Someone to Talk To

its 7:15 and i'm awake. her hair is soft and in my ear and my thumb lightly rub rub up her forefinger. our hands are still clasped half under the sheet and together for so long, our palms are glued moist and warm. i listen to her breath in her sleep and she smells wonderful. and then she smells like motor oil. as i smile and begin to drift i squeeze her hand. and i love her. i think about the meat in her hand and how much i'd like a piece of ham.

its 8:02 and i'm sweating. alarms are firing up my spine and into my brain and i'm terrified and confused and i can't remember why. she's awake now. her arm is wrapped around my chest and she's humming warm breath in my ear. but i'm still afraid and for a moment i'm still asleep and she's another invisible enemy. i must have quavered because now she's giggling and squeezing me. she whispers good morning and i feel her nose on my cheek. and i love her.

its 9:31 and i'm sharpening pencils. there are hundreds of them here in a box. i don't ask bobbi where they came from. i don't want to know. i never ever want to know how these things happen. i keep sharpening pencils and placing them in evenly-placed segregated units of 4 pencils each. if i sharpen one too far, i have to sharpen them all again until they're even. i wrap each bundle with tiny orthodontic rubber bands i bought from the office down the street. i hear her in the kitchen. she's making cinnamon rolls. she knows i like cinnamon in the morning. she wants to make me happy and she's making me cinnamon rolls. i don't ask her about the pencils.

its 9:45 and there's hair in my eye. her neck is so soft under my lips and she smells wonderful again. i'm holding her around the waste and i think she's smiling. my hands are sifting over her stomach and i kiss her shoulder. holding her abs, my chest pressed against her lower trapezius. her deltoids. ever rippling latissimus dorsi. her ass is a stone. i imagine how easily she could crush me if the fancy ever took her. she's purring now. her smell. she's making my scalp tingle. and i love her.

its 9:48 and i've got a bundle in my right hand, my knuckles roll along her tummy. my pinky in her navel. she turns her head from the bread and kisses my cheek. and i see her fingers, gummy with icing. and her eyes open slowly and back to the rolls and she's smiling. and she's gone and i'm alone. the heat of her on me is cold now and i can't see the kitchen or the pencils and the smell is gone and theres a bell ringing in my ear. the gooey fingers are massaging the rolls. spreading cream. the fingers. very dirty fingers. i think about cholera. typhoid fever. shigellosis. i imagine severe abdominal pain and weight loss. paresthesias. motor weakness. bloody diarrhea. i think about creamy hepatitis A. sweet coated trichinosis and salmonellosis. now i'm tensing and my neck is starting to hurt and i'm shaking and pop pop pop my jaws clench tight. dirty fingers spreading escherichia coli and cryptosporidiosis and brucellosis. i think about prolonged vomiting and cranial nerve palsies. i'm all over the place and my arms are about to burst. i feel the skull under my forehead swelling and the ringing is so loud and i think about hemolytic uremic syndrome. post-diarrheal. somewhere far far away bobbi is making noises.

its 10:22 and my hands are warm. and everything's warm. and there's something moving up my arm. i start to get up and the warm on my back starts to slide. it moves through my hair and rolls down my neck. warm on my arms and in my eye and i taste something warm on my lips. i taste something warm and i think of cinnamon rolls and i can't help it. funny they don't look so bad now. they look good. i try to think of paresthesias motor weakness but it looks so good. i can't remember what cryptosporidiosis means. mm. cinnamon in the morning. i pick one up and its warm and its wet and its speckled shiny. and its delicious.

