Hello, little one. I had a dream about you just the other night, if you’d like to hear about it.

Firstly, little one, let me apologize to you, for I do, indeed, have some apologizing to do. And then we’ll get to the dream all well and timely, we will.

I haven’t seen you in many years, I know that. I know that you know  that, as well. I’ll bet you can’t even believe that I used to be your height, can you? Surely you’ll grow to be larger than I. But, once, long ago, you were sleeping in a tiny bed, and I used to watch you twitch your little feet, and I’d pat you on your little head. Your hair was blond and messy, like pasta, actually. I guess . . . well, I guess it still is, isn’t it!

You haven’t forgotten that your mommy loves you, have you, little one? I certainly hope not! Well, she’s not around so much, these days,  but don’t you think for one second that her absence has anything to do with you. You’ve been a good one, haven’t you? I’m sure — no, I know – that if your mommy was here with us right now, she’d say the same thing. I wouldn’t even have to open my mouth. I’d just nod and agree with her. We’d look at each other, and we’d nod again. But, she’s not here, is she, little one? Now, don’t give me that face. I still have a dream to tell you about, remember?

So, you were a littler one, once, if you can believe it. You looked like a little toy, sleeping there in that little bed. A lot of people said, “He’s going to have back problems, lying on it all the time.” But, you don’t have any back problems. You’re just a little boy. All of that sleeping, well . . . you must have been storing up all of that energy, I’m sure. April tells me that you’re always running around the house, and you never wear a shirt. She says it’s because you want everyone to see how big your muscles are. Is that true, little one?

You know, that sounds like something you’d do. See, I knew you before you could even speak a single word. Everyone was so happy, just because you existed as a little baby boy. They would always rub your little head, and your blond hair just never had a chance, did it? It sticks up in the back, still, and it seems like you’ve had the same haircut for as long as I can remember. Lord, it’s as if you were born with that haircut, little one.

The dream, yes — we’ll get to it! Really!

I’ll bet you don’t remember when you lived at my house, do you? You did, you know — you sure did. You’d wake me up on Saturday mornings, and after having worked all night, I would be quite tired. That didn’t stop you, did it, little one? You’d beg and you’d beg for me to wake up and see and play with you, but I didn’t do that so much, did I? Here: I’m sorry, really. I apologize. I was just so sleepy back then. I wasn’t very happy, either, little one. You’ve had it harder than me, haven’t you? And yet you’re still the happy little boy with the messy blond hair. No, no — really, I owe you an apology.

I haven’t forgotten about the cake you tried to surprise me with on my birthday. You hid under the table, but I saw you the entire time. I walked up the stairs, and — “Surprise!” I’m sure you’d heard about surprise birthday parties before, hadn’t you? And you thought, “I’m going to do something really special.” I never thanked you for that. You were just a happy little one, hiding under the table, waiting to hand me a slice of cake. I didn’t tell you this, but I don’t necessarily like cake, but I could tell that you wanted me to eat it, and I wasn’t about to disappoint you. I think, you know, now that you’re a little older, it’s okay if I tell you that. To be honest, yes, it was a wonderful cake, as far as they go. I really did eat all of it, yes, I promise you that. I’m sorry if I could have been happier about that cake. See, I don’t like my own birthday so much; it’s hard for me to be happy on that day. Maybe you’ll feel the same way, some day. It’s my least favorite day of the whole year, but you tried to make it better, didn’t you, little one?

Well, you’re all grown up now, aren’t you, little one? Oh? Not yet? But you want to be. Well, let me tell you — I don’t want you growing up just yet, you see. You stay a little one a little longer, promise? If you run around shirtless with messy blond hair, people won’t like you so much. Why don’t you just take it slow, and run about like you do — messy hair and all — while you still can? No, you won’t ever grow out of those little blue eyes, and lord help us all, we don’t want those little blue eyes to go away, either.

You’ve got to go, now, yes. I understand. Well, I’ll see you in another five years, I’m sure. You’ll be a young man, then, won’t you? No, no — you’ll always be my little one.

It’s okay, really. I’ll tell you about that dream some other time.

Do you remember how your heart used to feel? It felt that way for a long, long time, didn’t it?

I know you think about her every night, and you miss her so much sometimes that you’d put yourself in a state where you could be missed, too. Is she over there, in that other place?

Do you remember when she cried so much that her tears were candle wax? Warm little tears that melted down her face and onto yours. And you asked her, “Why are you crying?” even though you already knew the answer. I’m sure she cried a lot, didn’t she? I’m sure she cried those candle wax tears every night, soaking into her pillow to be forgotten the next morning. Night would come around, and she’d do it all over again. She’d cry those tears until her body was aching and red and starved for death. And you’d love her, even when she was like that, wouldn’t you?

I’m sure she visits you in your dreams, and I’ve no doubt she looks beautiful. Does she let the moonlight drip into her hair? I’ll bet her hair falls over your face, but you can’t smell it, and I know you wish you could. Do you remember what it smelled like, when she was still part of our world?

Do you remember when she would write you letters, and call you on the phone? Do you keep those letters, still? Little messages in black ink scrawled across crumpled paper, locked away. I’ll bet you kept them, didn’t you? Do you read them, from time to time? They won’t ever disappear, if you keep them locked away tight.

She would cry those candle wax tears, the moonlight dripping into her hair, and another boy would tell her that she was the shit that she’d always believed she was. You never let her feel that way, did you? You didn’t let her. You might have joked that you were her knight, and she might have been listening, if even just a little bit, as she fell asleep in the seat next to yours, driving under dead stars, whispered music cooing from her still legs, curled up and there where you wanted her to be. You sang to her, even as she slept, I’ll bet. And she sleeps now, doesn’t she?

