Kyle Muntz - Voices

"Not yet. Or I don’t think so."

I walked around for a minute. My back hurt. Jacob sat next to a big nest of spiders. They hadn’t gotten him yet. He had dirt on his face again for no reason this time, and he let up a trail of smoke, widening, one twisting, turning strand, rising and rising. No matter where life took him, he would never visit the stratosphere. I wondered if he would miss it. Together.

"I never should’ve helped you, you know."

"Yeah," he said. "I know."

A star fell out of the sky. No, the star was still falling. It fell, and wound, and came back to earth, strands of the psyche, a firey, flaming dusk. I held her tighter, and we talked for a while on the veranda. Our fingers were of mesh of touch and sharing. I kissed the nape of her neck.

I’d seen her the day before, remembering the first time we met. Our eyes caught, and she made me want to stare. Chance meetings desist from me. We ran from each other, making circles, playing dangerous games in the roses.

She tasted like moonlight and nocturnal beauty. No, that’s not true either. She tasted like vodka and lips, tongue and teeth. Neither of us understood beauty, though I think we wanted to. Life would be so much simpler if we could pretend not to have names.

::::::::::::::::::::

I went to visit the guy whose house I'd painted. He didn't recognize me because there was nothing to remember. His house looked the same; his street looked the same; his world was unchanging and the same. Mailboxes, lampposts, sidewalks and toy slides, I’d been here before now, so it was different, but it felt strange to come back. I didn’t belong here. Our frequencies clashed all wrong. I still wanted to break a mailbox.

I knocked on the door. He answered fat and bald, ripples, the titanic bulge, his hairy, hairy chest, warbling chins, swinging gut. His house smelled like a department store. It was much cleaner than he was.

He asked who I was. Impatiently. I knew he’d be impatient.

I said I was here doing an interview; a documentary; whatever you wanted to call it. There were these kids around here, I said, these really bad kids, and they were getting to be such a problem. He agreed. His chest puffed. Importantly. I knew he’d think he was important.

"It all goes wrong," he said, "when the kids stop saying "sir". It all goes wrong. There’s no respect in the world today. There’s no consequence," choking, "and the world’s going to hell. I have proof." His chins jiggled, multiplied, jiggled again. He said: "The world’s going to hell, I say. When the respect goes."

He certainly talked like he was important.

And like most important people, he had very little to say.

"I went to that guy's house earlier today," I said. "I got it all on tape."

Jacob looked up. He’d gotten pretty drunk. His eyes wandered, and his face sagged. Jacob’s face did that, wilting, one eye down, like the proverbial neighbor’s dog, flee-bitten, infected. He existed to be spat on, a worthless little boy in a cold place, wearing passed down clothes and worthless skin. There was no place for him here, no corner to set him down.

He said I always got things on tape, so why should he care. His head wobbled, bobbing. He didn’t understand self-awareness. I walked around a bit more. The spiders might bite him. I wondered why I should care.

::::::::::::::::::::

I saw her again that day. I saw her. She looked beautiful, her eyes looked beautiful, her arms looked beautiful. We passed and she went the other way. The crowd drew a boundary between us. We pretended not to see.

::::::::::::::::::::

It was my friend’s party. I didn’t want to go. I was busy tonight, I said. My friend said I wrote enough, and no one understood my poetry, so what did it matter? There would be girls there. He’d probably be getting laid. I said good luck. But that night I didn’t write any poetry. I went.

I’d gotten there late. There were kids in the yard, screaming. Someone had tried to flatten the mailbox. I wished I’d gotten it first. Inside the lights were on, and the music was on, and the door was open. I wondered how many people I knew. Most of them. A kid with green spikes vomited in the yard, spraying strangely scented stomach, peculiarly thin.

"You okay dude?"

"Yeah…" he said. "Yeah, I’ll be okay."

He heaved. His shoulders shook. He looked to be in agonizing pain, showing it.

His face crinkled; his hair shook. He tried to hug me (with a tackling motion), but he smelled like puke, so I backed away in time. He had a cool tattoo.

::::::::::::::::::::

"The kids don’t have any respect," he said. I penciled in the rest.

He was obviously used to being a speaker, and having people listen. It was repulsive, his inclination to the stage. I wondered if he deserved my respect.

He kept going. His eyes bulged. His nose spat leakage, over stubble and fringe, sweat, his fatness and chin.

I interrupted him. He obviously wasn’t used to being interrupted. I told him again, he was just echoing someone else, word and voice, spit and message, but he didn’t understand. I don’t think he’d ever read before. He wasn't very good with language.

I asked if he had any kids. A daughter.

I asked if I could talk to her. He said I could.

"What’s her name?"

He yelled up the stairs. I found out. She was small, she had a small face, and her aura was small. I walked to the side of the house and they followed me. If she hadn’t been so small, she might have been attractive. For some reason it seemed like she was scared of me. I’ve never thought of myself as being intimidating before. I asked if he understood what the poem meant. He said he didn’t know.

::::::::::::::::::::

We heard a siren from out front roaring. Two cars pulled onto the lawn. People took off running: transformation into an escaping wave. She pulled away, all lips and breath, moonlit beauty, light from inside the house, hair sweeping back. A gust of wind blew.

(She pulled away.

A gust of wind.)

We ran into the woods. The party fragmented like a star. It was dark here, where the forest made a boundary, through brush and foliage, rustling leaves, rain breaking in the canopy; and vision split. Her hair caught on a branch, but I untangled her. We came out the other side, knelt to catch our breath. She let me borrow her hand. It was still cool.

"You okay?"

Her arm bled, a trailing drop. It got washed off in the rain. She said yeah, ragged, leaning into me. I held her. She sighed. The night danced on her lips. When it was for her, the night could dance. She was real poetry: for her every bow bent, every corner turned. We didn’t need supplicants, and we didn’t need love. Every light blazed, every star shined. It didn’t matter that they’d come for us. We were already gone.

Writing slow in a hard place, sleeping twice in the yard. They carry burnt sticks and hard irons. The wind carries the scent

of seashells and brine.

::::::::::::::::::::

"Shit!" I pulled away.

"What?"

"I forgot my camera," I said. "I forgot my fucking camera!"

"Won’t you…?"

"No… no I don’t think I will."

We stood for a moment. It would be raining soon. No, it was raining already,

and it had been raining ever since we left. Two guys came out, looked around, ran in the opposite direction. One of them fell. We still heard the sirens. I took a step toward the forest.

"Wait." She grabbed my hand.

Wait.

And then we were kissing again, bark and limbs, backing her against the tree.

We kissed. Her breasts against my chest, full, pressing, she was my winding trail, banking starlit eyes, beautiful, beautiful we kissed. Again, pulling away and: kissing, full bruising lips, stretching and straining, hips and thighs. Pressure.