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Maelstroms

Posted on December 18th, 2012

My shoes were soaked, crunching the snow and making my presence known to the silent sidewalks. I swore I was alone, even though you were beside me. I kept turning around, looking at those heavy steps I had just created, and they left such clear imprints that I was surprised to see your feet hadn’t left a single mark. You took my hand, trying to distract me from your disappearing footprints, and you said something about the storm and how attractive it was to see the snowfall on the trees, protecting their roof and drawing canopies. I took a sip from the bottle of wine we were walking with and its bitterness graced my palate and made my heart warmer. You took the bottle…

Aligned

Posted on November 27th, 2012

Miss drew the line. It was vertical and oddly straight. The shading from the pencil was thick, never wavering its size and she wished she could be in that line, or at least on the other side of it. These drawings were such personal endeavors. She wasn’t an artist, but she liked these projects, these experiments that required only one warm, hunched body. This time was different though because she had company. Mister was sitting across from her and he was drawing a house, she could see that clearly. Miss stopped herself because she was about to draw one as well and she thought it would be too strange if they both had the same ideas. She turned the paper ninety degrees and thought…

Run Away

Posted on November 10th, 2012

When you’re young, they tell you it takes practice. They tell you not to worry if you lose. They tell you there will be other opportunities. Take chances. No regrets. Be trite when you’re in a corner. When you do finally win, your trainer will tell you to be humble and to expect the rules and the players to change, rotate, and evolve – to become better than you. Because when you do win, when you collect your coins and put them in your front left pocket for everyone to see, you are still just another player in a world of them. And even if the coins glow this bright red color, seen right through your white-collared shirt, most people disregard it, because we’re…

Slowly Sinking, Wasting

Posted on November 6th, 2012

At one point I think, in everyone’s lives, there comes a series of moments where spending time in a quiet place, like the top of a mountain or within an attic, becomes a priority. My early twenties were like that. I had myself a mediocre pond, which was technically in a park, but I didn’t pay the park much attention. It was always filled with these bouncing children, their loud and giggly mothers, and tamed dogs. I was in between jobs, in between classes, in between interesting people, and I always thought it was very funny how I always felt like there was always something to be “in between.” And at the same time, I’d feel terribly selfish because it wasn’t like I was…

The Luck You’ve Had

Posted on October 30th, 2012

The girl with the purple-feathered devil horns looked at me with these dark-rimmed eyes and pinned her fingers around my wrist. The Monster Mash began to play overhead, and people in masks started to leave our table and collect themselves for the dance. She took a thick pen from her pocket, shifted in her chair towards me, then bit the cap off and held it between her teeth. Turning my hand over, she wrote the message in bold capital letters. I could hear her whisper as she formed the words, almost like she was repeating lyrics to her favorite songs, trying to be telling, trying to sing quietly and looking like a thief. Her eyes were set on my palm and I could see…

Splits

Posted on October 22nd, 2012

I was comfortably alone, but split in two. And sure, you know, I guess there could have been moments of loneliness when I would be staring out the window of a café or a bar and watching all those real people draw trails with their heels; their eager hands would be coupled around another’s waist, and I wondered where they found people like that, people who suddenly made them think they were corner pieces of a ten-piece puzzle. I’d sit on the other side of the glass, looking into the zoo of the world, all the hyenas giggling at each other, their laughs echoing and bulldozing the yellowing or browning leaves across the sidewalk. There would be times when I’d see a person walk…

Go Letter, Go

Posted on October 18th, 2012

When I looked at myself in the mirror the next morning, there were bruises on each side of my face. One circled my left eye, the ring looking dark and awful. Another was splotchy, blotting my right check in these wonderfully shaped polka dots. I started to think more about the boy and how I wished I had more power. I lifted my chin and looked at my neck. Somehow, the scratches were deeper and looked more painful than I remember experiencing and I started to wish that people could cut their nails more often. I didn’t have any make-up, never had the need to invest in any form of concealer, and I wished that I could be more feminine, even just for that…

Playing House

Posted on October 11th, 2012

“When I was younger, I said to myself, ‘If there was ever a house just like this one, in some other part of the world, I wonder if there was a little girl inside who couldn’t seem to leave.’ And it wouldn’t be because she wasn’t able to leave, but it would be because she didn’t want to leave unless she was going somewhere. And I wonder if her and I would get along, I wonder if we would have things to talk about. Perhaps we would only need each other and we wouldn’t worry about what people thought of us. I imagine that girl as being very tall with very long arms and red hair and witching blue eyes.” “Witching?” “Blindingly.” “You read…

Lean

Posted on October 8th, 2012

It was a great bottle – tall and lean. I was feeling this pain, not in my stomach, but in my chest and my mind. It was something like a heartbeat, steady and persistent, but it wasn’t a natural, painless beating; it was a torturous one. It put pressure on my lungs with each breath and a quick, unnatural sting through the edges of my skull down to the bridge of my nose between my heavy eyes. The bottle in my hand could feel it too. I could see the tall clear liquid pulsating as I placed it on the coffee table in front of me. This wasn’t my bottle. This wasn’t my apartment. This was a different realm and I knew I felt…

Lifeless

Posted on October 1st, 2012

I settled into it. There was a divide right down the middle, starting from the base of her neck and leading down towards the indentations at the bottom of her spine. She slept this way, on her stomach with her arms reaching towards the head of the bed, and I hoped that she wouldn’t always sleep this way. It was a dangerous way to sleep. I noticed that her skin had grown darker recently, maybe from the open window, maybe from the spring sun, and maybe from the fact that she always shirtlessly slept. I had seen her back more than a few times, and I adored it, and knew that for the remainder of our time together, she would only show me her…