Daily Menticide

little thoughts, while i consider grand things

2011-12-12T08:07:00.000-08:00

This is the darkest hour of my life.

with every flicker of light from the television on these steep empty walls of my living room I

Realize how empty and fake I really feel.

Washed out.

Over done.

I'm chasing dragons with a stupid smile on my face.

It's all a concept of change and that concept of chance becomes clear to me.

My emptiness is just a state of consciousness; a state, which in reality does not exist.

People manifest and thrust themselves upon me for a reason.

Is it chance?

Is it the chance of meeting?

The chance that one-day you will wake up and notice that your whole world has collapsed before your eyes. If you can believe this is possible then it is only a matter of time before it happens, You know this and yet you can never escape it.

So why does the air line up waiting for my breath to exist?

When chance is born there is no escape.

As I walk I see the people who have chosen to cross my path today.

Their existence comes into my focus.

I look at dark empty windows and I become uneasy and anxious. I want to explode. overwhelming. whats wrong with me? someone make this stop! please. someone.. Helplessness.

I surrender to the feeling, the spinning. the hurting.

I can't escape.

Strange to wish, wishes no longer.

It's strange to see things that once belonged together floating in every direction.

will someone guide me?

I'm trying to figure out the difference between artistic genius and mental illness.

I feel foreign all of the sudden.

Like I'm walking blindfolding in a maze.

hopeless. vital, but in a malevolent fashion.

A Parasite.

If you have fear you must be aware of three things;

You are born alone, you live isolated, and you die alone.

but if we are born alone we should not fear to be alone.

Am I alone?

When I'm confronted with the end of my life will I have the calculative resource to let go of who I was? The trick is to look back on that instead of looking forward and damaging everything in our path.

stop.

rewind. what's wrong with me. I've begun planning my death like a dog.

it's not that I'm afraid to die.

It's that I'm afraid to die without accomplishing anything.

Because of these darkness’s staring at me. I can see my failures.

everyone laughing at me. pointing.

I'm naked in a box. bleeding. wasting space. wasting time.

you are here today,
and gone tomorrow,
without a word.

either way you are here today.

and gone forever.

He left us all for good.

No-one understood.

The chance to change has passed
Over and over again
Procrastination was key
Easy led me here

Time slips from my hands
Into the well of missed opportunity
A vast collection of things neglected
Where one can only wish for their return

Direct Nerve Damage

2011-12-12T08:01:00.001-08:00

In mathematics one plus one should equal two. In the natural world, one plus one equals three. These common human mistakes prove our ignorance to the flow, the summits of cosmic fractal patterns that repeat forever and ever, ones that can never be answered in a lab, or on paper, they just continue, like time itself.
The matchbook you were trying to strike was soaked and ruined from the mid summer rain, matted hair and beads of water added to the beauty of your smirk, your infinity ability to penetrate the safety net array I had so cleverly planned out.
You wore a bracelet that said, 'EVOL' and you explained to me that in was love backwards, this was obvious really, but you also explained to me that love is usually a series of backwards events, you don't just walk up to someone and say, “we're in love now.” the sky was lit bright gray and there was a dull roar of thunder miles away, the train platform shined in the gleaming electric light reflections in the pools and puddles, “love is random, its a fractal pattern.” your eyes surveying the sky above, “its based on a series of events that no one can determine or plan, its destiny.” “destiny?” I questioned, “ you really go around believing its all a predetermined life? Nothing is random, or spontaneous? You just live life in the route set for you, like a train stuck on tracks?” your eyes trailed from the sky to the railways in front of you, the sound of passing freight cars on a nearby track added a scene of music and poetry to the moment,

“we all meet, and fall in love, fall out of love, live, die, eat, sleep, go to work, and do whatever we do in our lives because its...its....” she paused. “picture an avalanche, one flake starts it all, moving out into a bigger unstable fissure and eventually the whole side of the mountain is coming down right?” I nod, glancing at my watch and then eyeing the beauty of the exhaust from jets overhead crossing forming grids in the sky, disappearing into the storm clouds to the west, “one day at the beginning of everything, one event, one motion, set in play the avalanche that is today's life.” “action – reaction, right?”

I let out a sigh and silently refused the idea.

wandering

2011-12-12T07:59:00.000-08:00

Arrows of time screaming through my mind.
I may not see, but I'm not blind,
That what I search, I will not find.

I am alone on a road of dust,
Running away from my empty past.
Dreaming a future of colorful lines,
Walking ahead, not seeing the signs.

What should I choose?
What will I lose?

Inside my broken shell,
All hurts like hell...
But I knew this too well,
And still I chose the worse
Because my blood is cursed.

And now I close my eyes
To fly to the skies
And fall to the ground,
Nowhere to be bound...

Through heaven and through hell I'm found
Just wandering around...

Just another Carbon Copy

2011-02-22T09:59:00.001-08:00

Dance in dark suspension
Tear at your skull
Drink your blood
See the lies behind you

Tear asunder
Pillage and plunder
Burn and wonder
See the stars

Scream hoarse
Go off course
Unspeakable force
You've been denied

Oppressed and depressed
Suppressed and halted
Fight, tear it down
Burnt bridges; Faulted

Cry terror
Speak horror
See no truth
In your eyes

Dark matter
Pitter, patter
Hungry feet
And crying souls

Misguided
One sided
Obscure points
And desperate pleas

Fought battle
Blood shed
Win or lose
Better off dead.

exploits

2011-02-12T19:33:00.001-08:00

the doctor is in-
side your head and he won't leave
until you explain why the doors are locked
and the windows are painted black
inside your heart.
you believe that
there's an answer hidden in the disclaimer

your breathing is hitching-
a ride back to your home town
where it smells of smoke
and day-old gossip
because nothing ever changes there.
your throat is a drought of words
but you refuse to take a drink;
you believe that
there's something in the water.

we were tired of playing-
experimental masochism.
Game Over. we lost again.
out of lives, out of chances and halfway out the door;
wrap your mind around this
before you wrap your arms around me.

I believe that
there's a heaven between two horizons.

cells?

2010-11-09T13:31:00.001-08:00

It's not really useful to think of anyone as an enemy.
This is an act of violent objectification, an artificial duality to differ one's self from another.
Why?
We are one !
All "otherness" is illusion !
True non-violence is total acceptance that everyone is
in relation to their evolution along their cultural path,
no judgment,
no comparisons,
no valuation,
no classification,
no labels.
Violence is not just,
and it's not just physical injury.
There is the harm we do ourselves
in the dismissive act of putting people in boxes,
and the harm we do them !
Living things rot faster inside rectangular and square boxes.
No one deserves that!

they should expect resistance.

2010-11-09T13:29:00.000-08:00

When they send in the National Guard, we'll take chainsaws to the telephone polls to halt their progress— and they'll throw down their guns when they see their nieces and nephews on the other side of the barricades. That night, we'll drag all the furniture out of the offices and department stores to build great bonfires in the intersections; we'll sit around them, passing food and drink and telling the unbelievable stories of how we arrived there.
The next morning we'll venture out one by one, then in pairs, to survey the remains —and perhaps after the initial shock it will appear to us as a great playground. We'll gaze at the carcasses of the dead machines in wonder that we lived in a society powered by things beyond our understanding; from that moment forward our understanding will be honed sharp by the challenges of building anew.
Some of us will still be angry, some will still be hurting; others will climb to the tops of the great wreckage heaps to look out into the sunrise, trying to see beyond it into the future, and sit there in silence for a long, long time. We'll trace each others scars with our fingers, squeeze our hands together and shake our heads; perhaps someone will sing softly.
We'll stand outside looted supermarkets, pitching soda cans and hitting them with axe handles to see them explode in the air, spinning like pinwheels. We'll dress the lampposts in satin curtains, paint our own names on the street signs, throw Christmas ornaments at each other like snowballs. We'll string extension cords around the old monuments to pull them down like the Communards did in Paris; we'll empty the TV dinners from our freezers and throw them off rooftops as we eat fresh apples from new trees. This is what it will take to rediscover that we are the masters of things and not they of us. Wearing bridal gowns and fireman's jackets, leaving a swath of shatter dinner crystal in our wake, we'll cut a path to the gates of heaven so wide no one can ever shut them again.
We'll tattoo our faces to celebrate that there are no more borders to cross, that we can meet our oppressors in open war instead of having to smuggle ourselves through their checkpoints. Police stations will be evicted wherever they appear, officers will walk the streets in fear of being picked up and taken to squats, and the next time terrorists fly airplanes into office buildings, no one will be working in them.
The earth will give birth to stars that humble the heavens, and we'll have hospitals without sick people where today we have sick people without hospitals. Blacksmiths will once again swing their heavy hammers through the air, forging crowns great enough to fit on all heads at once. Driving through the wilderness across overgrown freeways on our species' last tank of gas, we'll see fireworks shooting up into the night sky on the horizon—a flare saying "don't rescue me!"
A decade to track down technicians to disable warheads and deactivate nuclear power plants; a generation to replace grocery stores with gardens and couch syrup with licorice root; a century for dairy cows and toy poodles to go feral; five hundred years to melt down cannons into wine goblets, water pipes, and sleigh bells; a millennium for the dandelions growing out of the sidewalk to become redwoods.
Or else none of this will happen, but we will have the adventure of our lives; and if we meet again, we will build another castle in the sky.

You want the mustache on or off?

2007-09-20T22:56:00.001-07:00

not sure where im going with this. haha

Haunted Heart

2007-09-06T00:04:00.000-07:00

What had we traveled so far for? The manuscript, now flaky and black in the fireplace, the wine bottles discarded on the perfumed, delicate rug like unused children's toys. Fire flashing and flickering, sour smell of wine and burning wood, wet palms, tongues like stiff cotton and brown breath. Your small head bobs, swivels, blond strands tussled and stringy, sharp teeth, jutting cherry red bottom lip, the tongue is lifting off its bed of saliva and muscle, the throat is contracting, the breath is rushing, into lung sacks, and mixed into the blood filled pathways, the muscle of your heart chugging, beating, waiting. Brief seconds of quiet, the fire cracking, shivering windows, rattling door, cabin creaking like a sinking ship, white snowflakes falling like confetti. "That was the only copy." Words jut out of her mouth as she pushes herself off the pillowed armchair, peachy fuzz brows pointing at me, her lips curled, spit glistening on her pointy teeth. I feel her steady eyeballs tracking my face in the battle of shadow and fire light. Am I smiling? Tears? Horror? Face pale and white? Mouth dropped and gaping? Hands open and pleading? Shall I start marching the room, stomping back and forth, hair pulling, fists clenched and screaming, tear the photos of the wall, and throw them in the fire? Should I grab you by the throat? Squeeze until the neck is bruised and purple, the eyes darting about like crazy flies? "That's it? What are you just going to fucking stand there like a photograph, like
a fucking lump? You know what your fucking problem is…" Slurring and swaying, her slender pale arm grasping the arm chair, breasts rocking like over ripe plumbs under her thin shirt. "…you've got no fucking balls. You're a faggot." Did I care abut the manuscript, now turning to sifty, gray flakes, fluttering in the dying fire? blackmail had never been my cup of tea. Manipulation, deception, sure, I was game, rich widows, lonely heiresses. My family never had a cent, but somehow, my sharp nose and heavy brow, long legs, and effeminate reserve gave off a hint of pedigree. Uniformed doorman hustled to open doors for me in shiny hotels, maitre d's patted my back, ushered me to the tables marked reserved. I never really had to pretend, it was just the way people reacted to me. But blackmail, it was so blunt, so vulgar, so confrontational. "Well, do you have anything to say?" Her head titled, swiveling, bony shoulders slumping forward now, she's drooping again, her head like deadweight on her neck. She crumples to the rug, blonde stringy hair splattered, thin fingers brushing her splotchy cheek. Her long arm stretches over her face, like a bird cleaning its wing. Shakes work over her, her back heaving and expanding, the splashes of blonde hair twitching. And now tears, I don't see them, I hear them. High pitched mewls, sniffles, coughs, the works. Nothing that had happened that night surprised me one bit. Not the destruction of our only bargaining tool, now reduced to gray dust and ash, not the realization that we had actually been double crossed, that we never had any power in the first place, that we had just been brought out here to be out of the way so they could finish the others off, and manuscript or no manuscript, we were next. I poked at the ashes with a iron fire rod. "It wouldn't have mattered. We've read it. They'll want us dead." "Shut up!" She flipped on her stomach and threw her head up, fists tantrumed the rug, wild yellow wolf-girl hair. "How can you be so fucking calm? I fucking hate you." "You're the one who threw it in the fire."
Her head falls like a weighted down body sinking into deeper and deeper water,
hand flops a clumsy slap on the rug. "I thought it would get us out of this. It was causing us so many problems, I thought if we got rid out if it…" "You weren't thinking." I pointed the iron rod at her, sharp point and hook, like a harpoon.
"Why don't we run?" She props up on her elbows, back arched like a smile, lips
curled wide and the wet cheeks sparkling in the fire light. "Where?" I drop the rod, clang then thump. "I don't know, I still have some money left" She is getting up, pulling her white, bare feet under her ass, smoothing her hair, leaning towards me again. "And then what? When the money runs out? What are you gonna do then? Get a job? Find some new sugar daddy? How long do you think you can hide for?." I was waving my hands at her, blurry pink shapes in the light, projection images. I thought of blood vessels expanding and contracting, heads being smashed, cracking like popped blisters, her lips red, like raw meat, my mouth between her legs. She covered her face, more shaking, more tears. All we had in our corner now was a gun and six bullets. It lay on the bare wood mantle, like a magazine. "You've got a chance, if you beg forgiveness, beg him to take you back." I pushed the butt of the gun with my fingertip, straightening it, like it was a conversation piece. "I should be the one crying. I'm the one who fucked the bosses wife and tried to blackmail him so I could run away with her. Cry for me." I grabbed the gun and stumbled towards the door. "Where are you going?" She was sobbing, her words falling out in pitched waves, like a child lost in the horrible throws of some trivial injustice. The wind shoved the door open as soon as I turned the knob. For a second, the cold was soothing, a relief from the trapped, choking heat inside that cabin. Then it hurt, stung my bare toes and sliced up my pant legs and into my shit and clawed all over me. There was no running for me either. I raised the gun to my head, pushing the metal hard against my temple. The snow fell.

maybe it's my epiphany... or it's my aching heavy heart

2007-09-03T13:12:00.001-07:00

Sometimes it helps to vent. Other times it is a delusional and unproductive waste of time. My heart told me to start this blog years ago, because someone out there would smile upon my 'brilliance', and help me hone this 'brilliance' to my heart's content, to allow me to achieve my dreams. Years later, my ego has been stripped of its mask, exposing the fool that lies underneath. Your ego is a thorn of many on a bush that contains the sweetest of fruit. Why do I not understand? All analogies break down at some point.

What am I really doing when I attempt to write; when I attempt to communicate? I certainly believe that I am a decent writer. But why can't I hope to accomplish anything through this straightforward communcation?

A grasp of grammar and a rudimentary understanding of prose makes an excellent writer, but such skills are in fact, a dime a dozen. A true writer has the ability to move emotions like flower petals in the wind; a true writer has far more than second-rate analogies and semi-witty-monologues, more than excessive drama, more than an important message. A true writer needs but a few words to engrave a thought into memory as surely as stone. A true writer works with the essence of what already lies within our minds, and brings it to the forefront, forcing our synapses to fire and propogate waves of belief into realization; as different and foreign to one another as doubt and certainty, we achieve unity of thought, a shared understanding forged within the uniqueness of billions of brain cells, reaching across all barriers to allow the very soul to speak and be heard. A true writer need not write solely to vent, nor to be smart, witty, or simply to write something worthwhile. It's just to share the beauty locked within our minds; the truth of what we are, of what we should be. This should not be a medium, it should be a reflection of our lives. All things; joy, pain, life, and death can be described across this channel of flowing spirit. The true writer is the thriving life, a seemingly effortless transformation of energy into beauty.

To write is to speak and to speak is to act, but action is not intent; speech is not intent. This change of structure, this discord of thought and harmony this is damage done.
The perplexity created by my mind prevents me from engaging in so many activities, and countless experiences - it truly gnaws at the way I learn, at my perception at my recollection. In my own life, the coping mechanism learn'd was to accept it as a worthy trade-off of problems faced by others - but this does not stop me from seeing it as a coping mechanism, nor as a truth. It is one shared by those acutely aware of all successes and failures, who judge harshly, and who unsuccessfully attempt to ignore the questions their hearts desperatly ask of inequality and circumstance, of pain and silence, desire and revulsion of motive.
I have observed the human race and its fellows of life on this planet for 20 years passively, actively, subconsciously, and intently. I have been given great gifts of understanding, and yet am still in great confusion, not just by my soul's disrupted connection to the world. I have observed when I could not bare to call myself human, lest the overwhelming shame of the crimes committed by humans daily grab hold of my emotion, and I have observed when I believed myself superior, inferior, slower, faster, enlightened, retarded, active, and incapable. I observe now, knowing that I am human and equal ... and tired. Our foolishness, our rationale, our beliefs, our loyalties, our crimes, our justifications, our joys, our addictions, our hopes, our dreams ... Why ? ... I want you to be happy and just. I want you to be free, independent, creative, prosperous, and in good company. I want you to experience luck, love, and adventure. I want you to become wise, and intelligent. I want you to do what is right; to see what you're doing, do it well, and know that it's right. I want you to know that your mind is beautiful, amazing, strong, and capable of so much. I want you to know that your body is beautiful, amazing, healthy, strong, and capable of so much. I want you to revel in your excellence, your uniqueness, and your elegance, from your innocence to your sexuality, from your ignorance to your understanding, from your denial to your acceptance, from your birth to your death. No loathing, no lust, no repression, no degredation, no pedestals, no confusion, no presumptions, no dogma, no fear, no hatred, no suppression, no coercion, no deception; no evil. I want you to be truthful, committed, respectful, peaceful, ambitious, excited, subtle, blatant, healthy, active, and decisive.

I want you to be innocent.

I want you to be happy.

I want you to live beautifully.

My confusion still humors me. My resolve still clothes me. My desire still fuels me. My love still improves me. My faith in you always remains. I just want you to make peace with yourself, peace with those whom you've affected, peace with God, and should the opportunity present itself, to make peace with those who've affected you. Live a life worth living.

It is all I ask of myself, all I ask of anyone, all I ask of everyone.

Sanity Break

2007-09-03T13:11:00.000-07:00

You know...

while I'm learning I might not actually be able to do anything I set my mind to, I've erecently discovered something else. I enjoy the fact that I can devote myself in entirety to anything I set my mind. Nearly the same, but not quite.

