For the past three years I’ve been borrowing bones from my neighbors, a rib here, a femur there and I reckon I’m blessed to not live by inquisitive neighbors. They mind theirs and I mind theirs as well but mostly my own. And I carry their borrowed bones in the trunk of my fathers old van so they rattle when I come to a quick stop and on mornings with a frost I can hear them whistle as they thaw. I haven’t a use for them, I just like to know they’re there. So if I’ve ever borrowed a bone, don’t worry it’s in safe hands or arms or sheets or wherever i’ve hid them. I’ll return them one day, but if you don’t mind I’d like to borrow your bones for just a little bit longer.

Sincerely,
F.

I’m confident that roses appreciate the masses who pass them by without shoving a nose in their stomachs. I’m sure the tree’s don’t mind having so many people willing to name them. Tiny knives carving letters of two wrapped in lopsided hearts. And river rocks appreciate being thrown. They spend their lives trying to get from one spot to another. Not any spot in particular, just a spot and to be thrown helps that Iliad-esque journey. Wish-bones feel sad for the losing party and tend to grant both wishes. Horse-shoes were said to be lucky to make the horses feel less sad about losing their foot-wear. Snow bunnies prefer the term Winter Coat Rabbit and are notorious for not paying their acorn taxes. The rivers appreciate you holding your breath when you slip into their skirts and it’s okay to open your eyes under there. They have nothing to hide. You can wish upon stars but don’t be sad when they put no faith in you. Pine cones are in no way associated with hand grenades and would very much like to break that stereotype. Words of wisdom was a phrase coined by a well respected Moss General during the great Lichen crusades. Ashes don’t hold a grudge, a stream is content with being just that. a stream and Snails can hold their liquor.

I know all this because I asked.

When I was thirteen I stepped into the grocery store and cut my stomach open and let my guts pour out over the iceberg lettuce. Those who used similes and alliteration said I was looking to cause a scene and wanted to lash out against my mothers screams. But those who use such simple things know just about as much as my toe knows. And I hate to break it to the good Lord but he made my toes and forgot to add the smarts. My aunt kissed my neck and caught a glimpse of my newly found piercing. “your body is a temple! treat it as such!” I had never heard this carriage of mine called a temple and I refused to clutter it up with such silly things. Tubes, veins and the squishy stuff in between. Take it all back I haven’t a use for it. My body is a temple a place for holy congregations and I don’t know about you but i’ve never stepped into a holy temple that actually had anything worth mentioning in it. So on the third day of December I split my stomach open and did a little spring cleaning during the winter winds and now here I lay. In this hospital named after someone who would probably appreciate my temple. With tubes surrounding me and there’s a constant beep from the box to my left and I’m confident that my sexual orientation was considered when placing me in this room. Tubes. I rid myself of something and the ungodly institutions shove them right back in me. “Oh Mr. Bark these are the good tubes. feeding you the good things and making you all good.” Good. What a silly thing. So as I lay here in this cold box having my temple repainted from the inside out I considered my aunt, I considered the nails attached to my toes and I worried for a few more minutes. Just long enough to make love to my bandages and slip off into a silly kinda sleep.

Wildfire

"Your father was a damn fine man"…"Oh son, he was a good one"…"You take care son" I found it a bit annoying that at my fathers funeral I kept on being called son. What a load of shit. You hear tales of folks "coming out of the woodwork" when you win the lottery and I reckon to some souls a funeral is like winning the lottery. They awoke and thanked their good Lord for another day and found out that ole Angler down the street had passed away. "Well praise be the good Lord, it wasn’t me" They have images of the Lord scratching off that silly silver flake and just by chance ole Anglers name appeared before theirs. But the moment their boot laces get hung up on the gas pedal or the sandwich they chose didn’t come with mayo they curse that good Lord who just gambled with their little souls. So there’s father hiding in the box we picked out all those days ago and I’ve grown bitter and stale towards the soft hands swallowing my palms. I smell the beer on my uncles necks and I watch my sister pinch her leg in some sad attempt to cry. She hasn’t cried in years, dad knew and he wouldn’t mind her dry eyes but of course mother took offense to the lack of tear stains down her acne ridden cheeks. so there’s father sleeping in the box we picked out all those days ago and I’m gonna miss his hairless legs and the way he pointed at me when I farted at the table. "Son? do you need to go wipe" and if you’re the kind to say words of prayer, you mind saying one or two for me. I’d say thanks but my dad said thanks were used a little to often and man ought to really think about being thankful before spreading it out like wildfire.

wildfire. he said that’s what my mother tasted of. I kissed my mom while she slept once. I anticipated the world to set a blaze but all I felt was cracked lips and aim toothpaste. I reckon a father can only taste the flames on your mothers lips.

