homogeneous

A girl moves away from her entourage in the crowd smoothly like a criminal, so cautious as if rushing off because she knows something is feeling too peculiar for her heart‘s very perceptive content, a feeling that maybe the ceiling is about to cave in over everyone. Perhaps this is the best time, as any, to get away from here, and now is her chance, she can see her cue.  A light turns on near the judges, on a pole from the floor. Blood droplets surround the trembling canvas, center ring, in slow motion and scattered rain, like accidental art shows, applique; more bleeding happens, more blood droplets ricochet from the glove and face, from open lesions and the spray of eyelids, to paint the perimeter around the fighters a gentle red color. She is almost there. She slices through the heavy aisles of people donning a trench coat and the girl has legs. Knees peak through the open lining of her hemming and big buttons like flashing seductive neon, and there goes a slow, gradual distraction to all things men see. See a glowing figure head to the stage. Blood on her shoes. A woman in a bikini.

A perfect bottom.

She seems to not quite smile but what else can be rising on her face if not pride or self-love? Blue eyes glisten and pat the crowd, every last one of them, and she stares out as if she can see speech rather than hears it like writing born in the air, and her eyes water. Everyone is saying all of her favorite words, everything a girl could possible want. Waving like a monarch, she takes off the coat and lets the thing fall from her back as if she is shedding; she walks up the steel steps taller than she should be, thighs shining tan, lighter than air. Rivers remembers something Samantha had once said about high heals and training the muscles in the vagina, and Sam says a girl can smile twice. Once here and once here, or down there, when the lights go out.

The girl is definitely smiling.

She holds a sign above her head and walks around, traces the ring. Echoes the crowd shaking her breasts.

Round 9.

She says good luck, Rivers. I have my eye on you. She blows him a kiss and exists the ropes without her long coat. Fucking life Rivers says. Spits out blood in a bucket. The bells ring. Ting.

Apathy, he realizes, is what I’m feeling. An ancient feeling born in each person as real as a mole or a tailbone, and when it shows itself again like raw wind inside a warm home, in the most inopportune fucking of times, somehow someone somewhere, has to say okay. Fucking okay, Rivers says, everything looks colorless. Stale as the back of my tongue. I have lost my reliable point in the world.

Breathing heavy in his corner like a smoker, he stands up, allows the blood to drip inside his left eye because he knows damn well, as surely as Mason does too, blinking means a weaker man. The crowd is loud. In their mist among them are some of the greatest minds of his generation he knows, like scientists and doctors, and yet they only want gore tonight, the way they scream unsociable things to get free. The way they want to get free or feel less important, less connected. Men and women that can solve boredom and cancer and know where God is hiding, and Rivers feels sacrificial, like a cheap thrill, for their greater good. They scream KO. They scream kill him. The stadium seems twice as large as it did before, because everyone in the house is standing up. Even the judges.

Rivers thinks am I the one that lives forever? Among them?

Mason has not blinked once for three minutes. His face hangs like salami, aggressive. His pulse is seen on various veins throughout the body.

Rivers can say the same, he has not blinked. His face is also, like a Picasso, rearranged but bloody. If he decides to breathe in through his nostrils, because all of the profuse bleeding, he can choke, so he keeps his mouth barely ajar and he seems as if he is whistling. A good idea. Rivers locks eyes with the girl sitting down in her bikini near the ring, and he says nice ass, whistling, feeling mongoloid. He says perfect ass. Thumbs up.

She says thank you.

The eye breaks. Cold rises like love inside Rivers’ chest and he begins laughing very loudly, uncontrollably. Shaking too. He covers his mouth with his gloves trying to contain himself and walks around the ring like a drunk, happy.

Mason hovers close.

Samantha listens at home on the radio.

The announcer says, truly bizarre, my dear audience. I do apologize for this. I believe we are nearing the end of this match. Daniel Rivers cannot seem to stop his maddening laughter.