Someone's singing rhymes in your kitchen, like blue-patterned wallpaper, shutters open, wind easing through. There's a snap and crackle from a pan of oil -- red peppers, green. Don't make an omelette, you remember suggesting; you always feel sick after those, but you distinctly smell egg-fumes, and you love him, you do, but perhaps you should spell things out more clearly. Here is a tape of the morning's activities. Here is a breakdown of yesterday's half-conversation, when your mouth was full of toothpaste and he stood behind you, watching your eyes. It's hard to quell your paranoia when things keep niggling, rising up out of the sand like obelisks, fossils, and maybe it's the Aztecs or maybe God put them there to trick us. Obelisks like idols. So will you find razor blades in your omelette this morning? Yes? You hope not, you really hope not, but when an individual is caged and harassed enough, who knows what they're capable of. Now here is the cool stair underneath your forehead, your vein throbbing beats against the wood, the dust. Now here is your breath in your nose, your throat, your lungs, your teeth, your tonsils. Now here you are, and you see in your mind he's made of panes of glass, and each slab renders your face in perfect detail, shiny bright. You know that's what he is, you know, but what is the creature that wears this suit? There's a thing underneath and you can't even tell what shape it is.
From the kitchen he whistles, sing-song, come and get it. You do, and you try to smile but that mirror is there with your fragmented face, over and over like a fractal, a poisonous fern, and suddenly you don't feel like eating, you feel like closing your eyes, like howling, like sinking slowly into a saucer of milk on the chair -- for him, you say. Pull this book out, this cookbook, and it lists all the things you should sink into: milk; egg; vodka, though it stings; apple juice; the broth of a turkey with bits of meat left over; heavy cream; blood; and the thick spongy batter of brownies ready to bake. You're ready, you tell him, and spit flies everywhere. You're lying on the table with the light trained on you, and suddenly he's not a mirror and his brow is furrowed. You could have sworn, you could have -- but there is his face, and there are his lips, and there is the point of his nose, and the dip of his chin. It's now that you notice the clouds of smog circling like hungry-taloned birds. Why did you just... you didn't unfold this scene correctly, did you. Did you, did you? Another ripped map in the glove compartment. Here he is with questions, and what do you say to them, really? You didn't mean it.
Then what do you mean?
