Lark & Termite

Then he's inside you, and your body remembers, each time, every man, even if you try to forget.

Smoke veils the air like souls in drifting suspension, declining the war's insistence everyone move on.

The ragged cat drags its belly across where the grass is short and the stones are sharp, under the lilacs that have no flowers. The flower smell is gone and the white falls off the trees. Seeds, Lark says, little seeds with parachutes to fly them, Termite, all in your hair, and she runs her fingers through his hair, saying how long and how pretty. He wants the grass long and strong, sounding whispers when it moves, but the mower cuts it. The mower cuts and cuts like a yowling knife. He hears the mower cutting and smells the grass pouring out all over the ground, the green stain so sharp and wet it spills and spills. The mower cuts everything away and Nick Tucci follows the mower, cutting and cutting while the orange cat growls low to move its soft parts across the chipped sharp stones. Deep under the lilacs where no one sees, the orange cat waits for the roar to stop.

A song moves a story fast or slow like the river moves the water.

Sheet music circles on the water, silent, open pages, weighted and wet. I train the beam of the flashlight over the words. “Meet Me in St. Louis” drifts by, and “My Funny Valentine.

I think about going away myself, living a whole different life, like I could exist on a different planet and this life wouldn’t know about me, and I wouldn’t know about it.

The afternoon has closed down, gone purple, coaxed and sucked dark by the storm.

Termite can imitate almost anything,” I say. “Things just sound more like music in his version. Sounds instead of words.

There’s always been a wild quiet about Solly. It stays in the air near him like a scent.

If death is this brilliant slide, this high, fine music felt as pure vibration, this plunging float in wind and silence, it’s not so bad.

Termite likes music without words, and he falls asleep surrounded.

older, I’ve got a clear space around me I didn’t have before. I wonder if that’s like a future, or a place where a future will be.