“Hah.”
It was easy enough to teach to the kids. He didn’t need their language. This was their tax. She purred. He came inside her. The man reached for the pistol on the couch. The volcano warned them, essentially. It needed to open up further, but it would. She smiled. He felt alright about having just one.
“Up up up.”
The fingers were dead somewhere, too.
“The idea means nothing.”
He shouldn’t compare them. He nodded. The moon worked for him, slightly over clouds. The door locked.
The car didn’t start. He hung up and redialed. Cuts all over the soles of her small gray feet.
“What are you doing here?”
He closed the book knowing he’d never read it again. It was a simple code to crack. He leaned over and dropped the note. Doing his fatherly duties. A sour, invisible pain. She stood with him, nodding. He could lose the words for it in so many ways.
“Red or blue?”
He remembered, said there’d be depth problems. He asked for eggs. The men seemed to require a universal equivalent. He coughed. I’ve never seen so much blood.
“Watch it again.”
Asked, received.
The bays were full of ripped women. He put it on a timer so they could use the delay. He heard about the project. How could she communicate so far in advance, so widely? Genuine interest was supposed to soothe him.
“Don’t let it fall!”
Dumb, but it felt like he switched from feminine to masculine. Not knowing why he had to help other people draw the same conclusions. He distilled the positive aspects, spoke them out, one finger each. Made a joke about not having much room left. She brought her fingers up, feeling it from him.
“It’s the side we need.”
He couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment, showers always did that to him, but he told people it was after he washed his hair, a detail he thought earned some extra smile, liar’s trade, and then he said he knew it’d be the biggest mistake if he didn’t ask her as soon as possible. He couldn’t be formal. Plastic hose held them down because they didn’t have extra cloth. She patted his head. He felt simple.
“It’s your game.”
He apologized. He cried telling her how beautiful she was, how she was, how, okay.
The same age. He needed the door shut and a few hours. Retreat felt provisional. He admired the violent ones, though. She wasn’t afraid to admit that fantasy.
“What percent?”
He didn’t know if it was a problem yet. He thought they should wait. They laughed. We have an hour. Her pants were tangled. He bit into it and sucked. It was all too much, the numbers and abstractions, all the formulations present even in an empty tent. He wanted rejection, even saying so out loud. She wasn’t in the house. He came home. He opened the door. He missed.
“I don’t like you like this.”
Severe problems with inactivity. He was breathing. He felt exhausted by all the meals. A white shadow. He blinked. Fifteen minutes exactly.
“You have to get it.”
When would he stop adding words to their requests, close up their questions, extend their favors. He’s the disciplinarian, she said. She picked him up by his wrists. Sleep, no animals, just some time. He laughed. The bottle wouldn’t open.
“You should work on that.”
He couldn’t tell her. He looked where his right hand was. I wish it was more of a problem.
He’d repeat the belief that it’s just what’s needed, a critical take from the inside, a voice that shouts about silence, the murder of murder by murder. She didn’t touch him. He thanked God.
“There’s no way in.”
His body was constantly building.
It couldn’t have gone down. He wiped up the shit with a paper towel. Babies eating peaches. That’s horrifying, she said. He cracked his neck, five pops.
“Fine.”
The later you bought in, the better. They pushed one more time and the casket went completely in, and then they were all huddled, crying, heads together.
“Last time.”
Thinking of the trees. Everything so permanently elegant.
He’d talk about it indirectly. Reminders, to do lists. He opened his eyes wide then opened his mouth wide then stuck out his tongue then made noise. She smiled, idling. Sex. Most likely total folly Even probing. Believing there were questions. The knife slipped and stung him. Blood dotted the paper audibly.
“If you can get enough of it.”
He smiled and shook his head. Either cursing or blessing the transitional. I respect him, she said. Oops.
“Don’t let me stop you.”
He couldn’t exercise to exorcise. She cried. She’d run laps around them.
I want to look at the rings. He looked at the skin below his mouth. Wondering where the pure anger that came with not being able to clip his fingernails came from. He laughed and ran farther away. He could argue against being prolific better than anything else. She pointed to their son. He stared into it just long enough to see bars, flushing white when he looked down, blinked.
“Go ahead and stop.”
That anger will help him. Eventually. His friend called. She looked at the clock on the microwave. He pulled her in by her hips. They wanted hamburgers. They laughed and decided on The Church of Omission.
“We keep getting them, though.”
He had to stop thinking about it.
“I’m going to take a nap.”
It was a hard experience to describe because he couldn’t really frame it. Blame my mother for everything. The scale of the planets was off, or so he hoped. The dog jumped and came down in a puff of dust, the dog licking its paw now, intensely, while its owners yell at it to quit. He wanted to touch the gore.
“I need your finger.”
Only local anesthesia is what he’d heard. A minor work.
There was stuff in their lives that was clearly poisonous, and he oscillated between feeling tasked to find the more embedded harms, and wanting to leave them piled, left to the therapist’s invitation, collected in rooms.
“I’d recommend you turn it on first.”
He’d be cut and punished back home.
He saw the number and knew it was larger than the population of many cities combined, but wanted to know what that number meant, what it translated to. Thinking in defaults helped. His skin felt raw in certain spots, too sensitive, but he couldn’t explain it. She enjoyed noting their progress in quiet moments. He wanted to know how deep it was.
“Can we stay home?”
He warned her of their possible poverty, but jokingly, assuring himself by both laughing about it now and conditioning her to the idea, maybe just saying it at all, that it would never happen. The ditch seemed to suck the truck into it and spit it out, axle snapping, falling forward in one lurch, immediately fucked. He saw the knives from a distance. Mothers can fight, too, wiping her eyes, closing her mouth over broken teeth. There’s a problem with this picture.