Lance Olsen - Head in Flames

Parse that sentence Mohammed Bouyeri.

Teenagers peer into the windows of the house in Arles as the non-stranger with the bandaged head crouches in front of the sofa, eyes shut, pretending to be air.

Another fish, Theo imagines, faster than the rest, in a what do you call it and one of those prayer hats.

Steady.

Or have we already splashed into Monday? I startle myself by following up.

Matters have changed since my father’s brother Hakim began staying with us. He waits till I am alone at home, then he comes to my—

— to my room and orders me to do things to him.

For four hundred francs .

Top down on the red rented Audi S4, Theo and Lieuwe sang obscure Beatles tunes as they flew along the autobahn on their way to the International Film Festival in Berlin.

When I told my mother she said she would take it up with my father but my father ordered us not to question his brother’s honor .

I love you, Anne Boch.

Something in the way the fish begins arcing toward him hooks Theo’s attention.

But that day is gone.

Roses.

How their eyes meet for less than a heartbump.

You feel it becoming lighter than the phrase you spoke in passing at the market last week.

I love you, Anne Boch.

A djellaba: that’s the—

The Moroccan desert blushing at sunset.

A brief dream: Toulouse-Lautrec kneeling behind a little puppet theatre, using naked dolls to try to explain something to me.

His: brown as a beetle’s.

A wolf.

I know a town not far from Paris called Auvers, Pissarro offering as he perched on the edge of Monsieur Vincent’s cell bed in Saint-Rémy. There’s a physician there who is sympathetic towards artists, dabbles in painting, and knows something about psychiatry.

Mean Mr. Mustard .

A bloody knife blade up in the snow.

Perhaps, Pissarro adding, you’d like me to contact him on your behalf?

Well, you should see Polythene Pam She’s so good-looking but she—

The wealth in my fist.

Homo sapiens being the only species to have learned how to torture.

Ashtray.

The riches.

Except for cats, of course. The mice, you know.

Laughing.

You watch yourself veering in.

It is not knowing that makes life a one-way journey on a train: you travel swiftly, but cannot distinguish any object around you very clearly, and you will never see the engine.

A pudgy young guy in a dark djellaba. Wearing Nikes.

Let the faggot lick.

At last: my pipe.

O Allah, Hakim is gone, now that he knows I am pregnant .

If you live—

Small miracles.

What’s this? Theo wondering loosely.

The verdict that killed my faith in love , says the whore, is written in your holy book .

Merci .

Faith in you, submission to you, feels like—

— is self-betrayal , she says.

The smoky ru—

What’s—

And then you sense yourself leaving language.

Touching without touching. That is precisely how to put it.

The guy sharking down on him.

Timelessness wedging time in two.

It is somehow magical that I am propped up in this bed, here, now, sipping this water, surveying this future.

The realization arrives as a bantam kick: the guy seems to have recognized him, seems to have singled him out.

I have done nothing my whole life but turn to you .

Like a Japanese emperor.

A fan?

Faster.

Dear Theo: How does one become mediocre? By compromising with the world, I sometimes want to say. — Your fond hopelessness

Theo likes fans.

You are flying.

Lilac astors with yellow souls.

And now that I pray for salvation, under my veil, you remain silent as the grave .

Flying.

The church belling clumsily atop the hill.

Theo likes fans and doesn’t like them.

Grip firmly , the Turk teen instructing. You see?

It is July. It is 1890. Monsieur Vincent is both here and there.

Fans reminding Theo of what he has accomplished in life, yet interrupting him at precious ordinary moments like this.

Today you have other parents.

The situation being what it isn’t.

Dinner done, Theo helping Ayaan on with—

You have another family .

If I’m not painting, I’m partially someone else.

White mollusk on her shoulder: him.

Wrap your non-dominant hand around the side of the frame. Like this .

Monsieur Vincent can imagine far less interesting moments to inhabit than the present.

That song.

He actually used the word non-dominant , as if having memorized a pamphlet.

Arms akimbo, my mother looming over my smashed clay elephant, at a loss for how to proceed.

Which?

Your bike drops out from under you, and then you are happening.

Someone’s voice levels an indifferent sentence in my direction.

The first bullet whumps into Theo’s biceps, yanking his momentum right.

Align both thumbs to point downrange .

Pay no attention.

His black bicycle shimmying.

A stuttery instant: the world endeavoring to take in what has begun evolving in its midst.

A vocal suspension.

His wounded arm letting go.

Look: the crowd yawning open around you.

Monsieur Vincent examines his defeated workman’s boots protruding from beneath the covers several leagues across the ashy swamp of blanket.

The blueness of them.

Fairness speaking through you.

If in fact they are his workman’s boots, and not, say, a neighbor’s, a golem’s, a stranger’s, a strangler’s.

The second and third bullets into his abdomen.

Your feet should be shoulder width apart .

Montmartre, 1887: windmills, vegetable gardens, farmers tilling their undersized plots.

And, then, Theo: sans bicycle, sans thought, hand raised as if attempting to halt oncoming traffic.

Blade your body .

One day I noticed with curiosity that the universe had commenced vibrating with color.

Theo stunned.

Stand with a slight lean forward.

Shimmering. Mosaic.

Asking: Can’t we talk about this?

Your dominant elbow nearly straight .

The name of my brother and sister-in-law’s new baby: Vincent .

Can’t we—

Aim by viewing with your dominant eye .

After me, you see.

The fourth and fifth in the region of his heart.

You’re here. You’re nowhere else. After his poor painter brother.

Theo stumbling a single step back, looking down at the injuries developing on him, at a loss for how to proceed.

This second is everywhere.

And so I close my eyes and visit the sea.

Onlookers fetching up in mid-step, crying out, dodging down side streets, ducking behind cars.

Aim for the center mass .

Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer: a red fishing boat, a green, a blue, another blue rocking down the taupe beach.

Like an American science-fiction movie from the Fifties , a witness later reported.