Christopher Todd Matthews

One hand slops suds on, one hustles them down like a blind. Brusque noon glare, filtered thus, loosens and glows. For five or six minutes he owns the place, dismal coffee bar, and us, its huddled underemployed. A blade, black line against the topmost glass, begins, slices off the outer lather, flings it away, works inward, corrals the frothy middle, and carves, with quick cuts, the stuff down, not looking for anything, beneath or inside. Homes to the last, cleans its edges, grooms it for the end, then shaves it off and flings it away. Which is splendid, and merciless. And all in the wrist. Then, he looks at us. We makers of filth, we splashers and spitters. We sitters and watchers. Who like to see him work. Who love it when he leaves and gives it back: our grim hideout, half spoiled by clarity.

Dark by five, the day gives up and so do I, stalled at the top of the stairs I forget what for, adrift in a scrap of dream that’s not a dream exactly but a stupor, unrefined. I go astray in old routines, I dare myself to reconstruct the rules of old invented games—that one of throwing snowballs at the roof, to watch them shrink as they rolled down, spinning to their pits, to see the force that made them briefly a thing so neatly undone. Today an old friend’s tiny boy lobbied me to pitch some snowballs at him. I bowed to his dense little will. But planned to miss. As I packed and flung each one to its unpacking, he hunted down the humble bits and crumbs of every impact, as they ran from him along the icy slope, and gathered and carried them back to me at the top. Eating them as he came. So that’s how you get to the marrow of breakdown. I forgot. That you could put what’s left to your lips.