When The Fellow With Brimming
Sights received his anger, it coalesced against the backdrop of a frighten-cold
night. Anger through memory.
He was in the middle of the road watching a car continue after passing. He paused, head beginning to bristle from just underneath bone and cell, bristling outwardly towards the scalp. A closely clustered burst of thick blood punctuated his brain, winding red pearls—cluster of burrs. He continued on with a pronounced hesitance towards a concrete bench. Leg over leg draped, hands at sides dropped. Swirling around the red cluster began a blurred string of memories converted into television quality picture. He closed his eyes, the bench cold beneath knees.
After he received anger, he
sat to enjoy it. Through memory.
/ / / The first memory involves
his mother, on her hands and knees, kitchen floor. Luminescent
blurs infringe around her outline, the shouting light of television
quality. She looks up, as if towards a camera and smiles, front right
tooth tinted by purple lipstick. Purple like meat. Purple like a nerve
or a brain. She is washing the floor, and there is an orange plastic
bin next to her. There is a mouth on the inside of the elbow’s bend.
It is closed, but still trickling blood. She opens her own mouth to
talk but the elbow interjects. Red begins to flow, increasingly denser.
The elbow speaks.
‘This is my floor. How are you? Come on in and have a seat.’
Blood jets out with the sibilance.
The mouth closes again having filled the orange container. She lowers
her head to continue on the floor, arm dipped into container. / / /
The Fellow With Brimming Sights
opens his eyes and looks towards his knees; the bench no less cold than
before. A plane flies above with a silver chute behind it. The blood
in his brain has begins to dry. The halo of television memories continues.
The column of muscles in his neck tightens and as he drifts back, the
smell of sprinkler water, which has lightly imbued the air, inflects
his thoughts.
/ / / He is nine, in a bathing
suit, behind the house, in front of the garage. The sprinkler has trumped
the grass. Charcoal fumes scent from far off; late day is becoming
wan eve. He stops and feels a light, gentle drop fall down his throat.
A face appears in the garage window. Like a gingerbread man. He lets
the sprinkler continue unmoved on his stomach and looks deeply. The
face recedes.
The side door is open; he enters.
Inside, the darkness is split solely by a single beam from the four-squared
pane. He can see nothing; a splash hits the pane. From the corner a
voice begins-
‘You are nine and your swimsuit will not protect you forever’
His eyes try but cannot discern any form from the corner.
‘Drink the water from the sprinkler and your life will be paid for.’
He lifts his foot and starts
towards the door; silt from the garage has painted his soles, grainy.
Every track he makes is recorded. / / /
On the bench, beneath its snare, a quick breath of flowered air floats. Television is a memory cue, not the actual memory.
A story not a gift.
/ / / He is five years old. It
is his birthday. His mom comes home dressed like a ghost and hangs ethereal
crepe paper from the doorway that bordered his room. She gambols by,
hidden behind a white sheet. A white sheet with downward pointing eyebrows
drawn above the holes. A white sheet allowing lip stick permeation.
He was building a city with blocks. She was candy-fumes, neatly decorating
while he sat. The iconic architect, inclined to regret each building
but not until it had been thoroughly thought out and constructed by
concern.
Each building was an insignificant
idea and the letters that formed it, leading to the hallway, near the
carpet limit, near the foot of the ghost who held out her hand, candy
within, green and alluring. She smiled and blew perfume currents. That’s
when he learned the confusion of exchange.
‘You can’t kill emptiness
with dying buildings’ shot the ghost, throwing the candy to him with
small contempt, razing a building made of red and green blocks,
‘and no one is going to remove the war of your enemies like me, remember
that.’
He withdrew the candy and spied
the ghost, her lipstick shining through a white sheet, deep burst behind
cloud cover. He unwrapped the candy and licked it once covering it well
with one pass before laying it on the windowsill. He liked to watch
the ants group and feed. The cake was round with moribund candles; each
one shot him dead with hope. Uneaten and laminated in the dark fridge.
You get one wish, but don’t tell, don’t ever tell. / / /
When The Fellow With Brimming Sights felt the nauseating tickle of his brain’s reformation, he acquired anger and sat on a bench to enjoy it. It struck immobile the imagery from actual memory and replaced it with television brilliancy. He thought of situations. He thought of people. He thought that he must never return home, must never find mail, must never father a child, never employ or be employed, never love or allow the effacement of personality. Anger found him, he sat to enjoy it on a concrete bench and the memory erasure placated like a plane with a silver chute, jetting and soothing.
