I want to write the kind of book that gives your brain papercuts. The kind you can’t stop scratching at cause how could something so small hurt so bad?
And I want to see who keeps scratching and scratching until they uncover something hidden deep in there that explains exactly how and exactly why. Exactly who they are in bare, raw syllables. I want to see who understands pain is part of the process of becoming.
And I want to see who just slaps a band-aid on it and pretends it isn’t there. See if they even finish it.
(I bet they won’t.)
I once had a hope for eternal sunshine.
And the core currents that wound tight my heart are different. And the old sorrows beneath my irises are dead leaves torn apart. And nothing is real unless I will it, but don’t worry because I willed us— once among the ashes of a life lived. But in fragments.
You are dead; I am death; souls are the everlasting reality of Earthdust. And this is now- a complacency in our timeline- and this is now- a dry burnt love to the skin- and this is now, as the goldenrod summer powers its way towards us: nothing. Nothing at all.
I took my fingers and touched my skin to remember I am real. I looked at my eyes in the mirror and believed that if love exists, then it is forever connected with death. My laughter sounded like the broken yelps of an ape in exile, and the moon shrouded the whole scene. Took my keys and drove to the highway we followed everyday. Screamed in song the whole way back home.
I once had a hope for eternal sunshine. It is gone with my past. I am better this way, I keep telling myself. I am better this way because I understand what is possible and what is impossible— in love and in life. Yet the fog that swamped around my windows brought me to a land that sought my own soul, and I wanted to return briefly, because back then I heard a universe in a single girl’s laugh.
The draft of the night seemed to pull my car back into the driveway. I sat at my kitchen table and reflected. The core currents that once wound tight my heart are different. My old sorrows are there, in my eyes (just look), but torn apart. Mixed. And that is my world.
I did it again; lifted my fingers and touched my skin. I wanted to know that I was real.
Just Friends
We’re just friends we say as we go to the movies every other Friday night. Once, we watched a crappy spinoff of Romeo and Juliet. I was afraid I was bugging you, constantly whispering how the characters relate to the actual Shakespearian piece. You told me you liked it when I did.
We’re just friends we say as we drive the back-country roads near your house, just because we can, out well past our bedtimes on a Thursday school night in your beat-up Ford. We lean over the dashboard, looking up at the stars that are starting to fade in pink morning light. You play the radio and whisper the lyrics under your breath.
We’re just friends we say as we see our favorite band together, screaming out every note of every song in harmony. I remember the way your face looked ecstatic as you crowd-surfed, your flannel shirt torn open and your middle fingers saluting the moshers below, and then the way you screamed my name when a wave of shoving in the pit knocked me to the cement floor. We went to Denny’s after, two in the morning, and ordered pancakes. I gave you my bacon and you helped me count my bruises because there were too many for my two hands. We smelled like beer we didn’t drink and cigarettes we didn’t smoke and other people’s sweat.
We’re just friends we say as I cheer you on at the regional cross country meet. You were in the winning pack with only one kilometer left when the guy next to you pushed you down. I remember the feeling of my heart shattering and my blood turning to ice when you fell, hitting your head on the flagpole, star-fished on the ground, and then the burning in my lungs as I screamed for you to get up, and watched you finish in 16th- the last place to make it to states- beating out the guy who pushed you over. You collapsed into my arms, wrist and ribs broken and red marks left over from half-inch shoe spikes. You lean heavily on me as we walk back to camp; you fade in and out of consciousness and mumble nonsense. I hold you upright as you vomit up Gatorade into the soft, wet grass.
We’re just friends we say as I call you at night, panicking and trying not to cry into the phone because I hate the sound of my own tears. I say no one understands, and you tell me about a guy with razors under his pillow and suicide letters rewritten a hundred times in shaky print. You sit on the other line with me for two hours, until I finally start to calm down and drift off. Before I fall asleep, you promise I will be okay. The next morning, you hug me for the first time before I even put down my backpack and don’t let go until I’m smiling again.
We’re just friends we say as one drunken night, you tell me you could marry me. Not now- maybe three or four years. I have a feeling we were more sober than we thought.
out of retirement
He’s nursing a beer as the door opens and a woman comes in. She’s holding a free drink coupon, but it’s all but forgotten now.
Neither of them felt Cupid’s arrows, which is just how he likes it.
He’s retired, but old habits die hard.
He can spare the free drinks if it means love gets another chance.
Cupid smiles and tucks his bow back under the bar.
