In the rushes, gildy-green, i find a nest: toppled, looted, broke, and follow bent reeds and dry-throated riverbed until i see fine wolfish creature, white needle-toothed and shy. i hold out my hand, steady, open, soft. And patient, too. Sun sinks and rises again the day grows blood blood red then gold then blessed blue before he comes to caress my salt-licked hand with sweet and snuffling tongue.
And so, now, paired again, mine dog and i we hunt, leave our excess at the precipice of my father’s door, sleep warmer now, closed-i pressed to wolfish throat. Sisters watch from the window, sour-faced and scowled-lip jealous. Of what? i ask myself even as i, laughing, dig my feeble fingers into scruff. This is a friend, but cold comfort, still. At night, the stars leak into sky and out as doggy breath sighs and snores i remember when all was dark and i was less than one half of me, less than one half We.
Then come years sallow and goldenrod, years whose mustard skies went hardly stirred by unhearty gales as i knelt down in dusky grass and let one afternoon then next and next wash over me, a stream, a yellow stream, coursing the color of the fat sheared straight from woolen hides as wild creatures gasped their lasts. At first father hunted too, cocked his pistol, grunted, grimaced, swigged and shot. But soon those afternoons were mine and only mine. In long grass i spoke secret prayers, became hidden, strange, slept and woke to stirring blades. Alive, i dragged the beasts away so he could drunken skin and cut them down while they swelled gazes to me, squealed, stumbled, kicked and bled hollow, drained and empty, died.
Our home would be the ruinous ruin whose bones were swept from door by mothernew. Sisters, sweet and bittersweet, string daises over the altarpiece, drape hand-stitched quilts over the wedding-bliss marital bed. This sun-blessed room, where strange creatures once spilled blood, will be where the ladies lay their heads.
Father’s place is at the hearth, where he, restless, wakes to stir the coals again, warming stone floors, keeping creatures black-i and hungry-i and evil-i away. Just once a month, when the moon hangs swollen, full, outside the paneless windows, newmother goes to him, and lays down inside his blanket. i think of her shimmering, slithering, scaled movements as the fire gasps out. i think of her as just another beast.
and watch with uncomprehending i from the eagle’s nest, the stone tower, the silent clock-home, unsleeping in the windswept spire. the way of boys, these sisters say, is to keep watch and stay away.
Journeying, we journeyed out while bamboo wrists of steel diminished until our figures grew in contrast: men sat stout on the steaming engine, the rotund rear cabin all aglow, the eyes of newsisters, newmother, too, burning out like nervous light bulbs.
i did not say good-bye to city-home, or apartment-home, or window-home or my stern beloved nanny-face. Instead, only sat, stout and staring, wondering at this new turn: an unpaved road worn down between tall, sharp-bladed grasses, a sky bright with brighter clouds than my pale i could stand, scurrying creatures scurrying away from heavy carriage wheels and the whistled song of my father, happy, the reins wrapped round his wrinkled hands.
Four blue i cast to me and trembling
when father knelt me down at altar-stone, at priestly-feet, and thrust my hand out to take two girlish hands. The priestly-man cupped our crowns in priestly-hands and said: “A marriage is as much a vow twixt family as twixt woman, man. And so, brother, do you vow to bear these sisters and keep their virtues pure until you can deliver them to husbands on some bright future day?”
No words, said i. Til father jostled shoulders, hissed: “That’s you.”
And so solemnly i vowed to them, “Of course. I do, I do.”
i depart from familiar home first time propd princely on Papa’s shoulder. The neighbor children, old-friend-voiced but stranger-eyed all gather to wave strange hands byebye at the staircase rail. We proceed into the light, bright street—i am diminished, flattened by the brick-faced spires that spiral up into the pepper soup skyline, by the many-eyed faces of bustlers-by who greet my father, who greet i: “Oh a wedding? Oh a fine son! Benedictions!” He grips my foreleg tight.
Earlier, he came home bearing packages wrapped in parchment, twiney knots. i opened slow, exposed the flimsy, sacred clothes. Then he grappled me by the wrist. “You are my son,” he breathed. “And you will be very, very happy for me.”
The nanny-arm whirled close, her i shrinking back to pinprick, alarmed. But what could she do? He was her maker, of course, too.
Cotton-shifted and shifting from foot to foot; I have never seen such creatures, their new, bright i heretofore a sight unseen, holding the cotton skirt of the likewise new mother-creature to their trembling chins. They are, i think, as feared of me as i of them. The girls, at least; the mother glowers, simpers, frowns. “His name?”
“Rafe.” Father flicks my shoulder blade. i sullen up—not me. This was what We called the other onehalf of We. Was my secret, then, shoved down so deep? The whispered curl inside me whispers still, does not yet uncoil, spring or shout. Father, bearded, makes stern back-thumpings, stout. i set my jaw. yes, boy, yes raifish child, i and me.
Alone
Alone
Alone
At last the nanny-arm unfurled pneumatic hands to envelop half-body in a whole embrace. i opened i to see only shutters, only blades until she took my chin in metal palm and turned it, forcing i to see bright day that crept through window-square. And there, letting go of thin shoulders, thinner clothes, she, the nanny-face then showed me pictures: me. No. Wait. Freckle there where I have none. A smile coiled like a spring. Him. That aching, missing half of me.
And so I grieved. While she stroked cowlicks from my hair, humming auto-tuned notes on notes. The only kindness We have ever known erupted from this fleshless beast of veinless hearts, a cold, square finger upon my sticky cheek. Together, until the apartment shook with closed door and heavy steps, until father came home and i was once again altogether and utterly alone.
Alone, alone, how can this meager body ever be more than onehalf of You and i, more than onehalf of We?
If you were to ask me what was at stake, i would have told you
that fevered, Our fever blistered, burst and broke. i would have said that in Our skulls were fogged-glass eggs for eyes whose soft shells swelled and spilled past socket-edge. i would have spoken of the sparks inside, still live, still lithe, abuzz like green beach-glass apartmentflies while We misted, faded out. While round Us machines still moved as programmed: father, hand clasped to hand mimed prayers to blessed San, his Sanagnese and nanny-face, ever helpful, hopefully supplied a ghost of hooked nose and knobby hands to haunt unsleeping and undreamed dreams.
Our last collective thought, this: who else has gone this way? Not Us, never, please. We clutched skin to skin to sweat together, took last onebodied breath.
and then i woke alone, just i, skin still sticky from the grasp of Him and daylight clear in corners as the clearing of my body, mind.
