“And then you have to wake up again.”
She pushed. He smelled his fingernails, tried to smell under them. Everyone wanted to abandon their rational project.
He rolled up his sleeves. He never wanted to hear another redemption story. Dark faces were color corrected.
“We can’t support that figure.”
She kept thinking about what he said, the entire time she said, and he enjoyed getting hard as she barely looked up, playing with the bottom edge of her dress. He’d speak up more often.
“Need me to write that down?”
He didn’t question the lifestyle back home, as he had been culturally prepped to, primed by all the nomad romances. He drowned him in ice water.
“First.”
He had the capacity and the time and the desire and would never.
It would be awkward for her, and preventing that set of questions from coming up would be the least he could do, at this point. Twenty weeks. Could they do it without advertisement?
“You need the draw.”
He mixed the papers up with his finger. She reached into the recycling as she spoke, grabbed a long piece of window. He knew he was like a little boy when he pushed against her like that. She laid a towel on the bed. The moon was out, somewhere. He tore the skin off his middle knuckle underneath her. It only happened once every thousand years. He pulled up a little grass, picked up the ring. I know you’re deep underwater, she said.
“Geometry is a nightmare.”
Even then he felt a logic. The finger would heal. He thought about talking, but he knew what to say, to tell everybody: No more of that story I’m exhausted.
She wanted a pamphlet. He stood in the long tunnel and opened his mouth, expecting nothing but sunlight. Two independent explosions. He saw the third boy get concussed. She wanted to give blood. The voting form marked with one and a half names.
“Fucked, how easy it is.”
Four pings in the sole of his feet. Knew he needed sleep when he could only think about sandals. She tasted it, before it was ladled. He remembered. She asked the neighbor if they saw his naked body. How often?
Of course he wasted so much time, but as long as the guilt sunk into the next screen, he would continue.
“Skip ahead.”
If asked, he wouldn’t know how to describe it. Acceleration seemed like the right word but wrong sense. Hard to cook for one. He noticed a shift, from a gradual appreciation of a quiet house to, when alone, a soft and widening pain.
She found every box he hid. How easy it was, and pleasurable, to neglect his childhood. The boring made bruised.
“I really have to go.”
They took turns lying to each other. I think you’re more stubborn, she said. He looked at the paperwork again. He didn’t know why he was surprised.
“It’s hard to breathe.”
His kid. Only around other parents, she said. He nodded. A tattoo on every arm in the crowd. He told her he was so glad to see shoes on everyone. They couldn’t live, after that. She laughed and pointed at the two crows, both still at the foot of the tree.
“Sit for awhile.”
He poked the crumpled body. She asked that he be careful, use certain words. He bumped the phantom into things. She knew, but he started to tell her what he was thinking. They needed new music.
“I don’t know.”
I’m lucky. Bearing a bad winter, he said, he had only been to one funeral. She looked down, put on her gloves. Snow and train tracks.
“So unreal.”
He wanted to shed a grammar. She questioned him, the idea of permanence. He sobbed, buckled. People watched him run out. She gave him her hand.
“We want to proceed.”
He was the only one in the house that enjoyed dead flowers. It’s as painful as it sounds. They told each other to make faces. They should keep the phone away from him, at least in the other room. The temptation to leave, give up the virtue, probably more parasitic to stay and help. She didn’t want him saying that. Fuck my head. Fuck my head.
“Can I make you lunch?”
A stunning amount of choice. They remembered, they agreed on not having kids the day they met. He could feel the skin coming off. She told him to feel right there, and he did. He used the pad of his ring finger.
“You’re empty.”
He did. Days died with her.
The blade must’ve been totally dull. He asked for a better table. Dumb how many people think that not fucking other people is such a loss. A precursor to home invasion.
“I can’t watch it again.”
A couple knocks at the door, a worried unknowing glance, eyeing through the bent peephole to two tubes, a muzzle.
“Drinking is no excuse.”
He left satisfied.
“Who are you?”
The comic, viral side effect of privilege. He felt taken over. He wanted so much to see just one proof of the supernatural.
“Everything.”
She laid the flowers in a row, patted them down.
“That’s great, babe.”
He had to punctuate it with something. Fourteen children, three fed.
“Pick a realm.”
He could see them withdrawing, stripping English out too with the translators, every trace dying out if the people split, reemerged elsewhere, took nothing, died. He drew a square in the air and she poked her finger through it.
“I can see you down the line.”
He was too aware. Any absence, any independence.
He tried it while he walked, he looked around and attempted to focus, repeating out loud what he’d been told. A final tone. Thinking. He felt unable to see without naming or noticing patterns, but kept seeing and saying it anyway. Thinking. Even twice in a row, sometimes. Minutes passed.
“Thinking.”
He did.
He felt his cheeks get hot and his eyes water, a swell of relatedness, because here was a person even more barricaded from saying something of worth, speaking out of code. She turned the volume down. They asked about the functioning screens.
“Thank you for coming in.”
He reminded her of their son. A very designed year of detesting conversation. He wanted to fill a great hall with nothing, shouts for the echo alone, sex. He knew all the names.
“Cast your vote.”
A different way to organize a life. That couldn’t be right.
“Hello.”
She told him about the desert plant that grew horizontally, each piece of its stem carrying the ability to grow the whole body again, the plant’s head above ground, moving to follow the sun.
“Yes.”