Do you remember how she made you feel? It hurt sometimes, didn’t it? She was ill-omened, all right. I’m sure that didn’t bother you, though. I’m know that’s why you loved her.

Can you hear it now, the little piano? It’s playing little notes that sound hushed and delicate. The guitar sounds so gentle, too — like plucking the strands of a spiderweb. When will you see her again, old friend? Maybe she’ll come tonight, I don’t know. She might exist only in your head, now, drifting under the moonlight that drips into her hair, gliding past little piano keys that play so softly, so softly — and I know you’re there, too. You’ll put her under the sheets, and promise that you’ll be with her soon, kissing her forehead so softly, so softly. You’ll tell her that you love her, won’t you? She’ll thank you for meeting her there, like you always do, and for protecting her, like you always do. She’ll flutter her eyes and look into the ones above her own. She’ll shut those eyes so softly, and you’ll wipe the little warm tears away, like you always do. “Do you remember when . . . ” you’ll start, but she’s already gone to that other place.

The traffic light went from green to red without a sound.

Amazing that it was still working. Here, nestled in the very center of this empty town. At the intersection of two minor roads. The color oozed through the viscous darkness. Small buildings loomed their cold faces above the roads. There were no lights in the windows. Neither were there cars here, to obey the floating red eyes that hovered above on twigs of iron. There was only one person. He walked up to the thick white line just before the intersection. He stopped. There would be no cars coming across. There would be no cars coming from behind or in front of him. He knew this. But he stopped anyway. Maybe out of pity. This light hadn’t had anyone to halt or usher forward for a very long time. He knew this too. So he waited patiently, like he would have done a long time ago, behind the wheel of a hungry beast purring for its meal of asphalt. His hands were in their pockets, imagining the grip of flesh to vulcanized rubber, round and smooth. How strange, how the memories could come flooding back, so easily, with such fervor. Memories of anything and everything.

But there was no car, there was no wheel, there was no anxious toe on the gas pedal, no expectant hand on the gear shift. There were only boots, worn to pieces with love, clasped against calloused feet with cold sweat, laces tied four times over scraping along the ground.

The traffic light went from red to green.

He stepped forward. The sound of his boot on the road echoed against the buildings that lined the intersection. It was a dull thud, but it was spread flat on the brick walls again and again until it was like a thin smoke in the air, a taut vibration, and then it was diluted and destroyed somewhere in the atmosphere above the painted roofs.

He listened to it as it died away. The first step. The first step in what? Would it prove important? Or was it another waste of his body’s ability to transport itself? It didn’t matter though. These thoughts never did. They were only a burden, necessary though they were to travel. They were meals for the ghosts that laid their invisible picnics by the sides of the roads. Someone had to feed them, or else they would keep coming to the same place with empty wicker baskets forever.

A second step. Just as important as the first, but without all the disgusting metaphorical implications. It was easier to take the second step. And the third – yes, the third – merely a matter of momentum. Soft and yielding, was that third step, always and everywhere.

He walked on, across the blank square of dark that was the intersection. He looked both ways as he crossed, some dying piece of his mind expecting to see headlights. There were none. His hands firmly in his pockets, he arrived at the other side. He stopped, and took a deep breath, as if he had made it a hundred miles rather than a few yards. He let the air out of his decaying lungs, and let his neck falter and his head swing down to face the road between his feet. He examined the cracks in the asphalt in between the tiny pieces of gravel, trapped in some wet blackness that would not let go, held under in the green gloom that shone down like alien flame from the towering lights above. As he watched, the road reflected green, then yellow, then red once again. He tore his head away from the microcosm. It was beautiful, but he had his own to live.

He moved forward. The light from the intersection receded behind him, and night crept into him from behind his ears, curling around his back with undulating tentacles. He had the urge to turn around, but he knew that he had to keep moving.

A spec in the static, white one moment and black the next, but the glow was constant, and the noise was pure, and it moved. It moved. It was not still.

He passed by houses in the gathering dark. There were no lights in them. The only light was that of sickly moon, finding its way through tattered clouds. The stars were mostly obscured, but in places they shone through one at a time, tired and lonely. There seemed to be no wind. Nothing to cycle the air. Each breath seemed to pull in the same bundle of molecules, and spit them out again. The only things with motion were the boots on the pavement, and the eyes that darted in and out of the scenery, braiding themselves into its frightening majesty.

The houses were behind him, and now the road was narrow and curving under a canopy of trees. From all sides and all angles flashed the courageous yellow lamp-lights of fireflies. Some hovered over the road on brittle wings, some swam in the thick darkness of the grass, some dwelled in the cool of the bushes, some hid in the branches of the trees. But some bravely plastered their tiny brightness against the dark of the sky for a brief second before being swallowed.

They were everywhere, flashing again and again, from all around, above and behind, beneath and before. They spread themselves out and kept their distance, and took their daring photographs of the bleak world around them. The earth’s paparazzi. Suddenly all aimed at him.

He threw his hands up over his eyes, for the lights were blinding him, dazzling him. Evolution had laid him a trap, here on this black stretch of endless road. Each picture from each perspective, compiled evidence, all being stacked and filed away somewhere in a world between worlds, being counted and organized by angle and by time. They could see him now from every direction, from every place, during every moment. So long as their angles were from the outside. A photo from the inside: only he could provide that. He had been providing them all his life, and he could stand it no longer. The polaroids were shaken and developed in his dense brain, the walls nearly bursting from the internal pressure, hung in the damp red light on razor wire above a leaking bathtub, clipped up and then taken off to lay in pools of seeping liquid as the colors took shape and the shapes took color and reason began to mold itself to match the little square memories laid in rows and stacked on tables all filling up a place already so small.

