Cell Division
By Michael Harris Cohen
A perfect square except for the bed bolted to the wall.
Again, he paces the distance. End to End. Cold from the stone floor passes the shoes, enters the feet. No socks, no belt, no shoelaces, they took these things and now the shoes slip at the heels, the pants ride low on hip bones.
There is a door within a door; only the smaller one opens. Daily, a metal tray scrapes the stone. A glimpse of fingers, a hand, then the door shuts with a noise that feels a part of him. He stretches on the floor to look past the hand though his sight travels only as far as the man’s watch.
He allows himself a conviction: that there is no more to any man than hands. Hands are the most prominent things in his vision. He regards them working at meals or roaming each other. They scratch a sore above the ankle.
The hands infuriate him with their indolence, their dumb simian aspect as they await task. When this happens he punishes them: he digs the jagged nails of one into the palm of the other or hurtles them both against walls.
He knows the idle hands have done other things, countless other things, but what? He recalls he had a watch. A silver border dividing hand and arm. On this watch he remembers it is always six o’clock. On the unseen man’s watch it is always 11:30.
Muttering, holding the time so he might have a sense of what time means, he senses it is a thing that passes, knowing some moments after he begins counting 11:30 it is no longer 11:30. Then he loses sense of why he keeps this number.
He stares at the ceiling, the only wall he cannot touch. Once, the word “sky” drifted in, then out, of his head.
Sometimes he speaks. Words creep from the mouth, each syllable separated by quiet. The mouth feels odd forming sounds, the ears unsettled as locution dies against stone.
A suspended bulb serves as his sun. He orbits it. He assumed, at first, it must turn off at night and on in the day. Later, he questioned this. Lights dim in the day where there is day, do they not? Later still, it does not matter. Perhaps only The Sign matters.
The Sign could be a letter—a “V” or perhaps the beginnings of an “A.” He prefers to think of it as a “V,” as something carried through to completion. Though if it is the beginning of a word than it is, of course, unfinished. He can’t apprehend what the word might have been. He knows nothing of how old the room is, how many other men have lived here, how many pairs of hands stretched in the darkness, perhaps carving the mark.
He apologizes to the hands. He kisses them. They often help. Perhaps he will carve his own Sign someday or even add to The Sign. And the hands connect his body to the room, the room to his body.
The nose creates problems. He’s forever aware of the nose in the inside corners of his vision. He’s tried to recall what kind of nose it is. Long, thick, perhaps broken in that spot on the ridge? He traces a finger over the bump there, the hill that might be a badly healed bone. He nearly forgets the nose when he looks at other things but it is not possible to forget it completely. He seals one eye to see a blurry image of a nostril’s hood, switches eyes, then closes both, trying to make a picture of the whole through addition.
He inspects the reflection in a cup of water, trying to behold the nose, resolve the color of the eyes, but the reflection is a featureless silhouette. The outline of a head, a jagged horizon of hair and beard but he could feel that already. He didn’t waste any effort on that.
He sees letters on the bottom of the metal trays. He knows the trays vary because different letters are worn off. The eyes fumble over the letters, wondering are they important or merely unfinished like The Sign—if it is a letter at all.
Sometimes he thinks The Sign is only a chip, perhaps from the bed that breaks the perfect square. A mistake.
He sees again:
Bony hands, sweaty hands, weary on thin soup, straining from the weight, dropping the bed before it is bolted to the wall. A sharp corner divots the floor.
Staring at The Sign, the nose distracts him. It stands between him and the truth of The Sign. Then, only the movement of the hands can divert him from the nose.
Sometimes he thinks he hears other voices far off, through the walls. A humming dull and distant, like the sound the bulb makes when he cannot ignore it. He imagines there are other men like him in rooms like this but he cannot really imagine anyone like himself. He cannot imagine himself.
But if there are other men and he could meet them perhaps they could explain what hands are for. What color the eyes are and what the nose looks like. If it’s broken. Or not.
- - -
I am a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Brown University where I was on full fellowship. I’ve had stories published in Our Stories, The Virgin Fiction 2 anthology, the online-Conjunctions, The Land Grant College Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Lurch, and a number of other fine magazines, in addition to several times having my words performed on small stages and screens. I'm a recipient of fellowships from the Djerassi Foundation, The Jentel Artists Residency and The Blue Mountain Center as well as receiving a Fulbright grant for translating Bulgarian folk and fairy tales.
