Turning

Turning Like a proud father of a son, I pat the piano’s side. After this, I go up in search of my room. I peek inside and see my wife asleep, and I slip in as quietly as I can. There’s a nightlight on that I detest. “I don’t want the dark to eat me up”, she says. I love my wife, and want her to love me more, so I cannot turn it off. Infidelity is never forgotten. My body dissolves in the fabric, and I place my face in her palm as gently as I can. We went shopping today, and her wrist still smells of Jessamine, sprayed on by attendants at female boutiques. She says holey shirts and pants aren’t things one should wear, but after seeing new clothes hang on so many mannequins, I cannot speak. Not for her or myself. Not for the clothes displayed in every aisle, every window for the two of us. Not for the way I ignored the ‘hello my name is JANE’ at Macy’s as she went on about prices, nor for the boy in line behind me whose toy growled “destroy, destroy” every time he pressed upon its chest. Later that day, I’d noticed a homeless man writhing near the parking garage mouthing things like “awwooombbass” how it sounded so much like ambulance, how the words for help rushed to my lips then turned back, how he fell silent, eyes facing the garage, whose old parking ramps proceeded two by two with debris. “There’ll be so much fucking traffic” I told my wife while in the car. Thinking back, it scared me then how there was no sense to the pretense that I’d ever turn the key again. Ellie turns away and my face leaves her palm, aching from the loss. That was when I remembered the piano, and how I played and played, and how scared I was, briefly, when the notes in measure 33 spelled the word age, And how those last four notes spelled dead, and I quit right then and there, not caring for the artistry of the finish, recalling that poor woman on the TV holding her daughter, blood and gore marring the screen like a child splurging with Crayola, constellations of bodies tattooing streets... And how I changed the channel to some Tupperware infomercial, refusing to acknowledge what I had seen, hating myself for that.