—THE DIFFERENCE IS THE POINT 

 

The Water Has No Place to Go

 

The guy fixing the pipes has been at it for hours now, when he knocks and pulls out what looks like a metal ribcage and says, Your problem is you need to unscrew the hose or else, come winter, it’ll freeze and the water has no place to go so it’ll split your line like here, he says and points at what looks precisely like a knife slit through bronze skin, but while he’s pointing he’s glancing at me for my reaction or something else, and I can feel him assessing me and this stupid big house, believing me to be just as moronic as my home, and he could be right, he could tell me anything, that Trump is really Christ and not the antichrist as I swear to God he is and I’d have to believe this guy, because he’s the technician, the smart ace in charge, he could bill me a fortune, which he already has, working on the rotted deck, walls and windows of this stucco mansion week after week, but now, in an instant, with his jabbing at the split pipe, it feels like a showdown of sorts, one I don’t want, but as happens in those aberrant moments where memory jumps in and grabs you by the scruff, I’m a boy again, eight or nine maybe, running through the trailer park like a slender stick of broken lightning, not caring if a pickup slams into me or if the cops come squealing up again, or if the neighbors see I’m a Crying Fucking Wuss, in memory I’m just a rusty bullet flying fast, away from everything I owe and hate and feel shame over, things I can’t tell anyone, appalling stuff that’s as commonplace as sundown, and I sure as hell can’t explain what happened tonight, how I somehow misspoke again, why my eyes are lopsided fruit and my lip’s split like a dumb plum, so when the guy asks me, Do you know what I’m saying, I look at him, I mean I really do, I dip straight into his eyes where answers are supposed to sit, but none are, they never are, so I say, Yeah, I hear you, Thank you so much for knowing what to do