Concrete Teeth

Carla paused a moment before spitting out the bacon rind she had been chewing between her teeth. She looked up at us both as she sat on the mismatched paving slabs, chalk outlines of schizophrenic mandallas and quantum algorithms tracing a disjointed map of Barry’s dreams. The tower had captured the three of us in its shadow, a terminal web charting the impact patterns of suicidal students like an obscene sundial. We were waiting exactly where Philip Liu, wrapped in a shower curtain, had caved his head in from the fall out of his ninth storey room. The one I now live in. The campus porters used to say that if you looked just right you could see the fragments of his upper-left canine still embedded in the brick below the counselling service’s window. I looked up at my room, exhaling smoke from my cigarette, I think I realised exactly how menacing these obscene structures were. Concrete cocks being stroked and serviced by the wind. I wonder if Philip came as he hit the ground. I heard he died with a smile on his face.