There is significance to your step. I can see; I see most. The way your foot eats the carpet, your toes receding from each other in order to reverse purge. It’s ugly and yet more than a nod in the right direction which is away.
“Are you done with the classifieds?” you say, grazing by the door to the bathroom. You’re twenty feet away. I can almost hear your feet chew.
“Almost,” I say and then find the classifieds from inside the rest of the paper. My fingers get ink soot deep in the grooves.
Enough of the soot will ink my face until a point dormant self-awareness. First the thoughtless hand-to-face, and then later, as I rub my fingers above my lap, I will remember the soot and my face and then head to the bathroom you currently occupy since it holds our only mirror. A medicine cabinet combo filled mostly with makeup. Giant ink-smears all over. You know I touch my face a lot.
The classifieds and the comics always have the most ink-to-page ratio. They are more often then not folded into each other, the entertainment and the hint of future entertainment. Whoever writes this stuff wants to be on you. Both the classifieds and the comics are usually solicited from outside sources. The ink is only a translation. I have theories about the ink-to page-ratio.
You flush and come gnawing your way back toward the bed. You stop at the beginning, again grazing. I can sense your feet slowly nibbling cud.
“You should circle the ones you want like everyone else,” you say.
We are in our shared one bedroom. We are both contenders, fighting for wardrobe space. Clothes litter the floor and I wonder if your feet bit into any of my shirts.
“What if I cut them out,” I say, “that would be outside the hat.”
You turn to look at me. “Outside the hat?”
“The hat is inside of the box which is what cutting would be outside of.”
“You’re not making sense. Where is this hat?”
“Look outside. There’s two guys down on the street. They might be around the corner by now, but they’re both wearing hats. They’re wearing the same thing. Conforming. That means they’re doing something inside of the box. Then, if something is outside of the hats, it’s outside of the box.”
“No it doesn’t,” you say and turn to the window. The morning is bright enough where you look metallic in its glow. I was hoping that the day would be a gentle one. One of those days that’s so nice and gentle that you have to spend it inside so as to not disturb how well it’s doing. Instead, this morning is sharp and metal from end to end, a blade without a handle. You add an edge.
I remember the matrix classes I took and know you’re right but I just flip a page of the classifieds and stare at words that don’t contextualize immediately. You never took a matrix class. So sharp.
“Did you hear about Mark?” you say and walk to the window. Your hair is a hot fiberglass splinter. “Jen was talking to Marcy at the bar and I overheard. I guess he’s really bad. Like in a bad shape.”
I imagine Mark in various shapes. A shape that is dishonest. That is disloyal. That is worse than the worst quadrilateral. I smile a little but then put it away.
“Oh really,” I say. And then, “And anyway I don’t have a pen. We never have pens near the bed.”
“Here’s a pen,” you say and throw it at my face. It hits the pillow. But it seemed like you were going to get my face. Where did you find the pen?
“What if that had been a pair of scissors like what I actually asked for? You might have cut me.”
I think this might be it for us.
“What are you talking about? I never know what you’re talking about. You’re always talking and looking away at something else and then trying to tie that into whatever you’re saying.”
I pick up the pen and start circling without looking at where I’m looking but within a certain radius so that the orbiting lines slowly tear away the paper. You continue enumerating my multiple delinquencies. It’s true that I look away while talking, but it’s because the outside is so rife with material. Sometimes I don’t think I personally have the correct amount of material to keep a conversation rolling. I feel like I’ve talked to you about everything I’ve ever done and thought. You know all my features. You can tell me more than I can. What I do in a day barely covers a text message.
“We don’t talk any more, “ I say even though it’s a lie. I’m lying to you right now. Am I an ugly shape too? Do we share an ugly shape? I pick up the oval of the paper. It looks perfect.
“One female jerk party needed to fake a potential “accident” in a very public place. Must be okay with blood and orange juice and talking to security guards. Also, payment is through food in the form of vegetables soaked in the blood of poisoned frogs. Please call Phone Master Kay between the hours of 5-8.”
“That’s not what it says,” you say. “Say what you mean.”
“Never,” I say back.
But what if it was what it said? What if I told you the truth? What if I told you, I need more closet space? I touch my face and sometime tugs inside me telling me that later I will realize what I just did.
