TYLER ENGSTRÖM / 3 THINGS
BROTHER
My brother has lived a whole lifetime in a painting called,
“and then there was nothing, but first, the centipede.” How
many stories each of those legs carried, all that
centipede’s have. You might think that I too am a
centipede but I am not, I am a regular man who is here to
tell you that we cannot choose our family. Sometimes our
family chooses us, sometimes our family crawls from the
drain of the sink and makes itself at home and who, if I can
ask, whose right is it to deny them of that? Who is to say
brothers can’t carry eggs on their bellies? Who is to say
brothers cannot be venomous, even with such pathetic
pinchers, in the grand scheme of all things? Who is to say
you cannot find them under dead leaves or buried in rotting
wood, seemingly waiting for nothing at all, but always,
relentlessly, waiting for it?
HOT NIGHT, HOT NIGHT
I count three breaths and taste my spit. Welcome to Little
Death, Arkansas. A man walks in with lips like rubies or hot
dogs. I know him, I know him. There is a knife inside of me
with no handle and I am begging him to reach inside of me
just like the knife that is inside of me just like his hand
inside of me and cut his fingers. Forgive me, forgive me.
Hot dog man. There are so many hard lives with soft
endings but that is not the point. The point is, the point is.
AND TELL ME IT’S RAINING
Things were mostly the same unless they were different. I
was doing the same kind of thing I always do on Tuesdays
around two in the afternoon which was nothing. This time I
was doing nothing with Gary, with is nothing, or different. It
was different but not that different as Gary comes over
often. Gary brought me with him.
My wife came up the stairs and asked me to come down,
to see about something outside that was going on at the
time. I went downstairs and things seemed typical, the
dishes were right where I left them, the fan was still on,
most of the plants were still dead or dying, the tap was still
dripping and Death was still crouched in the corner of the
room like a bad child in the 60s or whenever.
Whatever.
“No, not in here, out there,” she said. Alright, alright,
outside. I looked out the window and again nothing
seemed unexpected, again. The grass was still on the
lawn, the car was still low on gas, there was the distant
sound of children playing but no sight of any (like small
ghosts we keep to ourselves until eventually they gang up
and beat us to death). But then there was a tree, a few of
them, alright, enough of them, more than a few but you get
the idea. It occurred to me that I couldn’t name a single
one, not a single type of tree, I’d made no space for it
within myself. I know the names of every player that played
in the 2018 World Series. I know the names of six different
types of screw. I could name off every street in a 30 block
radius. But not the names of the trees. Something that was
here long before I was born and I couldn’t be bothered to
learn its name. Maybe we were the ghosts the trees kept to
themselves? No, never mind, it’s embarrassing to write
something like that. I am embarrassed for myself more
than you ever could be for me. Something that would be
here long after I’m gone if not for the fact that I’ll cut it
down long before then. The natural fate of the tree, after
all. I am Mother! Here! The natural fate of everything we
didn’t create and most of what we did.
The trees I said, sure, the trees. And I looked at the blood
on my hands. “Not the trees, you idiot, the neighbor,” she
said. “The neighbor is pissing on our lawn again.” And
there he was, sure enough, taking a piss. And there I was
under him, naked on my belly. “Tell of the rain, the rain, the
rain!” I will tell you of the rain.
Tyler Engström is a writer who spends his time dreaming of the man with hot dog lips. He is on Twitter @_stromo_.