pica_pica

It could be about freshly baked scones, Im thinking.

Ive layed here once before, exactly like this on this exact couch.
Well, not exactly, not both legs elevated like this, and it wasnt a pile of wrinkled but otherwise clean and just not folded laundry I dumped there 3 days ago that I was resting that leg on, it was one of these pillows. That one bloody pillow that you eventually encased in a wrap of sheets incase the bandages leaked again.
No, not both legs, you remember you were here. Just the one.

Elevated like this, head right here, looking over and up at that same shelf thinkin
dammit, I really should have done something to the bottom of that shelf.
(Im still thinking that)
and Im thinking back to those cold December nights out there in the back alley. 6 years ago? Beating the shit out of that plank with that chain, dragging that fork I told you I didnt know anything about over its fresh, white, new and perfect pine surface, scraping it with that screwdriver and getting medieval on its ass with that blow torch, my white knuckles not bleeding yet but still beating the shit out of that plank from a Christmas core of pure love.
distressing, the book called it.

Yeah, I should have done something to the bottom of that shelf. Even if it was just the linseed oil part.
Fuck, from this angle, I can totally see the bottom.
Yeah, maybe I still will.

And this was gonna be about how Im layin here again like this, legs up, eyes lookin down the bridge of my nose at whatever my slow and pointless neck is makin it point at at that or this moment:
The shelf, and then (neck pull to the left, crane up in that corner, a dusty red arabesque lamp hanging from a gold chain, black frills limp) thinking I still need to dust that lampshade; I still wonder if actual spiders make those those single dusty strands from the top corner of the ceiling to those links in that gold chain holding the lamp up. cob Im thinking
cobweb, hmm, cob.. what does cob have to do with that word?
What if I tried to dust it, and just ended up smearing the dust worse? Vacuum?

(neck release, head lolling, nostrils bright and panning prisonbreak spotlights back over to the right) lookin at the bookshelf now. The bookshelf shadowed by that distressed pine shelf you didnt take with you.

Not as much stuff in that bookshelf now, candles, incense, and pretty much just those books Ive been fillin up all those black spines, why do I never read them?
Tombs.

This would be staring
Then (neck pulling down to the front, reeling em in, rolling it forward, a bit harder to breathe, chin almost pressed into my chest like this, a tight stretching somewhere up between my sholderblades)
Lookin down the bridge of my nose at my knee.
How normal it looks now.
With this tan, theres tilled white stretchmarks that have lost their surrounding disguise, ghostly fishboning like a spine, the scar.

The scar from the second incision that was so perfectly sliced over and into the first from a few years prior is an ant thick red valley, dry and rippled. Pissed off, perhaps, from too much sun. Slight divots perfectly spaced staccato along each ridge of the valley from where the staples were yanked out after the skin fused. Yanked out by that doctor who had never done that before and before you took over.
hey man, neither one of us has done this before, but I can feel it lemme try

But thats just still just a knee.

Layin here with the same dog standing here in my face breathing close, hot with expectant pants, telling him to back up, back up, back up
Good boy. Lie down. Lie down Gooood boooy

Just like this, with my arms like this: elbows bent and wrists crossed over my heart where they look all gother-than-thou in a funereal pose but really are just the most comfortable place they seem to be and always find a home when Im lying down like this.

Just like this, glancing around the same set, looking at the same paint on the same walls and it was gonna be about how earlier tonight as I was going through the cookbooks, a card fell out.

A 4x6 recipe card in her handwriting for scones.

Blue ink on yellowed crusty cardstock, big rippled and waterstained in places to blank amoeba, empty cumulous clouds with feathered blue edges and Ill never know exactly how many ..ps of flour that was supposed to be.
But oh man theyre good those scones.

