Only Fourteen
“Jesus, she is only fourteen” he thought, pulling a blanket around her delicate shoulders. Fourteen.
Her hands were balled into savage fists, eyes hooded with practiced vacancy. Her malnourished pre-pubescent body was on display in thigh highs and a low cut top. There was no cleavage, because she was a goddamn child and he felt sick.
13 years and 2 months ago she was as innocent as his daughter, and he couldn’t help but think of all the men he would kill if it meant shielding his own flesh and blood from this.
“What’s your name?”
“Lina” her voice so young.
“Hi Lina, my name is Officer Caine. Do you know where we can find your mother, or a guardian?”
Lina shook her head in a definite no directing her gaze at the ground.
He’d expected that. More often than not, this was a case of parents selling their children. Desperate times desperate measures… Bullshit he would never understand.
“Okay, where do you live Lina?” His voice was friendly and unassuming. It was his greatest sorrow that this conversation was a repeat.
Lina looked down the street, almost empty save a few homeless men sticking beer bottles into their pockets. In this part of town the red and blue lights of a squad car incited a mass evacuation.
“Down there.” Caine assumed she meant the broken down apartment building at the end of the block.
“I can’t go home now.” Lina added wistfully, “I think they’ll be mad.”
Her detachment crept into his spine. Caine looked at this girl, her wide eyes incapable of unseeing. The injustice and tragedy in that pulled at Caine’s heart. He promised himself she would never have to go home again. He would personally shield her from whatever realities she was left to deal with.
Even if it meant killing a man.
My fingers quickly swipe at the water droplets forming on the nape of my neck. Smile, I remind myself. And so my lips stretch awkwardly filling the bottom half of my face. From my perch in the trees I look down at all the people watching me. The front row is filled with unwavering love, the second a testament to my affection, a third stand proudly gazing at my so called achievements. But with all the pristine eyes focused on me, only a few stretch to the heat of my skin. Three fiery pairs in the back row that glance in my direction for a moment before turning away in boredom. I raise my voice for their attention and sink back if they hear it. I see only them and they see everything but me. The world lie before their feet and I am the down trodden past behind it. I miss them. I miss it all. The excitement in their eyes, the passion in their voices. I glance at those love-filled faces nearby and smile back but they know I don’t believe them. Those three turn their backs without a second thought and with them, my own heart turns against me. It’s cruel but it’s the truth. I sit upon the trees and watch my skin grow duller by the day. One by one the others turn on me and I stand there helplessly. There’s nothing I can say to call them back. My voice grows weaker by the second and by fall I may be mute. Those pain staking eyes burned right through me. What am I to do? I can no longer see myself. Can you?
all of my love letters are always too late, but take this anyway.
The truth is, I will love you even in the midst of all these collisions in my head. There will be angry nights in which I want nothing more than to snap the wishbone of my hips in half so that you can never get the chance to fuck me back into yours, but there will also be nights in which I put my mouth to your scars and suck the sorrow from your bone marrow.
The kind of love I choose is the ruthless one. The one that makes it hard to breathe when you’re gone and that twists my insides into unrecognizable territory. This is the only world that I get to live in for now and I do not want to waste the days I’ve left being scared to give the softest organ in my body away to foreign hands; I will thrust it into your palms and let you do as you wish, standby on hiatus as I fold my arms over my chest and fall backward into the transparency of your trust.
And if I fall, darling, if I fall into a vastness filled with nothing but cigarette burns and razor blades, so be it. I will wear your fear with pride. I will wear your bitterness during the most intimate moments and I will never hold another’s hand; I will wilt away like this, burdened with the need to fuse my flesh to yours and if it is too late for that, if it is too late for me to love you properly, I’ll know it when I look into the barren warfare of your darkened eyes.
And I will love you silently, from far away, with wishes pinned to the cardboard of my homeless chest. I will love you in cacophonies and hopelessly and I will be thankful that you existed next to me for however long you have and when you come to say goodbye to me, do not do it tearfully. Do it with the knowledge that there is now a heart in me which will never be able to belong to another.
The truth is, i will love you even when you’ve left. I refuse to believe this is a tragedy. This is my heart finally learning how to say hello. This is the pearl under my tongue opening up for you, the crystals in my lungs exploding stubbornly in your name, the worlds in my head recreating the big bang.
