A Contagious Age
DEAR ________ : I WANT TO BE A BETTER FRIEND, I’M SORRY
You put your hand on my neck and whisper that if you were here you would sew me a telephone. But you are here, I say, and then you walk to the door. I follow your shadow past my mother’s gun-filled aquarium and meet you on the porch where we watch a slow wreck occur on the highway. The colliding metal makes a severity of noises and we stand admitting our own heroic transgressions without ever discussing who let the neighbor’s kid unbury the body. When it’s finally dark enough to move in poor focus, you saddle my shoulders with soldered toy soldiers and ride me to the crash site so one of us can flirt with the medical examiner about unsanitary stock market projections. Nobody has enough loose rope or batteries but the signs we’ve made hold firm under the weight of your aging chest. Lost in the panic we are ravenous trumpets, mouths swelling like boxcars to blow hard scissors and oil.
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