Q: What would you consider is or was, probably, the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?
A: Elyssa.
Q: Why?
A: Does that sound cruel?
Q: A little angry, yes, and mean too, but mostly angry. Cruel’s a strong word and I don’t thing most people truly understand it as a real thing when they think of that word and place it on something. I don’t really believe most cruelty is intentionally cruel. But, I think you’re angry, and regardless, I can see you’re hurt.
A: I don’t know why I feel that way.
Q: Yes you do.
A: Yes, I do.
Q: Can we start again then, and I’ll ask you the same question?
A: Okay.
Q: What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you, or is happening to you?
A: I can’t answer that right now. I’m sure the true answer is simple enough to get it out, but I can’t even peg what that would be in the first place, let alone get it out. So, I can’t answer that one. I don’t know.
Q: Well, then what would you consider is, or was, probably, the best thing that’s ever happened to you?
A: Elyssa.
After the disheartening discovery of my office door having been pried open sometime during the night and the locks smashed well beyond repair, I moved my things down to the hospital accounting office. Without a safe office of my own, it was just as well that I should leave the floor while the investigation was still pending and assist in sorting out the security receipts from last year with the rest of the overworked accounting staff, many of whom were not very familiar to me. I was given a small desk alongside Mary (someone that I did recognize), where the two of us were charged with restoring damaged security-cost documents, primarily in regard to preparing a fiscal budgeting system for the next two years that would both predict and accommodate the rising costs of subduing violent encounters within the hospital. Mary’s hands were shaking so badly that I called up to the cafeteria for some coffee and muscle relaxants for her. Her long hair fell in front of her face, hanging there motionlessly until the pills could arrive. Once they did, she parted it down the middle like the curtains of a movie screen, lay one of the pills delicately over the pointed tip of her tongue, then leaned back to swallow it down with a sip of coffee.
We pressed the lamb’s head jaw-down into the vice grip and then you put all your weight into further pressing at the top of its skull while I spun the tightening wheel. Within a quarter of a minute we had the lamb stuck there, thrashing and bucking. You came around to my side of the vice and kissed me on the cheek and together we watched the lamb release crystal waterfalls from its eyes; a general sign of fright and panic on behalf of the lamb. I kissed your cheek too and whispered, “L’en occulta.”
Hold your hand in the sea, brush up against urchins in the dark.
In a circle and star painted on the floor of your attic we looked through memory albums and you told me stories about the history of seclusion. Then I heard the sea calling and it was like being a kid again, when you can hear your mother bellowing out on the front porch from seven blocks away. I put on my slippers and walked out into the water, going home again beneath the harbor’s warm coverlet to stand council with a whale.
After the serpent sought out the morning.
(Source: corpseonpumpkin.com)