LEAVING RETURNING

The clock needed to be reset.  Needed to stay in step with everything else until a part of it somewhere where their expectations someone's expectations would get rubbed the wrong way somewhat whatever the some of it was or would be.  Their expectations these expectations inflated arms hands fingers to reset the time before the instant glue of slathered and frozen palms could peel off the layer of stuckness that adhered to the body other bodies bodies of others.

Standing with the right thumb scratching the left palm unable to tear off imprints of images dim classrooms upside down young man young woman holding on to the floor the chair the desks voices interrupting memories what memories don't have any no matter what they compile in a pile it gets disposed and forgotten as they are resurrected when something else embarrassing happens these are the only resurrections for watering eyes and dousing the head in the depths treated with miraculous natural elements blurring vision that smoothes over others their silhouettes compiling in a pile until they unleash their sharp instruments for sculpting again what's left behind.

The model retreats and returns and retreats sculptors fill the marble scene a scene for chiseling out another story that goes something like this and it doesn't want to start not yet or maybe ever and yet it starts something like this anyway usually one way in many modes folding the same paper unfolding leaving creases returning to the edges of paper disappearing into spaces.

The young woman not so young call her Amanda when others call her Jennifer even though her name was changed to Lilith from another that lies in that frame that hangs on that wall somewhere in that house on the edge of that forest trimmed away that trimming away she has been trying to stay one step ahead of one foot two feet of hair ahead of nothing left to get back to.  On second thought, don't call her Amanda.  Whatever she leaves whatever she returns to should couldn't care less there is less of her to care more for them to be right less of her nonetheless.

Death where is death's long overdue pinprick?  Death is being administered in smaller dosages numbing and dulling with inadvertent returning to something familar or unfamiliar can't tell the difference anymore.  Typing faster with more what's the word with what with earnestness fuck those earnest payments in full full of it hole in the bucket keeps emptying nonetheless none the less less is this which is less than what it is which is this and will be less all things being more or less less typing at a steady pace pausing for the effects of life and its caffeinated deadlines procrastinating against oblivion.

Returning to pill calls with additional times and additional locations slinking of cables through the dirt of the desert tripping over stepping over getting it straight for lines for pill calls expectations that belong somewhere along these cables that get longer and thicker dividing up space for division for additional times and addition locations addition for subtraction adding memories that clench their teeth to return to the hole of zero with wide curving ellipse multiverse pre-empted by televisions inside televisions all the way back to the beginning of the program to the beginning of the seasion to the beginning of the signal returning to the reruns that return.

What's left is left behind and has left to return for what's left all these streets so rectangular and perpendicular boxing in these lives so circular stepping over cables curled up behind desks those classroom desks those voices echo in every cough every pill call on every street corner every corner of every room of every mind corners of circular rooms spinning in round minds rounded off to the nearest estimate of birth and death leaving returning leaving returning.


- Max Stoltenberg