Often it’s only when you tell something that you come to see its true shape. I believe this to be one of life’s great lessons. Thus nightly I narrate my story to the generations of kinfolk gathered around my hearth—really a hot-plate and the TV with the sound turned down.
For years you have lived in the next room. You shout to indicate you haven’t understood. I shout back that I was not addressing you personally, but, as it were, posterity.
A chair creaks.
“Don’t get up!” I scream. “It’s not important!”
“Then why are you screaming?” you scream.
By this time we have our faces to the wall, one on each side. There are signs—chipped paint, incisor-shaped dents in the plaster, splinters, stains from wine or blood, dried snot—where we have done this before. If we keep it up, one day our lips will meet, if we still have lips. It is in danger of becoming a metaphor for something.
“What?” you scream.
“It is in danger of becoming a metaphor for something!”
You scream again: “Isn’t that your big plan?”
“Forget it!” I scream. “I was just thinking aloud!”
I return to my chair. You keep screaming.
“I mean, are you serious—kinfolk? hearth? What century are you living in, anyway?”
“Ah ha!” I move back to the wall.
Edmond Caldwell’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, SmokeLong Quarterly, Word Riot, Pear Noir!, Harp & Altar, and elsewhere, and his short play, The Liquidation of the Cohn Estate, was produced in the 2009 Boston Theater Marathon, just over the river from where he lives. His website is The Chagall Position.