Key

I tilt my head, focus, and he's looking straight at me. His half-open eyes strike the flint behind my ribs, send a shot of straight aggression to my pulsing midsection. Feral, I ignite. It isn’t fire, but it’s close. This is when I wish he had long hair, so I could pull it harder.

Demonstrations. Things he could do. But he doesn't, and even if he did, we’re moving too fast for the hurt to count. Click click click and it's gone, thrusting weeks into the rear view mirror. It isn’t flying, but it’s close. Time devours pain, processes it, transforms it neatly into nostalgia with alarming efficiency. In a few days, these hours will be beautiful. This is now and now and now and now is nothing.

"Say my name," I growl, and it isn't for the power, it really isn't, of watching all of these smirking sets of lips spread wide and oblige. It's to ground grind ground this into Me, because even though I start out lost and end the same way, in the middle I am endless. In the middle, I am strong, or I can make-believe to be, and that fairy tale is key. Because this is how you fuck when you've got a soul like a half-empty trash can and a heart gone missing. It isn’t dying, but it’s close, god, it’s so close.

Cipher

Loneliness is a knitting needle on my chest, pointing straight down. It couldn't hurt me on its own, but it waits, it waits for assistance, the thrust of his palm. It never needs to linger long.

I love holding things that could kill me, because as long as I'm touching them I am untouchable. As long as I have arms to hold them.

It's probably true that every person is an algorithm or a mixed bag of equations. But I can't handle that. Inevitably, I will see all those numbers rushing together, blackening the air, choking me every time I try to inhale.

I stared at the sun and saw nothing for days. The apocalypse was worth my blindness.

People run from things that spin webs, even if we've got no venom left, even if that's all we know how to do. Sanctimonious, they call us black widows and enact senseless slaughter under the guise of self-preservation.

Despite being desperate for singularity, I am forever a part of the plural. He does not notice me.

She told me that water flows faster when you decrease the pressure. I must be living backwards.

Defiance

And I laugh, I laugh

when you look away.

Where is your power now?

Your only tool

grown obsolete

because

I've learned to love the mania

that you impose

so joyfully.

Vouloir

There's this breath waiting in his throat. I want to steal it. To put my lips over his and suck out the sweet air and get dizzy. All mine is gone, anyway. I want his bruises.

So strange. Small, gnawing animals populating my chest, settling in, building nests. Every second of his silence feeds them. Every time I see him, all my reasons dissolve.

I want his boiling insides; I want to swallow it all, and it will burn good, it will burn like anger.

This is the skeleton; you have picked away the meat.

I want his expressions, every shift, every furrow, or maybe I want what's pulsing behind them. Because whatever it is, it is screaming, it is pushing at his cheeks, and I can nearly hear, I am nearly there. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's only a heartbeat. Maybe he's only alive, like me.

Him under my fingernails and eyelashes all over the pillow. I want I want I want like a child. And I could almost hate him, if I tried.

Helena

Because I was wrong: this is the forest, now, and I am on your heels. The liars told me trees would whisper.

Because my love is not delicate like hers. I know. I am not standing elevated, flowers cascading down my back, beautiful and still, poised for love at first sight. I am tired, covered in mud, screaming, invested in the chase. I wear my need on my skinned knees and I will not tell you lies; no goddess, no invention am I. To be still like her would be to allow your peace of mind, to give you what you’ve taken. And you must hurt like me to understand. I will only smile to cut your fists with my broken teeth. I will make you feel. And can’t you feel it? Claws wrapped around your lungs and needles scraping your skin, searching for a vein. Pain is the flame on my tongue, the only translation. So beat me, beat me, you hopeless romantic, and decorate the clearing. Leave me flat on my back, and I will cherish the stars.

Because I know you could never love me more than the poison in your eyes. But, God, can I pretend.

In Medias Res

What you seek

gossamer

in a leather shell.

Hours, hours

drip

away.

Savory transparency:

I sip it from my fingertips,

indulge in your bouquet.

Bite

Introduce your burning
chest
rip through buttons
exhibition
to the crowd, because
you know why
you hurt now.

Evidence
snake bites
flushed punctures
spreading venom
heart beat
s s s stutters
but

...

a loss
no
this doesn't have to be
one
not if you
mean it
or just
commit, god, just
commit to the
end,
at least,
not if you
fight through the
death throes
for true, for
true
clarity.

