three warts

my phone calls tonight emerged in an ugly little clump of three. warts of varying degree, my phone calls dotted the reveling fog, faintly perceived by what lay beneath. cataracts, while one was not thinking of such things. while the clouds fell i couldn’t approach the subjects a little higher on the cloud-swept precipice. (i don’t know how they got there, were they helicoptered in?)
how does one complete the act of telling, of sharing an unplanned inconsistency, inconvenience, the uninhabited horror through which many do not suffer to illuminate? the unwilling spectacle of the first. let fester too long, you didn’t know what to do, did you? through your pocket i heard the muffled conversation of a muzzle, a continuous boasting as everyone checked himself in the mirror. your glossed eyes, perhaps? out in the open, the conversation existed and will exist behind our words. how do we face the hearing, the upfront issue through this yellow fog? left to weave itself again, to metastasize—a sordid aloneness. to see oneself separated, a tiny light through denim, through one’s fingers always fixing his hair, through an undeniable effort of a fixed and dimming lighthouse—the imagination of the self-destruct enclosure brings is too heavy, weighed down by fog-settled dew.
the danger of the second leaves the mystery, the blind devotion of viral determination and one’s ability to yet forget. cough & wheeze, the light closes on its own. unknowing worry, you are paid a compliment, no doubt. i see you accept it, haven’t seen one accept yours, haven’t seen him accept it & the tiring treatments every four weeks. do i tactfully resign to silence as i stifle my own cough? do i ease through the ringing voices and leave the half-assed flash of a timid contribution? this tell will run its course untreated or otherwise. it will multiply on its volition and yes it, too, will die.
and with the (hopefully) final (i want it to be last i swear i want this to be the last one) you recognize the symptom and cut a line, quickly before the sun can burn through. we sit at the family table glass-eyed and wonder when we graduated from the kids’ one, where they, glass-eyed but wider, gnawed fleshy legs happily known as “drumsticks,” snapped wish-bones in their oily little fingers, pushed red-stained tongues against loose teeth, filling the missing gaps with bird & dressing faces with smiles. unthinking of the cavity, the plastic bag in the cavity, the gore in the bag that may yet beat. to shriek a message, to cry into nothing. the indecision of whom it is to listen. in our solitary sleep, we wait.