Mark Phillips' Pages: Workbook: 1/31/03: Tall boy, unkempt hair, slumped to the floor where he's fallen off the couch.

Jacob Lawrence, "Life, Death and Resurrection" (1955) — Jacob Lawrence, *Life, Death and Resurrection* (1955)

January 31, 2003:

Tall boy, unkempt hair, slumped to the floor where he's fallen off the couch. Head slouched. Shakes, cramps. Rolls into fetal position, bites his hands, pounds his fists on the floor, on his head, weeping.

You're watching dispassionately from a vantage point near the ceiling, several feet above and to the right of the familiar figure. "He's not going to live," you think to yourself, sadly. "People can't live like that."

You're reminded of photos you once saw of a burn victim in a trauma center. He's immersed in a tub of salt water, skin hanging in strips; and on his face is a scream of soul-pain so agonized that you can see the death-longing in his animal's eyes. This is what the boy on the floor is experiencing right now.

Tuesday night. A large studio room with kitchen, top floor of a two-story cinderblock building near the jacuzzi, part of a beachfront motel complex somewhere in Southern California.

After her sister told you she was gone forever.