Twirling Daisies
She gleans daisies because it reminds her of him. She sits at the coffee shop twirling its delicate stem and watching the petals glide onto the table, in a motion much like her heart, as the hours pass and he does not appear at the door she watches so intently. She continues to wait, and in an overstimulated state from too much caffeine, she changes her order to distilled water. This is her ritual every Friday afternoon. The staff call her “Patience.” Here is where they met; here is where they fell in love; here is where they parted ways. She often thought of never returning, but the walls are still seeped in their laughter and endless hours of verbal exchange in the form of childhood stories and their adoration for each other. She can still hear the conversation clearly amidst the atmosphere of clinking coffee mugs and the hushed murmur of blossoming love from the other patrons. He would bring her daisies when they would meet once a week for their ritualistic Friday afternoon coffee. It is the only flower she purchases now. She feels it would be a betrayal to look upon any other petal. It is the same reason she continues to return to this place. To go anywhere else would be a slap in the face of their time together and the bond they had formed which she thought would never disintegrate.
I wonder if I were to look through the window of this coffee shop 10 years from now on a random Friday afternoon if I would witness her sitting there, twirling a daisy and nursing her fourth coffee cup. How we hold onto hope to the point of never moving on. I nourish the vision of her twirling a rose one day and truly smelling it as she walks away.
The Selkie's Lover
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The sea is a cruel lover, cold and temperamental, but she loves him because he is all she knows, glory and despair, depth and width and flood.
She goes where he drives her and lets herself be battered by his storms because, after, oh, after. He comes to her then, in the debris of human things, in the predawn colours and the northern lights, he comes to her and presses a kiss of magic to her temple until she grows and slips into her other form, the one created in his image.
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Beauty without
I looked up into the plum tree. All of the fruit must have fallen off and been eaten by animals. The sunlight through the oxidized blood-colored leaves cast a warmth about me. As I closed my eyes to bask in it for a moment, something smacked me hard on my right jaw. I distinctly heard a muffled squish and felt a trickle of liquid running down my neck. I opened my eyes to see what appeared to be a retracting branch, part of the tree, and considered that I must be in shock because plum trees don’t retract their branches. Aware of the steady trickle of blood soaking my t-shirt, I ripped my shirt off to use it to stanch the flow of blood as I staggered as quickly as I could along the one-quarter mile path back to my house in a confused half-panic. I felt a bit drunk, as if I had been injected with a tranquilizer.
As I stumbled to the house, the light looked a bit chartreuse. This wasn’t tornado season and no storms had been in the forecast. I realized that my vision was impaired. I was experiencing severe horizontal gaze nystagmus and nausea. Paranoia set in as I heard sounds behind me like dragging logs over gravel. I knew if I tried to move any faster I would most likely fall down. My line of sight was severely limited at this point, but I turned back to see the source of the sound and could swear that the plum tree was in the middle of the path and moving towards me. I kept traveling to the house and made it there, but no one was around. My husband, my children, my parents, my cousins had all been there earlier, but now there were no cars around and everything was silent. I started to wonder if I was imagining that I had any of the those people in my life at all, as I could not recall their names or faces. The door was locked and I fumbled in my pockets for the key. Once inside gawking into the bathroom mirror, my face was unrecognizable. It was swollen and rough, as though all of my veins were enlarged and on the outside of my skin. The bleeding had stopped, but a black liquid appeared to be coming from a gaping hole above my jaw line. There was knock on the door and I must have fainted.
When I awoke, I felt pretty normal. I was in a bed. I sat up and and no longer felt impaired. My face didn’t hurt at all. I could hear voices in the kitchen, the children and their grandmother, perhaps. I wasn’t sure. I stood up to look at my injuries and recoiled from the reflection. I was not myself. My skin looked like the toughest leather. My eyes were extremely close-set and my teeth were horribly discolored and protruding. My hair was wispy, gossamer. I screamed and touched my face hoping it was a mask. As the sound of footsteps approached I hid in the corner of the room. A voice at the door called out, “Mary, are you OK?” My name is Jessica, and, thus, I replied informatively. The person giggled, “Okay, Mary. Dinner is almost ready. Since you weren’t well we cooked for you this time!” She bounded off. A feeling of bitterness overcame me. My previously elegant hands were gnarled and red. I had been a beautiful matriarch and now I was something close to beastly and apparently a maid of some sort. Surely this was a nightmare.
