Monday, June 29, 2015

MIDDLE FINGER TEMPEST

She didn't have to kill meaning it would dissolve around her on its own like a camera cellphone flash that fades and hurts your eyes those bananas are going bad bought too many again or didn't eat them fast enough both she would say were the case as one of her ankles itched and she scratched at the one and pulled down her sock to see the red marks she left from her nails the toolbox had so much shit in it she couldn't find the extra brackets she thought were in there for fixing the bookshelf that fell and all the dusty books all the dust all the bent corners of books that were there before and that were there after the latest shelf had fallen and she looked at some of the titles and asked herself if she had read them why she hadn't read them yet yet she flipped through the pages of Amber Alerts Her Friends and Other Stories and began to look over a page somewhere towards the middle of one of the other stories entitled "Flesh Solitaire" describing a woman cursing rather colorfully at her lazy Susan that had just jammed and how she had to knock over various containers and "make a fucking mess" just to be able to reach in the back and "grab and drop the damned sea salt in the douchey desert." She scanned a little further leading to a couple pages on detailing an awkward encounter with another woman in a furniture store where the other woman apparently in the business of coercing information regarding a favorite sports team and signing some petition to stay in the kitchen drove the protagonist to call for the store manager who took the petitioning harpy's side. Only chapters later would she think of how his body secretes the obvious. 

"How long has he been in there?" she asked.
"How am I supposed to know?" he squawked back at her.
"Don't tell me you forgot your watch," she said.
"No I remembered it. It ran out of battery," he muttered.
"Really? Seriously? How long has it been out of battery?" she asked.
"How am I supposed to know?" he squawked back at her.
"You are a clueless vague man," she said.
"I made sure to order both," he said recalling the cafeteria they had discovered with no walls, roof, or food, just bugs and piles of dirty skeletons.

III

She stared at the grimy building as she stood up a little over the rubble they both hid behind on a nearby hill. There were no windows on the lower floors and the few that there were on the upper ones had dark metal plates in them. As her eyes drifted back down to the lower levels she wished she could find a bathroom and then thought of when she looked for her and squat back down noticing how her knees hurt.

"He's probably better off in there," she winced.
"How could you say that?" he asked awkwardly.
"Because it's fucking true. Look at us!" she raised her voice but not too much to draw suspicion.
"I thought I had it pinpointed the moment when this all of this I don't know slapped me hard enough to help me realize help was ridiculous and not help in general but my help," he said thinking of the dog food dish he had stopped cleaning after it was apparent that any further effort would never return it to anything resembling somewhat clean not new said thinking thinking of the dog food dish he had stopped cleaning after it was apparent that any any further clueless vague.
"Our help this involves both of our wasted pointless contributions this is not all about you you know," she said rubbing her left knee in particular.
"I used to think it was when I watched my dog look up at me sniff at her food and walk away that did it. Then I thought you bastard it was when we were complaining about a cluster fuck of different things and just as my son was about to chime in I told him to can it after all that prodding him to stand up to those little pricks and what he told me they would say. Guess I wasn't in the mood or I never could hold too much shit would fall out of my hands so easily I can't remember what he did get off his small chest when he could actually give it words."
"And that was it?" she asked.
"What was it?" he asked looking at her rubbing her knees.
"The moment with your son that was the one you finally pinpointed as when you became aware of the pointlessness of your help," she said thinking of when they had stopped looking for her.
"No obviously that wasn't it either," he said.

Left something out
on and off too quickly
who was that?
what was that?
heart misses another
beat this person
climbing walls
they nailed things into
them
and their nails


- Max Stoltenberg

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