j.a. van wagner :: wordobject :: imagetime

Because the unseen have advanced so far into the neighborhood, trying doorhandles and interfering with the mail, the small, daily absences of difference he observes, where nothing has changed from the hours and days before, where what is solid was solid before and what is hollow was hollow before, and the usual drones in tones so low as to be unnoticeable, all bristle now with stilled fraughtness. Alterations to the air. Subtle breezes on neck napes. The neighbors confused by remarkable penumbrations where some shadows have been shifted, in the night, to allow for others.


The door, by some fluke, some terrible accident, is open. The door, is open, a tall man there. A great apprehension clamps the small veins of his neck; sudden audible pumping hoists the rack of his ribs. In a neighboring street hidden bellows drive a church bell  clanging. He sees, on the verge of a faint, perishing halos of pinched light, fallen purple pinpricks: crystalline, like snow. 
At the sight of the man by the squeezed-flat vision of the entryway his eyes shrink to pins and himself comes untethered from him, floating above; not at a great distance, a trivial distance, as though he’s been colored just over his own red margins.


The order of this is that the man is at the door then arrives at the door, shuts with some deference the open door, steps on one heel back, preparing himself to arrive at the door. 
Jiggling the dented brass knob that rests loose on its spindle, the man peers through the pane of the once-open door, lips pressed, eyes through the pane meet furtive eyes standing three feet off the tile: a man, the man of the door, nods now toward the knob in query.


He insists on other worlds: In these some say fine weather. All said, some say, tender greens do somewhere unfurl. Sun’s smile, imagine too a sun. A blue bloom, a blousy sky, and on the litter fledged chicks peck. Sleek cats fattened merely on afternoons. All said. 
And but, there’s always—he grips his tether— that ringed round every thing, between the thing and every other thing and within the thing the things that fall between it, that short tall long dark gasp preceding every breath.


He finds no comfort in a closed-door-once-open. Hello the tall man through the doorpane says politely tapping. The tall man does not know? Cannot see? The unseen, held at edges of the doorframe, drift in dozens, wheel lighter than puffed parachutes of seeded dandelions. Lightly bob at the thin pane!
It is your father I want to see says the man. I want to see your father. The man inhales long, the kind of breath the unseen stalk.


Inside, much mail sprawls across countertops, tables, rests on the toaster oven. Letters, brochures, newspaper pages are spread open to tile the floor, open to air and light that wafts across, scrubbing them with time in doses of seconds and minutes and hours: back, forth, in slow, cleansing currents. 
In the flat cartoon from which now his body dangles over the collapse of the universe he observes the tall man at the door and feels the thump of the father moving through the dark house soon to arrive.  


The father comes; the door, the door is open!
Air passes outside to inside. The tall man says some words and the father says some. The man smiles at him then and places his hand low, so he can shake it.  What do you say says the father. 
But to say, his mouth must open. Nothing stills the high whine and flurry of pinwheels.


Advancing around the edges of shadows, past all outlines and borders, the unseen settle on roofs of houses and hoods of cars and on windows and the broad-brimmed hats of gardeners. They whirl off, torn away by wind gusts, and come to rest on the handlebars of bicycles and bare wrists of teenage girls. He rubs some more spit in his eye, like they told him, so he can see them coming.

j.a. van wagner ©2020 2020.04.18