I love you.

You have these small moments in your life where you realize that you’re the type of person who could lose a toe and not lose sleep over it, the kind of guy who wears a smelly hat in the bathtub with a shotgun in arms reach. You start to recognize how you try and only wet the bottom half of your fingers, maybe you’re trying to prove something or maybe you’re just an asshole and like denying the top of your hand warm water. And then you just sit there. thinking “this is the moment when all kinds of memories should come running right at me” and nothing but the time you bit a girl in second grade for stealing your pencil comes to mind. Then you think maybe Felecia is sitting in pee water thinking about how some crazy boy bit her arm and you wonder how she’s doing but then remember you hate her for stealing your pencil and its just a vicious cycle. thats what they meant by the circle of life. pee water reflecting over pencil bandits. you pee a little and think I just peed on myself. And at nights you’ve become this person who can’t sleep if theres a fly pissing around your room and on other nights you want the symphony in your closet practicing and every written word you own covering you in hopes to get paper cuts and let those silly authors sink into you so you can walk around spouting off quotes. But who wants to be a quoter. who wants to have the conversation skills of a four shot burst. “oh you will notice all these moments where you discover that you are no longer a child but an adult!” eating the heels in a bag of bread, that was my big moment and for some reason there’s always some mysterious screw just laying in my floor. I believe it was Thomas Jefferson that once said: “hey, how are you” my toes are bruised and i hate being in this pee water alone. minimalist million dollar homes all can lick my (whats that fancy word that starts with an “A” for nipple?) these are just some things that didn’t deserve to be written down but would have probably gave me a pimples had they not been said.

And i'll tell you right now that I have never been so revealing in my rambles, i'll tell you how her use of toast in place of a fork brought chills to my bare skin and if it wasn't for the sand covering our toes, the house burning to the ground and the waves breaking on our ankles her whispering I loved you would have felt so different. And when I think about watching your fingers trace my sides, your toes pressed against my cheek, the way your lips cracked when you smiled and how the spot behind your knees felt on my lips I start to cry. Not the cliche type of tears but the kind that actually stain your cheek, and my hands always seem to find your ring in my pocket. My finger pushing through the band and for that second I can smell your skin and feel the tips of your fingers on my teeth. Those letters you hid in the walls, the ones that are wrapped in cloth under my bed, flow in my veins and the rain that fell on our lips will always haunt me. I hate how we changed and I suppose it's all my fault and i'll never forget, Lord knows i've tried....There was a blue light that sang me to sleep and letters covered in borrowed snow. There was a sweetness on my lips that will never be tasted again..and for that i'm sad.

We were raised with soft lips and quick hands, our kin shouted from the mountaintops of the love they found. Our neighbors sat on rooftops and heckled the people walking by, taunting them with the love they found. But we were raised to borrow the ears of the saints. whisper of the love we found and keep it close to our chests. Our kin folk paraded about with their hands to the world and our neighbors embraced the villagers with an open fist. But we were raised to hide our hands and hold tight to the love we found. Our kin folk brandished forked tongues and our neighbors borrowed any ear that turned their way. But we were raised to whisper into the ears of humble of the love we found. Our kin would make riddles that cursed the soft spoken and the neighbors would accuse us of being ashamed of our token. But we were raised to be patient and we were raised to sing, to whisper such a lovely thing. peace to your heart it shall bring. To hold such a passion buried so deep this precious love you shall keep.

