12 - Sleep

Some trick of gods has left us cool, hidden and alone, though the walls of this place, and its roof if we could reach it, are still too hot to touch, should be glowing like a filament in a light bulb or those many thin red fish bones of a toaster, things he does not remember well and never will. A conversation has just ended and that thing we left when we began speaking is returning, has returned.

I wonder how he will know who he is. He is the only child on a playground. He is the son of invisible parents. He is the brother of a thing departed, returning to a new thing, an older meaning and holding his hand, he returns with it. There are no thousand shades of black. No menagerie of ideas. No calm crowd, perfect & meaningless. He will be devoured by readiness. He will spend the night of the rest of his life at the bottom of and beneath a great death and though he call it god, it will not be.

“I could do it. I could keep us safe Michael.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“If I don’t do these things, If I don’t do what I know will make us safe, we won’t be.” He is fiddling with a part of his coat. I fixed it. There is something about its form, its reincarnation that is wrong to him because it is different, I think that is what he is doing, what he is working at with preoccupation, it works, it’s not the same.

I abide by a rule not to rant or explain without being asked to explain. It felt like I was giving clean water when I first did it. I even felt righteous when I was holding back these explanations, these rationalizations, whatever they are, they are the fire and they are the cross on the hill the fire illuminates. Now my silence eats me like acid.

I must ask a question now or be silent until he speaks again. I ask a question. He just turns and rolls over to his side, his back to the fire as he faces the sudden cold that has become of all of this. I hide in the coals of this fire, our life, it takes me, I would let it were it not for him. I say his name. He is sleeping now, whether he is or not.