Leaves

by: o. del hombre

Allow me to get to the end.  We sit here, you and I, discussing this thing that you never thought we’d need to discuss (I always knew the discussion would come – I just didn’t know it would be you at the other end of this table) and I can tell you’re uncomfortable.  You shift in your seat.  You smile pleasantly enough: “You can talk to me,” you said, you offered, you proffered.

I can.  I can talk to you.  And it is you who have come to know: who am I?  I have plastered my words across electric poles, up and down alleyways on the ass-ends of brick buildings.  You have followed these words.

“I will show you,” they all end.  All of them.  Tales of hair clippings tossed into the woods to twist the limbs and choke the necks of lost children.  (Limbs! you say.  That could mean tree or human!  How clever, how clever…)  Tales of Bacchanalian feasts and debaucheries along the lamp-lit paths of this-or-that mid-american town, tales that wander those paths and ramble down to the water’s edge (a river – there’s always a river running through the town; water and waste mingle; life and shit).

Tales, tales.  And you pulled the posters down, read them ravenously, followed the directions on where to find the next, always wanting more and more.  Not ravenous – hear me now: I am not calling you a fiend.  But when presented with the possibility of more Balah el Sham, of course your lips moisten, of course you anticipate the fried crunch of syrup-soaked dough.  And, like honeyed delicacies, these stories are a delight to you.

Delightful.

And so we sit.

And I am not the one you were expecting.  And you, too, are one of the many faces who I could have found swimming in from N—– Festa and all of its rabble-rousing gambols out on the street.  You are one of the multitude who could have found a way in to sit at this table.  And you present yourself as amenable: “You can talk to me.”

And so I can.  I tell you of the way that the city smells to me, how I can taste the flesh that has passed through it all day and into the night, how the dough and street meats are only a precursor to the smell of flesh, how the flesh itself is derivative of its first cause, its prime mover: dough and street meats.

Ha!  Street food as prime mover… our god is one of us then.

And you shift in your seat.  You are young, but already your spine is uncomfortable at this table, your eyes slipping always leftward because of the booze and the tilt of the tabletop.  Your stomach moves inside of you: probably just the green light and the smoke that covers it all like a sordid spirit.  Your body aches and aches and aches.

Allow me to get to the end.  You want to know how these all end.  Each of these hangs the uncertainty upon a peg by your door so that the rough fabric of the tale reminds you when you go out: I do not know this world anymore.

Green light.  Street food.  Smoke.  This may be my aesthetic.

You rise, but only halfway because you’ve grown dizzy and your own body has become a burden to your uncooperative legs.  No matter – the barkeep will leave us alone back here.

And you want to know.  “Tell me…,” you trail off, “… how it ends.”

You know how it ends.  For me to say so would be to gloat, to make it too obvious.  Where is the mystery in that?, I say.  Trust the audience, I say.  For me to tell you would not be fair for you or for me.  You’re tired.  Close your eyes.  Another sip from this pint and yes, you anaesthetize the ache.