Enough. Enough. No more film. No more pictures. Disperse.

He watched the insects all lift off in gentle streams from the grasses and the leaves. They flew upward through the moonbeams, their cameras and guiding lights still flaring up and down like cigarettes, switching on and off like traffic lights eternally stuck on the phase in between motion and stillness. His hands left his pockets, reaching upward, trying to feel the breeze from the thousands of lacework wings beating at the air with a force unnamable. But his tender fingers could feel nothing. Only the thin air of the night slipping between them like fish or feathers or something alive and sweet, and they fold into twitching fists and recede into his pockets as he resumes his steady pace down the black carpet.

I’m sure if you have the internet (of course you do) or if you do not live under a rock, you have heard of the the somber news: Michael “the King of Pop” Jackson is dead. We did not want to believe the gossip or the hearsay. However, it seems, this sad reality is the truth. We here at octonaut would like to extend our condolences to the Jackson family. We would also like to say, Michael we love you.

Hey, you:

Roll your eyes over these words, tonight. (It must be night-time.)

There is a boy, or perhaps a man, sleeping on my couch. He is welcome to stay there for a year or more. I’d like for that to happen.

There are bugs gunning for my eyes. I don’t blame them so much for doing this. Maybe it’s their nature — the nature of little bugs, that is — to want to live inside one’s eyes. I don’t blame them for trying to fit inside of there. Maybe our eyes are puddles of strange water, to them. There are so many of them, though. I try not to kill them. I swat. They keep trying, though, God bless ‘em.

There is mud on my shoes.

I went underwater, today. Looked around, saw some things. Tried to breathe, couldn’t. Stepped on the bottom of the riverbed, and got mud all over my shoes. I’ll wash them off when I put my book down, or when I’ve run out of sunshine to capture. I have a lot of sunshine to keep with me, these days. Hangs around in the sky, floods the grass; sun-blasted and dry as a bone, it sure is. It doesn’t get dark until I’m ready for it to get dark. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship I have with the sun and the sky and the things that pass through it. I pass through it.

Though, you know, I’ve forgotten what it is exactly I’m doing that is beneficial to anything or anyone.

Anyway, so I went underwater, today. I was above it at times, too.

It was a hushed place. Everything kept going without the push of a button, and listen: I felt like an intruder. I did my best not to place sticks where they hadn’t been before, and I leapt from rock to bigger rock with only the nimblest of hops. When a handful of stones cascaded into the current and pulled them along some place far, I swallowed a tiny parcel of guilt and kept my hands about me, not wanting to disturb the things I hadn’t created that lived on without my touch.

When the forest allowed me to, I swung from long vines of mysterious origin, and allowed the cool creek water to swallow my dusty hands when I was afforded the opportunity. There would be stones shaped like human furniture, and if the forest invited me to do so, I’d sit on them with my human body. When I was asked not to, I didn’t. I nodded and understood. The forest purred and stretched and ached and yawned. I fell into the throat of it all and sunk. I was not at all afraid.

The forest would roar, and I would whimper softly. When it chose to be silent, I would tread gently.

The boy — man — that sleeps on my couch, he would walk with me. He’d say some things, and I’d listen. I’d say some things, too. We shooed away the insects that were fascinated with our eyes. When we held on to the vines and swung about, we’d forget about those bugs, and we’d forget about that date on our drivers’ licenses, and the rooms in our homes that were not at all like this place here.

Sometimes mud would find its way to the bottoms of our shoes, but of course we didn’t get mad at the forces that had created that mud. We’d just clean it off later.

“Let’s go underwater.”

There were tiny brown fish and tadpoles. Their entire world lay before us: a small inlet of clear water on the path of a larger body of more clear water. Stones had fallen to the floor of the tiny sea, either willed by the forest or the lazy calibrations of intrusive human beings. We knew we were intruding; we apologized. The forest sneezed and said it didn’t mind so much, as long as we put everything back where we found it, and cleaned up after every mess. “And leave the fish alone!”

We walked on, and on, and through the green and the familiar and were greeted by trees we’d never met before. “Hello!” We waved to them, and walked on, and on, and up and up, resting at the knees of a young mountain, hushed with our words, well in our hearts, and happy to be where it was both warm and shaded from the red giant that becomes a black one, and vanishes, and so do we.

“If only I could always be as interesting as I am after I masturbate,” said the suicide note.

I was doing push-ups when she called. It was about eleven fifteen. She had been planning to drop by, after her work was over, around ten thirty. Turned out not to be the case.

I answered the phone. We exchanged greetings. She was about to say something in a tone of voice that I figured meant she wasn’t coming. She was about two words into the sentence when she gasped, and then it happened. I had never heard a car crash over the phone before. In many ways I would have rather been involved in it.

The phone cut off.

I called her three times. No result. I was biting my finger. Had I heard wrong? Had I heard right? Was this really happening to me? Did it really happen to her? Was it really? Was it?

Crazy ideas flew through my head. I grabbed one of them from out of the air. It told me I should run up my driveway. My road parallels a highway, separated by only a thin hilly median covered in tall grasses and a rusty old barb wire fence. If she was on her way home from work she would have been going down the highway. It’s a crazy idea. I don’t care. I run down my drive way. I climb my hill, from which I can overlook the highway.

