Markers. Ants. Tectonics. X. & Pain. & Illness.

At first, he had two keys. House. Car. Then he locked himself out of the car so he had a duplicate key made, and put the duplicate in his wallet. He kept his wallet in his back right pocket, and the key made a key shaped pattern, though it could have been a leaf, or a bit of a broken shell. Then he locked himself out of the house, so he made a duplicate and left that key under the mat. A week later the key was gone. My father was worried that thieves had stolen the key and were waiting for the right time to break in, so he changed the locks, and this time hid his spare under a rock in the yard. He was looking for a battery for the garage door opener when he found the key he had thought he had put under the mat in a drawer in the kitchen, still in the cardboard holder from the hardware store, wrapped in a receipt. He had been over charged for the copy by five cents, and had meant to take the key and receipt and get his refund. On his way to throw out the over charged key, for kicks, he tried it in the new lock, and it worked. He called his locksmith, who explained that it sometimes happened. That there were only a few locks, what did he think, that each lock on the whole Earth was different? So my father gathered all of the keys and put them on rings. At the same hardware store be bought bright red and green and yellow rubber key cozies and intended to put them around each key, but he could never develop a system and so the cozies went into the drawer and the keys stayed on the rings, anonymous, sharp edged. He gave one to each of us, and then locked himself out again, and had new ones made. Then we moved out. For love. For money. For education. We left our keys. My father added these to his rings. Then he moved out. For love. For love again. He found that his new house opened with his old keys. In the new house, he opened a drawer and inside found rubber key cozies in purple orange and blue, and walking outside he picked up the mat and found a complete set of keys on their ring. Each key had a different head. Different teeth. Different slots. But they all opened his door. He looked at his house. When he put his hands in his pockets, he found the rings and the keys, bound through their heads like a collection of pierced ears, and then he thought, no, that it isn’t right, as he ran his fingertips over the hard edged ridges, not soft at all, knowing that he could cut his fingers on these ringed boundaries he held, the very things that were supposed to keep him safe, could bleed him if he wanted, and in fact, were going to scar him for ever, for life.

He knew Loneliness on a winter’s hilltop in Virginia. Overhead was low and gray and the ground was white with snow and rose to cup the sky. The boy stood on the hilltop and wondered at how the snow met the sky and the sky met the snow and the two were the same and yet he knew he couldn’t climb into the sky. At that moment, he recognized that Loneliness was there, and that Loneliness had always been there. The boy was so relieved, because now he knew what it was that had been with him forever. To Loneliness, he said, This sky looks like the time when I hid under the quilting frame, and the fabric hung down around me. Loneliness didn’t say anything, so the boy said, You were there, weren’t you? And Loneliness didn’t say anything, so the boy knew Loneliness had been there. And then Loneliness, of course, went. Loneliness stepped behind the boy, and there it stayed. Later, when he was a man, the boy tried to explain to a woman how Loneliness existed with him. His first attempt, the woman had said, You’re not alone then, if Loneliness is there all the time. The boy who was a man said to her, Imagine you’re standing at the edge of the ocean, a storm wind, a fierce wind, snaps at you, tossing the sand and salt, gritty, into your face, the air pulling at your clothes. She had nodded, loving him, holding him, convinced that she was stopping the Loneliness. She rested her head so that her ear lay on one side of his collarbone, and she could hear his breathing and heartbeat and his voice, twice, first in his chest, and then from his lips. OK, he said, Loneliness is that ocean wind, only I never feel it on my face, my front, instead it goes right through, catching my back, pulling me away in grits, atom by atom. Always? she said. And while she was doing her best to distract him, he was thinking of how soon she would be gone. How he had managed to say to her what he had first felt as a boy. How the comparison wasn’t perfect, but it was the best he would ever do with words, and how those words would never be enough to describe Loneliness. The explanations vanished from him into the air, her ears, where everything would be broken down into chemicals, and lost to him. And even as he was thinking these thoughts, he was aware that he was thinking them, and that they were fleeing from their being thought, and Loneliness was drinking all. And some time later, the woman was gone. He had found his life was like that. That’s why he liked his analogy. Things and people sailed to him, he felt, born on Loneliness as he was. And these things, these people, he could never tell when they were going to arrive, or when they were going to leave. There was another woman, and as she held him in her arms, and he wrapped his arms around her, he could feel her own Loneliness plucking at his clothes, exploring his fingertips, and even as she held him, and him her, he felt their grips loosen, and he wondered who would be the first to turn to Loneliness, and say go ahead, take this, take this too, I know you, be my guest.

He can see shapes, as if he had pebbled glass for corneas, or frosted glass like in a doctor’s office, or if he had complete cataracts. But he doesn’t. I know these comparisons because he wasn’t born blind and that’s how he talked to my mother before they divorced. Hell, mother said, he might still think he’s with me, if her shape is close enough. I was too young and don’t even have his outline or blur. Where they lived, married, her describing everything, it was hilly, but not too hilly. A man with a tower made of bricks might see other cities, glowing half bubbles in the night. Mother said, Your father’s gone blind all the way to his fucking toes, what for he expects to do with his tower instead of building that extra room for you, I don’t know. She doesn’t expect me to say anything. As if her husband were blind and she expected her son to be dumb. What I know is that even if his vision cleared, he wouldn’t know which way to begin looking, to be able to see me, here, now.