My brother presses his fingers, his ear to the impressive seal on the window, where the dulled argument pools and leaks in. The Sun is being accosted along the exit to 25, hat and coat donned, clutching a suitcase of birdsong color, still bright like yellow-red wax that melts itself. The horizon readies to give way, but a man, Shirtless sheen of oil, arms held aloft to Halt! the Sun. He pleads to the wax seal on the horizon. Shirtless man wearing a shirt of wax, my brother a replica of himself, ear pressed to the glass, hearing himself begin to pool at my feet, sticky business.
The Shirtless man continues the song. He petitions the Sun to spare him. The embrace too warm, the man with only his dignity left and that, too, melting. The Sun listens, generous. Taps its foot, a solar flare the size of a multi-department superstore. The Shirtless man waves his whole body as he hollers, attune to the sky in-tune with the swan, he has made one verse of many and the Sun must wait. It is evening, now. It is evening forever.
A mother reaches for the last item on her list, a candle sought out on recommendation. She cannot read the label, it is turned away from her, and she must wait for the Sun, and the Sun must wait for the Shirtless man, and the Shirtless man has collapsed to his blistering knees, gasping for air, song sung, his tears sizzle beneath him, before him, before they touch the pavement.
He dismisses the Sun, crawls towards an elegy, crawls towards that yellow-red flash approaching on the 25, the Sun (with a sigh) takes its exit, the mother reads off the names of her sons under the candle’s brand and she is gone, left cart and all, a missed take, it’s the last one of that scent and it will go to some oily blisterknee, it will wreath his chest and finish him, corona, it will never reply to the sizzling tears trailing out into the lot, her tears too warm to save, yellow-red flash in the night surround her, corona.
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