“Okay, say something to end it perfectly.” So we’ll know it’s ended.
With no loving in our souls and no money in our coats,
You can’t say we’re satisfied.
I somehow find him several years ago, and because his thoughts wander, I enter his mind. Now I’m David. I reach for her hand on a pillow. She withdraws before the touch, a hand-width. I feel flames in my eyes. I remember this. I did this. I played this with our calico, a catnip sack tied to baling twine dragged along a barnwood floor bouncing over loose straw. I reach again, but because I’m David she let’s me catch her this time, string and all. She wants someone who’ll challenge her.
And now that I have it, I no longer want to be David, and I have it, and she knows it’s different. I put soft pressure on new points that David always missed, because his mind always wandered. And she knows this can’t be David, because my mind is on her. And she feels flames in her eyes and I must become David again and let my mind wander so she won’t withdraw her hand. We’re one more moment closer to the last.
“I saved you a seat.” I’m 8 years old every time I say this.
Jane says, ‘I’m done with Sergio. He treats me like a rag doll.’
Now I enter David’s mind to find out ‘just what were you thinking?’. He looks at her cheekbones and it reminds him of the Bosphorus, where Europe meets Asia. I sing to David, “And when Irish eyes are smiling, Sure, they steal your heart away,” but he doesn’t understand.
Now she’s in Istanbul. And I try to tell David that it’s one of 96 places. 96 places she’s been without him. He doesn’t seem to care so I give him a headache until he does. And while he suffers I find a tenant with a blue-eyed landlord. And each month I cause him to send in the rent 11 days late just so he can have the pleasure of one more phone call. Does she feel challenged, yet? We’re two moments closer to the last.
“If you hit her, you’ll lose your scholarship.” Housecleaning finds a showercap with other strange messages written on the back.
I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, I know you'll be a star
In somebody else's sky.
I keep digressing, a talent I picked up as a child, my desire to speak beaten out of me long ago. I only want to listen, or to draw clues on cocktail napkins.
Now I’m back to me, and I’m waiting for a bus. In the corner of my eye, a woman crosses the lobby to a restaurant and sits behind a wall so that I can see only her foot. One last time I seek out David and enter his mind. But this time I plan on self-destructing. We’ve reached the moment of the last.