John Biscello

At night I go out, scorched and empty. I pool inside myself all day, every day, a sipping and flooding, and then I carry this out with me into the night. There is a hissing that I can hear out here always. As if the world is leaking air, and no one can stop it. Wounds are exit strategies and raptures. They are also the beginning of dictatorships and rape culture. Is the hissing in my head? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I shut down my head. Close the ears in my mind, and still the hissing comes through: slow, low, the tempo of rats in alleys. This hissing must have origins in something. Rent. Not being able to make the rent. It’s what I think about most often these days, what preys on my mind the most. How will we make the rent, except there is no we, it is I, how will I make the rent so that me and the babies can remain together, in our apartment, where we have lived since forever (their forever shorter than mine, of course). We are lucky that the landlord lives far away, that he has no idea that we live in a motherless house (the house was fatherless from the beginning), and we have avoided getting caught so far … I’m assuming that everyone is assuming we are living with an aunt or uncle or grandmother, that some adult has been responsible for our care and well-being since our mother was taken away. So far I’ve made the rent two months straight. More than half of the rent is owed to my body, to the fortunate and unfortunate fact that I’m a girl, and there will always be men who want girls as playthings. Men need broken toys. Or toys to break. I am not sure why I need these night-walks. Maybe it’s to feel the largeness of the world when it is dark and quiet, a different kind of species. At night the apartment feels like lungs closing. Once the night air is on my skin, I can breathe again. I pass a butcher shop, its display window lighted by a street-lamp, and I see pigs hanging upside-down in a row. I read the prices advertised in the window, and it seems the prices on meat and other products have gone up since last week. This inflation seems to be part of the hissing. I keep walking, hands in my pockets. No one is out. I am inside a painting waiting for a nocturnal artist to arrange its living. The traffic light changes from green to red. There’s something about traffic lights at night, when there are no people, no traffic … something sinister. It’s as if the switching of colors—green, red, yellow—are indicating codes to unseen entities, a language of night-signals. I see something move. Someone. Or thing. It is a sack on the street-corner, except the sack is now assuming shape, a form, a human form outlined in sack, and its begins heading—not exactly in my direction, more of a sideways staggering that is still undecided on direction, or beyond it—and then, at the exact time the traffic light changes from red to green, the sack-figure fixes a determined course, which is most definitely in my direction. My first instinct is to run toward the sack-figure and kick it as hard as I can in the crotch, but instead I skip the assault and run away as fast I can in the opposite direction. When I get home, I lock the door, peel off my sweatshirt, air out my sweaty body, down a glass of water, and after about ten minutes my nerves begin to settle. I check on the babies. They are more or less in the same position in which I left them, sound asleep. I go into the living room and click on the TV. The man who paints happy trees and delicious clouds is on. His voice is the lullaby to which I fall asleep.