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 poor or starving, and it wasn’t like I didn’t have my family to support me. So I tried my best to think positively, to welcome the incomplete feelings and cherish the complete ones. And I knew that eventually, everything would be taken away from me. I would die, fall into the pond in front of me and just sink beside the fish. I imagined them nibbling at me and I felt this tickling sensation, but I tried to remember that I was dead and honestly unfeeling. I was the pierced whale, falling lifelessly and slowly for days and days and days, sinking continuously until I finally reached that bottom. The soil would push up and spread like an explosion from my disintegrating weight.

And there was one time, this was after my Aunt died, that I was squatting at the bank with a red Dixie cup between my fingers. The cup was from the long night before, used to drink away the beer at a party I wasn’t necessarily invited to, but I went because my friend wanted to flirt with boys, and I remember wishing she would flirt with as many boys as possible so she’d realize people weren’t worth a fuck, not a damn thing. Then I’d giggle at myself because I was immature and thought the boys probably were “worth a fuck” in her eyes.

The bottom of the cup was stained with the leftover beer, so I took it from the floor of the passenger side to throw it away. Walking through the grass and avoiding the groups of snickering families, I was distracted and forgot, passing the trashcans and going directly to the pond. I could see all those little tadpoles swimming around. It was that season, and their legs even started showing a little bit. It took me awhile to get the rhythm, but I’d dip the cup in, watch the water spread apart in circles as if to notify the rest of the fish through sonar, and I’d catch a few of the tadpoles and throw them back in violently. They’d spread out across the water, as if I were skipping stones. Then they’d all swim away rapidly and return to the same spot. I don’t even know why. I guess that area just felt safe to them even though it wasn’t. Maybe they just didn’t have a good memory. They were stupid, then I laughed at myself and thought how even more stupid it was for me to outsmart them. So when I caught a few more, I sat Indian style and stared into the cup like a scientist and his specimen. They were changing all right. Their eyes seemed bigger, but I bet they didn’t see much considering I had just caught the lot of their family.

I started to think about my Aunt again. It had been a few weeks since her big accident, the one that flipped her car a few times, right off of the road and into a ditch. But I told myself that it didn’t really bother me anymore. It doesn’t bother me. It was just a half empty bottle, useless. It became my mantra until we found out that one was not useless, but a few other bottles made them perfectly toxic enough.

I pictured her falling to the bottom of the pond, even sinking below the soil. I imagined a little flower, like a dandelion or something white, peeking and sitting up like in a cartoon. She had this butterfly tattoo on her right shoulder blade. She always told me she liked winged creatures, but I did remember before she actually got it, how my mom was scolding me for my tattoo, and my aunt defended me a little, but qualified it with I would never get one of my own, but you can do you what you want. And I hated how people changed, but never evolved.

So when I looked at the tadpoles again, they started to look like butterflies because I guess butterflies change like tadpoles change, even if the steps are different, and even if butterflies are supposedly more beautiful than frogs. I imagined a large square mirror. On one side was this black and white butterfly that looked an awful lot like my Aunt’s and it was flying around, but not outside the perimeter of the mirror, but its reflection was this repulsively brown frog, and I thought it so incredibly hideous with its warts and its sliminess. I imagined the mirror splitting in two, falling and smashing the butterfly and the frog. It felt calming – their death.

Looking into the Dixie cup, those tadpoles were still wiggling around and I thought it was about time they finally came out of the water, even if they weren’t really ready yet, so I laid them in the grass softly and watched them writhe on Earth with everyone else I knew.

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 her eyebrows furrow at the end of each symbol. They were very thick, thick like fur and at one point, I started to lean closer to get a better look at their angles.

When she finished, she let go of my wrist lightly and I took my hand back, waving it around to dry. Then I placed my other hand on top and avoided peeking for the remainder of the night. She gave me mean smiles, disguising her annoyance with her white teeth. She tried to keep her head low, but I’d overhear her say from time to time, to all the boys who wished to take her home, her name, and how it wasn’t a boy’s name.

It’s Robin.

Robin Hood?

Just Robin

Never met a Robin before. Nice.

I thought about the marks she left on me the night before. I could see those bones on my forearm and I could see her take a hard bite from my skin, snapping quickly and sucking in my flesh. It left marks – a porcelain tattoo – and I remember thinking about my science class, about entropy.

