#2 PAINT IT BLACK

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Who are you?


For an eternity, I hang in black completely naked. The is in my eyes and mouth. My hands are fallen leaves around the bathtub bar.
I can see you, little brother, through the mist, and I reach to protect you even now that I will die.

I wake up shivering and Dad is punching the bathroom door hard, I go out and fall in a maze of blankets and sheets and stuffed toys. He tries talking to me, but I can't talk back. I hear the voices laughing in dreams and we all play and dance in circles and go to sleep, until Dad shakes me and something is wronf because I fainted in the bathtub and I can never ever take another bath.
How to explain blackness?
There's an empty space movin between my bones. When it's in my head I can't talk because the empty space is in my mouth. It has eaten it up. And if I can't speak Dad will take me to see the doctor again. But I'm never sure who it is I have to see. The doctor or the dentist. What's wrong with me this time. If it's the dentist I brush my teeth. If it's the doctor I only comb my hair twice.
Even after my near-death experience, I sit at the table and for an hour and a half I study with the door open and no music so I can get the black jacket at the end of the year. Of course I get distracted easily by the dead people, but in the end they are nice, except at night, when they won't let me sleep and I have to bang my head against the wall to make them shut up. If that doesn't work I prepare myself cups of hot milk and camomile, five or six of each. If that doesn't work, I bang my head harder. If they're still awake, I cry and hope Dad wakes up and helps me... but he never does. I knock on the wall between our bedrooms, I knock harder, I cry louder, I open my door... but he never wakes up and he never comes and I always bang my head until I see the red eyes of the dog of the Baskervilles disappear from my window. Then I close my own eyes and everything goes black.