THE FACE: THERE ARE THIRTEEN BONES THAT FORM THE SKELETON OF THE FACE. FOR COMPLETENESS THE FRONTAL BONE SHOULD BE ADDED.

Of the visions that come to me waking and sleeping the most insistent is your face. Your face, mirror-smooth and mirror-clear. Your face under the moon, silvered with cool reflection, your face in its mystery, revealing me.

I cut out your face where it had caught in the ice on the pond, your face bigger than my body, your mouth filled with water. I held you against my chest on that snowy day, the outline of you jagged into my jacket. When I put my lips to your frozen cheek you burned me. The skin tore at the corner of my mouth, my mouth filled with blood. The closer I held you to me, the faster you melted away. I held you as Death will hold you. Death that slowly pulls down the skin’s heavy curtain to expose the bony cage behind.

The skin loosens, yellows like limestone, like limestone worn by time, shows up the marbling of veins. The pale translucency hardens and grows cold. The bones themselves yellow into tusks.

Your face gores me. I am run through. Into the holes I pack splinters of hope but hope does not heal me. Should I pad my eyes with forgetfulness, eyes grown thin through looking? Frontal bone, palatine bones, nasal bones, lacrimal bones, cheek bones, maxilla, vomer, inferior conchae, mandible.

Those are my shields, those are my blankets, those words don’t remind me of your face.

The Special Senses

HEARING AND THE EAR: THE AURICLE IS THE EXPANDED PORTION WHICH PROJECTS FROM THE SIDE OF THE HEAD. IT IS COMPOSED OF FIBRO-ELASTIC CARTILAGE COVERED WITH SKIN AND FINE HAIRS. IT IS DEEPLY GROOVED AND RIDGED. THE PROMINENT OUTER RIDGE IS KNOWN AS THE HELIX. THE LOBULE IS THE SOFT PLIABLE PART AT THE LOWER EXTREMITY.

Sound waves travel at about 335 metres a second. That’s about a fifth of a mile and Louise is perhaps two hundred miles away. If I shout now, she’ll hear me in seventeen minutes or so. I have to leave a margin of error for the unexpected. She may be swimming under water.

I call Louise from the doorstep because I know she can’t hear me. I keen in the fields to the moon. Animals in the zoo do the same, hoping that another of their kind will call back. The zoo at night is the saddest place. Behind the bars, at rest from vivisecting eyes, the animals cry out, species separated from one another, knowing instinctively the map of belonging. They would choose predator and prey against this outlandish safety. Their ears, more powerful than those of their keepers, pick up sounds of cars and last-hour take-aways. They hear all the human noises of distress. What they don’t hear is the hum of the undergrowth or the crack of fire. The noises of kill. The river-roar booming against brief screams. They prick their ears till their ears are sharp points but the noises they seek are too far away.