Puddles
by George
Sparling
For the first
time I see a blank, her face disappears. Nothing
exists, and that’s a positive development.
“What
happened to your head and torso?” Clara asks.
“I
don’t know, probably where yours went.
We’re not invisible, we’re non-existent.”
“Are you
religious? I’m not,” she says. Changing
subjects are clear indications of a vanishing act.
With no face, no mouth, no torso, I look down at
her legs. I’m a leg man and hers were great.
It’s too late for voyeurism. We could melt
out here and no one would find the remains of our
lives.
“I’m
a voyeur when it comes to religion and God.
It’s better to pretend than actually believe,”
I say. The flaw lies not with the stars but with
our emptiness.
“I
don’t believe in anything,” she says.
“But where are you, lost in the sunlight?
Where’s the rest of you?”
I don’t
see her pupils. I shade my head with my hand and
her body diminishes to a puddle.
I can’t
tell whether I speak to myself, the abyss, or to
her.
“I
loathed your bodily form,” I lie.
I’m
another puddle on the grass beneath the bench.
“I bet
you wonder why I agreed to this non-date,”
she says. It ain’t because she’s a easy
lay, sexism has been purged completely. “Sex
is useless.”
Our
insubstantial selves wouldn’t hold the
glands, organs and fluids needed.
“How did
you contract herpes?” I say. Gagging, I
refrain from barfing. “My girlfriend tricked
on the side.”
“And your
herpes came from her,” she says. She begins
to annoy me. “Once I visited a bisexual and
she gave it to me.”
“Yes. My
girlfriend was bisexual.”
“Did she
have a ‘Touch Me’ green tattoo on her
belly?” she asks. We’ve touched bases,
so to speak. I assent.
We’re
past being ethereal; terra incognita more apt.
We’re
blanks shot from a gun.
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