A long time ago, I set out on a journey to learn more about religion, religious viewpoints, and I thought I had completed it: I am content that there are forces beyond my control working behind the scenes and at the forefront, and that the true test of a person is whether they can be the best person they can be, even without any definite evidence of higher powers. I am at peace with my belief, no matter what I choose to perceive or how I choose to act.

My opinion has always been that there's proof enough without the need for faith - it's all right there in physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, anthropology, linguistics, even in the study of animal intelligence, even the 'unanswerable paradox' that is our own existence: "Which came first? The chicken or the egg? The Big Bang or the Universe? Earlier big bangs?" The quote that 'Matter always was and always will be' just doesn't fly with me - I just wish I knew who said it... Everything about this universe suggests intelligent design - not just humans, or even animals. Everything from coalescing electron fields that exist only when in contact with matter, to an event-driven universe, where nothing in our observable universe occurs without the presence of an electromagnetic wave. The studies of who and what we are, of what we represent, are just as important as what we strive to become, and what we strive to accomplish --

To believe that something is false because you don't understand may be as foolish as to think it is true for the same reasons, and to stay a decision because you don't understand is a decision itself, and by its own nature, a temporary decision. I don't understand higher powers - but I see evidence of their work everywhere - brilliance that no computer-simulation could ever hope to surpass - even the quirks of particle collisions alone in the real world is an elegant solution to a problem witnessed in almost all simulations and even hardware such as that cell phone in your pocket, the television you watch, and the lights at your school or office.

In this place, light particles are waves and ripples - just dips and divots of space in motion, as if spurred on ; an unseen hand guiding threads of gossamer in an intricate web of existence.

I don't disagree with evolution or intelligent design -
I know evolution exists; I don't care about Darwin's theory.
I know a higher pwer placed me here for a reason; I don't care about your proof.

I severely disagree with the idea that one excludes the other.

This is. My reality is energy perceived.

I see. My perception is energy received.

I think. My thoughts are energy, interpreted.

I decide. My decision is energy, directed.

I do. My action is energy, emitted.

I am. My existence shifts energy to all the right places.

(I have way to much time on my hands)

little thoughts.

2007-09-03T13:10:00.001-07:00

This is the darkest hour of my life.

with every flicker of light from the television on these steep empty walls of my parents living room I

Realize how empty and fake I really feel.

Washed out.

Over done.

I'm chasing dragons with a stupid smile on my face.

It's all a concept of change and that concept of chance becomes clear to me.

My emptiness is just a state of consciousness; a state, which in reality does not exist.

People manifest and thrust themselves upon me for a reason.

Is it chance?

Is it the chance of meeting?

The chance that one-day you will wake up and notice that your whole world has collapsed before your eyes. If you can believe this is possible then it is only a matter of time before it happens, You know this and yet you can never escape it.

So why does the air line up waiting for my breath to exist?

When chance is born there is no escape.

As I walk I see the people who have chosen to cross my path today.

Their existence comes into my focus.

I look at dark empty windows and I become uneasy and anxious. I want to explode. overwhelming. whats wrong with me? someone make this stop! please. someone.. Helplessness.

I surrender to the feeling, the spinning. the hurting.

I can't escape.

Strange to wish, wishes no longer.

It's strange to see things that once belonged together floating in every direction.

will someone guide me?

I'm trying to figure out the difference between artistic genius and mental illness.

I feel foreign all of the sudden.

Like I'm walking blindfolding in a maze.

hopeless. vital, but in a malevolent fashion.

A Parasite.

If you have fear you must be aware of three things;

You are born alone, you live isolated, and you die alone.

but if we are born alone we should not fear to be alone.

Am I alone?

When I'm confronted with the end of my life will I have the calculative resource to let go of who I was? The trick is to look back on that instead of looking forward and damaging everything in our path.

stop.

rewind. what's wrong with me. I've begun planning my death like a dog.

it's not that I'm afraid to die.

It's that I'm afraid to die without accomplishing anything.

Because of these darkness’s staring at me. I can see my failures.

everyone laughing at me. pointing.

I'm naked in a box. bleeding. wasting space. wasting time.

you are here today,
and gone tomorrow,
without a word.

either way you are here today.

and gone forever.

He left us all for good.

No-one understood.

The chance to change has passed
Over and over again
Procrastination was key
Easy led me here

Time slips from my hands
Into the well of missed opportunity
A vast collection of things neglected
Where one can only wish for their return

"and I was Like.....Whattteva"

2007-09-03T13:09:00.001-07:00

Why do people work hard to spite each other? As hilarious it may read, it's just a pathetic waste of energy by individuals too angry to do anything else than vent.

Proof: if you weren't angry enough to vent, then you wouldn't. Hence we wouldn't see someone attempt to get past multiple bans to state a point.

Case and point.

Shut the fuck up, sleep on your frustrations, wake up in the morning. If you feel the same way, get help. If you don't, then congratulations, you may just turn out to be okay.

Keeping It Simple

2007-09-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

time for a few short stories i've wrote over the past few weeks

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The outside gave little away. I knew what to expect.

Down six steps, into the basement building. Stale cigarette smoke, dead flowers, cheap perfume, the smell of pine.

How the smell of pine forests came to be associated with hygiene and cleanliness is beyond me.

The receptionist comes over, so bored she can hardly bring herself to commit to the next footstep. Looks like she chooses to offset the ageing process by using a trowel to fill the lines of her orange face with thick goopy make-up. Dead eyes embedded deep in sockets, resigned and distant.
"This your first time?" She hands me a towel.
I look up at her and squeeze the towel. "If I say yes, do I get preferential treatment?"

She looks at me like I just spewed up a turd, and sighs her millionth sigh.

The woman points to a paisley-patterned chair, a relic from some 1970's office, no doubt imbued with the dead farts of a thousand fat pen-pushers. With a motherly look on her face she says, "Someone will be with you shortly."
I guess this is her idea of good customer service. Waiting, moving my hands up and down my legs, wiping off sweat which immediately returns.
A girl appears from a door to my left. She too looks distant, although this time drugs likely feature in the picture. She comes over, catches me off-guard by flashing a genuine smile, a little lopsided but sweet and tragic. Standing half-turned away from me, I remember time is money here, and stand. Less nervous now, I follow her through another door. Then another. She adopts a more confident stance, the girlish innocence and naivete gone, assured in her domain. Her voice floats to me, hangs in the air with the smoke.
"Four hours I've been here today. And Tuesdays always seem worse than Mondays, don't you think?" She continues to talk, failing to follow one train of thought for very long. She performs little tasks during all of this: lighting small chubby candles and sandalwood incense, folding and unfolding starched towels, smoothing the bed sheets.
"My name is Anna. Try to relax- you look as stiff as a board. And not in a good way either."

I start to wonder if I always look this rigid and tense, and decide I probably do.

Do we, her pathetic clients, all look the same through her green eyes?

Anna walks over to the bed, sitting close to me. "You know about prices and stuff already, I'mwhere did that scar come from?" Her eyes flick up and look at my left eye.
"I had a cyst removed when I was young. The scar just never faded."
"Oh."
I blink 1,2,3 times in rapid succession, trying to prevent sweat running into my eyes.

I am aware of a lack of feeling from the neck down.

She continues to watch me, blinking sleepily due to frustration or boredom, I bet. Or maybe this is her idea of looking sexy.

It's hard to tell.

The sandalwood incense lets off careful wisps of smoke. I taste it in the back of my throat and swallow it down. Anna offers me a Marlboro Light, already lit. I take it and inhale. It's like smoking a straw.
"Thanks," I say, feeling nauseous. Exhale smoke. "I needed that."
She starts to slide my jacket off, easing it down until I shake my arms free. I struggle to think of some witty anecdote.

Nothing.

My imagination permits me to become the best sex she has ever had. I am the one who takes her away from all of this.

I allow myself these ruminations and diversions to escape the present moment. The heavy silence makes me panic, my breathing rapid and desperate.

Her voice brings me back to this depressing moment. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

I grab my jacket and leave without looking back, eyes fixed on the floor.

Back on the street again.

I walk towards the harbour, grateful for the light rain on my face. It falls, steady and calm.

Never Date Dirt. You'll Get Buried.

2007-09-03T13:06:00.000-07:00

Imagine waking up one morning. Same bed. Same ear piercing alarm klaxon. Same morning hard-on. Same weary stagger to the shower.
But something is different. Same shaving irritation, Same taste bud numbing toothpaste. However, You're unsure which direction you're heading. You begin to live on impulses. You're anxious, moody, and worrisome. Your well-known optimism is reduced to shambles, a ruined ancient monument. Your logic is contorted. Your overall outlook turns bitter. Socializing leaves a feeling of emptiness and discontent.
You begin searching for a reason to it all. You strive to find purpose, to find your place. You begin discovering new doors through compulsive reading. In your spare time, you hang out in libraries and bookstores, reading up on random topics, searching for a solution.
Erotic Fiction by Acclaimed Oriental Authors, A Modern Approach to Calligraphy, Masonry For Dummies, The Trials and Tribulations of Teenage Pregnancy…
Dinner becomes cappuccino and the daily reading material.
Easy Hopi Indian Crafts, Read Palms in 6 Easy Steps, The Astronomer's Handbook…
There's an insuppressible anticipation each time you turn the page. A childish expectancy to find a single word, phrase, or sentence that will unlock an answer.
The Wine Taster's Handbook, Easy Vegetarian Recipes…
You soak up all of this information like a sponge on a summer day. You file it away for future use. It slowly begins to work itself into your life. It becomes a key that opens new doors, with even more possibilities lying within.
Needlework and Fiber-Arts for the Patient Mind, Biotechnology in the 21st Century, Summer Landscaping…
You discover a newfound source of confidence. Everybody discovers you are an interesting person. Scanning line after line of text is your only exercise. Your mind becomes your strongest asset.
A Beginner's Guide to Metalworking, The Delicate Art of Flower Arranging, Dealing With Breast Cancer…
Your living room slowly crowds with bookshelves. There are books on top of the television, in the medicine cabinet, and on the kitchen table and counter.
Cycling is Fun, Pornography For The Soul, A Stylist's Guide to Kinky or Curly Hair…
Your sex-life dwindles away, but you barely notice. You're lost in your research, a new and more satisfying form of recreation. Your friends grow farther apart from you, but you feel no loss or remorse.
The Healing Power of Water, The Art of Sensual Massage, Abortion As An Option…
Sleep becomes unnecessary. Most of the time, you stay awake until four in the morning reading. When you wake up, disconnected and unaffected by your lack of sleep, you pick up reading where you left off. You read about overcoming sexual dysfunction in the shower. Over a bowl of Grape Nuts, you read "How To Buy Foreclosed Real Estate" instead of the newspaper. Your bathroom reading consists of how misguided feminism is harming America's men.
You learn easy tips for relieving migraines, how to get wine stains out of a white rug, how to manage impossible hair, how to grill the fat out of a hamburger, how to tell if an infant has an earache, which zodiac signs are compatible, which herbs treat impotence…
You're finally progressing in life. You've found a direction. You're justifying your existence. You move up the ladder of life one rung at a time, the thought of reaching the top burning in your brain, all the while learning how to mix gunpowder into usable ammunition, how to identify a genuine Victorian furniture piece, how to induce orgasm by touching sensitive spots on the neck…
You swim through this endless sea of information without looking back, not bothering to take inventory of what you've left behind. Your only concerns are how the Internet is decaying our society and which color of rose compliments a certain occasion.
Receipts are scattered everywhere throughout your apartment; Line after line of ink with names of books you don't even remember buying. Books chosen with eyes shut and groping hand. Books about piano tuning, archery, viral infections in mammals…
"The Practical Quadriplegic Gardening Guide".
"Death By Convertible: Shocking, True Life Testimonies Of Tragedy Caused By The Most Dangerous of Automobiles".
You stop drinking soda because "The Patterson Guide to Modern Health" claims it slowly eats away at the wall of your stomach. Carnival Rides become a phobia after a midwestern author investigates the companies responsible for such amusement and releases a detailed journal. Your alcoholism digresses as you read about a construction worker who found a prophylactic in his can of beer.
You learn how to speak Korean dialect, where to find the best witch's covens in California, how to replace a heater core in an automobile engine, how to improve your golf game…
Informative therapy. Rehabilitation by the Facts.
Imagine all of this being you: A twenty-ish check-out lane clerk racing to find a reason before the hate and violence of the world consumes him.
God save me.

desperate

2007-09-03T13:04:00.002-07:00

Voluptuous voice, tempts me, drains me,
Bleeds me, But the blood still comes out the same.
Dripping down just like it used to.
And the residue may still remain.

What reflects my image is a mirror
Totally opposite and strange
What looks upon looks deranged
Looking to turn my shit into water.
My mind begs me to open up my veins again
As the knife comes back round to slaughter
Me.

I am to
Desperate to
Bleed and release what Ive been contemplating to,
What Ive been clinging to

Without my skin,
Beneath my flesh,
Under the blood keeping me connected to you.

And as the past is drained
As it begins to fade away
Flashing is the flash backs pining away.
I have died
and will die.
It's all right.
I don't mind.

I am to desperate to
Bleed and release what Ive been contemplating to,
What Ive been clinging to

Without my skin,
Beneath my flesh,
Under the blood keeping me connected to you.

Methadone Pretty

2007-09-03T13:04:00.001-07:00

Seven .38 revolvers are pointing at my head.

Behind each, an empty face tells me that I have the right to remain silent.

Cum tacent clamant.

Outside, the sounds of engines, sirens and propellers all blur into one, bouncing down an empty hallway to where I stand with my arms hanging stupidly above my head. The chorus of car-crash voyeurs and screeching breaks from the sidewalk barely even registers in my mind. The only noise that I hear is that of my little girl weeping and screaming for her daddy, as three more heroes lead her away into whatever is left of a world outside.
And I know that I will never see her again.
My mind feels the way your arm does after you've slept on it all night. Dead. Like all this is happening to someone else. Like all this is just another movie I am watching on cable TV. Like I could change the channel at any time and wake up in my bed.
Someone, somewhere is telling me to kick my gun away, and all I can do is exactly what they say. I am a slave with no mind of my own; ready to do whatever they tell me. In this country, you are guilty until proven innocent. But that will never happen.
A voice tells me to lie on the floor.
I lie on the floor.
A voice tells me to put my hands behind my back.
I put my hands behind my back.
Fingers are clutching at my body, cuffing my hands and dragging me to my feet, forcing me towards the open door of a house I no longer even remember arriving at. Someone, somewhere is telling me that I should fry for all this, and his warm breath tastes of hotdogs and root beer. Right here, right now, all I can see is a pair of dirty black Magnum boots kicking up the scattered remains of too many take-away pizzas, as I am led out into the night.
Right here, right now, my skin is two sizes too big for my body; hanging limply from my bones, scrubbed raw at every joint from too long spent sleeping on cold basement floors. If I smell or not I can no longer say, but the way the officers turn their heads away to take each breath tells me that I probably do. Behind me in the front room, the sound of laughter. In front of me, all the sounds of a carnival. My face pale and discolored and drawn, this is the way they want me to look. For the cameras. Pathetic and hopeless and beaten, just the way a good bad guy should. The world's happy ending.
And yet, for me, this is almost relief. At least it is finally over.
The end.
Somewhere amidst the carnival outside, I can still hear the cries of my little girl, of Elizabeth, screaming words that no one will ever believe as she is tucked away into the back seat of an awaiting police car. I want to shout out. I want to tell them that she is my daughter, that she always will be, and that they had better leave her alone, but I can't. My tongue is a piece of rubber in my desert mouth with lips that will not part, and I go peacefully. Deep down I feel that I shouldn't.
I do it anyway.
As I am thrust towards the outside, chased by the smell of hotdogs and drugstore cologne, I remember the sweet smell of Obsession, the monotonous pounding of bass, the taste of another person's blood in my mouth. I try to remember how to plead innocent, but my mind keeps returning to my little girl. To Elizabeth. Out there and all alone. And gone from my life forever.
Outside, a crowd of people watches from behind rows of police cruisers and television cameras and orange-faced reporters that fill up the space between the moonlit street and the front yard. Every one of them wants a little piece of my story to take home with them. A little piece of disaster to tell their friends. For the reporters in their gray and black designer suits, misery is product and the slightest whiff of death on an evening breeze lights up dollar signs in the spaces their souls should be. For the rest of them, this is just better than a night in front of the TV.
From somewhere behind the blinding lights, someone asks me to say cheese.
I can feel reality knocking at the door, begging to be let in, and my legs give way from under me, sending me most of the way to the ground, before I am dragged back to my feet by half a dozen silhouettes. From now on I do none of the walking, my feet trailing behind me like I am a lifeless mannequin. I let my body go limp, my testament to the world that I give up.
I am a slave.
I give up.
Beyond the picket fence and neatly trimmed hedgerow, the name on the mailbox is obscured by a nest of religious postcards and stickers; a tightly woven collage of paper declaring that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Declaring that Jesus has risen. Declaring that he died so we might start again. A black on white sticker in the center tells us that drugs are for losers. Beneath this, in fresh felt pen, someone has scrawled IT'S NOT THE WINNING THAT COUNTS, IT'S THE TAKING PART.
As the officers drag me on, the sidewalk nothing but a darkened haze in front of me, I hear the gathering crowd break into wild applause. One hundred people clapping the sound of a thunderstorm as my weary body is paraded in front of them just so they have someone to blame for the world going to shit. All these people in their sweatshop jeans and rabbit skin coats, these people will all sleep just that little bit more comfortably tonight.
A hand ducks my head in through a door I didn't even see, and as the bright spots clear from my vision, I see that I am sitting in the back of one of the marked vehicles I had heard from inside the house. The door slams shut and I am left alone with nothing but distorted memories and a thousand questions about how this all began.
But like every story, this one began in the beginning.
My heart is a piece of jagged glass pounding below my dirty shirt, screaming to be let out, desperate to be set free once and for all, and my thumbs throb a silent bass line in my lap. The constant soundtrack to my life.
Looking out through the window, I am greeted with the sights of police officers ushering the horde of photographers and reporters back to their comfortable homes, in their comfortable towns, and their comfortable lives. Cameras click, the video rolls, and my testament is recorded for the whole world to see - alone, cuffed and weary, a creature locked behind bars.
And then they are gone.
Out on the freeway, the police car drives on in relative anonymity, heading south towards a cell which will be my housing for tonight. The fight is over; outside, no sirens. The world keeps turning just fine without me. Everyone moves on, except me.
In front of me, two police officers talk about lingerie models and baseball as though I wasn't even here, lost on their own deserted highways to prison. One of them eats crystallized pig fat from a foil bag, losing huge saliva-pasted chunks onto his shirt every time he opens his mouth to talk. On the dash, a sticker reads complacency kills.
With the weight of an avalanche wrapping itself around my chest, I breathe in long, labored gasps, my mind filled with purple clouds. Something cold and wet slips softly down my cheek and disappears amongst the dirt and sweat that clings stubbornly to the faded fabric hanging from my chest.
I feel less than a man. I feel I shouldn't cry.
I do it anyway.
Up ahead a dark, empty road looms ominously as we speed towards the end. Trees line the edge of the desolate road ahead, and the headlamps illuminate them intermittently. The moon dances in the sky between the stars and the place where the sun set just an hour ago and I angle my head to get a better view of the clear night sky; an infinite dark space that mirrors my future. As we race away from what was my life, I sit motionless, neck craned towards the enfolding darkness, waiting for an eternity, alone. Scared. And all that is left of my life is a story.
Above me, the stars and moon keep me company for what seems like decades, before the memories return to torment me once more. I smell gunpowder and hear laughter. I see men in cars, girls with kites, and women in dresses split to the crotch. I feel pain and anger, sorrow and regret, love and hate. My mind ambivalent about everything, as always. The night sky is a brilliant array of mysteries, and I feel strangely at home. To the east the stars now hang over houses and to the west, nothing. Above me, I see suns as they were thousands of years ago; the moon in half crescent as it orbits this useless rock; and darkness. A shooting star that in truth is nothing but a thousand tiny rocks burning through the earth's atmosphere, arcs through the darkness and briefly illuminates the night sky.
Then they are gone.

