He tried to sop up what he had spilled on the countertop. He tried to sop up a light green liquid that could have seeped right through the table and onto the floor at any time in the morning. We went to foul the well. We went to spit in the cistern. We weren't supposed to swim in the reservoir, but we still did. We didn't have swimsuits, so we tied t-shirts about our middles. We slept on a trampoline outside. It was a fine way to fall asleep slowly. Our goal was to fall asleep as slowly as possible--to take many hours. We found many comforters in the thrift store. For months, we collected comforters and threw them into our spare room. It became the most comfortable room in the house. We would open up the door, and comforters would slide out. Some of us would sleep on top of many comforters. Others of us would burrow into the center of the room. I stood on top of many comforters. I had a hammer thatIn I used to make a hole in the ceiling. The ceiling looked like cottage cheese. It came down in sheets. I looked in the newspaper and saw that the newspaper printers were trying to get rid of aluminum sheets. I drove a long distance. Her effect on me was not pacific. I had an attack in the middle of a field. It was not quite in the middle. I tried to belittle my sister, but she turned around and spat in a hole I had dug. It was no easy feat. It was not easy to tread water for so many hours, but I had no choice--especially if I wanted to put my head through a large mushroom.
She did not bite her nails. She cut all her nails to the quick. Right to the quick. She had to have all her nails cut close. She tried to cut the nails of her partner. It bothered her that his nails were longer. It bothered her that he wanted the nails on one hand to be long. He said he played the guitar and that he wanted the nails on his left hand to be long. But he did not play the guitar--at least, she never saw him play a guitar. She knew he didn't own one. And, since he is right handed, wouldn't that mean he would have to grow the nails on his right hand long? But he claimed that he played guitars in stores and that when he played them he played them left handed. She had a caniption fit. He vomited in the neighbor's pool. He watched his effluence bloom away from him. He worried he would catch his finger in the filter that was at the bottom of a pool. He had a pit bull mix that, when he threw rocks in the would, would fetch the rocks. He hated the sound of the dog having rocks in its mouth. The sound of the rocks in the dog's mouth reminded him of sunset. It reminded him of when he had a strange thought in a very dark room. He hung upside-down for ten minutes and then righted himself. He heard his blood. He wanted to listen to its blood because, sometimes in its rushing, it explained to him how he should assemble subterranean markings.
There were nuts in the eaves. There were snoozers in the house. They should have gotten up hours ago. She had to wake up the snoozers with a mix she had created. It was a pancake mix. It was not time to be noiseless when it was time for the snoozers to be up. She thought she should dig a moat around the house since the rains would come soon. She saw herself as a mote. She was with a moat because of the rains. Inside the water, she sprinkled oatmeal. She was at the seashore. She had not eaten breakfast, so she sprinkled oats in the water. She swam through her oats with her mouth open wide.
My sister would not eat her dinner. We found we could trick her. We asked her to sing a song-- one in which the lyrics were Open Wide Your Little Mouth. When she sang that song, she had no choice but to open her mouth wide. And every time her mouth opened wide, we crammed a forkful of something into her mouth.
My mother told me where she kept her night-blue nailpolish. It was in a location. It was hard to find. It was not hard to find. The nailpolish was in the attic. It was underneath a pile of spears. I brought the polish back to her, and she asked me to paint her nails. I had never painted nails before. She told me to be careful of the cuticles--not to get any on the cuticles. So I was careful. I painted her nails, some of which had become brittle. Just when I was about finished, I got some paint on her pinky's cuticle. My mother said, "That finishes it. Now you have to paint my fingers. Paint my fingers but beware my knuckles." I painted her fingers, and of course I could not avoid her knuckles. Once I got some paint on her knuckles, she said I might as well paint her entire hands. Her arms. He shoulders. She removed her nightgown and had me paint her chest--all with night-blue nailpolish. I was surprised to see three hairs in the center of my mothers chest. Three more hairs than I have. Would you like me to remove these, I thought, but then I remembered they were there because my father liked them. That must have been a large bottle of nailpolish! And it was. It came in a five-gallon container.
One the side of the five-gallon container, there was a warning. The warning was a cartoon that showed a baby falling into the container. I wondered if babies had fallen into five-gallon containers or paint or roofing tar. Five gallons of it. I called the companies, asking them if babies had fallen in. "Did you put that warning there because of something that happened? Or did you put it there because of incredible foresight?"
The pickle factory was closed because it poisoned us all. We couldn't ride the horse because everyone who rode it got a disease. We couldn't pet the cat because it bites. We couldn't cross the river because we were afraid. I sat on a wooden chair. The chair was slippery, so I fell off it. We were seeing who could sit on it the longest. I was lonely, so I hired some kids to paint my house. Whenever I felt lonely, I'd have a coat of paint put on the house. I would wrap thick ropes around my arms and legs.
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