You are reading an archived issue of Sleet Magazine. To return to the current issue, click here.
Volume 2 Number 2 • Fall - Winter 2010-2011
Perceiving Doors
The Wait
Hero
He grabbed the door after opening it from the inside and somehow broke it off its hinges. Holding onto it for a few steps, he then threw it to the ground outside. As all of this happened, he felt himself become the building, with and without a door. He had always thought that when inside of a building it was an entirely separate space from the outside, but as he walked through the doorway carrying the door he felt differently. His rage diminished with the understanding that there was no such absolute difference.
For his first fifty years, aging didn't bother him. He liked it, really—recognizing his developed confidence along the character of his advancing skin.
After fifty, he felt something deeper in his flesh. His confidence would now quietly leave him. Years that had moved naturally now had long, loud pauses of doubt; here is where the obsessing began with analyzing his own picture: a picture every week of every month of every year—each the subject of a demanding critical review.
He turned 62 and discovered the problem. He was decomposing. This was very clear from his pictures.
All the pictures were taken secretly when alone. He told no one anything.
An oil spill in an ocean happens. There is a fire on the water.
A man on a nearby ship sees the water appearing to be burning.
He misunderstands what is happening, thinking the sea and soon the
world will cook away.
After a few quick moments, he finds out what was actually
happening. But these few short naive moments hold too much meaning
for him. He has already experienced the end of the world. He recreates
and re-experiences this in his mind over and again while at sea—seeing
the flaming water—trying to understand what the meaning is.
Back home again, he goes to his favorite place to get sandwiches
and sits and begins eating. Halfway through, it occurs to him that he can
see the end of the world in his sandwich too.
Ed. Note: Hero was written in December 2009.
Dwight Peters lives in Seattle with a small glass cow and many socks push-pinned into place on his wall. In the past ten years, he has battered his body up and down the American West—living in Portland, L.A., San Francisco, Las Vegas, and several other spots along the way.