Noah drowns
Somewhere between auto and remote control.
The boy is careful with the angles most of all, uses levels and rulers and other mathematical urgencies to get every corner perfect and to specification.
His head flies back and forth between an open book and the geometric mess on the table.
He is a translator, that yellow carbon copy sheet that’s beneath the white one and above the pink, exacting what he sees and mimicking it with glue and toilet paper rolls and cut fragments from cereal boxes.
The city grows, layer upon layer: streets, houses, shops, skyscrapers, traffic lights. And as it grows, so do his people.
They exist everywhere, standing on corners, in lines, in seats, in beds, in prisons. Some sit in church pews he made my folding crayon boxes just right. He has a picture of him at the front where a cross or Star of David should be.
His classmates call it “Narci City.”
He calls it genius.
He’s making a truly beautiful scene, finishing the pen-stroke eyes on two of his people when the alarms sound.
Water cascades down around him, glinting silver and white in the emergency lights.
“Everybody out! Everybody out!” his teacher yells.
He does as she says, adrenaline taking over. When he returns, his mighty city has curdled, once tall buildings now hunchbacked and ill. His people float in puddles. His church picture has curled into a nar-cigarette.
He sighs and wonders how God does it.
His head flies back and forth between an open book and the geometric mess on the table.
He is a translator, that yellow carbon copy sheet that’s beneath the white one and above the pink, exacting what he sees and mimicking it with glue and toilet paper rolls and cut fragments from cereal boxes.
The city grows, layer upon layer: streets, houses, shops, skyscrapers, traffic lights. And as it grows, so do his people.
They exist everywhere, standing on corners, in lines, in seats, in beds, in prisons. Some sit in church pews he made my folding crayon boxes just right. He has a picture of him at the front where a cross or Star of David should be.
His classmates call it “Narci City.”
He calls it genius.
He’s making a truly beautiful scene, finishing the pen-stroke eyes on two of his people when the alarms sound.
Water cascades down around him, glinting silver and white in the emergency lights.
“Everybody out! Everybody out!” his teacher yells.
He does as she says, adrenaline taking over. When he returns, his mighty city has curdled, once tall buildings now hunchbacked and ill. His people float in puddles. His church picture has curled into a nar-cigarette.
He sighs and wonders how God does it.
