paorta-kremvax

She’s all orange, like a new tan—”Did you go tanning?” She’s pulled off her shirt and her back is dark not pale and it takes us a few moments to realise it was the shirt she just pulled off. “Guess the point of that shirt is you take the Arizona sun even after you’ve gone,” but we never went. I squirt something into my hand and spread it on the wall and it tells a story about what I just said, in braille, when it dries. We run our hands over and remember the time we ran down the street and it was all dark outside, the houses were hushed and we held hands and ran and the little girls in the second floor window screamed and screamed because the fireworks were going off over our heads and the whole place rumbled with the sound and the flash and we saw it go off, wide over the fire-station clock tower before it all stopped.

“We’re missing it, we’re missing it,” and I said we better slow down and enjoy it now, we’d have plenty of time and then it all stopped because that was it.

 
 
Later she passes the door as I am spreading more on the wall and think for sure she is mad, I think that I’ve really done it now and she goes into the living room to sit down and she’s mad but I can’t be bothered and keep on with the wall, spreading it straight to the edge.

 
 
When we eat the apples and oatmeal hot and brown from the sugar the food tastes good and it slides down our throats. I ask her about how she was mad and she says I wasn’t what do you mean and I tell her about the time she walked past the door and didn’t say anything and must have had something on her mind because she didn’t talk or even turn to look and I just kept spreading the wall, pretending like nothing was wrong. She says she was just waiting for the dessert to cool and I say “Oh, it was that hot?” and we eat and afterwards it’s night and we lay down but I don’t remember anything except that I was still spreading, in my head.