Years went by in my new, strange experience. I found joy in small things, but I resented my distinct lack of advantage. I could not accept that this was my reality and kept imagining that I was in a coma in a hospital somewhere dreaming all of this. Surely, one day I would awaken and my good life would be restored. The family was kind enough to me, but I was treated with pity and expected to cater and kowtow. This was not in what I thought was my true nature. A servant’s heart I had never had. I would often visit the plum tree in hopes of being clobbered again. I would hug its trunk and beg it to return me to my superior status. The plum tree would remain silent. I grew more and more bitter with every day. My sullenness did not go unnoticed by the family and they would often cavalierly tell me to brighten up. I felt hatred toward them.
When I thought I could stand it no longer and began to plan to take my own life one day, I noticed the same eerie chartreuse light outside. I ran to the plum tree, but nothing hit me. However, a sharp breeze whipped through the leaves at one point. I walked home and tried to search for a sign in the eerie light. No one appeared to be around and I grew excited that perhaps my ordeal was about to end. I ran to the bathroom and stared into the mirror. As I watched, my flesh shimmered and I felt that I was being turned inside out. The ugly exterior was turning inside and, after excruciating pain, what came out to the surface was me again. I fainted happily. When I awoke I was in my own comfortable king-sized bed and my princely husband was by my side looking worried. I bolted up and ran to the mirror, giggling with joy at my gorgeous exterior. Everything would be normal again.
I was beautiful and back to my more comfortable social status, but I couldn’t shake the memory of what I had experienced as Mary. Initially elated, I gradually began to feel bitterness. My husband looked at me strangely at times and I felt as though he could see something of Mary in me. He became distant and I became resentful. As time went by my children did not express the joy to see me that they once had. Why couldn’t I be satisfied with my apparent perfection?
To this day, I am not. I have become cruel. My therapist believes that I experienced a fugue state and that I have not been able to leave the experience fully behind. Yes, he is paid to tell me obvious things. I am angry. Mary is angry inside me. How can physical appearance determine how this world treats a person? The chance of birth, the genetic luckiness, the acceptable standards for beauty determine how we treat people. I am ugly inside, but you are all too willing to accept me because of my beauty without. There are creatures who live in caves and never see light. They are pale white, albino, practically transparent, yet they thrive. Perhaps someday we’ll be relegated to underground cave dwelling and what will matter to us will be what we can do for each other and the love with which we do it - not how we look while we are doing whatever we damn well please. Yes, Mary keeps me bitter and cruel. The false smile on my face fools the world and the world loves me for it.
XXXIII.
The truth is, if an apocalypse stared us right in the face, we would sit amongst hailing fire and scorching pieces of buildings with a bowl of sugary cereal in hand, leaning against one another in nonchalant laziness.
XXXIV.
I need to teach myself how to talk about us in past tense. Right after I stop beating myself up about the present.
XXXV.
Have you ever tried to catch your words in mid-air? It is the most heartbreaking thing. To accidentally utter inflamed anger because your veins were carrying approximately three-storeys worth of fire at that millisecond. Remember death? Now imagine you are responsible for invoking it.
XXXVIII.
I will hold onto thin air until it turns into to you.
At The Whisky Girl
Scott Syx / Russil TamsenAt The Whisky Girl, narration by Russil Tamsen, flash fiction by Scott Syx aka cheshirecatgrins. This piece said noir to me although updated. So I said noir back! 4’20”. An unlikely romantic encounter between a pair of drinkers starts at a noisy night club. The two grapple cautiously on the perilous road to intimacy - their respective emotional baggages are casting long shadows…
All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen is a narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit his ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com
I’d give anything to fill a bathtub with candle wax, to go up in flames with a sweet scent in your nose. I want to disappear. I want to be your goddamn ghost, I want to haunt your waking as much as your dreams. I want you to feel all the oceans you shoved in my body. my mind is a fishbowl being stirred with a wooden spoon. But I’m out from under your hands, your fingerprints are still bruised in my skin. I sit here, in this red chair, knees to my chest and coffee cup in hand, wondering what it will take to bring laughter back to my old bones. I’m crumpled up like a mistake on paper. You made this.
You don’t remember what the world looked like when they made you.
You don’t remember what the world looked like when they made you. Your parents’ clothing in those pictures belongs more to their youth than their lives as fathers, mothers, people. Men and women.
You were born in round numbers, 1980. Decades collapse in large forms, that’s so 90s, but you came when Disco spat up New Wave, there’s no Punk where you live. Your dad dressed like The Knack that night out in the City, your mom was Debbie Harry. They were dancing queens.
