compendium

somewhere i have never traveled gladly beyond

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

William and I had been friends since we were little kids. We became friends because he threw my sandwich on the floor in lunch and I cried and got both of us sent to the principal's office, where we had to sit on chairs so mighty our feet dangled inches above the floor.

William and I overthrew them, and then William left.

I can't bring myself to really say what happened to William.

William and I marched into that superannuated building in a superannuated city in a factory world that turns out hate after hate after hate and we threw a coup. Just the two of us, just us and the angled corners of the building, stretching towards us, urging us to free them of their burden.

William and I stole the sky back. I still had it, propped up in a corner of my little house on top of the skyscraper. (It doesn't seem to scrape the sky anymore than I do.)

We stole back the sky. I had cut off the frame with a broken pair of shears, cutting the sky free from its bonds. I liked seeing where the thick blue and black and everything in between ended and the cream white of the paper began. It was free, and the stars swirled off the canvas and back to their place.

And I could pretend that, and that made it real.

It was going to degrade itself, one day, but until then, it was mine.

William and I stole back the sky, and then William got colder and colder and colder, and William stayed cold on a day when it rained.

I had been sitting on the edge of the building, my feet over the edge, when the sky snapped like a glowstick and all fell down. It felt like that, now - fire threw itself up and rain pitched itself down, and everything else fit in between.

Nothing feels like rain. Nothing feels like their DNA, nothing is a drug like rain is. It's a mist, it's an ocean, it's an earthquake, it's a caress, it's everything all at once and nothing at all. It feels like your own tears on your own cheeks. It feels like fingerprints on yours. It feels like the pounding of little pulses on yours. It feels like little pieces of souls, immaterial things that can't possibly exist, and they fall and fade like nothing else.

William left with the rain.

I couldn't bury him. (I didn't have the strength, I didn't have the place, I didn't have the time.)

(I didn't, I didn't, I didn't.)

I couldn't bury him, so I burnt him with a lighter and with the rain. It almost burnt me, it came lurching so suddenly and violently. It could not be satisfied.

You need oxygen to live. Too much oxygen, and you die.

Just living puts us in such a position of subordination it's laughable.

William left. I had a friend named William, and then I didn't.

William was healthy. William was supposed to live longer than me.

I had to get more ribbon for the typewriter. And I was still playing with the very likely possibility that I was insane.

William is the reason I'm cold.

William is

(dead.)