I wrote something awful, just now, about the fantasy to choke my father on the day he looked at my mother with lust in his eyes. I went on to say that the reason behind this was to keep him from producing a defective human being.

But–

Maybe I shouldn’t say such things.

And anyway, I don’t want to kill my father. It would be only a ten second ordeal, for I sense that a polite letter or a gentle handshake and a smiley explanation would do little to keep the sad experiment from taking place.

And it was a sad experiment, wasn’t it.

The hands around the neck would serve only to show him, Goddammit, you don’t need to be doing this.

Marry someone else.

Leave this poor woman alone.

Mother, go off, get away: none of this needs to take place.

Ah–

But, I don’t know. Time is something that I have only rubbery hands for, these days . . .

He’s not a bad man.

He simply made a mistake.

Anyway: I would maybe grab his shoulders next, and let him see the flares in my eyes, and the deadness of my speech. Maybe he would change his mind, right there, rubbing his neck from the red markings I’d left behind, sore from it all, ashamed, confused and light and floating and alone.

Ah–

Yeah. I wouldn’t choke him. I’d slug him in the mouth. But, what for, I think now . . .

Hm.

I don’t know. I said I wasn’t going to write this. I wrote a lot. I won’t ever do anything with it. It doesn’t need to be seen or heard from again.

But: a winter fog has crawled out of my mind and settled here. There will be fortunate and prosperous spans of time when the deep dark sheds itself and goes away. And . . . Home and old friends and flesh and hair and sweat and sadness stay deep and dark and dead.

Like a fever, they gush from my forehead. I do not know what brings the fever on. If I knew I’d kill it good.

And now I am stuck on home and old friends and flesh and hair and all of that. I tied my hair up like a limb to be amputated and sawed it off good.

It lay there in my hand like a dead rat.

It is dead still.

I reach for it, sometimes, but I find only air. And now I look like someone I used to like. Only I can’t find anyone else I used to like. And anyway I don’t feel like that person.

Deadly, deadly places and times. Now gone to weeds and dark sky.

I miss these places.

They exist still, but no one is home.

The bodies of human beings that I once loved still blink and move, their colorful occupants now long gone. Now they tiptoe an inch above the ground with dead eyes and bad feelings and big brown bags filled with things that I do not want to see or touch or carry.

Great God, I think, keep those people away from me.

It was an arrangement–

No, really, listen to me: it was. The exact people in the exact places at a time that is now a number in my head. When the assembly splits apart, I split apart, too. Now I’m just defective and self-aware.

Which is an assembly in itself.

It is a wicked one. If I could, I’d kill it good.

I don’t miss you, I miss the dead you. Where is he now? Do you keep him in your big brown bag, tiptoeing an inch above the ground with dead eyes? Do you blink? Do you feel? Do you miss you, too?

And now, brothers and sisters, I only look like someone I used to like. I am not fooled . . . I know who you are. You’re someone I used to love but where are you now.

And–

Jesus God! My legs are being crushed and I can feel blood in my chest. Jesus God! Jesus. I loved you so much, where are you?

Are you hiding? Are you dead?

Ah–

I would have choked him good. I would have stopped him cold.

I would have stopped the arrangement of numbers and wet flesh.

And here it is now.

It lay there in my hand like a dead rat.

Good and dead.