We Make Mud

Boy, Falling

One night we see Boy. Boy, he is down by the river, and what Boy is doing there, down by the river there, is Boy is climbing up the side of Girl’s leg. Boy, he is going up: this, us brothers, we can see this. Boy is heading up to the top to where Girl’s head, it is sticking up through the clouds, through to that muddy blackness there on the other side of sky. When us brothers see this, back from where we are watching this, back from in the back of our house’s backyard, we run ourselves down to the river, so that Boy can hear us when we yell up to him, Hey, Boy, we holler this out. Boy, what do you think you’re doing? When Boy hears that it is us brothers who are calling this out, Boy turns back his boy head toward the sound of our boy voices. Yes, Boy, he looks down to see that it is us brothers, but no, Boy does not stop climbing up even when he sees and knows that it is us, even when he hears that it is us brothers who are calling out and up to him to stop. So us brothers, what us brothers do is, we start too climbing up the side of Girl’s leg. Boy, we are going up after Boy to get Boy to come down. It does not take us brothers long for us to catch up to where Boy is just a freckled spot, to where Boy is just a climbing speck of a spider climbing up the side of Girl’s mud body. Yes, us brothers, we are boys bigger than this boy Boy is. We are bigger and we are stronger and we are faster climbers-up than this boy. We are boys who know Girl’s body, the bumps and rivery curves, better than we know the banks of the river. Us brothers, we know this mountain of mud better than Boy could ever get to know it, because us brothers, we are the brothers whose muddy boy hands made Girl rise up out of the mud. And so, when we get up to where Boy is about half the way up to Girl’s mud-topped top, us brothers, we put a hand on each of Boy’s shoulders, and this is what gets Boy to stop. Where are you going? is what we say to Boy. And then, Who told you you could? What Boy says in answer to this is, Boy says, Girl. Girl, Boy tells us, told me to come see. Us brothers, our ears, we cannot believe it that this is what Boy is saying, though believe it, we have to believe it: us brothers, we know that it’s true that nothing along this river is impossible. We have to believe it too when Girl tilts down her chin at us brothers and nods with her girl head that yes this is true, Girl was the one who told Boy that he could come up to take a look, to see this other piece of the sky. Girl’s eyes, when she looks down at us brothers, Girl’s eyes are quarter moons that do not wish to be, by us brothers, fully seen. But what Girl wishes to be true, when it comes to us brothers, us brothers, we always do whatever we can to make what Girl wishes for to be true. And so, us brothers, we turn and look the other way. If this is what Girl is wishing for for us brothers, we say this to each other, we say this with this look of us looking the other way. If this is what Girl wants, we look with this look at each other. And like this, us brothers, we nod with our heads okay. And then, like this too, we lift up our boy hands up off of Boy’s shoulders and we send Boy back up on his way back up to the top of Girl. Boy, our hands they are saying, Boy, and we both of us brothers both let with our hands go. Go, Boy, is what our hands say. You can keep climbing up. But our legs: our legs are telling another story. Our legs, on us brothers, our legs, they are telling us brothers to climb up too. Go after Boy is what our legs are telling us to do. To our legs, us brothers, we listen up. We go climbing up the side of Girl’s leg up after Boy. We do not stop this climbing up, all three of us together climbing up the side of Girl, until we get up to the top that is the top of Girl’s head. Up here, Boy reaches down and gives us brothers each a hand up. Up here, us boys, the three of us boys together, us brothers with Boy in between us like this, we make a crown of boys with our boy bodies up here at the top of Girl’s head. Boy, he is looking like he is believing that he is one of us. This boy Boy, he could be one of us brothers, or so it might look, but no, this boy Boy, he is a boy who is brother-less. But maybe, us brothers, we are both of us brothers thinking. Us brothers, we are looking at each other, and we are each of us thinking what the other one of us is not afraid to say. What we say to Boy, then, is we say jump. Jump? Boy asks, with his eyes. Jump, we say, with our mouths, but Boy just gives us both this look like Boy believes that us brothers, we are just saying this word just to say it. But us brothers, we keep on looking at Boy with this look and then, us brothers, what we say next to Boy is fly. Fly, we say. Like a bird, we tell him. Boy gives us brothers this look that he is looking at us with. It’s a look that is broken only by Boy’s eyes blinking both of them at the same time shut. Each blink of Boy’s eyes is saying to us brothers, What do you mean? Close your eyes is what we say to this. And this time Boy listens. Boy does what us brothers say. Good, Boy, we say to this. Now, look now: Boy is right now more than just a boy to us brothers. Boy is about to become a brother to us. Now take a deep breath, we say, and we see Boy’s body rise up: it is a kite that has just caught hold of a wind that only it can see. Now, we say next, let go, we tell him, and we give Boy with a hand on his back a push. It’s a soft push that is just hard enough to get him to walk forward, a step into the dark, and when he opens his eyes what it looks like to him is, it looks like to him like the sky is a sky that is falling up. But what is really going on is this: it is Boy who is the one doing the falling, and this boy, he is falling and falling down fast. Boy is falling fast, down to where the river and the mud that the river makes are waiting to catch his falling. See Boy falling this fall. His falling, it is a sight that is beautiful to see: the way the sky around Boy, that blackness that seems to hold the moon and stars in their place, it unfolds its hands and lets Boy go. Watch Boy go. Boy, he is going. Go, Boy, go, the both of us brothers sing this out. When Boy hits the river, there is this sound that the river makes, it’s this sound that sounds like what mud sounds like when you take up a fistful of mud and throw it, this fistful of mud, up against the side of something hard: a wall, a boat’s hull, a tree. But there is this moment, too, just before Boy falls, that moment when Boy and Boy’s boy feet are about to step off the ledge of Girl’s head, when Boy is standing up in mid-air. Boy, it looks like to us brothers that this boy, he is a boy floating in a river of mud. His boy hands are stretched out at his boy side and Boy, this boy — are you seeing with us brothers? — he is pulling in at the sky, he is holding the sky in close to his body, he is pressing it, the sky, and the moon and stars in it, up against his heart. When he does, the moon, it shatters into a billion moon pieces. Each broken piece becomes a star.