I felt the cold glass connecting with my cheekbone and the room went dark.
Something breaks; not only the bottle, but something inside my face. I don't pass out, but a for a long time my whole world is black and I can feel the cold malt whisky trickling down my face and onto my ragged, dirty shirt.
I had said the wrong thing again. I had opened by big, fat, stupid mouth and said something dumb again. Apparently. I just wasn't quite sure what it was. Maybe it was asking for some scraps of food at dinnertime because I hadn't eaten for two days, or maybe I shouldn't have told her that the kitchen was already clean, and there was no need for me to do it again. Either way, I'd fucked up, and now I had to pay the price.
I heard the footsteps slowly receding down the hallway and onto the stairs, and finally I was alone once more. The stench of alcohol smothered me and I gasped for clean air, but all my lungs could find was cigarette smoke and fine malt whisky. For a few short moments I lay on the floor, allowing the Scotch to clean my wound, ignoring the pain as best I could. She wasn't going to win. Not this time.
Who was I kidding? She always won.
I placed a thin hand down onto the dirty carpet and tried to pull myself up, knowing that I needed to get back to work before she returned. If I hadn't finished my chores by the afternoon, there would be more trouble, and I didn't think my frail body could take anymore.
As I shifted my weight onto my good arm, a piece of jagged glass dug deep into my palm and I came crashing back down to the damp floor. Blood seeped from between clenched fingers, and the small shard of whisky bottle worked its way deeper into my hand.
This is my life.
For the first time in months, I just let myself go, crying uncontrollably - for myself, for the weakness of the human spirit, for every single injustice in this egocentric world. But mostly, I cried out of pain.
My mother had been living in a spiral of self-destruction and alcohol abuse for almost as long as she could remember. Her mother had been a gin-swigging divorcee who locked her only daughter in the linen closet for days at a time, disciplining her the only way she knew how.
Disturbed and bitter, she left home at eighteen, a pale and shy girl who used alcohol to give her just enough courage to give blow jobs for $10 a time and sleep with men to confuse sex with love. She hungered for companionship and found solace in cheap booze and nights in sleazy motel rooms where the sad and the lonely paid to hold her tight.
Three years, two abortions and syphilis later, and she met Gregory. A kindred spirit, he knew what it was to need someone. Theirs was a marriage born out of need, rather than love. Another five years and one daughter down the line, and Gregory had retreated so far within himself that he barely spoke to his wife. Instead, he just drank his life away, left for work early and arrived home late.
Gregory. Her husband. My father. Maybe.
My mother was alone again.
The only person who was there for her was her daughter, Jenny. My sister. A memory of happier times and life as it was supposed to be, Jenny was the one thing that truly loved her above all other things. Except for maybe cartoons and drag queen Barbie.
And then she was pregnant again. A miracle.
My mother once joked that Gregory's sperm must have just jumped out in the middle of the night because they were sick of waiting. Just swam right up over her leg and made their own way in. But none of that mattered. What mattered was that they had been given another chance. They both stayed dry. They talked again, like when they first met. They were happy.
Then I was born and everything started to go wrong.
I was a fuck-up from the start. All I did was cause trouble. That's what my mother told me. Every day of my life, that's what my mother told me.
And there I was again, crying like a big baby on my bedroom floor, covered in blood and tears and whisky, causing trouble. One big fuck-up. Apparently.
I wiped away my tears, knowing that I couldn't let her see me like this, and also knowing that I had to get myself cleaned up before Gregory got home. He wasn't to know. He wasn't to know about the broken bottles and broken bones. He wasn't to know about the trips to casualty and the casual trips down the stairs. He wasn't to know about the family Ottoman and five hours trapped in the darkness unable to move even an inch. Of course, he knew all of this without ever really knowing.
Ignorance is bliss. Self-absorption is better.
So, once again, I found myself covering up for her. Washing away the blood, hiding the scars, ignoring the pain. Locking it away. My vision was blurry and the room shifted and stretched as I slowly made my way to the bathroom, but eventually I found myself laying a damp cloth over the open wound and slowly mopping up the drying congealed blood that clung loosely around the edges.
Another night that seems like hell.
I knew I wouldn't need an excuse. By the time that Gregory made it home, she would already have explained to me what had happened. I would be made to repeat the story at least fifteen times before she would be satisfied. The lie. The lie that was the truth, but just a little easier to digest. A little more comfortable.
Once I had finished cleaning my wound, I slowly made my way back towards the bedroom. My whole sense of equilibrium was off and, after only a few steps, I was on my knees, the tears back in the corners of my eyes, my whole head filled with an intense pain that seemed to numb the entire world. I was too weak to go on. I wanted to just give up. I hungered for absolution. I dreamed of the end. An end that seemed like it would never come.
Footsteps on the stairs. The fear in my heart clicked up another notch, and I knew that she was coming back for more. Coming to finish me off. Maybe this time it would be over.
No more. Please God, no more.
The footsteps reached the top. They paused for a moment and I could hear strained breathing. I could smell cigarette smoke and cheap perfume.
Silence.
For a few seconds I thought that she might have changed her mind. Maybe she was sorry. Maybe, just for today - just on this special day - she would walk away. Maybe, just for today, she would love me.
A heartbeat later and she was moving again. Creeping ever closer towards the place where I was sat up on my knees as though in prayer to a God that had failed me all my life. A God that was never even there.
And then, there she was, standing in front of me, looking down at me with something that resembled pity, but was probably closer to hate.
My big sister.
We stared at each other, Jenny and me, with equal parts fascination and repulsion. Then, she reached down and took my hand. Relief swept over me and I felt my body relax as I reached up towards my sister, towards my salvation, awaiting a warm embrace. I felt her arms closing around me, pulling me in, and then I felt my body being propelled out into the open hallway. And then, once more, I felt the hard floor. The wound opened up afresh and sent crimson torture spilling out onto the olive green carpet.
"Out of my way you little shit."
The bathroom door slammed shut so hard that the light fixture above my head rattled, the flickering light only adding to my growing sense of vertigo. My breath was caught somewhere between my lungs and my throat, and in my mind I was falling. My eyes flicked shut and for a long time they would not open, daring me to let go, begging me to just give in to the darkness. And still that familiar feeling of falling.
See: postural hypo tension. See: transient ischaemic attacks.
The pain running down the left side of my face was counteracting the permanent pain that resided in my right cheekbone and temporal lobe. The pain I endured every time anything brushed against my face, every time I chewed food. The pain from the time my mother's stiletto had slipped out of her hand.
See: trigeminal neuralgia.
I heard my mother's voice calling me, and suddenly my strength returned. I blinked my eyes open, and the light seemed to burn holes deep into my retinas, but I could not delay. If I didn't go down to her straight away, I would be paying for my insubordination with the buckle end of one of Gregory's leather belts or the head of one of my mother's metal cooking spoons. Faint and frail, I placed a scrawny hand onto the windowsill and pulled my wasted, feeble body into a standing position.
Thick black clouds were beginning to roll in from the east and just outside, snow was falling, covering up all the dirt and the ugly clumps of grass that were growing in sporadic tufts around our garden wilderness.
The muscles that hung loosely from my thin legs had atrophied almost beyond repair and my head was cloudy and confused, but somehow my broken body carried me down the stairs and into the front room. And there, before me, was the monster.
She looked at me and then to the trail of blood I had dripped all over her precious shag pile, then brought her face down until it was just an inch away from my own. The stench of alcohol and stale cigarette smoke brought fresh tears to my eyes as I tried to hold my ground, desperate to disguise the rising fear that pulsed through my body.
Apparently I was playing with Jenny in the back yard. Apparently I was climbing up on Gregory's conservatory, having the time of my life. Apparently I was hiding from Jenny, my face pressed into the glass so that she couldn't see me. So that she couldn't see me through the glass. Through all the transparency. Apparently I slipped and put my face straight through the glass roof. My head smashed into the floor and that's where my mother found me, unconscious and bleeding, before nursing me back to apparent health. Apparently.
She tells me all this with her face so close to mine that I can actually taste the tobacco on her every breath. She tells me all this with the smell of ethanol suffocating me, while all I can think about is finding the strength to not collapse right there amongst my own blood on the living room floor. She tells me all this whilst in the conservatory every single pane of glass is still clearly perfectly intact. And then it's my turn to repeat the whole damn thing.
At first I am fine, my brain set to repeat everything I have been told, the example I have been set. Auto-pilot. But then my body betrays me and my eyes are seeing only darkness, and I am telling my mother something about hiding from Germany in the Coliseum. My mind can make no sense of the jumbled words that I am trying to replicate for my mother, and instead I am telling her that she is a nursing a savage elf.
I had only successfully repeated the story twice before I slumped down to my knees in front of my mother as though begging for reprieve, and started talking about Gregory's glass hoof and riding in the observatory.
If I had been able to see my mother instead of just darkness - darkness occasionally broken up by intermittent flashes of light and hallucinated floating spots - I would have seen the cerise glow of her cheeks reddening to a furious ruby and the corners of her mouth pulling down sharply into a violent sneer. If I had been able to see my mother instead of just darkness, I may have known to run. But of course, this season's vision is black with yellow spots.
See: retinal detachment.
All I could hear was my mother's harsh breathing becoming faster as I reached out blindly, wanting nothing more than to be held. I felt her body brush past mine and heard her footsteps disappearing into the kitchen. Then I was down on all fours, aware that I would be vomiting if there had actually been any food in my stomach to throw back up. From the kitchen came the sounds of a drawer being opened and cutlery being shuffled around, the hollow scraping of knives on wood, the dull clatter of metal. Then the drawer was shut and my mother was making her way back to the living room.
Shit.
Fingers gripped my scraggy hair, jerking my head back violently and bringing me swiftly to my feet. My world was now total darkness, but I could still feel the acute pain of my spine connecting with the solid brick wall and the cold steel blade being pressed up against the delicate skin where my Adam's apple was now beginning to protrude. I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, pushed up against the cold wall, my head pulled back by my lank greasy hair, a carving knife held up to my throat, my mother's vile breath washing over me. And then my mother is telling me to beg for mercy. My mother is telling me that I must repent my sins. My mother is telling me that I need to learn some respect. Just like she had to learn. My mother is educating me - she is telling me who the boss is, why I must do exactly what she says, and why I am going to be a failure for all my God-given life. She is telling me that she is my God. Apparently. And she tells me all of this with a ten-inch blade resting tentatively against my esophagus. My mother asks me if I want to fuck with her, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, her question is not rhetorical.
Except for my mother's labored panting and my vain attempts to fill my lungs with mouthfuls of fetid air, there was silence as my mother waited for my reply. With every strained inhalation, I felt the cold metal pressing deeper into my throat.
See: pulmonary embolism.
My only comfort was that I knew that everyone had to go through this. The only thing that kept me from passing out there and then was the unalterable truth that this was life. To me, this was a rite of passage, a thing that all men must go through.
Epiphany.
So, if this was a rite of passage, why was there that rising fear in my stomach, that feeling that I may die right there on my mother's Persian silk rug?
I could find no strength within me to answer my mother, so instead I felt the thick wood of the knife handle connecting with my skull, a symbol of my defiance. I dropped to my knees as my mother told me that I was a failure and asked me why I couldn't be like other kids. Why I couldn't be like Jenny.
And in that moment I realized that there was no rite of passage; just a stupid, dumb, retarded little boy who would never make anything of his life. I deserved this. I was destined to fail. So why even try?
I felt the razor sharp edge of the blade returning to my throat and trace a line from ear to ear, never quite penetrating my skin. And my mother tells me to pray.
And then from somewhere in the room came Jenny's voice, the answer to my prayers. She was telling my mother to give her the knife, that I didn't deserve all this, that she had done enough for one day. Especially today. Tenderly, my mother handed her the knife and watched as Jenny helped me to my feet, gently leading me out of the room and towards the stairs. My every step was slow and deliberate, my eyesight still absent and my body still weak, while, back in the front room, my mother cried into another bottle of whisky.
When we reached my bedroom, Jenny lowered me steadily onto the worn mattress that served as my bed and stayed with me, stroking my hair and cleaning my wound. As I drifted in and out of consciousness, I caught fragmented apologies and snatches of excuse. And I understood why she was sometimes so mean, why some days she treated me with the same hatred and loathing that my mother showed me. It had something to do with conforming being easier than doing the right thing.
And with that, she wished me a merry Christmas, lightly kissed my forehead, and left.
Downstairs, I could faintly hear my mother asking her to stay awhile. She didn't want to be alone on Christmas day. But my sister had packed a bag and stopped only long enough to let my mother know that she wouldn't be coming back. The door slammed shut and once more the world was locked away, and the only sound that remained was my mother's words hanging on the air.
"I love you."

When I awoke, night had arrived and by the sounds of the raised voices below, so had Gregory.
I opened my eyes to find that my vision had partially returned, albeit hazy and distorted, and as I slowly swam up from the depths of my sleep, the pain returned, taking me by surprise and blinding me with its severity. I reached an emaciated hand up to the main source of the pain and cried out as my finger scraped the bone of my cheek.
For a moment, the voices below fell quiet, but for years my parents had been devoid of compassion, and within seconds my pain was forgotten, lost under more empty words.
As I began to mop up the blood and alcohol stains from my bedroom floor - a twelve-year-old boy imprisoned by my own innocence - I listened as they shouted at one another, never listening to a single word the other said, each of them on their own private journey to nowhere.
I listened to them as they talked about cardboard magi and fallen angels. I listened to them as they talked about the vows they had made and the wedding rings kept in a box under the stairs as a souvenir of another life. And I listened to them as they talked about a Christmas nativity.
And just before I climbed back onto my worn and dirty bed, Gregory - my father, apparently - came up the stairs and into my room. And with his head held down, unable to even look me in the face, he took a long swig from a bottle of Jack and wished me a happy birthday.

Some days it seems like the whole world is afflicted with a disease called apathy.
When I was a child, I remember watching a butterfly as it emerged from its cocoon. And at first, it wasn't quite sure what to do. It just sort of sat there, fascinated by the beauty of the world around it. As if its eyes were open for the first time.
And then it realized it was free.
And it spread its wings and began to fly. Away from the safety of everything it knew. Away from the ugliness from which it had been born. Away from everything. And it never looked back.
I followed it with my eyes for a full ten minutes as it arced through the sky, rising and falling gracefully, dancing on the breeze. For a moment, it hung gaily on the air, floating high above a cluster of wild roses, captivated by their beauty, seduced by their richness, briefly tempted by their luster.
And then it was gone.

States of things

2007-09-02T23:26:00.001-07:00

The curious little man with the curious little face told me it was time to leave my happy little place. I sigh, always feeling right and proper in my happy little place. One can tell by simply looking at me. My posture perfect, my smile solid and my happy little gaze makes everybody happy in happy in little ways. I can tell to. I see things and feel my head closer to heaven. Things like the first robin of spring bouncing. The early bird catching the worm that soon itself will be late. I see little girls playing pad-i-cake and preening each other's ponytails permissively. Like little monkeys eating lice of leprous liars.
No, that thought doesnt belong. Its morbid, vain and scary. It makes me feel all-wrong.

So the curious little man has his way. Giving him my credit card I pay to go delightfully about my day. I like when words rhyme. I enjoy the progression it makes and the dignified form that my manuscript takes. If my meter moves you mad, may I make the motion and move you merrily on? I also enjoy alliteration, although its argued a script should always avoid alliteration. Anyhow, I adamantly adore it.

And so I leave this curious little man with his head holding and embracing information bought in books. With the shelves holding the books and building a library. And the walls holding the library and building a house. And the house holding the curious little man building a neighborhood in which I walk. In which the sky is holding the sun.
And as I walk I notice just by chance, looking down at the sidewalk, a tiny row of ants. And I wonder what it is that keeps them in line? And if the sky was falling would they know the bottom of the boot was mine? There I am stomping the sand in the sidewalk looking somewhat insane again.

Somewhat Insane Again

It starts when you feel your eyes drowning then its go go go. burn burn burn it. Chew on the corners on your mouth and jump off the edge of the world. An angel has exhaled a long lonely cold breath and I am filled with life. The aftermath? A shattered fragment of joy with enough self-loathing to be dangerously fun.

Oh what pity my fellows?

Oh what sorrows will tomorrow bring.

Debts on the games we play.

On the other side of the street there is a woman in a power suit whom in her last reproach screamed, "Kill me for I am not one of you, my gentle heart foil it in two, my young son who knows not what I do!" And a rush to thought. "Who has time to deal with a wench when there is so much joy in the air!?!"

I fester.

Her quite.

On a long golden rope hangs a silver spoon laughing in the face of impending doom! What do I owe this great pleasure? Would the sun shine lower in the sky if I were forced to measure? Oh sweet victory my kingdom will come. And in my fight I will lay scratch on the wing of a dove flying over fields of dandy white lions. What dark and vial kingdoms. What seedy cities will I go without? For this is the work of my brothers, and their fathers.

