The Sea-Wave Read Free Page B

over a rough patch, it snows. My glasses are blanketed with skin cells.
    â€œTo scratch an itch,” said the narrator of a nature documentary, “is one of nature’s greatest pleasures.” Well, I might feel an itch, a wicked itch on my leg or something, my back, but there’s nothing I can do. When you ignore an itch it only gets more powerful. Like North Korea. Or it floats all over me, this lilypad of itchiness, up and down my body and I scream internally. When it finally passes there’s a kind of mild relief which is probably not even close to as good as you’d feel from scratching.
    I don’t have dandruff. It would be worth having dandruff, though, if I could only scratch it. I can touch my head, but . . .
    Life is quite a bit worse than a nature documentary.

Major Depression

    M om has major depression. “I have major depression today,” she’ll say, like it’s a headache, and take Aspirin.
    She goes to Dr. Blignaut twice a week but she goes to me two or three times a day to complain about her major depression. She has no energy, she says, it’s a labour of Hercules to even make toast. “I wish I was dead,” she’ll say, but I have difficulty believing this because if she was dead she’d have no one to complain to.
    Dad works twelve hours a day and when he’s not working he’s running long errands. He could be having an affair. When he is home, he opens a newspaper and holds still for two or three hours. Mom looks for him but it’s too late because his skin has changed to the colour of newsprint. So she hunts me down, instead.
    It’s depressing.

Bacon Bones

    T he only kid I ever identified with was Bacon Bones. His head was too big. He went from being a shy, big-headed kid to a total shithead. He got bullied so much about his big head that he hurt too much for just one kid and needed to hurt other kids. But he never hurt me. He even once defended me from people. I guess I was the one kid he identified with.
    Too bad he’s in prison.

The Sea-Wave III

    I t was not a dream.
    The wave came in . I was sleeping. I leaped up. My hands . I felt the cold water, pouring.
    I felt on the wall, for the hole. It was only very small. I thought to grab something . . . but there was nothing. So cold, the water, on my throat.
    I folded my hands. I pressed them on the hole. But still, it poured water. Stop . God . My hands pressed together, as in prayer.
    I could hold no more.
    I cried out.
    Someone opened the door.

Odour Coat

    I miss the smell of people. The old man has a smell but it’s just the one smell and not a good one. If you put maybe ten people together, there’s just instantly this smell, sort of like how whatever’s in garbage smells like garbage. I miss that people smell where there’s sweat and perfume and whatever and it gets painted on your skin and taken with you like an odour coat. I tried smelling my sleeve to see if I still smelled like my house, like people , but I didn’t. I smelled cold, and strange. Which is pretty much how I felt.

Bickersteeth

    T here was an ancient guy at the public library, maybe eighty-nine, ninety. He worked for the library, barely. He gathered stray books from cubicles and slept in them. The squealing book cart was his walker.
    His name was Bickersteeth.
    I heard this conversation a lot:
    â€œWho is that?” someone would ask the reference lady, nodding in Bickersteeth’s direction.
    â€œBickersteeth,” she’d say, without even looking.
    â€œBickersteeth, eh? Like something out of Dickens?”
    The reference lady would grimace or grin, depending on the time of day.
    â€œWhy doesn’t he retire?”
    The reference lady would either grit her teeth or grimace and say:
    â€œWe can’t make him.”
    Apparently Bickersteeth was hired by the library when it was still being built. The contracts back then said you couldn’t be forced to retire but