Lots of emergency lights blinking. Maybe half a mile down from where I am.

Jesus no.

I run down my road. The cars on my left are piled up behind the activity ahead. This isn’t happening. This is ridiculous. There’s no way. She’s fine. I’m asleep. I’m dreaming. This is someone else’s car accident.

I stand on my road, watching the people and the cars and the searing lights. There’s a car that’s smashed up, it hit the side of the hill between my road and the highway. I hear sirens. I’m here before the police.

I watch the cop cars pull up. I hear the firefighter’s siren rise above the night, howling its guts out from town. I watch as the firefighters arrive, in their reflective thick coats and blaring red trucks. They get out. No one seems in much of a hurry. I’m biting my arm, watching from the road. I can’t quite see the crashed car. I can’t tell if it’s one I recognize. I don’t know what it is, and more importantly who is in it.

I watch.

Some people from a house on my road come out in their pajamas. They ask me what’s going on.

“What the hell happened?” a lady asks me. I turn around and see her and probably two sons of hers coming up behind me.

“Car accident,” I say. I’m standing in the high grass of the median. My left hand is clenching several stalks of the grass, twisting them, clutching them as hard as I can. My right hand is in my pocket, clutching my cell phone, praying for a call. I want to hear her voice. They can tell I’m distraught.

“Were you in it?” she asks me.

“No,” I said. “I live on this road.”

“Who was in that car? How many?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you okay?”

“I was on the phone with someone. And I heard the crash.”

“So someone you know might be in the car?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

The family and I watch as one of the ambulances pulls away, after they strap and load someone into it on a stretcher. I can’t see clearly, through the grass and the blinking haze. I here a firefighter shouting orders. Something about how they needed to find someone else. How that someone could have been ejected. They spread out and sweep their flashlights through the grass of the median.

The family slips away behind me and goes back to their driveway. I assume they went home. I assume they are sleeping soundly. More power to them.

I stay and watch.

No no no no no, I was saying to myself, on the run down here. No no no no, I say to myself, watching the scene.

A firefighter shines his light at me from the highway. He does it a couple times. They’re probably discussing who I am. He clambers through the grass and up to the fence, and shines his light at me again.

“Sir?” he says.

“Yes?”

“Did you come over from the highway?”

“No, I live on this road.”

“Alright,” he said. “We’re looking for someone. Wasn’t sure if it was you.”

He goes back to his search.

“Was it…” I say.

He turns toward me again.

“Was it a young woman, pulled out of the car?”

“Yeah,” he says. He turns away again and keeps looking.

There are helicopters overhead now. I call her phone a few more times, leaving several frantic messages. I don’t know what I said. Just begging her to be alright.

This is really not happening. It really can’t be.

After a while I just walk away. I can’t handle all the blinking anymore. All the questions. I need to get away. A man in a van passes me on my road. He stops and asks what happened.

“Car accident,” I said. “Smashed into the side of the hill or something.”

“Yeah,” he says. “They’re backed way up on the highway.”

He drives off. I keep walking. I feel like Orpheus on his way out of the underworld.

Just don’t turn around, and she’ll make it out with you. Just don’t turn around.

A car goes by me, and screeches to a stop. The driver rolls down the window and says my name.

“Who is it?” I say.

It’s a good friend of mine. What a place to see him. What a time.

“What the fuck is going on man? This looks bad.”

“Yeah,” I say. I wipe my eyes a bit as I approach the light from his car. He’s driving with three friends.

“Car accident,” I say.

“Well what’s going on at the fair grounds?”

“The fair grounds?” I ask.

“There’s a medvac chopper that just landed over there. We drove out to see what was up.”

“Jesus,” I say.

“What’s wrong man?”

“I was talking to someone on the phone. I heard a crash. I think they were in it.”

“Who?” he asks.

I tell him.

“Woah, man,” he says.

I don’t know what to say. I’m gripping the side of his door.

“Wanna get in man?”

“Sure,” I say. “Just take me anywhere.” I open the door to the back seat. His two friends back there slide over for me. I close the door behind me. It smells like weed in here. These guys have been having a fun night, no doubt. More power to them, I guess.

He turns around in a driveway, and starts back the other way. His friends want a closer look.

“I wanna see this sucker get towed,” the guy in the passenger seat is saying. “I wanna know what kinda car it is.”

You and me both, asshole.

“No,” my friend says. “We ain’t stopping. That’s a bad idea.”

My friend, the only real friend of mine in the car, the one driving, just starts driving away. We’re going away from my house. He knows it.

“Want me to drop you at home man?” he says.

“I’ll walk from here,” I tell him.

I open the door before the car is completely stopped and hop out. He says something like “Later man,” as I shut the door behind me. He knows not to bug me anymore. He drives off.

Get stoned, guys. Have a good time tonight.

I walk back. Since we had driven a ways I had a bit farther to go this time. And I had to walk by the scene again. Once again, I was Orpheus, leading my lover out of the underworld, not looking back.

I prayed that my story would not end like his.

I walked the mile or so home. My steps stayed even. I knew I couldn’t stop. A lot of cars passed me. They must have been avoiding the jam by taking my road. Nobody stopped to ask me questions this time. Maybe it was my scowl showing up in their headlights. Either that or they didn’t care why it was backed up. Just wanted to get where they were going. And who am I to blame them for that? That’s what roads are for after all. That’s what cars are for.

They weren’t made for killing people. They sure as hell weren’t.

