AKA "She's Confessed"
________________________________
The Least, Easiest Things.
He was gone again.
The whole town was out looking. He never meant any harm, it was just harm’s way. They knew he was gone for good this time: he had taken his father’s book from its open, secret hiding place: The Least, Easiest Thing, but he had drawn an upright snake after the “g” his father had made.
The snake was bronze & yellow Crayola: a dully-glittering flaky gold: the only two wax crayons left from the box no one else would touch ever, now. It was his father’s journal as a child—no “diary.”
A journal his own father made him keep.
To remember the simplicity of his own father's one simple rule.
________________
It was gone, and her first name was “Honey.”
Everyone, everyone now in town and out East in the city called her this, or anyone who looked like her: this. Her real name (he knew) was Alisen Candy McCantrel. He called her Candy, because he called everything Candy - and there, behind the counter, directly under the cash register they made him and only him man, was where this ledger was kept, annotated in pencil, ink and Crayola caked and flaking off in layers: her true name was all through it.
That’s how they all knew he was gone for good. He never would’ve kept his father’s book anyplace else: the whole town knew. It was an open secret. She was forced to man the front desk herself, since his father, his mother, the only family he had in town (the oldest family in town, in fact, reduced to this act of servitude) (don’t fret! His name lives on. The very same Isoceles Dry Goods which sells packaged candy, alcohol, nails and boards from where you sit now reading - out to the stars, it’s said! They named it after the child, in his memory, when he was found finally!).
I’m sorry.
That should’ve been a comma.
Flash forward ten years (A Fragment from Izzy’s Book): She’s Confessed.
She was found in the city, of course.
She’d buttoned her coat over nothing,
and stepped out into the night air.
She couldn't begin to explain herself
the purpose of her presence there
There was a knife, but it wasn't used, and
scandalous details emerged.
Like the link the connected the two of them both
(which wasn't what you might have heard)
She's confessed
she's confessed
To so many things, We
can't see
how they
all connect, She’s
confessed she's confessed:
still no hint of what it all means
.
There was a knife, but it wasn't used
and the blood stayed concealed in the body
(which was carefully hidden beyond all trace
by a third, unidentified party) and scandalous
details emerged: as we stood around smacking
our lips in the darkened confessional, third-degree
light
She's making sure everything fits
She's confessed:
She's confessed.
To so many things, we can't see
how they all connect
she's confessed
she's confessed
still no hint of what it all means
She stepped in red-handed
and leapt at the bait
we owe her a great
debt of thanks
from person
of interest to suspect to culprit
she tidily filled in the
blanks
So she buttoned her coat over nothing
and stepped out into the night air
It couldn't support her, she was -
insupportable
The weight of her guilt, still
too heavy to bear
and she's confessed
The only one who knew he wasn’t gone that day.
She had his book of course. She was frantic. Trying to decipher the text, the scrawls in dim rusty streaks of blood, pages stuck together with tears; sweat: matter.
Her name was all through it. The pages were stiff with chiaroscuro and salt sea patina. You couldn’t look at them through the tears, that is: if you were the one supposed to be minding the store.
He was always out front, when he wasn’t tethered to the register at least. He’d developed a long habit of hopping into strangers’ (dangerous strangers, these parts at least) cars after holding the doors for them. Just to con them into some simple act of charity: a coin, some change.
Something of his own they couldn’t accuse him of.
To buy the one thing they would never let him touch. He called his part of it The Candy Store.
She knew where he was, and will always be.
Under the floorboards. Directly under the register. No basement. Just a series of old, warped, sanded-level oak planks with dry gaps between where he could breathe.
His body chained. His last gasp stirring between her legs as her eyes widened, in horror
at her own
name
.
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