he caught it out of the corner of
his eye over the last four days creep as he struggled to enter his bath and
shower to try and soothe the monster of his Body Gone Awry with hot water spray
and soaks
it was a ritual now
a maniacal wildhaired peasant his
body was at fierce odds with his thoughtful deliberations and anointments he put
into place to combat it and despite having neither the literacy to read them much
less understand them his body twisted and tortured them(and him)
his Body Gone Awry wasnt in any
mood to negotiate
it mobbed his brain and took it around and around on an aimless joy ride enforcing its virile bestiality and a very delicious rawness
he couldnt get any closer to bared
nerves if he tried
on the component buttermilkcoloured shower wall to his left facing into the spray of the showerhead
was a long single strand of his girlfriend hair
inexplicably it adhered to the
wall at nearly eyelevel
when he realised it was there he
almost washed it away spouting a mouthful of water on it however standing before it in the
tub sizing up where he ought to apply the spurt to eliminate its clinging presence
he saw something that wasnt the nuisance of a creepy shower hair that wasnt
his(not unlike the remarkable pubic that one can hardly take their eye from fearing
it might run away and later reappear while they in public on their cheek or
forehead – You got a little something there on your face)
his eye confirmed its shapeliness
the hair was in the outline of an
auroch Bos primigenius he knew that
the last wild one died in Poland in 1627
he knew that too and knowing so and quietly revering
the modern buffalo enamoured with aurochs(depicted on walls of ancient
caves) he spat the water from his mouth onto the tubs bottom deciding to leave
the auroch for as long as it would stay and watch over him
he wasnt superstitious
rather he took it as
supernatural
not forgetting for a moment that the house they lived in they
shared with ghosts whom they called their roommates
perhaps they furthur supported
his inclination to believe the auroch was also supernatural
the auroch appeared on the
second of two successive days very
difficult days which waylaid him and diminished and rendered him very
small childish
childlike
it wasnt like him to submit
yet he stood literally at the edge of
a precipice where he could have sobbed unashamedly into its black toxic void
everything breaks
and he was like everything else
no matter the blackened tried steel
he welded in his mind to defray and deflect his pain
he struggled he pushed himself up
out of the tub on bad wrists and swollen hands on legs which refused to bend
more than fortyfive degrees on a shoulder snapping like Rice Krispies into his
ear on his descended head
he stood up with a birthing cry and
even though his eyes were wide open they were filled with a sparkshot blackness
paired by an ugly stingy dial tone growing louder and louder and from what he
heard from others a kind of frequency that rises to the pitch of a wail to where they
blacked out
his sparks their bright light grew
larger
the tone croaked
they left him only to contend with
a spit of bile at the back of his throat that he hawked and spat into the
emptying bathwater
in the aurochs presence he
quieted himself
he drew on its fixed outline
watching him watching it
he sustained himself on its primacy
fixed himself on its bestial endurance and strength its confined beautiful solace
late into the third day of its
existence the auroch began to slip
it narrowed as if it were turning
away from him leaving him
he felt in his bones in his soul
it wouldnt abandon him it wouldnt dare leave him high and dry
still the auroch continued to turn
continued to narrow
recede
he fled the bathroom
on the fourth day(what now have
become the fifth sixth and seventh days) the auroch was gone
though in its place it left him
him
at first when he saw it was a
childs profile
over the childs right shoulder
a bust if it bore artistic
significance
then slowly it occurred to him it
was his silhouette from when he was a boy of two
the picture he remembered remained
with his parents in their collection of photograph albums many many dozens they had nine children
he had not seen the image in
years
his uncle somewhat of a camera buff
took it of him as he sat on his mothers lap at a family birthday party the edge
of his face highlighted by the candles burning on a cake
it captured an innocent boy
--- a boy before he toppled over backwards
bringing in his clutched hands an end table and a crystal lamp atop it
the corner of the table split his
eyebrow
the lamp shattered and became a
flat mirrorball throwing flames of light across the evening room
his grandparents who were
watching him were agog and forgetting their parenting from when they were
younger they ran out onto the neighborhoods street and cried for help
the old witchywomen from across
the street who tended the health of the entire immigrant neighbor for live
chickens or other foodstuff responded
heard told she was already
across the parkway in front of his parents house when his grandparents emerged
onto the street crying for help
he laid untended bleeding
copiously from his head wound until she entered the livingroom
he remembered the hardwood floor
at the back of his head remembered the banging of his heart the warm
pulsing blood the runlets filling his ears trickling across his throat
--- a boy before he fell out of bed and cracked his
chin on the iron bedframe splitting it wide a hot lurid smile smiling out from under
his tight gray lips
his blood painting his cornflower
blue pajama top accented with repeated buffaloes grazing or standing stoic with
their noses to the air alert and wary
the frantic car ride to the
doctors office sitting in his mothers lap as she held a washcloth filled with
icecubes to his busted chin too hard and he helpless to wiggle out of her arms for
shock for physically overwhelmed by her concern her eldest damaged in her home
in her care
and then carried up the dank
passage up the enclosed staircase to the doctors office above his home the door
sprung open awaiting them in his fathers arms which never relented which shifted
as he sat shifting one arm over his pinning them to his body and his fathers
hand at his forehead holding his head tilted back as the doctor his breath
musty warm at his face as he fingered a needle and thread up through the lower
curl of his flesh into the flesh curled up above it and then scarce millimeters
beside the original penetration descending again and up again and down again and
over and over again the sharp bite of the steel needle the odd snag of the
thread pulled through his little boys skin
a spongy gauze over the sutures
taped to his cheeks and throat
a wide eyed boy he hadnt seen in a long
time
a sensitive little boy told to be
tough dont cry by his father by his doctor There you go Good There Youre a
tough little soldier You know that Youre a tough little boy Those stitches hurt
like the blazes but you took them well Very little tears You didnt move
he couldnt
his father held him in the chair
like his mother held him in the car
he was overpowered
to struggle would have been
nonsense
they held him so tight in their
fear he only had room enough to breathe his lungs two tight little balloons
feeling their restraint feeling his ribs rubbing against them
told to toughen up
and since only more tough
a boy he didnt think he would
ever recognise
visiting him again
at the showers wall
threaded into existence by his
girlfriends long hair
long like the thread long-ago used
to suture him
earlier and then
the afternoon, Monday, 27 6.
16
0626, Day-between-Two-Ts, 29 6.
16
