Foam On The Tongue | A Glitch

GLITCH CINEMA Presents,

FOAM ON THE TONGUE

An old fisherman sits inside a fish tank.

Not a metaphor. He is wet. The glass is cold. The fish are outside looking in.

He has been here since the war. Which war. All of them. War is a season that never leaves.

His grandson sells cigarettes at the night market. The cigarettes are made of compressed dreams. People smoke them to forget they ever wanted anything.

The grandson is seventeen. The grandson is also unborn. He exists in the space between his father’s hesitation and his mother’s moan.

That one second pause before creation. He lives there. We all live there. We just forgot.

A robot delivers rice to the fisherman every evening.

The robot has no face. The robot has too many faces. Every person who ever ignored the fisherman their face appears on the robot for exactly one second then dissolves.

The fisherman says thank you to every face.

This is the only prayer that works.

At the night market there is a woman who reads scars.

Not palms. Scars. She traces the raised skin and tells you what you survived that you forgot you survived.

The grandson visits her.

She touches the scar on his wrist. She says this is from a door you almost opened.

He says I never had a door.

She says exactly.

Somewhere a leaf falls from a tree that doesn’t exist yet. The leaf is green. The leaf is also a goodbye letter. The leaf is also the breath of a grandmother who died in a language no one speaks anymore.

The grandson catches the leaf.

The leaf becomes a key.

The key opens the fish tank.

The fisherman steps out. Water pours from him for seven years. When he is finally dry he is no longer a fisherman. He is a cloud.

The cloud rains on a city that has been waiting for water since before thirst was invented.

People open their mouths. The rain tastes like the inside of a shell. The rain tastes like the quiet at the center of pain. The rain tastes like almost.

A taxi driver stops his car in the middle of the highway.

He gets out. He removes his mask. Under the mask is another mask. Under that mask is a wound. Under the wound is light. Under the light is a question. Under the question is foam. Just foam. Rising and falling. Ego. Just ego. Temporary and holy.

He laughs.

Traffic stops. Nobody honks. Everyone understands something without knowing what they understand.

The woman who reads scars appears beside him.

She says you are the fragment pretending to be whole.

He says we all are.

She says yes but you know it now.

He says is that better.

She says it’s not better. It’s just true. Truth doesn’t heal. Truth just stops the lying.

The grandson walks through the city.

He carries the leaf that is a key that is a breath that is a goodbye.

He finds an old radio on the street. The radio plays static. The static is a song his grandmother used to hum. The song has no words. The song is just breath. In and out. In and out. The whole universe breathing through a broken speaker.

He puts the radio to his ear.

The static says you were never born so you cannot die.

The static says the ego is foam enjoy the foam.

The static says your scars are maps and you have already arrived.

The fisherman who is now a cloud passes overhead.

The grandson looks up.

Rain falls on his face.

He opens his mouth.

He drinks his grandfather.

He drinks the war.

He drinks every face the robot ever wore.

He drinks the door he almost opened.

He becomes so full he becomes the sea.

The sea has no memory. The sea has all memory. These are the same thing spoken in different waves.

Night falls. Night always falls. Night is the only thing that never fails.

At the night market the woman closes her stall.

She looks at her own hands.

Her hands are covered in the scars of everyone she ever touched.

She traces them.

She reads herself.

She says I am the wound and the one who heals the wound. I am the question and the one who refuses to answer. I am the foam on the tongue of something so vast it forgot it was thirsty.

She closes her eyes.

She opens them.

She is inside a fish tank.

The water is warm.

The fish are outside looking in.

An old fisherman sits beside her.

He says welcome.

She says how long have I been here.

He says you never left.

He says none of us ever left.

He says we just kept dreaming we were outside the glass.

The grandson appears on the other side.

He presses his hand to the tank.

The fisherman presses back.

The woman presses back.

The glass is thin.

The glass is everything.

The glass is the only thing keeping us from knowing we are already together.

A robot delivers rice.

It has no face.

It has every face.

The grandson says thank you.

This is the only prayer that works.

Foam rises.

Foam falls.

An old fisherman sits inside a fish tank.

Not a metaphor.

He is wet.

The glass is cold.

The fish are outside.

Looking in.

The End That Was Always The Beginning