I've never been one to count the stars, sitting out in the wind trying to put a number on something I don't even understand seemed pointless. And when I ride in the automobiles the clouds always look like animals, never like people. I've never spotted a cloud and thought it looked like my aunt Linda. You could ask me why but I wouldn't have an answer. You could ask me again and I could lie to you. Stare right into your eyes and tell you that deep down I doubt clouds have any use for mimicking us humans. Why look like something that walks around on two legs when you could look like a wild beast running on all fours with not a care in the world. My first memory was on a summer day, I was dressed in my cowboy vest with my trusty plastic six iron on my side. I was attempting to put the sheets on my bed though I had no idea why. From an early age the idea of making your bed was ridiculous to me. Mom was in the hallway folding clothes and singing an old gospel hymn: "could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made; were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade; To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Tho stretched from sky to sky" if you walk into the church where I was raised and pick up the ole hymnals. Turn to page 220 and you will find the corner of the page folded down on most of the books. When the choir sang it. hearing my dads voice stand out in the bass parts and the white haired saints singing so beautifully off key my mind went back to the day with my cowboy vest and mom with her denim jeans and hair pulled back in a red hair tie. I never ran away as a child, instead I faked migraines and made myself sick so the other kids wouldn't think I was a weirdo for wanting to be with my mom. I had on a purple tank top and borrowed pants the first time I saw a man holding another mans hand. I was in the grocery store and they made me angry. Not because they held each other hands but they were standing in front of the chips I wanted. Hold whoever s hand you want, just don't stand in front of the tater chips. She was the child of happenstance and had pocketfulls of second chances, and with every palm she kissed a part of her was left behind.

that's all I gotta say.

I pray dear sister that they burn us at the stake. Oh dear sister I pray they bind our hands with twine so when the flames eat at our wrists our bonds break free. My dearest sister I pray that with free hands we embrace and break bread with the fire. And my dearest sister the flame in our hearts will make the pyre around our legs seem nothing more than a campfire made by children in the snow. Oh sister of mine when our voices harmonize with the crackling of the wood I pray the town cover their ears and grow heavy with sorrow. Sister when they go to collect our ash their shovels will be bare. Because dear sister of mine you know better than I that our ashes are not theirs to claim.

I was an exception to the phrase "we were all born with a voice" I was born a mute, had it not been for my mother pressing her lips to mine and passing on her voice I would have walked this earth in silence. But my mother felt she had said enough in this lifetime and gave me a chance to shout from the rooftops and whisper to the ones I love. She spent the rest of her days scribbling on napkins and pressing her lips to my ears so they could feel her secrets.

When I was nothing but a small child I would chew on the tips of my fingers in hopes that one day I would grow up to a be a good boy. I wanted to grow up and stand straight while me and my wife served snacks to the crowd. But I was born in a different world and grew up with a bowed back. pockets full of phone numbers and the sin of other woman beneath my nails. I hid my passion in wooden boxes buried beneath the house and on the nights I held her hand I held back tears while I thought of how you ran from your mother and sent letters down the river..

He practiced the gospel every chance he got, turning the other cheek to feel the lips from the neighbors wife. He was known by many, but not in the way you and I would like to be known. The townspeople knew him as the man who rummaged through their mail, opening private letters from overseas, birthday cards and the occasional pre-approved credit card, looking to strike some sort of fire in his dried up heart. By law this is a capital offense but nobody had the heart to turn him in. They let him live vicariously through their lives, there was even an older man who would write the occasional letter full of scandalous acts for him, and it wasn't a surprise to see half a sandwich bundled up behind the readers digest. Visiting family and friends wondered why the townspeople put up with such nonsense and even in a small way enabled it, but nobody had an answer. It was an unwritten law, a sort of code one would say. They never turned their backs to a fellow man, even if he had wronged them in every which way possible. They were just common folks, no different than you and I, they read the same books as us and laughed at the television just like we do, they had their secrets, hidden taboos under the bed sheets and dark pasts but they were just better at keeping it hidden than him. And maybe that's why they tolerated his ways, because deep down he was more honest then everyone one of them, he put it out for everyone to see. And whether we admit it or not, all of us truly want that...to be completely honest with the world no matter the cost.

