B hasn't shown up to
class for days. My bleeding heart is missing him, and wondering where he is, again
taking too much responsibility for problems that are not mine. Is he ok will he
graduate what about his final project will he will he will he how?
Prof. S turns back our final papers (final papers for an art class?) and has traced my
split infinitive back for every single sentence I have written. The page is almost red and
I must keep better track of my
words.
Together we look for B's contact information on the personal info sheets we were
made to turn in at the beginning of the semester. Bizarre personal info sheets that
demand a 36-inch figure, and some kind of reckoning on what the figure as a concept
means to us. Sculpture II: The Figure in Context. Page after page whips by and no sign.
We find one by a someone who's name starts with B but I know it is not his for the
terseness and the cramped, barely legible handwriting. There is none of the flair for art
that I know B would have to render.
Prof. S is convinced I will be able to find it. You know him. You know him you
know him you know you know.
We find at the bottom of the stack the crinkled red sheet, sheerly tinted with a soft
crimson, a looming figure slowly peering through the veil of color, rushing in and out
and around and inside our plane of view.
This is him this is him this is him.
There is a phone number but it's the one we already lost. There is no finding him.
Only studying his moves.
We carry art downstairs, and I am constantly catching flashing images of his truck in the corner of my eye, as I am always prone to do, but he is
never actually a character in this dream. He never even makes an appearance. Only a
shadow, still haunting this life, ever beautiful, never understood,
missed and resented, his image is still lingering on my burned-out retinas, replacing
question after question after question with yet another after another after
another.