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DISAPPEARER I know a girl thirteen and lean as a sunflower stalk, all blunt angles and bones, a girl who never removes her necklace, a black string of shark teeth. To school and home, to shower and sleep-always the comfort of those incisors resting against collarbone. Between classes she slips her narrow body through crammed hallways, around jutting backpacks, elbows. Home, whatever's spooned onto her plate she nibbles with her small teeth, her larger pair dangling above the untouched potatoes. Only one finger's needed to empty her stomach, one to flush before she showers, water lacquering her skin, water climbing down the twelve rungs of ribcage. Off to sleep, barely a mound under the covers, barely the rise and fall of breathing as her necklace etches her flesh, checkmarks over her heart. THE TAXICAB INCIDENT A boy runs into a busy street, a boy who happens to be my father. Yes he's careless and yes here comes the taxicab. This happened in Bogotá, Colombia. And this: a boy falls, a boy who happens to be my father, fallen before the taxicab. You know what happens next: my existence spoils the drama. How the taxicab glides over my father and skims his shoulder blades. He stands unscathed and brushes the dust off his clothes and continues to breathe. Fallen differently, I'm not here. Fallen the way he did, I am. When the boy who happens to be my father runs into a busy street, I'm in the backseat of that taxicab with my brother and sister. The three of us, we're outlined. Our skin is translucent as cellophane. When we begin to scream nothing but nothing leaps from the zeros of our mouths. Such is how the future lives without influencing the world. And my mother? She's the girl hundreds of miles south, blowing air into a plastic ring skinned with water and soap. The flimsy bubbles lift. Whether they are pushed into a wall, the spikes of branches, or the sky's blue field, it is up to the wind. ALWAYS DANGER There's always the pit bull lunging for someone's throat. There's always the girl sucked into the shadow of a van and dumped in a field or the vast blue of the ocean. And the car crumpled like foil on the freeway, the yellow sheet, the vigil of flares. There's always that. There's always the plunging bombs, those wingless birds, silver-beaked, whistling their death songs. There's always the bullied kid with revenge in his backpack. Always. And there's always the Christmas tree in flames, its ornaments softening like sherbet, in a house with bodies dreaming under bedcovers. A cop to chalk circles around bullet casings. The black widow and a baby's pudgy arm. The fallen dominoes of a derailed train. There's always an epidemic congealing in the air. There's always the busy café and someone in a trench coat with his finger on the switch. There's always the man with a 3-inch nail driven through his skull plate who says he didn't feel a thing. BULLET We see the shadow of a bumblebee. Fat dot skating the basketball court where it's skins versus shirts. Benched, a girl flirts with a boy diamonded with sweat at the three-point line. The orange ball's pitched his way, fingers spread as if pushing a glass door. Around the girl we see the blue air blushes when she smiles. Shadow of the basketball slides to the shadow of the boy, charcoaling the court. Curbside, a lustrous car rolls, a tinted window whines down. The sky around the girl vibrates red. The boy shoots and we see the shadow of the ball on the pavement gliding toward the circle of the hoop. We see the revolver but not what zips out of its barrel, not the broken dash of its shadow. Another black stitch pulled from the world's seams. EPISODE His head jackknifed is the best way to put it. She sliced the teakettle's throat when it screeched on the burner. After the water was poured, the air above the teacup filled with ghost shavings. His head swayed on the ceiling like a birthday balloon. Outside, a windblown potted plant sliced the air with long green knives. You could see the moon was quickly becoming a ghost. The moon with its head inside the night's guillotine. A lemon slice to squeeze into the tea. He blew steam into the air before taking a sip. A ghost-cloud pressed its face against the window as his head slowly descended back into his collar. With the bedroom light sliced off, the dark arrived- a black crayon scribbling over air. His face was ghostlike. There, where the crayon stopped filling.