We were raised in a house of superstition, brother and I. Always putting the left shoe on first, keeping a bucket of buckeyes under the foot of our bed, or never breaking a twig on the Sabbath. Small things to the eyes of the world, but in our parents eyes these small traditions or superstitions kept the universe in tact. Folks felt sorry for us on account of our families odd habits but i'll be honest with you. We had a good home life, if the biggest thing they fussed about was us leaving our closet door open while the sun was still up I'd say we were pretty lucky, considering how rough others had it. I knew a boy in grade school who'd come to school beat to kingdom come just because he walked in front of his daddy. Growing up I questioned a lot, as most kids do. But I never heard my friends asking why they couldn't brush their teeth between 6:45 and 7:15. Mom and dad would sit me and my brother down and start to tell us about how the world used to be, how people took reverence in the small things and kept the world in order. But those ways were leaving, people lost their reverence and the ways of old were all but forgotten. And these traditions they were teaching us, silly as they may seem were greater than we could ever imagine, in a way they were keeping the universe alive. Now you tell two little boys that keeping two nickles in their back pockets is saving the universe, you better believe they never left the house without two worn down nickles. And even today, twenty-two years later I still got two nickles in my pack pocket. And I guarantee if you looked in that casket you'd find two nickles under mom and a bucket of buckeyes at her feet. Cause even on her way to the grave she stood by her beliefs, dad and brother were the same way. And the day someone is standing over me, talking about how I kept my bottom button undone or never broke a twig on the Sabbath I hope i'm just like my mom and dad. Going to the grave with nickles in my back pockets and knowing my family did they best they could to make the universe a better place.

And everywhere her bare foot stepped my words fell off her heels...

Since the day of my birth I have been sick. A bafflement to the medical fields, I have a rare condition with no name and no history of it happening to anyone else. The place I was born is where I have to spend the rest of my life, luckily I was born in fathers study and not some cold over lit hospital. My steps have been limited by a house, and the farthest my eyes will ever see is out of sixteen windows. I have no visitors nor do I have any friends. When I became older and more aware of what my future held I started to write my dreams, thoughts, made up memories anything that came to my mind on the palms of my hands. At night I would offer to rub my sisters feet, my palms pressing against her foot letting her heels soak up every word. Sister never wore shoes when she left the house, her bare feet felt meadows, river beds, the cobblestone of the town below and even the shop floors where she defied all "no shoes no service" laws. And everywhere her bare foot stepped my words fell off her heels, soaking into the earth, collecting in the corner with dust or washing down streams. I was bound to four walls but my words had no boundaries. My nightmares were soaked into the flowers that men picked for the gals. Every made up friend was collected in the dust between stones. The fields sister ran through were now plowed, upturning all my thoughts. Seeds were planted and mighty rows of crops were produced. Corn with memories of my first made up kiss, tomatoes full of secrets about mothers hidden liquor bottle in the medicine cabinet. Potatoes holding witness to the first time I saw mother and father fight. Every ocean in the world had a piece of me in it. The creek beds riddled with the images of my father passing away and how sister sat in the corner not saying a word, just shaking her legs. Eager to run away, eager to spread my words. She had no idea that her heels were writing to the world, the morning before they put her in the ground I wrote to her. Telling her all that she had done for me, thanking her. I'm not sure what happened to those words, maybe they soaked into the casket and kept her company while she passed over. Maybe a few even touched heavens floor, I like the thought of them saints soaking me up. I have no one to spread my words now, mother will occasionally go out and i'll sneak a few secrets on her. But most of the time it's just me, writing on anything I can find. So when I pass on over and they burn this old house down, the wind will pick up the ashes and this little girl who never left the house will touch every corner of the world.

Ole tub water

We used to fill up that old tub in the back and share the bath water, when folks heard word of it they made a fuss but we defended ourselves. Saying "Ah, we're just saving some water, no need in wastin' two tub fulls" But truth is. We were scared. We were scared of washing off our sins alone, so we shared that tub. Scrubbing at every little sin we could find, and if some were to stick back on our bodies when we got out..well, that'd be fine, cause we'd be carrying them together. And Lord knows we could use all the help we can get.

