Ken Baumann - Say, Cut, Map

“Look up for me.”

He felt her ease out of him. Waiting to eat.

He counted, doubling up on the same fingers, and always stopped at nine. The crying was perfect. Yes, they were being asked to leave. She stood up and bent over. He felt the ants all over him.

“A teenager did that.”

He’d show his skin to drunks. Hunger was an option, and just that. They pushed and pushed on his stomach. The dream opened up somewhere. They are certainly docile.

“First time’s the hardest.”

He took the stickers off. He drove it first. They stopped too hard. They let her vomit in a ceramic flower pot and put it back on the shelf. Don’t cross here. Safety lights. The flight attendants lined up and synced. Prayer, then embalming. Here’s the order, he said. His fingers wouldn’t get another color than red.

“It’s like a joke.”

Holding was the same. Never a bride.

Break it off, then see. He could go to the bathroom, but fast. First they dragged him out of bed.

“Smile!”

The weapons paid for it. Quoting music. He cited incidents as specifically as possible. He went black, probably from the blood. He said that every time. Mechanics were small gods. He found it on the map and asked. The monastery by the lake. Forty miles from home. He could walk. The blood scaled the quick bandages.

“I don’t climb mountains or anything.”

That’s why you can trust him. An altered spring. He scrambled. The handwriting tilted in its other language. It would only help you. That word.

“Don’t put up with me.”

The mirror fogged over. He leaned down. He crept to the girl. Nightfall.

Two tickets. He put his hands out flat. Grounded in the paperwork. Even temporarily He signed where the red tabs led him. First he swallowed. Another white cup.

“If you have to put it anywhere.”

A doctor with cheap earrings. That was the poison. He screamed until his throat broke.

“Feel invaded?”

A great plain. The place became thick with breath and breathing, and then divided. He looked at the missing palm. Forecasts. Keep notes, she said. He listened to her doing laundry. Her voice couldn’t be there. A general intensity.

“See a surgeon.”

Professionals were on the list. Hung and dead. Just above the kids, all staring at it with their mouths open. He could feel the plane burst through his eyes. He doubted his fingers. That wasn’t fair. What am I going to do, report them? Feel sicker. Shape up. Send help.

“I’m not answering you.”

He sat and watched her smile on video for hours.

He either remembered this or was filling it in from some movie, but there was this man, his friend had seen him, who had no hands, but I watched him through the windowpane of the check cashing place and he was at the counter signing papers and unfolding and refolding money, organizing the bills, and rapidly, all as if his hands were there, like there were so many fingers.

They cut him off. It was routine. He gave it to her. The screen went black after she read the last line. The children noticed the veins on his arm, and then his feet. He thought about the bay, and her on the phone and the little things she missed.

“I hurt.”

Five dimples of blood. He almost put his finger in his mouth. The truck left. Basic accommodation. After she asked him to leave, he went into an empty room and put his face into the hanging curtain.

“That’s work.”

He stretched it and stretched it. It’s dumb to act like that. She looked under the covers. The heat came in too regularly. They thought of sabotaging the current. They could plant something. He stopped buying things. Mites, infectious diseases. Don’t go in the water.

“That’s an out.”

He knew he was crying in his room about the scars. This was a first.

“So many options.”

Pushing and pulling her like that. He licked it. All the faces laughed, floating above rags.

He swore he felt the cut. They looked, together, at the knife. Starlings. Admitted to briefly thinking that, yes, the kid was like a dog almost. She wasn’t any good, she said. Go ahead. Keep doing that.

“Tremendous blood loss.”

They laughed about casual encounters. Some poem about building a house. He tried to skip that by making love. Roll calls. Lunches were just so unhealthy. He stayed on the line. The red car drove by again. No waste. The man shook his head. No waste, no waste.

“It’s the first time it’s broken.”

It wasn’t a rational claim, but he made sure he did that to her. Close. Prenatal concerns. He wrote Yes.

It starts in the fall. The list is pretty open. He laid his leg on top of her. They pushed the meat away from the bone. Little boys kept daring each other to burn themselves. Just a sec.

“What’s christ?”

It would have to be earlier. He fixed his hair. Mirrors caught it, kept him greeting it, gone, daily.

“Why can’t it be simple.”

She’d read. They promised that. He switched cards. His birth certificate in an old drawer. She leapt on him, laughing. Posterity. Smart and pretty people like us need to breed, to outnumber all the idiots, she said. He admired their tree. Wind brought allergies. Fear in a room.

“What’s left for them?”

She never answered. Trial in December. Television to a minimum.

Little fingers rounding the hill. Where’d it go, he asked, staring. Then he looked then far below himself, into a well, its depth a precursor to his calm stop. Only dying. He smiled. The little fingers pushed against the old blade, two opposing magnets. This new charge felt like god, new palms he helped make. He knew. Released.

She didn’t thank him. He read the recipe wrong, but kept asking if they could cut it in half. A quarter at a time from now on. Low dosage. He wasn’t slurring his words anymore. Even the kids said so.

“Greed.”

Fields evoked it in them both. She let herself come. You’re strong again, she said. He put the mirror on the floor and stepped forward. Good thing there was no receipt.

“These weren’t jokes.”

They lived together, submitted as evidence. He wondered. Many nights ahead. There were only so many movies. The noise already lost novelty. He flexed that bicep in unison, one weight gliding up and down in the glass. Some game with Ghost in the title. No scoring, she told him. The ice cream pasted a lock of hair to his cheek, white, blonde, red.

“I’m bored.”

Many hours to bury her. The heat lifted some portion out of each person each day, dissolved it. He smiled. She stood up and left the room. Hyenas. The guide spit and batted the side of the truck with his staff.

“It’s okay to relax into it.”

I don’t do this, I haven’t done, she stopped and nodded. He held the edge of the crib for enough time. He paid her. All lost.

He pressed against her. A famine.

“I’m in work mode.”

He ate faster than her. The last place in their crusade of new places. She asked nicely. He went healthy. The blood crept into a little pile.

“Just go away.”

He had exhausted the cataloging. Any more conversation about it and it felt righteous. It’s just an event. He swept the dirt up with his hand. He rolled over on the carpet, again and again, laughing, so much capacity.

“I’ll only tell you once.”

His left ear rang and felt pressurized. She put her head under. He took the bottle off the floor and held it to his chest with both hands. Go fish. Or was it one?

“Unfortunate.”

The whole process should be simpler, he said. I’d do it if I had the time. Okay, she said. Alright, she said. He felt dizzy. The wood burst away from the door and careened, that gun surfacing out of white. Heat took them. He put his head down and tried not to breathe. The smell. She laughed. They wouldn’t clasp right. Little legs. He was frustrated. The payments were regular.