Fix It Broken #3

New one in Fix It Broken. A little different for me. You may have to take your time.

Other nicefaces like Beeny and Tanzer and Compton and Oliu and Fowler.

Go read.

If someone is leaving and you are worried, what do you do? I cannot avoid a wall. This shit is going to happen whether i like it or not. I am scared. (always scared)

I know. I know what I will do. I will turn off all my switches. I don’t know if that is a possible thing, but I will try that. Oh, I will also white light everything. I will blanket them. I will blanket them all.

I keep thinking about the dead father and how huge he was, lying prone, being dragged with his giant penis. I keep seeing him before hillsides. The hillsides are green, narrow valleys, breasts against blue skies. They rest beside a tree. They set out a picnic blanket. The dead father talks nonsense. I keep thinking about this today. I think about how the dead father must've been too large to sit beside the blanket. That always bothered me.

“Whatever you do, don’t look at that old man eating nachos.”

Maybe I am thinking about the dead father because, out of everyone’s hands, I could rest safe in his. I could float along safe in the wet bowl of his palm. Sometimes a big girl just wants to feel little. Wants to feel light and breakable. A lot of the times I just want to feel like my father will make everything okay. But you leave their house and you are on your own and then another man is supposed to do that. SUPPOSED to do that. Maybe I mean my mom. Maybe I mean being six and underneath blankets rocking back and forth trying to cry without noise. Maybe being an adult is not easy. No, that is the truth. It isn’t. Nobody tells you that. You just learn it as you go.

Not big,

something small, like finding a fingernail on the floor of the hotel hallway; part of it painted red. Everybody is disgusted, but nobody moves to get up. That’s what drunk gets you.

I look at all of the bare legs crisscrossing, sandals, bottoms of glasses with melted ice, the smell of tired skin. I take my hands off the carpet. When we first got there I said, “It looks like a melted clown’s face,” and everyone agreed.

The hallway sits. One of the men reaches over and starts stroking my shoulder, my arm. His touch is soft and I want to close my eyes so I can feel it better. I want to close my eyes and wait for more. I want him to know that closing my eyes means I am giving him permission. I want to be alone with him, out of this hallway, away from all of the legs. I want this not to be a wrong thing. But it’s a wrong thing right now, I know, I remember. I feel her eyes almost as much as his fingers and I know I should wriggle away but why should I? I am just sitting here like everybody else. His hand heats up my arm. In the hallway. The hallway sits.

Everyone stares at the fingernail but I am the only one who speculates; making up tiny story after tiny story about the owner of the fingernail. They aren’t normal stories. Everybody is disgusted, but nobody moves to get up.

Three Places I Have Seen xTx

(Guest Post by Casey Hannan)

1. I have seen xTx out of the corner of my eye. I remember watching one of those MTV reality shows where they go to a castle and tape stupid college kids sleeping in dungeons. The "spiritual expert" told the college kids that most ghosts manifest just out of the corner of your eye.

When I'm lying naked on my bed writing on my laptop that's sort of dirty with fingerprints, I swear my ceiling fan is a ghost/xTx. She says something about my penis and I pull up the covers and say, "Aw, Extie. Why you gotta be like that?" And then she's a ceiling fan again blowing so hard on my body hairs I think they might all come out. If I accidentally inhaled the loose hairs, I would be allergic to my own body like people who've inhaled sawdust sometimes sneeze around trees.

2. I have seen xTx at the Home Depot. I wanted to make a coffee table, so I went to the Home Depot to ask about lumber. The lumber lady was holding a 2x4 across her shoulders like she was about to go fetch water the next village over.

She said, "What do you want?"

I said, "Wood."

She said, "Duh, you want wood. What wood? My wood?"

I said, "Yes, I'll take your wood," so the lumber lady took the wood from her shoulders and placed it in my hands like it was a sacred sword. xTx's face was in the grain. I touched xTx's face and I got a splinter the size of a pencil.

The lumber lady said, "That's bad wood. I'll get you another."

I said, "This wood's fine."

She said, "No, see where it curves a little like a penis? You'll never be able to straighten that out. What I'm saying to you is xTx warps wood."

3. I have seen xTx put sandwiches in my mailbox. I confronted her about it and she said I couldn't prove it was her. She said it was squirrels, so I looked out for squirrels, but they were all up in the trees cracking nuts.

While I was watching the squirrels up in the trees, xTx put more sandwiches in my mailbox. She put a note in there too. The note said, "Ha ha. You were right. It was me. Eat up, queerdangle!"

I went over by the trees and started sneezing. When I saw xTx at the Home Depot, I inhaled a lot of sawdust and now I'm allergic to trees. Out of the corner of my eye, xTx was putting even more sandwiches in my mailbox.

I said, "Stop right there," and xTx froze in the corner of my vision where she has stayed ever since. Even the optometrist can see her when he examines my eyes, though he can't explain it. I tell him I'd prefer if he didn't try.