part I

I never owned many pairs of pants. Sure I could have bought a pair for every occasion. Some flashy pair for when I go dancing down at Ed's. A pair with fine hems for paroosing around town. A pair that matched my jacket and tie for when I fill a seat in the old Baptist church. And of course a good pair for sitting on the porch and ignoring the ever so changing world around me. Well I actually own that pair. AS for the other, I don't need special occasion pants because I don't partake in "special occasions" I find dancing redundant and a hurt on my feet. I got no need for "paroosing" around town..making a spectacle of myself just so I can go into ole Maney's store and buy some pipe tobacco and whatever nickel book they got stuffed behind one of them flashy girl magazines. I can do all that in my regular pants. I owned a suit and on the day they put my daddy in the ground next to momma and her sister I went down to the river, wrote a letter to dad. Confessing every lie. every time I took a sip of his jug or a pinch of his baccy. I thanked him for the things a boy should thanks his father for. I also put a few secrets along the edges then stuck it in my right pocket. Filled the left pocket with a handful of creek rock and I drowned that old suit. Maybe the creek beds got a use for a suit. I sure didn't. Besides I ain't filling no seat in that church, I got no problem with a church and i've been talking to the good Lord before I even had a tooth in my head. But that ole building with its velvet pews and a preacher who couldn't hold water if it wasn't for a little whiskey in his blood. That ain't for me. There's an old spring house in the valley, it's mostly a spot for kids to break their bottles and see how far they can get their hands up some good mans daughters shirt, but for me. It was the first place I was put on my knees and just hollered to the Lord. for me. It's my broken down springhouse church.
Some call me bitter and others don't call me at all, I've slipped between the floorboards in their minds and that's just fine by me. But I think all to often my lack of interest in people and their going ons has been misunderstood as "being bitter/hateful a mean old hermit" ah hell..maybe I am. But don't get me wrong I don't hate every person who comes strolling by my house(but I must say for one to "stroll by my house" one must abandon his or her vehicle. Trek in woods that even deer get lost in and avoid old mine-shafts that i've "forgotten" to mark off) there are the occasional fellas whom I don't mind sharing shade with and there's been a few lady folk who stuck by me for a bit. no longer than three months. I guess ladies get bored with the same ole thing everyday, beats me. There's also two youngins that i've taken a liken to. Brother and sister. The sister acts more like the boy, always got her finger in something and blood on her knees. She constantly reminds me that i'm alright by myself: "You know, ain't nothing wrong with a man who sticks to himself, if I was a man i'd stick to myself" she always followed that up with a long stare at my boots, a subtle grin and a quick spit onto my porch. Then she'd be off the poke at my ole goat or see what I had to eat "All you eat is bolonga and stale saltines!!" she said that every time..she's consistent. I liked that, hell it's one of few things I can actually respect. Now the young boy..men say i'm quiet, even my mother said so. But this boy beats all you've seen. If he didn't have such a haunting presence about him you'd forget he was there. When they first stumbled on my house she ran her mouth a mile a minute. Asking me everything from how many hairs I think I got to what I thought was really in the sky besides the clouds and good parents. But the boy he just sat in the corner picking at his britches and winding the dial on an old broken watch. The more they came around the more comfortable he became, he brought me stories he had wrote in school or the old watches he found. He gave me one for my birthday. Well it wasn't my birthday. "Here, I want you to have this. It don't work or anything but you've been around for a while and I assume you've had a few birthdays so think of this as a make-up gift." he handed over a bulky fake gold watch with "To Pete, my strong strong man" engraved on the back. My names not Pete and i'm sure as hell ain't strong. The boy knows that. at least I think he does. I wore it for a few months, I knew it didn't work but I caught myself checking it anyways. Fortunately I had no need for time. still don't. doubt I ever will. Eventually the band broke so I stuck it in my pocket and that's where it's slept ever since. The day I get buried I'll have that watch in my pocket unless some dimwit rummages around in my pockets and steals it. Stealing from the dead, now that's something that ought to make folk lose sleep at night (I don't) stealing in general disgusts me, mainly because i've never truly wanted to own something I didn't already have or knew would come in due time.
When the boy first came around he wore "special occasion" pants, now everyday, he wears those same ole "watching the world pass by" pants. Maybe I should tell him that just because I find "special occasion pants" absurd doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them. It'd break my heart to know the boy passed up life just to be like me. I've never once hated myself. But i've also never wished this life upon anyone else. The boy and girl always came together and outside the view of my porch and yard I didn't know what their lives were like. I never asked. Well I did once, but I didn't ask them. I asked old Maney, he called me a "pervert" and said he had half the mind to tell their folks I was asking about 'em. "Old man Maney! you're right about one thing, you do got half a mind. Now stop sucking air around me before I burn this store down." That's what a part of me wanted to say, that part never gets what he wants. Instead I bought my bolonga and stale saltines for half the price not bothering with friendly salutations or bonding farewells. A man like me shouldn't ask questions, it's not because i'm undeserving of an answer. It's just that when I really think about it..I either already know the answer or i've went this long without knowing and i've been doing just fine. Occasionally the kids will bring me a left-over plate of roast and taters, sometimes even a jelly biscuit. I feed the roast to my goat when they leave, I love roast..well I used to but a man becomes accustom to a certain diet and adding change upsets my stomach. I eat the taters though, the kids watch and you can tell they feel accomplished. On the days they bring biscuits I act extra stuffed from my taters and insist they eat the biscuit. I'm sure they know i'm not stuffed and i'm sure they know I feed their mama's roast to my goat. But it's our routine. It's consistent and it's safe.
Now about my goat, she's a good goat. Of course I have nothing to base this opinion off of but I still like to think she's a good goat. I got her when she was no bigger than a fat ole baby, I found her father with his head stuck in a fence, the breath from his lungs long gone and she was gnawing on a root half expecting him to wake up. or hell I don't know that, she probably knew what was going on. I never named her, the kids call her anne. I call her goat and i'm sure she calls me: dad, roast man or David(that's not my name but she heard it repeadatly one night when I felt real good and sang an old church song about David and Bathsheba at the top of my lungs) or for all I know she don't call me anything. And that's just fine by me. I know my name, although I forget it sometimes. Not on purpose..I just lose track of words.
In the children's eyes I had always been the man sitting on the porch in his "watching the world go by pants" who forgot the use of a razor and owned a goat. But I assured them that I was their age once. Telling them brief stories of my childhood and about growing up. I told them I was an only child, I was on purpose. I hear so many people say their kids was an accident. "an accident?! did they just fall out of your wife?" that's what a part of me wants to say, but that part doesn't say very much. My parents promised me I was on purpose. Mom cleaned for elderly folks around town and dad knew everyone's secretes. He was the garbage man. When I was too young to remember I laid at my mothers ankles while she washed clothes, the water was dripping on me. Mama said that's why i'm such an old soul(now i'm actually an old soul who couldn't stop himself from pissing the bed if his life depended on it..who knows maybe one day it will.) She'd say all the water dripping from those old folks clothes must've got in my soul and aged me real fast. She sang and read to me, songs she made up and words she read off of anything she could find. I learned how to read at an early age, I'd read anything and i'd read it carefully,slowly and close. So close that mama would slap my head "ruin your eyes doing that!!" I listened. That was my only fear growing up. To lose my eyesight and never be able to read. Forced to only hear what people had to say for the rest of my life, even back then what folks had to say did me no good. I'd been in school for years till one day it burnt down, by that time I had found myself..well somewhat, I recreated myself in works of fiction and lined my pockets with poetry and prose and only let my mom and dad see the true me. Thirty-seven days after the school burned down moms sister-my aunt-moved in. She took kindly to drinking and making eyes at anything that walked by. She died a year later, why? i'm not sure. The police came by a lot after the funeral, constantly asking questions and requesting to speak in private. Dad gave them a shoebox of hers one day and that was the last I saw of them. I was starting to write more, on the days I wasn't working with dad I wrote. Filling notebooks and napkins with children's stories or fictitious love letters. I quit working with dad and sold neck ties to men with dry necks and damp pockets. That didn't last long and in the next few years I tried out many jobs. Always leaving after getting to comfortable of just the lack of interest. I cut trees, I sold pets, dug graves, sold magazines and was the only guy to ever bar-tend in the next town sober. During all this I wrote and mailed off Three-hundred and seventy-five children's stories. In which seventeen got published under the pseudo name Thomas Brauty. I didn't receive much money but it was enough to put away for old age (it gets my bolonga and stale saltines) also nobody(minus the kids) knew I wrote them. I told dad in the note that I wrote on his funeral, i'm sure he would have been proud. I was twenty-three when mom fell victim to "old age" she wore a blue dress and even on her death bed her fingers were wrinkled from the washing of people who were long gone. I was somewhat seeing a gal when mama died. After the service she made the comment that blue wasn't my mom's color. That was the eleventh time in my life where that brutally honest part of me got his way. I didn't tell the kids what I told her. And I never plan on repeating those words ever again. Exactly One-hundred and four days after mama died dad sat in his chair. Lit his pipe with the cheapest tobacco he could find. Drank two fingers of thirty year scotch. Opened the paper and died. That was the day I started to smoke a pipe, never read the paper again and put on my suit for the last time..

