It was the doctor who threw you out along with the violin that had been missing a string and the bow well the bow didn't have the rosin and fuck that wasn't going back for anything anyway as all this cycled up and down the escalator in his mind that churned while coming across bottles with a few sprinkles in their bottoms sizzling in the Sun letting them run onto the tongue felt like the drawing of blood from the taste buds divided one's preferences in half nothing numbed instead was awakened again to the misery of it all.
"Do you want to buy an escalator?"
"Let me guess the one in your head?"
"How do you know that?"
"About the one in your head?"
"No the one at the mall."
"The one where the woman-?"
"With the misspelled tattoo? How did you know that?"
"I didn't know she had a misspelled tattoo. But thanks for telling me."
"Shit. I should have waited to see what you would have said."
"That's not easy for you."
"How do you know that?"
"You just demonstrated it for me."
"How did you know about the woman at the mall?"
"What the hell is that? You haven't even been able to find any food to eat."
"Just the natural causes of my death that is taking too long to get here. How do you know I haven't been able to find any food to eat?"
"And then this is when you wish you had a piece of tape to wrap and unwrap around your left index finger and instead you settle for picking on the cuticle of your right thumb and then that inevitably leads to chewing on it."
"You make my habits sound like the course of some illness."
"You're doing it right now."
Lips segmented and hibernating
for all the seasons
eyes clouded within
practicing those scenes
between addresses and returned malaise
Lips rolling in the dust
earthworms cracking
eyes peel off membranes
of focus
blurring roles
over time coordinates and stale bread
"What about the woman at the mall?"
"You tell me you seem to got wind of it and everything else."
"I certainly got wind of you. Yeesh, when are you going to change?"
"Look around and tell me where I'm going to find anything in this barren ashtray? The only change I will be able to muster is the stages of decay ahead of me. Now what about her?"
"Her?"
"The woman at the mall."
"She got run over by an asshole in a sports car and they were able to connect him to her."
"You mean besides metal to flesh."
"Phone records."
"Are you trying to feed me the line of communication digging deeper than physical penetration?"
"You never could find a replacement G string for your violin."
"No I couldn't and it was the D string by the way."
"You had trouble coming up with the cash to get it out of the pawn shop."
"That and the pawn shop and the rest of the town are gone."
"When you ask me to do things outside my purview I am bound to overlook a thing or two."
"And I thought you understood how the other half of the escalator lives."
"Let the one who is without a multiple personality be the first to throw pocket sand."
"Ever since her death it's the only way I could reproduce."
"You made her up."
"All the more reason."
"Just like the reason you gave for heading in this direction?"
"On fourth thought, you made her up."
"Now that you mention it I did."
"I just made that up."
"And I made you up."
"Not one of your best ideas."
"What can I say? I'm tired tired of moving in this direction or that direction until I dream and she reappears out of reach and I awake and she vanishes. I do not envy her qualities because I know I gave them to her. I envy her non-existence."
"And until that decay reaches fruition you'll both continue to be clogged in the sewer of your thought stream."
"Your thumb is bleeding."
"It is your thumb that is doing the bleeding."
"My blood looks different than yours."
"How is it different?"
"It isn't as diseased looking as yours."
"I want to be more diseased than you."
"Oh yeah. Give me your thumb."
"Leave me alone."
"There I got some."
"Where? I don't see it."
"Here on the back of my hand."
"It probably won't even take."
"How long does it take to download?"
"That's not how it works."
"Probably all fucking night."
"It'll lag like crazy and I know how much you hate the lag."
"I thought you said that's not how it works."
"You'll wake up in the morning and find out it froze in the night."
"Tell us about mom and dad."
"Not that again."
"Tell us once more and I won't ask again."
"You say that every time."
"I know and you tell us about mom and dad."
"Fuck you man."
"Don't do that. Don't ruin the ending."
"Whatever, you go to mom with your homework because one of the questions doesn't make any sense. You read the question to her and she has that puzzled look on her face because it really doesn't make any sense. And she says to ask dad and he tries to figure out what he thinks they meant to say and mom even though she's cooking she's been listening to dad and all his rearranging and rewording and then she shouts skip it because it doesn't make any sense fuck 'em!"
"I wish we had really done that."
"What? Skipped the whole coming into being thing?"
"That, too, but that we had actually listened to mom."
"I wish mom had actually said that."
"You're making that up."
"I wish there actually was a mom and a dad."
"Don't do that. You've ruined it enough."
"Ruined what? This? Before the barren ashtray the warehouse. All there ever was was the warehouse."
"I got to drive the forklift."
"You tell yourself that."
It was the doctor who threw you out along with the violin that had been missing a string and the bow well the bow didn't have the rosin and fuck that wasn't going back for anything anyway as all this cycled up and down the escalator in his mind that churned while coming across bottles with a few sprinkles in their bottoms sizzling in the Sun letting them run onto the tongue felt like the drawing of blood from the taste buds divided one's preferences in half nothing numbed instead was awakened again to the misery of it all.
- Max Stoltenberg
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