I get home to my basement and collapse on the sofa. I can barely think, barely move. Eventually I get up, and bring my laptop from my room to the basement. On the way up my dad calls to me from his office.

“Getting up at ten tomorrow?” he asks.

“For what?” I say.

“Soccer game. Brazil versus Egypt.”

“I might,” I say. “We’ll see.”

I bring it all down to the basement and set up my station. Laptop. Cell phone. A drink to calm you down. Some pillows. Blankets. Music? No, no music.

I will not sleep until I hear your voice.

I call her phone a few more times. Useless. Maybe my messages are touching but they aren’t doing shit.

Which hospital would she be at? There’s only one around here, really.

I look it up online. Jot down the phone number. I’m too scared to call it right now.

I call a friend of mine. I need to tell someone about all this to get my head straight. But not someone who is going to go talking about this to everyone.

I tell her the situation. She calms me down a bit.

“You should go ahead and try the hospital,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say.

So I do.

I get a recording. Press one if I want to be transferred there. Wait for an operator if I want anything else. I wait. Hold music? Are you fucking serious?

“Hello, operator.”

“Hi,” I say. “I was wondering if an ambulance pulled in any time recently? From a car accident?”

“I… have no idea,” she says. “Let me patch you over.”

I wait a moment. I hear ringing.

“Hello, emergency room.”

God dammit.

“Hi, I was wondering if an ambulance pulled in recently? From a car accident. Someone I know may have been in it.”

“Well, not real recently. But there was one. A little bit ago.”

“Can you give me a name?” I say. “Anything?”

“Well, what’s the name of this person? Who do you think it may have been?”

I tell her the name.

“Yeah, she’s with us.”

Sharp inhalation.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Is she alright?”

“She’s doing really good.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, she’s doing really good.”

“Any broken bones, anything?”

“I… don’t know, but I do know she’s doing very well.”

“I don’t suppose I can talk to her?” I say, with a nervous laugh.

“I can give her a message.”

“Thanks,” I say.

I tell the lady my name, and give her my cell number. I thank her again. I hang up. I wait. I pace. I pace like few men have ever paced. I call back the friend I had called before, just to give her the news. I pace some more. My phone rings.

“Hello?” I say.

“Hi,” says the lady from the emergency room. “I’ll put her on now.”

She does.

She starts to explain, but I already know the story. I ramble a little, about the sirens, and the lights, and the watching from the road. But there’s no need, right now, for that. Her voice is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. I tell her that. I ask if she is okay. She says her back hurts, and her neck, and her left arm, but everything moves and everything works, and she’s laughing. There are tears in my eyes. She says everyone there is very nice, but maybe they’re just getting paid to be nice. Well, they seemed nice enough to me. After a while she says she has to go. I’m rambling about something else, about coming to visit her if I can this very night, about when I can see her, about her calling me again, when she interrupts me and says she loves me. I reply with the same. She says she has to get going. She sounds tired. I say yes, of course, just call me again soon. She says okay. She says bye. I say bye. I close my phone. It’s about one forty-five. I said I wouldn’t sleep until I heard your voice. I wasn’t lying. Hell no, I wasn’t fucking bluffing. And now I’ve heard it. Now I’ve heard it. Goodnight.

