Pail Water and Corkwood

He was at odds with anything even; vectors and line-drawings, even-sided triangles and bootstrapping. Most days began without him noticing, they simply fell one in front of the other, an unbroken line of same-such days. Those days of the month that fell on even numbers, the 22nd or 28th to name but two, he stayed abed, burying his head beneath the covers, one eye on the clock the other half-closed and weepy. When he was a boy his mother cinched the bed-linens up over the knob of his chin, then tucked them in round the swain of his hips, his arms pressed in tight to his sides, palms upturned and sweaty. His ma sang softly sweetly, her voice plucking at the strings of his malnourished heart. The dog made a bed at the foot of his bed, its ears sticking up like corkwood shims, pail-water dripping from the warp of its dog’s mouth.