How to Be Both Read Free

on paper folded torn eaten, wasp nest shredded into air burnt away to ash to air to nothing.
    Ow.
    I feel the loss, dull the ache of it
    cause I
had
it, the place where his legs met his body, the muscular dark where his tunic flared up in the breeze as he went, I had it like telling the oldest story in the world cause there’s a very pure pleasure in a curve like the curve of a buttock : the only other thing as good to draw is the curve of a horse and like a horse a curved line is a warm thing, good-natured, will serve you well if not mistreated, and the curves of his sleeves concertina-ing down and back from his shoulders, blanket stitch then scallop-bite edge, round his waist a double yarnstrand to hold him well.
    Ilike a twist of yarn, 2 strands twisted together for strength : I like a length of rope : the rope after a hanging they sold, I remember, in the market, was cut into pieces you’d buy for luck so you’d never yourself be.
    Hanged, I mean.
    What, – – was, was I? –
    surely not – never, was I, hanged? – oh.
    Oh.
    Was I?
    No
.
    Pretty sure : I wasn’t.
    But how did I, then? End?
    I can’t recall an end at all, any end I ever, can’t, any, demise, no –
    cause maybe –
    maybe I … never ended?
    Hey!
    I
did that picture : hey!
    Can’t hear me.
    Sunlight hitting the yellowing leaves, I was a child, small, on a stone slab warm from the sun, almost too small to walk I think and something was twisting itself down through the air and landed in the middle of the pool of horse piss, the foam and the bubbles nearly all off it but the smell of it still fine in the dip in the stone between the old path and the new path that he’d made in the yard for the carts for the stones, my father.
    Thething that fell caused a circle to happen, a ring to appear in the piss : the ring widened and widened until it got to the edges and vanished.
    It was a small black ball like the head of an infidel : it had a single wing, a hard and feathery-looking thing stuck straight out of it.
    The ring that it made in the pool when it fell, though, was gone.
    Where’d it go?
    I shouted the words, but she was trampling cloth in the big half-barrel : she was making the cloth turn white with the soap, she was singing, didn’t hear me, my mother.
    I called again.
    Where’d it go?
    She still didn’t hear me : I picked up a stone : I aimed at the side of the barrel, I missed, hit a chicken in its sidefeathers instead : the chicken made a chicken noise, jumped and nearly flew : it ran about in a dance that made me laugh, it panicked all the geese and the ducks and the other chickens : but my mother had seen the stone hit the chicken and she leapt out of the barrel and ran towards me with her hand in the air cause she was a despiser of cruel things.
    I wasn’t, I said. I didn’t. I was calling you. But you were preoccupied so I threw it to get your attention. I didn’t mean to hit the chicken. The chicken got in the way.
    Shedropped her hand to her side.
    Where did you learn that word? she said.
    Which word? I said.
    Preoccupied, she said. Attention.
    From you, I said.
    Oh, she said.
    She stood in the dust with her wet feet : her ankles were beaded with light.
    Where’d it go? I said.
    Where’d what go? she said.
    The ring, I said.
    What ring? she said.
    She got straight down and looked in the pool : she saw the winged thing.
    That’s not a ring, she said. That’s a seed.
    I told her what happened : she laughed.
    Oh, she said.
That
sort of ring. I thought you meant a ring for a finger, like a wedding ring or a gold ring.
    My eyes filled with tears and she saw.
    Why are you crying? she said. Don’t cry. Your sort of ring is much better than those.
    It went, I said. It’s gone.
    Ah, she said. Is that why you’re crying? But it hasn’t gone at all. And that’s why it’s better than gold. It hasn’t gone, it’s just that we can’t see it any more. In fact, it’s still going, still growing. It’ll never stop going, or growing