How He manages upstairs, who knows, how they manage to able Him up, tuck Him taut into sheets soiled, got me. He’s storied, prayed tight, then left for that further diaspora known as neither sleeping nor waking, that time of rolling around and of rocking, wriggling, snuggling, of flatus and lull, having laid under His pillow, with pillow under His knees, on His stomach with the edge of the pillow itched along His staff in the midst of a shed and the scratchy sacs that cower below, lying with His head on the pillow set around His ears as a mouthful, to swallow His dreams. Israel had left only an hour ago, turning lips to His, whispering into them name…Benjamin, and with unsettled gut sensing a matter unfinished, the amorphous undone and leftover, He frees Himself from His sheets and stands; sneaky feets quietly and nude save that diaper yet another of Israel’s old outfashion shirts sleeved around waist, He one foots then another then toes and then tips. He stands at the door as fat as an idol halffinished, marbled at the threshold of hall. An idol, with an animate appetite. It’s a need for the leftovers, physical, those of the Sabbath especially, and though there’s the suspicion that sneaky He will have to account for them dawn the morning, it’s overpowering, just the thought of it, that leftover fowl going to waste, is oppressive, it must be so tasty, so filling, there in the fridge and freezing in there with the dial on 9, it needs His warmth, it wants Him and His only, dead in its own juices for hours after hours and hours soaking up all the multitudinous goodnesses, yum in the tum, the only one who loves Him, this poultry, the only one who can, who’ll make Him happy, and if not, there’s always experience to invoke, mistakes to be made and to be made again and again but each making made better — chicken drizzled with sauce, dipped twice then twice more; meals take on whole new dimensions — of taste, scent, textural — when eaten twice, especially if the second’s eaten hours after the first, when there’s a separation, a break, a puttingbetween, so that everything’s had time to gel, to congeal, to breathe in its own steaming waft, to age, not even to go totally cold but just right, and who is He to say no, after all, He’s just an infant, how does He know from denial. He can barely talk, if He knew from saying no He might’ve never been born; Will Power, dunno, Will Power, never met him, was he related to Ima or…
He — Benjamin — doesn’t yet possess the weakness that is restraint in accordance with the growth of His flesh and intelligent soul, and as if to prove such to Himself (satisfying ego, in the service of other appetites), He has the thought to step slow, and precise, to avoid problem floorboards, stares at every door drafting the hallway to stairs, stares them shut, wills them asleep until morning. Then, stops, waits at the slightest settle of foundation. Empty, the stomach of floor. Rumbling plank. No snorting snore, no din of dream. Bereft of mucosal stertor, the gunk of Israel’s caffeinated cigar. He stops at the stairs, at their head, the progenitor of descent, if patrilineal then of His God.
