Site 42:
Maytag obelisks in the kitchen
held together by Velcro, locks and keys
an ice core determines what’s inside:
television dinners, insecurities swathed in
layers of sandwich baggies, wedding cake—pre Y2K—
bitter freezer-burnt meatloaf that always had too many onions.
Carbon dating is unnecessary;
landslide prone pantry shelves prove too perilous.

Site 166:
Timothy’s old bedroom, now
an exposition of excess and
relics of our childhood:
Rock hard Flintstones vitamins, Wal-Mart bath sets, Tom Clancy novels, puddles of butterscotch candies, jogging shoes which never hit pavement and a heap of stuffed animals
loved gently.

Site 4:
Blaze a trail through an acreage of
empty boxes and unkempt vines of candy necklaces
to the master bedroom.
The entryway gapes
distended from the catalogue of films and CD-ROMS spilling
into the hallway: Misery
The Lion King, and One Flew Over
the Cuckoo’s Nest among them;
Pavarotti and Celine Dion smile forlornly through the rubble.

Site 233:
Here mother lies, deep in the bowels of her tomb
preserved in
the bomb shelter cellar she built to keep out
anxiety, family, scrutiny.
Four hundred pounds of scoopable Tidy Cat kitty litter,
50 cans of Great Value beets and a treadmill. All she needed to
sustain her osteoporotic frame,
tree bark skin and sinkhole cheeks, but
petrified roots immobilized her an
delved too deep into the cold earth.
Strewn around:
mummified remains of revered companions, a copy of Cujo and
photographs of us all.

We’ve defined face and heel and
how to keep the illusion alive
like Bloom hiding love letters to keep

kayfabe with his menstruating wife.
It all starts from the lock-up,
intensity comes across in your

hyperbole, you are Kinbote and
the ring is your Zembla.
And selling makes the difference between

flat and round characters. Sell poorly
and you’re the jobber who knocked up Dewey Dell.
Sell well and you can make us

believe your mother is a fish.
You must be Mrs. Ramsay
and get a grasp on what

your dinner guests (otherwise known
as marks) are feeling. Master ring psychology,
boys, and you can be the Henry James of Sports Entertainment.

A beginning must be established.  But where to begin.⁴ What staked its claim to jest or endowed the day with color so vibrant? ⁵ Too many to choose and remember in here that to choose is to sacrifice one for the other.⁶ Will the notation of a few be just to the many?  Will the many be useful to exemplifying my elation for the few affecting themes?⁷

One way to do best is an absurd idea, yet I ponder what will be if I choose one or the other.  Of all that is lost from making selections, one will be gained without motion to form.⁸

As I stare at this page, the words flowing from mind, through pen,⁹ onto paper with deliberation,¹⁰ a stare of the inner eye¹¹ looks at the emptiness of page, with the white spaces pervading through the letters.  So much remains untouched by ink. ¹² A day, so full of emptiness it seems when written, minute and discreet relations to a day where nothing happened.¹³

Is that really it?¹⁴ So much to say, but bits and pieces are chosen that amount to nothing in the end.  Nothing is gained without something lost, so I will begin my account at the time I awoke to the clear sky and the breeze against my cheek. ¹⁵

Noon had arrived on my watch that was five minutes ahead the average time.¹⁶ The tinted sky, calm and brooding, waned across the sky in languorous waves.  And the chill wind kissed my cheek in welcoming me back to this time of the year.¹⁷

(End of writing. Nothing beyond this point)¹⁸

As she looks up, I can’t help but think what a beautiful woman she’ll never become.

The city glows in the distance,
Burning with the heat of a million
Artificial halogen and neon stars;
They burn away, perpetually,
And illuminate all that might have
Tried to remain hidden in darkness,
But can no longer escape the light—
Things left exposed and bare like wounds,
For the entire world to see.

Even from this distance,
I can hear the angry buzz and hum
Of an endless procession of streetlights
Swelling like a swarm of insects—
A cacophony of static filling the air;
I try to find some darkness in which
To hide, but there is only light here—
There is not a single inch of darkness left,
And nowhere to escape the sound.

