NOTHING YOU EVER, NOTHING NOTHING

The black creation that’d been seated on the neighbor’s house’s front lawn all this time had by now spread around the structure, further on. It had covered over the old doors and windows with new doors and windows, such as the one the son had come to stand in front of, sopping wet. The son did not see the swelling structure. The son did not see the street, nor his own house there beyond the pavement—the same house they’d lived in all these years, they did not know they’d never moved. The son couldn’t see much for all the glaring—even if he had seen, even if he wanted, his house would not be there. The son felt sure that he’d arrived.

Yes.

Yes, in one of the windows in the house’s face he saw the girl there smiling. The girl’s soft head, shaped like his. He waved. He waited. He knocked and knocked and rang the bell. The girl was no longer in the window. The house was all around.

The son thought maybe there was something he had not done. Some invocation for invitation. He took out again the girl’s directions. In fear unknowing, he’d stuffed them down his pants. He found now in his running, all his nowhere, the heave and screaming, drenched, the paper had adhered to the son’s skin. Stuck to him, hugging, tingle. As the son pulled the paper off his body the paper ripped and became paste. It left small tattered patches near the son’s navel. On the son’s stomach the ink had transferred backward. The son could read the symbol words. The son spoke aloud each line, tasting language. In the list now the son found an instruction he hadn’t read before, writ in new blue markings on his belly—a new tattoo.

The son did exactly as his skin said.