46 | Psychopomp Magazine
somewhere behind me, closer.
I don't know any terms to put this in but—I don't know how, but I can feel Mason trying to have arms around me. From inside.
I am not aware of the decision, but I have just asked her to watch a home video of us as children. And her eyes are watering as they were when we watched Mason blow his heart out that night. And there is a heart racing and he's shouting sounds at me—did you do that?—and she's laced her fingers through my hand, her palm is moist or mine is. The feeling seems familiar. She has taken the state I am in as though half of me were dead. She is crying and maybe thinking she is sharing something with me.
And then I am witnessing my left foot stepping toward the television, sliding a tape into the VCR and falling back into the couch. She has composed herself to some extent, a last finger fixing hair behind her ears.
In television, the two of us come into focus and we are hammering in the last stakes into a tent. I have begun talking, but I am not talking. Mason is trying to whisper a name into my ear if he could just think of it right. It is then that I can first perceive this other intentionality in the shadows of my mind. He is talking to her, she wants to know about piano, how I played it. I cannot understand the words of his response.
On the television screen, at least, there are the two of us there, talking to each other in lowered voices. Mason is loosening his shoes, unzipping the door. This girl and I are still talking and my brother is shaking somewhere behind my eye. I try to concentrate upon the video. It was more than compatibility. We aren't talking, and our parents filming respect that. There is just the background conversation bleeding in here and there. Cynthia is smiling when she is not being spoken to.
In the television, the two of us are pushing our shoes under the tent and there is a cut on Mason's finger, a small spot of blood.
I reach out to see how deep it is and feel it to be only the red mud from the dirt around there. Mason laughs at me and then I am laughing with him. As we crawl into the tent, zip up, the noise seems to settle down. We lie down. We curl up against one another, close our eyes. I curl up against my brother, close my eyes. From outside the tent somewhere, I can