by Chris Semansky
(09/11/02)
"Don't talk back. Try to think in colors," she says.
Every word you know remains broken, or so haunted you can smell its past life. Camphor. Lilac. Cumin.
"Sshh," she says. "Sshhhhh."
The news says thirty more bodies have been found in a shallow grave. The dollar is taking a beating overseas. A year from now baseball as we know it will cease to exist. She tells you not to worry, that people will be people and that what, if anything, matters is the next five minutes, fifteen minutes, half hour. "Kneel," she says. "Further."
What if thinking were like a slinky, each rough equation hurtling downwards, finally coming to rest under its own accumulated weight? "Arch your back," she tells you. "Good."
The television seems like a painting in some Pleistocene cave, the motel room itself a joke you once heard at a cocktail party for single parents. You tell yourself each blow is a really a handshake from God. A promotion. A raise. Two million people are expected to show up for the Pope's visit to Brazil. A cold front is dumping snow from Maine to New York. You can't remember if you turned the range off this morning or not. Your beautiful house could be licked by flames, smoldering now, your ill-fed lawn reduced to ash, your china returned to sand. That would be something, you think. You smile; you wince: Indigo, emerald, cyan...
If you didn't know better, you'd swear she was your dry cleaner in drag. You do know better, but still...she's humming a tune you don't recognize, grunting it in double time. You can hear her molars grind, her heels scrape, as she raises her arm again and again. Once you almost black out, but you think violet and you're back in it, more alive than ever. What doesn't kill you will make you...magenta...yes, that's it, an aching shuddering fuchsia.
When it's over, you hand her your plastic and she runs it through the machine. You drip out the door, in love with the world. Because you know that not in a million kabillion years, even if you tried, could you ever hurt a single soul.