Fiction (III)

We fucked something like three times before I realized that I wanted him too much. I could tell because I started craving his stories, too, not just the rest of him.

I tried to be diplomatic, socially acceptable, to coax the stories out on their own. I asked questions, played games, but they wouldn't come. So one day (because it was the only way, really), hair in my eyes, I looked up and told him: I wanted his narrative, god, his anecdotes, oh, fuck, his memory-molded past, god, yes, yes. He knew I'd give him anything in exchange. I would've given him money, but money was easy. You could pick it up on a street corner, rumpled and gutter-stained and covered in other people's fingerprints. He didn't want my money. He wanted something tender, something soft to sink his teeth into. He wanted me.

So now, sometimes, he calls me over. And after a few hours, I rub the carpet marks out of my knees, sit at the foot of his bed and listen attentively to things I do not understand. Absentees and stand-ins and fights and scars and love and guns and girls who lie. But I know enough about his anger to follow along.

"He talks to you?" my roommate asks when I come home bruised and sore, because that's what I told her in a moment of weakness. Tell her you're having maniacal sex; tell her he's beating you up. Not that you're whoring yourself for his stories. But I was tired. "That's it?"

"He talks to me," I say again, twisting my head from side to side, examining the damage done to my neck.

"I mean...well, shit, is it good?"

Catching my eyes in the mirror, I hesitate. I do not understand how so much can live inside one person. I don't have the space. I stop eating, breathe less, just to give him more room to fill me up, a better canvas upon which to transpose. And I want more, more, all of it, while he wants only my real pieces. If he were to ask me why (he never does), I would tell him about my life, my unchanging life, my tiny life in a nightmare box. I would tell him how I feel, sad, missing, like the gap left behind on a coat when a button has fallen off. But he never asks, so I never speak. I suck the stories out of him, and it hurts, because words don't just disappear. Real words, true words, his words, they hit your ears and stick. They burrow into your chest. He is inside me, and I want him there. It hurts, but I am hungry for his pain.

So, "yes," I tell her. "Yes, it's good."

Suspension

I was waiting for the subway. My jaw sore, my legs aching, I pulled out my phone to check the time, but the screen was blank. I wondered if I had lost service or if there was simply no time left to pass, if I had used up all the seconds allotted to me standing in this crowd of people, lined up, militaristic. I didn’t remember falling in. It must’ve been instinctive. Most of them stared straight ahead, but few of us were weak; we shuffled and glanced around, searching casually for information or entertainment. The woman next to me in line took out a cigarette with shaking hands.

“Does anybody mind?” We might have minded somewhere else, but not here. Relieved, she lit up, and smoke hung still in the closed air.

Finally, a train approached. As it screeched to a halt, I tried to move forward. But those waiting with me seemed to pull me back. I was tired of perpetual idleness, tired of not knowing how long I had been trapped underground, inside tan concrete. I contemplated walking up the stairs and out onto the street, hailing a cab or taking a bus, and I felt fingers on my sleeve, clutching, holding me in place.

“Why can’t I go, too?” I asked, despising the whine behind my voice.

The woman smoking at my side shook her head. “That’s how it is,” she said, choking on a leftover bit of emotion that the others had disposed of long ago. “They choose, but they never choose us.” Four of the stoics detached themselves from the group and boarded. The second the doors shut, they were sucked down the tube.

The next train came after a while, but only one got on, a blond girl wearing a long white dress. The crowd expressed no outrage and offered no explanation, besides a small mutter from deep inside: “She’s related, the bitch.”

My legs shook, hurting worse than before, and I had to fight the urge to scream. I was trapped. But he was not. The man in a yellow jacket, smelling like mint and leather, walking slowly in front of us all, hands in his pockets, ignoring the order of things. When he saw me, he smiled mockingly and licked his lips. I longed for motion. But he did not.

Suddenly, another train came, faster than the last, rushing on and on. Eventually, I could no longer tell whether it was made up of many cars, connected, or if it was one long, solid mass of metal. I tried to step back but couldn’t; I was surrounded by a mass five people deep.

Calm, unafraid, he approached the silver blur and extended a hand.

“Don’t!” I shouted, and the heads surrounding me, more than ever now, whipped around to stare at me. He didn’t notice, kept reaching, reaching until finally, in one whiplash motion, he grabbed a bar on the window of the car and was carried away. The train ended, finally, leaving behind a rush of sound like a broken wave. He was gone. But I was not.