Turning off the spotlights for a second, laying here like this.
Just like this but with only that one leg up, staring at the bottom of that shelf. Its only been up there a couple years now, I cant believe Ive never noticed the bottom eventually, after the sounds of the opening and the closing of the fridge tap on, tap off metallic wet percussion of you whipping something maybe eggs and milk, maybe cutting butter into cornmeal consistency with the .. ..ps of flour, Id crane this head and would only see the back and sometimes the side of your head framed in a reflection off the kitchen window. A mirror now from the inside against the black winter night pressed so cold up against it.
Same view almost as if I was out there in the dark looking in hungry and blackeyed and watching you make something.

Oven door opens, scraping of metal sliding against metal, the oven door closes a different shriek, and you disappear from the frame of the kitchen window.
Fridge door, the scene in the mirror brighter for a second, then back to empty with the suck and the silencing of the fridge wind.
And then youve come up from above the crown of my greasy head and your beside me now putting down onto this coffee table a small white ramekin of cold butter to warm. As I turn my gaze back to the ceiling, the flesh of my cheeks feel like they are sagging, sagging down over my ears and youre there above me, upside down, fingers brushing my forehead, do I need anything?


Prisonbreak.
Flaring my nostrils, I blink a few strobes and inhale deeply. I think its startin to smell like dog in here a bit, I should wash his bed.

Its different. If I really wanted to, I could get up right now. I could get up right now and not crutch or hop in winces into the kitchen and I could take out those bowls and butter from the fridge and I could cut that butter into those .. ..ps of flour and grease the pan and preheat the oven to ..0 degrees and lay those scones out and bake em up right. I could fill this apartment with the delicious humidity you were always responsible for and I could fan my apartment door to fill this entire floor, fan it out to let the neighbors know that
oh yeah baby, we got some fresh baked scone action happenin in here tonight!

I could stand up right now on both legs and do just that.

I could.
If this was about freshly baked scones, that is.

Or maybe it could be about the times before I even lived in this city, before all this, before all that times when I always had my skateboard with me, times when my friends were named things like Spak, Rusty, Arson and Chainsaw, and my apartment often smelled like you would expect a carpeted apartment to smell when you had a guy named Rusty sleeping on your couch for 3 weeks, or that Spak-stuffed sleeping bag at Rustys feet: curled tight and fetal into a big stained @; like that old and moldy orphan tortellini you find behind the stove when youre trying to fish out the hot knife Arson just dropped.

No idea what happened to any of those guys, (but Rusty you fuck I hope you got it the worst.)

Its not about that either though. Im just bringing those guys up like bile.

Like when you are suddenly forced into trying to comprehend exactly how all your guts are put together, when you have nothing left to puke, dryheaving in cold sweats thinking that one more retch and you will surely rip something valuable from its visceral tethers deep inside and down, and this next heave will surely be a pressure wash explosion of blood with perhaps the flapping end of a once important artery hanging out of your wet mouth.
Like when your knees are grinding on the hard linoleum in that calm in-between part, that moment where you can breathe again for a second but you know its not over yet, that part before the vomitendulum has peaked paused reversed and finally starts to pick up renewed velocity and you feel your intercostals start to grip again, your back starting to arch, that part when you know you would never ever ever want to see exactly what your face looks like right now: as the muscles contort and pull at your lips, your jaw, if your eyes were open and not dripping tears off the tips of your corneas like the cumcatcher tips at the end of rolled condoms you would perhaps see Munchs The Scream forming to look up at you from the currently calm surface of the bowl.

Youve got nothing left, why are you still praying?
(Just another retch, hopefully the last.)

5 or so more swings of the empty vomitendulum, and there it is: suddenly a new substance

That new yellow galaxy presented so close to you there, the hot and sour you see slowly spinning through your tears, how the fuck did that get there?

That reality could make some people really hate their guts.

Biles past the stomach. No way should it make it up. Hows that work? What happened there?
You find yourself thinking, how if it goes on long enough, and you go back far enough, will shit start coming out of your mouth?

Could it be about how I could get up right now, press my face up against the window of the hot oven door and watch the pasty white dough rise and swell like my knee did, how I could watch it turn brown as it shrinks back down, and how I could take it out, smother it in butter and eat the past?

It could be about any of that, really. If I felt like getting up and writing it down.
But I dont.
I think Id rather just lie here for a while.