Three Hundred Million: A Novel (56 page)

I don’t think about Flood’s life. I don’t need to. It is mine. Above, the sky has turned entirely opaque, shutting out the ream of color holding beyond us anywhere the night might stretch forever. The sheen of the lip of it remains reflective; each glint shows the earth back at itself. There is no moon or starlight in the dead resonance, but the pulp of day remains visible beneath, the glow of sun sucked into the ground radiating through all coils, the heat hungry for more meat to disintegrate on stage, more skins unpeeled against the faces, torsos, limbs to expose the meat from and let simmer, desist, until underneath that too, the private lattices of bone and thrall, which as well has rubbed and split and uncompressed to ash and silt and blown away, sucked into wherever, sexless, lipless, nowhere.

Among the vast terrain remains what junk. The haunted veins of buildings stand up uneroded, their matched glass eyes seeing the seer where the glint of the contained light does not obstruct the vision head on into the building, through which the hallways cross and come to doors, catacombs of air locked in unto itself beyond all disintegrated organs. There are the statues and the lamps, the birdhouses and gravestones and quilts and gravel stacked as high as what the air was. The lists of what remains remain unmade. Wires hang taut in arteries to where buildings had been indexed on the mud, beaming nothing back and forth between the husks where in the absence of larger motion hive cells have begun to cluster up over long fields absorbing the leavings of our people into its chest, now spun defunct and clogging nothing.

I feel Flood’s body’s organs flay and tangle. Its blood is screaming for itself. I raise Flood’s right arm where it would have been and have him touch his face and where I want to feel the finger between my eyes there nudging at the space where flesh had held him caged, the texture of my vision warps white around the presence, any color turned to gyres. His shape is no longer contained in him alone, but made as if with coordinates that change as the lens shifts to change the framing: every instance of him rendered long and wide and senseless. Wishless, and so full of every wish. Cold folds like little hills of newer land where we could walk and tell our daze and have a fall. On the land is so much room there, space that opens up around us more the harder that I make him press, miles of it contained in him at any instant, requiring only to be forced up into birth by feel. This could be true of any vision, I remember, in any being.

Why was I me. What have I done. What fields of rooms of people have gone on hidden in them, the blipping lights, so many breadths in any inch. There could never be a reason.

Where I have no organs I am eggs. Or I am in awe. Along the perimeters of holes: not the hole itself but not not the hole there either. What am I feeding.

Beyond day. Smoke flows from where the light was, like old locks. An oceanic box of blue more soft than sky and neater, nearer. It could be any blue, I know, set to pupils or dog collars or the whole tone of a life. A fragment of an instance in a version where even I am not a she or he or me but floors, or money, or a thing like color, here kissed from lips to lips like blood that hadn’t pooled, knives of the hours between all desire left unlisted from the trees allowed inside the evening to deform, to crawl over the highways or the plots before the plot of any text turned all yards into the way of graves. All our worlds up before us, mulched and sharper than any tool used to cut the dinner down, the blood in colors like a person aging in an instant from the sperm back to the sac, microphones in any mind catching the sound of all that living in a width quicker than every square of every square dividing.

I close my eyes and see the blood alone. In the blood the rooms are there too, through all the houses held there to connect. I walk into the blood and feel the film of it surround me. I feel the film fold down against the white. Within the white I close my eyes too and find another film held within it, in which again my eyes are open wide, where then again I then close them, and there again there is the white. And now I cannot remember who I’ve been talking to this whole time.

I can no longer remember where I am. Each room around me as I went seemed to hold voices on the far side of the chamber, a human sound of moaning that lighted through with the idea there would be someone left still in this shape, but I could find no end point to the walls. Each new room along the chain of rooms there seeming to partition off another impossible place, a language always on the far side of where I was.

No matter how long it went on, I loved this house. I loved the screaming and the beats between the screaming. I loved the grain of the wood of the floor beneath me like never-ending skin I might have meant to wear myself. At each inch of the wall I touched I felt someone on the far side touching back, and though they would not answer me, I loved their future. As I moved away, they moved away.

Sometimes I would find windows in the walls through which I could see out into the sky. Its face was full with smoke or milk in big blown sac clouds in packets bumping up against each other desperate for rain, and beyond that, a kind of wall there dark as my closed eyes had been when I could close them, only now all above us, waiting to burst.

