Sitting
in his mother’s chair, he has enough hair again in which to lose a fist, his
arm fully if momentarily healed. He fills his mouth with seriously rich and
strong mocha java, not black, but not far off. Reaching out with his free hand,
he allows a finger its lazy tracing of an outlined circular stain upon the
wall.
Mother: SKUNK! SKUNK! COME AND SEE THIS.
He takes some measure of fright from the
spider there upon the wall, a degree more when it moves a little, stops, moves
again. He thinks it might be tired or something.
Skunk: Is it tired? How can it hold onto
the wall if it’s tired?
Mother: Now look at this
dipping her finger into the mug resting
on the bookshelf by her chair, and then after tapping off the excess, describes
a semi-circle of coffee below the spider, like a smile, and then into the mug
again with enough to complete the circumference arc above.
Skunk watches as the spider moves until
one of its thread legs happens upon the ringed moisture, backing off elsewhere
to the same conclusion, and again, finally trapped, resigned. Brother Skunk,
his mother, the spider, all immobile, each one the other’s focus, attendant on
the process of evaporation.
Skunk
lifts the mug again to his mouth, the coffee now cold and his take spat back.
He runs his knuckles across his lips, rises, takes the mug back through into
the kitchen. Day to day to day, and all of this everywhere; he cannot move for
ghosts.
