ellis
He spits on the floor and there’s spit on the floor. There’s spit on the floor and he’s in the shed and the fields are outside and the saliva vanishes into the soil and he’s alone again. Writers need attention to detail but he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter that the walls are wooden or painted blue, or that the roof is leaking its own filthy spit. Any walls, any roof would do. “$” he says and his pronunciation is off as always but that doesn’t matter either. It didn’t matter then and it certainly doesn’t matter now.
Did it matter, then? Does it matter if it mattered?
It doesn’t. Details.
He kneels, plants his knees in the dirt and picks a piece of metal off the floor. Looking at it makes him think. Or feel. Or maybe he can’t decide which. It’s dead, but he knows it was never alive. It’s shrapnel. Weaponry. A metaphor.
He knows metaphors aren’t real. They’re more than that. They’re truths. If each wave that breaks on the shore is a detail, then the moon is a metaphor. Accelerations don’t mean anything, not compared to forces.
He drops the twisted sliver on the ground and buries it beneath his boot. In a day it will be forgotten. This whole shed will be forgotten, its particular sights and smells and darknesses.
And the body. Just a body.
