Wrench
One night, on my birthday, she guided him across her body for the first time. It leaves a lump in his throat he still thinks about now. How they stayed up all night, driving into the morning.
There is a fire underneath Denton’s chest. It has nothing to burn for. It’s the kind you light as a kid, after seeing your older brother do it. It’s pure spectacle. Denton’s fire makes him drum slower, not faster, his sticks burn holes in his kit, and soon he’ll have nothing.
I used to play in a band that did live shows in the dark, out of a car. They were quiet too. We soundtracked the coyotes. Some joke or idea about what we did in relation to a drive-by shooting was always in the back of our heads, but no one formed a thought well enough to say anything. No one could stop us other than the sunrise, which made us all insecure, to see our greasy faces in the rearview mirrors.
A monkey wrench can’t be bothered to flip over, revealing itself to the mother looking in her husband's shed. The water heater is broken. She ran a bath for her baby and dropped him in. Wetting him, she was annoyed that the water could only reach room temperature. It made her boy's teeth chatter. She left him to unplug the drain and turn off the water when necessary, as something was telling her she needed to investigate it immediately. Her son is older than a baby, six years old, but he is developmentally slow and smaller than he should be.
When she returns to the tub the water is pouring out fast, steaming. Her baby boy is scrunched up in the corner of the tub, farthest from the geyser, shaking and trembling. His mother turns off the water and sobs quietly. She grabs a tray of ice cubes from the fridge and dumps them into the bath.
Nicholas Wilder Forman is a multimedia artist and writer living in Los Angeles, California. They're currently pursuing their BA in Media Arts and Practice at the University of Southern California. You can reach them @nickwforman on Instagram.