Is how I see you. All human beings. Pipes. As you have running through your home. Transporting fuel, water, wastes. All you often see of a pipe is their mouth, in the form of a drain or toilet bowl. People are pipes through which different substances emit. As a boy I understood out of Mama emitted food, a bed, blankets, smacks, a home, limits, broken glass. Out of Cappy Lonnigan: tobacco, cuss words, larcenous advice. Out of Teddy: moans, burn holes, crying jags, blackened ants. I saw the colour, texture of their emissions. Out of Mama’s pipe flowed burnt orange fluid. Out of Cappy’s: bright blue liquid that when he laughed transformed into moths. Out of Teddy’s: muddy goo stubbled with dead crickets or rusty nails. Twist a water tap, water pours out. Not so people. Some days I could do such a thing as comment on Mama’s new haircut—which often made her orange fluid flow brighter—but instead her liquid turned blackblack, full of twitchy, screamy things. Next she committed acts meant to hurt me in ways that I am incapable of being hurt.
