“Sir, you forgot this.”
He caught himself mulling lifetimes and would stop. He threw the ball. Something foreign, she said. He spoke louder. This couldn’t be graded. The cows were piled. He nodded, and lay down. Color struck him with the crowd. No crows.
“Darwin. Right?”
Then it split.
In the shower he prayed through the water, keeping his hands dry. He crawled. The water slicked her left leg. All at once. He was in, burning. He knew.
The map uncurled. He let himself sit there. The water rose, but was too dirty. He wiped his spit off her lips. The sun moved in a way that kept him returning to bed many times per day.
“Take it down.”
A challenge. The hand, in outline. He woke up. They felt around for it. He woke up. This was a long time ago, almost two years now. Yeah yeah, she said. They told him repeatedly: it ends.
“I see it that, but I still don’t understand.”
It was the face talking. Numbering for a few hours, then displacement. The taste coated his mouth, hung onto the insides of his cheeks. Beginnings are harder.
“We do require.”
He forgot his agency. They repeated themselves and pressed the gun farther into his stomach. None of them are machines, she said. He felt hands. No more lawns, he decided.
“Look up for me.”
He felt her ease out of him. Waiting to eat.
He counted, doubling up on the same fingers, and always stopped at nine. The crying was perfect. Yes, they were being asked to leave. She stood up and bent over. He felt the ants all over him.
“A teenager did that.”
He’d show his skin to drunks. Hunger was an option, and just that. They pushed and pushed on his stomach. The dream opened up somewhere. They are certainly docile.
“First time’s the hardest.”
He took the stickers off. He drove it first. They stopped too hard. They let her vomit in a ceramic flower pot and put it back on the shelf. Don’t cross here. Safety lights. The flight attendants lined up and synced. Prayer, then embalming. Here’s the order, he said. His fingers wouldn’t get another color than red.
“It’s like a joke.”
Holding was the same. Never a bride.
Break it off, then see. He could go to the bathroom, but fast. First they dragged him out of bed.
“Smile!”
The weapons paid for it. Quoting music. He cited incidents as specifically as possible. He went black, probably from the blood. He said that every time. Mechanics were small gods. He found it on the map and asked. The monastery by the lake. Forty miles from home. He could walk. The blood scaled the quick bandages.
“I don’t climb mountains or anything.”
That’s why you can trust him. An altered spring. He scrambled. The handwriting tilted in its other language. It would only help you. That word.
“Don’t put up with me.”
The mirror fogged over. He leaned down. He crept to the girl. Nightfall.
Two tickets. He put his hands out flat. Grounded in the paperwork. Even temporarily He signed where the red tabs led him. First he swallowed. Another white cup.
“If you have to put it anywhere.”
A doctor with cheap earrings. That was the poison. He screamed until his throat broke.
“Feel invaded?”
A great plain. The place became thick with breath and breathing, and then divided. He looked at the missing palm. Forecasts. Keep notes, she said. He listened to her doing laundry. Her voice couldn’t be there. A general intensity.
“See a surgeon.”
Professionals were on the list. Hung and dead. Just above the kids, all staring at it with their mouths open. He could feel the plane burst through his eyes. He doubted his fingers. That wasn’t fair. What am I going to do, report them? Feel sicker. Shape up. Send help.
“I’m not answering you.”
He sat and watched her smile on video for hours.
He either remembered this or was filling it in from some movie, but there was this man, his friend had seen him, who had no hands, but I watched him through the windowpane of the check cashing place and he was at the counter signing papers and unfolding and refolding money, organizing the bills, and rapidly, all as if his hands were there, like there were so many fingers.
They cut him off. It was routine. He gave it to her. The screen went black after she read the last line. The children noticed the veins on his arm, and then his feet. He thought about the bay, and her on the phone and the little things she missed.
“I hurt.”
Five dimples of blood. He almost put his finger in his mouth. The truck left. Basic accommodation. After she asked him to leave, he went into an empty room and put his face into the hanging curtain.
“That’s work.”
He stretched it and stretched it. It’s dumb to act like that. She looked under the covers. The heat came in too regularly. They thought of sabotaging the current. They could plant something. He stopped buying things. Mites, infectious diseases. Don’t go in the water.
“That’s an out.”
He knew he was crying in his room about the scars. This was a first.
“So many options.”
Pushing and pulling her like that. He licked it. All the faces laughed, floating above rags.
He swore he felt the cut. They looked, together, at the knife. Starlings. Admitted to briefly thinking that, yes, the kid was like a dog almost. She wasn’t any good, she said. Go ahead. Keep doing that.
“Tremendous blood loss.”
They laughed about casual encounters. Some poem about building a house. He tried to skip that by making love. Roll calls. Lunches were just so unhealthy. He stayed on the line. The red car drove by again. No waste. The man shook his head. No waste, no waste.
“It’s the first time it’s broken.”
It wasn’t a rational claim, but he made sure he did that to her. Close. Prenatal concerns. He wrote Yes.
It starts in the fall. The list is pretty open. He laid his leg on top of her. They pushed the meat away from the bone. Little boys kept daring each other to burn themselves. Just a sec.
“What’s christ?”
It would have to be earlier. He fixed his hair. Mirrors caught it, kept him greeting it, gone, daily.
“Why can’t it be simple.”
She’d read. They promised that. He switched cards. His birth certificate in an old drawer. She leapt on him, laughing. Posterity. Smart and pretty people like us need to breed, to outnumber all the idiots, she said. He admired their tree. Wind brought allergies. Fear in a room.
“What’s left for them?”
She never answered. Trial in December. Television to a minimum.
Little fingers rounding the hill. Where’d it go, he asked, staring. Then he looked then far below himself, into a well, its depth a precursor to his calm stop. Only dying. He smiled. The little fingers pushed against the old blade, two opposing magnets. This new charge felt like god, new palms he helped make. He knew. Released.