The truth is, our love is revolutionary (and I can only hope you’ll be there beside me to watch the world go down, not as a distant memory in my heart, but as an entity standing next to me, holding hands, jumping into the pit of this runaway world together).
This is your alone.
It’s 22:09 and the clock won’t move fast enough for tonight to be over already. There’s a girl who has inhabited every space inside of you, whose voice won’t stop ringing in your ears, whose name won’t stop spilling from your pen and into the margins of your notebooks and line breaks in your poetry. There’s a crowded room inside your heart you have to leave just to breathe a little bit. The walls of your bones are caving in tonight, and you don’t know where to go.
It has been weeks since your rib cage smiled. Your fingers hover over the keys trying to find a safe landing that will describe the scream in your skin, and the hollow in the womb of your stomach, but no string of sentences can ever be enough. It seems as though the sun fell asleep for too long, the stars decided to play hide and seek with clouds that burst and mimic your eyes, they are so squeaky clean- you don’t know when they’ll dry.
Streetlights blur by your windowpane, and days blink into nights. You think about a certain kind of sadness that has become your friend, become the answer to the empty side of the bed, the no longer stranger sleeping in your chest. You stare at the naked ceiling, the spinning fan, the tired bulb, and you wonder when you stopped seeing things. You scroll through a list of names you cannot call, a list of names you wish you could, and everything seems the same. Your nails play games with the lining of your skin, your teeth teasing your lower lip, and you wonder when you stopped feeling things.
All the words you cannot find the courage to rescue from your fear swim to the basement of your throat in a ball of Christmas lights you cannot see through the thickness of the fog. Memories play in infinity loops across your mind, and secondhand sunshine trickles through them. You realise that this right here is your solitude. Your lonely. The only thing you have when everything leaves as it always does,when autumn always comes- this is it. There’s a girl who doesn’t realise she is holding the puppeteer’s strings to your heart, and the slightest tug could pull it together or tear it apart. There’s a glass that has been empty even when it’s half full, that has been half full even it’s filled to the brim. Your eyes cannot stop from leaking and flooding the floors of your faith. This is your alone. You glance at the clock and it’s 22:10.
autistic summer
I realize you won’t miss me like I miss you. No matter how I phrase my sadness you cannot empathize with me, cannot feel what I feel. Any further effort to try to make you understand seems cruel and unusual — “I will be gone for a long time, okay? You should be upset about it because we are friends.”
Retreating into the knowledge of your disorder, I find solace. I know there is nothing I can do to change your emotions, or lack thereof. I know in your own special way you will miss me. You will miss tickle fights and balance beams, dance parties and nap time. You will use all you learned with me to further your life, hopefully in increasingly social ways. You will adjust to your new routine and no longer miss these things, but for a fleeting moment, I know you will miss me and our time together.
I will miss you, my young friend, and I hope you have a great summer.
It was a year before we decided that something had to be done about our brothers apartment. I guess we had been expecting something to happen during those first twelve months. We were hoping for some news to reach us, for a phone call or email, anything.
The first three months were the worst of all. A feeling of anxiety followed us everywhere. A dread that never left us. Whenever the phone rang I felt a cold terror flow out from the center of my chest. My heartbeat tripled and my the palms of my hands were suddenly sweaty.
I woke late at night and I would know that the phone was going to ring at any second. The news would be bad. They had found his body beside a road somewhere, broken and bloody, torn apart by wild animals. I knew.
The call never came.
Months later, my younger brother told me had similar experiences. He would tell me that he woke in the early hours of the morning with the certainty that Jim had been in the room with him. That Jim had been talking to him, telling him things he didn’t really understand, things that scared him half death. He said that Jim had been standing in the doorway to his room and that there was a impenetrable darkness behind him, something beyond black, and he had a feeling the darkness was reaching out for Jim, that at any second the darkness would envelop him and Jim would be gone, lost forever.
After appearing on a nation wide talk show where my younger brother and I appealed to the public for any information about Jim’s disappearance, I remember feeling that I had been talking directly to Jim. When the cameras were on me and expressing my grief and confusion I remember thinking the lenses were his eyes on me. I felt that Jim had heard every word we said, that he had heard our cries for help, and that if he had a way of reaching out to us he would.
