House

"You grim cocksucker," he said to a grasshopper, as a
gesture of friendship. His shoes fumbled off in his hand
and he beat on the thing, but it scampered away.

Directly beneath the arch to the north side of the room,
spatially the same coordinates but in a lower elevation,
was squatting a man in a shirt with stripped ruffles and
a shiny suit the color of ground-beef, with a faux-
pocket-square sewed in to his south.

To his north, the larger of the two rooms. Smooth
floors, big fat walls made up to look like newsprints.
Tin double doors, one open to a street. "People on
the street could pick up rocks and throw them in
through my door for good luck." The room closed
toward a narrow at the far end. He couldn't, our man in
the suit, he couldn't see if the room closed or just got
very narrow and dark and continued on outside or
toward a further, third room.

To his south, the smaller room, with a similar
floor. The west wall had degraded, holes or
brick or glass or sheetrock and wallpaper on the floors
of both its eastern and western sides. The rain came in
through the hole a few days and the floor near the
western wall was breaking and sinking. The top
keep getting knocked down and splashing water
on the man while disfiguring the shape of the floor.
The other walls in this room were as they were
when he had been introduced to them earlier.

There was neither furniture in room to his south nor to
his north. He was squatting again, balancing against
the western edge of the arch. Furniture would have
suited the rooms. One elaborate couch drawn out
into a thin beam. A set of animal skin hung on loosely
to shaped and unprocessed plastics. Portico chairs.

"You could sit also in this way." to no-one and the man
sat down toward the east. He put his hands inside his
suit and tickled himself. A furious energy then got in him
and he took to his suit, ripping it, into a gradient. He
stopped. "This was my only pair of pants." and pushed the
scraps to his north, barely into the big room. He hesitated
and began to talk for a little while, as if giving a lecture.

There was a few pound of bindings to his south. He
could muster them upon themselves and shape them
into something comfortable. He put them instead into a
chain and set into them his shoelaces and his belt, the
scraps of his pants, an organization of twine, the last
pieces of paper in his pockets. He pointed his fist at the
sun, out the hole. "Never stop exploding."