I feel I've been behaving in a manner warranting apology but unfortunately I don't know if I am the man to deliver the message. The messenger is out of the habit but may well bounce back long enough to deliver this overdue package, if it is, in fact, needed.

Help!

The messenger has fallen asleep and cannot get up. Someone's cool, dry palm on the messenger's forehead and the birds they can hear from behind their closed eyelids confirm that there is no fever and so the sleep is deemed psychosomatic and they are left to their rest. But the rest can never be too long or the messages will become indecipherable and no one will understand what it was all about. 

The words have a way of blending together the longer they go unsaid. Other times, the words become words in other languages, and those languages slowly fall out of use in favour of friendlier, more universal forms of communication. The messenger must hold onto the words in every form they appear. Sometimes they reveal themselves in deli signage, sometimes they show up on a billboard near the airport exit ramp, where they know the viewer will see them from the passenger seat of a car. Sometimes the words form in the fog of a car window, or rather the words form only once a child's small finger cuts shapes through their mists. 

The messenger requires supplements. Without them, over the years each fall will disintegrate his bones into a finer and finer powder until there is almost nothing left, and almost no way to retrieve the powder. 

 

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One of the first times I met my stepdad he insisted on giving me his camera. It was very beautiful, but I never used it. I know better than to accept the gifts in storybooks! And so I took it from apartment to apartment, and ten years passed with no trace of my life on its lens before its rightful heir sent a letter demanding its immediate return. While I had always known it was not mine, I had nevertheless gotten used to its company, and felt renounced by the order. Something came over me and I wiped its viewfinder all over my ass before packing it away neatly to send away.

A crass and filthy child who no messenger could call upon to the castle. And yet, hearing news from my mother of its arrival filled me with a tenderness I could not explain. Perhaps I had never felt closer to them. Her eye on my ass, gazing at I don't know what; it's not up to me to know.

A messenger with no consistency can never feel complete. Mine wonders if its messages will ever be sent, or if they will arrive in time. 

Recently I saw two cows in my country who had broken into the apple orchard and eaten all the ground apples. They were plump, mischievous, proud, and were not moved from the garden without a great deal of effort, an effort I loved to watch. They had recently been dealt many indignities, and someday soon would face the indignity of death. I messaged my stepfather with a picture but, having been unable to identify the breed of the cow on his own, he has been waiting in painful cancerous limbo for an update. The other night I discovered they were corrientes, Mexican Criollo cows descended from Iberian cattle brought to the Americas by colonial Spaniards, who have been purchased and taken further south, to Chile. I don't know yet when I'll find the time to tell him about the cows, or how many will be left by the time I do. 

 

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