My heart ached. Whether for him or for me, I couldn’t tell. The wide, dead eyes turned away from me, back to the tunnel. But it was no use. It was empty. I was empty. I wanted to take a chance like him, to stretch out and grab or maybe just to lie on the tracks and wait down there. Either way, I would at least have the promise of action. Instead, I straightened my spine and stared. And waited.

Enough.

So listen, she told me, I'm trying not to go too fast. Because I've asked for a lot of advice on this subject and gotten in way too much trouble by asking and the overwhelming response has been not to rush things too much. Fools rush in. Wasn't that what they said? Except I'm not sure, because the rest of life is a race that the rabbit would win, where biding your time is for the vengeful and the criminally insane. Slow means stupid, but here, all of a sudden, it equates to wisdom. So I guess I must be stupid, then, because I'm having trouble taking my time.

And I'm worried, she said. I'm getting worried because there are things I do not know. There will always be things I do not know, and this concerns me to no end. I do not know if it is worth it. I do not know if I will regret the shift. If the change will matter down the road. I am worried that I do not know, and I am worried that you do not know, either. That you've never looked past the second that I finally....

She sighed, and the wind kicked up. My fingers shook inside my glove, which she noticed, and when I looked back down she was holding my hand.

Fiction (II)

No pattern in their breathing,
shared breathing
unfamiliar meetings
revisited.
She licks her lips
combs her teeth
he watches
something underneath
laying, lying,
turning.
Do you see me?
Breathing,
beating, beating.


breathing.

Clutch

I am not safe in his arms like he tells me I am. He plants his promises inside my chest, and they germinate and thrive. They surpass expectations. My expectations win blue ribbons. He doesn't want his prize. Heaviest, biggest, most. Superlatives tied to his hands and feet, pulling him down. I indulge in his uncertainty. "But what if you're my girl?" I revel. I am not safe in his arms because he will let go when we start sinking. But he doesn't know that yet. He is the champion of three small words, repeated three hundred times over, dubious. He doesn't know that I am a tornado, full of hail and wind and broken bits, accidental but damaging nonetheless. I hurt him, so I hurt myself in turn, indulging in small pinches and the clarity of starvation. I am his selfish consolation gift, screaming, needing what is not my place to need. The smallness inside of me wants him to take me away. It wants to take him away. It wants him to lay next to me, to be small like me. I am my smallness. And what strong arms could hold me?

Snapshots

I don't know how to be properly autobiographical. I guess it's an acquired taste. Like snake.

Today, some girl on my floor burned popcorn in her microwave so badly that the alarms all went off and the firetrucks came, but not badly enough that the sprinklers went off. Funny how that happens. Everyone stood around on the grass because the three firemen apparently had to use the entire sidewalk, and I wanted a cigarette desperately. It was only once I had smoked one that I realized taking deep breaths, not nicotine, held all the appeal in making that decision. They were Newports, cheap ones, and the smell they left on my fingers reminded me of my ex-girlfriend.

I listen to my local classic rock station online to remind me of home in an unfamiliar city. I suffer through every single stupid song just to hear a trace of the DJs' Philly accents. Even the ones by a band named Hooters with random religious references. Even the hair metal. In the end, though, it doesn't matter, because Weezer has impeccable timing.

Lucy

She sits awake some nights and wonders. But not in the bedroom, for it is small and occupied and not conducive to wondering. She lies there for the allotted amount of time, staring at the hairline crack in the ceiling, the one that unsettles her when it's dark. It's never been filled. No one minds it in the daytime, when worries are less useful. Then, when his breathing is steady and his hands are still, she shifts slowly off of the mattress and onto the floor, dodging squeaky boards and walking on the outside of her feet, like an Indian, like she's seven again. That's how she knows it's alright to slip away. Because she feels seven and not seventeen.

Outside, on the small balcony attached to their kitchen, she lights incense and plays with the smoke. It tangles when left alone, but she sorts it with a few waves of her fingers, like a small child's hair. The night-bugs, cicadas and moths and big, green beetles, buzz around her as she closes her eyes and wonders again if she's a bad person.

It's such a subjective term, 'bad person,' she tells herself, even though she knows that this argument is crap. I mean, when you say bad, you could mean anything from your Irish Catholic grandmother's idea of bad to Charles Manson bad. But that's the worst thing about having a conversation with herself. She can't use (or rather, utilize) her dual degree in English and 20th century literature (or rather, wordy bullshit). She can't dodge the question and go of on a tangent. Well, she can, but it's not particularly effective, because there is only one of her, and she knows what she means by bad (and that people who are Charles Manson bad are typically referred to as "murderers" to do away with the need for distinction).

