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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…