House of Leaves Vignette

The Ragged Edges of the Hole

Shaking hands, made steady by shakier hands you held, shallow breaths, the tugging of a needle and thread, gentle stinging, automotive glass, small pebbles from the road, lint from the interior carpet, all gently excised from the ragged edges of a hole, in a small basin, contained like a stanza on a metal cart, the dirtiest room of an immaculate HOUSE, this operating theatre, the second act curtain closing like surgical gauze over your iodine-stained skin, gloved hands searching like spotlights over your surface for more shards.

Where were you going in such a hurry? By my shaking hands and dry throat i can tell i don't have what it takes in me to ask you, and under the mask and the anaesthesia, under the miles of road you had worked so hard to put between us, i know you didn't have what it takes to answer, where?

I'm drawn into the murky recollection of our last words: maybe your last words, not my last words spoken over you, spoken into you like a conch on a black sandy beach, not the last words I'll speak of you, someone has to tell your parents, someone has to call your boss at the regal cinemas, someone has to make the hard calls, has to make them all out loud. Someone has to keep your HOUSE in order. My throat was so dry. I spoke into your shell that night and couldn't even hear the ocean answer back at me. I spoke into your hollows that night and couldn't even hear the echo bouncing off of your walls, your cave was empty. Your cave was dark. The manifold tunnels leading deeper, into the HOUSE like so many wrong turns in a strange city: i had lived here all my life, i had never left the HOUSE; i would perish here. I was born here. I would perish here. Hospital hallways bathed in off white light leading left, left, right through living rooms and classrooms and our bedroom, yawning, stretching out for miles in every direction, Like the blown out darkness of the pupils in your lifeless eyes, your windows becoming doorways .ydegart fo kcohs eht yb nepo gnignah tfeL