Well, she revs up warily, if you asked most people, I would probably get a fairly positive response. I mean, they'd have their complaints, of course. Everybody has complaints about everybody. But I think that the consensus would be, yes, good.

But then she has to wonder how much of what they know is real and how much of it, exactly, is layering and creative placement. Because there's always something. No matter what she does. There are always so many little failures, especially with him. She tells him her feelings, that she loves him, like she's supposed to, but no matter how true it is, she can't kill that tiny, persistant animal that squirms uncomfortably in her chest every time she does. She tries to be as kind to him as he is to her, but moments still exist in which she wants to wound him. She goes to sleep next to him and wakes up there, too, but she finds herself screwing someone else in the middle of the night. Her control only goes so deep, and it kills her.

So what is she, really? Kind and loving, or a decent approximation of the two? Committed, or just well-trained? Does consensus matter when what they see is just a white sheet, draped over the ugly crime scene to appease and comfort?

She can't decide anymore. So she stops moving. She stops breathing. Uninterrupted, the smoke wraps around her, caressing her shoulders. She closes her eyes and listens. But the promised realization never comes.

If You Could Call It That

I've spent a week trying to describe it. I say "I", because I'm brave (or at least trying to be). But it defies description, and I'm starting to suspect it's because it all worked out so well. It wasn't like real life, where plot is sparse and erratic. It wasn't like writing stories, when you can add the exact right amount of conflict to make it believable. It wasn't like plays or movies or conversations, when you can feel the push and the pull between two people, sense the tides, the gives, the tells. At first, it was more like a dance between two willing and knowledgeable partners, except neither person wanted to admit to dancing, so they pretended that they really only came here to enjoy the music and wander about the room in an organized manner. It was more like we were circling, arms outstretched, refusing to touch. We knew the pieces would fit, but we were wary to construct. So I seduced the moment, slipping one block perfectly onto the next, everything working so hard so we wouldn't have to.

It was almost effortless, but only because we needed it to be. I did not have to push or be pulled. We floated aimlessly until we met in the middle, and then suddenly it was only that, only us, only breathing, until we retracted and waited for the next collision, detached in the presence of intimacy.

Demetrius

Because when he was there, it was like catching a drizzle, and when he was gone, it was something worse. Emptiness, the kind in a house after the last box has been packed and loaded; emptiness harder than emptiness alone, because it was not truly empty but a quarter full of a dull, achy hurt, just enough to slosh around at the bottom and make some noise. She didn't want it to be that way, but it was. There was something possessing about him, about the way he would not be possessed. Or, at least, not by her. Not that she would give him the satisfaction of open pursuit. She wasn't that far into the forest yet. But the want was undeniable, so she let it sit there, as undisturbed and untended as it was unintended.

Because she doesn't know how to understand him. He's like starting a story in the middle, the first hundred or so pages ripped out or blacked out, redacted, redacted, redacted. His open book is no good to her. She doesn't speak that damn language, anyhow.

Honesty

Sometimes I want to take my reasons and throw them on the ground in front of all of them, everyone. I want to tell them that they're all there, every last explanation, every last why. Count. I dare you, you sick bastards. Count these small things, the ones that matter so much that you'll throw them away at a moment's notice. Excuse. Justification. Unsatisfactory. Just plain damn not good enough. But they are there. And that is the one thing that you cannot deny.

Don't Jump, Part 2

HONOR
No! Of course not! Why, do I seem...I mean, do I give off the appearance of someone who--

John
Hold on. Have you?

HONOR
Have I what?

JOHN
Done this before.

Honor
...maybe.

JOHN
Before as in, one crazy night in the boy's dorm at college twenty years ago? Or before as in...more than once?

Honor
Ten years ago, thanks. And no, you're my first...

JOHN
Okay.

HONOR
...this year. I've done...well, four others.

JOHN
Four?! And you've chickened out every time?

HONOR
"Chickened out"? Really nice. What is this, the third grade?

JOHN
Four times?

HONOR
You're really not what I expected. Your tactics aren't normal at all.

JOHN

I'm not normal.

HONOR
They usually ask nice, harmless questions. What's your name is the first one.

