And that's not how it happened. The garage was dark and there were two men asking questions and the black box saw it and it still slipped my mind to mention it the air the breathing keeps me pressed against the Earth even as I slip constantly attempting my deliberate accidents the fucked up klutz of expression and filling up space folded with so much intent upon an eruption of coughing what activity inside and outside the tent meeting draped over the hospital bed watching someone else sitting behind the see through plastic door with the zipper zipped shut so I couldn't get them out of that side of my mirror.
And that's not how it happened. As it always continued it continued with the sound the imagined sound of a rodent to usher in the next moment next series of moments leading to the dead body on the concrete lying there no sign of blood as the dead body was there between us silence skewered by a nose for chit chat sniffing around other people's spontaneous punctuation marks in their routines. Never been all that good with the grammar of expectation and disappointment.
"I want to show you something," she said as she led me behind the house that looked like a house from the front and from the back looked like the back of someone's head with their brain ripped out. "Perhaps I shouldn't," she said as she stopped walking and looked around and avoided my eyes the ones that saw her age tangled in her mouth divided into extra decades than previously thought. And she started walking again quickly untying her hair and letting it down as she walked on swiftly away leaving. The more I glimpsed at her gray-blonde hair moving about the more my knees locked and unlocked and locked fumbling about the inside of a car door letting them go on ahead never catch up to the blood banging against the knuckles where fingers are interwoven by both hands behind lifted eyebrows that take note of both hands knitted together on the back of the neck palms are backing up into you armpits how do I know now I know as I keep walking along the sidewalk that disappears into the rocks and the dirt and the occasional dogshit. "She was going," she said. Turned toward the evaporating half-finished decorations and he replied, "She is going." She said, "She was going to tell you something." Watched her not look back and continue over a small hill that led down into more empty lots and chair legs and wheels sprinkled about. He coughed and growled, "She was going to show me something." "Stop talking to yourself and listen," she said as some dirt blew into the corners of his eyes. "And listen to myself instead I suppose. That hasn't worked out very well," he said as he sneezed at nothing. The few times he wasn't interrupted by his voices he had heard something in his chest and acted and it usually resulted in prison trying to get out of a bed made of various papers wood I thought they were lacquered trying to get out and not smear any more vomit around on himself than I had to ending up with a head of bloody hair smashed against a wall had to go and do that as well couldn't let me finish combing the streaks out couldn't. "Are you done with your explaining? Can I go on with what she was going to tell you?" she said. I was silent except for this. She went on, "She was going to tell you about the man she saw who started to build the shed back there and how he had come out with a glass window pane to set in the wall facing his house. He leaned it against the fence and went in the house and never came back out." I paused and thought about this what had been told and when a cough or a sneeze did not ensue noticed his allergies were gone along with the rest of the world.
And then are you are you coming? Following following along I meant are you following along with this? The shed business? Is that what is being asked in regards to? Lost in terms of who is doing the asking didn't intend to be a spoilsport but the royal we had its head lopped off some time ago floated along a river didn't count on rivers to run through flat dry streets of shred tires and broken glass floating about when it rarely rains like taking a piss in the desert careful when you swallow floss out the shards and treads ended up falling back onto that bed a bed nonetheless made it fell in it from what others had made and fallen it gravity brings you back to what you assumed you had gotten rid of following along with this dogs if I ever come upon one anymore is what I find myself following dogs never followed him when he was a tyke he would follow them and observe them about their business.
Truth is made too much of it
tumbled into the front seat
behind the wheel
in front of the blank strip
the frames snap apart
stretched across the hot bulb of the Sun
tape them back together
her lashes thinning
going she went
never looked back
thinning upon blistered knees
can't undo their belts themselves
sticking out tongues
to catch whatever residue
follows in the wasteland
truth is
made too much of it
And then must you? Can she continue with what he was going to say about the shed? Didn't mean to laugh at me yes I did that's what they tell me to do when people aren't telling me what someone wanted to tell me show me reaching out across dead fields and then must you? continue with what he was going to say about why he put the hole in the wall for the window facing the back of the house and she never got around to it making her circles even though she no longer had that dress that would do that thing she never got around to it because either she was making up the reason or I kept cutting into her circling and it was the latter he was like that a man for butchering her concentric attempts at congruence even in her most awkward moments and when enough passed and she passed on another cough followed by another sneeze he admitted his allergies had returned and so had the rest of the world.
- Max Stoltenberg
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