I remember the red curtains in our bedroom. I remember the bookshelf set into the wall. I remember how hard it was to button the neck on my work shirt. I remember waking up before the alarm. I remember the cursor blinking. I remember sensing I was being watched. I remember the blue key that started my first car and where I wrecked the car and how my posture never seemed the same again. I remember trying to teach myself to paint landscapes. I remember swallowing the first tooth I lost. I remember making eye contact with passing people and knowing I’d never be this near to them again. I remember the frozen food aisle at night alone. I remember never being able to remember certain names no matter how many times they were repeated. I remember a recurring dream of a large white church without doors. I remember wanting to remember things I’d dreamt and repeating them in my mind until I forgot. I remember lighting candles just to have them blown out. I remember cold glass on warm days. I remember the brightness of a bulb turned on near the bed in darkness. I remember believing I’d die drowning. I remember feeling guilty having never donated blood. I remember the click of the handle when the gas completed pumping. I remember changing my opinion of a color. I remember waiting to be told I was free to go. I remember biting into fruit that’d turned brown on the inside. I remember the color of the grass of our front lawn weeks after it caught fire. I remember looking into my eyes shaving my face. I remember checking to see if my wife had returned home. I remember the long dark hair on my forearm that grew back no matter how many times I plucked it. I remember the way snow looked landing on a sweater. I remember wishing I could remove one of my arms to sleep better on my side. I remember feeling discomfort and trying to remember to feel gratitude for the absence of that discomfort after it subsided. I remember imagining there was a secret room inside my grandparents’ basement. I remember laughing at the unfunny jokes of strangers. I remember waking myself up laughing. I remember wiping the dust off the screen of the TV with my palm. I remember lying in rented beds and imagining who had been in them before me. I remember the stretch of the skin around my smile. I remember knowing what I should say to someone and never saying it. I remember playing the same song over and over until I no longer needed to play the song to hear it. I remember watching my father talk to men of business. I remember wondering what lava felt like. I remember saying goodbye several times before I left. I remember being asked for directions and not knowing and still giving the directions. I remember taking the strings off a guitar and saving them. I remember writing down what I hoped would happen one day. I remember believing I already knew what would happen. I remember checking to see the door was locked. I remember trying to understand what it would be like to hear other people’s prayers. I remember keys I couldn’t remember what they went to. I remember not being able to remember the password. I remember trying on new clothes that didn’t fit. I remember not wanting to close my eyes yet. I remember waiting for the rain to pass. I remember a voice I recognized muffled through walls late and in darkness. I remember the water at my knees then at my waist then at my neck. I remember knots in the hair that held the comb from combing. I remember a light shined down my throat. I remember selecting one ring from many rings available for purchase. I remember peeling. I remember the different kinds of blue a bruise could be. I remember searching for the sentence I loved in the book I loved. I remember breathing into my hands to make them warm. I remember being unable to lift myself and finding another person there to lift me. I remember feeling like the day would never come. I remember knowing I wouldn’t know when I no longer remember what I remembered. I remember not liking how I looked for years. I remember metal in my mouth. I remember the wind against my face. I remember empty cages and colored wires. I remember diving. I remember opening the blinds at night. I remember believing I’d been going where I meant to go. I remember saying my name until it no longer felt like anything. I remember fearing what I’d said aloud would become true. I remember the scabs on my fingers. I remember gold robes. I remember holding someone’s hands in mine. I remember being scanned for parasites. I remember panes of glass. I remember cutting the words out of the paper without purpose. I remember standing in line for something I didn’t want. I remember the fear of my teeth being removed. I remember my tongue against my teeth. I remember pressing pause and it not pausing. I remember how the surface would get so hot. I remember the room we weren’t supposed to go in and therefore wished to more than ever. I remember spreading out in green. I remember the eclipse and what it meant to me. I remember the bathwater. I remember no moon. I remember believing bodies were hollow on the inside. I remember counting days down to one day. I remember chords I had not played. I remember seeing myself in a crowd across a large room. I remember stairwells that never seemed to end. I remember the skin of horses. I remember patterns. I remember whole rooms full of flowers. I remember games we played pretending we were wolves. I remember where the mountain disappeared. I remember trying not to wake the baby. I remember sand in the bed we never planned to leave. I remember drawing a picture of my face that resembled no one I knew. I remember the dials on our oven. I remember my mother’s pins. I remember asking someone else to choose. I remember leaving the lens cap on the camera. I remember chisels. I remember rooms that seemed a different size each time. I remember the darkness in the container. I remember wiping the grease off the meat. I remember the blood on my shirt in the sunlight. I remember spinning and stopping. I remember endless alternate endings. I remember inhaling between lines sung in the song. I remember asking someone to come nearer.

I come into the house and there is snow. Beyond the house it’s snowing, too. The snow is cinder and skin. It rains forever and has rained forever.

I close my eyes and open my eyes and the man I was once is there before me, not anyone I know by name but someone crushed between the sum. His body is made of all the bodies having been consumed into a single flesh. He is translucent. He stands craned with his arms above his head and eyes wide open, so much skin he has no features. The mass of his body is wet with blood pouring through his openings.

The blood runs off of his body into the ground, caking layers that lick beneath my feet and hide the world. I realize I am bleeding too, gore from each pore of me erupting off to match the other man. I see my arms are raised like his; our skins are knitting, while beneath them congregate the rub of days I can’t remember living.

The world breathes with us. And the days. The screws and bolts turn in their sleeves. Blood pours in from the window and the sockets. It pours in from the speakers in the walls also, through any gap it can imagine.

Today above us all the stars are bleeding, and the sun’s face, and the planets. Birds raining blood and the idea of god. And the corridors removed of destination. The age of the earth gathers packed in and still pouring hot and on inside itself all at once and never-ending.

I close my eyes and at the same time feel the eyes of all the bodies around me open and behind the skin there is no lens.

I fear I am not ending or beginning, but that I am.

I remember believing you could remember things about the days that surrounded your whole life and became carried in the place where you were meant to live forever in you.

I remember how the teeth fell from my mouth. They were beaten from me, or I lost them growing older. What’s the difference. I remember how where the teeth fell out more teeth came in behind them. And behind those teeth, more blood, and behind that, any memory.

I remember remembering I folded up a forest and I ate it. I’d chewed the dirt out from between the roots and felt it grow out in the long locks of my hair.