by: e. hooper

I heal them.  I heal people.

The birds peck at my yard – see them, there and there and there, heads darting in and out of the grass as if they weren’t black-feathered bodies but rather black-threaded needles with thick shanks plunging into the fabric of the earth; and, instead of sewing the pieces together, they are picking apart the seams in order to find the vermin.

Sit for a while and watch the birds.  This is what I do on glorious Fridays such as this.

I do not work on Fridays.  Something like a sabbath.  A shabat.  A sabbatical.  I recline and watch the birds pick at the tall grass and the dirt and come up with the fruits of their labor: worms.

You ask what I do with the bodies?  You seek to condemn me for crimes against humanity?  How dare you condemn when it is your own mouth that pronounces them bodies.  They are people, you see.  Temporarily inanimate people.

You come to see my gallery and so I will show you.  Step away from the window, down the hall, into the great room.  Mind the furniture – the lights are low here and the curtains drawn in order to preserve the art.  Paintings.  Cathedrals.  Fields at harvest.  Triptychs denoting the birth of man, the rape of the earth, and the rapture.

Have you experienced the signs of the rapture?  We all undergo our own personal —.

And here, my favorite: the monk, St. J—–, holding a skull and contemplating his own mortality inside of those dark eye sockets.  The void stares back.  Hunger only smiles.  Emptiness fills you up.

This, friend, is my gallery.  Simply painted fare, you see.  Artifice.  What do you seek?  What more do you seek?

Sit, sit.  I will get you a drink.  The cool of this room is good for the flesh.  I will get you a drink.  And tell me, tell me of that tattoo that writhes its way up your forearm.  It writhes up your forearm, onto the flesh of your shoulder, and down your chest that are all, as of yet, hidden.