by: m.s. fuller

I want you to follow me.

Do you see that light – hanging above my head?  Above your car?  Yellow in the night, it looks like a ghost with a diseased liver.  Yellow.  You know what they call that…

Of course, of course.

Let us walk a bit, through the streets, through the jaundice, through the leaking and wilting rot of the night.  Let us walk.  The unease is what draws you.  The dis-ease is what binds us.  And so we go together.

You see, there were three acts that wove themselves around you as you sat at the moviehouse.  You were bored.  You sought refuge.  From your boredom, from your thoughts, from your self.

You went to the beerhall.  I saw you go.  And I waited out here.  An hour, two hours, four hours.  I waited.  You would think that the longer that I waited, the harder it would be – the waiting, that is.  The cold.  The wind.  The rain.

But I know.  I know that the longer you are in there, the more my waiting will be worth.

And then you got in your car, rumbled over the curb, and there I was: in your headlights.  And now by your door.  And you are turning off your car, parked by the curb.  Because that is what men do.  That is what good boys do.  That is what animals and plants and solar systems do: rotate, revolve, go out and back, and here we are.

In the jaundiced light.  And wind and rain, too.  And you kiss me.  Of course you do.  Because I waited.

And we walk a ways under the trees, beside the river, down a brick alley, where you will ask me something and I will smile, pretending to know what your rotten breath has uttered.  But really, it has uttered nothing but rot.  And, as we lean into the night, lean against the brick, I lean against you with the chill that has seeped into me, along my limbs, along the slender thing inside of my pocket that is just an extension of my limbs.  And – surprise! – I penetrate you.  And you exhale.  And all is done.  And this tale is all that you get.  And you are what I get!