The Lease at Lyman Terrace Nathan Sindelar
We paint the floors black, and once they're covered she spreads her arms,
tiptoeing around the room as if walking a tightrope. I drop my keys before
the second coat, and they get wet, get black and kicked aside while we
dump paint trays and splash leftover cans. She opens and closes one hand
as the dull paint dries along her fate lines, our empty apartment creaking
on the fifth story as if pitched in the branches of a great cottonwood.
Matte-finish black and oozing between fingers. My keys disappear for good.
Then my overalls, and we roll through the paint at first like
sunflowers—her in a cream-colored cardigan, me now in nothing but an
afghan scarf. Then like tin milk drums, roll with each other, stained and
heavy, full of spit. She pushes down on my chest with her black balled
fists, and the paint clings to my back, peels when I sit up. She can't
open her hands any longer and smiles. In this way we chip and smear a
cosmos across black space, floor of nebula, constellation—reveal once more
the senseless patchwork of maple and ash, walnut and scuffed oak. On our
sides, breathing. Her line: I liked it better with jazz posters. Mine:
'Out Brief Candle.' She says it's bad luck to parrot a parrot and looks
toward the open window, where hours before, down to the sidewalk, we
tossed our books and taxidermy, our gold-chained hanging lamps. We crawl
toward daylight, black hair ripping from our forearms, and peer out. There
is our life together, scattered before the curb like street-side
ornaments. There is Boris—ring ring—the bright stuffed parrot, flying away
in the basket of a girl's bicycle.
Nathan Sindelar is a writer from rural Nebraska.
Read his postcard.
Detail of painting on main page courtesy of Shohei Hanazaki.
|