Wind bashfully blows and my mouth suddenly goes "Is my smile sharp and numb? Why I walk when I know I should run?"

The Delightful Daydream

Now, before I begin another bunch of banter allow me to explain if my bellows seems a bit bewildering. I blame in on my brain. It practically refuses to work on any practical level. With that in lay let it be learned that I do tie my own shoes. In that regard Im no Einstein, but whether Im pondering the purpose of life or the price of peaches Im always preoccupied

oh my.

Let me write of the woman in white that has come standing next to me.
Instantly Im infatuated with the intimacy of her eyes. My heart falters and flutters, a fire run astray. Im curiously consumed with the luck Ive drawn today. As you read take a deep breath making sure to stop at the top, to hold it in.

There.

Did you feel your heart jump and your brow bow? Thats exactly how Im feeling standing next to her right now. My posture perfect and my smile? Slightly sideways but seriously solid. Im staring beauty in the face and from where Im standing its a wonderful place, ultimately understanding with wink and nod. Its possible to find in her your faith in man and GOD. The skin of her cheek reminds me of when winter is bleak and you see the frost you make spring fourth from every breath you take. So refreshing and refined and free. For a moment I think of her as if she was with me.

And oh on our future.

I imagine a relationship rocketing relatively upward against all odd angst and arrogance. A furious fire ship in the sky. Something pretty to measure the value of your own life by. Wed live in luxury in a house on a little hill. Have two children, twins of course. Wed call them Jack and Jill. Jack will pass the pigskin perfectly like a pro. The boys will line up round our block to take Jill out to a show. We will gracefully grow gray together, me and this woman in white and Shell say, I love you as we lie in bed, each and every night.

I find myself often day dreaming this way. Becoming father to children on swings, husband to women in white, and living a dream that in no shape or form resembles my life, so far out from the norm. Then as is always its time to continue about my curious little life. Goodbye my son, my daughter My imaginary wife.

The Guilty Gaze

Politely I peddle down the parkway pleasing passer-byers with pleasantries. I walk so long I see the sun has grown red in sitting. Is it stoned drunk on blue sky or just tired from watching? Regardless, the moon is ripe with darkness that has it place. My shadow long and leery waits for the child I were whom upon abrupt arrival asks, If were all headed for Heaven who is headed for Hell? Perplexed and moved to ponder. I parked my person on the nearest possible place. A man made marble fountain whose water as it fell reminded me of Kerouacs Big Sur, which reminded him of Hell.

Oh yes, the Darkness has found its place.

I can feel it creeping up beside by all angles of approach waiting for any sign of insecurity so that it may viscously and quietly broach. Looking down the subtle silver reflection shows a sight I see and vaguely recollect. A man with smooth soft skin that bunches under crows feet indicating that at some point he was sharp and stable. This seems to be the only sign he carries from his younger glory days when all the world was his cradle. Waiting for a taking if only he received. Now the only thing thats distinguishable is a graying guilty gaze grown on him from years of being casually convicted by chance.
Youre a sad man if you were ever alive, I tell him under my breath looking away at the shape of the trees in the city under the buildings, under a moon which is full of itself. The trees are a breed of ghastly ghost looking upon us firmly rooted. Their position unwavering until, of course, they are cut down.

If I were ever alive? The reflection chuckles back relentlessly and ruthlessly mocking my every thought and desire to depths that my poor heart has never known. If I were ever anything except what people wanted us to be.
Deeper and deeper these doldrums delved into the core of my worldly soul. Who was this man and what right did he have

I cant go on living your life. Seeing you here for the first time clear is a revelation. Ive forgotten what we look like. Look at what youve become! Look at what you used to be, look at me! Dont stare of into the trees they wont offer any solace. Its time to talk together! Of the remembered reflection and the guilty gaze.

I can not take this anymore again. My hands have had the hemp tied taught and tied tighter as I writhe every time I see you. We could have been anything, even artist who painted VanGoghs piece so perfectly picturesque that GOD almighty would have envied us, his ear not as pretty as ours. But youve gone and convinced yourself that all there is to life is breathing to live and bleeding to die.

Youve died by barely living while living the life of the dead.

Youve bled so much over our masterpiece making a maroon puddle thats so sincere its scares anyone and everyone who dares to come near. Still they are drawn to it, to us, and dont understand why. It and us were full of so much life we were despised and discredited and duly disposed of. Theyve cast their guilt upon you for your gratuitous gift although they were the fools who had died and not yet lived. And you gave in everything you were destined for making you, me, us and I a guilty party. Go on about your life so easily as you please. Pretend I wasnt here or there or anywhere any part of you and you no part of me. Live the life of leisure in your daydreams and never, ever face the world apart from them.

I shiver on my way home.

My body heaves as all my pain leaves the fountain to found by someone more suitable. I pass where the woman in white was, where the preening preschoolers played, where the curious little man questioned quizzically. The lot of them in this late hour tucked cozily behind curtains shielded away from leprous liars, women in power suits, remembered reflection and above all the guilty parties. So I sit in my sterile house and I am almost elated. I actually attempt art. This is the result

under the cover of darkness I felt a twitch

thought Id rub it out without a hitch.

so I placed my finger upon my trigger and

youll happy to know my guilt grew bigger.

then as I came I had to yell

Screw you all, and go to hell!

A thunderous rush and Im finally quiet for infinity.

They say that all lives questions are answered up arrival to the other side. Is it true? I dont know I never felt I had any burning questions that had to be answered. I think now that just doing, going through moot motions, dealt the dirt on the ground that the guilt was founded on. The guilt I decided on that night on my way home from the fountain that I would never feel again and I was free. Suicide may be sort of cliché when writing, but it all happened in that way and I now I know it couldnt have happened in any other way for I still continue to feel and float in spirit, stronger now than ever before.

This is my answer.

An Afterward from the Afterworld

It was always captivating to stare at a glowing fire. The brightness an aura of hope, a potential so great to consume anything surrounding, a breathtaking beacon to wonder by. Why then, did it seem, the darkness it leaves seems so sadly contrasting, to the flame, when you know the coal it leaves is hotter and will burn longer?
Honestly I had felt cheated for a time. Cheated out of what was rightfully mine, and yours.

Success, money, the easy life.

Can you really blame me? How many times as a child were you told that you could do or have anything? The sky was the limit. You were wonderfully young and you were promised the world. All you had to do was, I wont even say take that would require work, reach and receive it. As I grew older I thought maybe the glimmer in my eye, running on innocence and promise, had simply ran out of fuel. The same faces that were telling you "its ok to walk" were now ashamed because you werent running.

Its a sorry state to be in, to old to be called a child, yet to young to feel like a man. Once my eyes had adjusted to the darkness from the disappearing flame I didnt feel like I was saying goodbye to a dear old friend. I was just warming up to the coal the flame had grown into. The coal that I had never grew to know. When I was back running under the sky which was, as stated prior, holding the sun.

evermore

2007-09-02T23:25:00.000-07:00

Rhythmically breaking the hush , step by sure step, he ascended. He went higher and higher, and the higher he went, the colder he became, the more numb. Yet he was resigned. A resignation to oblivion,: he mused. How quaint. But then it always was quaint--all of it. All the rules, all the quiet, cold order, numbing him. No! he seethed. This was a lie. It was not a set of restrictions--it was uncertainty! That blasted uncertainty is what plagued him. Two years of uncertainty, and every day had worn him away like the rain that fell heavily on him now, wearing down a mound of dirt, beating it down, breaking it apart--and all with a deceptive, gentle hush.
That hush was present now, roaring yet silent. It was the silence that startled him into realizing that he had stopped, and with renewed vigor he began climbing once more, began once more the rhythm that had resounded with clarity for the past ten minutes--a rhythm born of step after sure step, the clang and clang of shoe on steel. Ah, ten minuteshad it been ten minutes already? They had gone by so quickly, those ten minutes, so blissfully. Ten whole minutes of certainty. He hadnt had this kind if luxury for two years, and he wondered at why he had considered his life to be so sure before. Time had told him that it was not meant to be, even if she hadnt. She had tried to make things work, and in the end, that is what had been so pathetic. Assurance--he would hear none of it! False assurance, the only kind he had ever known, was the only thing worse than the damp cold he felt now. Being this cold, this numb, protected him from other pains--for a time, at least. The numbness covered him, surrounded him, soaked him. If it didnt cure the illness, at least it made him forget it--for a time, at least, for ten whole minutes, sometimes.
Eventually, of course, a new kind of pain was brought about numbness, sorrow in waves, in great crashing tides of agony: this wretched uncertainty. For where is a man to go when he has nothing to stand on? When even what he has is taken away--what then? It is precisely this question that had plagued him for these two years. What was he standing on? Certainly, there was nothing there.
The rain came down wet and chilling, and he shuddered to think of what culture offered as answers. Friends? Other women? He didnt want to try God. No one in his life really cared about him. What had he to offer anyone? And besides, what was the point of offering himself for the benefit of others? How would that make him happy? It could not, and he would only be knocked down again and again, rhythmically, even. No, there was a better way, a sure way, and now he was nsetting his own pace, keeping his own time with shoe on steel. No longer was he knocked down. He could please neither himself nor others, and now he was rising higher every moment. Sweet surety
In desperation, he had tried one of the prefabricated, cookie cutter answers. He had thrown himself into his job, and had been able to please his employers on superficial level. The emptiness quickly returned when he realized how easy it was to be successful at work. His superiors had immediately marked the change in him, and soon after discovered that a man who had nothing could be pushed to give everything. He was promoted twice, and they married him to their money. But he would still die alone, miserably alone, and the great fire of human existence would burn him to ash again. The emptiness had been a sick feeling in his stomach for weeks, and in the end, he had traded the corporate ladder for a steel on that was slick with rain. How quaint, he muttered. It was this ladder that carried the real answer.
Every step took him higher, and every footfall made him more sure that surety was finally all there was left. This was his religion, his worship. He didnt need anything else--that is to say, he would presently need nothing at all. The clanging continued, but it began to grow softer in his ears. He had reached his goal, and even the painful numbness no longer bothered him. He took a final step, and the world toppled toward him. The rain stopped falling, and instead merely stood beside him. Ah, at long last he knew his fate--and the blessed surely overtook him.

Cold Corners

2007-09-02T23:24:00.002-07:00

I have these dreams sometimes. Like something I can barely remember or I'm remembering; but it could also be nothing and I'm starting to think that's what it is. So I can forget. But it's a memory. I don't think that matters anymore, though.
This morning when I woke up there was nothing in my room. But that's the way it is every morning. My room is empty.
I have two windows which I am happy with. There is not much outside, besides the sun and a fence. Grass and a few trees; a few people sometimes. People can't see inside I have learned, and they can't hear me. I have no reflection in the windows. I do not know what I look like anymore.
I don't know any of this for sure but I have learned what it is to live alone. And I have tried every way you might imagine, more than once and twice.
As you might think, the walls in here do not have any color. I have one picture of somebody I don't know or don't remember anymore. The frame is small like my room.
Maybe it is you?

I forgot to tell you that my other window, it is not so much a window. There is only one on the side of my small room, to the right of the door that doesn't open for me, and the second is a skylight above where I have moved my bed. I had moved it from the corner to the center of my room, right below where the sun comes through in the middle of the day and the moon stays late at night.
And as you might think, I am quite thankful for my windows. I would not be able to stand the plainness without them. And I would not break them because they can't be broken.
During the night I found myself alone for the first time I beat at the walls and the windows but they did not crack. And the cars and people outside did not hear me. They didn't or they couldn't. I am happy for my struggle on the first night, I am calmer now, I found papers and a pencil under my mattress.
And I feel better, now that I can write to you.
You might wonder how long I've been in this room, though I don't know, it has not been for long. I am still alive aren't I? I have a small toilet in the corner that is not so clean and no sink. Everyday somebody comes along and hands me food through my tiny mail slot on my door. Outside of the mail slot I have looked through there are halls and other doors like mine. All of it is white like my room. Feet and legs move by wearing slippers and clothes white like the walls.
I do not know how I got here but I finish my days with hope that the door will open. And you will step inside, maybe wearing white and slippers like the people who shuffle the halls, but you will not be like them. I imagine you are different.
Outside I see cars that stay for the day and leave at night, before I go to sleep. There are some that do not leave when the others have gone, they still stay and I think they must be confused. I think I am much like them.

The door of mine, with the mail slot for my food, opens slowly and someone I don't know peeks his head in and asks my name, coughs loudly.
I wake up and I am laying in my bed, I say yes? looking toward the ceiling. I was only half sleeping because I thought it might have been you. I knew you would open the door for me.
"The doctor told me to let you out today," you tell me. You say I've been confined long enough.
"Confined?" I say. "From what? This is my room."
You look scared but you smile and open the door further. You are nervous to be around me I can tell.
"What have I done?" I ask.
You just look around the room.
I ask, "Have you been getting my letters?"
And you just look at me.
"Have you read them?" I'm asking.
But you leave with the door halfway open. The hall, coats of white walk by in no hurry. Lights brighten my room, the dark. It must be early in the morning because the sun is not yet up. The day is orange on top of the blackness outside.
And I realize it was not you.
In my slippers -- like the doctors' -- and my gray robe like the color of dust collected heavily, I get out of bed and hold the door. Cold under both of my hands, pushing it slowly, away from the wall. There is no handle on the inside for me to grab.
In the hall, I do not think it is much different than my room. Besides the shape and the people. The length covered in all these doors and all of them looking like mine. I wonder if they are any different on the inside. My door is the only one open out of so many. There are two windows down the end of the hall, as big as the squares of the white linoleum on the hallway floor, it is the same view I have but on a different side of the building.
I see the man who I thought was you, leave around the corner. And a woman replaces him.
The woman walking in a suit follows me with her eyes. And she looks at the door on the other wall as she passes. I touch her arm and she looks at me and back down the hall.
I ask her where there might be a bathroom, I'm sure, sounding friendly enough.
She stares at me, at my face, and she says around the corner. She points down the other end of the hall, where she came.
I thank her and smile but I feel my lips crack when I stretch my mouth.
Out of my grip, moving her arm, she walks away faster than she came. We both leave the spot where we stopped to talk and I make it around the corner passing no one else.
The door to the bathroom looks just like every other one I've seen. A small blue man on the door, standing like a stick figure. On the inside, the handle is wet with something I hope is water. There is a man standing at a urinal, he looks over at me and looks back at himself peeing. I smile.
I see the mirror, past the divider between the trash can and the paper towel dispenser. Across from the urinals and the man peeing. Past the stalls, I walk to see my reflection.
I do not even remember myself.
My hair, like straw, but not in color. My brown beard, grown to my chest, is an extension of my dirty hair. I regret not having a shower in my room, I'm sure I do not smell as pleasant as I would like. In the mirror, my face, red and burned. Cracked and hot. And my eyes, tiny and dimmed; in the color of my robe. I look old. What I look like is worn out.
The man is looking at me as he washes his hands. Maybe you are looking at me. So I smile to him -- you -- and ask if he's enjoyed my letters.
"Excuse me?" he says.
"Have you read them?" I ask you again.
And you stop drying your hands, you ask me what?
And I realize it is not you, like the man who opened my door. I say I am sorry, excuse me. I leave the restroom.
I walk back down the hall where my room is. Looking through the mail slots of the doors, saying hello. Looking for you. Some people do not say anything back to me. One man tried to fit his mouth through the door. Clacking his teeth together. I'm sorry, I said and walked to the next door.
After checking most of the doors along the side of the hall, I think maybe I was not clear enough with the man in the bathroom. I could ask him where you are and he might know of you. So I walk back through the door with the stick figure gentleman on it but the man is gone, and I become sad that I did not think of it sooner.
I start checking the doors on the hallway of the bathroom, perpendicular to mine. Maybe he is still around this area. The doors on this hall do not have slots, but windows to the outside. The walls covered in pillows, like the inner lining of a coffin. Nobody is inside.
After the first three windows I look through, the rooms with no one inside, the hallway is occupied by three men. One is wearing an outfit like mine and I immediately know it is you. The other men walk passed you, and they pass me around the corner of the hall. And you, you are staring at the ceiling holding your hands out in front of yourself. Folded. Your hair is stringy and you're wearing glasses that magnify your eyes. You look down at the floor and keep walking slowly, closer to me.
I say hello. You look up at me. I smile and you shuffle closer to the side of the hall I am standing on. You walk in small tiny steps. I spread my arms as you walk closer and you walk into them, closing your arms around me. Your matted hair against my chin, I ask where you have been. I ask you if you have ever thought about writing me back.
But you do not say anything.
I back away and you let go of me. You stand in front of me without an expression on your face, your eyes are pale like mine. Blue. The hall is empty around us. At the end a light is flickering, it doesn't stop. On and off.
You look at me and you place a hand on the side of my face, on my cheek. Your hand is cold like the door of my room and rough. You push hard against my face. You -- your hand pushes my face against the wall. And something pops. The lights go black in a flash but it's just my eyes. On and off. And when they open again I'm on the floor, with my hand on the side of my face that hit the wall. Blood deep and red covers the floor. When I stand up, I can see a red spot on the wall. Down the hall you're already walking away, but slowly. Shuffling away in your robe and slippers. My face feels hot. It's burning.
And you're walking away.
My hand pressed against the side of my bleeding face, I walk back past the bathroom and toward my room. The door still open the way it was when I left. The hall empty. At the end I can see the sun coming up through the small, square windows. The orange ball and the parking lot outside.
I walk back inside my room, dark, but brighter than before. I close the door, but I can't since I don't have a handle. So I leave it cracked. Down the hall somebody has a TV on. I hear people talking in southern accents loudly.
I lay down on my bed. Against my bleeding face, swelling and sore. And I wonder if you did get my letters, really.
My face, red because of the blood or the sun, I can't tell. Smearing my face. My eyes sting and burn. My face is hotter and I start to cry. The sun rises over the cars in the parking lot, thousands of reflections making it brighter and brighter. The white florescent light coming through the hallway door, through the crack, all of it stinging my eyes. And my face, hot against the bed, bleeding and sobbing into the sheets. I cry.

