"Not Done"

Tick, tick, tick. All he hears in the silence. Tick, tick, tick. He is a freak, a composition of gears and wires. Tick, tick, tick. The beat of what passes for his heart, all iron. He sits alone and carves and sculpts and cuts. All that he is: the art of creation, his only solace is the worlds he weaves. He wanted hands, he wanted love and touch without blood. He wounds all that he longs for-red spilling from incisions wrought with his angry substitute for hands.

He almost had everything. He is not done. Not done, not done. Tick, tick, tick. At night he dreams of the hands he should have had, pink and delicate and capable of gentleness. Hands, such a simple thing. Hands dissolving before his eyes, torn to pieces like cookie dough or tissue paper, like skin beneath his scissor blades. Like the inventor when he tried to wake him. My name is Edward. He is too gentle for the burden he bears, and the testimony of all is the marks left upon his face, branding himself a failure of design.

Tick, tick, tick—not done, not done. Kim. Kim. Kim loved him. Kim saved him. The ice is slippery and provides a sensory distraction. He sculpts the transient family he can never possess, can never touch. In the silence snow covers the town where he was nearly happy. Tick, tick, tick. Not done, not done. Never done.