He wrote, traced in the old dust using his thumb: I HAVE NEVER BEEN OUT OF THE HOUSE.
He set the chalkboard down on the floor where, resting, the text changed: THIS HOUSE IS OUR HOUSE, YOURS AND MINE. The son did not see these newer words. He did not see the text change again.
The man laughed and clapped and splayed his hands — a blackjack dealer’s flourish, followed by sneezing. He went over to another cabinet and reached inside and got a tray. He went to the stove and opened pots and spooned things out onto many little plates, still sneezing, not covering his holes. The man didn’t say anything. He breathed hard. His spine looked ruined or crooked. When the tray was full — so much food, enough for several people — the man hoisted the tray onto his shoulders and pointed with his nose toward another cabinet door — a door shaped just like the son was — son-sized.
So, son? the small man intoned, key-teeth splaying, speaking with no tongue. He sneezed and winked. Shall we? Surely. Oh, by all means, apres vous, allons-y, 
, proceed?
FILM
The son followed the
man into the cabinet,
down another
hallway, also shaped
like him — though this
one was much shorter
than the others and
there were little
nodules with TV
screens on them
playing films.
Some of the films the
son had seen, though
others were unlike
anything. Some of the
films looked like real
people doing real
things, walking,
eating, taking a
shower, laughing,
playing video games,
brushing teeth.
Some of the films
were quite obscene.
There were films of pigs and dogs being exploded — films of women giving birth, and films of men with women in the stage of birthing preparation (one of the couples in the films looked most exactly like the father and the mother but much younger, the son thought), and there were films of milk pouring from another familiar house’s windows and its girders and its seams (what house? the son could not remember any house but this one he walked and walked and walked in now) milk that on contact with the air and sky around it turned to mildew and to cheese — cheese that would be someday soon sold and then eaten, sent back into other bodies, carried on. There were films of the son watching a film inside a film inside a house (that same house again, what was this? what was the son inside there doing with his eyes?), there were films of the son falling through a great and endless air, the rip of wind and endless light greasing his body, pulling the flesh back in his face, making him look older than he’d ever looked, even in the deepest hours of the night.
Each film looped forever unrepeating, roaring on and on inside its frame, watching the son pass with its blank eyes, negotiating light.
The son saw and did not see.
The son’s eyes were changing colors.
The son turned his head to concentrate on following the back of the bobbing head of the little man with all the food. The man had a tic in his neck that made him spasm so hard the son thought the man was going to drop everything he carried, but just as the tics began to get most convulsive, knobby knots, skin-held explosions, the man’s neck and back and spine at once shaking so hard he hardly seemed to touch the ground, his skin as heavy as the sky — inside the room then the films went off and there they both were, standing face-to-face inside a cube.
ROOM
This room—made from calming—was
stuffed full of flowers large as the son.
Some of the flowers formed a chair.
There was a gentle music
playing — tones that raised tiny bumps
under the son’s hair.
The man motioned for the son to sit down on the flower and when he did the man sat the tray down on the son’s lap. The tray was hot and heavy. The son could hardly move. He looked up to the man and as their eyes met the man bowed low down to the floor and as the man’s head touched the floor the flowers rumpled and the room went superdark.
PHOTOPERIOD
PHOTOPERIOD Inside the father’s eyes, white. A gold of many glows. xxx xxx Around his head, a second head. White-on-white-on-white. xxx xxx a hunk of blank space, meat or ceiling, a white of darkness inside the son, mask or fervor, him or he, or she: they scourged and beeping, gone, going xxx xxx A gold of man glows, unfolding. In stereo of stereos, so wide. xxx xxx [Inside the second head, the father [Inside the second head and house, a watched the space around his body city spinning soft. A sea which in the shuffle, open, like a deck of open caused a closing, a collapse of all decks of cards, into a house.] that ageless air same as it came.]
NIGHT
The mother grew, filled up with nothing — cells in cells on cells, a house.
CONSUME
In the light from off his forehead, the son still could see his hands. The dinner plate was larger than he’d imagined. Some of the dishes were labeled with square brass placards, many of which, by handwriting or in translation, the son could not at all read: pink meats and bruised fruit, slaws and sauces, all soft enough to eat without the teeth, and such reek.
Several other unlabeled items were the ones that tasted best. The son stuffed his cheeks to bursting. The son ate so much it seemed his teeth themselves were also chewing with other tiny sets of teeth — as if eighteen people lived there inside him — people in people — on and on. There was a drink that tasted like one thing until he wished it tasted like something else and then it did. The son ate everything on every plate. The more he ate the more he wanted.
This house was excellent, the son decided, spoke in a voice inside his eyelid. Whenever the girl showed up the son was going to ask if he could move in, or at least if his dad could get a job with the girl’s dad.
Completing this thought, the son tried to go on and think the next thing and felt the same words thereon repeat: This house is excellent—his screaming eyelid! — Whenever the girl showed up he was going to ask if he could move in—yes, please, now—or at least if his dad could get a job with the girl’s dad—he needed.
And the thought again. The thought again, rolled in warming foam inside his head. A tone. He could not shush it. It numbed his gums — the food gluing all inside him, singing, a blank recurring unto exhausted, fat-full sleep.