Parcel? My kid's baby teeth, brown with old blood. A sweater.
Ashes. Couple of photographs, couldn't leave them out. A bottle of milk. Insects
pinned under glass. A little clockwork figure that unfolds its wings, tells
the time, sings a little tune. Ice. So I have to leave it all outside, or it'll
melt.
I'll drink that Cabernet, you bet. Karry, shall we dance? Let's get E from out
under; it's not all that warm clinging to that particular blanket, after all.
Even the boat leaks, from time to time, and if I look closely at the dark corner
where she sits I can see the moth holes and the edges unravelling, the threads
that E. has picked away. A draft picks up, making the lamps gutter and chilling
the red beans and rice. john's busy by the stove; he's oiling the leather on
his toga. Oh yeah, he says, just right, rubbing it up to a slick shine.
The music continues, and then at once everyone's listening, the way it happens from time to time: the whole attention of the room turns like light shining on the song. And it's painful 'cause everyone remembers, at exactly the same moment, the way it ended, the tone of her voice when she said goodbye, the time she hung up you, how he walked down the stairs and took off down the street without looking back, even though he said he never would.
He never even called back, says someone.
The last time I saw her she gave me these photographs, says someone else. I thought it was because she was cleaning house, I didn't realise she was giving them to me so that I would have something to remember her by. She'd already decided.
I tried to kiss him one more time, says another voice. And he ducked and shied away from me like I was poison.
I had to try and find him one night, I knew he was with her, the other one, the blonde one who spoke three languages. Walking around. I couldn't even cry.
We're waiting for delphic-oracle moans and revelations, all blown
up to modern size, a digital oracle, Delphi made out of pixels and sound waves.
But the thing, the want is always the same: take my heart and make it whole.
- juliet