The doctor came in after I fell asleep with my face bleeding. He was wondering where I was and when he saw the blood he called for assistants. I was still sleeping when they took me and gave me the stitches, which was probably better.
And now my face has stopped bleeding but it is still sore.
The doctor, the man who found me, asks who did this to me.
And don't worry, I tell him I don't know. I don't tell him about you. I sort of tell him the truth. About how someone hit my head against the wall.
He asks if I can remember what you looked like.
I say I can't. That is true also.
I touch my face and my beard is gone. They shaved it off for the stitches, but my hair, dirty, is the same. My face feels much smoother without the beard. There is still some blood dried on the left side of my head, in my hair.
We're in a small office. In the same building, because the floor is the same color as it is everywhere. Outside it is the same, through the small window. Trees and a parking lot. There are more cars than before. The sun is up higher.
The doctor says that he'll give me my new room on the floor below. Someone will walk me there.
"What about my old one?" I ask him.
He tells me they let me out of that one. He says they only put potentially dangerous patients in the kind of rooms I was in, put on this floor. "Like the man that hurt you." We'll have to look at the security film, he says, and we'll find who it was. But we don't have a lot of people on this floor, he tells me it would not be too difficult to find out who you are.
And suddenly I am scared for you.

The kind of food they give me is some soup, with everything all blended and mashed up. This is because of my stitches, they don't want me to stretch them so they tear open. What's left to chew I chew softly.
This early in the cafeteria, there's nobody around except for the people cooking food. And a few doctors, nurses. The nurse sitting with me is supposed to be taking me to my room, she suggested I should get some food. So we are both eating.
She has a sandwich with lettuce sticking out of the sides. She eats loudly, reading a magazine. I think why we're eating is because she is hungry. She doesn't look up at me and she just keeps reading an article about some place I've never heard of. A travel magazine.
After we're done she takes me down a hallway that looks like the same one from upstairs. Most of the doors are open and I think it is a little before noon. Patients walk freely around the halls, somewhere a TV is playing the Andy Griffith Theme too loud.
In the rooms there are beds tightly made, packaged. The walls are white and the shades are open. The rooms have one window on the wall. Nobody is still in bed.
At the end of the hall after the first one we walk through, the nurse stops and tells me this is where my room is. It looks just like the other ones. The bed is made, the curtains are up. I have a table and a closet. Out the window is the same parking lot from my room before. The sun is past the top of the window, above where I can't see. I turn to thank the nurse but she is already gone.
I miss my other room, but I have to tell you, I am glad to have left it. I'm happy enough with an opening door. To leave as I want. Maybe you are down here? Or are you still on the other floor, wandering alone? I hope you are not too lonely.

I think you would like this floor, unless you preferred to stay on your own. I've found more paper and pencils in my desk so I can write to you like before. I do not know where I should place them though. Maybe I could ask someone if they would give them to you. Or I will have to find you again.
There are few people who have talked to me since I've been moved earlier this morning. A man in the room next to mine came to see me after I had slept on my bed for an hour. He was standing in my door when I woke up. He kind of reminded me of you, with more hair though. He asked me questions I wonder sometimes myself.
"Why are you here?" he said. "What is your name?" I told him I could not remember so he called me J. I do not see why he should call me a letter and I asked him why he chose it. He did not have an answer. Later he told the other people of this floor my name was J, I realized when I found it written on the white board used for announcements that he must have meant Jay, instead of solely the beginning letter. I felt quite foolish.
And now everyone I pass in the hall, or who walks by me in the recreation room where the white board is, calls me Jay. It is not such a bad name and for me, without one I can remember, it is better than none. So I will keep it.
Nobody has asked me about my stitches and my face is still a little swollen. Sometimes I see people staring. I don't even know what I would say.
But now it is late at night, and the sun has gone behind the parking lot and the trees. Cars have left to go home. I am sitting in the recreation area with a woman who doesn't say anything to anyone but the TV. We're watching Nick At Night and an I Dream of Genie marathon.
Besides us, nobody else is watching. I am only sitting here because I do not have anything else to do. Sometimes I like the flashing lights. The quiet is usually in noise's place any other time without the humming sound. The television is comforting. The soft, warm colors. It's not really that I enjoy what I am watching, but I am joyous because I am watching.
People sit in other chairs, around small tables covered with newspapers and magazines, in the dark and away from the glow of the TV. They talk about things I can't hear.
The woman on the couch, she talks and ridicules commercials.
The walls in this room are sort of a pale blue. The border wallpaper is of suns and moons. Covering the top of each wall. What the room looks like is more of a nursery. All it is missing are cribs.
There is a window, where outside the moon is gone from the night sky. Stars shine in its place. Trees stand still around the parking lot.
In the room there's the television that provides the only light. The rest comes from down the hall and through the doors of rooms. Soon they will tell us it is time for bed and everyone will go back to their room, all the same. We will roll down our sheets and slide between them. I wonder if this is your nightly routine. It is not like it was when I was younger, but in some ways it is the same. Watching TV until we were worn enough to confess we were sleepy. We would all go to bed at the same time. Only when I was younger we could leave our rooms as we wanted during the night if we were not seen. I would sneak out and watch the TV at this volume and with this lighting. But not really watching it of course.
The walls flash and flicker. People's faces brighten and fade back again as the space between whatever's happening goes black. Scenes change. And some people leave to go to bed, they say goodnight audibly and go their separate ways down the two hallways.
When I have had my share of the marathon I get up to leave and wish my fellow TV watcher a goodnight. I almost say her name but I realize I do not know it. She says to me, "Goodnight Jay" and I can see her jaw moving in the darkness. Her eyes glowing.
I walk by the scattered chairs and the tables, lights flash and flicker. My room down the hallway, with the door open and a comfort so inviting. In my room there's my bed already rolled down for me to get into and the hum of the air circulating through the vents. The faint din of the TV still echoes through my head, down the hallway with the woman. And there's the white board, covered in pictures and everything written in messy handwriting, that says: Welcome Back Jay.

There's a flash like lightening in my head. And everything goes dark. On and off. I'm laying down but I can't see. Somebody is crying and two men are talking. Out of what they're saying, one of them says "Jay", but the rest I can't hear.
It's getting brighter. Now it's different, somebody else is talking to me. A shadow moves in front of me. Hopping from foot to foot. His breath comes out in plumes of white. Like little bubbles in a comic strip. He keeps talking, sadly. "Don't ever let her go," he says.
And then it gets brighter. It feels cold and the breath inside me freezes my lungs. But it gets warm again. I can feel somebody's breath on my face. Their breath fills my lungs and warms my body.
I'm dreaming.

Carl. His name is Carl, the man who came into my room. He finally decided to tell me this morning over breakfast. He invited me to sit with "his bunch," he said. Though, the only people near him were half way down the table. The woman from the TV room was there also. I ask him what her name is and he just kind of stares at me.
"Ella," he says. "Her name's Ella."
I say, what? and wipe my mouth and he just shakes his head. Ella sits down on the other end of the table. In the light she has tanned looking skin and long brown hair.
Today we have a choice of grits with scrambled eggs that do not look so scrambled or toast and jelly with one piece of sausage. They have dry breakfast, Carl says, and the sloppier kind. I chose the toast without the jelly. Carl asks me if he can have my sausage so I give it to him. I have never eaten much meat.
I tell Carl about the crazy dream I had the night before but I tell him I don't really know what it's about.
Carl asks me if it's maybe about the cut on my face, he points at my cheek when he says the word "cut." And I tell him no, I don't think so. It's something else.
"How did you get that cut?" Carl asks.
I ask Carl if he knows of you and for a second I am hopeful but he says he has never seen you. Though to Carl, you could be anyone. I know I will have to keep looking on my own.
Ella has a plate of scrambled eggs and a fork, she does not eat. She sits by herself at the end of the table. Her eyes, so large, and the dark circles under them probably from watching too much TV. I wonder if she sleeps well at night when she is not allowed to leave. Why is she here? She loosely takes her fork and scoops the runny eggs from her plate and she chews the first bite she's eaten all morning. She turns to us still holding her fork in the air and Carl's talking about something I'm not listening to. And Ella, her eyes are so dark brown that they're black. She's beautiful in a tired, sad way.
Carl asks if I'm ok and I tell him I think so. He says that I've been acting really weird lately. He takes the other piece of toast off of my plate and I ask Carl if I used to be down here, on this floor.
Ella gets up from the table and leaves.

I can hardly find the paper to write on anymore. So I have been taking more than my share of paper napkins from the cafeteria to write to you with. It is not as easy to write on as the lined paper I had, but I will have to use this until maybe I find more.
I was given the idea by this floors artist, Andy, who draws all of his drawings on paper napkins. It is probably because he cannot find paper like me. He has given me some of his works which I have gladly hung on my walls. Most of his drawings are of windows and the things outside of them. He draws scenery and mountains. Things that are not around here.
Today we are allowed to go outside. And I am surprised how cold it is. It is hard to tell what the weather feels like without opening a window when you are stuck inside. There is a small fenced in area we are allowed to walk in, with benches and a path. It also has a small pond containing fish and a waterfall. Carl and I, we sit and watch the fish. When I talk I can see my breath, it's that cold.
There are tall looming trees past the parking lot and the cars. The fences are high and barb-wired. Andy sits drawing pictures for the group of people around him. He hands them out to other patients and doctors. They smile, taking them agreeably. Workers, doctors and nurses in casual clothes walk around talking to people. Doctors in disguise to seem friendlier, without their lab coats and their stethoscopes. People I've seen but I don't know stand around in groups, like an elementary school playground, some people play basketball with the only hoop we have.
Outside everything is shadowed and cold. The ground is frozen. The sun is high but it's lost in the clouds. The air is stale and foresty. Windy.
The bench is a cold stone underneath the both of us. In the pond most of the fish stay in one spot. Some are bright orange and others are white and black. Carl throws rocks and things into the water. The fish check to see what they are, and they go back to swimming or sitting still. Ella sits cross-legged on a rock beside the pond feeding fish. Her dark brown hair in her eyes. She breaks off pieces of bread and throws them in the water.
"You don't remember anything?" Carl asks me.
Nope, I say.
"That's crazy Jay."
"Why was I upstairs?" I ask him.
Carl doesn't answer, he stares at the pond.
I can't remember, I tell him. I turn to Carl, "I don't know anything."
And Carl, he says looking at me and back at the pond with Ella feeding the fish, "I don't know if you want to remember."

Ella is always the last in the recreation room. Watching TV like she could never stop. I think that is what the TV here is for, keeping the people who do not feel like talking entertained. And she has probably seen it all before, the shows and the commercials. But maybe she is also forgetting something.
And after everyone tells us to get in bed and the hallway lights are turned off, there is little noise through the building. Sometimes you can hear someone coughing or getting up for a late night trip to the bathroom, but mostly it is silence. I have been meaning to ask if maybe I may use a fan to circulate the air through my room at night. And not because I am hot, but the hum of a fan is better than the silence.
I get up out of my bed and the floor is like ice under my bare feet even though it is not cold. The window is fogged and the lights outside are blurred through the glass. Everything looks darker and brighter at the same time.
Out of my door, and down the hall, the light from the bathroom door seeps out in bright white. Past Ella's room, there is no one sleeping in her bed and glass glints on the floor like little drops of water. Her window is open, with the drapes blowing, and the cold comes through the black bars. Under the bathroom door somebody's feet block the light and move again. Somebody is crying, softly.
Ella sits on the counter, beside a sink. She doesn't look up when I come in. And her head is resting in her hands. Her hair hangs in her face. She just sits there with her legs hanging over the counter. Shaking and crying, looking at the floor.
And she stands up, pushing herself with her hands off of the counter, onto her feet. She shudders, crying, and stops. Through her hair, her face is soaked wet. What she looks like is slippery. Her cheeks shine from the lights over the sink.
Ella walks to me and with her eyes shining, her face, and she's shaking. She hugs me.
And I can't think of anything to say.

"I'm sorry," Ella says in her room, half crying. She picks up the pieces of glass on the floor and I get on my knees and help her.
"What's wrong?" I ask her.
She doesn't say anything.
Once the floor is cleared, she gets up and dumps the glass from her cupped hand into the trash can. She picks up the trash can and takes out a smashed picture frame with a picture inside. It is the same one from my room before.
Ella half smiles, she says, "I guess it's kind of ruined." And she gently puts it down on her bed. Ella's room is really no different than mine. She has most of the same things. Her room is still different, though.
The wind still blows through, moving her hair.
"Aren't you cold?" I ask.
She shakes her head.
Well I am, I say and I walk over to close the window.
She sits down on the bed and I sit beside her. Us and the picture frame. I ask Ella if she wants to watch a movie.
"We're not allowed to go out during the night except to use the bathroom," she says.
And I say I know.
Ella sits and thinks for a minute, and she takes my hand and we walk out of her room. When we make it to the recreation room, I realize how much warmer it is than in Ella's room. I tell Ella to hold on a second and she waits.
I walk to the green couch in front of the TV and slide it forward as close as it will go. And when I turn it on, Ella walks with her eyes glowing and her face shadowed. She sits down.
And the only thing I can find on at this time of night is a program on the History Channel about Pearl Harbor so we watch it.
Ella's on my shoulder, but she keeps falling asleep and slipping down my chest until she's laying down. Even when she wakes up she stays there and she turns her head to watch the historians talking.
And the lights from the TV keep flashing on and off, between commercials and scenes. The room gets dark and it lights up again. The sound is a soft hum coming from the old TV speakers. And Ella falling asleep, she wakes up again. From the light, the side of her face that I can see, looks almost white. And her eyes are black.
There are pictures of people running, fleeing. A narrator talks so low, I can't hear. Over black and white pictures of planes. Explosions. A night watchman walks by and sees us, but doesn't say anything.
And when I think Ella's finally asleep, I lean down and kiss her on the cheek. But I can see her smiling in the dark, and she turns her head to look up at me. "I always knew you'd come back," she says and pushes her head up and she kisses me. A tear rolls from her eye but she isn't crying. Her head falls back and she closes her eyes. She doesn't open them again.
With the glowing TV and Ella sleeping in the dark, I think the saddest thing I may ever do is watch a movie alone.

Ella lays in her bed with her eyes open and she looks at me standing in her doorway. She takes the picture off of her bed and she smiles when she looks at it. "You know, you don't look the same anymore," she says. She puts the picture of me with the broken frame down beside her bed, by her clock.
The Pearl Harbor program finished an hour ago Ella and I fell asleep on the couch. The little bit of morning light woke us up, and I brought her to bed. It is also my bed time now.
Ella lays her head down on the pillow of her bed, her hair spreading out around her. "I'm sorry," she says as she closes her eyes. She whispers, "I get scared sometimes at night," and she smiles again as she falls asleep.
When Ella finally goes to bed and is sleeping the sun is almost up. Down the hall I walk back in my room, with my bed and it's messy sheets. The clock blinking and flashing red because I haven't set it yet. I set the time to five-thirty, I think. And the flashing stops.
Laying in my bed I watch the clock, and when I close my eyes, the numbers burn into the back of my mind. Leaving their trace. I fall asleep, and in my mind, I'm still watching the shapes of red on black fading.

When I wake up it is ten-thirty, my clock says. And I am surprised I have slept so long. Nobody is out walking around, the TV is not yet turned on. Outside there is the wind but there is no other noise.
With the light reflecting off of everything, from the window everything is white. Outside snow is falling in clumps and sticks to the window and piles on the ground. There is nothing but white against the trees. You can't tell the concrete from the grass. I am happy for the snow.
I look into the hall and it is empty. Cold air from the hallway blows through my door, I think they have forgotten to turn on the heat. The entire building is like an ice box without the energy of people moving about. Lonely. I am not sure if maybe this morning everyone has forgotten to wake up but nobody is in their beds. I have missed breakfast, I think.
But in the cafeteria, past the elevator, the tables are empty. The entire cafeteria is empty except for doctors and nurses getting food. A nurse stands at the window eating a salad for breakfast. She stares at the snow. I walk up beside her and I can see it is not the snow she is staring at. Outside there are the people from my floor, running around and rolling in the snow still wearing their pajamas. Nurses stand outside and calm them down. They tell them they need to come inside but they are smiling and so is the nurse standing beside me at the window with her salad. She gives an unfriendly look to her meal, she turns to sit down.
Ella stands with Carl underneath the window, their breath comes out in plumes. Ella with her face red and her eyes closed, she looks up at me through the falling snow. Carl is saying something to Ella and Ella's breaths are small through her mouth, pouring out in white. Ella smiles with the sun glowing white off of the ground and the snow, high above the world is the same from the ground to the sky. Ella, in the snow with her slippers and her nightgown, looks freezing. Ella looks at the ground and she walks back in the door where I can't see her with everyone else following.
And the snow falling, blowing down from the sky. Where everything is the same from everything else and no different. White on white as far as I can see, and besides us, there's nothing else.

Ella sits on the metal bench, holding the blanket to her, with her knees between her arms. She drinks and steam pours out around her face. She sits beside me on the bench beside a table in the cafeteria. With Carl laying down on the other side. I can see his arms hang down from his body, swinging underneath the table. Carl's drink sits, steaming.
Ella still has bits of snow melting in her hair, her face is glowing and her hands are cold. She holds her cup in front of her face.
"Why aren't you drinking anything?"
"I'm not really that thirsty," I tell her.
"You don't really eat much," Carl says, his voice coming from under the table. And I start to drink my hot chocolate.
"We should find some of those little marshmallows," Ella says staring into her cup.
"I hate marshmallows," from under the table.
"Why?" Ella asks.
"I don't know," Carl says.
I finish my hot chocolate and pull the cup under the table to show Carl. "Woohoo," he says and claps lightly. He sits up, raising his head over the top of the table, on his bench and stands. Carl leans with his palms on the table; he says, "And if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get in bed 'cause I'm freezing." Ella waves goodbye as Carl turns to leave. Carl waves with the back of his hand as he walks away.
Ella asks what we should do today.
There's not a lot to do, I tell her and she looks out the window. Ella sits beside me with her head on my shoulder. My arms lay from my elbows to my wrists on the cold metal of the table. Ella with her blanket, pushing the top of her head into the side of my neck. "You tired?" I ask her.
"Naw," she says.
Naw.
Ella picks her head up off of my shoulder and I fold my arms on the table and rest my head on them with my chin down. "We should run away," Ella says.
"You want to leave?"
"Yeah," Ella says laying the blanket down on the table. She lays her head down turned toward mine. Ella asks me, "When can we leave, Jay?"
I turn my head to Ella and she stares into me. Looking. And I tell her I don't know. "Soon," I say.
She whispers, soon.

