Walk-a-walk-a-way

On a polaroid film:
2 pillows (1 without a cover), 1 burgundy (so says the catalogue) cushion, 1 ventilator cord, an empty pack of rubber, you — a soldier of the never-ending past — in front of the camera (in front of me).

Behind the camera:
Your tongue fish swimming between my lips and your words, “I am joining the military. I will be intelligence. Somewhere in the East. For 4 years, no less. Leaving on Saturday”. My words, unspoken, still rot in my mouth. All the way from New York to California, from East to West and East again, from here to there and then to everywhere, from now to 4 years and to forever, well, that's simple math.

On a subway platform:
We don't look at each other, when you jump in the subway car. We look away — for you “away” is two rats running, making their rat love, running, running; for me “away” is somewhere behind the eyelids.

Saturday:
Now. If you had money for the flight — did you fly? If you had patience for the bus ticket — did you get jolted? If you hitchhiked (to my heart and back) — did you get kicked, raped, butchered? If your drove (on someone else's car, of course) — was an Indian family killed?
Anyhow. All the way to California (“with an aching in my heart”) away from these hours, this heat, this half of me or you or our lack of motherhood, from the truck of that car that runs all rogues over. From all the killers of the road. From all us.
Now. I fish swim between the polaroid film and the dimes in my pocketbook with my hands; between your all-sniffing rat nose and other pretty things — with my eyes; between “die” and “please, don't, please-please-please-” with my everything.
And after they send you far far away to show all the wonders — herds of Chinese eight-year olds on the factories, private Pyles with their brains on the tiles of the barracks — you'll hear roaring with laughter Mao Tse Tung on his back.
All that blood and bile just to learn your war face, but you wore it once already, I saw it the second you came (with your saliva and sweat all over 2 pillows and 1 cushion), if you just knew that its ghost still haunts the film,
Seamus.
Now. Now. Now. I rub my eye: it feels like glass (paralysing my retina). It feels like glass — it — the film, a vestige of love, the air.