Connect the Dots

Three Davids swimming under a bridge. Two Davids diving gracelessly from a buoy. One David’s thigh with a birthmark the color of a raspberry just beneath his clinging boxer shorts. Death metal blasting from a Mazda braked above the rocks. Earlier: three hits of LSD each. Earlier still: two Davids peeling cherry-colored panties from one stoned girl. Death metal blasting from the stereo of an unfinished basement, one mother puttering over kitchen linoleum above. Even earlier still: sleeping and sleeping through the night beneath screened windows—one stoned girl, three Davids. One mother adrift in a vision of fireflies twinkling in the black heat. Now the double concussion of two Davids diving. Now one David freaking off the lyrics of Cannibal Corpse. The Mazda a giant beetle. Bugs munching his insides. One David dunking another David. Repeated in reverse. Then one David on the rocks in a wrestling mask stripped of his boxer shorts. Two Davids drifting in the current, the shore seeming to recede. A glare off the Mazda’s windshield visible from the bridge above. Later: three Davids breaking streetlights with a scattershot of rocks. One stoned girl bored, her glossed lips glum. Later still: the hush of one hairbrush through one mother’s brittle hair. Then last: the summer heat broken by a thunderstorm, the river high in the wake of three Davids.