The pile of my writings has grown and is still piling larger. I think it is maybe bigger than it should be, were it on regular paper it would be half its size. I keep it all in a drawer when I am done. I find time to write when I can. Lately the nurses have been interested in my writing.
I do it out at the table in the recreation room. On the couch with Ella, watching TV, I will write. In my room close to the window. People have been asking. But I don't know what to tell them.
Paper napkins are not always such a good thing to write on. Sometimes I write so fast they tear in two, with my pen still writing between the pieces. I cannot tell what order they are in when they become mixed together, so I have started dating them. And the ones I don't know for sure, I have written the date I can remember best.
You will need to read all of them sometime, when I am done. I can get rid of them then. I would like you to know. And I would give them to you but I have not seen you. If you would read, there is a lot to catch up with. Of course, I would not make you read them. And I am not just writing for you.
Some days go by faster than others, and I have not written out each of the days. But the ones I would like for you to know are here. And there are some which I would like to remember.
There are some things I can remember and there is the rest of it that I can't. And what I have lost, these days I am trying to find again.

Today is the first day I have seen you after I have moved to my new floor and I am relieved.
Today I see you passing into the cafeteria, walking with two other people in white which are not like you. They are nurses, I think. This morning I have been out watching TV since I am too awake already to be sleeping again. Early in the morning, I hear the elevator and see you.
You turn around the corner to the cafeteria with your head down. The other nurses walk beside you and help you along.
I run to my room and grab my things, my napkins and paper. I hurry back to the cafeteria to give them to you. You're sitting alone, at a table by the windows. In front of you, out the window it is still snowing. Down through the trees and all over the parking lot. Nothing is any different than anything else.
You sit with your back against the table on the bench, looking out the window. I sit down beside you. "Hello," I say but you're not looking anywhere but into your lap. You cough and the window fogs a little. I am holding all of my paper napkins, my writings with me. Anxious for you to read them, but I am also nervous. "How are you?"
You still do not say anything.
"I am fine," I say. "I have not seen you in some time. I brought these for you." And I hand you my pile of napkins with the few sheets of paper on the bottom. You take them and you hold them on your lap, you flip through them. Staring. When you breathe more heavily the window fogs in front of you.
"I can leave you to read them," I say as I stand. You squeeze them in your hands and your eyes fill up. You stare at your lap and the napkins. You're reading.
You smile and you flip from napkin to napkin, reading the words written badly in black pen. The torn napkins, taped together. Falling apart.
I leave the cafeteria to go to Ella's room and I can hear you crying.

Ella is sleeping with the covers pulled up over her head. You can barely hear her breathing. She does not make a sound when she sleeps.
I'm sitting in the chair in her room with my elbows on my knees, holding my head. I watch her sleeping. Out of her window covered in frost, there is the sun shining through. Making everything glow.
The blankets move when Ella breathes, so quietly. The two thick blankets and the sheet we are given for our beds. We are given one pillow each to sleep on. I am used to two. I remember when I was young and my bed was full of pillows that I would stack around me to keep me warm on colder nights. I had all the rest but I would only use two to sleep on.
I pick up the chair and carry it across the room, I set it beside Ella's bed. I pull the covers down off of her face. She's awake but her eyes are closed. She smiles. "Hey," she whispers.
"Hey. Sleep well?"
She nods, still smiling. She pushes her head into her pillow with her eyes still closed. I touch Ella's cheek and her face is so warm.
Ella sits up in her nightgown and she puts on her slippers. She leans down and kisses me on the forehead before she leaves to go to the bathroom. Even from her room, I can hear Ella shuffling down the hall in her white slippers. There's no other noise. Even over the TV, turned almost all the way down, I can't hear anything else.
I stand up and lay on Ella's bed. Watching the light pour in through her window, I watch dust floating in the early morning. I wonder if you have finished reading. Maybe you cannot read it because of my bad handwriting. The handwriting I must apologize for. Some I have written while, almost sleeping, late at night. Dreaming more than thinking.
Little bits of snow blow against the window, looking like feathers through the frost. Blowing around outside and falling down again. Ella's bed is left warm but feels empty. I close my eyes, listening to the silence and down the hall, Ella screams.

Everybody's looking out of their room when I get out into the hallway. Everybody's awake now.
By the cafeteria, Ella's sitting on the floor, against the wall crying. And the two other people in white are rushing you to the elevator and madly pushing the buttons. The doors close and I do not see you again.
"What happened?" I ask.
Ella's bawling with her hands over her eyes. Nurses are leaning over and talking to her. "Calm down," they say. "Are you ok?" another asks her. The other one says, "It's alright." Ella's crying and shaking. The nurses help her get up. They walk her past me back to her room.
"What'd he do to her?" I'm asking.
A nurse says, "She's fine. She's just a little scared. She'll need to rest."
They help her into her room. They lay Ella down on her bed and she's looking at me through her doorway, Ella can't stop shaking. "It's ok," one says again. She's holding Ella's hand. A nurse gets up, she closes the door with Ella still staring at me behind it.

There are my napkins, my writings, laying on the floor in cafeteria. You have left them. I pick them up and they are spotted with tears. I am hoping you had the chance to read them before you left. I'm glad you have left them though, these paper napkins are all I have besides Ella. They are my story.
I sit on the bench and I flip through the napkins. Carl stands in the doorway to the cafeteria. "What happened?" I ask. Carl walks to the table, he sits down beside me. Carl is still wearing his pajamas.
"What happened to Ella?"
"She's afraid," Carl says.
"You saw it?"
"Yes."
People walk about in the hall, also still dressed in their clothes for wearing to bed. They talk to each other. Some people come in for breakfast, but it is still too early.
"Why is she scared?" I'm asking. Ella saw you.
Carl sits with his hands in his lap, together.
"What's wrong?"
"Jay," Carl says.
"What's wrong with me?"
Carl stares at the floor, out the window. The snow falling and falling. The world outside never minding.
"Jay."
Carl turns to look at me. He tries to talk and nothing comes out. He whispers, "Ella."
"Why can't I remember anything? Why can't I remember being here before? Why don't I remember Ella?"
And Carl says it. Looking right at me, he says, "Ella was raped, Jay."
And I can't talk. I can't think of anything to say. I don't feel anything. I can't think of anything to feel.
And Ella.
I get scared sometimes at night.
I feel numb.
I don't know if you want to remember.
Never minding.

I dream of the things I can't remember. At night, I have dreams of Ella's rape. Everything's so real. The night after Ella saw you, I'm dreaming and I'm remembering.
It is late at night in the halls and I am sleeping, laying down. I can feel everything. In my dream, I know the air is warmer than it is now. It is not so cold outside. I'm sleeping in Ella's room. The curtains blow and the window is open above me. Beside me, Ella is sleeping in her bed. Under my arm she's breathing. Ella is facing me and her eyes are closed. The warm wind blows down through the curtains, moving her hair. I remember the summer nights.
Out the window you can see the stars. Shining faintly in the black sky. I can hear Ella's breathing, she moves beside me and she stops.
I remember on nights like those, Ella would tell me about growing up and living with her grandmother. She would tell me about living in a small house, her room smaller than the one she was in now. She never told me why she was here and I never told her. These are the things she would whisper late at night in the dark.
And the night she was raped is so real to me now. I can remember it well. In bed with Ella, I remember when it was almost morning and I had to get up to leave. I remember standing there, watching her sleeping as I took my things to go. And I remember seeing somebody standing in the doorway when I turned around to leave. After that, I do not remember anything but darkness.
I did wake up, after I had been unconscious. I could hear Ella crying. And then I remember seeing you, laying on her in bed. Ella soaked in sweat and tears. And you holding your hand over her mouth. I remember the door was closed and I could not see. I remember her breathing. Ella was trying to scream.
I remember the blood all over the ground. Waking up and passing out again. Seeing Ella's black eyes staring off at me. She was so empty then. Crying. I had thought she was dead maybe.
I can remember waking up and so badly wanting to help her. I wanted to get up but I could not move.
I remember waking up, now, last before I had stopped remembering. I remember Ella laying on the bed, with her nightgown torn. Ella bleeding from cuts on her face. I remember the nurse screaming when she came in and found Ella and I. You had already left, you were gone. I remember Ella crying when they tried to take her away. And I can remember her screaming, too, when she saw me bleeding on the ground.
In my dream, these are the things that I last remember before I woke in my room upstairs. Before I found myself alone. I remember now.

In the morning, Ella is out in the recreation room, watching TV on the green couch. And I am carrying my writings with me, I have been reading them since I have woken up this morning. I've found that one is missing and I have been searching my room to find it.
Ella smiles when she sees me in the hallway and I come in to sit beside her. Everybody else is outside, I think. Today is this week's outside time.
Ella asks me what's wrong.
"Nothing," I say. I'm alright. I smile.
"You sure?" she says.
"Yeah," I kiss her, "I'm sure."
She smiles, too.
Ella and I lay on the couch, we watch movies and flip through channels. We watch infomercials, looking for something. Ella changes the channels, she cycles through them, over, four times until we stay on something. Outside, below, everyone is playing in the snow or sitting around. Feeding fish. Carl sits on the bench by the pond.
And somewhere, the fire alarm goes off. The noise makes Ella jump and sit up. We sit together on the couch, listening for another noise. The TV is gone in the sounds of the alarm. Ella covers her ears and the fire alarm keeps blaring, it keeps screaming and screaming.
Everyone outside is standing around, looking at the building. Scared. People cover their eyes from the sun and look up at the roof. Ella and I and everyone outside look for something wrong.
Ella sits, not moving beside me on the couch. She stares at the TV.
And out of the window, a sheet of paper, a napkin flutters down passing, falling from the roof. It sways back and forth in the wind, moving in circles, falling. The napkin falls so softly and slowly, like a giant snowflake.
And then there is you, falling after. Slowly I can see you falling down the side of the building. Past the window, toward the ground. Outside people are yelling. Ella does not look.
And slowly you fall. You land, on the ground, on the concrete covered in snow. Powder like dust, clouds and is moved by you. But you do not move.
Ella slowly stands and she takes my hand. She takes me to her room, she pulls the blankets off of her bed. Ella holds my hand as she takes me out of her room and down the hallway, by the elevator, she opens the door to the staircase downstairs. In the stairwell it is louder than ever and Ella winces at every chime of the fire alarm. She takes me close behind her down the stairs. She takes me out the door and in the snow. And Ella just runs with me behind her. She runs in her nightgown, wrapped in blankets. Through the falling snow.
Ella running, I'm following her and I'm leaving everything. I'm leaving you. I've left Carl. Everything is gone. And Ella runs in front of me, laughing, lost in the snow, we're together. And we're running away from everything. We'll leave it all behind.
And in my hands, the papers, the napkins start falling and dropping, they are caught in the wind and the snow. All of my writings, I have to let go of them. These things are gone. My life. The words. They are the story of my life and death. My paper napkin eulogy.

I know that when we are gone we will not be remembered forever. I know nobody will know where we are. But, surely, they will know we have left. We have gone missing though we are not missed.
I am remembering more now. I still have my dreams of the past. But it is nothing I would like to remember. There is one dream that I am happy I still have, even though most of it is something I would wish to forget, I am happy this is still with me.
I dream of being outside in the winter time, years ago. With Carl and Ella and the pond and the bench. Everything is the same as it had been. It is different from now.
Carl is talking, I never hear what he is saying, no matter how many times I have dreamed it. I cannot remember. He is mumbling, static until the last thing he says. I like to remember.
Ella kisses me on the bench and I can feel her warm breathe in my lungs, pushing out the cold. Ella, sitting with me, she is so warm. I can almost hear it, Carl tells me that I'm lucky. And Carl, talking in bubbles of white, in breaths, he says, "Don't ever let her go."
These things I like to remember.
Ella.
Don't ever let her go.

adeus

2007-09-02T23:24:00.001-07:00

Brown eyes hide behind an imminent overflow. You look to them and they say to you, "Don't leave me." They say, "Why now?" They say, "I'm sorry." Pale fingers twirl through the fringes of a beat up old checkered blanket. They itch with regret, but say, "I wouldn't ever change a thing." Saltwater races downward; first to drip wins. There will be a winner, but the runners up will follow closely, far too fast and steady to make a fair call.

Lover You Should Have Come Over, a song by the son of Tim Buckley, strains through the thick morning air only days later. No one hears it. Instead they hear the birds that don't sing.
They feel the silence.
They pray for movement.
From somewhere out on the street the smell of frying pig wafts into the air. The urge to vomit creeps up high into your throat. That awful tingle followed by the gag you have to force back into your gullet. The disgust of having to swallow down the acrid taste of stomach acid that's now filled your mouth.

The box you're staring at is brown and long. You almost half expect a vampire or something of that ilk to spring from within. Too many horror movies as a child. It won't happen anyway.
An older man, mostly bald and wearing glasses stares despondently in your direction. He curses your name. He curses the day you were born. He curses your very existence. In his head he repeats to himself, "I never would have let this happen to you, I never would have let this happen to you, I never would have let this happen to you, I never would have let this happen to you.

You were only eighteen when you met her. Until you walked her to the car that August evening three months later, you thought she was the same age. She had been lying. She said, "I wanted you to like me." You stopped between two small green bushes. Her feet kept her moving.
"It doesn't matter," you said and only then did you realize she was crying.
You walked to her and with your fingers barely cupping her ear you let your thumb brush her swollen cheeks dry. You thought to yourself, "Does it matter?"
It was that same night that you first watched Oliver Stone's JFK with her. The theater was crowded, maybe even packed, with people more then double your age. These were the people who found novelty in asking each other questions like, "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" Some of them really remembered and some made up stories to feel they were a part of something big.
You sat with her silently in the back of the theater. She kept herself facing forward throughout the film. You noticed her auburn hair and matching eyes. You noticed the curve of her slightly moon shaped nose. You noticed the way her fingers danced on the purple armrest in between your chairs. You didn't think to hold her hand. You were still young then.
When the flickering faded and the film stopped running you found her face glowing.
"Things like that," she said. "Makes you think."
You thought, "She's still just a cub, she doesn't know anything about anything." She talked the whole way back. She spoke a lot about nothing to your mind.
She said she liked your sleek silver Eclipse, but every time you hit 80 her fingers tightened around the handle. Whenever you approached another vehicle her feet would push hard into the rubber floor mats. At crosswalks she always said, "Watch out for people," even if there were none.

A road ran parallel to her house about a hundred feet out in front. It was one of those pebbly unfinished kinds. You made known your opinion on those kinds of roads.
"Impossible to run on," you said, "there's no footing. None." She probably didn't even hear you. Kennedy still had her wrapped in his charms.
"We're here," you said.
Her head turned to you and then back to the darkened window.
"Oh…that was a quick trip," she said, "it usually seems to take longer."
You sat and picked at the steering wheel.
You fiddled with the radio.
You adjusted your seat.
The knock on the window startled you. She stood there, bent down and peering in as she tapped on the glass with her finger.
"Come on, let's go."
You searched for reasons. You were young then.
"They're asleep," she said, "they'll never know."
On the porch she told you, "Once we go through that door you're mine." Her hand brushed against yours. Looking at the extravagant lacquered white portal you flinched. In your mind you pulled away and ran. Past the lawn, past the street, you kept going further as she pulled you through the doorway.
There was no light inside except that which peeked through the sides of drawn blinds. You could barely make out the finger she brought up across her lips. You reached out and almost toppled a candlestick. You thought she probably turned and pouted her lips at you. You wondered what that would look like. Daydreaming ran you smack into something big. Whatever it was, it toppled over. You followed. A choked back laugh tried not to bounce off the polished wood floor.
You didn't laugh.
You didn't find it funny.
A substantial shadow pounced down onto your waist. Your hips felt it worst. The flinch from earlier intensified as you wrestled the darkness. The soft exhalation of pain emitted from your assailant.
"Oh shit," you said, "I thought you, not you, but I thought…I thought I was being attacked."
You fell to your side and let your head touch the floor. Her body slid in close to yours. She touched your lips. In your mind you were past the street now. You were in a thick wooded area; probably because you didn't really know what lay beyond the road, partly because that's what the people in movies usually ran through. It looked better on the big screen.
Then there was light everywhere and you were lost. You heard her voice in the background struggling to be forceful. You saw her pulling at his sleeve. You really were being attacked now. The force with which you were thrown through the white lacquered door tumbled you down the porch step. He seemed very large with his finger pointed at you like that. His words passed to the sides of your head, never touching your ears. It didn't matter, you knew what he was saying.
You walked slowly back to your car that night. Once inside, with doors locked safe, you found your guts. For a moment you considered going back for her.
You considered going back for him.
You turned the key and backed away.

A week later the two of you sat in a vinyl booth at the Olive Garden. She kept her eyes down, concentrating a little too hard on the red cloth napkin she twirled between her fingers. She never even saw her food getting cold.
"I had fun," she said.
"Me too."
She weaved the napkin up and down through her fingers.
"You wanted to…to have fun, right?"
She let the napkin unwind from between her fingers. She folded it into a neat little square and placed it on her left thigh. Her arm dragged across the tabletop until your fingertips barely intertwined. Your arm was stuck to the table.
"I have to go back with my Dad," she said, "next Friday."
"I have to work Friday."
"I know, but I'll be back for all the holidays and I'll be back in the summer and in two years I'll be back to stay. I'm gonna come to college here."
"Yeah." You had nothing else to say.
"It wasn't just fun," she told you.

The trips to Allentown were long. When the sun was out you usually didn't mind. You loved rolling down the windows, turning up the volume and letting your thumbs dance across the steering wheel. You bopped through the long mountain stretches and breezed through the lost-to-time little towns.
You called her once from a phone booth just outside Bethlehem. You couldn't hear her very well; there was soft music blaring in the background.
"What are you listening to," you yelled into the receiver.
"Tim Buckley," she said. "He's got a really haunting voice. It's kind of beautiful almost."
You told her you agreed. You weren't sure why. You'd never even heard of him.
"Yeah, he's great."
The rest of the ride up, and the whole way back, you listened to a rotating combination of Happy Sad, Lorca and Goodbye and Hello. All Tim Buckley albums. "He is good," you told yourself.
It was another year of trips very similar to this before her father agreed to let her drive her beaten up old Chevy down to see you every once in awhile. Even then, the permission came with a warning.
"I remember how I met that boy," he said, "don't you think I forgot. I still don't know if I like you two seeing each other so often."
"Dad," she said in her best don't worry about me meets I'm a big girl voice.
Finally able to share the driving, you saw her more often; almost every other weekend. At first. The balance of having more time then before, but less time then you desired was a hard thing to keep level.
"I can't come down this week," she said.
"Why not?"
"Too much work and my Dad really doesn't want me to."
"So just come down for the day then."
"I don't think I can."
"Fine, I'll come up there…again," you said.
"It's okay, you don't have to."
"You mean you don't want me to."
"No, it's just…I have a lot of work and my Dad…"
"You know it's your own fault that he hates me."
"What?"
"You know what I'm talking about."
"Look, maybe we should talk about this later," she said.
You pulled the phone from your ear and shook it forcefully in your fist. This was the part you hated most. Any problem was a problem for later; for some other time. For a second you thought about smashing the receiver against the wall…then you did.

