Names I Keep Writing Down at 3 AM
Lead-in:
Found on scraps of paper stuffed in a library book about municipal records. Different pens, some pencil, one section in crayon. Water damage suggests the writer cried on it. Or spilled coffee. Multiple times. The librarian said someone's been leaving these all over town—in phone booths, under windshield wipers, pinned to trees.
---
I collect names. Can't stop.
Started with Marlène Silt. Waitress but the word "silt" follows her. River bottom. Keeps dirt in her apron. Actual dirt. For sadness, she says.
Then Jean-Debris. You say it French—zhahn deh-BREE—or it's just garbage. He IS garbage. Tuesday garbage man. Talks about trash at dinner. His wife left. Or she's there but not there.
C. Beaumont. Just C. Lives in the pause on Beautiful Mountain. Not a place. But she gets mail there.
Can't stop writing these.
Troy Rousseau under the bridge. Has books. Kant maybe. Or can't. Cop's handwriting was shit. Won't shut up about pure reason. Birds listen.
Ohm Lie Why—stupid name but there she is. Violin case. Never opens it. X-ray machine broke when they tried. She says it contains "whimsical wreckage." How does she know? She walked away when I asked.
---
More:
Lint Chin at the laundromat. Every laundromat. Collecting—what? Someone said "neutral flowing" like that means something.
Mo Delacroix at crossroads. Which crossroads? Yes.
Veronica Spool pulls light from her fingers. I didn't see this. But I did.
---
Margaret Pearl guards a building they tore down in 1987. Still shows up. City still pays her. Thirty-seven years of paychecks for guarding nothing.
Branch Holloway grows through walls. Not around—THROUGH.
Ourtour Vessel is a person or a container or both boxes checked.
Doro Loom knits things that come true. Knit "warm" and you're never cold. Knit "loved" and—
Can't finish that thought.
---
Marie Debris Johnson. Two names fighting. "Call me Marie when I'm kind. Debris when I'm not." Nobody uses Johnson.
Will Beau Silt ruins beautiful things beautifully then ruins that too. Can't stop.
Georges Gardener plants sparks. Not seeds. Sparks. They grow into—I don't know what.
---
Singer who hummed forty minutes about a marble crime. Jury cried. Verdict unclear.
Someone lives between possibilities. Not two. ALL. The pause where everything could happen so nothing—
These aren't made up.
They are made up.
Both.
---
3 AM they come. Wake up with names like dirt in my mouth.
More names:
- Tuesday (person or day?)
- The Hummer (testimony without words)
- Pending Margaret (Pearl? Different?)
- Guardian of demolished space
- Planter of impossible things
Why do I do this?
They demand to exist. Even though they don't. Yet.
---
Oyparaploo keeps signing things. That might be me. Can't remember.
You're reading this. You found it. Tree? Book? Windshield?
You have names too. The almost-people. The should-exist. The 73% real (Barry made up that number but it feels true).
Check your pockets. Might find dirt. That's Marlène's sadness. Or yours. Can't tell the difference anymore.
Tuesday's coming. Or it already came. I can't tell anymore.
The pause between words is where C. Beaumont lives and maybe where we all live, between one word and the next, between existing and not, between the names we have and the names we're becoming.
Write them down. Your impossible people. Before they become possible. Or after.
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—Found everywhere, signed by no one, everyone, Oyparaploo, you
Coda:
We all carry lists of impossible people. Check your pockets for dirt. That's how you know they're starting to exist.
