by Mark Waldrop
I remember sitting there on the first unfinished
rooftop, watching you building houses out of
words. You hammered in grammar and
punctuation; you said these things needed to be hammered in
by hand. You drove the long straight exclamation
points carefully. "These have a
specific purpose," you said, "one here and maybe another over there."
You pointed. I nodded, and the heat was so real I thought it
hated us both.
You let me sit as close as I wanted and you'd
let me hammer too. I bent all my nails and you
wouldn't give me any more. You made me
straighten them by hand.
We stopped for lunch to eat burritos because that's
what people eat when they're building houses
out of words.
When the clouds pursed lips and blew muddy
kisses through dust we sawed pages. "Sawing pages
is the most important goddamned thing about
building houses out of words," you said.
When I thought we were done, sun-baked-dry the first
summer evening you made your way down the ladder
as carefully as you had hammered. "We need to stir the paint."
I was working on bent nails and you said, "houses made of
words need people in them."
When I started painting you told me I was better with big brush
strokes that were there for making the backgrounds, so
I used a roller to wipe out the people I made. When you
told me that was the beauty of painting people on walls
I believed you.
1
fav |
1094 views
2 comments |
256 words
All rights reserved. |
The author has not attached a note to this story.
This story has no tags.
Funny, off-beat, and also lovely, Mark. A feat :)
Ah. I had a crappy day - that helped. Imaginative.