Grandpa records everything. His Plautdietsch accent at breakfast orders you to turn around, wave spoon at camera. Back home, your parents perform renovations: Mom slugging holes in drywall for Pops to patch. After the car crash Grandma plays tapes on loop for a year. A rotten box of them shows up blank but with sound. You name each noise: Jackie chopping watermelon, Deb slurping from the hose, that neighbour’s fat Chihuahua in the kiddie pool. It gets so you know which season by a wavelength of breath. Grandma laughs at herself in the living room, drapes drawn, watching a black box. But when he huffs, mumbles through the speaker, you don’t blink. • Your bunkie has AIDS and loves a scrap. He chokes below, coughs, lungs like a damp paper bag. The ones he clocks just bolt. Christened Torpedo, in the caf real quiet behind Hitler who cussed him out for using the clippers, your bunkie winked then snapped a hook into The Führer’s ear. He stomped the steel gangway outside Sharky’s cell, red fists raised, shouted I’m the king of the world before the COs unloaded two cans of mace on him, flopped face down. The grate engraved his gagging mouth. Milky hush of spray stained his head. Sharky got him back, cracked the tin edge of a food tray across his scabbed dome, stamped him into the pay phone. Listen to each sigh and night-toss. His skin peels the gym mat. Hear him masturbate pre-dawn, the dry tug, reckless hoorah. Often you hear him hearing you hearing him, hear him thinking you never sleep, thinking you think too much. Your ears raw from damp tissues molded in. His huffs echo through the cell. • Sleeping in a clapboard boathouse on Matsqui Slough, one year out, where wind whines through boards worn concrete-smooth, the tin roof rattles, sudsy floodtides pat divots in the grey clay and muck and gulls squawk from the dock all night, you, awake at four AM, grind each huff through your head, cough, mumble in bed and scare yourself.
Echoes
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