Poetry

Faulkner: prose-poem by Alex Wells

i.

The terminal is empty. I can hear the fluorescent buzz and the distant echo of a dirty cough. I am utterly alone and it feels free.

ii.

A girl exits the bathroom, toting a bulky baby bag, full of whatever the fuck you keep in those. She’s curious, carrying that thing with no baby accompanying her. I wonder what she would look like naked, then try to clear my head because she’s probably a mother with a husband and a home and a dog and a life.

iii.

This plane has the least amount of people I’ve ever seen; I get a row to myself, but the lady still makes me wear that useless belt. I’m positive that thing has never saved a life.

iv.

That same girl is across the aisle from me, and now I can say for sure that she is a girl. She’s no more than twenty one but extraordinarily beautiful. She keeps pursing her lips, like she’s getting ready for a kiss, but instead she’s meticulously writing notes in a copy of As I Lay Dying by Faulkner. Her hair cuts between itself in a sort of messy way, making it look effortless to be that pretty. It takes me thirty minutes up in those dark, deep clouds to think of something to say to her and then another ten to actually gather the courage to say it.

v.

“I love that book.”

Pause, then she looks up, catches my eyes and pulls a white bud out of her ear. Shit, I think, I didn’t even see that music. Now I look like an asshole. I curse my luck but continue to stare at her eyes. They look like blue glass.

“What?”

“I said I really enjoyed that book a lot.”

“Oh really? Most people have either never read any Faulkner or hate his guts after they put down the book.”

I love that she has such strong opinions to a stranger, and I love the way her breasts are sizable but modest in a shapely way.

“Well, I sort of had to read it in my junior year of high school, but I couldn’t get enough of his complex character development.”

She eyes me sidewise and I suddenly think I’ve fucked up by acting like a stuck up English major (which I sort of am, except not really stuck up, I just like talking about books and shit). Then she smiles and I realize she was trying to gage whether I was taking her seriously or not. I keep my face glued to hers so she knows I respect her choice of literature.

“Yeah I agree…some of my friends say that he’s too confusing and overwhelming, but I think he’s trying to challenge his own perception of the human condition.”

“If they hate confusing, they probably shouldn’t read The Sound and the Fury. That thing is a chronological mind-fuck.”

I immediately regret my choice of words and apologize quickly but she’s already getting up. I’ve offended her and she’s changing seats; my mind is working like a beehive to figure out how to remedy this situation but I got nothing. She sidles over to the aisle, holding her place in the book with her slender, painted fingers. Then she sits down next to me and opens the book, showing me a note she took: “dialogue progression suggests that author is testing the boundaries of time.”

Nobody’s perfect, but she’s fucking perfect.