OFF AGAIN

"Did she?"


Get the cables.  What was her name?  All right we'll try the length.  Was it long or short or even go with about shoulder length?  Shoulder length is a length not bad not too bad not since the party of skunks eating pizza on a trampoline and gassed the neighbor in a what would be called by many residents and their respective pets and potted plants as a particularly ambitious redistricting effort this year or perhaps it had already been attempted the year before or perhaps the year before that all right we'll try the length.  Was it long or short?


"Did she say?"


Get the cables.  What was the color?  All right we'll try the color.  Was it light or dark or in between for a length of life not bad not too bad not since the first contact that contact with sense organs in the forest couldn't pass through in an uninterrupted reverie for the neglectful or worse suppose suppose so and it was so that contact more than one one too many and would rather have waited for the falling of the leaves to bury the ruined cut out cut down and cut out for less than the screams that painted the branches in saliva and the fog of her breath their breath that scattered into the weather patterns of the parks of the plazas of the other sides of things and those dead faces long faces.  All right we'll try the length.  Was it long or was it short?


"Did she say something?"


Get the cables.  What was the smell?  All right we'll try the smell.  Was it open or closed or in a manner of standing at a threshold about to have that slab of door that mile of wall slammed into one's nose this nose for smelling not bad not too bad for getting around couldn't get around in an uninterrupted scenic route for getting around.  They're in that back corner there tangled.  You'll have to untangle them.  Just get the cables.  Enough distracting with your telling yourself how we all need a jump now and then.  Better to be left empty than started again for yet another turning over.  On second thought, leave the cables.  Leave them be among the leaves collecting in the trunk.  Leave the trunk hood up.  Leave it be to its gaping over the leaves swirling about the forest where the other sides of things can gather into their feeble headstones.  All right we'll try the length.  Was it long or was it short?




- Max Stoltenberg