Wessley Lyle sits in the back corner of the classroom, stapling orange peels. His hands are weathered, and dry, calluses dotting the insides from playing on the metal monkey bars at recess.  Beads of sweat are glued, or rather suspended? vertically by gravity to his temples on both sides of his head, where his hairline meets his skin.  His teacher draws circles on the board with long white chalk and explains Venn Diagrams in her cotton dress. The orange peels are of different sizes and he squeezes them through the pieces of metal and staples them. They are corkboard like (penetrable) and the fleshy white meat of the orange is soft on his hands. The white thread-like material attached to the inside of the peel is called pith and he perforates it. Wessley doesn’t know that orange peel is used by gardeners as a slug repellent, (or does he?) otherwise he could offer it to his mother afterschool, arms outstretched and open palmed in his back yard, the sun casting shadows on the ceramic sundial in their little garden.  His hands smell of citrus and there is nothing else to do (he thinks) and for now he is entertained.

Wessley Lyle is doing needlework on the sofa.  He sits cross-legged, his back digging into a hardcover book beneath a pillow.  His lips are chapped and he is, more specifically, cro-tatting and simultaneously sipping on a glass of apple juice that is on a table, adjacent to the couch. Cro-tatting combines needle tatting with crochet. The cro-tatting tool is a tatting needle with a crochet hook at the end. In patterns, the rings are tatted and the arches or chains are crocheted. He works for hours without noticing the time pass and without notice anything besides his thoughts, he lets them swell and mellow in his mind, they come and go like totem animals.  Occasionally the clinking of the ice cubes against the glass and the sound of swallowing is audible from the living room, but aside from that the house is quiet and still.

Wessley Lyle is the sky hanging itself low tonight.  And you are not there.

Wessley Lyle is moving his feet, unable to sit still like Christmas lights flickering, like the reflection of the moon on waves, shaking, (like the bristles of a toothbrush against white teeth?)

Wessley Lyle lies in his bed like a pancake on a skillet. The summer heat in unbearable, so he lies on his sheets, on his back, waiting for the sun to rise.  He stares at the ceiling and gives up on the idea of a couple hours of sleep before he will leap from his bed and begin his day. Actually, it will be more like being pried from the bed, like a burglar that jimmied the lock.

I will try to give you more, but there is no relevance, no purpose.

Wessley Lyle is holding (has?) his cell-phone pressed against his ear.  He is walking fast among a herd of other, well-dressed, middle aged men, rushing from one place to another.  His wife taught him how to hem his pants last night, under the dim light of the sewing machine in the attic and he is secretly proud of this, which explains his unmistakable air of confidence (smug swagger) this particular morning.  “Milk in your coffee? Or sugar?” Ernesto is on the other end from work, accepting Wessley’s coffee offer.  “Alright, be there soon.” He arrives late to the meeting as usual, but greets everyone with coffee in paper hot cups and they defer their negative comments of his lack of punctuality for some (multiple, tension-bearing and distracted) minutes.

Wessley Lyle is a tribal chief.  He is wearing his feathered headdress and his tan skin complements the color of the feathers nicely.  His thick hair (stronger than fine more wire-like) is pressing forward in his back (lying tiled past his shoulders) in the wind, and the sun, equally pressed against his back and casts a dim shadow across his entire face (like the way that you’re not supposed to stand when you’re taking a picture at a rest stop in the desert). 

Wessley Lyle is flattening dough, his body is smooth and compact and flattens the dough. His skin is darker than the dough, and embedded with differing hues of brown.  He is a rolling pin, rolling.

Wessley Lyle is a pendulum (clock?) ticking (tapping?, moving? Dragging?) itself.

Wessley Lyle speaks on a small stage in an old school auditorium in Ohio. He is nervous, his hands are sweaty or dry, it is irrelevant.  He shares his poem, it is mandatory for participation points.  His voice croaks and wobbles and then becomes smooth and constant like a horn. “I am the water in your cup filling you up.  I am the peaches in your can too sweet to eat When rain comes will we sit still under sheets on the floor Will the arched back, the muscles relax Will we begin to intertwine I am the dust on your mirror You keep looking past.”  He rubs his eyes unsatisfied.

