Pawns by His Noodly Appendage
His eye began to swell shut. A rivulet of blood traced
the contour of his face and formed a tear on his chin.
He could hear his heartbeat and smelled the burning
dust of the central heating. A bird crashed into the dining
room window. He heard the thud of the newspaper
landing on the front porch–but he couldn’t open his
mouth to ask for help. He wondered if this was the end;
undone at 71 years old by the chord of a vacuum cleaner.
The phone rang briefly; then hung up. An ice cream
truck turned into his street, and distanced itself. Beneath
the sofa he saw a few pine needles gathered in the curl
of an old post-it note. Nestled against the back leg was
a forgotten pawn and inches away–waist deep in the
blue polyester carpet–lay a king. He thought about
the bird that crashed into the window. He thought
about the symmetry. He wondered if the bird was
dead, or laying on the ground undecided like him.
He thought about what he might have done differently.
–Bison Jack
Her Two Cents
“I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind-and that of the minds of the ones who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.” ― William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
