MORE OFTEN LESS OFTEN

Dead branches had been knocked out of a paint bucket that he had accidentally kicked with his right foot.  Before he began to run back through his thoughts he bit the inside of his left jaw of his mouth.  That brought up his left hand to the left side of his face his left your right no both his left and your left if you just turn around no he'll turn around see if you can follow having a hard time following this you turn around and go back the way you you were rejected always turning around and going back over it when the sting of thoughts begins to fade think of fading is when he bites the inside of himself. Close a door and turn off the light and step outside and stop the chewing under the dirty grey skin that barks up the wrong tree had its branches yanked down around the ankles of the desert what a waste of connections relations they were called once calling out into the hot wind that whispers your name what your name sounds like when it is erased very slowly along the limbs the dead limbs of dead branches that had been knocked out of a paint bucket that he had accidentally kicked.

He said that she sounded as if she had been silently reading something speculative and had to suddenly turn up the volume to speak. She said that whenever he opened his mouth he sounded as if he had never opened a book. He said that she should talk since he had never seen her with a book and now that he was reminded neither of them had seen any books. She said that he reminded her of how much her silences drove him crazy. He said that she reminded him often of how less sane he was every day as those were flushed around them in the desert. She said that they reminded each other of how much they would really like to be able to flush what they squatted over including all the rest of it. He said that she reminded him of all the times he reminded her of how it was all too flat for any of that. She said that she would occasionally remind herself that the images, the continuity, the symbols, the signs, the frames, the vantage points, the concepts were gone and all that remained was naked reality decaying under the fraying strands of what remained to cover them as their words grew duller left alone together growing more alone from each other the only thing that could grow in a world worn down with nothing sharp left to end it all with.


- Max Stoltenberg