The Feeling of Bee's Legs

It’s funny only now, all of it. I ran out of down-pressure and swallowed too quickly, so up it came, all of it. I got sleepy, like beeswax eyes, after the spittle’d dried and started its peeling. When I wake, it’s all so funny, and I know everyone’s laughing on their side of the door, laughing through a two-way mirror. They’re watching me and feeling me. Their hands are pressed to their glass, and I’m sleepy still, laughing with my ankles and knobby old knees, laughing because I know they’ll come back. They’ll come in for me and wipe their tears on my bedskirts, they’ll send the doctors out for sherbet and we’ll all laugh and eat with wooden spoons. I see, I know, they’re waiting for me to rub the sleep from my spine. I stop laughing. The room’s too empty to temper the laughter, I think, and the people will keep it up for me outside. They’re rubbing their elbows together and patting each others’ backs. They’ll keep it up for me. I don’t worry, I just rub the sleep from my spine and roll to the ground. Soon enough, they’ll trample on in, they’ll kiss me and touch me and pin me back to the bed. They’ll pile over me, they’ll crush me to powder and I’ll be laughing, laughing. It’s all so funny, I know they know, because the feelings finally came. So far gone, so far past, we’d all thought they’d flurried to dust and spilled from pores yet — they came, all at once, all of it. And everyone knew to stay, all those years they knew to wait, they chose to believe all the bits, all of them. When they saw the truck sinking its rear tires into the beach, they flung the doors to let the sand swallow it whole. They watched the bubbler crabs force their papery claws through the dashboard, mason worms slip, one white, red-toed starfish splayed in the rearview. Finally, when the tides bring the crocodiles in, all my people clap and cheer as the truck’s newfound ecosystem perishes in the deathroll. I sat at the opposite shore, then, scribbling and mussing the scene best I could, my truck and my people, the funny crocodile, the fish and the beach fleas. Once I’m all rolled out, alert and arouse, I fold my fingers together in anticipation. I let them wriggle in my lap’s linens, waiting, sourcing the comedy from wherever it’s lain dormant, drowned or dusted or waxed to my insides, I wait for the first crack of the wall when my people’s hilarity seeps in. I knew they’d wait for it. They’re coming back for me. I knew it all along. I think I’ll let myself sleep until they do.

Art;

Untitled, Mimmo Paladino, 2005.

Museo Madre, Naples, Italy.

https://www.madrenapoli.it/en/collection/mimmo-paladino-untitled/