The room is filled with a smokey haze like congealed tobacco soap drifting in and out of caring for its own existence. I can’t see behind me and don’t want to. There might be a light. There might be a few walls. Four walls. Six. Six if it’s a cube. Is it a cube? Is it a room, for that matter? Am I just floating on a cloud of my own exhalations? What a disgusting shameful mistake that would turn out to be. Turn the cab around, you drunk son of a bitch! The big game is on. Turn the radio up. What’s the score? Mind: 3, Body: 3, Soul: nobody has yet decided if it’s even in the game. Is someone making a play? Are the cards hitting the table? Is a thin white ball piercing some spectator’s skull? How lovely, when things don’t go as planned, in a sport. Minus in a sport. That doesn’t need to be there. So why not delete it? And why are solid blocks of text so intimidating, compared to a few friendly paragraphs? It’s like having all your work laid out for you ahead of time. It’s like the grim reaper meeting you on the street corner and telling you the hour and location of your inevitable demise. It’s like a needle in your leg that you find out is part of your leg. It’s like that feeling that you have, all the time, and you hide it behind posters and plaster and shining gold jewelry and gleaming candlelight and desks and rocks and mounds of dirt and exotic trees holed up in clay pots and soon you’re running out of things to obscure your vision so you grab anything and everything as you run as fast as you can forgetting you’re on a treadmill. What feeling? Does it really need to be explained? Of course not, but that’s not the point, because I need something to throw in front of it too and adjectives work just as well as objects if you know how to use them properly. There’s a hole in the midst of your ocean and you don’t know how it got there. Water is pouring into it at an alarming rate and you want as much water as you can but it leaves faster than you can count it. The hole might be growing, you can’t be sure. But the point is it needs to be patched up. So you build. Through the nerve tendons in your brain stream thousands of little blue synapses, a colony of ethereal ants crawling back and forth, tiptoeing lightly on the flowing surface of the ocean like messiahs and miracle working beast-fighters. They scavenge the depths of the seas and the heights of the skies for twigs and stones and mud and sand and they paste it together with their glowing saliva, making bridges across the widening hole in the ocean, trying to seal the gap that may or may not be there at all because every one of the ants is covered in eyes but every eye is blind either because it cannot receive light or there is not light to receive. So they struggle on and extend their crumbling structures over miles of void searching for a friend to meet them in the middle but how often do their structures swing astray and bring them back to the same patch of ocean where they once were before but this time much farther down, because building on water that is moving downwards, as quickly and frantically as they may be able to do, is a risky business and will generally end up with not only a blatant lack of architectural foundation but also a significant decrease in elevation as time swirls on. So when the structures get too far down the ants working on them are lost to the howling darkness along with gallons and gallons of water every fraction of a second. Until you’re not just losing water anymore. You’re losing your memories, that were strapped in little heaps of rotting vegetable matter to the backs of the little blue insects as they fell to their timely doom. Their cobwebs continue to stretch themselves across the mighty expanse, but seldom do they meet the other side and when they do it only causes more destruction. So you’re not done yet. No, you can’t give up. You’ve already tried to give up and discovered you cannot. So you think, letting the creatures scurry around inside you from one side of the ocean to the next, to all ends of the compass and all curves of the world inside you until you know what to try next and you don’t want to try it but what choice do you have? You realize that you can’t build on the water. It’s moving too fast and it’s water. You have to dive. So down the little monsters go. The ants begin diving. They let the tides pull them near to the hole and then they slip beneath the waves and wriggle their spindly legs trying to find purchase in a liquid medium they were never meant for. And they find it, but not before most of them are drowned and floating up again and being sucked into the hole. But some of them keep going. They move downwards, ever downwards, and if they could see then they would notice how dark it all is, that deep under the water, despite the fact that it remains to be determined if it were just as dark on the surface of the ocean. But they can’t think about that. No, they can’t think at all. All they do is follow your commands like good and noble soldiers, young and foolish, in the care of a commanding officer even younger. They plunge ever downward, their blue carapaces saturated in the pressure of the deep, searching for a rocky bottom, so that it might be discovered, at long last, where the hole is, what the hole is in, what precisely the hole is a lack of, because this can only be done if the medium through which the hole is a puncture is identified. But if the glowing electric-blue snowdrops crawling deeper in the waters never hit bottom, how can they patch the hole? If there is no bottom to be found, how can there be a hole at all? Or rather, how can there be an ocean? Because if there is no bottom, then all is a hole. But if all is a hole then why does the ocean collapse in one specific locale? Questions swim in your mind as the ants drown. Their brine-inflated corpses are carried away past the event horizon and you can no longer command them, and the packs on their strong little backs holding miniscule percentiles of your character and your memories and your sanity are once again lost along with the bearers. You want to cry for them but you know they are just insects, and crying for each one would take years that you do not have nor desire to have, so you let them die and try to keep smiling. It’s the little ones that get you. When one is lost at a time. A fleet of insects is a terrible thing to see gone, but it becomes an event and a life altering experience and as such it can brooded on applied and then brushed aside. But the death of a single insect is something to be cherished, something over which one’s heart begins to feel the strain of its many restless beats catching up to it, something that makes the lungs breathe cold and the stomach twist and the eyes curl up and spit out their sides and the legs begin to buckle and gravity the almighty banker begin to collect its long awaited interest. So keep sending them and keep spiraling farther in your thoughts and around your ears looking for the source of the hole or the location of the hole or building boats to sail away on or lighthouses that just spew more slimy darkness into the hypothetical fog that surrounds your kingdom. Feel as the creatures burrow and twist in new ways, leaving behind fungus and cumulonimbus and broken chunks of pink squash that smell after two or three weeks. You command them as they tunnel and as they search and as they scratch and bore through the piles of unread literature making their way in an orderly procession to soil and earthy grass-fodder, but the one thing you can never never never command them to do is stop.

Rolled in to a small town to learn about the Lord; didn’t end up learning much about the Lord.

It was a town built from a lonely postcard. The people shuffled about in the dirt, watched the sun vanish and reappear. They’d ask their neighbors about the weather, or water that made up the creek that ran under the bridges, and they always said the same thing: “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Didn’t matter if they meant the weather or the creek. “It’s beautiful,” was enough to get by and move on.

When it was time to eat food, they would eat food. And when it started to rain, they’d sit on porches and talk about how good the food had been. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” some-one would say to another some-one. “It is, yes.” Didn’t matter if they were talking about the rain or not.

Cousin Ned came with, said, “We’ll live like little kings. When it’s time to go, we’ll go, but for now, we’ll stay put right here.”

Nodded, said, “Ryan means ‘little king’”. Cousin Ned chuckled, said, “Now’s your big chance.”

We ended up moving in to a small room in a big house. The house could have been a bigger house, or it could have been a smaller house, but we didn’t mind it so much either way. The big house was all right with me and Cousin Ned.

Our room was on the ground floor, had a nice enough bathroom and double doors that opened up to a wrap-around porch with rocking chairs. Those chairs were for sitting and watching the rain. We had no purpose for those chairs.

The walls were wooden, and the floors were as well. Twin beds on the opposite side of the room, dressed in lacy blankets. We folded one of the blankets and put it on a shelf in the closet, content with whitewash sheets that smelled like chemicals. We borrowed a fold-out poker table from the common room, and put the other lacy blanket over it. Took a vase from the kitchen, filled it with flowers we’d picked by the creek. It was an all right room, thought me and Cousin Ned.

Walked along the dirt paths, near the enormous tree in the town square. People asked, “Have you heard about the man from Galilee?”

“Sure I have. Son of God, Alpha and Omega, walks on water, all of that. Sure, I’ve heard of the man from Galilee.”

“But, have you made peace? Have you made peace with the man from Galilee?”

