Why did we turn around and waste all this time what time what waste too much time left anyway and not what you're looking for anyway totally wasted anyway would like to be wasted anyway or just starting out with that water painted anyway ends up the same way anyway anyway it starts it ends up the same way anyway why did we turn around and then turn around after we already turned around made it seem like it was so worthwhile to look around and around for that stuff you had been talking about recently very recently just were talking about it between turning around and after we turned around and then I fucking got interested why the fuck did I I don't know we turned around again to get back to the original turning around and I think we lost track or count somewhere someone once said to me or to someone else who told me someone else told them that everything was about math because it was all about what we were counting on and we lost count or lost track we lost track and when we saw it and you said you thought that we finally were getting to it you were surprised because you were convinced we had never turned around enough times and that we must have been heading in the right direction all along until you second guessed yourself myself I second guess myself and I was told or actually I told someone I think it was you I told so why am I telling you again about to tell you again don't make me repeat myself don't make me pull another finger back this way and make that cracking sound like the other one did before gritting my teeth while my body points in all kinds of directions end up in the same way anyway you were saying you thought we finally were getting to it you were surprised because you were convinced we had never turned around enough times and that we must have been heading in the right direction all along at least the direction that led in the direction of your stuff until you second guessed yourself myself I second guess myself and I was told or actually I told someone I think it was you I told so why am I telling you again for your own enrichment and you could use it especially in light of the fact that the last time you bled all over us it didn't look very rich and by that I mean consistency don't know if we'll ever find anything to you know add to your blood to thicken it up a bit just keep it in there if you can and it's getting harder for both of us that's why we move on no sheets to clean no sheets no anything anyway ends up.
"Before we get any higher up can I tell you about the time I lost my friends?" the question came to her as she looked down the dirt path and had begun to be more aware of the growing distance between where they were and where they had been down below.
"You told me already," he replied as his head felt like it was placed in the vice at the end of his grandfather's worktable in the dark stale basement.
"Told you already? I did not tell you this already," she insisted as she saw the long flat land below and the conversation had been empty and she questioned herself in terms of why did she have to fill it up with anything again anyway.
"You did already with the friends at school the fake friends and how they all left you and what you put in your diary," he said as his head continued to feel pressed between cold metal memories of schoolyard fences and looking at the houses and the old people who sat in their backyards quiet and not at school.
"I told you about the kids at the school and all their horseshit of excluding me, but I don't think I told you about when I lost the rest of my friends actually lost them," she explained cracking her knuckles and imagining that they could have found some branches at least one to hold in her hands and bend and split into smaller pieces a nice sized branch dried out and no sign of green she really cracked her thumb knuckle on her right hand when she started to go through a list of vegetables and reached asparagus dirt not a branch dirt not a branch anywhere.
"Lost them?" he asked reaching for his rear left pocket to poke his index finger through the hole where the last few grapes had fallen through through the hole that's what that was forgot thought it was the usual forgetting to wipe and the crumbs dropping through from the hole through through the hole in the rear left pocket from through.
"I went with three of my remaining friends on a hike," she said trying to crack one more knuckle and producing only silence only silence space in a machine for a missing part that dropped down below not for being on one's own only when the time comes for lots of time and lots of space combining into lots of emptiness that knuckle must've been cracked already or it just won't crack.
"Three of your remaining friends?" he asked losing count of all the drinks he spilled lips to do without he spilled lips lips to do without rejected before he had even had his chance to say enough or when he spilled until he ceased to use his hands.
"Two remaining friends I went with two of my remaining friends on a hike and they found this cave we found this cave and we took our flashlights actually only one of us had a flashlight because we hadn't intended on exploring a cave and we weren't sure how far in we should go and how long the light was going to last and if I could remember how to tell that really long story I like to tell when I go into caves with people and I don't know how long the light will last," she said making a fist and moving it side to side like a head gesturing no.
"You mean your life?" he asked remembering when he stood and looked indifferently at his cousin who told him about the storage facility fire and all the burned photo albums.
"I am not that old," she said rubbing her back with her fist when it was done saying no.
"Old enough," he said refueling his contempt for how tall he was and not being sure what year of high school that girl was with the straight blonde hair that coursed down the back of her blue or black windbreaker.
"The story was long and it could if done in the right way outlast the light as well it should and I was having trouble as usual and with the same part," she said rubbing the tips of her fingers and feeling the fingerprint ridges and how they used to be caked with newspaper ink after tearing her dad's paper after he would read and wondering what day it would be when she would finally tear the paper before her dad read it.
"Trouble? Having trouble?" he asked confronted with the knowledge of never becoming a grandfather and then he was plagued with the horror of encountering his children and grandchildren somewhere along the desert as it slid towards him under the sky like a mechanized sidewalk and all the baggage he had surrendered in another desert or the same desert would reappear as it wrapped around the Earth on a belt just above the opening to the world's rotted crotch.
