Improv 2, Week 12

(THE WAY HE STUMBLED ON AIR)

After days of rampaging through dreams she noticed a shift in the
narrative. The night was broken. The air was accidental. The earth was
immutable. In this version of the story there was an obscene sun and
her words caught fire. She said What else is it but magic, that chasm
/ between things and their names and she pointed to his hands on the
outline. He painted sadness on her dress with a weeping stone. There
was no color on her tossed glance. There was no one on the road either.
They took off their eyes to rinse out ashes of sounds and for a moment
the screen was empty. He said Boredom / like an ill-fitting / speech bubble
and went on to adjust her belt. By that time it was clear that she brooded
over their setting.

Brigitte Byrd

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(AND WHEN HE WAS GONE)

After days of kicking a bottle cap down the asphalt, from Topeka to Summerset, she finally swallowed the sounds of her own voice. The taste resembled that of an accident, one in which a boy was involved, a boy with an abundance of freckles.
It was obscene. As the newspapers went there was a pick-up, an empty horse trailer, and them, the boy with the freckles and the lonely girl now kicking a bottle cap down the highway. He once ate a hot dog on the Fourth of July and they talked
of a baby. She licked the relish off of his cheek. Your freckles taste
like commemoration, she said, like the sulfur that leaks into the air from every firework. I will name you my favorite taste. It will always end this way, in a vow to never speak. A singular utterance: yes, no, I love you, could lead her back to those words. And him. Every once in awhile, when glancing up from the bottle cap, she sees a horse under a tree, on some farm, down some road, and she just keeps kicking.