Tully
by Brendan Gillen
I am your archetype, a lurker of tunnels. Hands taped, I pace the dripping furnace. Somewhere above, the announcer growls my name. On the lips of strangers, it’s a synonym for wicked, the relentless enmity on which I depend. Ferocious, they say. Caged beast. Can barely spell his own name. Maybe it’s true. Maybe I am what they want me to be. Maybe I am my country’s son.
I was a weightless child, a chaser of bricks. They plucked me from rubble, welded my hands. They fed me fire; their champagne dreams became my own. Someday soon I will forget my mother’s face.
A whisper, paper thin, tells me it’s time.
I prowl the maze, bow in a bowl of smoke. Thousands of faces, brutal as pastries, scream of forfeited wars. They gamble on flesh, can taste the collision. Flashes pop, the wicked lithium. A man with a haggard visage grips my wrists; I touch the fists of a stranger. He looks just like me: tattooed conscience, kaleidoscope eyelids. Terrified.
Tomorrow, ink will spill, pens fueled by his blood. In an hour, lying in a bed of regret, he will forsake his trade. In minutes, the pitiless nexus; the fantastic damage. He will crumple at my feet, a heap of bones, a natal shape.
He believes the same will become of me.
For now, my corner is babel, a lash of tongues. I loom, a brooding razor. I coil for the knell, the stinging bell.
I hope it never comes.