By Michael Harris Cohen
A perfect square except for the bed bolted to the wall.
Again, he paces the distance. End to End. Cold from the stone floor passes the shoes, enters the feet. No socks, no belt, no shoelaces, they took these things and now the shoes slip at the heels, the pants ride low on hip bones.
There is a door within a door; only the smaller one opens. Daily, a metal tray scrapes the stone. A glimpse of fingers, a hand, then the door shuts with a noise that feels a part of him. He stretches on the floor to look past the hand though his sight travels only as far as the man’s watch.
He allows himself a conviction: that there is no more to any man than hands. Hands are the most prominent things in his vision. He regards them working at meals or roaming each other. They scratch a sore above the ankle.
The hands infuriate him with their indolence, their dumb simian aspect as they await task. When this happens he punishes them: he digs the jagged nails of one into the palm of the other or hurtles them both against walls.
He knows the idle hands have done other things, countless other things, but what? He recalls he had a watch. A silver border dividing hand and arm. On this watch he remembers it is always six o’clock. On the unseen man’s watch it is always 11:30.
Muttering, holding the time so he might have a sense of what time means, he senses it is a thing that passes, knowing some moments after he begins counting 11:30 it is no longer 11:30. Then he loses sense of why he keeps this number.
He stares at the ceiling, the only wall he cannot touch. Once, the word “sky” drifted in, then out, of his head.
Sometimes he speaks. Words creep from the mouth, each syllable separated by quiet. The mouth feels odd forming sounds, the ears unsettled as locution dies against stone.
A suspended bulb serves as his sun. He orbits it. He assumed, at first, it must turn off at night and on in the day. Later, he questioned this. Lights dim in the day where there is day, do they not? Later still, it does not matter. Perhaps only The Sign matters.
The Sign could be a letter—a “V” or perhaps the beginnings of an “A.” He prefers to think of it as a “V,” as something carried through to completion. Though if it is the beginning of a word than it is, of course, unfinished. He can’t apprehend what the word might have been. He knows nothing of how old the room is, how many other men have lived here, how many pairs of hands stretched in the darkness, perhaps carving the mark.
He apologizes to the hands. He kisses them. They often help. Perhaps he will carve his own Sign someday or even add to The Sign. And the hands connect his body to the room, the room to his body.
The nose creates problems. He’s forever aware of the nose in the inside corners of his vision. He’s tried to recall what kind of nose it is. Long, thick, perhaps broken in that spot on the ridge? He traces a finger over the bump there, the hill that might be a badly healed bone. He nearly forgets the nose when he looks at other things but it is not possible to forget it completely. He seals one eye to see a blurry image of a nostril’s hood, switches eyes, then closes both, trying to make a picture of the whole through addition.
He inspects the reflection in a cup of water, trying to behold the nose, resolve the color of the eyes, but the reflection is a featureless silhouette. The outline of a head, a jagged horizon of hair and beard but he could feel that already. He didn’t waste any effort on that.
He sees letters on the bottom of the metal trays. He knows the trays vary because different letters are worn off. The eyes fumble over the letters, wondering are they important or merely unfinished like The Sign—if it is a letter at all.
Sometimes he thinks The Sign is only a chip, perhaps from the bed that breaks the perfect square. A mistake.
He sees again:
Bony hands, sweaty hands, weary on thin soup, straining from the weight, dropping the bed before it is bolted to the wall. A sharp corner divots the floor.
Staring at The Sign, the nose distracts him. It stands between him and the truth of The Sign. Then, only the movement of the hands can divert him from the nose.
Sometimes he thinks he hears other voices far off, through the walls. A humming dull and distant, like the sound the bulb makes when he cannot ignore it. He imagines there are other men like him in rooms like this but he cannot really imagine anyone like himself. He cannot imagine himself.
But if there are other men and he could meet them perhaps they could explain what hands are for. What color the eyes are and what the nose looks like. If it’s broken. Or not.
- - -
I am a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Brown University where I was on full fellowship. I’ve had stories published in Our Stories, The Virgin Fiction 2 anthology, the online-Conjunctions, The Land Grant College Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Lurch, and a number of other fine magazines, in addition to several times having my words performed on small stages and screens. I'm a recipient of fellowships from the Djerassi Foundation, The Jentel Artists Residency and The Blue Mountain Center as well as receiving a Fulbright grant for translating Bulgarian folk and fairy tales.
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