Beat.

HONOR
Oh, come on. I'm feeding it to you. Just ask me.

JOHN
What's your name?

HONOR
It's Honor.

JOHN
Anna?

HONOR
No, HONOR. H-O--

JOHN
Oh.

Beat.

HONOR
You really suck at this, don't you? Aren't you going to ask me anything else?

JOHN
Such as?

HONOR
Everyone's approach is slightly different. Not so different, but it varies, I guess. Some get personal. They tell me their names, too.

JOHN
I'm John.

HONOR
Then they just...ask me about myself. Little details. Children. They always ask if I have children.

JOHN
Do you have children?

HONOR
God, no. Twice I lied and said I did. A girl, two years old, father left me when I was pregnant. Cute little thing with blond curls. I was just trying to help them out, because God forbid you are a woman without a child. Suicidal, fine, but never alone.

Beat.

HONOR (CONT’D)
So? Got any ideas of your own? Any other questions for me?

JOHN
When did you start faking suicide attempts as a hobby?

HONOR
Who says I'm faking? Who says I'm not one-hundred-percent serious right now and just screwing with you?

JOHN
I won't tell on you.

HONOR
It started, like, four years ago. It was real the first time. It really was. I thought it was. I was so lonely, and I guess I convinced myself that that was the only way out. I lived in Utah before that. I used to rock climb a lot. So many great outdoor cliffs. I loved it. You couldn't think about falling or you got stuck. You had to focus on getting higher without thinking about how high you were. It was so zen, just...looking around. It kept me sane. And then I lost my job and had to move to New Jersey. Have you ever been to New Jersey, John?

JOHN
I think everyone has, at some point.

HONOR
Yes. Just passing through on your way to New York or something, right? But still, you saw a good amount of the state?

JOHN
Sure.

HONOR
Then you understand where I'm coming from. Everything got so gray. So I decided to go back to Washington.

JOHN
I thought you lived in Utah.

HONOR
No, I grew up in Washington. It's kinda gray there, too, but I had started to dream about it. About fourth grade.

JOHN
Fourth grade?

HONOR
The year that we drove into the city for a field trip to the Space Needle. I got the stomach flu that week, and I never really got around to visiting it before I moved away. Anyway, once I was exiled to Jersey, I was having all these dreams about how incredibly great it would be to go there and go up high and look down again.

Don't Jump, Pt. 1.

What I did for internship. Tell me if you'd like to keep on reading/give me some feedback, plz.

Honor, a woman in her early thirties, is standing on raised platform (the roof of the building), looking down. As the lights go up, a muffled crowd can be heard below, in a general state of panic. One woman shouts, don't jump. Honor rolls her head around on her neck, basking in it.

John (an average-looking man in his mid-forties, very middle-management, with a glazed, recited look and feel to everything he says and does) enters from upstage right, like he's just come up onto the roof.

JOHN

Excuse me.

Honor jumps, puts her hand to her chest, a pantomime of what frightened should be.

HONOR

God. You scared me.

JOHN

Ah. Yeah, that probably wasn't a great idea...

They stare at each other awkwardly for a moment. John coughs.

JOHN (CONT'D)

Um, ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to get down from the ledge there. It's against building protocol for non-security employees to be up on the roof like that. So if you could just...

HONOR

Are you joking?

JOHN

No, those are the rules.

HONOR

I know those are the rules. Those are the rules everywhere. I don't care about the rules. I'm going to jump.

This had honestly not occurred to John before now. He is mildly surprised to receive this news.

JOHN

Oh. Huh. That's...don't do that.

HONOR

(theatrical)

If you've come here to stop me, you can save your breath. I'm not going to listen.

JOHN

Well, it's probably not all that--

HONOR

There's nothing you can say. My mind is made up.

JOHN

You could at least hear me out. Common courtesy being what it is.

HONOR

Why bother? I already know what you're going to say. It's just not worth it anymore. Every day is a worthless circle. Get up, brush my teeth, take a shower, go to work, get home, go to sleep, rinse, repeat. Life is not worth living.

JOHN

Then jump.

HONOR

...excuse me?

JOHN

Listen, don't take this the wrong way, but you're kind of pissing me off right now.

HONOR

I'm what?!

