Kendra Fortmeyer | 27
fleshsoftness of his skin.
In the most specific space, in the man’s hands, she was becoming hollow.
This was a new thing to the tree. She had been solid for so very long. She wondered at this new coolness rushing through her small body. She wondered what would fill it.
In American Sign Language, applause looks like this: hands raised and waving. A pleased auditorium signals its appreciation by becoming a tempest of (e)motion.
Overhead, her flame-colored leaves waved applause applause applause?
VIII.
The body was ready, smooth and hollowed out. As he walked home, the pencil-maker rubbed his fingers over the wood, burnishing it with the oils from his fingertips. He’d present it to his wife, and in the morning, they’d lock the wolves in the house, go out to his workshop and select the graphite together. Maybe a number 3 or 4. Something soft and yielding.
He arrived to his doorstep in the dark, his body a great ache. He reached for the knob and found it locked. He stood a moment, blinking at it, tried again. He tried to fight the sense of something shifting.
The pencil-maker knocked and waited. Upstairs, a light went on. There was a shiver of curtain. But nobody came.
Rubbing the hollow pencil body with one thumb, the pencil-maker knocked and knocked. One by one, the lights came on. The lights of the house were blazing bright. The lights of the house could be seen from space, and still nobody came. The pencil-maker knocked until his knuckles stung and then bloodied, and then he continued to knock, painting out his existence on the door in small Rorschach blots.
Around midnight a voicemail sprung to life on his phone. It was his wife. She was weeping.
She said, I can’t do this anymore.
I’m not strong enough to say it to your face.