b_and_be ovenbird You sent me the test results, so blatantly horrible even a layperson could understand. Last stage. Severe. I looked at the picture where he had attempted to draw a clock. Just five scribbles in a white square, like a child’s drawing of waves in the ocean, like asemic cursive that signals sense but contains no meaning, like the barest suggestion of a snowy landscape. We sat at my dining room table with tea and hot chocolate. “I think it would be fun to throw a living funeral party,” you said. And then we looked at each other and started to laugh, because how is this life? How is this the real world where you can nonchalantly throw around the idea of eulogizing a person who isn’t quite gone? We are running out of time. (We are running out of time). We know because he couldn’t think of enough words that start with “B” in one minute to pass the test. The scores, so abysmal: zero out of two, zero out of five. But no one says, “I’ve lost all the words that start with B, I guess it’s time to end it all.” Do they? That can’t be where meaning lies. The light coming through the window struck the crystal prism hanging in front of the glass and sent rainbows skittering across our cheekbones. Beauty does not depend on the letter “B.” It can just BE. Even without language. Even without containers to tell it what shape it must take. We’re running out of time. I give myself a minute. Think of words that start with “B.” I write down twenty before the alarm goes off: brilliant, barometer, backlash, bold…I pass the test. I wish I could give him words that would save him, though there are none. Just bend and break and (eventually) blank and (eventually) (finally) been. 261104 what's it to you? who go blather from