
KYLE.
the boy with hands like catcher’s mitts faces two whole blunts
before he has the courage to surrender to me. straddling
a backward chair, he watches me flick ash into a flowerpot
while all the light in the room pools under my eyes.
he says, i want to tell you a story. says it so quietly i cannot see
what is dark & sprouting in the sinkhole behind his teeth.
i am too busy playing magician, making the tiny grey molecules clench
& wink, so when i say ok, it signals that i have opened my face
for the drinking, & in rushes a gift of black water
louder than any ode. he says,
i didn’t mean to kill her. my skin balloons to fill the room,
blanketing his twisted mouth in shadows large enough
to cover the holes in this story where the grief eats through.
the stars, in shame, annul themselves, & in this apocalyptic fog
i make myself a boy like him, weedy, sprinting past the trees
in search of silt or something holier. three of them
in all, not including the girl, trotting dutifully paces behind
(—i can’t remember her face, he says, so imagine instead
how it could be air there, rolling along her scalp,
above the pearls of her eyes—)
each of them a victor in his own right, but it is her who throws
a wrist & signals the clearing, that birth of their carriage
in 3pm light. & they are so beautiful, standing there, bleached
pink & full up with need. he says, it was my dad’s car.
waves his hand & the truck’s spartan blooming is magnified
in the eye like a peony. envision, if you will, four dirty teens
climbing into the mouth of the devil with bare feet. pay attention
to the swallowing. all that red in the teeth, & he doesn’t have
to say anything more. we know where the story goes,
because someone else is at the helm & they are looking back
to shout at us. not me, or him. not even god, who sits in the branches
because he is tired of getting grass stains on his shoes. kyle kneels
on the swath of carpet between us, moving from the couch to the floor
again like a woman possessed by the weight of her knowing.
what was her name? the joint i carry a spear between my fingers.
me, leaning out of the fog to read his eyes, the notches
of his spine in prayer; were it not for the sound trickling in
from the kitchen, i would forget that there were others here,
that it is not just us. the lights are so low—or is it the dark lengthening,
stretching its spindly arms to tower above my head and render my
seeing implausible? the imprint of a cushion on kyle’s cheek makes him younger
than my eyes need him to be. but rewind to the clearing, where the light
has been devoured by muck, and young bodies are ricocheting
through time with their skins blown off—or perhaps only
their senses. kyle’s hands begin to shake, & so do the details.
it is as much my tale as his, so maybe i am the boy
hungried, stretching my hand out towards a pretty girl,
but she is not looking at me: rather, one of the many hims
in the passenger’s seat with the orange on his collarbones,
in his philtrum rinsing him clean.
could it be kyle, with the hat backwards & the bright eating his face
away like acid? maybe. she looks so long & hard that she does not notice
the hot plastic rushing up to greet her mouth, her exposed cheek,
salted meat sabered away from the bone. maybe there was too much
dirt in the wheels. either way the truck is in air, is alive. look. see
how it devours clouds & women. see how the gloved fire catches
legs spread-eagled as if they mean too to kindle, & the logic of tears
cannot dissuade them. i say i am a boy but perhaps i am the air
that blankets her—only to avoid seeing the grief that paints
his face when he realizes that there is no way to staunch the red
erupting from her throat. blood spots the leather seats where her teeth
have planted themselves, & kyle envisions uprooting them
with giant hands, even his sight /spotting/, the red running black
through the gaps in his fingers where her flesh clumps, limp as a tern’s
blue meat. & what about the other—boys, i say, so i can get it right later,
where did you put the rest of the bodies? but the words only live
this life in my head. i pose them to sit kinder in the mouth
when i speak, but even still it eats at him. i watch kyle move
& be moved by his mouth, feel the commensurate dread as spit,
tired of this dancing, settles at the corners of his lips.
he says i. don’t know. i think. i know we left the truck
in the field. because the wheels. wouldn’t move we couldn’t
get them to go. i think. in the trees. blake hid the body in the trees
& we couldn’t get it down. her down. she was just air. we didn’t
have enough fingers to hold her.
he holds his hands out in front of his face like they are wide
enough to net the past through. drain the black water so i can see
everything through the holes, i want to say, but kyle is too high to speak
now, his freckled back to the door and his eyes tracking the moon’s
waning paleness—like someone who has lost
their lover in it, like someone still looking for their shape
in every incoherent, wet glimmer.