Scatterbrain

I had slept for some time when you decided to come by and let me know about a number of things I had forgotten. Your intent seemed kind but you told me a number of things I had forgotten that, when added together with the things you forgot I had forgotten but I remembered I had forgotten, was large. A large number of forgotten things. How large the number was is unknown, but it creates a mass that spins rapidly inside you and threatens to pull down the books from the top shelf. Particularly the volumes pertaining to metallic elements such as tungsten or iron and also indexes of perfumed oil.

You told me these things with such a degree of nonchalance that you didn't notice when I began to resent you. I watched you peeling the candle wax with your fingernails like I did when my brother was being baptized and I was forced to hold a candle that I didn't want to. I peeled the images of lambs with my fingernails and I didn't know why it wasn't lit. I had never held a flame before and I forgot his name for a moment. He was the innominate "brother" figure and you were a fleeting inkling.

When you had told me that your sister was having a birthday, you put the candle wax from under your fingernail in your mouth and you chewed disgustingly. I could hear the bones in your temples cracking as you chewed that pliable wax and I tried to think of a metaphor this could be representing. An allegory for which this was holding the place. But there was nothing except miniscule air pockets and involuntary sucking noises that occurred on the remote sides of your teeth and gums as your thin cheeks and temples flexed like a pink organ and you swallowed candle wax.

I had stopped being drowsy then and I offered you a small cake from my cupboard, from what was our cupboard, but you said you weren't hungry and you gnawed your nail with enough force to bite it off in small, peeling sections. You put those fingers into intimate locations before. Those fingers popped a champagne cork last year. Auld Lang Syne. You kissed my hand and my nose at midnight and my mouth at one after midnight. You touched me nicely and vigorously. We didn't sleep until we were exhausted and clutching nakedly.

When the dog came over, being depressed, you pet the dog. Because you pet the dog, you reinforced the dog's depression and as a result, it lay at your feet, just like you wanted, and it sighed a canine sigh. "Lay down now," you said. And it did, and you gave it a biscuit. Fuck you.

You drank a bit of your seltzer water. Who drinks seltzer water? Not anybody normal, I'll tell you that much.

I wish I had said those things to you after you told me that I forgot my mother's birthday because then it would have seemed like a joke and you would have come to touch my face and put your broken fingernail next to my ear. You would have said something that would redeem you to me and I would have forgotten all of those things I hate in you. But instead, you refused food and I packed a suitcase and pretended to talk down to you like a farmhand or a ruffian. But I didn't do those things. I forgot my luggage in the other room so instead I sat and loathed you until I fell asleep in this armchair. You woke me up by not noticing I was asleep and that I hate you.

But I do, I do, and you eat your oatmeal dry and mealy. When you told me all of the things I had forgotten, I remembered (which in itself is surprising) that we are not different people, and we are not different people, which explains why I hurt so much when I say I hate you. I hate you. Comfort me and my ugly limbs, extremities.