Wessley Lyle is spinning threads like he’s making something big, counting spools aptly like this will explain tomorrow.  There is no moon in the sky tonight and it’s forgotten.  He is inaudibly humming melodies of the past, and you are not here.  Jars of jam and pickles and corn keep long in the fridge, but now we are the smooth smooth glass and this is bottomless.  An inexhaustible series of circles winding themselves, another year and we are in the same place, this time you are wearing a different sweater and you hold your spoon differently.  But your eyelids are the same and mine are still open.  And these hands still hold nothing, feel the cold air and lock into my teeth.  There is nothing left but open space and time for Wessley, and yet we lie suspended like a movie paused, like a freeze frame of a baseball in mid air over a sweaty field in Detroit,  the grass is thickest here but this is still no place for one to fall. 

Wessley Lyle is stringing beads on a bracelet, beads of the same color, of the same shape and in the end they’re in a heap on my floor.  But still nothing has changed, this didn’t heave something onto us.

Fog closes him up like a man hammering nails on a log cabin, bearded, boots painted in mud, the stench of last night’s beer is fading on him.  But you are not him, and you are not here, I am swallowing and I am breathing.

I am unable to stop

I am layering pages in a book, I am reading word after word

The same pattern unfolds itself every time I open this case

Yet I cannot look away I cannot keep it closed

Yet I cannot look away I cannot keep it closed

This is too boring to read, I will give you some sort of story.

The water pulled itself across the rocks.  Broken bits of sand and stone were ground beneath them, forever, and layers of dirt beneath that remained untouched. The sky was blue and imposing and it was difficult to be unhappy in its cloudless presence.

Wessley pulled himself delicately from her eyes and glanced at his feet.  They were whiter now, losing color, losing feeling.  His beige toenails didn’t match each other; there was no crisp alignment.  Her teeth began chattering in his ears. Goosebumps surfaced on her calves. “Let’s keep going.” 

His feet gripped onto rocks, cold and hard, although others were slippery and delicate and jerked loosely between the sand and neighboring rocks under the weight of their strides.  Her weight jerked onto him, heavily, sporadically, as she struggled with her balance and the placement of her feet all the way across the river.  When he made it he sat on a bent log and looked at her.  She was uncomfortable, distressed.  Wessley wiped his right foot on his left pant leg, staining them with dirt and cold cold water.  He put on a dry sock, and slipped on loosely laced sneakers.  Then, the other foot, he proceeded, the same thing.  The hum of the river, the coos of distant birds calling to each other high up. 

Wessley is sitting, (thinking?) and she is reciting her feelings in her head.

You were trying to kill me, without explanation.  I followed you quickly, through tall eucalyptus trees to a little creek.  My head cocked in the broad daylight I looked up to the rest of the river, it spat itself into a lake.  The water didn’t move on the lake, the sunlight glared off of it and it looked white in the distance.  One we crossed it and put our shoes back on, I followed you, shivering, towards the lake. A willow tree dipped its droopy branches into the water to corrupt it, a little bit.  The sweeping branches didn’t move much; there was no wind that day.  I followed you, clumsily, I was tired.  Your patience was waning. 

Wasting time like its air catching flies with tar not honey we are never ending the way that you can close your eyes and conjure up all of it before I can spell cake but hey I never was a good speller and your teeth they look so wobbly but hey I never was a good dentist.  Night stretches forward like a cat in morning light and I am still here, scratching the same circles with my palm like it will solve something and you are standing.  Sink or swim like fish with beaks we struggled until our swollen ligaments were gasping I am not the tea in your mug I am not the jam in your jar I am the food in your teeth the knot in your hair and I am spilling like a kid again and I am mumbling like I was never taught to speak and I am playing with my paper and folding and unfolding I am floating and you are standing and you don’t notice any of it.

 Wessley Lyle is me, he is you.  He is all of me and none of me, he is off-white paint, chipping. Wessley Lyle is the ink in this pen, he is words on this paper or the rhythm in a dance.  He is the gum wrapper in the waste bin.