It was cold the night you proposed to her. You wanted it to be warm. You wanted to walk with her around the lake. You needed heavy jackets that night. Maybe you should have even had scarves - she had several at home.
You took her to Kim's Hunan. The one on Cherry Lane. She ordered vegetable dumplings and Szechwan String Beans. You ordered egg rolls and Kung Pao Chicken. You both shared. On most nights, since you moved in together nearly two years ago, she cooked separate meals for each of you. Your tastes were completely different.
The waiter stood around by your table throughout a good portion of the meal. You had to wink and nod your head before he would move away. Neither of your plates were cleared. The waiter wasn't far though. He had the leftovers in those little white boxes before you could even ask him. He even packed the rice. Then there were oranges and fortune cookies on the table. One of the cookies was cracked inside its cellophane package. She tried to take the cracked one.
"I want that one," you said.
"It's okay, I'll take it."
"No, really, I want that one."
"It's cracked," she said.
"Yeah, it's kinda like a weird luck thing."
"Then I want some luck."
You picked up the other cookie and tossed it towards her into the air. Instinct took over and she reached out to catch it. You grabbed the abandoned cracked cookie now lying free on the table
"That's no fair," she said.
You didn't give her time to argue. You already had the cookie halfway down your throat before she even finished her sentence.
"You bastard." She threw her cookie at you in mock anger. "I don't want this one."
"Oh come on," you joked nervously, "don't be a sore loser."
"Nope. I'm not eating it now."
You put the cookie in your pocket, paid the bill and left. She was resistant to the lake idea.
"It's cold out. Can't we go some other time?"
"Just for a little while. We haven't been for so long."
She cuddled in close to you. Her arms hugged around your stomach, her left hand in your jacket pocket. It wasn't the easiest way to walk, but you were happy to relive those first summer nights. Twenty-four years old and already acting the geriatric.
Her small frame was trembling before you even finished the first rounding of the lake. You suavely slipped out of your jacket and wrapped it around her. Buried under several layers, she looked like a bulbous snowman with only the slightest hint of a head buried deep within. Your face must have showed your amusement. She was laughing with you, her cheeks red and shiny. She put her hands in your jacket pockets. Her face crinkled for a second and then she was holding the unbroken fortune cookie out in front of you.
"You took it with," she asked?
You looked for an excuse. Nothing came to you.
"You're weird, you know that."
She ripped the cellophane away and broke the cookie in half.
"Gotta eat half of it first," she said, "or my fortune won't come true."
She pulled the small slip of paper from between the two halves. She popped one half in her mouth and put the other in yours. You didn't really want it, but you ate it anyway. The symbolism was too strong to ignore.
She kept walking at first. Rereading. Trying to understand. Then, before you noticed, you were several steps ahead of her. She had stopped. Her mouth was open. You could tell in her head she was putting the pieces together. Thinking, how could I be so stupid, when really who could have known?
"YES," she squealed.

Her father was the hardest to convince. To him you were still the corrupter of his little girl. If he only knew, you thought. He wore thin new glasses, but they didn't help; he still saw everything how he wanted to. You were still eighteen years old to him.
You had planned to get married the following summer, probably sometime in August. Maybe the sixteenth you had been thinking. You wanted to make sure you were getting that promotion first. The head honcho over at the paper had promised you Features Editor by the end of the month.
By the end of the week you got the position you wanted, but you also got shipped out to Somalia. They wanted you to cover an escalating situation in Mogadishu. When you told her she grabbed onto your sleeve and squeezed her arm around yours.
"I'm not letting you go," she said. "Screw the job."
You did go. She made you promise to be home by her birthday. She said you weren't allowed to get killed. Not over some stupid story. You weren't allowed to leave her like that, she said. Not like that.
On the 24th, two days before her birthday, you were standing on the front porch. The house looked dark inside. You wondered if perhaps she got the dates screwed up. Maybe she was at her parent's house. You slipped the gift you bought her into your workbag just incase she was at home. She could always be watching a movie or something like that you thought. It sure would have explained why it was so dark inside.
The key eased through the small pins that composed the front door lock. With a click and a turn, the edge of the doorframe slowly broke the darkness. You thought you saw a large shadow pass in front of the window and duck down behind the couch. You took a step back onto your heel. You squinted your eyes to try and see through the dark. Nothing.
Was it just her?
Intruders?
Someone who had followed you back from Somalia?
You rested your finger on the light switch. You didn't turn it on. You thought what the consequences might be if it wasn't her. If whoever it was turned out to be non-friendly. Your shoulders tensed. The joint in your finger cracked with a loud popping noise. You flipped the switch. You took the chance.
Bodies flew out from every corner and crevice of the room. From under tables, behind couches, inside closets. Big grinning faces. White teeth. Mouths moving in slow motion.
"Welcome back," they yelled in unison.
She came running out from the center of the room. Her arms were around your neck and her lips on your cheek. She missed you she said. So much. Your grip loosened from your workbag and you put your arm under her for support. You looked around the room at all the people, but you didn't see faces. You learned this in Mogadishu.
"Wow." You swallowed.
Her glow sputtered a second and then re-ignited with sarcasm, a thing she never lost.
"Did we shock the big bad war journalist?"
She tapped your nose twice; once as she started making fun of you and then again as she finished. You tried to smile. You were tired.
"Thanks everyone," you said to no one at all.
You wanted to trudge up the stairs. You wanted to crawl under the down comforter. You wanted to put your arm under the green pillow and rest your head lightly on top. You wanted to let your eyes close and you wanted to forget about these people.
"Surprised?" she asked.
"I gotta get something from my car."
You picked up your workbag, turned and walked out the front door. It was only a moment before she came after you, closing the door behind her. "I'll be right back," she probably said nervously to her guests. Her guests, you thought. Not yours.
She stood slightly removed from you at one end of the porch. Her arms were wrapped around her stomach. She looked at you; you weren't there. She bent and sat on the stoop.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"I brought you something."
"You didn't answer me."
"You're really gonna like this."
"Answer me."
You pulled from your workbag a small plastic case.
"It's a CD," you said.
"Answer."
"It's Tim Buckley's son," you said, "it just came out."
"Tell me what's wrong."
"The critics are saying that he's even better than his father."
"I'm going inside."
You told her that you didn't care.
"Go," you said, "I don't give a shit what you do."
Of course you weren't telling her the truth. She had no way of knowing that. First her fists let out into open palms that dragged down to her knees. With her hands there, she rocked back once, maybe twice before her fingers slid back up her legs allowing her arms to cross over each other. She rubbed her shoulders. Her lips trembled enough that you could just barely see the teeth biting hard within. She was trying to be strong for you.
She knew she couldn't hold it together for long. As the convulsions began, she turned her back to you. A moment later she was no longer sitting wrinkled on the concrete porch; she was past you, looking back and running across the street. Her high heel hit the pebbly pavement, she was far away now and the light wasn't so good.
The driver said she did it on purpose.
You said she lost her footing.
The crimson puddles coagulating on the cracked windshield said nothing at all. Fringes of a yellow and red blanket lay draped by the rear tires. The people all gathered around and stared at you as you bent down and picked up her shattered white heel. It's okay you said.
It's okay.

God's in my coffee

2007-09-02T23:21:00.001-07:00

In a blue field I first spoke to God. A small blue field with shades of gray at dusk, encompassed by over-growing oak trees, and full of rolling hills where rabbit dwellings hid among the dandelions and weeds; isolated from the dilapidated homes and concrete buildings that surrounded it. To me and my younger sister, it was the Garden of Eden, secretly located down the street and around the corner; behind and above the Exxon station. It couldn't have been more than and acre or two, but at the ages of seven and eight, it was vast and magnificent.
Only occasionally did an outsider intrude upon this haven. The men from the gas station would pile old tires on the edge of the field and use them as a place to sit and smoke their cigarettes. My sister and I would crawl in the tall grass towards them, trying to get as close as we could without being seen so we could eavesdrop on their grown-up conversations. And every once in a while we would have to run away when the old man who lived in the home closest to the field would drink too much and come out to the field to shoot at rabbits. We didn't know his name, but we called him Captain Killer and would shriek and giggle and run whenever we saw him coming towards the field with his shotgun.
For the most part, however, it was the place my sister and I could go to escape into our own private world. It was the place we spent our childhood afternoons playing princess, picking colorful bouquets of wild flowers, or running round and round in circles until we both fell down laughing. A place to go when the sun was burning brightly and the heat made our clothes stick to our skin uncomfortably, because there, in the Garden of Eden, there was always a gentle breeze gliding through the trees, and the heat never felt so hot lying in the grass between the shallow hills. It was a place where we could go to read a book or to dig for wiggly earthworms in the dirt. It was a place where we could go to build snowmen in the winter or a place to catch fireflies on a purplish summer evening. But more than anything, it was a place where we could go to hide.
When the voices got too loud and the tempers were flaring, with flying fists and furious words, we would escape and run as fast as our legs would carry us, down the street and around the corner to the secret field. There we would duck down and hush and sometimes peak out our heads to see if we were being searched for or if anyone had noticed we were gone. They never did. "I think I hear someone," my sister would say, and we would hold our breaths and silently, fearfully, hopefully wait. But no one was ever there. After a while, when our fear had subsided, or our bellies started to rumble, or the sun started to set behind the giant oak trees, we would come out of hiding and leave the field to return home.
We would sneak up to the tall, brick-red house we lived in at 29 Orchard Place, ducking behind houses, ears open for shouting, or better yet laughter, and, when all seemed fine, we would enter the house where our mother was cooking or cleaning or playing solitaire at the kitchen table, and our father was asleep on the sofa or watching the news or, more than likely, no where to be found. And we would not even be noticed or spoken to unless to be told to set the table or to go check the mail. No one would ask us where we had gone or why we had been away for hours. No one mentioned the flying fists or furious words.
It was on a winter day that I first spoke to God. The first snow of the season had fallen during the previous night as we slept and my sister and I pulled our sleds out of the garage and took turns gliding down the hill in our front yard. Towards evening, my mother opened the front door and told me to put away the sleds and asked my sister to come inside and set the table. My sister tossed her sled into the driveway and ran in the house. Not wanting to go in so soon, I slid down the hill in the snow a few more times before putting my sled away in the garage and entering the house. When my father came home from work soon after, he pulled into the driveway, and, not seeing my sister's sled, he ran right over it, causing it to break apart and flattening his front tire.
Entering the house and slamming the door behind him, my father was in a rage and the furious words were already flying. He grabbed both me and my sister by the hair and pulled us to the window. He wanted to know whose sled was in the driveway; he wanted to know which child he should punish. I opened my mouth and the words, "Not mine," came out. My sister never got the chance to defend herself. His fists were fast and heavy, knocking her into the wall, the floor, the furniture. My mother came running from the kitchen and forced herself between my sister and the blows, but my father did not stop just because it was a different face that he was hitting. I grabbed my sister and pulled her out the front door and we both automatically started running in the direction of the field.
When we got there, the normally green grass was blanketed in snow and appeared blue in the setting sun. We ducked between the hills, out of breath, shivering and scared. My sister's face was red and swollen and tears were freezing on her cheeks, but she held onto me and listened for voices as she always did when we came to the field to hide. I couldn't look at her without thinking that it should have been me. I was the one who deserved those swollen eyes, yet she did not blame me for what I had done. I hated myself; but, more than that, I hated my father. I closed my eyes and, for the first time ever, I prayed to God. I prayed that my mother, my sister, and I could be free of my father forever. We rarely went to church, but I knew of the Bible, and I thought, what better place to talk to God than here in the field we called the Garden of Eden; and so I prayed, though I did not know if my prayer was being heard. We weren't there long when the sound of a gunshot exploded from somewhere nearby and we both yelled, "Captain Killer!" and started to run back towards home, not wanting to be mistaken for a rabbit in the snowy field.
We took the long way home despite the cold, and walked around the entire block, rather than cutting through the neighbor's backyards. We passed familiar houses, and watched through well-lit windows where families were sitting down to eat dinner together. The smell of wood burning in fireplaces made us realize just how cold it was outside in the winter air without our coats, or scarves, or mittens. Quickening our footsteps and huddling closer together for warmth, we hurried to get back to our own home, listening, as always, for signs that all was safe.
From three houses away, we knew it had not been Captain Killer hunting rabbits. Neighbors were starting to gather in front of our house. My mother was sitting upon the front porch, a shotgun in her lap, blood covering the front of her cooking apron. She did not speak, but simply stared straight ahead. My sister, tears streaming from her puffy eyes, ran to my mother, crying for my father, sobbing, "Daddy, Daddy", again and again. I stayed in the next door neighbor's yard and viewed the surreal scene from a distance. I watched as snowflakes began to drift from the darkening sky, passing through the orange glow of the street lamp and, remembering my prayer in the blue field, I thought, "Amen."

It will end no other way.

2007-09-02T23:19:00.001-07:00

Here again, I can only sigh and look around.
The whole room smells of rotting fruit, banana peels and orange rinds.
Theres a distinct buzzing emanating from near the ceiling.
I cant tell if its bad wiring in the lights, or a large nest of fruit-flies.
The floor is again trying to remove my shoes. Sucking at my soles, laughing in loud moments of silence a sickening and snide, shnick-shnick.
As if this wasnt intolerable enough, the paper in front of me lacks feeling.

The color of it is good though, mesmerizing me with bright yellow-green.
Flexing my hands in front of my eyes, forcing them to stay in place.
Injecting my will into their form even as I mutely curse the disappearing act they seem to find so amusing.
Reach out for the paper, my hands itching to hold it.
Theyll stay in place now. Not being able to resist the prospect of a perfect fold.

A hand that isnt mine.
Slams down.
On top of this mud colored and paint-splattered table.
Trapping my paper with its knotty joints and meaty palm.
And that ring, the one that always looks grafted on, clicks pleasantly as it connects with the wood. The index finger twitching. The glint of metal catches the florescent lights, its socketed pebble refracting the sunlight.
A ring that leaves a mark, catching your skin to say; Nice to meet you, Im in control here.
Not until we have an answer. the man speaks, softly growling his commands.

Sighing again, shushing my hands to be still. Promise them soon, and plead for them to stay with me.

My gaze goes back to the hand that is tapping the table, trapping my paper.
Follow the length of it up;
Up the mans white-clad arm, to his white-clad shoulder, the starched collar, unbuttoned as always. The mans thick neck joins to his careening skull. His face is taken up by the sagging shape of two fleshy sections of tissue. Alternating between pursing in annoyance and smacking together thoughtfully. The ocular orbs are narrowed at me, pupils dilated.
Already Im bored.

Point at the paper hopefully, remind them why were all here. I even remember to smile as if its for them.
They sip coffee that seems to pain them and click their tongues along the roofs of their mouths, keeping time to the clock on the wall. It doesnt make any sense, when they tease me like this.
Watching it, wanting it, you can see it begin to pulse. Separate from their noises. Calling me, one little voice of reason in this din. All I can hear is paper...

My fingers linger on the edge of the low table. Leaned down, bent double in my chair. Tapping the tips of my hands along the tables edge trying to drown out the chorus of clock song they seemed so intent on repeating among themselves and at each other.

Look up pleadingly. They have forgotten me already.

Trying not to breathe or even twitch, my left hand skitters out and across, a perfect insect of bones and angles lost, drowning in this soft world.
My hand touches pulp,
Easy now. tell it in a whisper, slow is careful.
Licking my lips, carefully watch as my hand begins the retrieval sequence. I crouch lower against the table, so low the ground cant find me.

Watch their fleshy mouths, tocking their tongues along their white teeth. I watch them, roll the glassy white orbs they call eyes, and flail their soft padded hands. Theyre arguing. You can tell by how the water collects at the sides of their mouths, their tongues and lips, flicking it at one another as they attempt speech.
They have no color.

Longing and impatient my hand begins a deliberate caress of the yellow-green edge. As I wondered what it was, it had called out, what does it need to become?

The man tries again, "matt.... like this,...." clearing his throat to gain my attention.
Snarling at his use of the word, meeting the mans eyes for a moment. Only one unblinking moment, showing him true; all of the yellow that I possessed.

Predictably they blanch, startled and cower away. Some tripping along their feet as they fall back under my amber gaze. Which allows that fraction of space time, for my hand to snatch and covet the paper, right from under their eyes.
Scuttling away before they can recover, dart from beneath one table to another. My hands working the folds as my feet find the paths between carpet and tile.

Fold Center, crease, angle, fold, double back, fold, a turn; then crease, smooth . . .
Whispering my mantra soothingly to the paper, a prayer to its life. My feet and hands following as we look for a place to hide.
The doors here are always locked. So no use in checking.
I throw myself into them on at a time, bruising my shoulders uselessly against unyielding metal.
The open windows are high, and unreachable for as long as my hands are occupied.

Echoing squalls pierce and split the air, like outraged vultures driven from a meal.
It sends tremors of frisson down into my skin.
They have recovered from their shock, shattering my heart and my focus. Out of time, out of mind.
The paper trembles in fear, I try to calm it, treasuring its life through another fold. An out of options scurry, diving far beneath the corner table.
The carpet fibers here sink into my knees, imbedding their false fibers into my skin. Lacing into my elbows as we crab along, trying to keep the paper in my hands from being crushed by my panicky movements.

None of you are real, I scream out at their thick net of hands. They reach in for me vainly, seeking to connect with my extremities. Curl up against the wall, falling against the center crease of its supportive corner. Ducking my head to my knees, trying to continue a fold even as I hug the paper protectively to my chest.

umm matthew, a sugar sweet voice purrs out from above.
Stop this foolishness.
Oh but we can smell her ... crocus flowers in winter. Anxiety dampens my shaggy head, blurs my vision. I find I cannot swallow.
Her voice...
My hands choke up, thick dead weights of anguish and defeat. My body responds and uncurls.

A kick lands my abdomen, doubling me over to choke out for air. My blurred eyes meet with a grinning maw. Theyve sent one in after me.

None of you, I gasp, tears welling out of my eyes. Clutching the paper for dear life as they drag and kick me out from under the hindering shelter.

How can such soft flesh cause so much harm?

