Crawl Spaces

short fragments to hide in

Footfalls creak above. You're pancaked in the crawl space, watching dust bunnies traverse spider lace. It's not ideal, but you're thankful for the quiet. You're using your body in new ways, relishing the pleasant pang of muscles heretofore unknown.

Radios squawk, and someone’s wearing heels. For fun, you open and close your hands. You feel the bloody glaze crack against your skin as it stretches. You recall the mantra the Sanskrit-speaking white man gave you in exchange for three days and a banana. It settles upon your shoulders like a cloak, moving hurricane-like behind your tear ducts.

You no longer hear the feet and the squawks, only the mantra. Only the disquieting mitt tickle of blood—open, close, open, close, open...

🟄🟄

I’m no disciple. I’m yours to make strange. Shape-shift me til’ I’m reviled— condemned to sardonic eyerolls. Pasteurize the long goodbye of make-believe into the science of identity. Wear me down til’ I erect skyscrapers of cypress and gum. Distress me until I project onto tall grasses, the city glow reflecting in my belly as groundhogs tongue my toes and cattails interest my philtrum. Slither deep in my brain, recast normalcy as no-go, and back away slowly. It’s less about missing and more about never having been.

🟄🟄

He never said please enough. When he did, it lacked the bitter fury of desperation. He’d sulk when struck, affirming his status as a bland refrigerated mind, the empty gut gorging on table scrap congrats.

After he fled, he spent days throwing himself into traffic, compacting himself, and retreating behind my delftware. He comes out at night to light fires in my nostrils and sarcastically hum Please Please Me in my ear.

🟄🟄

The twice plastic ersatz king heralds left coast rains. He strolls among rows of mossy stumps, laughing as they brush naked legs like leaning pups.

He will, someday, make the bones in his face as fragile as possible.

He will, someday, work furiously in course sands, grating posh hands down to pink stumps. He’ll stand admiring sloppy cathedrals of coagulated blood and yellow sand. His precious rains will turn them back to mush.

He will, someday, begin again.

🟄🟄

I suspect the doom-scrolled somnambulant suckles my pewter. I awake to find G. Washington sloppily kitty-cornered, slippery with sputum. The Spirit of 1776’s slender flag poll is bent, succumbed to hot breath; the flag is ass over teakettle, battle-frayed edges nipping at the dead-eyed drummer boy. Only the unnamed soldier is bonedry. The rest lay on their backs in clear globular pools pocked with bubbles. The perp lays zonked on the couch, J. Hancock in her iron fist, willing history with her slung yap.

Spirit of 1776

🟄🟄

The lump in my carpet keeps getting bigger the more I try to flatten it. It makes me feel like Ma is still around, poking her finger through quantum curtains, burying swine in my living room.

I'll sit and stare.

Sometimes, I'll take my shirt off and finger the thin skin between each rib, seeing how far I can push until I howl.

Sometimes, I'll leave a plate of rice cakes near the lump before bed. In the morning, there's only crumbs.

The book club bitches say it's grotesque and insist I call someone about it. They won't go near it; they say it looks hungry and won't take its eyes off them.

🟄🟄

Life and Death are conjoined twins breathing through one mouth. They've sat for eons, tongue-tossing a cherry Hall's through their shared kisser. After umpteen sojourns, the Hall's becomes a pitiful disk, clanging against the sucker's weary teeth until it vanishes. A starving Death will metabolize Life. He'll sit fat and happy until the bigger fish darkens his door.

---

This post is indebted to

maydayhobby

. Her post, Between Trees, really stuck with me. It grabbed me by the wrist and ushered me down a many-doored hallway, allowing me brief peeks into wild worlds before peeling me away.

I’m unsure if I offer you beak-less perma-yolks taken too soon from their warmth or fully formed chicks—a pleasant stroll down the many-doored hall or monochrome whiplash.

All I know is I had fun. I enjoyed the process and kept those fingers moving.

Remembering that writing is a source of joy is almost as important as remembering to kill your darlings. Indeed, their death may be nigh, but it won’t be by my hand. This time, the youngsters are spared the cutting room. Off they go, thrown into the blue deep, ready or not.

Maybe they’ll sink. Perhaps they’ll swim back. Either is fine.

If you liked this, you might also like…