EXCERPTS FROM “PICTURES OF THE WEATHER” by Timothy Michalik
My sister is dead. I fold my socks and arrange them
in shaky piles. They encounter the dark, dust. I am
encountering the dead while I’m reading this book.
It is about rearranging things, like thinking before
feeling. Like with every book produced the world
gets darker. The logic is shaky, the prose crude.
The dead encounter these things, but tell us
only later. I step outside and the cigarette
my sister smokes turns to dust, arranged just so.
All things come first. Here, another day.
Green balloons in the grass. A can of paint
and a towel. Wipe your face off when
you are looking at me. It is so dead like that.
First, the day. Looking back at it, straight
ahead. In the grass, there are things, faces.
People, looking. The day comes first, and
then it is dead. A towel wrapped around
a can. The people, me. The dead.
I’m staring at my friends. All of them.
They live with these actual words. A knock
at the door, who is it? Somebody else’s
idea, I guess. Staring at words like “door”
and “actual.” When I head home, I notice
my coat has a shadow. It lives. All of this
staring, and I’m just now noticing. Who is
knocking on the actual door? It is me.
I left my keys at home, behind the knocked door.
There is loneliness, things in their boxes.
The loneliness of a thing in a box. Stairs
left unclimbed, those too. It is a thing
not sculpted in time, time. It is a thing
in a box. The fragrance of loneliness:
ambroxide, compounded. Powdered
musk. The thing on the stairs, waiting.
Climbing a box, with time. Lonely time,
sculpted into those boxes, too.
Funerals replaced luncheons. And they make me
feel like pigeons lost in the post office. I don’t
want these anymore, sack lunches or a corner
office. I get high and walk into the organ loft.
I scribble bunnies onto a postcard and mail it
to myself. I go out for lunch on my long walk
home in the snow. After several weeks of this,
it just doesn’t feel fun anymore. The organ
notes go too high, and then we all go home.
