i see you there playing with our daughter, a game involving tea cups and paint.
i’m standing right here but i cannot be there.
i see you there singing at the station, your voice like natalie merchant.
i wished i stayed there for one more song but the train took me away.
i see you in between train cars, going off to the side, telling me to go in, to look out.
i tried to stop you, but it was useless. instead i walked in and then you screamed.
i see you there, smashed and angry, every word one word too many, every drink one drink too many.
i remember feeling free and violent, wicked and wild, but i barely survived it.
i wish i could join you, any of you, but i’m just not him anymore.

i don’t mean any harm by it, but there are times i just really want to do him harm. sometimes, sometimes, i really just want to gut him like a fish, y’know? and i mean, he’s gotta be awake for most of it. no, scratch that. for all of it. and i’d want to use a kitchen knife, something like, something with a serated edge that’s just a little blunt y’know? just to give it that little oomph as you go along. that belly will give me a bit of a hard time, there’s no bone there, so i can imagine the knife going this way and that. but i figure once you’re in there, once you got a good spike right through his prostrate and start pulling the tear open as you go up, it’s gotta be a little fun, yeah? and i’d imagine i’d need a mallet for the sternum. i wouldn’t want to saw through that, too much noise, i wouldn’t be able to hear him over it, but a mallet would do. just take one good over the head swing and smash that right in. maybe i’d burst his heart. that would be awesome, wouldn’t it? of course the best would be when i’d get the knife under his chin and open his jaw right where it’s soft. this way i could get my fingers in there like a handle and drag him around like luggage. wouldn’t that be something?

she sits in a room. you sit a room.
she barely sees her hands. you see her skin.
she stirs in her chair. you stir her from sleeping.
she rubs her hands on her legs. you rub your hand on the inside of her thigh.
she cups her hands and blows into them. you open her legs and press between them.
she stands up, paces. you pull her hair, you pull her mouth to yours.
she trips over herself. you trip over her tongue.
she sits down again. you push her down again.
she looks in the dark. you look at her.
she’s been here before. you’ve seen her before.
she gets up abruptly and tries to leave. you get up abruptly and try to take her with you.
there are no doors to her room. there is no one here with you.

-what’s the turn?
-the turn? boy, don’t you know about that yet? that’s when things end.
-why is it that?
-goddamn it boy, you just show up or somethin’? it’s when someone’s gone as far as they gonna go, and they decide to turn back.
-that obvious huh?
-fuck yeah it’s obvious. it’s a whole new change in the weather in a different country. it’s like waking up one day and you don’t speak the same language anymore.
-there’s no stopping it, is there?
-listen boy, it’s the natural order of things. friends, lovers, family. they all turn. they have to. one day, they all change. so do you, boy. so do you.
-i don’t want to.
-boy, you’ve been turning so fast you might as well be a top.

we offer him a cigarette, it’s what we always do in the beginning.
“no, no,” he shakes his head like we were offering him spoiled fruit, “get that shit out of my face. do i look like i smoke?” he points to himself, then shows us his hands, “huh? you see any tobacco stains here? huh?” his eyes bounce between us, indignant. “that shit’s for the weak. for addicts.”
alright, we say. alright let’s begin.
“what people always forget is that you never really are who you say you are. you start out one way, any way but you can only be that way for so long.” he raises a hand over his face, as if he was casting a spell over himself, “but eventually you change. it can’t be helped. you can only tolerate that weepy shit for so long.”
we ask, what does he mean?
exasperated, he points to one of us, “c’mon, you know, when you play it like you care. buying flowers or telling some sob story like your dog died or something.” he begins to whisper, as if he telling us a secret. we all lean forward, “i usually tell them someone i loved died. anyone. a friend, a wife, a kid. that’s how you eventually get to fuck ’em.” he bursts into laughing, “get it, ‘fuck em’? every which way to sunday i tell ya.” folds his arms, shakes his head, “every fucking which way to sunday.”
we know, we’ve read the reports. he kept the bodies for days, then put them in the crawl space under the trailer.
“you know, when i was kid, i read this book,” he plays with his hands, studies his fingernails. we found pieces of their skin still there. “it was about all these travels in the world,” he looks off to the right, “they still don’t know who wrote it. marco polo or columbus. but there’s this one line and i swear they must’ve been talking about us, about the ‘glades.” he closes his eyes, “something like ‘in that country… there are many, many crocodiles, that slay men,’ get this, ‘while they weep‘.” he looks at us again, “you believe that shit? crocodiles weeping, cryin’?”
he shakes his head, “i’ve never shed a fucking tear for any of them.”