Cate Marvin

I rode him through the village, smiling. He tossed his tasseled mane in distress. The villagers took his gesture as vanity, and made no attempt to rein him back. Camped at night by stream and fire, he seemed to think stories were in order. The ghoulish tales twisting out his mouth no longer frightened me. On leaving, I'd taken on a certain complacency. Later, he'd characterize my silence as merely mean. But what is mean about a mouth that, having no stories, claims it can provide no flower for the ear, no wine for the wind? I tried: I told the tale of him, which he (the version being mine) was not much interested in. But all of us, the fattening moon, the yewey trees, the sharp-toothed stars who combed their glowing backs against the sky like cats: we laughed. And now that I had left, where would I take him? He was vehicle and, as such, responsibility. He was deadening, tiresome, and necessary. I made ourselves a home and kept him gently as a pet. Visitors often wonder aloud, How do you manage to keep such a creature inside? The floors are stained with his keep. I tell them my heart is huge and its doors are small. Once I took him in he grew. Now I cannot remove him without killing him, which, frankly, I have never wanted to do.

Before I go let me thank the man who mugs you, taking your last paycheck, thank the boss who steals your tips, thank the women who may break you. I thank the pens that run out on you midsentence, the flame that singes your hair, the ticket you can't use because it's torn. Let me thank the stars that remind you the eyes that were stars are now holes. Let me thank the lake that drowns you, the sun that makes your face old. And thank the street your car dies in. And thank the brother you find unconcious with bloody arms, thank the needle that assists in doing him in—so much a part of you. No thanks to the skin forgetting the hands it welcomed, your hands refusing to recall what they happened upon. How blessed is the body you move in—how gone.

As one in dowte, thys ys my ssayyng: Have I dysplesed yow in any thyng? —Thomas Wyatt That greasy letter into which my legs entered, its tone conspiratorial as his wink, a linguistic wriggling of the eyebrows, a heh heh —it may as well have appeared before my door chafing the air with the stiff noise of its cheap leather jacket. Am I not chagrined by his proposition to put it all behind us and begin again as friends? How do I reply? And how shall I contend with the fact, Reader, that this matter cannot mean much to you, and that I, as author, am required to consider how to tell this tale in a manner that will entertain you, despite having never met you and having no way of knowing how to affect you, get you to let me touch you all over, kiss your lips then tongue your mouth open, move my mouth down your neck to the valley of your chest, pluck buttons off you with my teeth. I have thought of this for a great, long time. I have sat here hunched, feeling sick; I have paced rugs bare. Why should you care? His door opened, selves spilled out my heart's bucket, flopped their silvers across a floor. He was too poor to enter a store, too poor to pay postage for a letter, so poor he'd have stolen crumbs from a mouse, so poor he'd have sold his cadaver if he could. Yet, consider the man: his deep voice began to work away at my inhibitions like sandpaper. Before I knew it, I'd moved right into him, wiped the eyes of windows clear, mended the tears in his screens, made our bed with sheets so icy clean— but you do not want me to give too much away. What fun would that be? Here, as with any tale, the moral's like a molar, set far back in the mouth of the story. Open wider, let me stick my pliers in, wrench it out. Left unattended, anything's prone to spoil, go bad, turn rotten, sink into itself, stink up the whole house. And how shall I begin to make my account? Dig through the junk heap. Start small. He grew over me calmly as a vine climbs a trellis. Your nightgown is unbecoming. A few small terrorisms. Eyes wide at my wince, incredulous. You thought I'd hit you?

Roofers scrape the scaly lid of an auto shop beside the house where I live. Where I live shirtless men tear at the black scabs of a roof's old flesh, toss scraps into the back of a truck parked in the lot next to a house where I live. Where I live a tarp rattles at night, plastic rustles, and trash is kicked along pavement by wind. Roofers curse and shell the tire shop's peeling lid beside the house where I live. Where I live a tarp shakes all night; cans land on pavement, tossed from windows of cars that blur by where I live. Where I live windows are ladled red with light your sun leaves me with. Repairs are made to roofs which will never cover me. As I read the road between us, tire tracks unscroll their tawdry calligraphy. Any day now you shall arrive, roar into my eye with your mountainside. Where I live when I live where landscape cannot survive you.

Inexplicable, the sign outside a deli scrawled with FLOWERS and below that: ALWAYS. But there were no flowers. And I have never seen an Always. I would like to, and I have looked. I have kept my eye keen for Always, have liked its idea like an expensive purse, coveting it as it appears, riding the arms of rich ladies who are so very lady.                      I've rolled on velvet cushions where I heard Always slept, and I once tried to kiss Always, but I don't think it was the Always I was looking for. I like your Always, it looks such a demanding pet. It looks like it kisses nice and soft. It looks like the bruise I found flowering on my knee. I fell down at your voice. Not to worry, I got right back up, walked ten more blocks and by then I was halfway home. I knock my knees blue and scabbed crawling toward you, wanting flowers, and always, always, always to slide against the cold vinyl of a car's seat, your pale hands on the bare backs of my legs, that's one Always I want, and whoever knew there were so many species of Always? Your bare hands on the pale backs of my thighs, printing bruise, and if you said Flowers, said Always and we could erect a forever of something like sheets and breakfast and an ordinary day, my eyes would always slide across the table toward you, to warm their twin marbles in your palm, my face would flower for you daily, so that when we die, roses might petal themselves out our throats.

