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Paring

Scott Varengo

When I was a boy
my mother showed me
a clever blade
and told me it was a paring knife.
She used it to take the skin
from an apple.

It should not have been
a moment of import.
It should not have nested
so close at hand
in a mind
that has forgotten so much.

But it did.

And when I was older
it occurred to me
that if a knife could wear such a name
I needed to better understand.
So having newly conquered
the mystery of letters
I turned in earnest wondering
To the tome of words.

It told me this:

Pare - to trim by cutting off projecting, irregular, or superficial parts.

It should not have been
a passage that burned itself
forever into a mind
already singed, already ashen

But it did.

And when I was older once more
having first learned
and now coveted pain,
life became cluttered.
I had found so many things
I had promised myself I needed.


Then one day I stumbled.
Then one day I tripped.
The one day I fell and
struggled insanely
just to rise up on my elbows
just to see above the debris.

I thought,
“You have gone astray.”
As I looked at a cruel blue ceiling
So far above me
Unattainable.
Unfathomable.

I thought,
“I shall begin to pare.”

And so I did.
I cut my world down
to four small rooms
and a grey tar walkway
which seem somehow to glow
just before it storms.

I shed human enterprise
I shed human intercourse
I revised my definition
of Human Being.

I chose sound over sight
word over image.
I chose distance over immediacy
I chose a pen of blue ink
over a killing phantom with blue eyes
and over a lying blue ceiling.
I chose night over day.
I left the plaza
and rested my head in the grave.

I listened to the song
of an eternal scream
echoing in a vacuum.

 

I found absolute absolution
in absolute zero
and I stood alone and naked
where the mirror used to hang.

I did not smile
as I remembered smiling to be
but in a smirking voice
as I thought of my mother
as I thought of the book of words
as I thought of falling
and of the wicked blue ceiling,
I said, at last,
“My whole life has led me
to this moment
this instant.”

And then I pared away

 

myself.

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