we are going to get paid and then we will dress for the weather

SASHA FLETCHER

*


I was thinking of heaven or at least of the upstairs outside. I was thinking of taking a nap and just curling up on the ground and letting a good stiff breeze blow me on upstairs. I was thinking of being carried off by balloons.


*


I was carried off by a string of balloons.


*


I went on down the road. The sky was a picture of a lake. I put it in a glass and drank it. It was the best water I’d ever had. This is, I decided, the big deal about heaven. A choir of angels swooped in. They had trumpets.


*


When I came to, I was sitting in a chair in the yard.


*


Where is this going she asked me. I folded her into an airplane and sent her on her way. Then I missed her. Then I built a fire in my belly and when it came out it came out as something else, and it galloped and it brayed and it shook itself loose of me and of everything.


*


A fireman walked down the street. I watched him from the roof. He stopped the fire using his hands. He said What are you doing. The fire didn’t say anything. He asked the fire if the fire heard him. The fire said I didn’t it said Wait and then he covered it in water like a sheet and said go to sleep and it did and everything was ok.


*


Later the fireman cut his own throat open with an axe. He had been crying. Out of his neck flew a bird and the bird flew up into the sky.



*


I was standing in the middle of a meadow in my yard. I dug a hole very slowly. I filled the hole with birds. They sat there in the hole, flying very still. I pulled planks of wood from the ground and I built a ship around them. I built a fire in my belly and I put my belly in the ship and I drew a new belly so no one would get lonely. I closed my eyes each time I swung the hammer.


*


The weather is staying underground right now. How did you get it to do that she said. Through trickery and also sheer luck I said. She was holding a box. She was very quiet. Look into this box she said.


*


I could see a small balloon moving up and down at the foot of my bed. It said Out here folks do what they want.


*


Did you see my bird last night she asked. I didn’t know what to say. It was looming she said. It loomed. It has a hunger we can never know. She said she has never seen its wingspan, but imagines it to be enormous. Did you she said See my bird last night? It looked cold.


*


I watched a bird land on a telephone pole and I thought maybe it would become electric but then it didn’t.


*


Our love is a road. Our love is a river. She said how are they different. I didn’t say anything to that. There wasn’t anything to say to that.


*


She said All the grapes are soft and I really don't like it when the grapes are soft. My belt is too tight. My nipples are sore. The branches and power lines were waving at us. With my free hand I waved back. She said Stop that. We were sitting on the steamboat. How did we get here she said.


*


The mailman came to the steamboat and heaved a box over. My books have arrived she said. Happiness spread over her face and ate it. It then ate the package and all the books and everything the books contained and it ate the birds and the fire in my belly that I placed inside the ship and from all of this we will move. I am going to put on this jacket and you will wear your new dress.


*


In the wild silence after the dawn we waited and watched. She climbed over me. She took in my tie with her hands and adjusted things. Your eyes are cold she said. I said how can you tell. She told me that she was the only person in my eyes. That I’d said that. Wasn’t that just a figure of speech I said? She gave me a look and strangled me with my tie a little.


*


My head could have been severed it could have floated off like a balloon with my tie as a string and you’d be holding onto it and carried far away and you could never get away from me because if you did you’d die because you would fall to your death. I would, she said, be carried away on the backs of birds.


*


She squeezed my tie shut and popped my head off and then I floated away but she didn’t.


*


One day this house will be a beach and this steamboat will be our home and the ceilings will swarm and the clouds will be hungry.


*


She was waxing the floorboards when I got back. There was laundry on a line from the steamboat to the back door. I bled all over her. She stitched me back up. I had to lean on her for a while. I have to lean on you for a while I said. She said that would be just fine.


*


She built a window for me. She set it on fire. It looked just like water. One of these days I think.


*


The sky is a lake and it will swallow you and all of your days.


*


Using our umbrellas we warded off disaster.


*


We were talking about heaven. We were talking about climbing upstairs while outside. Then we were talking about planting ourselves in the ground.


*


In my bedroom is a door and that door goes straight to the ground and in that ground there is a hole and in that hole there are birds flying perfectly still in a sky that never moves, because it is underground. Out my window is another window. It is part of someone’s house. Out their window is an alleyway, where a man is performing magic tricks.


*


I saw him pull a ghost out of his hat. It looked just like his assistant. His hat turned into his assistant and his assistant crumpled up. They took a nap. She said I imagine being a magician’s assistant is very tiring. Or she said He murdered her, and we should run him out of town, as that sort of person is undesirable. Then the magician was standing over us, and he was weeping. We looked at our feet. He kept on crying. He opened an umbrella.

sasha fletcher's novella WHEN ALL OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED MARCHING BANDS WILL FILL THE STREETS AND WE WILL NOT HEAR THEM BECAUSE WE WILL BE UPSTAIRS IN THE CLOUDS [from which this story is excerpted] is due out from ml press in december of the year 2010. sasha is an mfa candidate in poetry at columbia university in the city of new york.
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