Have you ever stood in the home of someone who has not been there in over a year? Let me tell you how you can feel the emptiness like a weight. Let me tell you how the air feels thick and heavy and about how no matter how many windows and doors you open you can not shake the feeling that the air itself is trying to suffocate you. Let me tell you how you feel like you are doing something wrong, that you are in a place you should not be, that you are sneaking, invading someones personal space. Let me tell you how you expect, at any moment, for someone to burst in screaming, demanding that you leave, now, at once.
On the final night of packing up his things I fell asleep on the sofa in Jim’s study. I fell asleep reading one his notebooks, reading the fragments he had jotted down, stuff about things, beings that lived on the cusp of this reality, evil things that called from the darkness. When I woke my breath was caught in my throat. The phone was ringing, but this was impossible because the phone had been disconnected for months, and I remember thinking exactly this. This is impossible. And I remember being afraid, my skin literally crawling with fear as I leapt from the sofa and rushed to the kitchen. I remember cradling the phone against my ear and listening and I remember I heard what sounded like fierce winds howling and voice calling from such a distance the words were barely sounds at all. Jim, I said, Jim, it’s okay. We’re going to find you. We love you Jim. Stay where you are. I’m coming.
Is this Revolution?
Slowly but surely the night has slipped away
What once was can never be again
For I am the only man who can show you what freedom truly is
Give yourself over to me
Trust in the words I speak
and follow closely
Silently we must go
For they make their rounds near midnight
and judging by the moon I would say the hour draws near
The first to fall shall be the damnedest of us all and in hell we shall visit him nary twice a year with arms overflowing in gifts of gratitude we shall march through the games of Hades and deliver to him a short reprieve. Known for all time as a prince among men, his legacy shall give birth to noble sons and lovely daughters for whom temples are built and songs are written.
On my wings men
Clutch tightly
and speak swiftly
Do spill the secrets of ancient times
Has our story been written
are we simply playing our parts
reading our lines
and following stage directions which lead us to our doom?
Lie if you must, but know this, when the dust has settled and the smoke has cleared, it will be the winners who write the history books. So be steady and aim true. Kill with your hearts and not with your minds for the instinct of man is self preservation. And what truly matters in the end is not which side was right but which side held the might.
For you see I am man and all that I am is all that I can be and all that we can ever hope for is to be free.
So do what you must and do what you will
Do it for truth, not the thrill of the kill
Is this poetry spoken by a poet
Or a death rattle choked from the throat of a tyrant
I ask you to do your best to heed my advice
I ask that you pay close attention to the words I speak
Sing me true as if your life depends upon it.
The last time we speak will be recorded into history as an epic on par with homers tale of a journey in search of home. Because after all isn’t that what we all hope for? A grand adventure with many trials and tribulations which eventually lands us in the arms of our lover? And to hold her close as she whispers in your ear while caressing your flesh in the way only a best friend can. Not the pleasures of a whore but the familiar warmth of true loves embrace
Brass keys and Cages.
He mark’s me with crude graffiti like symbols tagging the columns of my vertebrae with his name. Marked, claimed and taken. A massacre to take over this territory, blood shed and violence, he’d hold your silence with your tongue tied in bows. Pretty knots in which he manipulates my coherence looped and pulled tight. I’m smiling despite not breathing and wading through the thick lights that chain my ankles to hold me down. Brass keys tease the tip of my nose down to my sternum; strokes of a cold caress that branch and licks inside of my body like trees to window panes. He ponders on how to punish me while I smile inside my cage as he locks the door.
It’s simple; the moments gone are torture enough, even in sleep I am punished.
You Talk Too Much
Immediately I hate it. Without any warning, it was practically a guarantee, but if I’m being honest, I’d have hated it even if they let me pick the color. My jukebox was gone. All of the familiar scratches, the chipped buttons, the long-dead tubes of neon, and selection K13. In its place, a touch-screen television tacked to the wall, a video jukebox with all the comfort and familiarity of a kick in the teeth. I make a solemn promise to St. Cecilia that I will never drop a quarter in the damn thing, and then I find out my vow is useless. It only takes cards.
I watch anxiously over the shoulder of the co-ed in front of me. She’s got a glass of something blue balanced in one hand, and she’s idly tapping away at the screen. When she queues up “Like a Prayer” I briefly consider asking her name, but settle for saddling up on a bar stool and having another bourbon and ginger ale added on to my tab. The college kid to my left throws me a “right on man!” but I shrug it off and stare at the new screen above the bar, where it’s 1989 and Madonna’s dancing in front of black Jesus and burning crosses.