JOHN

You think that everyone who wears a tie and drinks coffee out of a 'Life's a Beach' mug doesn't think strikingly similar things about all of their strikingly similar lives? What the hell makes you so special? Hmm? That you get to stand up here and bitch about it to everyone? That you get to quit instead of sucking it up and typing up expense reports like the rest of us? If you want to jump, go ahead and jump. Who am I to stop you?

HONOR

(knocked off balance by his words, to herself)

But...well. This is interesting. A new technique, or something? It must be. I've never heard anything like that before.

JOHN

Before? Like you've been in this situation before?

Honor laughs awkwardly.

Dear Lady Gaga,

I think you're pretty cool. Okay? I really do. I admit that when I saw your first music video, I sort of wanted to take something very pointy to your skull, because like we need another slutty blond girl singing about how easy it is to get into her sparkly spandex American Apparel hot pants when she's drunk. But once you busted out the nipple fireworks and killed Alexander Skarsgard, I went over to the dark side. Because, let's face it, no one can pull off Muppet genocide like you do.

But when you make me go through 20 minutes of scantily clad backup dancers with bowl cuts violating each other and cigarette sunglasses and chunks of meat wrapped in barbed wire and no eyebrows and American Flag jumpsuits and rosary-eating nuns in red rubber habits and going back to normal for five seconds only to bust out a machine gun bra in the next shot and lesbian prisons and your entire face randomly dissolving and scaring the shit out of me all for no ostensible reason (considering that none of that has anything AT ALL to do with what you are talking about), only for me to excuse everything once you start singing and get Allejandro stuck in my head? NOT COOL, GAGA. REALLY NOT COOL AT ALL.



P.S. Do me.

Thrust

I will not write about the boy. I will not I will not I will not. The names on the list may matter less than the size or the shape. A rose by any other name, and all that. Words are no good anymore, anyways. They told me to try not to think in words for thirty seconds. Most of them couldn’t make it, but I did, I made it and now I can’t unmake it. Everything is motion. Smooth and rough and desperate. Everything is motion.

I can’t describe it. But I will sure as hell try.

It’s fluid, the way water still moves over rocks and fish and bare feet. It’s a growl that only I can hear. It’s the way his eyes shift and glaze over while I speak to him, because, like I said, words are no good anymore, and he knew it before me. It’s a scream a scream a scream, because of course my rebel yell would conform to the rule of three. It’s that one extra bend out of distraction before the plastic snaps and bites your fingers, a sudden sting inside a trance. It’s those fingers, curling, grasping, clawing, clutching his pencil for dear life. No one else knows that. They think that he’s just writing, just dashing off another witty epithet to be used later. But I know. I see him. We live in the same zip code, all alone, never speaking, and we are falling down the same rabbit hole.

Masterpiece

I took my time.

He watched me set up. I don't think he believed me, that I would do it. But once the signs grew more apparent, he began to panic. A small waver in his smirk, at first. That tiny flash of knowing. And then that chuckle, nerves showing underneath his thin skin of superiority. He accused me of having no creative eye. He said I was selling out. He called me an idealist with one breath and a cynic with the next. He screamed at me, words and spit hurtling from his mouth and splattering across my face. But my grip on the paintbrush never slipped.

My hands stayed steady as I grew closer. My face remained impassive. My arms flowed. I took my time. Line by line, stroke by sweeping stroke, I painted over him until he was nothing but an angry pair of lips, spewing insults and black ink.

And then, suddenly, I paused. I paused for the first time in days, staring up at that Earth-shattering mouth. That mouth had known me. My world was once held in the shallow dip of that tongue. The willing brush strained against my hesitating hands.

The mouth noticed my indecision, and it smiled lazily. I watched, transfixed, as its lips parted, its tongue already sculpting its next enticing phrase. Did you...

It was not I who did it. It was the brush that shot up before the mouth could string together any more words for my noose, dragging my arm along with it. The brush knew better. In three swift strokes, there was no mouth, expunged from reality, leaving only canvas and thin air in its place. The thinnest.

Gently, carefully, I set the paintbrush down.

I stood up straight, staring at the screaming emptiness, and I realized that there was a certain ease in facing an oblivion of my own making.

Portfolio Piece #3 (Keep Moving)

I used to love driving at night. Even when I was younger and only grown-ups sat behind the wheel, I was infatuated. I liked it when my dad would pick me up from a friend’s house after dark and we would take the freeway home. I would look out the window and watch the big brick buildings fly by my window, the “adult alternative” station that my parents loved so much playing peacefully in the background. The needle on the speedometer flirted with 80, but everything was slow inside the car. When it was even later, I would start to drop off, lulled to sleep by the wheels’ soft static shh as we moved forward. But it was only when my friends got their licenses that my casual fling with night-driving became a love affair.