At the end of that lyric-filled night, I was in a taxi uncovering my palm and saw, “WITH ALL THE LUCK YOU’VE HAD, WHY ARE YOUR SONGS SO SAD?” I immediately closed my eyes, felt that heat grow on my cheeks and in my throat. I held my head pressed firmly against the seat during the cab ride home, sniffing deeply from minute to second as if I had a cold. The driver looked back at me, then darted his eyes towards the tissues he probably kept in the glove compartment.

It was going to be a long ride, and I could feel his uncomfortable legs shifting, so I asked him, in a whimpery voice, “How long have you been driving?”

In the rearview mirror, I saw him lift his brows, checking to see if I was talking to him or maybe on the phone even though the question was clearly directed at him, and eventually he said, “Almost my whole life.”

I nodded, though I realized he was only looking at the road, and said, “You like it?”

“I don’t mind it,” he looked at me clearly, eyes darting back to the road from second to second, and I could see his dark green eyes and how his eyelashes were incredibly long for a man. Then he asked, “Are you having a good night?”

“Did I have a good night?” I said this slowly, calculating the positives and negatives and I thought about it, thought about the girl writing the note on my palm and replied, “Didn’t mind it.”

He gave a quick smile in the corner of his mouth, as if he had been there, right there swimming in my head, and he said, “Sounds like it was a boring night or a bad one.” He seemed so sincere, not flirtatious at all, just simply listening and taking in my words with the tide. I told him about my evening. The jump from bar to bar, me tailing my friends like a misshapen shadow and wishing I had just stayed home in that calm isolation – because it was the solitude that cooled me and didn’t withdraw from my emotions. I recounted to him the millions of conversations I had with people I didn’t even care about.

And as I was about to tell him about the girl and the note on my palm, he slammed on his brakes and my head darted forward and smashed against the back of the passenger seat. I yelped a little and gripped my hand over my nose, which was warm.

“Shit…” he said this under his breath and started to mutter apologies.

I could feel a little blood dripping from my nose from the strike against the headrest so I cut him off and held back my cry, “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I think…there was something. Hang on a minute,” he put his car in park, leaving the keys in the ignition and the car rumbling. He shoved his door open in the middle of the road, looked around for cars, but it was too early for anyone to be out. The sun had even begun to show itself. He walked to the front of the car, squatted down, and I didn’t see him for nearly a minute. I sat back, hoping that he wouldn’t charge me for it. When he stood up, the sky had become pink and much lighter and I could see his hair hanging in his eyes, but I knew he was looking right at me, right through the windshield. His tail of his white-collared shirt was hanging out comfortably. He stood like that for a minute, his back curved towards the cement and his hands held out in front of him.

He turned to his right and came back to me, sat in his chair and began to reach for his seatbelt mechanically. But he stopped, saddened and had something in his hand. He leaned over to the passenger side, took out a box of tissues from the glove compartment and placed the small body in the center, “Just a bird,” he said, “I swore I saw something.”

So I looked at my palm again, wondering the same, and rubbed it away to make those letters smear.

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 by alone and they seemed so uncomfortable at the idea, often looking at their watch as if they were meeting someone, and I labeled their hastiness under my breath – a farce. And always, always, always at the bottom of the coffee, the whisky, the end of the cigarette, I’d look around at the window and I’d follow it to the edges of the wall and then to the other two walls, and I’d start to think of myself as in the cage. Maybe they would look in upon me, so I planned to try to spread my feathers, do a little preening, and sit up on a post, looking at my slow watch pretending I wasn’t really divvied out somewhere, somewhere, somewhere else. The solitude was as solid as the shadows.

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 minute. I knew I had to leave, I had to mail the letter as soon as possible, but when I left my apartment, images started to bounce through my brain, even though I remember it being very dark and cloudy, and I remember how I kept keeping my eyes half-closed throughout most of the night.

I was lying there, on a bed that wasn’t my own, that was harder and didn’t like to soak in human flesh, and I was looking at the ceiling wondering if it would be easier to hang from it now that I was swimming around. I imagined myself hanging by my neck, not by a rope, but by a hand, and I wondered who owned that hand, that rough, thick hand, full of muscle and covered in hair. When the girl finally came through the door, she leaned her back in a corner, against the ropes, and slid down until she hit the floor. She put her face in her hands and started to ask me muffled question after question.

