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JULY 20TH, 1998, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO I SAID?
I want you to see my broken toe, I cried into the flower like rain, my toe was red black with a bruise down the fork, the last time I broke it, it was hanging from the foot at a right angle, I was so angry that something as stupid as the corner of a lounge had injured my body, I tore the stuffing out with a knife, that is the kind of person I am, if something hurts me I want to hurt it back, that usually helps, but the lounge just sat there, all vinyl and fake and ripped open, I was determined to keep going, so I hovelled right around the big park with my two dogs, I didn't like to hovel, people look and think you're a cripple, they think of your purse or your knees or your cunt or where you're vulnerable, I would prefer to remain anonymous now that I know what they're like, I rang my girlfriend and said that I was really angry at the toe, I said, 'the bone is splintered in my foot, but my toe didn't stop me, I walked right around the big park,' she said, 'you're going to just have to slow down now, you're going to have to rest it,' I told her to get fucked, 'it seems that breaking a toe for me,' I said to the flower in a grizzly desperate voice, 'has become as common as the cold,' I kept breaking them and far from shifting my sense of direction, it just makes me more disabled on the path I am following, this time the break is on my left foot, pulling my lower back out, since the left is where I tread the strongest, on the second day of the the second break, I almost got run over as I couldn't cross the street fast enough, I was just ready to go out into the world, now I was to crawl again, the petal of this particular flower was frail pink and prone to bruising, even a raindrop or a teardrop could bruise it, 'what are we going to do?,' I wept to the little flower, 'what are we going to do?,' I held my blue heeler's loving face up as his eyes rolled into his soft blue skin, and I felt his irregular heartbeat in this frail bony chest, he was too beautiful to be carrying that poor strange heart inside him, like an oyster wraps a pearl in salty fat, he was so careful and yet so careless, everything he was is spontaneous, he took a violent fit, I knew when it was going to happen, the first time it was like a dark hand reached down through the sky to touch him, as he stumbled ahead first into the ground, only halfway to racing a frisbie and began to twist and fit, then it was me carrying the one I most loved 'my section of heart,' I called him across the big park terrified of his departure and thinking of the animal hospital, where the vets came in and listened with stethoscopes and said, 'it's a wonder he lives,' they said that the heartbeat of Binda was like Beethoven's Fifth, the most recent time he fitted was the day before I broke my toe, again, he just turned around and his eyes went back into his head, and his face went all long and desperate, as though he was saying, 'oh no, here it goes again,' I held him down and put my cheek to his cheek, as he twisted and spun in his head, and wobbled in his soul that climbed the unsteady ladder back to its existence, 'a broken toe is so small and insignificant,' I spoke to the pink petals before I placed them to my lips, 'I know it could be worse,' I said, 'but I just want you to look at it from my side of the world, my blood of my toe, the strange purple liquid under the skin, the bones slowly mending, look at my dog's skin and his frail heart that just won't let him go and live, that drags him back towards his non-existence with a rope, the dog whom I love and fight for, my skin that I long for, the flower that I talk to and listen for, what are we going to do?,' I said. |
