Ratman

I arrive back from visiting my mother for a week on September 12th. Magpie gives me a live rat as a welcome-home gift. He never gets it right. No matter how hard I try, I will never be able to position my target closer to where he is pointing his arrow. I know he thinks he’s aiming straight for me, and sometimes I find myself capable of thinking this is endearing. He holds the rat in his dirty, browned hands and looks at me like I should know how to look back at him. Eight years ago, Magpie wanted to have sex on September 11th. Like the September 11th. I wasn’t into it, but I kept trying to convince myself that it could help, that it could make us feel like we weren’t alone or in danger. Magpie fucked me on a pile of old newspapers, my bare ass rubbing the newsprint, Magpie squeezing tight at my hips. I tried to forget the dirt under his fingernails, how it seemed like they never got clean. The whole time, the pile of dry paper wobbling, I kept thinking about the tremor of a building before it falls. I kept thinking of steady streams of cigarette smoke. I kept thinking of kindling.

I smiled at Magpie, because I thought that would be nice, but he had his eyes crimped shut, busy thinking of someone else, imagining the cushion of her breasts against him as he rocked into her, busy thinking of the soft landing of a safety net, of some set of primitive wall drawings that would affirm his sense of being right where he belonged. I made estimations. I thought of Zeno’s paradox. I guessed at what the halfway point would be. Then I guessed again. And then again. And then, contrary to the rules, Magpie arrived, but I was still only half of half of halfway there. He slumped against me and I bumped my head on the wall behind us and Magpie didn’t notice. This September 12th, Magpie followed me around the house with the rat clutched to his chest until he squeezed it too hard, and then we had several ounces of dead flesh and limp tail to deal with, and I wondered what made me come back and come back and come back. Magpie cried on September 12th. I had never seen tears come from him before. I tried to appreciate the gestures, the rat and the tears, once I realized I didn’t have to deal with them. I measured our life together and divided and divided and divided, and though I felt like I was making it smaller, in reality I was metastasizing it. Magpie looked at me in that way that wanted me to look the same way back, but finally, I looked away.