“Why is it,” she started, “that everything is so much easier for you. You don’t care about anyone, do you?”

I laughed a little, trying to keep my eyes on the ceiling and responded, “I don’t.”

“So why do people like you?” She started to whimper a little, her throat was turning red, I could hear that in her voice.

“People like me,” I paused because I wasn’t sure why, but I knew I had to be certain in this situation, “because they don’t really like themselves so they want me to like them.”

“Is that really true?”

“I like to think so.”

“Do you think I don’t like myself?”

“No, you don’t like yourself.”

“Do you like yourself?”

“100% of the time,” I said this with a smile and I could feel her gaze on me and I could feel the burn in her face because she believed me.

“You probably shouldn’t be here.”

“Probably not.”

“He’ll be home soon. He’ll want you here. Probably expects it.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“Why’s that? Why is that…?” She stopped, looked around her apartment, then at her hands, “Because he knows.”

“What does he know?”

“He knows everything about me. He knows my face – my eyes, my nose, my mouth. He knows when I’m angry and when I’m sad and he knows that when I’m happy…I…”

“You…?”

“I don’t even know when I’m happy, but he does.”

“Is that why you’re with him? Because he knows all of these things about you?”

She stood up, came over to the bed, and sat with her legs cross towards me. I kept my eyes up, knew that if I looked at her, I might see tears and I never really liked it when girls cried, mainly because I never knew what to say.

“It’s not okay,” I tried to whisper to her.

Then she took her hands and put them around my cheeks and brought my face towards hers and I thought how incredibly forward she was being and I hadn’t expected that. We rolled and I kept myself ahead of her, dragging my calm face from corner to corner until there was no more room to move. As her hands wrapped around my waist, I heard a door click and some heavy footsteps and I knew what was going to happen, I could see it. Then I felt something floating downwards from the ceiling, and it was all of these feathers, just floating downwards, every color you could imagine, not able to get out the window. I felt a deep desire to collect them all, put them in a duffel bag and run away, but I let them fall and hit the floor with a chime. She must not have heard the door click, but at one moment she finally noticed him and she flipped me over, straddled her legs across my stomach and began to claw at me, throwing some fists from right to left. I tried not to cover my face because I knew the whole situation was my fault and she had to protect herself. She took her fingers, her long nails, and began to claw at my neck, scratching every surface and wishing to remove all evidence of me.

When I left, he was sitting by the door, smoking a cigarette and giving me this awfully toothy smile. He looked at me for a second, up a down and calculating my worth, and I gave him another look that told him he should add more numbers to his equation. He put his hand out, in it an envelope, the addresses already written and the stamps already licked. I took it in my hands, felt the weight of it and gave him a nod. I could feel his stare as I left completely and even going down the stairs, out of the reach of his eye, I could still feel that terribly creepy smile being tattooed on my spine where I couldn’t really notice.

The walk home was dark and the cuts on my neck were starting to sting from the cold air, but I tried my best to wrap my own hands around it, trying to place value on those new, deep marks.

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 way too much. I don’t think witching is even used anymore. At least not like that.”

“We should go on an adventure then. That would be much better than a book.”

“Well, where do’ya wanna go?”

“Paris.”

“You speak French?”

“Ah, that never stopped the imperialists.”

“Good one. But still, Paris is too far away. I don’t have that kind of money, do you?”

“I just want to go away. Where? Who cares?”

“Well let’s go away to the backyard and have a cigarette.”

In the yard, they sat with dirt-stained feet in the cool, damp grass and stared at what looked like vanilla sprinkles decorating the coal sky. The porch light set a creamy yellow, attracting a mix of thick mosquitoes, tameless June bugs and clumsy moths.

“What a night.” There was a glance at Greta, whose eyes were set on the sky. Leaning close to her jaw, it was easier to see how it curved slowly towards her earlobe. Greta pretended not to notice and closed her eyes, trying to remember where each of the stars were placed. A sensation of warmth overwhelmed the side of her jaw and began to inch closer to her, she felt a hand rest against the side of her face and a turn. Once they stopped, Greta fell to the grass completely, moving her eyes to the stars again and thinking of how that kiss must’ve come out of a book. There was no need for an apology, or an explanation or admittance of guilt, for it all felt completely natural and like an adventure outside of the house.

