the opening of the great channel offered a trade route between the two cities. commerce and maritime industry was greatly improved and the economy boosted
deep blue, black, blacker. darker. move, but can not. Feel something surrounding me, yet escaping at the same time. Is the weight of the water not crushing you?
We never changed the channel. It was stuck there for months until father died. I said it wasn’t right but no one listened. No one listened to the weather man, either; and they wonder why we’re here now. Elijah would be able to tell you why, I know that.
I don’t know a lot of things, but I know the channel never changed and my mother sang hymns to herself over the news reports. She scrubbed the vinyl siding of the house like it would protect us from germs, and the weather man bathed in the light of the camera like he believed people actually cared about the sounds his mouth made.
Elijah cared about the weather man. I mean: he cared about the sounds coming out of my mouth. He tucked me into bed on the nights we had sleepovers, and he made sure to kiss my forehead before we talked about the moon.
I was a weatherman and he was a moon-man. We studied things in the sky that controlled the molecules of our lives. No one listened to us except the insects huddled in the baseboards.
On the day before my father died, I heard him talking to himself from the other room. He was asking to change the channel, but we were all too afraid to touch the buttons. Our fingers were too tender, and the channel too familiar by then.
He lied in his musty bed and bathed in the sound of his own voice as if he were as important as the weather man on cloudy day.
Elijah got up from the old recliner and ran his eyes over the whole house–my mother through the window, my father’s lips moving in the other room, and my pale face staring back at him. Defiant, he reached for the dial on the television.
After, he said the moon made him do it; he said even the weather man could’ve known it. Elijah cared about things like that, knew why he did the things he did. He studied shapes in the sky and thought he was the only one to hear them. He said there was an old man up there and he was speaking.
Does even the weather man listen to himself anymore? Maybe he sings hymns over his own predictions and waits for kisses on the forehead like child begging for good dreams.
When my father died, there was only a sliver in the sky. Does the moon know its own phases? I’m too afraid to ask.
She heard him pick up the remote and flip around for a while, then the TV turned off. She flipped to her other side, facing away from the door. She slowed her breathing, trying to focus on seeming asleep.
I try to list the channels in my mind (the ones on TV, the ones in my head, the ones on the Internet featuring contoured beauties and declarations for social justice) and they might as well all be muted, and I wonder how often there are repeats… Too often!
Change the channel. I don’t like what’s on this one. I want to be entertained and this show is depressing!
Flipping through channels for something else, I realize they are all the same. I flick off the TV and decide to take a walk instead.
“Can we change the channel to the college softball tournament? My sister’s playing.”
The manager of the Lucky Stars Bar and Grille lowered his knuckles from his sweaty brow and gave his best bartender a look. “We got a UFC fight on in ten minutes.”
“Just one screen? In the corner? Nobody watches the TV in the corner.”
you are thinking of the way her hair falls in the low light. the specific heat of her nape under your hand as blood and neurons move beneath the surface. everything pulsating, everything waiting for a beat, then another. you are thinking of the silence between you as it stretches, the threat of rebound. your hands laced together. your hands stirring the ice in your drinks. how her face is the same, but just slightly altered, just enough to be altogether familiar. the years an untraversed territory, time made a physical and weighty thing. the compulsion to cup it in your hands floats to the surface and dips back under again. strips of fly tape hang from the ceiling, half-filled, swaying under a lazy overhead fan. her wrist rotates as she talks. her voice is carefully cavalier around a tight throat. you consider the way the earth is filled with shallow graces, the unglamorous real estate of death. how lumbar that could have been a ship’s hull is made a coffin and returned to the earth. you think that every tragedy possible has played itself out before, all that changes is where you’re seated in the audience. the body degrading, language becoming inadequate, the way we ask “were you close?” as if death were a blast site.
the opening of the great channel offered a trade route between the two cities. commerce and maritime industry was greatly improved and the economy boosted
deep blue, black, blacker. darker. move, but can not. Feel something surrounding me, yet escaping at the same time. Is the weight of the water not crushing you?
We never changed the channel. It was stuck there for months until father died. I said it wasn’t right but no one listened. No one listened to the weather man, either; and they wonder why we’re here now. Elijah would be able to tell you why, I know that.
I don’t know a lot of things, but I know the channel never changed and my mother sang hymns to herself over the news reports. She scrubbed the vinyl siding of the house like it would protect us from germs, and the weather man bathed in the light of the camera like he believed people actually cared about the sounds his mouth made.
Elijah cared about the weather man. I mean: he cared about the sounds coming out of my mouth. He tucked me into bed on the nights we had sleepovers, and he made sure to kiss my forehead before we talked about the moon.
I was a weatherman and he was a moon-man. We studied things in the sky that controlled the molecules of our lives. No one listened to us except the insects huddled in the baseboards.
On the day before my father died, I heard him talking to himself from the other room. He was asking to change the channel, but we were all too afraid to touch the buttons. Our fingers were too tender, and the channel too familiar by then.
He lied in his musty bed and bathed in the sound of his own voice as if he were as important as the weather man on cloudy day.
Elijah got up from the old recliner and ran his eyes over the whole house–my mother through the window, my father’s lips moving in the other room, and my pale face staring back at him. Defiant, he reached for the dial on the television.
After, he said the moon made him do it; he said even the weather man could’ve known it. Elijah cared about things like that, knew why he did the things he did. He studied shapes in the sky and thought he was the only one to hear them. He said there was an old man up there and he was speaking.
Does even the weather man listen to himself anymore? Maybe he sings hymns over his own predictions and waits for kisses on the forehead like child begging for good dreams.
When my father died, there was only a sliver in the sky. Does the moon know its own phases? I’m too afraid to ask.
She heard him pick up the remote and flip around for a while, then the TV turned off. She flipped to her other side, facing away from the door. She slowed her breathing, trying to focus on seeming asleep.
I try to list the channels in my mind (the ones on TV, the ones in my head, the ones on the Internet featuring contoured beauties and declarations for social justice) and they might as well all be muted, and I wonder how often there are repeats… Too often!
Change the channel. I don’t like what’s on this one. I want to be entertained and this show is depressing!
Flipping through channels for something else, I realize they are all the same. I flick off the TV and decide to take a walk instead.
“Boss?”
“Yeah?”
“Can we change the channel to the college softball tournament? My sister’s playing.”
The manager of the Lucky Stars Bar and Grille lowered his knuckles from his sweaty brow and gave his best bartender a look. “We got a UFC fight on in ten minutes.”
“Just one screen? In the corner? Nobody watches the TV in the corner.”
you are thinking of the way her hair falls in the low light. the specific heat of her nape under your hand as blood and neurons move beneath the surface. everything pulsating, everything waiting for a beat, then another. you are thinking of the silence between you as it stretches, the threat of rebound. your hands laced together. your hands stirring the ice in your drinks. how her face is the same, but just slightly altered, just enough to be altogether familiar. the years an untraversed territory, time made a physical and weighty thing. the compulsion to cup it in your hands floats to the surface and dips back under again. strips of fly tape hang from the ceiling, half-filled, swaying under a lazy overhead fan. her wrist rotates as she talks. her voice is carefully cavalier around a tight throat. you consider the way the earth is filled with shallow graces, the unglamorous real estate of death. how lumbar that could have been a ship’s hull is made a coffin and returned to the earth. you think that every tragedy possible has played itself out before, all that changes is where you’re seated in the audience. the body degrading, language becoming inadequate, the way we ask “were you close?” as if death were a blast site.