Every After by Kyle Dacuyan

Every After

 

All good characters have an air of inexplicable.

There is a woman who drops into the Brattle Bookshop

every month or so incognito. Quietly she rips pages from

used bibles and quietly eats them until the jig is up

and she is asked respectfully to leave. I have many questions.

Does this have something to do with the word made flesh

or vice versa. Is she a militant atheist. Is this a kind of life-

long gustatory rampage. What kinds of things go through

her mind when she’s picking her disguises for bible day.

Where do obsessions come from. Is it erotic. Is the getting

caught erotic and the paper all a ruse. Is paper really

all that digestible. What kind of shit do you shit when you shit

the bible. Does it approach the pain and lonely terror of

a Catholic childhood. Why is obsession so painfully lonely.

Why pleasure. Where do stories go. Bloodwise, nervewise,

to what do they turn and how and where inside our guts.

When did we stop letting stories hang temporarily in air.

Who first had the idea of a book. Of paper. The idea of a

record. The idea of killing something in the name of

permanence. Who imagined permanence. Who first ate

a book. To what territories of magnificence do our bodies

go when they die. Where do we commingle in the future.

Will the soil of us make trees forever. When do stories stop.