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Myrmecophagy

I am drunk like a glass of water, empty as a null set. My mouth is as dry as English wit; my tongue is like a hand caught in a closing door. Stolen heat melts me; owned winds make ice in my pockets. This is not the way it was meant to be.

Let me explain to you something. She was to be here, she promised. I await succour. I await, sucker. As evening draws on I am in mourning. I raise my wrist, watch, as the time circles, spirals, forming a cone as it recedes. An ice sickle, it reaps me. Only words do not fail me, but they pass me and I am standing still. On this corner, brick vertex checking my back, I stand, stalk, still in the tentacles of ice, the squamous winter squall. She has made this. If only she could make it here.

The wind offers me no quarter, but I give eight bits to the crepitant shreds of tape and lint careening with exsiccated cup. Go on, go on. I am emptier than you are, ants crawl up my tongue and down my throat, and the queen rests in my amygdala. Eight-sixteen and thirty-two seconds. Three, four, five. This mirror sidewalk shows only my sole. She said she would arrive!

Taxis dance by, salting the uppers and tibias. I whirl at every step, every sidling shadow that is routed to this spot as I stand entwined in blue vines of Thulean air. Loss is my only comfort and all that I can hope for and expect. Eight, my pride was swallowed; by a score past I know she has won though she does not have to. This is all: I can stand, no more. Until I have spied her, in silk, weaving her way down the glittering strand, I am left hanging, consumed from within by murmuring echoes.

 

 

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