come when he appeared at our front doorstep to pick me up and take me home to play with his son, in their backyard with that magnolia tree that seemed to touch the sky. How I hid inside a closet in no light and waited till he was gone. Then my mother took me over and that afternoon Adam and I discovered an elevator in his basement that went to nowhere, on and on.
Since then that church has doubled in its size.
The smell inside the car now is the same as the blood that was pouring out of Marcus S.’s nostrils without clear reason in the grass inside the night, during another Boy Scout meeting where everybody carried handkerchiefs and knives. The blood’s glisten, his eye wet’s glisten. I find it hard to breathe—and yet the creaming taste opens a door. The car starts moving faster.
- Hey,
I hear myself say. It’s the only word I am allowed.
The word inside my mouth makes glow-oil. I am working on a new balloon.
- You are working on a new balloon,
the man continues, his hands so tight-gripped to the wheel his fingers seem about to break. I realize he is wearing thin gloves, revealed by how their skin color frays around his wrists. The gloves’ color match the car’s interior’s color match the man’s other skin, and mine. My skin is sticking to the all of it.
- but the problem is, you’ve already turned so old. Every day is faster than the last and you’re still all pen to paper and all in small rooms hiding from the light. What do you think sleep is? One third of any life. And still the bodies who talk about books don’t want to hear what happened to you in there, call it ugly. Like every word you’ve ever said. Like every inch you’ve ever houred. This is the smallest car I’ve ever drove.
Driven, I start to say to him, correction—and my mouth is so full of my spit, I can’t even snort or say no, pull over, who are you, there’s no seat belts, where are we going, why does the radio not have dials, why does the seat belt feel like burning, what is that banging in the trunk. Suddenly I have all these questions, and from each of those three more, and from each of those a paragraph of wanting I’ve never written down and will die in me, I know, contained—even when the skin splits and my blood runs to leave the meat, these wrinkles will remain—these wrinkles will decay to sit upon the air the way all light does, a hard drive on the night, and yet still every day my first concern is all this typing—not any woman, not any walking in a pasture or a light. Every minute with anywhere and escalators and moss and doors ever, all directions all at once in every era, and yet the same room with the same splits in the same walls, healing and unhealing, asking . . .
I look down, see there is a button sticking up out of my shirt—from the center of my chest; it’s always been there. Its head is gold and cannot see. I cannot move my arms to move my hands upon them to touch the button, to press the button in my chest, and I know that when I look away I will not see the button there again, ever or ever, or feel the wanting of it, the gold thrum, and it will be right there in my chest still all those hours, waiting all the same.
The man who is not my father lifts a hand off the steering wheel and moves to hold my face, to cup it like a massive taco and fix it forward, looking straight on, as he is, to what’s ahead.
- That’s not a button, it’s a tumor. You are growing. Doesn’t matter. You are growing inside too. The length of the human intestines are ten times longer than the length of the body. Each year 275,000 Britons disappear. In 30,000 years, Saturn’s rings will have disseminated into blank. So what. So who. Listen, the reason you don’t sleep is because you’ve never really been tired. Because there’s nothing to name the thing you want. Well isn’t that just so sad.
Through the front window of the car the yards of the houses in surrounding come on calm. This is a neighborhood and its
Since then that church has doubled in its size.
The smell inside the car now is the same as the blood that was pouring out of Marcus S.’s nostrils without clear reason in the grass inside the night, during another Boy Scout meeting where everybody carried handkerchiefs and knives. The blood’s glisten, his eye wet’s glisten. I find it hard to breathe—and yet the creaming taste opens a door. The car starts moving faster.
- Hey,
I hear myself say. It’s the only word I am allowed.
The word inside my mouth makes glow-oil. I am working on a new balloon.
- You are working on a new balloon,
the man continues, his hands so tight-gripped to the wheel his fingers seem about to break. I realize he is wearing thin gloves, revealed by how their skin color frays around his wrists. The gloves’ color match the car’s interior’s color match the man’s other skin, and mine. My skin is sticking to the all of it.
- but the problem is, you’ve already turned so old. Every day is faster than the last and you’re still all pen to paper and all in small rooms hiding from the light. What do you think sleep is? One third of any life. And still the bodies who talk about books don’t want to hear what happened to you in there, call it ugly. Like every word you’ve ever said. Like every inch you’ve ever houred. This is the smallest car I’ve ever drove.
Driven, I start to say to him, correction—and my mouth is so full of my spit, I can’t even snort or say no, pull over, who are you, there’s no seat belts, where are we going, why does the radio not have dials, why does the seat belt feel like burning, what is that banging in the trunk. Suddenly I have all these questions, and from each of those three more, and from each of those a paragraph of wanting I’ve never written down and will die in me, I know, contained—even when the skin splits and my blood runs to leave the meat, these wrinkles will remain—these wrinkles will decay to sit upon the air the way all light does, a hard drive on the night, and yet still every day my first concern is all this typing—not any woman, not any walking in a pasture or a light. Every minute with anywhere and escalators and moss and doors ever, all directions all at once in every era, and yet the same room with the same splits in the same walls, healing and unhealing, asking . . .
I look down, see there is a button sticking up out of my shirt—from the center of my chest; it’s always been there. Its head is gold and cannot see. I cannot move my arms to move my hands upon them to touch the button, to press the button in my chest, and I know that when I look away I will not see the button there again, ever or ever, or feel the wanting of it, the gold thrum, and it will be right there in my chest still all those hours, waiting all the same.
The man who is not my father lifts a hand off the steering wheel and moves to hold my face, to cup it like a massive taco and fix it forward, looking straight on, as he is, to what’s ahead.
- That’s not a button, it’s a tumor. You are growing. Doesn’t matter. You are growing inside too. The length of the human intestines are ten times longer than the length of the body. Each year 275,000 Britons disappear. In 30,000 years, Saturn’s rings will have disseminated into blank. So what. So who. Listen, the reason you don’t sleep is because you’ve never really been tired. Because there’s nothing to name the thing you want. Well isn’t that just so sad.
Through the front window of the car the yards of the houses in surrounding come on calm. This is a neighborhood and its
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