blown ragged by the winds of early March.
Half of Rumpelstiltskin watches as, in the distance, a kite mounts its way into the air. Beneath it, a man stands in a meadow of dry yellow grass, unspooling a length of string. He tugs at the kite and the kite tugs back, yanking the man in fits and starts through the field and toward a playground. Half of Rumpelstiltskin sees children loosed from the plate of a restless, wheeling merry-go-round, holding to its metal bars with both arms, their bodies like streamers in the air. He sees swings arcing up and down and supine parents reading newspapers and smoking cigarettes. Beside the playground, a sandwich stand sprouts from the ground like a toadstool. Half of Rumpelstiltskin’s stomach churns at the sight of it, rumbling like sneakers caught in a spin cycle. He places his hand against its interior lining, finds it dry and clean and webbed like ceiling insulation. Half of Rumpelstiltskin is hungry.
At the sandwich stand, he asks for peanut butter and jelly on wheat. Eating and hopping, he unwittingly lights on an anthill. It goes scattering ahead of him in a fine particulate brume. Half of Rumpelstiltskin lowers himself to the ground and sits with his haunch on his heel. He watches as ants swarm from the razed hill: they broadcast themselves in all directions, like bursting fireworks or ink on water. Within a matter of minutes, the tiny, volatile creatures have built a protective ring of dirt around the bore above their home. Half of Rumpelstiltskin finds the sight of creatures working as a collective a strange and unfamiliar one. It’s spooky and — for some reason — a little bit sad. Half of Rumpelstiltskin has trouble enough comprehending the nature of individuality without throwing intersubjectivity into the pot. Although he has unmade anthills on many, many occasions, Half of Rumpelstiltskin has never stayed to watch the ants rebuild. As a gesture of goodwill, he leaves them that portion of his sandwich he has not yet swallowed. If they can’t eat it, he thinks, perhaps they can build with it.
An abundance of drugstores lines the walk between the park and Half of Rumpelstiltskin’s home, and he stops at one along the way. There he purchases a chocolate bar, a bottle of apple-green mouthwash, and a newspaper from the metroplex across the river, the headlines of which affirm what he has long held to be true — that the world tumbles its way through political conventions, economic treaties, televised sporting events, and invasive military tactics in starving third-world nations with utter indifference to the inglorious fact of his half- existence. The stock market columns report that gold is down — straw way, way down.
Half of Rumpelstiltskin has poor depth perception. Hopping home, he trips over a concrete parking block.
1:25 P.M. He receives a Mad Libs letter from his other Half.
3 March
(year)
Half of Rumpelstiltskin:
Not much new here in.
(place where you are not)
The Queen has decided once again to levy a whole (term of derision) new batch of taxes — and guess who the (ironic adjective) victims are this time around: homunculi. That’s right. Miss has decided that the time is ripe to tax (what’s her name), and (things) (other things) homunculi. And who’s the only homunculus on this whole (color)? Me! Rumpel- (land mass) (crude participial adjective) stiltskin. Sorry. Just need to vent some of my and (bodily organ) frustration. I should learn to control my temper — if there’s a moral to this whole affair, that must be it — but you know how it gets., at least we’re not as bad as (tame interjection). (fictional character renowned for losing his or her temper to no good end) Life on the personal front is no Life on the personal front is no (word that rhymes with letter) than on the political. I’m still out of work — the (occupation) position fell through — and I’m on the outs with. (person you and I know who used to keep me from being lonely sometimes) Sometimes I wonder when and how it all turned so. (adjective expressing disconsolation)
When you get the chance, your half of this (direction) __to me, so I can find out what I’ve to me, so I can find out what I’ve (word that rhymes with better) written. When the words won’t come to me, I figure they must be yours. I miss you and (subject) (verb) (object) (sad word) (sad, sad, sad, sad word)
All Right:
Half of Rumpelstiltskin
2:30 P.M. He delivers a speech to a local women’s auxiliary organization.
Half of Rumpelstiltskin stands at a lectern fashioned of fluted, burnished cherrywood and speaks on “The Birthrights of First-Born Children,” a topic in which he claims no small degree of expertise. Half of Rumpelstiltskin has had his fair share of ill-favored dealings with first-born children, particularly those of millers’ daughters. As he speaks, the cheery, preoccupied faces before him exchange knowing glances and subtle pointed smiles. Half of Rumpelstiltskin, when asked to address this meeting, was not informed as to whether the auxiliary was for or against first-born children and their concomitant birthrights — and so he has taken what he considers to be a nonpartisan slant on the topic. Listening to the raspy coughs of the women in the audience and regarding their nodding, oblate heads, he can’t decide whether he is offending or boring them. Half of Rumpelstiltskin concludes his speech to a smattering of polite applause that sounds like the last few popping kernels in a bag of prebuttered popcorn. When he steps out from behind the lectern and joins the women in the audience for a question-and- answer session, nobody has a thing to say about first-born children, birthrights, red pottage, or the nation of Israel. Instead, as he might have suspected, it’s all straw-to-gold this and fairy tale that.
— What, the women ask, happened to your other half?
I split myself in two, says Half of Rumpelstiltskin, when the Queen guessed my name. However, he says, that’s a story that demands a discussion of first-born children. So then—
— But, the women ask, how did you split yourself in two?
In a fit of anger, says Half of Rumpelstiltskin. When the Queen guessed my name, I stamped explosively, burying my right leg to the waist beneath the floorboards. In trying to unearth myself, I took hold of my left foot, wrenching it so hard that I split down the center. My other half lives overseas. I myself emigrated.
— I thought, say the women, that upon stamping the ground you fell to the center of the earth. Or that you merely bruised your heel and wandered off in a fit of malaise.
No, says Half of Rumpelstiltskin, those are just myths.
— Is it true, ask the women, that you wish to huff and puff and blow our houses down?
No, says Half of Rumpelstiltskin. You’re thinking of the Big Bad Wolf.
— Is it true what we hear about you and the girl with the grandmother?
No. That, too, is the Big Bad Wolf.
— Is it true that you’d like to cook our children in your large, cast-iron stewpot?
Half of Rumpelstiltskin sighs. No, he says, I am in fact a strict vegetarian.
— Do you believe in the interdependence of name and identity? ask the women.
Yes, I do.
— Why don’t you change your name?
Because I’m still Rumpelstiltskin, says Half of Rumpelstiltskin. I’m just not all of him.
— You’re still Rumpelstiltskin? Even after having lived as Half, and only half, of Rumpelstiltskin for oh-so- many years?
Yes.
— Is there a moral to all of this?
No. Half of Rumpelstiltskin checks his watch. No, there isn’t. I have time for one more question.
— If you were granted only one wish, ask the women, what would you wish for?
Half of Rumpelstiltskin doesn’t miss a beat. Bilateral symmetry, he says.
4:10 P.M. He shops for dinner at the grocery store.
Half of Rumpelstiltskin is standing in line at the checkout counter of a supermarket, reading the cover of a tabloid newspaper upon which is pictured a pair of Siamese twins and an infant the size of a walnut — who is actually curled, in the cover photograph, next to a walnut. The infant looks like the protean, half-formed bird Half of
