by Ivan de Monbrison
The mountain is split in two. On the other side, there’s a path. It winds between the hills. At the end of the path, there’s a burnt-out cross. The sun has been nailed to the sky. Your hand is bleeding from your nails, but you’re not crying. The face left in the wardrobe looks exactly the same as when you put it there, a long time ago. The window has been kept closed because of the cold. A tree branch is tapping against the icy glass. A house is burning next to mine, and the flames of the blaze are huge. Nearby, a woman is walking along a path bordering a wheat field. Inside this field, a man is himself walking away, turning his back at her. Closing her eyes, she manages to see all the disincarnated lives of this man, disincarnated as only mummified flesh can sometimes be. Two hands pull the face out of the wardrobe where it had been placed, and this face has the rigid shape of a catfish. The house next door is still burning, as if it were that burnt-out cross that the children saw earlier at the end of the path; meanwhile, they keep on playing together, silently, in a rustic living room with wood walls. Their mother, without them noticing her, walks in the room through one door and leaves on the other side, through a second door. And I, even though I am holding you, my face, at arm’s length between my two hands, I am no longer a catfish anymore.