The kid orders another beer as the song transitions, and suddenly I’m stuck watching something modern, some vaguely attractive blonde, wearing a war bonnet and belting out auto-tuned trash-pop. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever heard.
“Jesus Christ! She should be hanged.”
I slowly peek over at the college kid, his face covered in outrage and a terrible beard.
“‘Scuse me?”
“Her,” he points up at the screen, “wearing that Indian headdress. That’s a holy relic to them. It’s so offensive! I mean, I’m one sixteenth Chickasaw, and it bothers me, you know? It’s just not right to do something like that because you think it gives you swag.”
I vaguely remember my mother saying something to me when I was younger about not judging people so easily. I like to think I’d followed her advice for the most part, but this kid was exempt the moment his mouth opened. I contemplate keeping mine shut, but my jaw is well oiled from the bourbon.
“You know the Chickasaw didn’t wear those, right?”
“Excuse me?”
“The Chickasaw. They’re a south eastern tribe. Those war bonnets are staples of the great plains tribes. Wouldn’t catch a Chickasaw wearin’ one,” I answer, looking at the bartender and tapping on my empty glass, “And I’m pretty sure we stopped calling them Indians a long time ago.”
“Okay. Fine. It’s not offensive to my lineage, but it’s offensive to an entire group of people,” he retorts, peeling at the label on his bottle.
“Listen. You just watched Madonna dancing around in front of a bunch of goddamn burning crosses and catch a case of stigmata while feelin’ up black Jesus. You didn’t say a word. You think that girl up there’s makin’ an artistic statement? You think she’s got somethin’ against a whole culture? Man. She’s just wearin’ a fuckin’ hat.”
He stares at me in shock and silence, like I’ve just burned all the soy and wheatgrass on the planet. I still hate the new jukebox.
You reverberate within me, reeling me into a delirium, an LSD incited high where everything turns the color of your eyes or disappears. The hue seems to weep through my irises, saturate my frontal lobe and bludgeon my mind into senseless flesh. I wander around, depth perception annihilated, because when I began to fall for you, I didn’t realize how deep this abyss really was. Sober, I would never have allowed myself to. But in the stupor of your eyes, I was defenseless against any attack, especially from your front.
See I wrote this for you, broke every bone along the backs of my hands and pressed them into the sidewalks outside my house, blood being a lot better than ink when it really comes down to it and this being the last thing that I would ever write:
My lips still know the name given to the nape of your neck, but my mouth stutters around the fringes of words when I catch you looking over at me. I lose the ground. My grip on my own gravitational pull, my sense of self. I flake to pieces around the heels of your palms and gather myself up in the soft spaces cupped all through your chest, the coin shaped indentions deep enough for my fingers can to fit through, and just small enough to leave my words out in the cold. I wanted to say something about dying, but everything I say is about dying, and about nothing, so I can tell you only this. That I’ve loved every piece of you for years and years before I even knew, and that whenever you look at me, I fold. I bent into myself like origami paper. Everything inside imploding and imploding again as I stop being me, and become something else, entirely.
I.
On our first date we broke all the rules, and talked about religion. I told you that I thought if Princess Diana hadn’t died in a car crash, she would have drowned in the sea of flowers delivered from across the world to the home of the family who had rejected her, wilting outside of the gates of Buckingham Palace as I imagine our souls wilt once they die, caving in on themselves until they are nothing but free flowing energy, lost in the oxygen that invades our sky. You smiled politely and replied that you were Catholic and didn’t believe in ghosts, pointing to the Bible passage inked across your chest, as if an imprint of God’s Word across your body made you more special, more pure, more holy than the rest of us.
Because God knows it didn’t make you more humble.
II.
The morning after the first night we spent together, I ran my hands over your back and spelled out in braille the date that you would leave me, as if I were reading the lifeline of our relationship in the curve of your spine. I connected each freckle on your skin with the dimples on your back until I had recreated Scorpio’s constellation across your body, covering your tattoo with the invisible trails of my fingerprints across your skin. You woke up two hours later and asked me what was wrong, said I looked as if I’d seen a ghost. I replied by tapping out in morse code on your kitchen counter the date that I had read in the bumps of your spine, and saying that I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.
III.
