cabinets
collapses
Marlene
displaced water
Rose
Buddy had a collection of broken car parts that he kept in his kitchen and bathroom cabinets.
He imagined that he had closets in his bones. He imagined tiny closets in his cells where he stored his pain, buried with soggy board games and old mateless gloves. The language he had to talk to his daughter and his ex-wife was trapped in there as well.
He drew bath water and sat on the toilet. His bowels only moved once a week, usually on Wednesdays. His stool was crowded with the food he couldn't fully digest and blood, densely packed into the shape of a horse's penis.
In car accident people try to brace themselves against the dashboard to protect their ribs and heart. They shouldn't do this. The space between the windshield and their torso snaps shut, compacting their arms. The bones splinter and stab into their center where blood regenerates. It's the same process sedans go through at a junkyard when they are condensed into a steel box. It's the same transformation stars go through when they die, when their gravity collapses their matter into a rock. With his tightly packed pain closets, he felt himself compressing.
His colon gave nothing away. The bath was deep and cold. He lay in it and felt his lungs fill up with air. He displaced water onto the bathroom floor. It felt good to hear it splash. He thought about taking Marlene and Rose out to the ocean for a vacation.