|
michael has no shoulders. sometimes i don't think i'm old enough to have any sort of relationship. father talks "oh i remember johnny jennings. 23 years ago." i am not 23 years old. i am 17. how young and stupid that is. no, really. These things I’m saying are being said in a very serious tone. robert blassingame wears a tie and shiny shoes everytime I see him but has the voice of a young, gruff boy. He is 28 years old and very strange to me when he is not laughing between words that come from my mouth. Like this is a part of his life he hadn’t planned on. Not smiling. I don’t know what that has to do with anything. A mother to the right of us drives her 14 year old son to high school at 7:39 in the morning. They stare nonplussed. My father tries to talk to me then. He says I don’t know why you’re quiet like this. I am pulling at my eyelashes. I don’t know why, it hurts a little bit. P> It is sketch-book time and I am thumping my pencil on the pad in a horrible stagnant frame of mind and then I slide across the tile to go under my bed. There I lied today chewing purple gum from long ago that I found under there along with magazine clippings and the word “carbonate” carved into one of the wooden slats. naomi arnold wrote my brother’s name on the top bunk under-side and put a green star sticker next to it. I was sleeping on the floor and she leaned over and whispered “josey, come look at this” in a way that suggested she was proud of her newness and she opened the window-shade so the dim light came in and there it was. It was sort of plain. But I had never seen my brother’s name written in a girl’s handwriting before. Then we giggled and she put her knees under her chin and her hands on her toes.
by The JavaScript Source
|
