It’s easy to wake up with a clear picture in mind of everything that has to be done in life that will make the situation progress in a sensible, lasting fashion. Asleep, all of our troubles together were operated on and then stitched up and fixed in that conscious clear world, and when I woke, I knew how to do it in real life too. But in the seconds that it took me to pick up the telephone, I felt like I’d lost a very key fact in why it all worked in the dream—some kind of feeling I needed to have. Dreams fade. When you wake up, you can’t take them with you.
The saints were followed about by floating tears that would hover around them as they walked the open courtyard of the police scene. I reached out to touch one of the tears but my hand only slipped right through. With taped-off areas covering just about every inch of the property, there was no spot available to sit and watch the ghostly parade of the saints. I held onto your hand, squeezing enthusiastically when I thought the floating tears would become snagged on a branch. But the saints encountered no such simple obstacles, weaving through these slumped figures of dead family members as though browsing the aisles of a tired curio shop; their eyes would alight upon the headless father or the ravaged son, the strangled mother and the badly crushed daughter; keeping a sauntering pace, they covered the entire courtyard, blessing the bodies with promises of release in heaven. I kissed you on the cheek and we took sips from a flask and marveled at the curious, semi-transparent saints of this unexpected holiday weekend tragedy.
Wilted opera.
A trail of bread crumbs starting at the curb outside the funeral home’s loading dock led through a pinwheel tangle of lefts, rights and straight-aheads, ending at last in a clearing of the woods nearly half a world away, where the sister of the burial-to-be deceased woman lay crumpled in a ball, naked, unconscious, bleeding. The cold marble whites of her eyes beamed blankly up at the sky, but I rolled her pupils back down so that I could peer inside, at which point I fancied myself a visionary traveler into her beautiful mind. To be of more pragmatic use, I swept up the bread crumbs with a broom and deposited them at the bottom of a waste basket, covering it all up with scores of napkins and empty bottles and other debris. Then I went back out to the clearing to lay down and watch the sky too.
Very Thin Lines | A short film by Jaret Ferratusco.
Featuring: Justine Corner, and Rant.
I discovered my nerves in a closet drawer in your bedroom. Pulled and removed from me at some remote life-point previous, the newly found strands and sensitive ends had all been kept in a small locked box in the closet drawer. When I cracked the tiny box open a I felt at some loss to explain the disappearance. In the removal of all these things, apparently I hadn’t felt a thing, and at some level, I found myself unable to describe the difference. Swallowing these nerve endings and capillaries, taking them back inside myself, I proceeded to dress myself in your clothes. I stood before your bedroom mirror, at once all widened eyes, or then narrowing my vision to slits. Pacing the room, opening blinds like I could reveal the inside of some fabulously infamous tomb, then closing off the whole house to darkness so to reveal only thin glimpses to the vast neighborhood atmosphere’s birds who were fluttering past the window. A bell sounded inside the house and I was abruptly startled from lambent reverie to stand as still now as that shadowed oil portrait of you in the hall which earlier I’d stood in front of for so long just pretending that it was a mirror of wonders I were looking into. In your clothes I answered the front door to receive a notice from your pretty middle-aged landlord of an upcoming holiday celebration in the Hotel Lobby. Inviting me with a jeweled spark of fire in her weary crystalline eyes, I accepted the invitation on your behalf, using your voice and mannerisms. With gratitude I wrapped my arms around the tired sweet-faced landlord and against my own heartbeat I could feel hers perfectly despite the hardened wall of ribs that with apropos professional regard for the situation she barricaded her organs inside of. The scent of her lipstick was like a row of books on a grand library shelf, and down the front of her blouse I could see scarification on her chest from past incidences I’d only dream of being privy to in private conversation within her offices. With a restored fullness in my heart, squeezing her as I hugged, I felt her muscles ripple to fit the shape of my form, and we became one in the empty hallway. Your world, I felt, could never be a more perfect thing if it tried; I went back into your house and stood before the mirror, watching my features change in the swirling shadows, becoming you.
Further from a reasonable destination. Away from a decent place to call home.
If you tell me where you’re going I can meet you there probably within two hours. Just let me know when you do.
Dissected angel / dissected starfish.
I peeled the rosary from your tongue and placed it at the center of my hand. Just as the lights dimmed we clasped hands, palm over palm with the wet rosary in the middle, and the cellar became a suddenly hesitant entity, cold and silent, coiled and as poised as a marble statue. My fingers—wrapped around your hand—pressed into your skin as yours did mine. I couldn’t see you with my eyes but I could see you perfectly in my head.