my name is a cipher that he cannot pronounce. It is pressed to his tongue like the cold, bright edge of a spoon.

He stands in the center of the room, arms loose and extended at his sides. The light casts four shadows of his body, faint frames flickering against the sloping walls.

His fists make short work of the flesh around my wrists. He turns his rage to the flat doorways of my house.

His teeth shine like a knife grinding at a taut rope. He grips my arm and again I wrestle with him in the farmhouse, his eyes shining in the darkness.

He presses my face to the floor. His chest is an empty vessel, filled with the silence of a reverent flock in the moment before devotion is given utterance.

Symbiotic Architecture

Between the panels of the house at first there is nothing.
Gisli left water for me at the side of the bed. It is covered
now, a film of fine hairs floats at the surface. When he steps
on the staircase, the glass rattles softly against the wood floor.

It shakes because Gisli built the house when he was twentyfour,
didn't know a damn thing about walls or roofs.

On the first floor I can hear the hallways unwinding. Joined
wood creaks in its weathered seats.

No electric wires in these walls. Gisli didn't want any help.
Twenty-four, he could own his own future. The foundation
sagged out of shape as he was digging. When he built the
house on firm joists it tilted like a bush stunted by high winds.
The air is cool but the lit stove keeps the wood planks of the
floor warm, and the flies rest their abdomens there, rubbing
their legs together waiting for their young to hatch. Gisli is
my host. I am theirs.

I can see them from above as I descend. I know what each
wall means before it stops me. I can see the space between
the panels, the filled cavities, the bones of this place; I hear
only chewing, faint and steady.

If I had more time I would build it. Another floor, a winding circle of staircase to connect them all. I'd get a bathtub with clawed feet and a railing to pull myself up by. I'd have a room with a desk built into the wall and I would become a farmer-poet. A window to see the hills with their frost-heaved curves.

Since it happened, I have felt a calmness in the pit of my stomach. It was a relief. His skull was spongiform, a thin membrane under my hands.

I cover the floor of his bedroom with plastic sheets. He was useless anyway, no good with tools. They'd clatter out of his hands and tumble down hillsides. Ladders couldn't bear his weight. His thin body was in no shape for work. I pry his jaws apart and insert the thin, sharp blade of a knife.

My grandfather was Norwegian; he had a winding staircase connecting the floors of his house. When I was seven I fell all the way down the stairs and only hit my head once. He said that was lucky, and so after he pressed a cold spoon against the welted bump he asked me who was going to win the World Cup. I guessed Italy. Two hours later, Diego Maradona pressed a black and white kiss against his curved, silver bladder, his white shorts smeared with dirt.

"Good thing I didn't bet money," my grandfather said. After that he rang a bell if the phone was for me, just to avoid speaking.

There isn't time now. No floor, no staircase. I wrap the plastic around his prone body. Even now, the shape is awkward, ugly. He was useless anyway.