J. Osborne: Black Gum

While Shara quieted on the bed, I was sure he said, “He’ll lower his stinger and you’ll wrap your arms around it and he’ll lift you up off the carpet of crushed bones to a green dot floating in the particle board of his ceiling, and you’ll forget what it means, this green dot, but it will remind you of the lasers that would shoot from the stage you stood on when you were in the dreams of a popstar from Tokyo, and you will reach out to the crowd and let them sing the lyrics to the songs you’ve written, but every audience member is only a lonely minstrel by a fire in the woods, and you’ll notice your hands, that they’re your mother’s hands, and that you are your mother, and you will meet your father as a young scared teenager and you will pass notes and you will walk home from the bus stop past the mailbox and then your head is through the green portal and you’re asleep in the desert in your bee stinger pyramid, with a brand-new tongue and a whole lot of happiness, under constellations you’ve only just remembered existed at all.”

They hollered and whooped out in the other room. They screamed and tore at their hair. But Shane just sat there in the dark with me. All the life was gone out of the space and the blinking clock on the nightstand, and I was sure the heathen said something.

J David Osborne lives in Portland, OR with his partner and their dog. This is his third novel.