Wyl Staedtler
May 18th, 2009, 06:46:19 PM
For the last couple of months I've been taking a local writing course, in the hopes of refilling some creative wells. Our final assignment is due this week and we were given free reign to write whatever we felt inspired to write; this is what came out. I'd appreciate any criticism/suggestions (I've no time to write much else so will have to make a go of this) - depending on how I feel about it (I'm on the fence at the moment) I may give it to my brother on our birthday as well. We're both skinflints so he'll appreciate it for that, at least.
What Is One and Us
We were born with half a heart.
Ten days into August and it's hot, man, it's so hot that people are heading to the woods, looking for relief in the shade of evergreens and even then they almost can't breathe. It makes them crazy. The heat makes them crazy. Love '84 they call it. Years later kids decked out in tiny Columbia boots and caps will still be able to find Trojan packets in the forest and they'll hold them up to their blushing parents asking, what's this what's this what's it for?
Ma explodes. She screams and screams until they airlift her into Vancouver and split her open. Welcome to the world kids, says the doctor as he hands us, bloody and squalling, to a nurse. It's a hot place out there.
Katherine and Henry, says Ma, because they will know how to destroy one another.
Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth, says Padre, because they won't.
It's a year when they try to separate us. The books say it's imperative. Develop the individual identity. We don't stop wailing for days, vomiting and dripping snot and wringing tiny hands at anyone who walks by. It's like branding cattle. They give us back to each other on the third day.
We don't sleep for weeks after that.
Who's this in the picture?
Thas me.
And who is this?
Thas me.
Who is here, who are they?
Thas me.
But there are two people in this picture. What makes them different?
Thas me. An' thas me.
Do not distinguish selves visually and do not have average developmental comprehension of gender-specific nouns. Neurotypical behavior commonly present within a dyzigotic sibling relationship. Recommend speech therapy and in-home exercises.
Fuck man I can't do this, I say as we start on the third hour, legs burning, lungs aching. You vomited not ten minutes earlier, stomach bunching up in corded knots, the force of it like a punch in my gut.
Keep going. You always say that. You are a machine. You have always been able to find a rhythm.
I can't I can't I can't.
Keep going.
WHAT THE FUCK MCLELLAN. YOU TWO WANT TO TAKE A REST? MAYBE HAVE A FUCKING PICNIC?
No, no Coach.
Keep going keep going keep going. Your palm is on my shoulder, shoving hard. I can feel your stomach clench again. It's me who vomits this time, into the red dirt that is impossible to wash from our - no, my, her, his?- skin.
SOUND THE LINE.
The best kind of pace is a suicide pace and today is a good day to die.
By the time we're eight (magic number, our favourite) our passports have been filled and replaced twice. We can trace the stories of where we've been in the scars of each other. There, in the way your fingers always curl slightly when we meet new people, is Prague, where you - I - us - met a fist with your face. A patch of rock-tissued skin on my knee is Kingston where I tumbled on the sharp hewn stones. You limped for hours. Our voices, already hesitant with trying to pick apart language that only confuses us, stumble carefully over English and people can't place our accent because it's from nowhere. From everywhere and in-between, little inflections and dips that don't belong to any one place and so have come to find a home in us.
You are my map and I am your mirror.
The fire in Knysna.
I'm passed out in the backseat of Ben's car. Drunk as a loon and of course you call and you're drunk too because don't we always do everything together? Only we're not together and I can hear the fracture in your voice and it cracks mine, sends something rushing down the dry and dusty canal that used to be ours. This is the first time and the last time and like every goddamn time. Everywhere we go, we wind up back in each other, wrapped up in an endless inescapable loop.
Close our eyes and we can see each other. I can hear the catch in your breath and see the pale of your face and feel the flutter in your chest, know intimately, exactly how alone you feel. You say that Mexico is fucking hot and how the hell is Quebec?
My voice is gone.
Come back, I whisper after I can move again, remember how to speak, but you've already hung up. You're myriads of miles away.
I think about running after you, but I've never been fast enough.
You don't speak for weeks afterward. Not even the silent-speech that is ours. You just lay there on the bed, blinking and sometimes closing your eyes. The smoke damage healed a long time ago, minor as it was. Your throat is fine. You can talk. You won't.
I know what you are seeing. Saw it too, heard the dogs' terrified, frantic yelping and saw them. It was supposed to be an easy-out, the men with hoses said so.