Channeled Thoreau, said, “Didn’t know we were bickering.”

People would walk along the soft mud beside the creek, holding hymnals by their sides, singing:

Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom,
sometimes where Eden’s bowers bloom,
by waters still, o’er troubled sea,
still ’tis his hand that leadeth me.

They’d walk over sharp stones until their feet were bloody, still smiling, still singing:

He leadeth me, he leadeth me,
by his own hand he leadeth me;
his faithful follower I would be,
for by his hand he leadeth me.

We let open the doors connected to the porch. Cousin Ned would sit at the little poker table, reading science fiction. He’d turn and listen as they sang.

Would walk at night, long after the people had shut their doors and snuffed out fragile candlelight. They left behind the blood from their feet and the tears from their eyes.

* * *

Went to the general store one afternoon. The sun had froze in its place, was content to stay where it was. A snake dragged itself across the only gravel road in town.

Pointed to a colorful box, said, “What are those?”

A lazy woman replied, “Sugar sticks. Candy cigarettes.”

Bought a box of them for 20 cents. Chomped on one, coughed. Chalky and bitter. White dust all over my hands. Worse than real cigarettes.

Kid with moppy hair stopped me on the walk home, said, “Where did you get those?” Shrugged, said, “Don’t remember, sorry.”

“I’ll buy that box off of you for one dollar.”

Tossed the box to the kid. Made an 80 cent profit.

Other moppy-headed kids with dusty feet swarmed the one with the bitter candy, asked, “Where did you get those?” First moppy-headed kid pointed at me, said, “Him.”

They looked at me as though the answers to the world were in my pockets. Held up my hand as if to say ’stop’, said: “Stay put, don’t go anywhere, now.”

The children with the dusty feet shrugged, said, “Don’t got no where else to go.”

Ducked behind what might have been an inn, walked back to the general store. Took a strange route to throw them off. Smacked the dust off of my hands, saw only dollar signs.

“I’ll buy those candy cigarettes.”

“How many?”

“All of ‘em.”

Spent eight dollars and 60 cents, walked away with an arm-full of boxes of chalky candy sticks. Passed the children with dusty feet on the road, told them, “Come around the house that me and Cousin Ned share in an hour’s time and have all you’d like.”

The children with dusty feet and moppy hair cheered, thanked me, shook my free hand. Patted one of the boxes under my arm, smiled, shuffled away in the dust. Didn’t feel so much like a thing the Lord would smile upon. But then, didn’t know so much about the Lord. Hummed a song about a broken banjo, washed the dust from feet in the creek. The sun hung in the sky like rusty orb, and the shadows stayed where they had been.

Walked back to the room shared with Cousin Ned, shark’s grin on my face, said, “Put down that book and help me set up.”

Cousin Ned sighed, rolled his eyes. He sipped raspberry tea through a yellow straw, still seated at the little poker table. “I don’t want a part in this, but I’ll watch it fall apart.”

We borrowed a long wooden table from the common room, placed it in the grass just outside the back porch, near the kitchen. The common room was beginning to look barren. We shrugged, borrowed more furniture from it. Cousin Ned found two fold-out chairs, placed them under the long wooden table. Took three boxes of the candy cigarettes, arranged them on the tabletop. Grabbed the lid of one of the boxes, took a fat black marker to it:

“CANDY CIGARETTES $1.00“.

Cousin Ned chuckled, told me to put a box in the freezer, said, “Sell those for $1.20, call them ‘premiums’”.

Grabbed the fat black marker, added:

“PREMIUM CANDY CIGARETTES $1.20“.

Children with dusty feet ran up to us. They sang songs, whispered little whispers about the Holy Ghost. One dollar, then two, then three. Fifteen dollars in a handful of minutes. Glimmering, turned to Cousin Ned, said, “Capitalism.”

His head in a book, sipping raspberry tea with a little smile, said, “Robbery.” He crossed his legs, winced at the sun.

When the sun had left the little town, we packed up our little shop and returned to our little room. Laid at the end of the bed, head near the opened doors connected to the porch. Heard crickets playing violins, little children dreaming. Hid forty-two dollars in my pillowcase, thought about the man from Galilee. Thought about how mad he might be, if he could see me. Closed my eyes, held a song in my breath. It rattled on:

He leadeth me, he leadeth me,
by his own hand he leadeth me;
his faithful follower I would be,
for by his hand he leadeth me.

Didn’t feel lead. Felt tired. Slept with a smile on my face, forty-two dollars beneath my head.

*   *   *

Woke up to silence, didn’t know why. Didn’t hear any songs, only the crunching of little white sticks of sugar made to look like cigarettes. Saw children walking down dusty paths, white sticks between their little fingers, pretending to smoke. Shrugged, set up wooden table with fold-out chairs. They wanted more, more; sold them what they wanted. Didn’t feel so guilty about it; should have.

Cousin Ned joined me, book in hand.

“I’ll have a pack of premiums,” said a boy.

“Me too,” said a smaller boy.

Blinked, said, “A buck twenty each.”

They slipped me crumpled bills and sweaty dimes and nickels, said, “Hurry it up, now! We’ve got Bible studies.”

“Oh, I’ll be swift all right. And these premiums, well, they’re extra premium.”

Saw fireworks in their eyes, little red cheeks swelling with glee.

Walked inside the big house, took two packs from the freezer, hidden inside a dummied out box of waffles. Returned to the table, slapped them down. “Here.”

They ran off, we resumed lazing. Tried to split the profits with Cousin Ned, refused, said, “I don’t need your dirty money.” He didn’t say so in a mean way, smiling to confirm his apathy.