its 10:24 and there's something moving up my ankle. i've stopped chewing and its a hand. it tickles. i imagine a newborn child trying to pick itself up off the ground by the trunk of a tree. it can't get a grip and it falls and i have to stifle a giggle. tickle tickle. little warm bits come out of my mouth and i start laughing harder and the cinnamon in my throat goes up and down and up and i can't breath and i'm hahaha vomiting. i don't know how long i'm laughing. my throat stopped pumping sometime ago, but now the child is rolling around holding its head with its tiny hands and i'm still in a ball on the ground, hahaha and letting my chin drip drip drip clean. mm. cinnamon in the morning. when i open my eyes the hand has stopped and there's bobbi. it looks like she's choking. i wonder if i've been on top of her this whole time. she's not moving and she's not breathing and i wonder if the gag reflex still works after the heart stops. bubble bubble gurgle slurp. she has red sweetened sick all on her face and she looks so sad. my hands on her cheeks i start to cry. so beautiful. and i love her.

a baby. waa waa wa. its loud and in my ear and i don't know what time it is. when i try and stand i nearly fall over. bracing myself against the counter, i'm washing my face in the sink and trying not to lean too far over and i'm trying to keep my head from rolling off my shoulders and into the disposal unit. and i'm making a mess. the whole kitchen painted blood and vomit and bile and i'm making a mess. and i have to stop. i'm sore and i'm cold and i'm sticky and i'm achy and my head is thump thump thump bam bam. bobbi's under me. she's cold and hard like the way i feel. i'm wondering if her body sucked all the soft and warm from my own as it turned. maybe one last built-in fuck you of human biology. how could she do this to me. and i have to stop. stop cold. i begin to realize. i'm hearing. waa waa wa.

i haven't checked the time and i don't know whether to be frightened or sickened or sad. not surprised. i think about tadpoles riding bicycles down long hallways. oops. but i don't feel anything. left knee. right knee, and i'm crouching next to her. and i don't feel anything. just cold and sticky and how could she do this to me. waa waa wa. its higher and louder and closer and i have to lay my hands on her. he womb. her cold cold sticky womb. and i feel an eraser. i have to laugh. i have to because i had forgotten and now its coming back to me and its probably kind of funny how that happens sometimes. of course i'm not sure. i'm not feeling anything. waa waa waa is still there and i laugh louder. louder. waa waa wa. i'm shrieking now and it matches me. and i'm getting scared. and i stop. i stop because i realize i'm going to have to sharpen the pencils again.

its 7:00 and i have to save the baby. my baby. fruit of the womb. it took me an hour and a half to fix the problem with the pencils and waa waa wa my head hurts. thank heaven it hasn't suffocated. i couldn't find the scissors. and i decided a blade would be somewhat niggling, as it occurred to me that if someone were to witness the scene, there might be puzzlement, and i've no time for explanations. not with a child's life at stake. i found a shovel in the garage and i'm trying to be careful. i recall eating a corned beef sandwich once at the mall and at its size, click click my jaw would pop with each bite. that's what this sounds like. biting into corned beef click click. i cautiously clip around the lump for a while so i can scoop it out in a clump. at least i hope so. i've never delivered a baby before. click click. bobbi never looked pregnant. thats what threw me off i guess. click click. every time i push it in, the noise gets louder. one more time. and it stops. the waa waa. its over. i found waldo. i won. i've never been so excited and now i'm down on the floor, scrape scrape digging with my hands. its so heavy. its so heavy i think i'm going to pull something. there's a loud noise. and i jump. the kikes are on to me. with a thump, the corned beef falls away like silk sheets and i'm on my ass staring at the biggest piece of gold i've ever seen.

its the rest of my life and i'm squinting in the sun. wind in my hair. zoom. united states interstate 70. west. i look over at bobbi and i have to smile. you're really going to like it here, i tell her. you can never be sad here, i say. you can never be sad here. and i can't wait. the noise. the phone. bobbi works for a jewish law enforcement agency. she hadn't shown up. she hadn't called. is she there. is something wrong. hello. i told them about how she is irresponsible. i told them how she likes to work in the garden so much. how she hadn't been taught priority. i'll have a talk with her of course. don't you worry. of course. bobbi smiles at me and i'm thinking about having her melted down and reformed into a baseball bat. the sun is in my eyes and in my hair and zoom. its going to be a long trip and i wish i had someone to talk to. the end.