In the Mourning

Benjamin woke up to a neighbor clearing his throat of phlegm, choking on a web of spittle and snot. Ben’s building and the building next store touched, wall to wall, like much of the buildings in the city, but for a small space between them into which several apartment windows opened, into which the noises of various lives constantly spilled. Intimate noises, but noises that echo in the space of concrete and plywood siding, and end as deadened and lifeless sounds.

Lying in bed, stress became him, thoughts of the day without lightness. So he rose.

He stood naked by the bedroom window, illuminated by the pale glow of morning, closing the blinds left open through the night. I have nothing to create. A child screamed itself awake in the building next to theirs. Your parents enable you. It’s just a phase.

He looked at his girlfriend lying still, breathing deeply, in bed. If she doesn’t tell you often that you have food in your teeth, then you’re unhappy. You’re not smiling enough. Some old friend whose name he couldn’t recall, but still quotable.

He leaned over the bed to kiss her cheek, and stopped, suddenly feeling powerful. I’m the doctor who, with stethoscope hanging round my neck, checks the heartbeat of the men after they’re hung. I make sure they’re dead after they stop shaking. His lips were frozen inches from her cheek. As if she knew, she rolled to the far side of the bed, into the imprint of his body left from the night. I can’t stop.

In the kitchen, while the water heated to a boil, Benjamin stared at a small hole he’d made in the wall the day they moved in. Something was meant to hang there, but relocated. It’s not important. Whatever you feel about that hole, it’s not important. All of it passes. The string on his teabag read, “When ego is lost, limit is lost.” He laughed, secretly hoping there were people whose lives were changed by teabags.

Wrapped tightly in his bathrobe, he stepped outside to lift the morning paper from the stoop. The homeless man sat on the curb.

He is a 300-pound man who wears a tiny white tank top that could belong to a little girl. His backpack is a sweater with the sleeves tied to its bottom to make straps. He wears it upside down on his back. Another article of clothing is stuffed in the neck hole to keep things from falling out. He wears an extra large Alcatraz t-shirt as pants, with his legs through the sleeves, and the bottom tied tightly around his waste so as to prevent them from slipping off when he stands. His creamy white belly balloons forward onto his lap. His hat is strapped around his jaw that chews away at indiscernible words.

I feel the sudden urge to talk to this man who so often sits picking a nipple or sleeps stretched out on the sidewalk.