| Rust Lipstick The dirt is still in the shape of the pot, except at the bottom, which forms to the top of the blender base it�s plunked atop. Flowers above fist-crumpled leaves. I might ask about the chain, beneath the soil, tangled in the teeth that interlock and spin the blender�s blades. But I may as well ask why the blender casts no shadow. The steel pipe is sawed off diagonally into a sharp wedge, like a shank. Despite the rust�s threat, it�s too short and too wide to be dangerous though, unless you sat on it. It�s part of an inside joke shared with my brother and Mable. She and I wrap the pipe as a gift to my brother. One of those jobs with 15 layers of wrapping paper and boxes, each like a Matreshka doll, opening to show a smaller one. First, we move the red refrigerator. Its hand moves only gently in protest, and the phallic bulbs growing from the crack in the freezer door bob somewhat. We roll out the wrapping paper. Mable stands behind me. How is it that I don�t count her fingers on my back? Attached to her torso, are all those terrifying pointy things. Her body�s warmth, behind me, speaks of our bodies folding and pushing and creasing and rubbing the surface of wrapping paper. Though her heat also whispers of rolling my belling onto the wedged blade of the cylinder. Or perhaps that warmth only tells of you cuddling me from my lap, the slot of light from a doorway unable to touch your toe where it belongs. |