 |
Boss Battle: The One With the Long Neck |
|
When I arrived, the music changed -- you, queen of what remains, you in a
room too small for your body. Your neck is something I am unfamiliar
with -- the back of it invisible, the front of it, delicate: the graze
of a finger causes the chin to tilt downward, a trap, always a trap.
Your face, a mask -- smooth as the day you were born and as hard as the
stone on the ring that I am wearing, the ring that allows me to
pretend that this does not hurt as much as it once did; that the
bruises that form fade to yellow faster, that this is what I should
have been wearing since the beginning -- trading the green of my youth
for something that reminds you of an announcement, a declaration of
danger.
|
1996 © 2011 |
You, larger than the room you have been sleeping in. You, despite
this, will not push me against the wall, will not press your head into
my chest, will not listen to what I am saying; that you must
disappear, that the only thing that must remain is the room that we
have built here: red brick, red paper, red fabric on the floor. I
take my knife and start cutting -- your neck breaking in sections and
vanishing, tendons unraveling like our time away from this room, your
neck growing shorter by the second. Your face shrinks back towards
your shoulders, shoulders I remember but cannot place. You, of the
neck. You, of no neck, neckless: head on body like a badly drawn
picture, like something I once drew. This is where you disappear.
This is where the door opens. This is all that I have wanted.