Though I can’t recall your last name now, Howie, I’ve been penciling myself in to your way back then, way back when, in your gangbangland, she was loose and gone, struggling up on a limb to raise herself off from your bed, but lost, fell back, let the all of you in again. Said just trying to get out your room was no use since she’d got her own self in. Curbside-mind, I venture you are still alive. Wondering what she’d think of that, but, then, I don’t know, can a ghost think when its body’s shot itself in the head? Hell, just thinking about it makes me wish I were dead. Just some girl, you, then you letting your friends shovel their coal-selves up into her, just some person. I knew. Her mother’s now offering a twenty-percent discount for crystal healing therapy on her website. In high school, she was a calm mother, dull job as telephone operator, back in that town her dead daughter and I always swore we would leave, back in that town dead to me, and me, I marry a man who mocks me for crying.We-we-we, he calls out, snickering in the gloom. Yet still I wear the dead girl’s perfume. And I’ve got an accident to report. Because it was all our centers, uninvited, you rucked up inside, then bade your friends park their reeking selves in the garage of her feminine. What did you call it back then? You balding fuck, you’ve forgot. Sloppy seconds. Forgot her slippage, eyes dead drunk spirals, face some fluid spilling down your sheets. I’ve been where she’s been, and I can be where you are now, switch my hips, sashay into your office to see you any day now, wearing her perfume. What pack animal would you choose to be in your next life? Every day, the marsupial clouds grow hungrier for our reunion, the reunion I’ve been packing for all my life. There is a swing set and a girl in a dress who doesn’t know about this next. First, she’s pretty. Finally, she’s done for. So I took some pills to forget I knew you last as friend. Then I learned the ways of your wiles, how you did my girl who’s now dead in.

I regard your affections, find your teeth have left me a bruise necklace. Those lipstick marks leech a trail, ear to ear, facsimile your smile. Your 40 ounces of malt liquor, your shrink hate, your eyes dialing 911. The hearts you draw with ballpoint on my cigarette packs when I've left the room, penned in your girl's cursive, look demented, misshapen approximations of what I refuse to hand over. It's a nice touch, though: a little love to accompany the cancer. My thought follows you to where you spend your days lying in bed, smoking and reading the Beats. The accumulation of clothes and ashes circles you, rising like a moat after rainfall. Often you are a study in detachment—the trigger eye is your eye, still as a finger poised to press should one refuse to cooperate, and I wonder how you can hate men so much when you think like one. Think of what I could be doing outside if I could unlock the door of myself: think bikini, think soda fountain, think tradition, a day lacking entirely your brand of ambivalence. If you were a number, I'd subtract you; if you were a sentence, I'd rewrite you. Are you the one who left these wilted flowers, are you the one whose PIN spells out H-O-L-E? Why are you wearing my clothes? If you are weather, then I am a town, closing down at word of your coming: you're a glacier on fast forward, you're direct as a detour, when I say good-bye you move in next door. You say you want to have my baby, you want to buy me a car, and you're too young to enter a bar. I should tether you to a tree in the dark park, allow the moon to stroke your white neck. I should give you a diamond collar, walk you around the block and show you off.

I never recline in splendor, I never take repose. The eyes of an old woman are blue and stick to me like insects to a screen. She is not hating me, though there are those who hate me, so I never lie in repose for fear that if I agree with the vulnerability of sleep, I'll make my own murder. I don't embrace the unconscious or analyze my dreams. The eyes of people who hate me might be spiders crawling on my hands, or snails that leave their shells, but I will not allow their acidic tounges to touch me. I belive in ghosts only now that her blue eyes stick to me like humidity. I will not outgrow my spite, though I read books that instruct me to. No, I'll always lie with my sleep beside me like a knife. I forgot my spite, once, only to wish I had not: He lay me upon the bed, crossed my arms across my chest, then fell to me, pressing a book between us. I never lie in repose. I am not a portrait. But I think so still my joints ache. One day, he shall not be the same (as I have never been the same), and we shall read upon his stone a verse attributed to my name. This is my foresight and my fright, blooming red in his eye's white.

I carved upon my desk unsayables. He drank until he vomited on himself. Eavesdropping, the others resisted sleep. The house knew the pain of sun on lacquered floorboards. I carved it with the tips of scissors. A door creaked; he hung his head into the room. Please, the others cannot sleep. The shingles twitched like skin beneath moonlight. I spent the afternoon at a movie theater. He staggered through brush toward a pay phone. The others continued searching the streets for him. The house held the moon above it, it was that imperial. I recall the room was empty when I came back in. He was arrested at the Quik-Trip while calling collect. Frantic, the others circled the block again. The house was ghost-white, older than the dead. I needle-pointed for 72 hours straight. He claimed the whole situation humiliated him. Relieved, the others refrained from asking him what jail was like. The house was swan to field, tiger to sea. I lay in bed by the time the others came home. He couldn't recall putting on the orange jumpsuit. The others asked if I'd seen him around. The house shuddered,No-o-o-o. The house winced, winked its blinds. The house whispered I should stay inside. The others flew out the doors and into their cars. The others slammed their cars into deer and cried. He was more humiliated than he'd ever been. He looked more or less the same, though his eyes were ringed. The others hid in the basement. He climbed the stairs and presented a ring. The house swung its windows wide to ice. He banged his nails blue, pinned his tongue to his tie. He packed himself in a box, sent it to regions far off. The others pressed their ears to the pipes. The house wore its flames like a hat. The house called a radio talk-show. We drank all night, laughed all night, the night he left. I shook in its mouth till the house drank me up.