I cannot take this. I lay down beside you for days at end, begging, pleading, please please talk to me. There is no me without you and you have checked out. Even my hand on your hip, on the stubbornly flat plane where we once laid against one another, cannot coax you out. Please please please talk to me I'll do anything we're all so worried.
You've never done this before. Not to me.
It feels like years before you finally roll over one night and whisper. Izabur. Izabur.
My tears soak the pillow with yours and they taste like hope and chains and something we can't ever dream of understanding.
Phrixus pulled Helle from the water. They crowned him and he fathered strong sons.
It's a boy. You are a daddy.
Dizzy I have a son, you say and you are almost foaming with fear and apprehension and undiluted exhilaration.
It's a boy. I am a mommy.
Flick I have a son, I say and I am almost tumbling over in terror and doubt and punchdrunk love.
Born days apart and that's almost as good as twins. Better; one from you and one from me and it's us all over again.
The day of our sixteenth birthday is the day after the long-distance argument that tears something small and vital out of our hearts.
We're in le Midi and Ma makes her obligatory call.
I have something important to tell you. Which never means anything important and always means that she feels neglected. I slept with your Uncle.
We think she has probably slept with everyone on the planet. Even Santa.
Seventeen years ago.
It's a lie, I say to you after we've hung up and I've stopped swearing and sobbing and pacing and wanting to punch something.
It's her meds, you reply before you kick in one of the cabinets of the house which we cannot afford to be renting but are.
We're both wrong.
Someone's going to do something that someone else will regret. And goddamn, isn't that the story of our lives?
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Aardvark.
Aardvark who?
Aardvark a million miles for one of your smiles!
That's a stupid punchline.
You're a stupid punchline.
Your face is a stupid punchline.
Yo' mama is a stupid punchline.
We laugh until we can't breathe, until Padre comes in and says, Christ you two, it's four in the morning and we've got to be on a plane in a few hours, knock it off.
We're going back. We're going back home.
Except that we never really left, not with us together.
When we move apart it's like the world comes crashing down. It's the quietest apocalypse you've ever seen.
There is this hole inside of us and it just keeps getting deeper, like our soul is one big, slow-motion implosion. We are the gravitational collapse of a dying star. There is an end to this tunnel and maybe we'll come out of it a supernova and maybe we'll come out of it a black hole.
This is what our life has been leading up to.
Maybe we won’t come out at all.
Here is a riddle.
The answer is: one.
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a266/lizmclellan/Picture12-1-1.jpg
Fitz and Lizzie, 11/2/87
What Is One and Us
We were born with half a heart.
Ten days into August and it's hot, man, it's so hot that people are heading to the woods, looking for relief in the shade of evergreens and even then they almost can't breathe. It makes them crazy. The heat makes them crazy. Love '84 they call it. Years later kids decked out in tiny Columbia boots and caps will still be able to find Trojan packets in the forest and they'll hold them up to their blushing parents asking, what's this what's this what's it for?
Ma explodes. She screams and screams until they airlift her into Vancouver and split her open. Welcome to the world kids, says the doctor as he hands us, bloody and squalling, to a nurse. It's a hot place out there.
Katherine and Henry, says Ma, because they will know how to destroy one another.
Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth, says Padre, because they won't.
It's a year when they try to separate us. The books say it's imperative. Develop the individual identity. We don't stop wailing for days, vomiting and dripping snot and wringing tiny hands at anyone who walks by. It's like branding cattle. They give us back to each other on the third day.
We don't sleep for weeks after that.
Who's this in the picture?
Thas me.
And who is this?
Thas me.
Who is here, who are they?
Thas me.
But there are two people in this picture. What makes them different?
Thas me. An' thas me.
Do not distinguish selves visually and do not have average developmental comprehension of gender-specific nouns. Neurotypical behavior commonly present within a dyzigotic sibling relationship. Recommend speech therapy and in-home exercises.
Fuck man I can't do this, I say as we start on the third hour, legs burning, lungs aching. You vomited not ten minutes earlier, stomach bunching up in corded knots, the force of it like a punch in my gut.
Keep going. You always say that. You are a machine. You have always been able to find a rhythm.
I can't I can't I can't.
Keep going.
WHAT THE FUCK MCLELLAN. YOU TWO WANT TO TAKE A REST? MAYBE HAVE A FUCKING PICNIC?
No, no Coach.
Keep going keep going keep going. Your palm is on my shoulder, shoving hard. I can feel your stomach clench again. It's me who vomits this time, into the red dirt that is impossible to wash from our - no, my, her, his?- skin.