It was later at night. The music was better. We had nowhere to go: no dinner to get home to, no parents in the car to slow us down. Our only goal: pile as many people as possible into Rich’s SUV and get gone. Rich was eighteen and didn’t have a curfew. He drove like a crazy person but never actually hit anything, which was enough of a reason to assure our parents that he was the safest driver we had ever had the pleasure of sharing a car with. I always managed to secure a seatbelt at the least, but usually I got the front seat, despite being the shortest and the loudest in the car. I could see everything.

Early in the night, everyone was always amped, convinced that we’d find some secrets tucked away in our personal corner of suburbia. The air was an animated amalgam of words. We talked to every person at once in the same sentence. “And then I said—no, you can’t open the window—that I was going to—please take that away from her—kill him if he didn’t give me back the keys, even though they weren’t technically mine—we can’t go to that Dunkin Donuts—but he didn’t believe me—because the guy hates me there, that’s why—so I just snatched them and ran—because I dropped a jelly donut on the floor and stepped on it—and he didn’t chase me, so I guess they’re mine now.”

But as the night wore on and we wore out, our tangled ball of conversations diminished until it was one long thread, all of us grabbing onto it and adding things here and there. Sometimes I would talk, but other times I would just look. Other times I would take in the everything around me, because I could. Because, for once, no one was asking me to do anything else. I noticed Rich’s hands as we drove, his fingers spread lazily over the wheel, almost lovingly, looking so different from rush hour, when his white knuckles strangled the black leather, when I would wonder if he was going to swerve into traffic and slam his beloved car into the pink convertible that had just cut us off again. His whole face was relaxed, his mouth forming the words to the latest inane summer hit that we couldn’t help but love.

The city flowed around us like water, every landmark, every 7-11 and strip mall blurring and fading into nothingness. We were free, not inhabiting this earth, bound by only two rules: yield to pedestrians, and by all means, keep moving.

Something Different

This is in relation to something I posted on Soulpancake earlier today. The challenge was to make a collage and explain how it told your story. My massively inarticulate explanation is as follows:

"I have a collage on my wall. It's mostly made up of magazine clippings. Some people might say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but here, the words are what matter. Most of my pictures hold the deep sentiments of "I worship Neil Patrick Harris" or "Doc Martens are sweet". When I put words up on my wall, they speak legions to me. I'll put up some pics later."

Speak legions? Is that even a term? Well, regardless, later is now. And here are the pictures!

This is the longest shot I could take of the collage overall.

I want to start with this one, because until today I had no idea that it was here. After staring at it for a little bit, I started to remember vague (yet weirdly specific) details: the pen I used, the state of blind anger in which it was written. I don't remember exactly when I wrote it or what he or she thought. But I remember that scary feeling. It's a feeling I get a lot.

Self-explanatory.

"Who will be your accomplice tonight?"above a picture of Emma and I circa 1998, looking appropriately gangsta.

Urban Legend: unfinished piece that I decided to stick up there for the hell of it. Also, Florence from Florence+The Machine. She is kind of the coolest.

Death By Audio: Because, as an avid appreciator of music, that seems kind of like the way to go.
Minute: Because I love that one of the standard measurements of time is also the word for "incredibly tiny".
"People are always giving me weed.": True statement. No, not really. It was from a story about Devandra Banhart.
Purple: Because that's the best color ever. I never said I was deep.

Battle Brooklyn Hipsters: In the event of a move that may or may not happen, I wish to make this my mantra.
You are never so sexy as when you make me think: So mething true.
I am something that you'll never understand: Something I wish was true.

I'm Yours: Something that is no longer true.
There's Nothing To Frak Out About: Because I'm a dork.
Let's go crazy!: Because that way, I can at least make it seem like a choice.
Follow No One: Something I'm no good at remembering.

(...and, yes, that is a tiny picture of Tim Gunn. I love him.)

Life is...
An Action Film
a Deep cut
Never Avoiding Cake!
a party for the odd & invincible
awaiting sweet relief
Russian Vodka
dressing up for nobody
missed connections
made of words
summer
LOVEDAMAGEFURY

omgwut. Because I'm a goof sometimes.

