Punch on Wounds

By Emmanuelle

SCENE I: Can you see this scene?

Let us call this third person Em, she who speaks for those with wounds that do not heal:

This whole week she steps and hums to the thud and the thump of a drum. The calls, the mails, the texts had come. From near and far, high five, they say. She smacks, she slaps those palms not seen.     

One day she comes home. Where she drops her count that starts at one and ends at one, stumped as she was by shrills of. . .

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SCENE II: Can you imagine this scene?

A shrieking violin and metallic castanets. They were her two friends of the double whammies: when one misses, the other one whams. For these two, one syllable of a word is not enough, two are still far from too much, three might just be right, beyond four takes them to a wondrous world tour! 

Says Violin: You are fantastic, and for you we should wax ecstatic, but your latest particular style of creativity leaves practically nothing to the fertile imagination. Your words turned plain, even blasphemously naked. Frankly, you are a disappointment to the sisterhood of the intentionally vague but fashionably vogue!

Says Castanet: Monosyllabic is, well, like a monoblock affair. No flair, no mystery to the substance. It is also pretty much like the ghost of the comma poem of our young days. Why are you doing the squirt and making the kuwit all over again? Pray tell me, dear, what happened to the years of cultivating finesse with the quality of your modifiers? How can you desert your beloved gerunds, the verbals that masked as subjects of your inestimable predicates? Don’t tell us you have gone and lost the parameters of your marbles!  

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SCENE III: You must really see this scene!

Em cups both hands and plops them one each to their   mouths.  She shuts her eyes tight, breathes deep, and breathes out.  She leans her head to the right then to the left. She waits for the drum in her mind to start once more. When it did, she caught on to its tail.

Em says: You see, you two, there was this one day when I longed for the time when all was clean and plain and dull. In this thin book, there was this boy and this girl and their dog with a spot round one of its eyes. Their Mom and Dad were called ‘tay and ‘nay. Things were all light and gay. Not gay with the flick of the wrist, but just gay with the warmth of a hug. The boy throws a stick, the dog runs for it, the girl calls for the two, and they all walk to the school. They hop home, they laugh when they eat, they smile when they sleep.

Now, the home is just a house. See this boy, see this girl run fast from their house. A house that is not a home. ‘Tay is a Dad, drunk as a skunk. ‘Nay is a Mom, who cleans a house not her home, fields and seas and skies far too far. The dog runs for no stick. The dog snarls at cops and bills. Or dog is food on a stick. Or dog is stuffed toy. Darn that dog.

Things are not all light. Things are not all right. Feet drag to the house. No laughs when they eat. No smiles when they sleep. Gay is a word that does not warm with a hug. It is a smirk, with the flick of a wrist.

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SCENE IV: Ah, you are expecting this scene I see.

So, how dare you   insinuate that I should tolerate this diabolitical impertinence from such pale excuses for human beings as you two whammies of a misbegotten   friendship? Away, away you two! Come back when you too learn how to count back to one.

And so, peace reigns again. This house, this home where the clock strikes only once at mid of each hour. And the drum thumps once more, to the beat of one count.

Next week, we shall read of a girl whose wound was slashed by a nun.

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/feelings/
Readers may reach columnist at jingmil@yahoo.com . For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)

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