Hammer

If I had a gun I'd blow my head off, he says. He sits on a couch in a living room. A living room with walls he made by hand, posting timber, pounding nails. He sits on a couch alone in the dark. Is that what you want, she says. His wife sits at a kitchen table in the light. She sits within hearing distance, surrounded by walls he made. Their voices, not their eyes, make contact. His words respond to her words, her angry words for the cancer that kills him, that's killing him now. What else can I do, he says. That's not very nice, she says. He has months, maybe weeks. He wants life. He wants walls. He wants timber and nails. She sits under a lamp at a kitchen table smoking. One cigarette, then another and another. Her face appears in a cloud that follows her and kills her years later. Unaware of death inside her she sits by herself in the light near the dark where he sits by himself holding his head near the walls holding him up, near the walls that he made by hand, posting timber, pounding nails. In a hall against a wall that he built stands a girl, their daughter, listening in the shade between them.