The day you left me you didn’t tell me where you were going, you just left. And the next day at school the only part of your body that was still open to me was the back of your neck as you sat in front of me, not daring to turn around and see the lover you’d left to drown. You treated me as if I were the snake that had tempted Eve and turned the Garden of Eden into nothing but an unattainable fantasy. As if loving me were the greatest sin you could ever commit, and I was the lustful siren that had steered you off course and led your life to the shallow waters of love where the rocks of guilt splintered your soul at every twist and turn of our relationship.
The day you left me I’m sure that you rejoiced as you convinced yourself that you weren’t gay, that this was just a trial, that I was just an experiment and the results had proven that you were straight. You used me and left me high and dry, and if there was any sin committed in our love affair, that was it, and you are solely to blame. Because any God that condemns love but commends breaking a soul into a million pieces to save yourself from his wrath is not a God I want to believe in.
IV.
Two months into our relationship, you stormed out of our house, slamming the door so hard behind you that I mistook it for a clap of thunder and said a silent prayer to Zeus in an attempt to calm your fury. I watched as you slammed your fist against the metal of the car that once contained all our hopes and dreams for a future, before leading you back inside, stripping you of your clothes and leaning you over the kitchen counter. In the dim light I formed crosses on your back with the honey from my tongue, as you stood stock-still, pulse slower than I’d ever felt it before.
For a beautiful moment I let go of my un-beliefs and embraced your vision of heaven. But instead of seeing a martyr on a cross or a chorus of angels, I felt you breathing beside me, inhaling each breath I exhaled, as if I were your lungs working to pump oxygen through your body, working to keep you alive.
That was the first time that I realized what the difference between love and desire was.
V.
I remember the day you stole me away, sat in your car, idling on my front porch, waiting for me to drop everything and join you. That was just two weeks into knowing you, and my mother had always warned me not to talk to strangers, but she’d never said anything about leaving with them.
We drove for four days, drinking Red Bull and singing along to the radio as Led Zeppelin turned our wanderlust into words, our voices meshing together until we didn’t know where one of us began and the other ended. On the open road we entered into a marriage of three parts, like you always wanted, but we left Jesus in a gas station Phoenix because he wasn’t brave enough to cross the border without a passport.
VI.
Six days before you left me, I could feel it in my bones, the way the people of South Africa must have felt Mandela’s prison number, 46664, shake through their history books and rewrite the pages, as time moved forward and change, the only constant, progressed. I watched our relationship fall to pieces, slowly at first as our arguments grew shorter and our silences grew longer, then seemingly all at once when you packed up your bags and walked out the door. I felt like we were Rome in July, burning to the ground with nothing to do but to stop and stare at the train wreck that we had become. But you didn’t want to live in my metaphors anymore, and I didn’t want to live with your God anymore, so we let ourselves burn to the ground without bothering to salvage anything from the wreckage, the ashy remains of our relationship: sugar burnt over melting pages of your precious Bible covering the mix tape I had made you after our second date.
Sarah, we really made a mess of this
When he found her body he washed her with a warm face cloth like a murderer wiping away incriminating evidence. He washed each inch of her, slowly, with adoring attention. He changed her underwear and dressed her in a clean shirt. He held her cold hand and waited for the authorities.
Never would he describe these moments to anyone. They were his alone, to carry, talking about it wouldn’t lessen the weight. He doubted he would experience something so silent and devastating again and by choosing never to reveal it he felt he was denying himself the pity of others.
His punishment would be to go through life never allowing anyone access to his wounds, keeping silent, holding the pain like a secret treasure.
He would never allow himself the pleasure of someone telling it was okay, that he shouldn’t blame himself, that he deserved happiness, that he was a good person capable of being loved and of loving.
Years from now he would be miles away, in another country, and he would be drinking himself sick when this image would appear in his mind - his hand holding the cloth that cleaned her skin. And he would remember how he had loved her more than ever at that moment.
And how, for an instant, he imagined that loving her that much was enough to bring her back to life. He saw her opening her eyes, the colour coming back to her skin, a nice warm glow. He would lean down and kiss her on the forehead and it would all be as a dream.
Of course, she was dead. He’d known as much when he’d discovered her in the bathtub, a mass of dark hair floating like strange seaweed in red water. He stood there for perhaps too long, frozen in place, something like a groan caught in the back of his throat.
