Mark Us! For We Give You Good Grace

Standing there, I realized what had really happened. There was a flash, as though the past refused to be past and wanted to remind me of what it held in its grubby little paw. Jaws set straight, the edges of bared teeth rubbing ever so slightly.

Here, this seat was like some porcelain throne to a thing that he had banished to the far recesses. But though far, they were not impossible. It did not matter how they arrived; such formalities are meant for scientists. He remembered the deflated mallet sitting, dejected, upon his floor. It was tucked next to a bottle containing an empty ghost and a book containing a living one. The signs were still littered all over the room, his face. The white walls he now faced set things in greater relief.

That was why the sight tasted so strong.

I jumped back into place, abandoning the distance that stretched out like leather wings. Oh, now I am stealing another's soul. I feel ashamed.

Yes, shame. It burned like bad vodka, good whiskey. It burned in places that I did not know could burn, places where fire sprouted in cherry wisps that licked the stagnant early morning air. It left no scar. Shame never does. Never did. But I covered up the naked form, hoping that the red hot eyes would have no pores from which to peep.

I can run my finger through the air and I know exactly what shape I trace, what shape I trace with eye and tongue and endless thought. Outline formed, I fill it. I fill and fill and fill, from places deep and rocked with waves. And so the outline becomes a model, fit for nothing but a speedy, ruthless burial.

A dry throat indicated some regret. It was not mine to make, to mold. Perhaps mine to murder, but that was a presumption upon too many people's parts. I wish that this would detach. I wish for crystals to form and creak as they jut out. If my wish were to come true, they would breath out and expand into a thousand tiny broken postures.

They would not stand erect.

They would hang their heads, skew their spines, limply lay their limbs, thrust out their tongues, and remark that a portrait was fit to be made.

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