Older folks would pass by our little stand, shake their heads in disgust, talk amongst themselves in small voices. Their dark eyes met my own. Glared back with a clean soul. Counted money and felt the cool breeze rush up my shirt. Blinked, stared, kept on making money.

The sun grew anxious, said, “Good-bye.” Took off somewhere. The whole world got cooler. We packed up our shop and started walking back to the house.

The people looked angry, watching us from porches, pointing and saying awful things not found in hymns. Even the children with their moppy hair and their dusty feet poured over us with scorn, whispering and watching, candy cigarettes now absent from their little fingers.

At seven pm, there was a meeting in the chapel. Everyone gathered, talked about sin, talked about candy cigarettes. The older folks were angry, said we were crooks, swindling little children out of pocket money. There was screaming and anger. Didn’t like where things were going. Ran away and hid.

Found a wooden staircase on the side of white house. At the top was an unoccupied room. Door was unlocked, walked inside, locked the door behind me. The children with dusty feet followed, determined to kill the monster they had created. Ducked behind a bed with lacy sheets, heard tiny footsteps pattering up the stairs. They tried the door, was locked. Shook the knob hard, rattled around like a golf ball in a paint can. Frustrated little feet stammered back down the wooden staircase. There was five seconds of deathly silence.

A stone smacked against the glass, splitting one of the panes into a glimmering spiderweb. Then another stone. Then a brick. It crashed through the window like a corpse, bounced on the carpet, laid there flat. Had no life about it. There was manic screaming drifting in with the breeze through the broken window. Sounded like boiling tears. Didn’t know what else to do. Prayed.

Stood up, moonlight pouring in through the window, saw only what it showed me. Felt glass crunch like cockroaches under my shoes. Dusted off particles of melted sand from my shirt. Looked out the window. The sky was obsidian. The children with dusty feet were gone.

Figured they forgave me, was mistaken.

The room was trashed. Toilet paper strung around the lamps, stuffed in the toilet, wrapped around our beds. Hung from the ceiling fan like mummy wrap. Our clothes were thrown on the floor, balled up, spit on. The little fold-out poker table was collapsed on two legs, vase shattered on its head, the flowers once sleeping inside screaming for water, their faces trampled by the feet of angry little children. Wondered if seventy-five dollars was worth the trouble.

Cousin Ned clapped, the sound muffled by the book in his hand, said, “Earth doesn’t even blink when a single creature dies. And they don’t blink, either.”

Thought it was some deep Eastern shit, smiled.

Collected our things, knew it was time to leave. Had agreed to leave when it was time. Walked along the creek that outlined the little town, listened for the hymns that once echoed down the same paths. Couldn’t hear anything. Could hear only water. Was content to hear only water.

Rolled in to a small town to learn about the Lord; didn’t end up learning much about the Lord.

Looked up at the moon, promised to go wherever it took us. The light shone bright, we followed it.

“Lead us home, Lord. Lead us home.”

(Close your eyes, and continue)

Flowing music echoing from the steel rafters of heaven, the nuts and bolts of the very framework of the world and all its atrocities. It gathers to a greatness the warmth of the motional bus, rolling around for reasons it doesn’t even attempt to explain, to a destination that is undecided until it is reached. Laugh all you demons and angels, lift your voices in longing for the place of the mortal hand, and may you weep for us, we, who cannot weep for ourselves. We who, seeing the overpowering beauty of this world, merely sink further and further into the muck of our inner cruelties, and cannot recognize this power by the signs it leaves in its wake. What almighty boat generates these waves as it passes through the ultimate medium? One cannot help but guess, and arrive at undocumented conclusions that should remain as such. The answers to these questions cannot be communicated, the leaves of a fig tree, the beams within a sturdy tower, the lights enclosed in a sleepy overhang, the physical realizations of everything we have tried so hard to reproduce from the blueprints of our heads. We make do with what we can to compile these things into their final forms, and each thing, each light or object, has about it a sphere of influence that permeates and meshes with the surrounding spheres, molding and melding and molding that which is melded again and again, folds upon folds, and where those spheres touch each other, where they meet and where they mingle, there is a question. Each question is just another fold in time and space, just another layer underneath that which we are able to perceive.

Twanging fibers of chordal recognition.

(Open your eyes)

I look up to see the interlocking fibers, the lives of hookers, priests and divers, the souls of people who passed on through, striving to find and to make and to do. Reality is one piece, one endless strand, wrapped in more knots than we can understand, a ribbon of nothing, tied into a bow creating from nothing boats to row, suns to shine, and winds to blow. Clouds to rain and seeds to grow. Fleshy green grass blades thrust up their timid heads while children dream and fools make love all on soft clean beds. Bushes grow from bright green field mud and trees sprout from the gathering sludges. Poison is brewed from exotic plant bud. Men invent enemies and hold their grudges. Sailing, swimming, climbing through the sea on an endless conveyor belt of crystalline fluid. The gods of the ocean and the foundling forest: the probability that each branch of each tree will grow out in any one direction. The beauty of the universe seeps through our souls and exits again, unscathed and unfelt, and finds its way to the innermost reaches of dark labyrinthine hallways and sewers desperate for a friend; colors and their many names striped along the sides of long sheets proclaiming the worthiness of nations. A cold white rock. Hiking boots worn to pieces with love, lungs filled with black cancerous smoke, hands worn down to the bone, eyes dried to their roots, ever searching, never finding.

Morning breaks, and the cool night pieces together again.