You Make Me Feel. Shouted out of a cabbage megaphone.
(People Get Lost In There), because they do.

Destroy Something Beautiful: Because people do it anyway.
The thing below it is a piece I did with a photo of Axl Rose. I don't know what it means, but I like how it looks. Especially his stretched-out hand.

All I Got.

And we end this foray into my brain and onto my walls with a testament to my dorkness.

Conversations With the Ghost (I)

"You're good," he said, setting the pages down on the wire table. I put my plate (empty aside from the blueberries I had picked out of my scone) on top of them, afraid and praying that the light breeze might blow them away. "I mean, right there," he pointed, jarring a blueberry, "right there, I think you meant 'pray' instead of 'prey'. But other than that...it was really good."

"No, listen," I told him desperately. "Stop. It's not."

He did not react. He folded his hands and looked at me from over his glasses. "I see. And why do you feel that way?"

"Nice try," I told him. "But my therapist's a woman."

She brushed her long, blonde curls out of her face and adjusted her blouse. "I see. And why do you feel that way?"

I sighed. "Because...shit, I don't know."

She stared.

"Because...because of time, I guess, and the way it passes. Because no matter how good I think it is now, at some point I'm going to be older and know better. I'm going to look back at this-" tap tap tap on the table "-and I'm going to feel sorry for myself. For thinking that this kind of bullshit could get me anywhere in life."

"But," she said, "It is good. You think it's good."

"Yes," I conceded, "but it's not good because of me. It's good because of you."

"Me?" she asked, surprised.

"No."

"Me?" he inquired, cleaning his glasses.

"Close."

He took off his glasses altogether and shook his hair out of his eyes. "Oh, duh. It's me, isn't it?"

I rolled my eyes. "Well, yeah. It is you."

"What about me?" He looked at me like I was crazy. It was deserved, but it took me by surprise. My mouth disappeared and my eyes lowered. "Oh, stop that," he said. "You brought me here. You have something to tell me, don't you?"

"I told you. My therapist's a woman," I mumbled, and he laughed. I made him laugh!

"Come on," he said. "What is it?"

I bit my bottom lip, then the top, stretching them out, stretching for time. "You're...like, the reason, or something."

He raised his eyebrows. "The reason?"

"Yeah. You're my reason. You're...my why, I guess." I squished a blueberry beneath my thumb, relishing the way it resisted for just a moment, unconvincing, before spraying juice and blueberry guts all over my palm. "Why the fuck are there still blueberries in the scones here, anyways?"

"I'm your why?"

"Please stop repeating everything I say as a question in a cheap attempt to get in some dialogue. You would never do that. You would stare at me with a quizzical mixture of disdain and curiosity until I felt obliged to explain myself."

He stared at me with a quizzical mixture of disdain and curiosity until I felt obliged to explain myself.

"You're why I write. Well, not really. But you're why I write well. I copy you. I imitate. I know it's good, but it's not good because of me. It's good because of you. And my writing is...like, it's me. So does that mean you're me? Does that mean that I don't exist without you? And we're not close. You hold the cards. You hold the power."

"You're babbling."

"I know." Stop. Take a deep breath. "I know. But there's no good way to get this out. No easy way. No eloquent way."

"So, why are you trying?"

My laughter ruffled the pages in front of me. So many pages. But what had I said? "Shit. Because. Because I don't know how to stop."

We sat without speaking. The breeze whistled through the wire table.

Sickness

This is probably cheesy. Or rambling. Or something.

---------
This, this
this being
is so challenging
all by itself.

They told me it'd be
like a Sickness
eventually,
shaking and struggling
for every breath,
bleeding and screaming and sweating
for one more time
one more time
one more time.

Serious,
they put on the big voices
scared me into never
Daring
never living dangerous
or bad
so I would never have to catch
the Sickness.

And then, honey,
something happened.
Something funny.
I met you
and for a while, I
experienced
the greatest high.
I had rhyme, reason,
every time you held me
anytime, any season
And when you wrapped me in
your tragedy
the world would become
with us.
It was making sense.
It was bliss.
It was a new world-
reality-plus.

Then suddenly you cut off
the source.
You, my supplier,
were no longer dealing
in what I was craving.
And then the Sickness started.

Hands no longer
steady
oxygen no longer
ready
at my command
and while I lie
alone
shivering and
withdrawn,
I wonder why the stone-faces never warned us
about this kind of drug.