a fade

a.

The mother is in surgery and the doctor cuts open her chest and the mother is bleeding on the table.

b.

He is in the bathtub and it is Sunday afternoon. He is untying his skin and his blood is hot and it is warm outside but it is not warm inside. The room is white and the walls are white and the sink is white but it all looks yellow because the light is yellow.

c.

You had webs in your feet when you were born, the mother says but she is whispering and the doctor is touching her heart and she has more blood on the hospital floor. The sunrise, outside, is like a monster and it is red like an explosion and a car on the highway drives into the grass.

d.

It is a line that he has heard. It is a line about dawn and darkness and a finger that comes in and has no hand. He shakes it off and the water in the tub is not as warm anymore and he thinks that he has not been dreaming that softly. The previous summer was like hell, he thinks.

e.

The doctor has a yellow car that is yellow like it would be if the light were yellow and the room were white. Like my bathroom, he says. Like it would be if I died in this bathroom, he says. The doctor nods and shakes his shoulders like he just got sensitive in the neck.

f.

The mother is from a working class family and her kids are all grown up and have jobs.

g.

Sew her back up. There is still time, in the later part of the evening, for a circle. The children hold hands and sing a song.

h.

There isn’t that much room for her in the waiting room. She stands and holds her bathrobe close to her body because she is still bleeding and she is bleeding on the floor and her chest is not closed that well. There is not really an illusion that is all un-real. It just seems that the struggling are suicidally lit.

i.

He gets out of the tub and he decides, rather quickly and harshly, that there is not time for the hot blood. He dries himself and then it is difficult to see him because most of the things around him begin to fade because he puts dirt on top of them.

j.

The mother is an excited soil and it is a long exodus to winter.


[s]