Cerberus Smiling
There is at least one moment each day when I
imagine my own excruciating death. Tomorrow
evening perhaps space debris will fall from the ceiling
while I’m smothered at my desk by a gang of
Italian super models. Or cocktail waitresses will spray
me with gin and tonics as I cower naked on the hard
wood floor. I’ll turn on the faucet and a tornado will
swirl in the wrong direction, searching my body like
an early autopsy—and once again I’ll be under
a wave in the summer of my youth, trying to
make it cover me up like the kind of cheap
blanket they use when nobody wants to get warm.
*
I only own one photograph of my brother
and I together. We are flat on our bellies, framed
by a pile of leaves in a deserted field.
Our best friend sits on top of us, on top of the leaves,
taunting and triumphant, enthroned and embutterflied.
You can hardly make out my sloppy face in the picture.
(There is a dark substance that marks one side of my mouth—
dried blood maybe, or mud, or possibly a shadow.)
But I am the third head of Cerberus peering out
from underneath, arguing that I am there.
All three of us appear to be smiling. It’s not easy
to tell. I hardly remember this day at all.
~October 3, 1996