C19
Public Record
Excerpt from novel: Best Cellar

I can't take anymore love I think.

Don't really want it.
Carrie and i had all the love we could need
just between the two of us,
then Isaac came along.
It is impossible that any person on this
godforsaken planet loves any noun
as much as I loved that ugly kid.
The way his beady little eyes lit up
when I would come home from work
and he'd waddle those pigeon toes over to me
and lift his chubby arms to tell me to carry him around
and my black heart turned to porridge.
he laughed like I laughed,
so I made him laugh more.

We would carry on conversations, me and that little
sperm-and-egg. He'd ask about why the clouds were orange at night
and I would make up answers like
the clouds would get hot from all the sunlight during the day
and when they went orange that meant they were cooling off.
I wanted him to think I was the smartest man alive.
He broke a picture frame while playing with his cars,
flung one clear across the room,
and it broke me in half to pretend to be angry with him.
His hair was long and Carrie-brown.
He chewed with his mouth open,
ran with his whole body,
wasn't worried about anything but now.

He would fall asleep in the backseat
and I would almost wreck a thousand times because
I was trying to watch his nostrils expand and contract in the rear-view mirror.
I can't take anymore love I think.
Don’t really want it.

Thresher Charles