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Goodbye, Child
They sit on opposite sides of the room. He is picking methodically at his fingernails, his body hunched over in imperfect concentration, at the very edge of his chair. She sits cross-legged on a bed, flipping through a magazine, thinking of other things. Dirt and silence fill the room, while an aroma of oil and ancient incense (or rancid mayonnaise) swims through tepid air. The only sound is a combination of the irregular ticking of fingernails, the rustle of paper-coated gloss, and the menacing buzz of the naked halogen light.
He launches a sideways glance at her, sensationally turning his head for a full second. It bounces right back at him and makes him look again to the floor. He doesn?t think she saw it, but she did. She chuckles in her mind, but makes no outward gesture. She reaches the end of her magazine, and unconsciously starts over. Just keep waiting. Biting off a piece of fingernail, he fires another glance and sees it deflected. He slowly lets his hands drop and with a deep sigh asks to the floor:
"How's the magazine?"
"The magazine sucks,? she says, and throws it across the room, the pages landing with a thud and a cough, then sprawling to try to get away from each other. He chuckles nervously and stares at his red and purple hands, his back straining more than his mind.
"Look, I. . ." He trails off, overwhelmed by the sheer number of his thoughts.
"What?" She asks, appearing listless.
"I said, "Look" cuz I was gonna try and talk about this. I hate sittin' here makin' my fingers bleed cuz I'm so tore up inside."
"Just because you have the stigmata doesn't make you a martyr. And besides, some people like silence."
"But not so awkward that if you move an inch you think your head's gonna go through the ceiling or your feet are gonna go through the floor. . . She looks straight ahead and gnashes her teeth, like she tastes something funny.
"Now wouldn't that be hilarious," she says with a hiss.
He exhaustedly runs his fingers though his dirty, oily hair and rubbs his hands on his pants. Then, without looking at her side of the room, he gets up and walks over to the refrigerator, picks out a bottle of water, unscrews the cap with a click of broken plastic, drinks a little bit, puts the cap back on, and walks back to his chair, the bottle swinging in his left hand. He sits down, takes a second to formulate his reply, then jumps off the cliff.
"Sooner or later we're gonna have to?"
She exasperatedly rolls her eyes and slaps her knee and interrupts him: "I know!"
"Well then, why not now?" he retorts. "You think I want this to drag out? Do you want this to drag out?"
"No!"
"Then what are you afraid of?" He cries. His hands are open and outstretched, his eyebrows arched, his eyes wide and pleading. "What the hell are you afraid of?"
"Nothing! I just want it to go away!"
He becomes red with rage and jumps up, pointing his water bottle straight at her heart. "IT'S NOT GOING TO GO AWAY! Don't you see? You can't just sit there and look at your magazine thinking everything's OK! Look around you! What happiness do you see? Nothing but dirt and sadness! And you! It's not your fault, it's not my fault, it's nobody's fault! We HAD to let her die! There was no way we could care for her, and you know that! When are you going to get over it?"
At this, she jumps off the bed and yells at him an inch from his face, "Get over it? GET OVER IT? I will NEVER get over it! To have her die because it was convenient for us? To have her die because of our stupid mistake? I never wanted her either, but she was here! SHE WAS HERE! And you think that feeling is just going to disappear when I grow old? She's helpless and alone! She's in heaven because she never had the chance to make the conscious choice not to be! And we're gonna be in hell because we killed her! It was our choice, not hers! And the consequences for our choices NEVER GO AWAY!"
She retreats to the edge of the bed, sobbing violently. He stays standing, ruminating, churning his mind between doubt and sorrow, wanting to comfort her, but not knowing how. He sits back down on the chair, and mutters confusedly.
"But look. . . Look at our relationship. . . Look what we've become. I can't stand the fact that every time I go outside the sun hurts my eyes. I can't stand the fact that I haven't smiled in weeks, that I haven't shaved in months, that I have no will to live nor to love. I can?t stand not being happy, and with you, and in the world, instead of under it, like a dead man. . . or a dead child. . ." These last words break him. He shakes uncontrollably with his sobs, rocking back and forth in his chair, then suddenly pulls his hair and screams to the ceiling. A shrieking, wailing moan, disturbing to hear, and even more pitiful. She moves away from him, nauseated, but still crying. On opposite sides of the room, they lament separately the experience they share.
Time passes. It is immaterial how long or how much; he doesn't know, she doesn't care. She is lying on the bed, sniffling, not thinking nor feeling, hardly existing. He hasn't looked up from the floor. More time passes. She is asleep, in the same position. He still hasn't moved. He suddenly looks forlornly at her for some amount of time, thinking of everything and of nothing. Suddenly he rises from his chair and crosses the room to the coat hanger. As he puts on his coat he wonders how many times he will have to go through this, how many times the past will be the present, how many times the future will be the past. Yes, she is dead. But we are not. Yet, it would be better off if we were.
