The figure hung right there above the son. The figure had the longest hair. The figure’s hair was lashed into the son’s hair. They had the same hair. The hair grew shorter, pulling taut. The son looked into the figure. The figure was long in moments and scratched in others. The figure has someone else inside it also. Populations. Masses. Burning. The figure wore the son’s original shade of pupils, refracted now with shards of foreign color—red—red like the son’s bruises, like bricks for houses or wall paint, red the color the son had shat the week he ate all the mother’s lipstick, the mother’s lipstick in him, red like certain birds not yet exploded for the air, red like the son inside the son and the son the son could have had himself.
The son and the figure were mouth to mouth. Their lips were cracked and puffy. They breathed back and forth to one another. Their breath was made of the same cells. They breathed. They breathed. In each breath there was another word, and in each word there was another, and the son began to see the things the son would never see. They breathed.