Paul Ryan was not born. His parents found him in their house one morning, tiny and wrinkled and shivering in a corner, weeping and sucking for comfort on the coins that so recently had covered his eyes.
Paul Ryan did not have a childhood. Until he demanded one. But that was a hard gift to give, and they put one after another before his sharp eyes, and in the end he chose one belonging to a small girl. “Mine,” he said, as she wept.
Paul Ryan did not go to school. His mother said (with an odd smile) that she wanted to spend more time with him. But that was after he’d gone to school for one day, and returned with his eyes far too blue.
Paul Ryan did not have friends. His mother made some for him out of corn husks, but even those became…unhappy. “Another,” he would say. And sobbing, she would set to twisting another friend together.
Paul Ryan did not read until college. They gave him Ayn Rand, and when he finished, his eyes were sapphires. “Yes,” he said, and no longer asked his mother for cornhusk friends.
Paul Ryan did not date. Of an evening he would go to a bar and say to a girl “I like your eyes” or “I like your fingers.” And she would feel a warm, tingling pressure in that feature, while his eyes sparkled.
Paul Ryan did not get engaged. He would and stare into the darkness until morning, and there would be an eye. Another night, and there would be skin. And so on until there was just enough to marry.
Paul Ryan did not have children. He and his wife would smile and sparkle at each other, and their teeth meet, gnawing and slavering and painful, and in the morning a small creature would be found in the dining room, coins upon its fresh eyes.
Paul Ryan did not win his first election. But you do not remember that. Nobody does. Except Paul Ryan, and the son into whose ear he whispers at night.
Paul Ryan cannot hear human voices. He sees your mouth move. He smiles. His eyes are very blue. He knows your concerns. They are deep within him. Sometimes he runs his fingers over them there and shivers while his face goes blank.
Paul Ryan does not remember his parents. He remembers corn husks wet and torn. He remembers a dead man. But his stolen childhood included different parents, and those are the ones he thinks of.
Paul Ryan will not speak. The voice you think you hear is not his. He has not spoken since his wedding: some gift was necessary to make his vows binding. He will speak only once more in his life, as the red sun goes down.
Paul Ryan does not believe in anything. There is, after all, nothing to believe in beyond the scrape of his teeth upon bone and the sure knowledge of what follows—what MUST follow—and that it is necessary.
Paul Ryan does not understand what a child is. They are small fleshes with two sets of teeth. Their eyes are very large. Perhaps sometimes they are hungry. But their hungers are not his, so he ignores them.
Paul Ryan cannot contemplate his own death. For him there may be no such thing. When all is said and done, when his eyes finally turn dull as his toothless children gum him in the utter dark, he may still have no end.
