Sentenced

Connecting birds, he thinks she said, saying it was all connections, not that he feels selected, not with that bruised feeling not the healing he hopes for, but that said, they have this something this voluminous vertiginous fissure of affliction that keeps them both distant and entwined, only she is distant and he, tall and abrasive for his age, connected to her by a ravelled thread a reckoning a blessing almost, he alone is entwined in the ribbons of her, tangled up in the fantasy of her as someone else entirely, nonetheless she isn’t rude doesn’t slap him down not in public at least, whereas in the bathroom (him naked her naked) the way her lip curls as a parcel bow scissored is no gift, he knows, no sirree, he knows as well as anyone else she blames herself as he blames himself, his lame attempt to take the shame, drape himself in it, a cloak of disgrace his just desserts, but then it isn’t him that’s dead but Sonny, Sonny the name that shall not be mentioned, even the shrine on the kitchen cabinet bears no plaque no card no image no black rimmed lettering, just a violet jittery candle with a flame that will not rest, of course back in the day grief tore couples apart, too, split them asunder, an axe through a log, a fish eviscerated, and so he reminisces (eyes half closed) about the old days the gold gays of obtuse rainbows of crocks of bold and he would (if he only could be arsed), compare them historically to those couples who stayed the course despite the odds, although this may not be true for the Mr and Mrs whose fox cub went under a steam train, or the Mr and Mrs whose dachshund went poof! in a cloud of ash, remember spontaneous combustion? he does she doesn’t, conversely she believes in fairies, the gossamer kind all lace and no snickers, and somehow her naive notion of elfin folk ignites their furious disagreements about communists (there isn’t much left not even righteous left between them now), by the same token they split the electricity bill forty sixty he paying sixty what with being taller and more abrasive for his age, correspondingly she rinses forty sixty of the dishes, her slavish desire for cleanliness fractured by her fury over his height his slights the way he picks his teeth with the cherub handled olive pick and Sonny not even cold in his grave.