I remember the night you first told me you were dying. How
absurd, I thought, I did not like the way it came clicking out of your tongue.
We were in a ripe age. Youth – everyone wanted to be immortal. And
you looked immortal, a face veiled by an ancient godliness, perhaps because you
had just shaved that morning.
You did not look “dying.” Ah, you had those long, thin
fingers: I remember well how they cradled the fork that carried the spindle of
pasta to your eager mouth, the seldom drip of the viscous bloody sauce, pieces
of meat and pepper, the grinding of your teeth. Above us, warm yellow light
dissolved the restaurant in a pretense of safety, plastering our vulnerability
within a copied memory of “home.”
Back then, your eyes were bereft of the screen you had a
habit of wearing elsewhere. Your neck, a pillar to the prize that is your head,
was craned consciously at a curious angle. I could almost see the air filling
up your throat before every enunciation.
I strained to listen to your monologue on little sharp things and
their affinity to your skin. It was something I knew well. I, too, had that, an
evening before I put you in my line of vision. Needles in plastic ware . . . Not
clean, no, just the way I preferred them. They embossed themselves on the
material mortality of my arm like a nail driven into a plank of plywood. My
skin felt more tangible than it ever had. I did it fast, scratching at the
itches of my inadequacy, after the maternal figure slammed the bedroom door in
a feverish whip of disappointment –
one fluid line after
another.
This was our armistice, you and me versus the pretentiousness
of the world (and there was the occasional stifling of a chuckle that hid our
own pretentiousness inside the quiet of the restaurant.) It was written on the
air that flowed from our lungs to our mouths, a graceful ascent that was almost
serendipitous. That summer, the war melted into the thin ceramic plate you ate
pasta on, pieces of meat and pepper, meat and pepper . . .
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