Gianmarc Manzione
The Witness
With Johnson’s unbound body slung around my shoulders,
I found a way to make it
up the stairs from the room where Taylor called us down
to tie our hands
with tape at gunpoint—the twin holes a bullet blew
through my face
emptying a puddle of blood from my mouth—and began my life
inside the memory of a moment
spent flat against the floor of a walk-in freezer, my head packaged in a white plastic bag
I quietly turned in
to hear what was happening, an uncalculated impulse with which I saved
my life before
a shot through the cheeks knocked me out—I don’t know how long—
and even though the killers
had fled an hour ago with three grand in cash and a bag of burgers,
I awoke
to hear once again the snap of plastic bags they ripped from a roll, duct tape
torn in strips long enough to wrap
around our mouths, sounds that would repeat themselves to me until they became as
available to memory
as the name of a lover, and when police busted a window medics ran through
to locate the bullet
in Johnson’s brain, I paused at the top of the stairs amazed
that the bodies piled
on the basement floor appalled me less than the ease with which the room continued
to be ordinary,
that every detail of the space I made my living in had acquired
a repugnance I could not explain—
how the crusted grill Anita and I had sponged at closing,
the table tops we’d glossed with soaped rags
drying under fans, luxuriated in a composure that could not be troubled
by buffered floors spotted with coagulating blood,
and it occurred to me that I too had become an inanimate thing, that I could
only comprehend what happened
if I agreed to no longer feel anything, if I achieved a distance from which it is possible
to overlook
the absurdity of carrying on.
With Johnson’s unbound body slung around my shoulders,
I found a way to make it
up the stairs from the room where Taylor called us down
to tie our hands
with tape at gunpoint—the twin holes a bullet blew
through my face
emptying a puddle of blood from my mouth—and began my life
inside the memory of a moment
spent flat against the floor of a walk-in freezer, my head packaged in a white plastic bag
I quietly turned in
to hear what was happening, an uncalculated impulse with which I saved
my life before
a shot through the cheeks knocked me out—I don’t know how long—
and even though the killers
had fled an hour ago with three grand in cash and a bag of burgers,
I awoke
to hear once again the snap of plastic bags they ripped from a roll, duct tape
torn in strips long enough to wrap
around our mouths, sounds that would repeat themselves to me until they became as
available to memory
as the name of a lover, and when police busted a window medics ran through
to locate the bullet
in Johnson’s brain, I paused at the top of the stairs amazed
that the bodies piled
on the basement floor appalled me less than the ease with which the room continued
to be ordinary,
that every detail of the space I made my living in had acquired
a repugnance I could not explain—
how the crusted grill Anita and I had sponged at closing,
the table tops we’d glossed with soaped rags
drying under fans, luxuriated in a composure that could not be troubled
by buffered floors spotted with coagulating blood,
and it occurred to me that I too had become an inanimate thing, that I could
only comprehend what happened
if I agreed to no longer feel anything, if I achieved a distance from which it is possible
to overlook
the absurdity of carrying on.
