content warning: blood

She could see where she stepped out of her sandals for the last time. One in front of the other, she stepped out of them one at a time. One foot on the cool tile, then the other. She leaned on the doorbell, breath bated like she had a choice. The TV is going inside. I don’t want to lean on your shoulder. I want my crutch.

They drink coffee under ruined lime trees. There is a goat on the roof of the car. Three faces. One for me, one for you, one for everyone else. She’s got a couple joints loose, she said. His forehead folds like a concertina. He told her to stop being unsympathetic to the situation of others. People are so like their cars. She tries to maintain her sovereignty in the conversation. He thinks about the blood snagging over in his wrist. She realises she hasn’t filled the boy’s glass and does so. She hoses the car off with dirty water.

A thing is said to be finite in its own kind—in suo genere finite—when it can be limited by another thing of the same nature. For example, her body is said to be finite because we can always conceive of another body greater than it. So, too, her thought is limited by another thought. But body is not limited by thought, nor thought by body. It shouldn’t be.

She walks quickly to keep off the cold, but it creeps in like ants at a picnic. This is an easy bite. He walks fast, too. It’s one of the few things they have in common. He follows her until she passes the window frame. The evening swells like a rotting snowball. Like a deer bloated with sleep, the snowball is a body in itself; mixed with other things. The body blisters.

She drives back to the city. She is walking down the street when a woman grabs her arms and starts screaming hysterically. She wants her to stop, but the woman is not herself. The goat is not hers. She is a mother with three daughters and a storm approaching. Is the mother mocking her? Should she?

His jacket is apple green, the colour that isn’t real but sounds pretty. Talking to him is like doing the sky in a puzzle. What does that mean? It means you will spend your entire life trying to be like that. Who’s dancing with you? She is Sisyphus on that inclined treadmill. What does that mean? If someone painted her, it would be a still life. It means she will spend her entire life trying to be something else.

So, this is the gloaming. Hospitable though he may be, glorious that he is, He already knows. All flesh is weak. O God, you already know. All flesh is grass. O God, I’m the serf, pouring out basins and poured out like old water. At least it’s a role. At least I’m playing.

Are you ready, Abel?