M. Mack
Traveling Again
a reaction
Scene
The house my friend lives in is like my grandparents' house, or like the house I grew up in; it reeks of untraceable familiarity. It folds in on itself, on the people trying to trace it. The house is many places at once. The house is fine with this. Its visitors struggle.
My friend walks out of the house. Theirs is a solitary decision, but I start gathering my things. I, too, have wanted to stake a claim with absence. Leaving is not effortless. I look for my shoes, but I find instead a papasan chair beneath a heap of strange stuffed things, a frame creaking with weight. The heap breathes in deep, shaking breaths. So do I as I leave it. I trip on a pile of shoes that does not breathe. I find three wingtips, unable to tell which two are mine until I find the fourth.
Traveling Again
a reprise
Scene
Market. The street is cobbled. The buildings that line the walk appear constructed of riches, flaunting in this construction the currency of broken and unwanted things.
Shoppers don't always know how to let go. Some clench their pocket lint and gum wrappers in their fists, unwilling to trade up and in. Not everyone has learned to un-want. I find a wooden bin filled with textiles. A lump of sweaters. Many have belonged to me. I find an orange sweater is now turquoise. It is femme and fine. I sling it over the strap of my satchel. This belongs to me. Then a plaid flannel, large and geometric. It is just right. I sling it over the strap of my satchel. This belongs to me. I pay for the things that belong to me, with things that belong to me. I am still rich with forgetting.
Traveling Again
a reaction
Scene
The kitchen island stretches and breaks as I walk around it, forming an archipelago that floats around the corners of the house. Its pieces are uniform in size and speed, like the lines drawn behind street pavers. When it comes to it, the threshold is lonely. The outside of the house is as expansive as the inside is implosive, but the house asks that you try to take in one thing at a time.
Some friends are making a movie in the familiar house. She wants me to be an extra. He wants me to run lines. She wants me to be every extra. These are the same friends whose likenesses we spot in the backgrounds of our favorite movies. I extract myself from props and costumes, waxed mustaches and false breasts. It has taken all this time to put my shoes on for the walk home. I am leaving the threshold just as my friend is coming back in. The space between us compromised, we walk to the car impossibly close: they behind and also beside; arms fold around one another's hips, as if we could just—. When I turn my face, I have to reach only minimally. When their lips meet my reach, everything is gone. It's as if I've forgotten, and of course I have.
Traveling Again
a reprise
Scene
Cobbled street. Boys with copper kettles on their heads. Girls with fishing rods arranged in their hair. People with their heads nude. Here, too, the shopkeepers accept bits of broken things as currency. Here, the shoppers have their fists full, their pockets.
When we are walking down the cobbled street looking at strange machines in windows. When I still have my satchel with two or three sweaters slung over the strap. When I stop to consider a cow made of copper bells and clockwork. When our fingers are entwined and we can kiss but they can also drift ahead. When the press of the crowd. When the flannel slips from the strap. When I am too tired to turn back for. When the push of upward motion on the narrow steps. When I find I am climbing. When the sight of their head, ahead, yet the feel of them in my hand, the thrum woven in.
Traveling Again
a reaction
Scene
I told you: The threshold is lonely.
When our lips meet, the shapes are all wrong, and we sit with them, and we sit still. Our lips stretch into strange lines. I move my hooked top lip against theirs in a grasp, and then we are still again. We are connected only by our strange lips and by the thrum of proximity. The wanting moves my lips again. They moves theirs against them. We are intertwined at this single point of connection. I don't remember what it looks like as it breaks. Later, we are still thrumming. We are still walking to the car. The backs of our hands are flush together. We bend our fingers backwards to entwine them. There is pain. There is also thrumming. It is warm.
Traveling Again
a reprise
Scene
Outside of town, on a train for lost things. Everyone on the train wears a nude head, except the conductor. Every traveler is jealous of the conductor's hat.
When they and I are on a train. When we share a seat, entwined at the arms and at the fingers. When we are warm and laughing. When there are strange machines to observe in the fields outside the windows. When we are tourists to them, touching their tiny distances on the paned glass. The ceiling of the train opens and lost items drop through correctly sized openings. A parcel floats onto my lap; a name tag flutters and settles. I have some understanding of absence and return. I do not consider if they does. This belongs to me.