I was seven the first time I sewed scripture to the cuffs of my suits. I was attending my uncle’s funeral. I say uncle because legally that’s all he was to me. I don’t even know his name, mom had this to say about him: “oh him? yeah sweety(I hated when she called me sweety) he’s your uncle. Wanna have a little secret? before your daddy married me your “uncle” used to make kisses on me” I ignored mother that day, I ignored mother most days. Now don’t get me wrong, I loved her. But I did not love her words. I haven’t loved someones words since I was three. The last words I loved I heard on the radio “we offer a discount on towels” we offer something about those two words stuck with me. Anyways. I borrowed thread. I kidnapped a needle and I sewed a chapter of Habakkuk to the cuff of my “dashing suit” thats what my aunt called it. She’s the type that calls everything dashing. Makes me sick. I sat in the pew of a musty church, pinching my leg. stepping on one foot. occasionaly peeking at my scriptures. I do the same thing now that i’m older. My wife. when she picks me out a shirt she asks: “Hey babe, what scripture do you want to wear today?” I never answer. She knows. That was a day. Thats what I would say, “That was a day” I never learned descriptive words. Later when my age became larger I learned that “weird” would have been an appropriate word. “That was a weird day, I saw my first bra, dead person and realized I look nothing like my family” You’re probably wondering what my age is. Well by calender talk i’m 27. But in the world of science i’m only 13. I never paid much attention to science. Why do people want answers for everything? I have to stop talking now, sorry for such a weird ending but I have to sew.