You don’t remember what the world looked like when they made you. Round number, 1970. Your father was a roadie with James Taylor cheeks and hair. Your mom was Laurie Partridge. She worked at the diner where your dad’s band came for coffee and open-faced roast beef and gravy fries. Their first date was the late shift 39 weeks before you met them.
You don’t remember what the world looked like when they made you, 2010. Your mother was a decoupage of 40s, 50s, 60s — your dad was Fukuyama. They were bangs and whimpers, open-sourced and empty, signifying nothing.
You are in a white room. There’s a bed at one end of the wall and a locked door at the other end. There is a window with a small crack in its corner. At first you think you’re in a dream. The silence is so powerful that every breath is magnified. Each movement of your arms and your legs, every pace is thunder and every touch is electric. You think you’re alone but you hear someone crying in the distance. Someone is shouting, somewhere so far away. And you can hear them. You can hear their soul break into a thousand pieces, that sound ripping through your chest. Suddenly you stop moving. Everything becomes still, so quickly. The cry is severed, a sharp cut like the cool metal of a scalpel blade. You’re waiting for something. You’re waiting for your breathing to start again, and your lungs start to move again. Everything is quiet now, and you realize just how lonely you are. Just how quiet you have to be to survive.
Can you remember how you got here? Can you remember the beginning of this dream? What makes the day and what makes the night? You wake up in the morning, or what you think is the morning, and there is food at your bed. The room never changes. You are in a little box with nothing for company but the ghosts you build from your imagination. You used to believe in good things. But now you can’t remember what people look like. You can’t remember if you were ever in love, can’t remember what you look like. Your nails pull away and your toes start to lose their feeling. You sleep, wake, and sleep again. You are in a white room. You can never leave.
Break The Glass
The glass slipped off my hand. As I was picking up the shattered pieces I thought to myself: ‘This glass underwent many processes and it took much time to be made perfect; why did it take only a single fall and a matter of seconds to be broken?’. Unfortunately, I don’t know. Why does it even matter? It’s only a glass. Why are we so cautious not to break a glass? Perhaps because our mothers told us not to break one. Perhaps because picking the pieces up will get us wounded. But we’ve broken a lot of things more important than a glass. And we’ve got more serious wounds: unseen wounds that don’t easily heal. Some things are meant to be broken. I’ve broken so many things, and it’s not as easy as breaking a glass, but I’m glad I did.
“What happened there?” mom asked.
“The glass slipped off my hand.” I said, “Sorry.”
“It doesn’t cost much.” she said.
There are things inside us that are meant to be broken: things we’re afraid to break because we are told not to, because we are used to them, because we believe they’re precious, because we think breaking them will hurt. But the truth is, once we’ve broken them, we would be free.
Break the glass; resolve your inner conflicts. Break the glass that encases you; set yourself free. Break the glass: your fears, your pride, your doubts, your insecurities, your pains. Break the glass as I do. Let it slip off your hands as I have let my life slip off my hands. Let God take the matter in His hands as I have I let God take my life, for the Creator knows how fragile life is, and He knows best how to handle it with care.
Stop. Full stop.
I trod the hot pavement away from your door. I knew each step was another door closed. The night was balmy and the gravel spat at me as I left. I felt screwed up and worn out. I felt the moons clipped lips and mute eyes on my body as I stepped over the curb. The palms of my swollen feet absorbing the shock of travel. You told me we had a connection, you spoke of travelling in foreign countries and things which cannot be caged by simple words. Your words however caged my simple heart. I looked away, I laughed at you, I danced the night with another boy. Your eyes bore through my performance.
I came home with you. Unwillingly yours. A whim. A fleeting fancy. An easy lay. It never was that simple for me. I lit a cigarette and rubbed the make up off my face where it had been undone. My carefully painted mask rendered flimsy, dissolved by your sweat and careless caress. It didn’t feel to me as if we’d had sex. I didn’t feel as if we’d fucked. It was a full stop. A black hole. A trap which I had fallen prey to.
Walking home. The nights breeze licking my legs. Kissing my hands. The breeze, I thought, treated me far more tenderly than you, my darling. The night lay in pieces around me. A shattered illusion which I nervously plucked shard by shard from my minds eye. Each step a closed door. Each step a nail in the coffin. Each step a protest. I trod the hot pavement all the way home.