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 safe. It started to beg through a nonverbal voice, some kind of energy. It started to look like a medicine bottle, so I took it back in my hands and reached in my corduroys, which were starting to sag. My money was running low and this job was going to be an easy one. Just sit here, maybe feed the fish, but definitely water the plants. They were only goldfish, and I could see them sitting on the side table next to me, circling the bowl, and I wondered if they would remember me. I wondered if they had some sorts of lenses in those large, bulging eyes. I wasn’t scared of that so much. It didn’t matter if they saw me, did it? I started to envy them, wondered if I poured some of the bottle in there, if they’d swim around happily like I wish I could, basking in complete weightlessness. Feeling a buzz in each neuron to make our heads stop aching. They started to make me feel dizzy, them circling like that, so I pulled the bottle opener from my pocket and swerved the small knife around the top to remove the plastic shield. I started to put the swirl of metal through the cork and I started to imagine that cork as my brain, it was the same color anyways, and the wood reminded me of the body of the large plants on the porch. It made a large pop as I pulled out the cork and I poured the cool liquid into the glass and watched it grow tall. It was such a cheap bottle, but it was easy.

And then I looked as the bottle became two and vacant, and that made the pit of my stomach not so light because it felt like the world became empty again and there was no refilling of the world because it was already full of loneliness again. I went to the porch and straight to the plants that leaned up against the edges like a barrier. The jungle was tall, but not so tall that I couldn’t see across the city. I started to take the leaves in my fingertips, felt their softness and rubbed my fingers from the stems to the tips, hoping to soak in the dew. They were dry though and I realized I hadn’t given them anything to fill the soil for a few days. I thought about taking the remainder of the glass and pouring it into my favorite plant, the dying one, its leaves collecting at the bottom of the pot on top of the soil. The tenants told me it needed the most attention, the most water and the most trimming and the most talking to, but I couldn’t bear to help something that was already nearly dead. It was like it was asking to be put into a new, more prosperous cycle of life.

I leaned over the ledge and saw those tall buildings in the distance with their lights dimmed and their curtains pulled closed. I wondered if she was out there watching me with thick binoculars, hoping that I’d finish that glass with one large gulp and I wanted to, but I knew that would make her get that smug smile and bright set of eyes. Then I looked over the ledge and the concrete looked so comforting, like a feather bed and I thought if I accidentally fell, I would just bounce back up and be thrown into space and fly and fly and float and I’d even take a star in my hand and put it to my cheek and hope that it would warm me again, like the heat from a heart-filled palm.

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 back, never reveal those secrets that were stored on the ventral side of her body. It is always much easier to stride away, walking towards something much grander, something that could tan her stomach. I was already sitting up, perpendicular to her with my back supported against the wall, my legs bent, and my arms wrapped around my knees. Watching the sun move the shadows on the wall, it always felt like centuries passed while I waited for her to open her eyes and start her morning routine. Dart her head up and make eye contact, one. Throw head back down against pillow, two. Finally sit up, back turned towards me, three. Scoot off to the bathroom, close and lock door, four.

That was usually the cue. When the door locked, I would go to her one of her bookcases and being rearranging. She wasn’t like me. I liked to keep things in order, alphabetize each novel based on the author’s last name, but her mind was hectic and she didn’t have patience for such things. I would spend those ten minutes she was hiding away in the bathroom taking the books from one shelf and rearranging it with another, but it was difficult work because she had five full-length bookcases all filled up with novels she had collected over the years. Twice every weekend, I would spend a total of twenty minutes doing this, maybe being able to rearrange enough to organize one shelf. Some books were strange and had blank covers, so I’d place them on the nameless shelf I mentally created. Sometimes I’d wonder if she even read those books, or if maybe they were all gifts or maybe stolen from some local library. The process was calming and becoming habitual, as if I was writing my way into her very own novel.

One morning a few months after I had first begun the ritual, she caught me, busted open the door and spotted me with four books in my arms, my eyes wide with suspense, her eyes rounded with confusion.

“What are you doing?” she smirked.

“I was just…organizing your books.”

“How are you doing that?”

“By the author’s name.”

“How orderly of you. I didn’t ask you to do that.”