Hearing something crack in one of my legs, I cry out in pain and finish another fold. Something crushes my right shoulder, wince and start another crease. They force me over onto my back, turning me with slow kicks as they laugh merrily in their guttural language.
Finishing the last fold, quickly my arms raise above, up and over their bruising and oppressive kicks. Opening my hands, letting the paper go free.
Yellow-green wings beat too fast to be seen, flittering sprightly up, carried on a cool autumn breeze.

The man leans down to scowl at me, pulling his arm back to land a well-practiced blow to my skull. The image of the paper flying out along, alone into the spectral blue sky; is lost as my senses fade . . . all gaining black.

Here again, I can only sigh and look around.
The whole room smells of rotting flesh, human rinds and leavings.
Theres a distinct buzzing emanating from near the ceiling.
I cannot tell if its bad wiring in the lights, or a large pocket of flies.
The bed is trying to swallow me again, wrapping my soul in layers of a hard white shell.
The chains, that hold my wrapped limbs aloft, laugh among their kind, a sickening and snide, sha-ick, sha-ick
As if this wasnt intolerable enough;

My hands have disappeared again.

sunday.

2007-09-02T23:16:00.001-07:00

There are so many reasons why people come here, alone, at the bottom of a vodka bottle. Some do it to celebrate. Some do it to unwind. Some do it because they cannot help it. Some do it to forget. This is where I am, the bottom of a vodka bottle. This is who I am, alone. This is why, to forget.

But I don't forget. The inebriated haze seemed to put a soft focus on things, making it easier to look at them head on.

Reaching the bottom of a vodka bottle is always a sad occurrence.

It is all the more sad if you do this alone.

How do you move on from here?

I suppose you do it one vodka bottle at a time.

squinting clarity.

2007-09-02T23:14:00.002-07:00

This is where my mind expands.

At the edge of the low cliff, if things were moving, I would have been able to hear the waves crashing into the skin-colored rocks. Somewhere out there is a lighthouse, I know, but I cannot see it. It reminds me of her saying how, nowadays, we have bigger houses and smaller families. Now, I guess I will never know if her claims of wanting a picket fence house were true. Deep, soft and thick grass covers the flat that stretches around me, in all directions except before me. The grass would be vibrant and alive, it really looks very alive, only it is solid in its paused state. Knowing it is full of life, my mind barely conceives how right now, nothing lives in the grass. Not a single bug is more alive then any piece of earth is. Nothing moves and nothing truly lives, although the image is a perfect copy of life itself.
Why I am doing this is she used to say we have managed to learn how to survive, yet we have no idea how to live. Somewhere behind me, there is a low cumulus, I know, but I cannot see it. Smearing the blue sky with it's immaculate whiteness, the cloud is frozen in this moment, just like everything else is, the vapor stoped to pay respect one last time before life continues.
Low on the horizon is the white-and-green sail of a big sport yacht. This could not get any more pathetic, standing on the edge of the cliff, already losing balance and I am frozen in time, just like everything else is. If she was here, she would have told me that the people on that sailing boat on the horizon have alienated and the stretch of sea between us and them is a symbol of our determination. In her words, these are the times when everything is stuffed in our shop-windows, while the warehouses remain empty. I never understood what she meant, saying things like that.
And yes, to make things even worse, to dazzle my paused mind even more, there are two seagulls above me, shrieking, I know, but I cannot hear them. The seagulls, like everything else, they are frozen in time. Her comment would be that we are living in a time of speed, and yet we always seem to be late. Never getting anywhere on time makes you wonder if we ever get anywhere at all. Their feathers soft and caught in a delicate shiver in the wind, the gulls hang in the air over my head, eyes void, staring at a dot on the horizon I cannot see but I am guessing it must be there.
This is, truly and deeply, a pathetic moment.
If time would to resume now, I would step over the cliff edge and consequently fall down into the foaming ocean water and sharp skin-colored rocks. How I know there is any wind is I can see it in the pattern before me. Suspended in midair, the tiny grains form a line, strands of the finer dust already blown into streaks to match the wind pattern. Somehow, the way the dust is set is similar to the way the vapor is condensed in the lone cumulus back there.
Her favorite thing to say was how we've managed to add years to life, but can't add life to our years. Why this is ironic is she knew she did not have much time left. For months, I believed her words to be deep and profound because of the fact she was dying. Otherwise lacking meaning and importance, she made her life count. Every day, she was teaching me something new and it only hurt more to know it would soon end.
I said it already, this is a truly pathetic moment. Why I am still doing this is out of spite. With everything she had told me, the words that stuck most are how we've learned how to hurry, but completely forgot how to wait. She said that and we were both aware she had no time to spare on waiting for anything and anyone. That idea panged its claws into my heart.
Stopped in this moment of understanding, her ashes forming a jagged line in the air above me, if you pay attention you will see how the line originates at the urn in my hands. I am squinting, for some of her has found its way into my eyes and the irony is, after months of deep insight, only now, with her ashes in my eyes, I see things clearly.
She wanted a big funeral, where we would sing and pretend to be joyful of her passage. To get even, I decided to toss her ashes into the sea. Don't ask why, for the explanation would require I tell the whole story of our relationship.
You see, all those smart, profound words she was feeding me – they were not hers to begin with.
It appears, someone had forwarded an email, one of those chain-mail messages, with a short text by someone called George Carlin. I was sticking to every word she had said, and all she was doing was quoting from a chain-mail! For months I was deluding myself we had something special, while she would recite lines from an email. When I found the message, I could have killed her myself. I was thinking we had something special and she was playing tricks on me.
What hurts even more is I had no idea why she did that. If I had known, maybe I would have respected her desire. But I did not, and here I am, tossing her ashes into the ocean.
With the cumulus, the seagulls, the boat and its rich white-and-yellow sail, the lighthouse, the dead grass at my feet, the frozen wave foam below and the still wind carrying her burned bones, flesh and hair, finally I understand.
The irony is, post-factum, I get it. I had to stand at the edge of the cliff and wield the urn. I had to get her ashes into my eyes and time had to stop for me to get it, so maybe I will feel better later. Right now, this moment is pure pathetic bitterness. This moment is when I understand.
This is when my mind expands.
That bitch!

random thoughts

2007-09-02T23:14:00.001-07:00

random thoughts.
and meanings
by
matt
-----------------

On any other day, this cold would be unbearable
numb mind

This body has stopped moving, stopped breathing, stopped everything.
sleepy.

Everyone thinks it's cute when I cry.
it's not

You know that ringing in your ears that, as myth has it, is supposed to mean that somebody is thinking about you. Well multiply that by a thousand or so and you're almost there.
inner pain

My brain was floating somewhere, going before the rest of the body.
sleep.

irony can grow very hungry.
luck

It's the end that matters, and to hell with the means.
linkin park

There was just something about what was said that filled me up so fast with tears and hate.
CNN news

Nobody really said anything to me. Nobody knew what to call me anymore.
racist jokes

Like gravity.
sleepiness

This is the first time I remember being afraid of abduction by aliens.
8 yrs old, watching a tv special w/ my grandpa about ufos

No, really. I'm actually afraid of this shit.
ghosts and paranormal

Milk Carton Kids are staring at you from the breakfast table
this sad little world

My lips taste the dirt.
coffee

Meanings and artwork only last so long.
death will win.

It's grown, changed, rounded, fattened, filled and puffed out.
my face

Instead I watch the ants crawl over her face.
bad dreams

This Common Gravity

2007-09-02T23:13:00.002-07:00

She sat at her table, the one closest to the cobblestone road. After the sun had set the streetlight turned on illuminating the side of her face I was unable to see. Her eyes were clouds on the verge of rain, giving the atmosphere around us that pre-storm smell, and the winds picked up, rustling the trees that hung over the café. She sipped from her cup of tea and went on scribbling in her journal. I envisioned a poem about the sadness of death, phrases and fragments slung together, describing the journey and documenting the transition. I imagined her remembering her grandmother and the way she used to explain things, using big words while still getting their meanings across.
She had come every Sunday for the last two months. The first time, she wore a black dress, which matched the black streaks of mascara along her cheeks. Even then, before her scent found its way to me, engraving its distinct frequency into my memory, I wanted to meet her. Maybe it was because I pitied her as she told the waitress about her Grandmother's funeral. Maybe it was the way strands of dark hair shadowed her face. It didn't matter. I had made a personal promise to myself to speak to her, to get her name so I could repeat it out loud. I wanted to find out if the syllables, when treated as separate words, could enchant me the same way her lips did as they moved when she read over her journal entries.
"Why don't you talk to her?" asked the waitress, refilling my coffee.
"Who?" I pretended.
The waitress didn't respond and walked away. Even with her back turned I felt the smile on her face. She had planted the seed. She asked the question I had been asking for the last two months. Maybe all I needed to do was hear someone else say it. It sounded so simple, but simple like the law of gravity is simple now that it is common knowledge, but then, in the time of Newton, it was revolutionary. "What goes up must come down." "Why don't I just go talk to her?" Maybe it took two months of Sir Isaac fantasizing about objects floating away before that notion came into his head? Maybe it was as simple as an apple falling from a tree?
I watched her close the journal and stare at the brick patio, biting her lip and sighing heavily. I dropped some money on my table and got up. All I wanted to do was find out why she hurt so much. If I heard her put it into words, I might understand her sadness, than maybe I could figure out my life and where it went wrong. And before I realized it, I had already passed her table and was walking along the uneven cobblestone.
When I was a safe distance I turned and looked back. She still stared at the same brick but she was smiling now. I saw the side of her face illuminated by the streetlight for the first time, and I had to wonder if I had been mistaken all along. Had the darkness of my vantagepoint given me an incorrect picture or was she now coming to some greater understanding. The same understanding I had been looking for. I continued to watch as she opened her journal and ripped out a page. She crumpled it and then got up to leave. The smile never left her face.

The Link

2007-09-02T23:12:00.000-07:00

I want to protect myself from others
Dream, I run to a better place
hell, illusions, see
This state of me unconscious
cannot
want to undertake to feel my soul
I want to build some fire
burn myself
I decide what I see

Call my name, i'll be there for you

Wrong and right
I want to create things
beyond, insight
life
I want to build some fire
run to myself, dive

find a link between wrong and right
understand, you create what you are
be the link, you are what you create

And now comes fire
Left and right connected
call my name i'll be there
I am there for you now
understand, you create what you are

Relative is The Emergency

2007-09-02T23:11:00.000-07:00

His skin takes on a deep blue blend of his own blackness and the fluorescent light of the vending machine. Aged accordion folds of his eyes are madly tightening up as he scowls at the offending machine through his tears. He's beating a dead horse. Maybe he really thinks he put money in it. Or maybe it's part of his act.

A waspy woman of some means, some wealth, bemoans her present state. Comfortably overweight and vocally unhappy with her present situation, she clutches an invisible something in her hand, pressing it to her chest. Perhaps the rosary that isn't there, the cross that was left bedside in a hurry. Her husband holds her head in his hands as he rocks her back and forth, bent over his lap. Its only when you see his dewed hands that you know she has been crying real tears. That and the kaleidoscope of what is probably seventy bucks worth of makeup fighting the Tammy Faye effect in vain. She keeps mumbling to him about this being the worse headache she has ever had. How she can't bear the pain. How having three kids doesn't hold a candle to this. He rocks her back and forth and cycles his gaze from floor to ceiling. I think he's praying to himself, on autopilot.

This guy over there is wrapped in flannel like its January in Juno. He sports a short beard that the best of razors would crack and hang on. And every time he gets ready to cough, you get a few seconds of stalled inhalations. Then boom. God knows how many microscopic bits of lung, phlegm, and virus are shot-gunned into my general direction.

Next to a probable aneurysm, across from a definite pneumonia, and trying for a coke at the vending machine a man who claims to have swallowed razor blades. He wants us to all know he has swallowed razor blades. We are all supposed to without fail believe that the man in the blue-green bathrobe and off yellow boxers is in need of emergent care. All I want are my meds. Depakote, Zoloft, Trazadone. My trinity of mental stability.

"Yall don't think I ate dem blades huh." Waves of yellow wash over me as I contemplate RazorBoy's latest challenge.

The nurse doesn't skip a beat, as she continues to interview the hulking mass with the crusty elbows. She nods to the rent-a-cop, and RazorBoy pipes down, and with something of an under-the-skirt grab tries again to coax a can of soda from the machine. Funny, you hit that little mysterious spot way up there, with the one finger maybe, and you get the payoff. Quench a thirst. Skirt or soda.

Emergency rooms are for anything but emergencies.

But when you are a card carrying member of the uninsured (and yes they do give you a card) this place is your only option. Well that's not true; you can meet a doctor in a nice cubicle a few floors up if you keep your appointment that you made three months ago. Most of my meds ran out yesterday therefore I am at risk of tipping the delicate balance of nature according to Fister Pharmaceuticals and what their salesman told Dr. FreshoutofSchool. Who in turn informed my TheraPissed.

Trains run late and jobs can call you in on your off days. You can be in a cast by the afternoon from a teen behind the wheel of his new car heading to school. Any one of these things can cause you to miss your doctor's appointment. I'm on day 96 of my 90 day cycle of appointments. I don't have any exotic excuses, just plenty of bed rest.

So here I am, fighting the third shift crowd for my place in line for my one hundred and eighty seconds of Dr. CantwaittogetoutofHere's best medical guess and speed-written prescription. Don't ever, ever miss your appointment again. Like not selecting the right option on the phone menu, you get thrown back in to the holding pattern. You wait and you wait, and you lose more than just time.

Gas powered weed-eaters resembling people smelling of two-cycle and blowing their noise bounce around next to those closer resembling a riding lawnmower in there low center of gravity low drone low brow manner. I'm just the silent and tall clump of weeds they need. They don't seem to buzz until they get in my personal space, my quiet eye-contact-avoiding space. "People have little respect for others these days" is the incantation of the older generation. Amen.

Sitting as low as I can in this chair, seeing if I can be at eye level with the arm rests, I spot the bright red plastic reel. Better go and get my number. Approaching it and crossing the invisible beams of stares, I pull and tear my little piece of paper from the number reel. Number 52 and the corresponding sign politely blinks 999 in bold red "Logan's Run" seventies LED. The little paper pre-cut to resemble a tongue on one end, and a "U" on the other. Number 52 is sticking its tongue out at me. Those invisible beams of stares have been set off and the alarm of straight-pipe laughter begins to burp and run through the lawn tools.

Brown as far as the eye can see, from my skin to theirs, from carpet to stains on these chairs. Dismal. Dismissal.

Not so much earth tones as disease tones. Malaria khaki. Pneumonia Cocoa. Off-yellow bone marrow cancer.

Architects should be forced to spend times in the hospitals before they ever mount the task of designing one to help us ease our mood. McDonald's employs more psychology in their interiors than this place. Unless they really wanted us to feel worse than we are. I never thought of that, but it would make sense from an HMO billing practices standpoint.

Children way past their bedtime struggle to keep their eyes open, despite all the remarkable distractions around them.

Shattered lives watching shattered lives on the small television three inches from the ceiling. All the garden tools laughing as if to say "look at those losers!" Yes, take a good hard look I say.

"Mr…"
"Mr. cow-zzz-cha?" so says the nurse at the station, starting the next file before the crusty elbowed hulk even begins to move from the chair she so eagerly wants to fill.

"Kautche" I reply while dodging volleys of lung disease.
"Like something you'd sit on." My inner smile spreading wide.

RazorBoy gives me the once over and mumbles what I think to be "what the devil is he doing here?" I smile and pass him on the left. Maybe "what the devil" was more "the white devil." Just enough to be heard by the violated coke machine and its attacker, I say "Hey, I really think you are sick."

"So you are here because you missed your meds?" she asks without ever daring to make eye contact.

"No, I have them, I just missed my appointment with my doctor so I figured I could come here and get that out of the way before I do lapse on my meds." I start to realize she might not think my choice of time and location the best given the room's capacity.

As if to say yeah, you are wasting someone's time, she inhales through those surgically pinched and drawn up nostrils and though her exhalation breaths "well you will have to wait to see a doctor tonight-"

"I've got nothing but time" I interrupt.

"-tonight, due to the patient load we are currently experiencing."

Jesus, press two for customer care, three for medical malpractice, and pound sign for waste of time.

"well its just that I took the last of my pills today, and I have a bit of a past as I'm sure you are reading right now-"

"under the regulations set forth by the HIPAA act of 1996, I am not allowed access to your personal files or patient records, so no, I don not know of your psychological history-" Interrupt touché.

"-psychological? Who said anything about psychological?" Where did she get that from?

Now we have eye contact, distemper with a dash of anxiety, not like a fear of losing her job anxiety, but more of a has it been ninety seconds already anxiety?

"- I just assumed that given the medications you are requesting, and the desire to confer with our on call psych doctor, that would be the history in question."

"Fair enough." Is all I can muster, it has been more than ninety seconds, and any time further invested in this exchange will only mortgage my future with the doctor.

Lets get this show on the road.

"I swallowed dem blades, I knew it, I can feel this soda working on them cuts! I need to see a doctor man! Damn I hate this place…" I gotta look back at this, he finally got his soda. The man's hands can get the job done it seems. I bet Mrs. CrazyLady at home could attest to that, just maybe. He looks at me like I'm the one denying him emergent medical care. All he gets from me is a gaze full of too bad so sad with one eyebrow cocked up and waving him off from above my right eye.

Swiveling back around to Nurse Sunshine, I'm answering questions from memory, playing back my reel to reel marked "Standard Medical Questionnaire" for her to click clack back into my file she has never read, according to the HIPAA act of 1996.

"Can you throw this away for me?" is my final request of the best front line representative of this hospital that a minimum state sealed-bid RN contract could acquire.

"Sure" she snaps while looking directly through the old monochrome monitor of my life. And then I bless her with number 52, now smiling at me and sticking its tongue back out at her.

The lawn tools begin to buzz and churn back to life as another invisible beam has been crossed and blue-smoke laughter spreads out from my general area like those impending flu shots spread out from the pneumonia pump back at my vacant seat in the waiting room.

Emergency rooms are for anything but emergencies.

black, broken

2007-09-02T23:08:00.000-07:00

You must have glass teeth in your face,
because I can see right through your smile.
In that lying mouth of yours--
what were you thinking, all the while?
Did you think for now, you would amuse me,
so as to better use me,
at your leisure on some later day?
You thought you would confuse me?
Oh no, I have the upper hand:
I know what lies beneath,
and you had better close your lips,
or I'll break all your glass teeth.