dummy

Antifreeze and cough syrup are mixed up in my head when I think about it.
There are not enough detectives. The cold-medicine aisle. The cold–outside,
in Billings, it’s twenty below. And I’m thinking about an iceberg–how many
therms can escape it, how fast. And pretty soon it doesn’t matter: if you’ve
touched the motor, or if you’ve split the wind, or if you’ve only cut the small,
red blister that forms between my thumb and index a week from now, opening
your letter. Because it never gets tiring.

I want you to accept the metal cabinet for what it is: a crazy place. And I’m
thinking: a tic. A mirror; nervous magnification. Like ten seconds of Radar
O’Reilly, coping. But it would be fine for you, you could even watch. Through
wet-glass. On-screen. I carry you. I put you in my back like an enormous stoop.
We go up.

Because that is the sound for me: I can do anything. Maybe years from now,
I’ll be an old fool too tired to know. Or on a blood-pressure machine, mixed in
with thoughts about radiation, about what I’ll have to do if the results say X,
say Y… I’ll be drawn to pills. Maybe then I’ll do what they say, maybe I’ll
take them. But no one will be able to tell me anything, about you.