one side of the dining room table meeting timid duplicitous silence on the other. The mother-yet-not-mother’s nerves the father’s nightly yelling at her for once again forgetting the salt. The hectoring self-pity across the table. Sitting next to the skinny grin. Your childish smirk little arch comments. An occasional relapse into giggling. The occasional irruption of unheralded fury. But usually the volcano remained silent just smoking. An atmosphere of anxious social superiority assumed by the father still to be proven for the mother who was yet not mother. We were part of the decor of reassurance. The need to dominate one’s neighbors as the only way to tolerate having any. The same to dominate the world the only way to support the inanity of family life a subadult world that kept the parents nailed to the infantilism of the kids. The false sense of power pretense of authority the childlike grandiosity of parenthood. To say nothing of the marriage cage though at that time such cages were beginning to split with increasing ease. You did not know this at the time do not know this now only guess as you pick at straws of understanding to figure what got you scribbling associations onto a tablet in an otherwise empty room between bouts of staring into space like. A bump on a log. As they used so often to characterize you from their perches at each end of the table. Often justly such was your talent for laziness daydreaming later on passiveness futility self-demoralization if that is a word it shall be a word. Over your peas.
An elegance cold and angry. Translated without a hitch from country to city. Fibrillating with nerves the feminine half.
A repletion of scorn arrogance and disdain made for a sustaining spiritual nourishment.
Almost hidden behind the mother’s nervous loving unhappiness fringed with frustration and spite. That you sensed nothing of oblivious to all but your confusions. As the quarrels increased in frequency and violence in the tight apartment.
I did not let myself be aware.
It was easy to hide behind the eyes.
And the sibling antics made for a scintillating sideshow. Oh how the laughter masked the rancor oh how the mask slipped oh how the face unhinged with rage stabbed the air with its teeth.
No more. An acane favor given for uncertain at best highly suspicious reasons. The justifications carefully nailed down airtight waterproof. No jury would convict on such slender grounds. All we need do is put you on the stand they won’t believe you you did it you could have done it you are fully capable of having done it indeed of doing it then indeed of doing it indeed of doing it now not him your honor must be kidding he’s a total wimp. Although you did and we know you did. Juridical persiflage. A modest pride in the capacity for crime. Against your past against yourself. And all the cutouts hanging on the rope that extends from your window down to a pulley in the garden. Multiple avatars of Her.
Anger became him more than kind.
To say nothing of his literary style.
The solitary one gropes for his solitude like a blind man. He cannot feel it cannot find it. What. Around him there is only bitterness and air. Nothing but eyes.
She had made the transition without ease hanging by her fingers on to the escarpment. Transition into an endlessly delayed maturity. Childhood was pushed from her with the budding of the mounds on her torso the distending of the papillae ragging of the pudendum trickling then flooding of the blood. Which from all men must be hidden they faint so easily. The thread down the inside of her knee that humiliated her one afternoon in the school hallway. Set her mother crying when she told her in the evening. It left red spots behind her on the tiles. It led up to her a bleeding leaky mess with a blatant trail behind me. I am disgusting. Hide me. The powders the perfumes the hairdoes the hankies the combs the jewelry the squeegees dresses laces clogs the pumps the stockings the garters the jumpers panties petticoats the blouses the barrettes the bustiers the flowers in the hair cute little hats the darling pendants disguises for the blood camouflage false face theater to fool them from the repellence of this flaccid ugliness smelly and bleeding that surrounds the fallopian nausea. The filthy moon of my body. Brain-dead who says he loves me knows nothing when he finds out he will run. Away. Off. Gone. After another disguise.
Women are filth men are idiots.
Help me. I can’t bear it anymore. Help me please God help me.
The edge of the escarpment bit her fingers where she hung over the bright abyss.
Greetings from the fire. There we handled with care for it was breaking at the folds this blueprint for an invasion of the past. Her fingers flickered in and out of the flames. At the other end of the city where the incinerator belched. A smoke wattled in and out of the air a weave of bark in whose chinks shone crosses of sunlight.
We were helpless so we prayed. Heroism not being an option however demanded. We had no choice but to take the boot in the face. No one else felt our mortification. That was consoling. To be human at that time was to live in a state of shame. For we destroyed everything we loved. We touched. And were instant ashes. Good King Midas of fire. Grinding the sea into a great pillar of salt. As we gazed rapt happy frozen behind. No power there had ever been to match our weakness. We drew all with us down.
Oh to melt into each other’s skins. What rapture. To vanish into the hour of our gazing. What delight. They were no more and yet they were.
The mind learned to match the world that did not match the heart. A slow learner or rather a recalcitrant student. No. But two plus two and so forth. Make three. You must grow up sometime. Never. You are going to have a hard life. Over my dead body. Ah!
Demonic attachments have their place. Frankly. Honestly. Eye to eye. Without flinching. Callous was called for it will come with time. With disappointment. When.
The desire to penetrate a woman and keep penetrating her without end in view. Forever or a close facsimile. So this is where it belongs this hitherto deeply frustrated thing. But what a payment plan! The worst crime to give yourself your pleasure on her of course. The pleasure you gave and took. Crafty she never did admit the joy of. You the accused in her holding cell. The mug in the box.
So she crushed you slowly between her loins for the privilege. Little knowing the links. Or chain. Her own dissolution taken on trust. Into fulfillment. Or ecstasy.
You the love I have come to destroy. Forever more or less.
The place where they camped on the edge of the kaldera. Curling tongs of loathing officious of no explanations. Glancing witheringly down. He was a beaten dog about the legs. Kept his eye on the cold faces. Studied his tricks. Gamboled at whistle. Made his A’s. Received his imperial approval however detached. Was only slapped by the father once in these later years. For not purchasing the gift for which he had no money.
Skeletal weeds strummed the windows. Nervous dogs of the neighborhood bayed at the passing cars.
I saw my first cockroach the egg sack sticking out behind the vestigial wings. It was a memorable day. Though disgust was followed by dismay. Rotten fruit outlined the edges of the palace. Knives piled up like a house of cards ready to crash down over my little solemn head. I saw the future a flat darkness stinking of rotting banana.
They giggled together nervously in the white kitchen.
The meals remained sumptuous long after the wind had ceased to rattle the windows. They were aware somewhere of a flaw diffracting the perspective but could only infer what no one was allowed to see.
The fingers pointing in the distance from the caravans of traffic. As if the only mirrors waved into the grotesque and the only allowance was for repellence. Their eyes smears on glass slides checked
