Skip to main content

Piecemeal


Joseph cut off a quarter of his thumb peeling potatoes. But it’s a good idea to finish what you start. While Joseph’s thumb healed he rode the elevator: there were no hand rails, no mirrored ceilings.
            “Sir,” he greeted Kirby, when Kirby stuck his hand between the elevator doors.
            “How are you?”
            “Pained.”
            Joseph nodded. “I cut off a quarter of my thumb today, peeling potatoes.”
            Kirby frowned and nodded. Nodding is polite, you know. Even if you don’t understand, you’re pretending to understand.
            The elevator shook a little because of the wind.
            “What kind of a pain do you feel?” Joseph thought it might be nice to ask.
            “Piecemeal. Like each piece of me has a different pain.”
            “Well let’s make steak and I can sketch you. That way if you die or something then you can have a sketch of yourself.”
            Kirby thought that would be nice. “I should like to write a will soon, also.”
            Joseph nodded. “Let’s just have a luncheon on the balcony. I’m famished, friend.”
            They ate all types of cheese on the balcony and the sky looked like a colored pencil. Cheese should be crumbly, like souls just before confession. Crumbly like bread tossed out to seagulls on the green ravine bay. Joseph and Kirby spent a while peering down on passing heads, discussing phrenology as a pseudoscience. It was obvious from Kirby’s square skull that he had a tortured past
            the most annoying women were the giggly ones with light feet and small noses.
            Joseph asked Kirby about his loves.  
            “You know what I’ve found,” Kirby croaked, “when someone asks you a question it’s really because they want to answer.”
            Kirby has soul, you know. At nine o’clock every night he hums “moon river” on the patio, then he turns off the lights and goes to bed.
            Joseph sketched Kirby in blue colored pencil, because the monster sky threw up over everything today. The sky tasted like blueberry pie, dripped blue ash wax. It was hard to swallow, like diamonds growing up out of mud. Joseph loved the whole world and none of it, because it didn’t love him back. 
            “How’s your thumb doing?” Kirby asked.
            “It’s fine. It’s pretty scabbed over now.”
            “Did you eat the potatoes after you peeled them?”
            “No, they got bloody.”
            “Cold water does the trick,”
            “Gross, Kirby.”          
            “You’re the gross one with a missing thumb.”
            Joseph finished the portrait. It looked like Kirby. Good.
            “It’s nice, I really like it,” said Kirby. Kirby nodded.

            Joseph nodded and glared up at a milky sky. “Well it’s almost ten,” he yawned and left, saying all sorts of goodbye. He heard moon river ticking in rhythm with the nods.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pulitzer

I. I am reading a children’s book called Hamish and Trieta , in which Hamish is a cow and Trieta is a bird. These two become fast friends. Good pals. Buddies. Sometimes the bird sits upon the cow’s back. Often the cow wishes he might sit upon the bird’s back, but of course this is impossible. The poor darling bird simply flits away, c hirping, chirping, always chirping, full of nonsense, not explaining. They fall apart, like many others in this fickle universe. Separated. I close Hamish and Trieta . What a hideous story. I was seduced by its whimsical cover, entranced by its gilded pages. Mother bought it for me ages ago from some downtown bookstore with cerulean walls.  Pulitzer, declares the cover, in golden script. I do not understand what a Pulitzer is and I do not particularly care.             I am a child, yet I know that horrid things do not deserve Pulitzer awards. Rage, like vomit, pools in my throat. ...
1 comment
Read more

Which is why they have sailed

I. It’s strange for Claudia, who has never been boating before, to live in a boat. Its name is Arden.             “Why do we live in a boat if we never go boating anywhere?” Claudia once asked her father. Her parents are both short, so at least they fit under the snug roof. Claudia won’t be short, but for now she is. “Bah,” Her father says, “We’re always going somewhere. Just think of Attila the Hun.” She always thought that comment did not make sense. He flips an egg on the stove, “Just use your imagination.” If you walk by you can see how charming the Arden is—look at that little window with Claudia’s father frying eggs. Look at his kind face with his curly, white-haired head too-big-for-a-hat. He is moving back and forth in a kind kitchen, with a miniature flowerpot on the windowsill. These are clay flowers—they keep on living even if they have been forgotten (except that Claudia broke one of the pedals recently, o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gauze

I.  Heidi is fat and wears her rain clothes well—they are bright orange and from Canada. Do you know how much she loves the rain?  More than other things, at least.  In October she sits under the slide and watches the rain fall; each drop a blackbird. This is Heidi from North Carolina, she is new to this school. What is your opinion of her? They ask me, because I am her teacher— “she seems to really love the rain,” I say. “She only goes out to recess when it’s raining,” I say. “But she should always go. It’s good for her to run around.”  I know in my head that she does not run around, though, she sits under the slide and listens for the rain instead of playing. One day when the rain turns to ice and a kid falls down the back of the sledding hill and bites his lip clean through, Heidi is there like a lightning bug as if she knows that something is wrong “Jimmie,” she says—“he doesn’t pay attention to things,” she says. And the bag of ice is wr...
Post a Comment
Read more