His mouth is covered, but I can still hear him. I only know it’s covered because it sounds covered. He may have his hand over it, so I don’t see his teeth. He doesn’t know I can’t see him at all. Or maybe he does.
“You know that you slice and dice, right? You know that the way you move is always different.”
And I do. And I move just the way I do in the intervals. I move forward and backward, trying to spot him in the tangle. He is a mouth on a branch, high up in a short tree, somewhere in the pitiful canopy. He is just high enough. It is just dark enough. Pitch. The streetlight bounces off the gloss of every leaf, highlighting the shadows underneath.
Really, the tree isn’t that short. It’s just short for a tree.
“I want you to be the thing you are.”
And I’d rather not be it.“I don’t think it behooves me.”
The leaves shake. Some of them flutter down toward me. One of them is streaked with blood. “Oh and why’s that?”
“I dunno. I’m shitty. We all are. If we were allowed to be the things we are, you don’t think we’d all be dead?”
“I do.”
“Oh… I see what you’re getting at.”
“You do. You definitely do.”
This is the same old road I’ve traveled. I don’t even know where home is. I feel the tongue in my ear. It’s a meat thermometer poking a growing swell of drying bark from the otitis. I’m only asking that he save me. That someone saves me. And if a tree, the thing that feeds oxygen into my open mouth, can’t save me, nothing can, and nothing will, and no one will.