Dropping a plant onto the furnace onto a lamp

Dropping a plant onto the furnace onto a lamp 

She steps up from the suitcase onto the peeling radiator. It reminds me of Germany, years before I had met her or had cared to have met anyone else. I had removed the shadeless, bulbless blown-glass lamp so she’d have enough room to step two or three times. I had acquired my plants last spring, but pushed off hanging them until I owned a piece of furniture tall enough to act as a ladder. I got sick, or complacent, or apathetic, and I developed an allergy to cashews. When I stopped dreaming, I really kicked it into gear.

‘What are you thinking about?’

We ask each other this all too often. It frustrates me sometimes, when she asks, and I’m in the middle of wordless processing. She falls if I say nothing. She knows me well enough to call me out if I lie, but what she doesn’t understand is that I’d like to keep wordlessly processing, staring at the side of her head, the sideburns that run down her cheek. I’m just feeling.

‘The furnace is wobbling.’ It is. It’s taller than all the others in the apartment, and doesn’t heat.

‘Your apartment is on a slant.’

‘It’s a historic building.’

She snorts, which makes the whole thing wobble again. I feel nervous. I hold the green lamp against my chest, like a swollen cherry, like a baby. Looking up at her, she doesn’t seem so frustrated anymore. The wrinkles in her forehead have relaxed. I think she likes doing this for me.

In Cologne, every piece of metal in my private room was painted over four times with thick, clumpy white pigment. Anxious without cigarettes, I chipped away at the floor-hugging radiator when I woke up each morning. I’d typically wake up early enough to smoke on the balcony before the downstairs neighbors began their day of lawn-guarding. I was convinced that if I got back in bed, I’d wake up an hour later having shaken the smell. My fingers, underneath the nail beds, would bleed when sharp pieces of paint pierced them. In reality, I was terribly depressed those mornings.

She finishes. She climbs back down from the furnace. I wonder if we’ll have sex now, but I don’t think she’s with me for that. I feel kind of sad now, too, and just want to crawl under thick wool blankets I don’t own. Maybe I’ll buy camping blankets from L.L.Bean. Maybe I’ll buy incombustible blankets from L.L.Bean, ones that I can throw over myself, over her, if the whole building sets on fire. If I had only one, would I try to fit us both? Would I cover her and burn into dust and ash? Realistically, I’d be a lump of seared meat next to a preserved wool baby, but I’d like to imagine my remains as tiny particles that float back into the sky over that.

I think I’ll just buy two blankets to be safe.

I am tired. I have to peel my heavy eyes back to find and focus on her, at the door. She drags dust with her, I feel like sneezing her a few feet away from me. I wish she’d just choose to leave or stay. I didn’t want anything in particular, and that was more frustrating than anything. I expected myself to leave if she ever did what she did, but I fell harder into her and couldn’t answer why to myself.

‘Do you want a beer?’ She probably wouldn’t.

‘I guess.’

It’s brisk outside, and I already know the can will be explosive slush. She’ll freeze her hands, she’ll blame me for making her go out. I want to go back inside before we cross the street.

Alt.

Tragically, beautifully, considerably quietly for the height, a planter slipped from my hand, off the radiator, slashing a thickly planted ceramic cow sculpture (see: hand painted) and a bulbous, bulbless, blown-glass lamp from the sistering table. It must’ve been comedic, the amount of time I continued to stand on the stool, arms raised. I wished my windows faced against anything but the white walls of a condo complex, so I’d at least have an audience. I didn’t need to hear the crowd to successfully wow them - that’s an internal meter that flourishes even in the white bounce-lit confines of new Brooklyn Hell. I stood a while longer, almost hoping the metal hook I had so haphazardly installed in the ceiling would fall and crack my head open, so my roommates could find me with the shattered lamp and dirt and dead plant, and think it was a beautiful accident, and we’d all put on headscarves and get on our knees cleaning dirt from the hardwood. Like in Annie. But the hook, miraculously, hatefully, stayed fixed, and I swept dirt with no scarf.

Art:

"Foundry, Ladle Feeding Furnace"

Graham Vivian Sutherland

Oil On Canvas - 32 x 26 cm

1941

https://www.wikiart.org/en/graham-sutherland/foundry-ladle-feeding-furnace-1941