Worms

Disenchantment wheelspinning in the shallow, silent foam of a french vanilla. Pain in the flick of a sugar packet. Alone, here, in its chemical aftermath: teeth sticky, mouth grey, and tongue on fire. Tears swell to the surface like childbirth, the shapes of kittens held by their necks, and still they wriggle and fall. They will hurt you until you let them hurt themselves. They will kill you until you let them go, those tiny water balloons that suck the sink at the pink of your eyes. 

“I’m sorry, bud,” I say. 

I choose bud because it sounds masculine and platonic. His name is Cora and I am in love with him. Today is the day after the day that his pet ferret died. We still don’t know what happened. His eyes are dry pink artifacts of late night googling. I don’t know how to talk to people I love and so we sit looking into each other until I feel the warm throb of arousal and need to look away. I press my bottom lip between forefinger and thumb. It is called a nervous habit but really it means I am somewhere else. Sometimes I turn the forefinger inward toward the pad of the thumb and pinch the lip with a nail. I push the nail into the skin and slide it back and forth or downward, sometimes quickly. This means indentations that well up into scratches and it embeds a lingering tingle at the surface of the skin. If I do it enough then the lip goes numb like it is at the dentist or having an anxiety attack. It is exhilarating. 

I feel my heart rate increase and wonder if I am having an anxiety attack, or if it is the coffee or the Cora or the lip thing. I switch to breathing through my mouth. It feels right. Cora is looking at me still and when he leans into the table, elbows daised, I revert to nose so that I do not look even more like a fish. My ears jut out squarely from my head and my lips are bulbous (possibly good genetics—possibly bad habit of the lip thing). My eyes are round and glassy and sometimes people think I don’t blink but I do. My skin gets dry and scaly in the winter and it is winter. None of these features alone is especially fish-like, but in conjunction they make a suggestion. I am aware of it but I never think about it until I am looking at someone like Cora. Fish don’t get tongue tied, though. They hide their screams in bubbles that pop far away. And I wish I could too. 

Cora turns to look out the window. His nose is his most angular feature, cast sharply from a slim, pink softness. His cheeks are red from crying and because they are always that color. His eyes chase cars apathetically. A shopping cart on the sidewalk obscures the view of the parking lot despite the size of the window. We got a good table. Cora was here when I arrived. Cora got a good table. I wanted to get here first so that I would have time to find my vibe but I am glad he was early because I would have just worked myself up and maybe even have left. 

I am beginning to understand consequences, which makes me want to not do anything ever. So I have been going out of my way to cross paths with Cora for months and I haven’t said a word to him in years. I didn’t want him to forget I existed but I didn’t want to risk distorting my fantasy. A fantasy is a very fragile thing. At any moment, reality can pry it open like a pomegranate and suck the pulp and seeds and juice out of it until it is messy and empty and confused. Reality is an atom bomb, and if the blast doesn’t kill you then the sobriety will eat your brain. I have seen how the empty people go. They dream and dream and one day everything goes white or time slows down and reality comes sucking and then they wake up and it is over for them. I am worried that is what is happening to Cora now. 

“My ferret is dead,” he says. 

“Yes. I’m sorry, bud.” 

Cora’s thin bottom lip is quivering under his top teeth, which are always visible. He rests his head in his hands, staring down into foam. He looks like he might start to sob but nothing comes out and I think about the empty ones. Empty people always end up full of people, but first they’re empty. And I don’t know what to say to no one. I don’t know what to say to anyone. I’ve never had plans, only fantasies. And they are too fragile now to do anything with. I spend a lot of time sitting still or walking in harmless places, remembering the prints I’ve left, the scales I’ve tipped, the butterflies I’ve killed. He shuffles his hair between his unkilling fingers and I think of how I would like to paint him here, now, like this, and still the split atom with oil. 

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Jeshua D. Noel is an award-winning author, TEDx speaker, and regular contributor to the Prison Journalism Project. A former writing coach, Jeshua now serves as editor in chief for The Torch, a publication that serves residents and staff throughout the Missouri Department of Corrections.