Wall Mice
2020; Emerson College; Volume: 46; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/plo.2020.0176
ISSN2162-0903
Autores ResumoWall Mice Noah Warren (bio) There are two piles of documents: the one on the righthas to become the one on the left.There is a paperweight in the shape of a whale. Some pages have almost nothing on them, maybeeight words floating in eggshell space.They have to be read too, so I do, I drift over them. Once I used to wear a fancy belt buckle,a cabin in cameo on a bright black field.My left thumb would circle the oval as I wrote. I miss that buckle. And I miss the dogthat slept in bed with us for six years, always nearer to me—youcurled toward the wall, me in the middle. I'd try not to wakeeither of you when I got up at four to pee. You were the slope of a shoulder,the glow of heat beside me, and I could love that. The brewery smell wafts in the open window, tangledrot and freshness. Also jasmine, and cut grass. When someone dies, their fears disappearand the luster goes from their treasures,just like that. The accurate watch, the binoculars,the stag-handled knife, the silver whiskey cup that great-grandfather won at the county horse race in 1902with a quick quarter-mile. Look what you've done,it's your bed, said my mother [End Page 167] to my father, who was trying to get upoff the floor, reeking of Listerine. A sharp rustling, like sycamore leavesmoving against each other. In a previous draft, I was able to imagine you risingto walk around the city at the same time I felt the need to walk,or setting down a glass of water as I picked one up. In a previous draft, I understood myselfas a man who preferred to writeon cocktail napkins, because they'd tear if he got too invested.In that one, I kept my father apart from my loneliness. You know this: there was a timewhen I hung large silver-gelatin photographs of glacierson the walls of my bedroom.I was able to sleep like that. They were my father's photographs. When I was small, he'd talkfor hours about the different kinds of ice,about glaciers, and how they 'calved.' I loved that.I could feel it. I felt the huge jewels falling into me. [End Page 168] Noah Warren Noah Warren's second book, The Complete Stories, will be published by Copper Canyon in May 2021. His first, The Destroyer in the Glass (2016), was chosen by Carl Phillips for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. A former Stegner Fellow, Warren is pursuing a PhD in English at University of California, Berkeley. Copyright © 2020 Emerson College
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