Debridement

He sits, he stares, he empties the contents of his nose into a wad of already-damp tissue. He crumples the wad. He considers saving it in his pocket for later use. Could the tissue withstand another attack? He puts it in his pocket. He thinks about churches. He still smells her on himself. He thinks more intently about churches, then railroad ties, gravel pits, house fires.

Briefly, he forgets where he is. He is at home, at his desk. No, at the office. No, the grocery store.

He is, in fact, at home. Trying to write a story about a moped-riding bigfoot. What a stupid premise. He calls it ‘Paul & the Piaggio’.

He sits and stares at the monitor. He begins plucking individual hairs from his head. His bottom teeth hurt. They are small, like baby teeth, and they are crowded and crooked and with the occasional sharp edge. He tries writing about the sasquatch’s teeth. He imagines the teeth of bears, badgers, dogs. Their teeth are small also, but yellowed and far more sharp. Does his yeti eat meat? He is uncertain.

Distraction

He only writes about neon signs any more. The signs and their flickering. It depresses him, makes him think about jumping off a bridge. These days, it seems, he even thinks in cliches.

In his mind, however, he does not die upon hitting the water, nor is he dashed on a sharp, stony crag. The water is deep and warm. As it fills his lungs, it revitalizes him. He is made strong in his drowning.

When he finally wakes from his fantasy, he makes a decision. To move on, to leave everything behind. To go somewhere devoid of neon lights and bristlefaced men and other hardboiled cliches.

He knows he has only moved from one fantasy to another, but it doesn’t matter. He knows also that by day’s end he will have settled back into his tired routines, probably. But for now he dreams of South America. Jungles. Unpaved roads. Little brown children with mud on their faces. These thoughts sustain him.

Outside his window, a neon light flickers in the dark night. He closes his blinds and feels the water fill his lungs. He is made alive in his drowning.

2009

Dilation

He has chapped lips and the cigarette breath blues. His fingers are clumsy, eager, tearing. He writes a hundred poems and hums them into her flesh. Along the way, they stop to buy ice cream and plastic guitars.

It might be snowing.

It certainly isn’t raining.

The words rise in his throat and freeze there. What, she asks. And again he hums, this time with less confidence. Tentative, but in key with the hum of every generator everywhere, every transistor, every idling engine, every low sweet drone. They strum their guitars.

It is not morning.

He might be sleeping.

He’s stopped writing poems now. She’s taken up the guitar, professionally. He always chooses paper over plastic when given the opportunity.

He sits at his desk, staring intently at the push-pumpable jug of hand sanitizer. He attempts to manifest a heretofore untapped telekinetic ability.

The jug moves. Maybe. He isn’t sure.

Meanwhile, she has become an auto mechanic in Saskatoon. Grease stains her coveralls. The spatter resembles the European continent. Snails. The Virgin Mary.

She’s cut her hair short and bought a crotch rocket. She rides it in broadening spirals.

Her fingernails are black.

He can’t stop thinking about her. It makes it difficult to will the jug to move. Instead he sanitizes his hands the old fashioned way.

Now, it is years later. Decades. The veins in his hands look like thick, squirming worms. Hungry. Breathing.

His lungs hurt. He is asthmatic in the wintertime.

It might be snowing.

His joints ache. It is definitely snowing.

He thinks of her now, but he swears, he doesn’t think of her that often.

She hasn’t aged a minute. She has a fleet of crotch rockets now. An empire of grease-stained clothing. It is all in heaps of varying sizes about her room. Mountains for rats.

Her bones are like Lincoln Logs. She stretches. She lets escape a soft moan. She bites her lip.

He is there now. In the room. Or in her memory. She shifts her hips. She writhes beneath him. Her breath collects on the windows of her recall. Off in the distance, a generator hums in D. Between her thighs there is also a hum.

Soon all things sing in unison. An old song, one he wrote, before he lost his voice.

He is undulating gently in his rocking chair. They all have rocking chairs here. Once a libidinous man, now he stares at the ceiling. In the other room, dinner is getting cold. He makes dinner for himself every night. A testament of sorts. A soundless protest. The others do not understand. How could they? They didn’t understand when he tried to escape, either. Why he tried, even though there was nowhere to go.

Well, maybe Saskatoon.

He whispers to her: Are you ready for bed? Your eyes are closing now. You are smiling so sweetly. It is adorable. But she is not there.

She is stalking in the tundra. She exists only in the past. She exists at all moments in time simultaneously. She lies there, sweaty, riding the final slow wave of convulsions.

She is ready for bed. Her eyes are closing now. She is smiling so sweetly.

2009