CPR

He is in the galvanized tub tittering over your cardigan. Look; look in; look in the water. There he is. There is the drowned man in the midst of a bubbling laugh riot. The bubbles are saying: every one under water isn’t drowned. Also: everyone who laughs at your cardigan isn’t dead. It’s a princely article. The cardigan. Fred Perry. I know. A crest. This is no reflection of you so stop it: anything you were going to say before I said this: Don’t let her take out your teeth. Twenty-seven years old is too young for dentures. The man in the tub may be laughing but he agrees with me. He doesn’t like the way she loves you either. Help me hoist him out in to the air. He’s not a dentist. Under the arms now, our hands beneath his knees to lift. His own clothing wool and buttery like a lamb caught in April showers. Yes. It is as precious as this. Feel how the temperature drops close to our man. Let’s chew the cooler air with our prematurely soft teeth. We cannot stop cataloguing the way in which we age. I know he isn’t likeable with his mouth petaled out like a fleshy lily. I promise after this we’ll go get a drink, something Irish and shirty like you like. Let’s just save this man first. I could explain to you the dark catastrophe that would befall us if we didn’t complete this mission yet somehow I think it’d get twisted, a major selling point for your classic cut-and-run. We’re undelectably moribund at any rate. So I won’t tell you anything. I’ll forget how I used to be around you. I’ll solemn up. We’ll lay him out. We’ll hover like lovers.