"Yes, yes, I was having trouble with the part that takes place in the prison," she said wondering where the passage with the cat with an ear and a half would go after the prison and the bridge that collapsed between or outside them outside. She continued, "The part with the prison is mostly in reference to a corrections officer who had started the job two years ago and within a few weeks of taking the graveyard shift had lost the feeling in most of his right thigh. He took it to mean he needed to exercise and get off his ass. When he left in the morning he looked through the fence into the exercise yard as it was gradually revealed by the rising Sun quickly covered by clouds as he felt himself swiftly blanketed in exhaustion."
numbness brings the dawn
grayness muffles the voice
temperature slows
indecisive vectors pledge
always pledging to
what's left standing
or underground
the sky and its droppings
bombard with the smell
of darker matter
as the grunts scramble
between the legs of reality
"And that is an example of how you have trouble getting through the prison part of the story?" he asked as a wave of anxiety rose up through him when recalling the overdue library book and wondering if the library was still there followed by the cat with the ear and a half that didn't go here already found a spot for that this was always grounds for covering ground that had been covered before and yet remained so barren the library was not there anymore.
"One example it's not always the same but when I start struggling with it it mostly veers off like that," she said clearing her throat after her left nostril had sent something down which led to her thinking of the one of the buildings she had seen before their demise and what the upper floors had passed on to the lower floors not a trickle but a profusion of dross.
"And the most popular deviation is waxing poetic?" he asked figuring out the possible combinations of malingering and crap as cralingering and being dissatisfied until he tried to reassemble it into macrap and it lingering on the edge of a sinkhole.
"I have never waxed do you hear me?" she said, "I have never waxed anything on my body except the time I got hot wax on my hand carrying that stupid candle around when we lost power after some truck crashed into a power line."
"What happened next to the officer?" he asked rubbing his nose that for some reason filled up again with the weird odor of his overdue library book as he tried to determine what had befallen the book since he no longer had it and what could have possibly gotten on it to have made it reek the way it did.
"The numbness spread all over his body," she said, "and he had to work at the prison long enough to be eligible to switch to a different shift which he did. As he moved along the spline he looked through the fence and noticed an inmate tall and muscular enough to suit his purpose exercising out in the yard. He motioned the inmate to come up to the fence so he could speak with him and asked if he was open to the idea of killing him and the inmate offered a reply along the lines of that he would think about it but that he was most likely leaning towards being accommodating and the corrections officer made his way toward the gate and then realized he did not have the key for it."
"Figures and then what happened?" he asked noticing her squinting at the latest ruin in the desert they had stumbled upon, "what is it?"
"What is this place this spot?" she asked sniffing and grimacing.
"This is where it used to be," he said examining the ground and debris.
"Your house?" she asked thinking of her own house and the burning wax from the candle and the nights and days that would continue from now on without power.
"My fish tank that used to be here," he said suppressing images of the ocean suppressing what he was seeing right now thinking about thick arms in prison sleeves wrapped around his neck.
"Smells like teen onions," she said cringing and tightening her face to brace against another rush of guilt of running away from the building as the rest of the chorus stayed on the bleachers that were ablaze she never felt good about that rehearsal.
And the mechanical pencil
disallowed now
looking in the other pocket
there it goes
long brown hair
dirty brush
to straighten it out
dirt to set her straight
so they say
when they open their mouths
and spit drips out
in the form of words
rolled into clods
to bruise her softness
tire swing
feet point out
from a broom skirt
between thick rubber
something sharp cuts her skin
crawling along the ground underneath
to escape the wheels
to be free of the hands
that pulled her backwards
Why did we turn around and waste all this time what time what waste too much time left anyway and not what you're looking for anyway totally wasted anyway would like to be wasted anyway or just starting out with that water painted anyway ends up the same way anyway anyway it starts it ends up the same way anyway why did we turn around and then turn around after we already turned around made it seem like it was so worthwhile to look around and around for that stuff you had been talking about recently very recently just were talking about it between turning around and after we turned around and then I fucking got interested why the fuck did I I don't know we turned around again to get back to the original turning around and I think we lost track or count somewhere someone once said to me or to someone else who told me someone else told them that everything was about math because it was all about what we were counting on and we lost count or lost track we lost track and when we saw it and you said you thought that we finally were getting to it you were surprised because you were convinced we had never turned around enough times and that we must have been heading in the right direction all along until you second guessed yourself myself I second guess myself and I was told or actually I told someone I think it was you I told so why am I telling you again about to tell you again don't make me repeat myself don't make me pull another finger back this way and make that cracking sound like the other one did before gritting my teeth while my body points in all kinds of directions end up in the same way anyway you were saying you thought we finally were getting to it you were surprised because you were convinced we had never turned around enough times and that we must have been heading in the right direction all along at least the direction that led in the direction of your stuff until you second guessed yourself myself I second guess myself and I was told or actually I told someone I think it was you I told so why am I telling you again for your own enrichment and you could use it especially in light of the fact that the last time you bled all over us it didn't look very rich and by that I mean consistency don't know if we'll ever find anything to you know add to your blood to thicken it up a bit just keep it in there if you can and it's getting harder for both of us that's why we move on no sheets to clean no sheets no anything anyway ends up.
- Max Stoltenberg
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