Pulmonary Figurines

Oberhofer – I Could Go

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You are out, Marina. You have taken gloves, both gloves, your softest purse, your thickest socks. You have zipped and unzipped boots. Your legs are shaven, the hairs rinsed down the drain. You have scrubbed the day’s saliva from your lips and now they are moist again, very, with the contents of a jar claiming to be “nervous-proof.” There are eight nail clippings living in the calf-high wastebasket of our tiled restroom. Mascara, I’m afraid, has made a sloppy cameo. Do not worry. Your navel is clean. Your arms immaculate.

The necklace you have chosen with care, as it is your only and desperate to catch the night. I have watched and said nothing throughout all this despite my breath quickening some. You are standing there one moment. You are looking past me at the salamander clock, and I can barely see your teeth. The air is thick for wordless air, but I know, I think, everything not left to say. Then you are out, and it is only I, and the clippings, and the “nervous-proof” and that awful clock shuttered in and floundering about like fish on a line or the midday homeless.

The passing hours lap at the door like waves. There is wind enough to coat the world in Spanish Moss. I am sitting in a room waiting for high tide to come spilling down the chimney, stretched out across the den like a toothpick rug. I am comforted in part by drink. Mostly, however, I try to still my hands. They have let go their amber glass. They are leading me skyward. They are gliding, palms up, along the banister, savoring each step, and I must brave the stairs sideways like a human crab. I am dragged, by the one hand, by the nape of my neck, though I am thin, as mentioned, and offer little in this way.

They are frantic, these hands, and I am spun terribly upon reaching the doorframe. I am flung across the unmade bed and crashed into the wardrobe. Nonplussed, possessed from the wrists down. I am groping, through the tie rack, for my suitcase. I am filling my things with others of my things, and I am leaving. My hands, two steps ahead, are already gone.

The house is coming, too. One way or another, I will pack the felled timber of my once home. I will breathe the rubble dust, puff out my cheeks, and hold breath to turn red, then green, blue. And I will keep holding, Marina, until what particles are there have rearranged themselves into flimsy miniatures of us, one per lung. And when I am almost, just about, the cough that claws its way out will ripple through every bone and memory living in these stupid hands. Do not worry. I will open the car doors with my jaw. I will kick my suitcase into the passenger seat. And I will be the one out for a change, driving only with an elbow, offering the curious something new to squint at between red lights.

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