It has been seven minutes since we have pulled from our driveway. We are making excellent time. Punctuality. We’ll be at the art gallery soon. I place my hand on Sonny’s thigh.

Sonny is staring vacantly into the side mirror. She has on one of my least favorite facial expressions. The only look more dismal is when she’s crying. She’s probably fixating on last night again.

“Well, what do you think?” Sonny had just finished the final piece for the show today. She stood back, her face speckled with black paint.

I looked at the painting. The series she had been working on was based on the Hans Christian Anderson story, “The Shadow.” She had done the panels in non-sequential order, and this one depicted the opening scene. She had chosen to make the learned man a writer, and I had posed for her at my desk. (I had lasted about an hour, before my muscles had cramped, and she had resorted to taking my photo.) I didn’t care for how my shadow took (there has to be a better word – bogarted? consumed?) two-thirds of the canvas.

“It’s fine,” I told her.

“Why do you do that?” she had asked me. “Why do you use neutral terms like that?”

I had used it because it was neutral. She’s capable of better work. She has more potential than anyone I know, but she squanders it (such a great connotation the “squa” sound has!). Then her work becomes squalid. Then I tell her so. Then we squabble into a squall because she squawks that I’ve squashed her spirit. There should be more words with “squa.”

I blame her parents for her need for unwarranted approval. Their only expectations of Sonny were for her to look pretty and say adorable things. Two things she does well without effort.

“I want to play Polonius,” Sonny said. It was about a week ago during dinner. I remember because the word that day was “turgid.” I was puzzling how to use it in a sentence while chewing on the strange cornbread she had made that night. “Baked polenta with butternut squash and Gouda,” she called it.

I wanted to tell Sonny that she was better suited to Ophelia.

“But you’re not an actor,” I retorted. (Retort? Refute? Rebuke?)

“You don’t know that. I don’t even know that. I’ve never tried.” And then she stared off, biting her lip.

“What are you reading?” she asked me later that night while we were in bed.

“Words, words, words.”

“Why do you do that? Why do you answer with an answer that requires more questions?” Sonny hadn’t gotten the joke. She rarely does lately.

The last time she had been this tumultuous, (I wonder if there is a word with more u’s than “tumultuous”) it was right before she had run off with that idiot. (I should really find an insult with more impact. Douche? No, only douchebags use the word “douche.” What was that word? Gadfly. No, I’ll sound like a prohibition gangster if I start calling people gadflies. Maybe that wouldn’t be so deplorable. Deplorable, what a great word!)

Sonny squeezes my hand. Maybe she’s over last night? I take her hand, growl playfully and bite her fingers to palliate the silence. Sonny laughs. (Facetiously is a better word than playfully.) I growled facetiously.

Sonny is still laughing. I give her an inquisitive look. (Is inquisitive the i’s answer to the u’s tumultuous? If the i and the u were to battle it out, which would be the more victorious vowel? The i has a greater army, I think, but the u has all those un- worthy contenders. Ha!)

“What are you giggling about?” I ask her.

“Pink paisley explosion,” Sonny says. She’s referring to earlier this morning. I had found her in the guest bedroom. I had laid (Laid? Lied? Lain? Why can I never remember the correct past participle of “lie”?) down beside her. It was then that I had comprehended why we never had visitors. The mattress is inflexible, and the wallpaper is, well, a pink paisley explosion.

“Terrible. Just terrible. Who lived in our house before us?” I ask her.

“Homosexual terrorists?” Sonny can be quick-witted (brilliant?) at the most unexpected times.

Sonny could be brilliant all the time if she strove for it more frequently. But she is complacent. She submits to her emotions and admits defeat before she even attempts something.

“Why?” I ask her.

“Why what?”

“Why did you sleep in the guest room?”

Sonny isn’t answering my question. She has gone back to staring into the side mirror.

“Sonny, this has to stop. You have to control your emotions. Crying at dinner like that – for absolutely no reason. Why? Why did you cry?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to cry,” she says into the window, fogging up the glass.

“Well it has to stop, okay?” I have a lopsided smile as I squeeze her thigh.

“Okay,” she mumbles.

Palimpsest. If we paint over the old wallpaper, would it be a palimpsest?

Day 4305 was your milestone.
Welcome to Day 534.