One of the books fell out of my hands and smashed against the floor, the pages opening from the breeze coming from the window.

“Why did you decide to do that?”

“I just thought, you..er..it…your shelves could use some organizing.”

She came closer to me, her eyes fully focused and her eyebrows curved in a thinking manner, and she slapped the books from my hands and watched them drop on the ground on top of the first. The breeze was as strong as ever, throwing her hair from left to right, and she pointed towards the fallen books. I looked at them, in all of their mess, and finally saw that there was nothing to them. She picked another one off the shelf, opened it in front of me, and said, “Pretty cool huh?”

I took another off the shelf and another and another and realized that all them were completely blank, just these white pages with these covers of famous or obscure titles, all colored on the outsides like the average book, but completely wordless on the inside. The lie was funny to her. My organization of unmarked, lifeless books was even funnier.

“You want one? I have plenty,” she smiled again and started picking up the books from the floor, throwing them back on the shelf in a flat pile.

I sighed deeply, and took in another breath, and shook my head at her thinking Who needs these books? These books that can’t be read. Can’t be read. Can’t be read. Then my eyes followed her as she went under the covers.

You Can

Posted on September 18th, 2012

The thickness of the rope wrapped around her wrists reminds her of anacondas or spicy shoelaces. And though destruction happens every day, she must remind herself that specials are not automatic. Smiles are arduously strained each second; bank tellers or McDonald’s employees survive off of grease puffs and sweaty palms. The salty taste on every bill is licked from our fingertips with each burp or fart from the riches. Though delicately is used too often, she had written that word down on every piece of paper she was forced to write. She delicately lights a cigarette. He delicately fingers through his razors. The dog delicately whimpers from its cancer. Light the match and save a forest/trailer park by utilizing population control. Her eyes are magnificent, you know. A color I have seen too often, but it is different when those eyes are looking directly at you, not in an especially caring way, but you see this wave of intense security. It is sweeter when those trite eyes stare at you like you are incredibly talented in some fashion. Striking a chord in my mind, she sits up on the disgusting gray couch, completely mindless just staring at me. Her fuschia hair sticks in most directions in an awfully ugly way. Her natural brown hair color is seeping through it in streaks, but I still love it anyways. I may have accidentally awoken her, which she despises me for, I can feel that. But I leave in a few hours so she should be sitting closer. Her legs are bent at the knees and she’s sitting on the couch like an upside down V and I have always wondered how people sleep like that, with their legs halfway suspended. The strain from her dripping eyes is drained into her hands, which are entirely unique and smeared with mascara or some sort of blackness. Her tanned hands have no veins; her fingers are rounded and medium-sized, calloused from a guitar I’ve never seen. But it’s the mascara that drags my attention away. It’s the ugliest.

Unafraid

Posted on September 6th, 2012

If I took one of the moons, wrapped it in my fingers, put it in a plastic bag, and stuffed it into my freezer, I’m sure no one would miss it. Except me. I would miss its dark glow and its telling phases. Sometimes, the moon will whisper to me and say things about the people. I dare not stare at the moon too long, but I do see it in their eyes. Sometimes, it’s like a sideways smile and when they turn their heads, I know how they want to play. Other times, it’s half-full, glowing with boredom and labeling mostly everything as unimportant. Then there are the full moon eyes, a light circle spinning in confusion. I take these eyes in, determine their weight and color, then take an imaginary photo with my hands, my index finger clicking the button. I like to savor confusion.