He turns the knob of the door, lets it ease open, takes one last look at her, and silently closes the door behind him.
By: Steven Bateman
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Comments can be sent to uchicago2006@hotmail.com
Prophet
The roof is a squashed pyramid above a square building. It is aluminum, segmented, like a garage door. It gets hot in the day and cold at night. It snows up here, it rains up here, it?s exactly the same as the street below. So why do believe that I'm in my own microcosm up here? It's no worse than walking under me at the same time every day, or punctually sipping your made-to-order latte across the street, thinking of hackneyed poetry, hackneyed politics, hackneyed business propositions. That's when most people see me. They wonder what I'm doing up here, how long I have been, when am I coming down? I wonder how many people have written poems or short stories about a guy they saw on a roof, writing things on slips of paper and dropping them to the street below. They want to know my story so they can have their own. But, ladies and gentlemen, I have no story to tell.
There's a stack of paper near me on my right. I keep a pen in my shirt pocket. Whenever inspiration hits, I write it down, tear it off, fold it up, and drop it. Sometimes the wind carries it out over the middle of the avenue; sometimes it falls straight down to my feet and slides off eventually. I often wonder where a piece of paper flies to, who has picked it up, whether it has changed their life or if it was merely ignored. i sit, between the undefined, wondering if what you think is real, or if it is truth. I let the slip fall from my hand. It flutters for a moment, as if hesitant to fly or to fall, is thrust up by a gust of wind, is beaten down by another. It disappears over the edge.
In truth I scribble meaningless datums about the people passing under me, of life, of time, of love. I have been sitting here for over two years and not a soul has spoken to me, except for the wind. Not even the police station right around the corner has harassed me for littering all over the street. They know it's not trash I throw from Mount Sinai. find yourself in a garbage can, not in a recycling truck A young woman glances at me, an intellectual, no doubt, sipping coffee in the window. my god, i've been spotted I wave and smile. She quickly averts her eyes as if she just saw some autistic person yelling in her general direction. Like I said, avoiding your own prophet. Most throughout history have done the same.
It's only a matter of time Today is a bright and cool day, no clouds, the sky the color of blue china, relatively windy. I have to brace myself so I don't lose all of my paper if I tumble off the roof. I look down and see a slip that I dropped two days ago. I peer closer to try to read what I wrote, but I can't decipher it. I think of sliding down to it and flicking it off the roof. Something catches me; I take out my pen. i have done all i can, whether you listen or not is your choice I leave it alone.
Sometimes I sing to myself, just to make sure my voice is exercised. Simultaneously I write the lyrics and let the wind and sun hear and read them. Sometimes I hear snippets of conversations and I transcribe them, writing slovenly and ripping the page out to throw it on the head of the person talking, so they can have a written copy of what they've said. They usually end their conversations abruptly, and peek up at my smiling figure. I imagine their paranoia that consumes them for the rest of the day. Most of the time I never see those people twice. Irregularly a few seconds after I drop a paper I hear a scream and an, "Oh my God!" or something akin. Usually it is in ecstasy because a phrase has a special meaning, like a passage telling them a direction or a decision. More often then not it is in despair because a phrase has a special meaning, like a passage telling them a direction or a decision. ecstasy despair what could be the difference?
My favorite thing to do right now is to write a statement or a sentence on my paper, then tear it in half to form two distinct non-sequiturs. Thus the person who reads it must finish or start it in their own way. Word on the street is I figure this will get old and boring, but what does it matter? I'll find another way, if this fails.
Nine times out of ten what I write never gets read, but I still write. method skews the It's my job to translate the wind. The wind speaks, I transcribe it. When the day is blustery is when i can write most prolifically. The paper travels farther on a windy day, and contains more portentous words. When you speak, the wind steals your words and delivers them to me. I give them back, like a respiratory machine. I cannot speak the words back to you because the wind will pilfer them again. The wind can steal my paper whenever it wants, but it cannot steal the words that my paper contains. That is the difference between speech and my pen. I will write until the wind speaks to me no longer, until the wind has nothing to steal. I will be your martyr and your savior. I will be your prophet.
3:30 in the morning
not a soul in sight
we set
four deep
at a traffic light
talking bout how dumb and brainwashed
our brothers and sisters are
while we
wait
for a green light
By: Steven Bateman
Comments On Prophet
Comments can be sent to uchicago2006@hotmail.com
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