An Interview with the Grim Reaper
I arrived early for our interview. That afternoon, I was wearing my favorite office attire. The light blue long sleeves with white stripes and the black pencil skirt bought by my Mom. I was wearing my lucky shoes, an Aldo black pumps. With the availability of a large mirror in the lounge room of that 5-star hotel, I took a glance of myself for a while. Damn,I look decent. With the accessories at minimum and my ID pinned on my blouse, I do really look like your ordinary news reporter.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
The Grim Reaper arrived 10 minutes late. His voice was raspy and dry as he apologized for not making it on time. I told him it’s fine, at the very least he’s present for the interview. He shook my hand and sat on the couch across me. His face looked dull and gloomy. Creases wore his forehead and cheeks down. Saggy eyebags populated his lower eyes. His lips were pale. His nose was crooked and etched with minute moles on top. His chin was slightly curved and his facial hairs weren’t groomed and trimmed. He wore his favorite all-black suit — a white long sleeves covered with a black tuxedo with a black necktie to complete the get-up. His pants were, I presumed, made of cashmere for the texture was evidently soft. His shoes were pointed and grimed with dirt and mud. He only had his long crane with him — no bags, no accessories — just his crane. I offered him a glass of water and he obligingly accepted it. He gulped the drink in one swallow and I could see his Adam’s apples twitching on both sides in his every sip. He’s having his difficulty in drinking. After a few casual exchange of “hellos” and “how are you”, I took my list of questions out and placed my tape recorder on the table between us.
[Start of Rec.]
Me: Good afternoon sir. First, thank you for accepting my offer for this interview. It is quite rare actually to hear your side in every story. What pushed you to speak up right now?
Grim Reaper: Good afternoon too. Well, for starters, you’re very much welcome. I kept my mouth shut for the past years, decades and centuries. For so long I roamed the Earth and collected souls for a living — I thrive on people’s death. That’s the very reason why I exist. To collect souls and keep it for my own selfish way of living. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t forced to speak up at this moment for I chose to do so, not forced. People these days, especially the young, think of Death as an escape — an escape to their problems, struggles and difficulties. They die because they don’t want to live anymore. And that is sad.
Me: You told me earlier that you thrive on people’s death, correct?
Grim Reaper: Yes.
Me: Then why do you think that it’s “sad” to die on your own? To die to escape from life when you will be the obvious beneficiary of such death?
Grim Reaper: The fact is, Death is not just a simple game of killing a human — it’s an art. Dying is a man’s last masterpiece. In my eyes, when I see the pain and struggles of the souls I’m taking, it feels like a paradise of abstracts, portraits and landscapes combined into one frame. When I get the feeling that someone is going to kill himself, I don’t enjoy the view. I don’t find the piece beautiful. It’s like a blank canvas with tiny dots and colored lines — a dull and plain death.
Me: You still have your taste in dying. Why do you think suicides are dull?
Grim Reaper: Many people in this world are striving to live and struggling to keep themselves alive. Every efforts to keep on going adds up to the challenge and subtlety of the piece. In other words, a pizzazz. When you kill yourself, just for the sake of escaping life, I don’t see the pizzazz that I wanted to see. Of course it’s fun and all that more souls are keeping me alive but in reality, it’s a pity. It’s such a waste to see people die from their own hands. There’s no thrill.
Me: I can sense from your words that you still care for the living humanity, even if your source of immortality is death, correct?
Grim Reaper: Yes. Humans are wonderful and beautiful entities that live on this Earth. They are living context of ideas and thoughts with the power to influence and talk to each other. They also have the power to love and be friends with one another. I admire those characteristics of the living for such characteristics don’t exist in me.
Me: I’m beginning to see how deep and loving you are, Grim Reaper. Of course minus all the soul-taking obligations and stuff, but really. You do still care about the humanity.
Grim Reaper: Yes. I do. But most humans don’t care for themselves. Humans don’t realize the gift bestowed upon them and they carelessly put it into waste. Human hurting, teasing, blackmailing, bullying, killing and causing pain to another human is truly one devastating sight. Such sight can lead to suicide, and I hate taking souls of the suicide victims.
Me: I see your point. Any last words to the readers of this interview?
Grim Reaper: You all should appreciate life as you know it. Enjoy the gift. Cherish every moment and live with it. A time will come that I will come and get you, and that time would be that right time for you. Don’t make me come for you in your own decided time, it’s sad to take souls in that manner. So live on, be happy and be free. We’ll meet someday, at some point when you’re ready to leave the Earth.
