Hrhegnauer

HR Hegnauer

Excerpt from Sir

I cannot always remember what itis like to stand next to another human anymore. By this I mean, what it is liketo stand next to every room in their body.

I like to drink my earl grey justafter I’ve brushed my teeth because it tastes extra fresh like this — likeit’s from the produce department or something. No one knows this anymore. Everyyear I Photoshop my college ID to keep it current, and then I go to the operawhere it makes my body feel both foreign and local at the same, and I like thiscontradiction. It’s the same way I feel when I write about how the word and is different from the word human. And I think that if everyonecould just be a little more and, we’dall be a lot better off.

I want to know these things aboutanother human.

The housethat I’m now living in has a television, which is the first time I’ve livedwith a television since I was in high school and lived at home. I’ve nowlearned from Oprah what forgiveness means. She said that to forgive someonemeans that you’ve realized you don’t wish to be any different than you areright now. This does not mean that you must love what is to be forgiven… Or itwent something like this… There were no colors. This never happened.

I understandnow that this is what happens when a humantries to become an and: the languagewon’t let us.

If it’s actually true that all poets teach how to lament, then whyis it that I don’t know how, yet?

What is the differencebetween grief and lamentation?

Can’t someone just tell mealready?

I’m writing these stories inreverse now because I can’t remember how to emit time anymore. I wanted tocurse Sir. Don’t you know she’s got no memory!? But the one fromseventy years ago is like a glass of water only even more clear: it doesn’teven have that distorted part at the lip: the part where you can’t tell howtall something is. The problem is is that her sentences have to exist rightnow. This is what the limit of her body is.

Sometimes I think about what it feels like to live inColorado now for the first time in three generations, and I wonder if memorymight be genetic.

Mrs. Alice, what are the limits ofthe body?

This is… This is…

And then that was it. It was like she had forgotten howto make a sentence. This is what? What is this? Or was it, This is, period. I’m so afraid of this. I want tomake these sentences. And I want to make them sixty years from now, too.

Dear Sir,

Were you here again last night? I’m alittle bit confused. I heard you in the echos when you said, Watch out! This is your body. But then Icouldn’t find you, and I looked; I really did!

But then Itook that bit of blow from that boy who told me his name was Peter Valentine,and I wanted to believe him.

Sir, I’m afraid I’mevacuating all of my bodies right now.

Dear Sir,

What time isit? A damp translation.

A row boat. A sack of a baby.

This is gonethough, Sir. Of ever imagining that.

Don’t you getit, Sir?! Or ever having wanted that.

Listen to me,Sir. I know what I’m talking about! Orknown it. From someone.

Sir, are you someone? No, you’re just a ghost. Aspook. A haunt and a specter. You’re a shadow now, Sir, and you can’t evenvisit these colors anymore.

What is itlike? Is it like skittering? Tell me it is.

Dear Sir,

I’mtwenty-eight now, and these bodies are moving quickly, no? What were you doingwhen you turned twenty-eight years old? It was 1953, and my mother was eightmonths away from being born. Did you know this?

I’m getting backto being a human again, and I guess this is what it feels like: I had forgottenhow cold it can get in bed at night when you’re only one human.

Sir, I wishyou were again to say human how youalways would — how you’d keep the hsilent. And I would say, uman is not aword, Sir. And you would say, Well,of course it is. I just said it.