Evelyn made sure the sleeves of her sweater or the hems of her skirt never rose up around the other children in school. She wasn’t ashamed of her skin, Evelyn used to sit in the tub on the nights she was allowed to use water admiring the fairness of her skin. But that was before her mother started losing things. That was before Evelyn sat up at night pulling off the sins and memories that stuck to the bottom of her mothers foot. Ones that had slid off her body without her knowing or even if she did know she no longer had the strength to hold onto memories or sins. Not after the “storm”. Not after the night her mother came home crying with two men from the Police station all wrapped up in a blanket and led to her bed to sleep the storm away. Evelyn didn’t want to overhear the Policeman as they left, but a child’s ear is a mysterious thing. “I’ve seen her before, she never was a lady of the evening..but she also never favored the mornings.” Evelyn’s ears made no sense of what they heard and that was for the best. A child’s ear has no need for ignorant words. She stayed up with her storm battered mother, reciting her poems, singing made up songs and counting the hairs on her head. Now things are much more complex, her mother never recovered from the storm. She lost all her memories, the humanity of sin, the grace that lived in her. It was falling off her as she walked, washed off her wrists when she scrubbed the same dish for 20 minutes. But Evelyn walked behind her, slept at the edge of her bed and drained the tub for her. Collecting all the memories, grace and sin that she so unwillingly lost. Evelyn saved her lunch money for a ink and quill set so she could take all things lost and write them between her thighs, under her arms. Covering all her flesh with her mother in hopes that one day she would want it all back. And if not..she would walk this earth with her mother on her skin…

sleep writing

I used to bury my nickles under mothers porch so the aunts and uncles of my father wouldn’t steal them from me. I buried my shoes behind the old truck that dad pretends to drive. I cover the cuts on my ankles with the mud from the hill. In hopes that one day I will grow roots and become one of those trees that sit so safely in the distance.

3 nights ago I was sleeping in granny and papaws old bed while dad slept on the couch, I woke up that morning and was throwing my pillow around trying to find my shirt and I found this wadded up piece of paper that I had scribbled on. I seem to always hide my sleep writing under my pillow

How Whales Communicate

When I was seven I knew a man who collected paper cuts. He traveled from library to library adding to his collection. The collection he hid on his spine and under his socks. When I was eight he showed me his spine. riddled with cuts. A spine painted in fiction, horror, living and children's books. When I was nine he would lay on his stomach and let me read his spine with eager fingers. That's where I learned what a kiss was. What it is to lie to your parents. How to grow flowers in a tub. By the age of twelve I had started my own collection of paper cuts. "How Whales communicate" was the first cut to sink itself behind my knees. When I turned fifteen he let me peak beneath his socks. He wouldn't let me read. Just look. He promised by my eighteenth birthday I could read the cuts between his toes. By the time I was seventeen he had moved on. He hadn't died, in fact i'm not sure if he was ever born. He simply moved on. Leaving me. a young man. a young man with knees full of paper cuts and fingers that craved a spine.