Me: Thank you for the interview Mr. Grim Reaper.
Grim Reaper: It was pleasure talking to you. Good bye, and see you, when I’ll see you.
[End of Rec.]
He hurriedly left the lounge to take more souls to keep himself alive. I talked to the most feared entity in this world — the soul taker, the Grim Reaper. But somehow, the life taker gave me the hopes of being and staying alive. He made me appreciate life in a new light and inspired me to live happily and just continue on living.
Such words. Thank you, Grim Reaper.
27.
The ceiling fan whirled 278 times. It whirled 278 times before he got irritated with the sexual tension that seem to tango in the air. Our silence, were dancing on fire. And our glares conveyed the scorch that seem to throw more gasoline to that, used to be tiny spark. That tiny spark that somehow, grew bigger and became inextinguishable. I know this, because I watch how he tense up, when I catch his eyes surveying me. Like I see myself beyond his mind, and watch myself spread-eagled inside his head. I’d catch his brown eyes, change to black. Hooded by the carnal uproar singing in his eyes. He watch as I try to hide my restraint, by looking away, but I’d get lost to my battle and bite my lower lip instead. Trying to control the tigress-like reflexes, that wishes to unravel him. Time held its breath and so did we.
276. 277. 278——-
“That’s it.” He captured my lips like knots on shoelaces. He governed it. He push his tongue like a serpent to the entry of my mouth. Coaxing me to come hither. I gave in, but not to his pleading. I gave in because, I seek to have him in ruins too. To have him, yielding to my whim. I bit his lips as I surveyed his mouth, and hear him moaned a guttural noise. A direct whiplash to my groin. My hands were exploring, his were like decrepit vines, entwining around me———everywhere. Reaching my hindered secrets, and hovering where clothes shouldn’t be. He stepped back one step, and I was confused at first. He stared at me—-breathless and hanging to dear life, to a need that seem insufficient to shut down. I was purring to have his way to me. But he just lingered a step away from me and then he took my hand. Held my moist open palm on his lips and half-kiss and half-lick his way slowly, to my fingers, knuckles, hand, arm, shoulder, neck and before I could combust into pyrotechnical molecules.
“I may have fucked you already in my mind many times in my sleep, but I’d always wake up wanting to make love to you instead.” He whispered my undoing. It felt like hot and molten against my left ear. The half-groan and half-sigh I gave out to him, to have him prove his point. He grinned a devious grin. A grin, I can only answer back with my nails burying on his shoulder blades. He took off my clothes like shackles burdening me. Swiftly and masterfully. And I shared his gift. As milliseconds passed, we are all flesh and heated breath. He carried me, eyes not turning away. He was magnificent to look at, basking in the midnight moon. He textured my body, with his mouth as a serpent. Leaving no borders of my being, unturned, unexplored, unnurtured. By his lovely, lovely mouth. He knew the shortcut to my core. The one where, I hide the secrets to my downfall. He didn’t stop measuring my limit, he kept turning my world into chaos, with nothing but his tongue and mouth. Until, he ventured my sanctum with his two fingers. I felt like, the stitches of my skin were liquefying. It felt heavenly.But nothing feels more marvelous, than his slow claim inside me. As he slowly conquer me, slowly driving me into the edge of red velvet. He showed me the corners of my being, how I can morph into any form, he molds me to. He was driving me into the edge of a cliff, and at the very edge of it, we freefall——an endless descend into oblivion. He gave in, as did I. Eyes of honey, melting with eyes of bourbon. He kissed my lips one last time and held my hand to his. At that moment, I lost count how many times the ceiling fan whirled. All I care is this, in my hands.
It was as if the world just came up with a valid reason, for me to live again.
Tonight, it was instantaneous.
Sometimes, when it’s really quiet and really late, I’ll let myself go there.
I’ll write a little one act play in my head in which you and I are the only players. I will be beautiful and desirable and float about in something diaphanous and my hair will move when I walk as if picked up by soft breeze. You will be achingly handsome and adorably eager and profess that you want me more than life itself. There will be a muted backdrop only hinting at a location, maybe Paris, maybe New York, but always it will be a place where people fall in love. Sometimes I will resist your advances initially, and other times I will fall instantly and irrationally in love with you. But every time, when the curtain comes down and the stage goes dark, we will be in each others arms, making plans for forever.
It’s really quiet and really late and I’ve let myself go there again.
