i could have been part of the world’s largest fraud. i could have had my appendix taken out and tacked up on the dashboard as we drove back to wyoming. i almost did it right there. that time. that time with all the jack-o-lanterns howling in laughter behind you. i could have smashed a thousand suns on the hardness of your iron-plated heart. i could have used all my keys on you. i could have measured out exactly one hundred and fifteen index finger lengths. and still i would have ended up with too many little people. too many little people getting smaller all the time and slipping out the cracks in my walls and in the vents which connect us all together. we can whisper at them and hear one another in the next cell. our cubicle. our cubic icicle. i’m enlarging my ass on the copy machine. it’s been blown up to 136% and i may increase it even more. so that my asshole asphyxiates the whole world. or at least this whole useless world here. the one which should have been flushed and crushed so long ago. staring up at the ceiling fan long enough without moving your eyes will make the ceiling fan suddenly disappear. i spent hours trying to make the ceiling fan disappear in this manner as a teenager once i’d discovered it. stare at something long enough it becomes invisible. it’s very interesting what tricks we can play on ourselves. about that, listen. i’m about to make an announcement. i’m about to become larger than you, although you may never perceive it. and that’s fine. our time here is long since done anyway. you’ve long since gone over to the side of acne trembling. saying suffocate me, oh god. be not merciless in my undoing. you are the most professional man in the universe, and i humbly bow before your expertise. you are the quintessential independent contractor, oh lord. and i know your rates are high, but you are all-deserving of your fee. have i? shall i? give homage to the snake winding its way through the office toilet system. head biting its ass, both covered in shit. the forest primeval, oh lord. let me lay down and shower me with one hundred golden apples. dropped from the sun onto my unsuspecting head. i shall perceive no mysteries of the universe by observing their fall. i shall in fact be beaten senseless by the bombing. hands and fists and ring fingers of women i’ve loved. or will love. and the lengths together all their earlobes create when strung and stitched together. seagulls glistening in the bloodwater. i’m always and forever shall be attached to you. the two of us at the knee. a boy and a god-man hobbled together in a three-legged race. triskelion. the three hands strands of fate. feet wound together to strangle us. time-elapsed video of zits being formed overnight. people whose arms grew too long and became useless from all their reaching. islands in the sun. halibut. salamanders, in the elemental sense. and not the kind your friend had as a kid which escaped from their cages and died. to be found later, shriveled up on the living room carpet.