There was one time when I captured the moon successfully. What most people don’t know is that the moon can move and shift quickly. During that particular night, a near early dawn when the sun dared to reappear and share its importance, I grew bored while taking a shortcut through a hiking trail near my house. For most of the walk, the thick trees were rustling, hiding me from the moon, but at one point, the trees thinned, and I got a heavy glimpse of the rounded moon. It began to taunt me, showing me bouts of attraction to my trailing loneliness. I ran through the trail, my feet beating at the mud, and when I reached the exit, I immediately veered and climbed atop the nearest building. I jumped from rooftop to rooftop trying to capture that moon. It had diversions, flashed bolts of cut meteor towards me, and tried to change its color, change its mood. Unafraid, I rolled and tumbled across the top end of apartment buildings, jumping over wide gaps that led to my death, and I took my arrow, attached to a rope and tossed it towards the moon. Miles and miles it flew, quickly shooting through the air, causing some drunken homeless men to stare upwards, quite afraid and thinking life was a dream. I could hear the men, booing me and cawing at me to climb down and give up. I ignored them, waited for the arrow to finish its course, waiting for the arrow to begin its first meal. Finally, about thirty minutes later, you could see me sitting on the rooftop, my hands under my chin and my eyes up as they always once were. I could hear it. The sudden, yet quiet sink of the arrow into the flesh of the dusty moon. It did not cry, only changed to a darker gray. Ecstatic, I took the remainder of the rope and pulled it towards me. Once I had it in my hands, I could feel its weight. It was heavy and began to beg me to do things for it. Tried to cast me under some spell. I abided, took a plank of wood, laid it on the concrete and used my hammer to smash it into a flat oval. I stuck a hole through the middle, wrapping a thin piece of string through and pulling it over my neck. I wore it for nearly a year.

No one seemed to notice the night sky anymore. They would look at the stars at times and a particular group of astronomers was confused by the lack of moon. Eventually everyone resigned it to the thick clouds. The night became darker and full of pests. I hadn’t realized the moon warded them off when it was free. I wore it selfishly, going to parties and hiding it beneath my shirt so no one knew I had captured it. Once, the moon escaped from its prison next to my chest and it glided around through one of my nightly parties, introducing itself and trying to become free again. People were taken aback, but interested. The moon was clever, wooing my guests, and making their eyes change shapes. My guests’ moods were submissive to it and the moon began to like its new job on the planet. It jumped out an opened window and I caught one last glance at its rear. It turned around once to meet my eyes, which were wet with disappointment, and it sent a silent message to me so no one else could hear or see it.

Good luck.

Once that moon left my grasp, it didn’t reach for the stars like I had thought it would, it actually remained alive during the nights, meeting various people. I heard stories of a man cracking it in half to see what was inside, but I don’t know if I believe that one.

If you look at the night sky, you’ll see another moon has deputized my moon. Though its shape is not the same, it is similar, and only I can tell the difference. It is smaller, more of a white, and likes to change its shape to confuse the stars as to its purpose. Because it is a newer moon, it is still learning how to spin around, and often waits until the sun is about to rise to do its real job, which is to listen to my secrets. Many moons will need replacing, I wonder, because my full-moon eyes tell me to keep trying to capture that blushing circle.

Lucifugous

Posted on August 31st, 2012

She told me to look at the darkened sky, to see the stars and the clouds and how they inched up upon one another as if they were trying to conceal the other. She’d say, they’re trying to be alone and in plain sight at the same time. I used to admire this habit of hers, her ability to stare at the sky in all its perfect naturalism and adore it.

She tried to show me the constellations and teach me something, but I never had an eye for stars. She’d tell me to look at this one, watch how it connected to a centerpiece to form belts. I’d nod and pretend I could see what she saw. And I realized my life was often full of moments like that, pretending to see what a stranger saw or believed even if it was a lie. Maybe I did it to comfort, to ensure the stranger that they were sane. They were stable.

Of course I see what you see. I’m normal. I’m just like you.

She wanted to become a botanist and I’d often giggle and ask her why she wouldn’t rather be a pilot or perhaps an astronaut.

Why would you want to dig around in the dirt, I’d ask, when your eyes have been staring up so long that they’ve changed to the color of the sky?

Then she would smoke and her eyes would fog over and I couldn’t see the sky in them anymore. In them, the avoidance of light. Clouds trying to mask the brightness, pushing to be visible.

I told her, I never loved you, but I think she thought I might grow to try. I’ve read about some women, about their obsessions with positive or negative attention. They grow this hatred when ignored by a boy. Some even annoyed their lovers intentionally to start a fight, just to gain a little eye contact.

There was never a good time for a phone call with her. People continued to call, her phone always busy. Beep, Beep, Beep. She never answered. She still never answers. I hope those callers didn’t expect to hear her voice after the fifth missed call. She told me once that she was afraid she’d be caught on the phone for too long that she’d have to lie — tell them that her phone was dying or that she had to feed her fish. I suggested new lies, but she refused to use them. She refused to gamble, lie, and lose a friend. But she did love to look at those clouds. Probably still does.