get help from the teacher by patting the cough out of his back and saying he was cool.
I see my pants are ripped a little. In the side mirror I can no longer see our house, inside of which the computer where I’d been typing is still typing. My mother in the next room asleep in her bed upside down.
That I could never get over coming back to that house, and likely never will.
By now we’ve passed the church on our same street I once believed was literally the house of god—god being my friend Adam’s father, the minister who stood before us and spoke out or sung from books in words I did not understand. How I would not
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