His hands caressed warm about my ripening flesh. Might this have been the one thing the adults took exception to, I’d guess correctly. Now, it is more deluge of memory. I remember the way the moon ironed itself across the mire. It reminded me of silver foil rippled from wear, poking and prodding, sneaking, and stealing of bits. A soupy, bracken onion-cheese sludge of things sunken into one of earth’s sores that have no right standing on ten legs, or a single bough, things ugly and of no constitution, but Herman-. I’ve only heard of “night birds” and “things”. I can’t scarcely ever call into existence his appearance, for he did not exist visually, only comprehensively.
Herman is a gentleman and a tapdancer. For the life, I couldn’t comprehend otherwise any counterpoint in debate. Herman, unspoilt, spotlit, aloft, drenched in light which wove itself unto darkness to some hollow abyss, open caress, as no stage ever existed, still, there came a soothing polyrhythmic prosody, a scheme of sensual rhyme of which only he could make look and sound so easy, and of which he had created purely for my entertainment.
My mind fails to recreate even a caricature of Herman. A rich, benignant host to my whims, intoxicant, sleek fingers, and ‘oh, kindly, sir, go back to tapdancing, this is going to ruin’ - groping ever so tenderly - oh, but so near my inexperience (‘yet, young lady, a real weal where most tender, I, fragments, you, concealed, mommy- she can blame it on daddy, can she not?’ Words, not spoken, never spoken, but, as daggers through a bedroom window - ‘fragments’, he says, and does not say, only knows how to stir), so near the nevercourse.
But to contain this figment, impossible, though he convinces me, I’m far too old to have mommy keep washing me ‘under the under’, says Mr. H., Fragments, to stay course, of course, ‘it was daddy! Daddy! Daddy!’. ‘Learn to thread’, spoke his fingers. ‘Though you know you love me, and the reasons - safety. Always safety, and despite the chill I am warmed. ‘Shed the weight of your pain over me with thoughts, tangible, and let me protect’. Always protecting, baby blanket pink, momma’s. And so he, Herman of Fragments, persists, ‘off to Blyway’, Infant Isle, as it is colloquially known (so many little teeth buried there, once flesh, thrown from the breach like water from a pail, those empty mothers, who wept and only emptier for it all, and only after).
So it is night again, and the lights go down, the candlelight stoked, windowpanes no longer bouncing and alive, in this cold, dead house, and I take to my covers, my eyes wander languidly and yet my heart pounds. I can hear it even from my spiritual dissociation (in fact, it is louder from the ceiling, my machine-gun heart). Footsteps, and then, louder, a footstep, but not, only more of a scraping. The hinges scream. It’s darker now. Chain of warm breaths floating over me like apparitions, frosting me if I were a mirror, and -
‘Shhh’.
‘Yes, shhh. I know only of your love. It’s ‘supposed to’ feel this way’.
‘Shhh, baby, angel’
The eyes wander. The ‘eyes’ have it! The light, pirouetting away, and then it, but glitter glittering, pierced shrouds, daggers. Fragments. But I can’t think of it. It is only fragments. Herman, come, where are you?
‘Shhhhhhh’
I’m abound, weightless, I’m above, floating, over the arcs. Beyond Way Street and the glades. The ridge. Feels pointed, and down, the chapparal, brambles, skinny legs, foil sheer across the water, spiraling, spiraling…
‘Shhhhhh…it’s just protecting. Safety. Always, isn’t it, baby?’
Think it, it will come. Unto existence, and into. Blyway, of buried little teeth. Bits. Breaking bits. Prodding. Fragments. Safety among Fragments. Pail water. Deep into misery.
‘Shhhh. Safety, baby’.
Whorling, whorling, the moon, the arc, rays piercing boughs, out there, a cyclone, beyond the boughs. Blyway. Would be snaps to be under you. Snaps, haps, happs happy happy!
Oh, Herman, what wonderful taps you have!