SOUND THE LINE.
The best kind of pace is a suicide pace and today is a good day to die.
By the time we're eight (magic number, our favourite) our passports have been filled and replaced twice. We can trace the stories of where we've been in the scars of each other. There, in the way your fingers always curl slightly when we meet new people, is Prague, where you - I - us - met a fist with your face. A patch of rock-tissued skin on my knee is Kingston where I tumbled on the sharp hewn stones. You limped for hours. Our voices, already hesitant with trying to pick apart language that only confuses us, stumble carefully over English and people can't place our accent because it's from nowhere. From everywhere and in-between, little inflections and dips that don't belong to any one place and so have come to find a home in us.
You are my map and I am your mirror.
The fire in Knysna.
I'm passed out in the backseat of Ben's car. Drunk as a loon and of course you call and you're drunk too because don't we always do everything together? Only we're not together and I can hear the fracture in your voice and it cracks mine, sends something rushing down the dry and dusty canal that used to be ours. This is the first time and the last time and like every goddamn time. Everywhere we go, we wind up back in each other, wrapped up in an endless inescapable loop.
Close our eyes and we can see each other. I can hear the catch in your breath and see the pale of your face and feel the flutter in your chest, know intimately, exactly how alone you feel. You say that Mexico is fucking hot and how the hell is Quebec?
My voice is gone.
Come back, I whisper after I can move again, remember how to speak, but you've already hung up. You're myriads of miles away.
I think about running after you, but I've never been fast enough.
You don't speak for weeks afterward. Not even the silent-speech that is ours. You just lay there on the bed, blinking and sometimes closing your eyes. The smoke damage healed a long time ago, minor as it was. Your throat is fine. You can talk. You won't.
I know what you are seeing. Saw it too, heard the dogs' terrified, frantic yelping and saw them. It was supposed to be an easy-out, the men with hoses said so.
I cannot take this. I lay down beside you for days at end, begging, pleading, please please talk to me. There is no me without you and you have checked out. Even my hand on your hip, on the stubbornly flat plane where we once laid against one another, cannot coax you out. Please please please talk to me I'll do anything we're all so worried.
You've never done this before. Not to me.
It feels like years before you finally roll over one night and whisper. Izabur. Izabur.
My tears soak the pillow with yours and they taste like hope and chains and something we can't ever dream of understanding.
Phrixus pulled Helle from the water. They crowned him and he fathered strong sons.
It's a boy. You are a daddy.
Dizzy I have a son, you say and you are almost foaming with fear and apprehension and undiluted exhilaration.
It's a boy. I am a mommy.
Flick I have a son, I say and I am almost tumbling over in terror and doubt and punchdrunk love.
Born days apart and that's almost as good as twins. Better; one from you and one from me and it's us all over again.
The day of our sixteenth birthday is the day after the long-distance argument that tears something small and vital out of our hearts.
We're in le Midi and Ma makes her obligatory call.
I have something important to tell you. Which never means anything important and always means that she feels neglected. I slept with your Uncle.
We think she has probably slept with everyone on the planet. Even Santa.
Seventeen years ago.
It's a lie, I say to you after we've hung up and I've stopped swearing and sobbing and pacing and wanting to punch something.
It's her meds, you reply before you kick in one of the cabinets of the house which we cannot afford to be renting but are.
We're both wrong.
Someone's going to do something that someone else will regret. And goddamn, isn't that the story of our lives?
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Aardvark.
Aardvark who?
Aardvark a million miles for one of your smiles!
That's a stupid punchline.
You're a stupid punchline.
Your face is a stupid punchline.
Yo' mama is a stupid punchline.
We laugh until we can't breathe, until Padre comes in and says, Christ you two, it's four in the morning and we've got to be on a plane in a few hours, knock it off.
We're going back. We're going back home.
Except that we never really left, not with us together.
When we move apart it's like the world comes crashing down. It's the quietest apocalypse you've ever seen.
There is this hole inside of us and it just keeps getting deeper, like our soul is one big, slow-motion implosion. We are the gravitational collapse of a dying star. There is an end to this tunnel and maybe we'll come out of it a supernova and maybe we'll come out of it a black hole.
This is what our life has been leading up to.
Maybe we won’t come out at all.
Here is a riddle.
The answer is: one.
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a266/lizmclellan/Picture12-1-1.jpg
Fitz and Lizzie, 11/2/87