Flowers
suppose
Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head.
The only response he gave was that of fabric (blue jeans) scraping against the seat of his chair (dupioni silk?). Progress was a sign of modernity, was it not? Just a moment ago his hands had been fidgeting with the hem of his t-shirt, and his teeth had been worrying the tender flesh of his lower lip, and his foot had been tapping a rhythm to the beat of his heart. He’d finally come to the conclusion that he might be coming across as nervous, and so he’d stopped. He’d stared at a zenish plant for a minute before he flicked his eyes away and started bouncing his leg up and down, up and down. It helped knowing they were functioning if he felt the need to use them.
It wasn’t so much a matter of could. Every kid that’s ever been in school knows the technical stuff (raise hand, open mouth, make noise) and it wasn’t what he didn’t know either. He knew. He’d spent most of the past week preparing for this. His friends had known not to push– actually, that was total bollocks. He had precisely one friend who hadn’t smirked, cajoled, sympathised or tried to convince him this was the best decision he’d ever made and was going to make in his entire life (hallelujah, amen), and that’s because she was too busy being across the world to know about it. He had a sneaking suspicion she was angry with him too, and so maybe she would have ignored it even if she did know. The only other friend he had who didn’t like him had cackled evilly and quite honestly scared him a little bit, but she didn’t like anyone, so that was that.
say to you who are silent.—“Do you see
Life? he is there and here,
or that, or this
or nothing or an old man 3 thirds
asleep, on his head
flowers, always crying
to nobody something about les
roses les bluets
His therapist was looking at him with something akin to disbelief. This was, after all, not the first time he’d been to see her, and he knew, he knew he was surely acting like a twelve year old…but fuck, this was different. There had been a moment between sleep and awakening, something had vaguely taken shape. He knew he couldn’t mess around anymore. Or he wouldn’t survive this. Whatever it was.
“So I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to get my act together.” Yeah, totally rude to just ignore the question, but this was all he had. It was as if he was frozen in places he didn’t even know existed up until now. Somewhat like a schizophrenic, there was a voice (that sounded remarkably like this singer dude on television) telling him that if he took three letters (y and e and s) and put them together, there would be no going back.
“Uhum. And what difference will this conclusion make?”
“Well…um. I wanna-I…I wanna talk. You know? Not about random, silly stuff like my childhood, but about the times that mattered.”
“From what you’ve told me, do you honestly believe that your childhood is a silly episode in your life?”
“No, ok, I know that my childhood…gave me scars – hehe – messed me up, made me a little bonkers and all that. But it’s not what I am now, you know? Well, I suppose I’m still a little bit insane, or otherwise I wouldn’t be here, but I want to talk about those moments I can still taste, right? The ones that left the prints.”
“How many of these prints are there? Do you know?”
“Eight. There are eight of them. I’ve though long and hard ‘bout it, and it always comes down to eight.”
Lying in bed, one foot dangling over the side. Staring at a portrait.
“Well, then. Where do you want to start?”