When he dipped his hands into the water to find her it was cool on his skin and his immediate reaction was to pull away, to actually turn and flee from the room with its red water now lapping at his wrist, from this room and the cold tiles beneath his bare feet. He could turn and flee, run, run run. Never look back. Not think about any of this again. Pretend this never happened.
He was good at that.
Instead, he pulled her from the bath and attempted some useless parody of resuscitation. When he put his mouth to hers and tried to force oxygen into her lungs all he got in return was a mouthful of red water and in an almost panic he spat it on the tiles and beat at her chest with his fists, red water bubbling at her lips with each strike.
Before long he realized that the strange noise that seemed to fill the bathroom was his own vocal cords moaning. Jesus, he thought. Goddammit, he thought. Fucking hell, he thought.
The woman on the other end of the phone told him to stay on the line but he disconnected and carried her waterlogged body to the bedroom and placed her on the bed. He cleaned and dried and dressed her body and then sat there holding her hand.
The Most Interesting Interaction of My Day
Every Tuesday - I have to give it a schedule or I’d forget when I got it and get it every day - I go to the only Starbucks I know about for fifty miles and get a Chai Tea Latte.
Don’t judge me. It’s goddang CHRISTMAS IN A CUP. I’ll slap you if you diss chai.
ANYWAY.
I pull up to the drive-through and it’s not even eight in the morning. I don’t have to wait long, but the girl in the SUV behind me is distracting me because she’s putting on make-up and talking on the phone at the same time. And driving. And the Impala in front of me waits for ten seconds after he has enough room to move forward in the line. Probably texting.
Who does he have to text at seven-thirty in the morning?
“Hey, man. Can I take your order?” I can see the barista from the order panel. He’s a husky guy with glasses, a goatee, and spiked brown hair.
“Sure, ‘man.’” I say. Stressing the “man” as strongly as I can. “I’d like a Venti Chai Tea Latte, please.”
From where I’m sitting, I see the guy start laughing on the other side of the glass. I now fully understand what Clement Clarke Moore meant when he wrote “He had a broad face and a little round belly, that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly” in “Twas The Night Before Christmas.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that,” he said.
“Venti Chai.”
The next transmission was muttered. I thought I heard “What-” and “want-“
“Venti Chai.”
“Yeah. What do you want to go with that, man?” Now he was being curt with me.
“Nothing… man.”
Not even eight in the morning.
Momentarily, I pull up to the window, and Lil’ McChunkin’ picks that exact moment to disappear off to god-knows-where.
For the next two minutes, I sit at the window, twiddling my thumbs, watching the other barista frantically making everyone’s drink and after about a minute-and-a-half, she realizes that the less-interesting (and poorer) cousin of Guy Fieri went to put more gel in his hair. She takes a quick scan of the cafe inside and returns to the window.
I see her face for the first time. Very attractive. She’s wearing glasses. Her wavy blonde hair is done up in a messy bun. Imagine Taylor Swift from the “You Belong With Me” music video. Minus the angst. And bingo.
“Venti Chai?” She chirps it at me like a cheerful bird.
“Mmm.” I grunt. Her eyebrows are raised now.
I realize I’m wearing the frown caused by a mixture of the morning, the poor service, and lack of caffeine.
“Are you doing all right?” She asks simply.
Not the rehearsed retail-brainwashing way. In an actual, genuine, concerned tone. She was curious. Not just curious, but interested in making it better.
I grin. The first grin is always a little stiff. I realize I probably looked like a bad combination of tired and annoyed. And it was directed at her. So I turned my grin to a smile.
“Yes, I’m just fine. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right, darlin.” She hands me my much-anticipated Chai. With a split second of eye-contact and a flash of a smile back at me, she said, “Come again.”
I pulled away and that was it. Barely any time at all.
Barely over ten words but she said them with feeling. With actual feeling that is so rare and enchanting to me.
At not-even-eight-in-the-morning.
So she hasn’t been off my mind since.
Strip
He smiled a playful smile and grazed my forearms with the back of his fingernails as he took a step backward and came to stand in front of me. He was bathed in the golden sunlight that now shot horizontally through the trees and covered everything with a surreal black and yellow checkered pattern. With the most natural, uncontrived movements of his wrists and fingers, he began to unbutton his shirt. I felt my eyes grow wider as larger areas of naked skin came into view, though it was clear that any provocation was intentional, because I was sure he was undressing the same way he did every night in the privacy of his bedroom.
Once the last button had come loose, the shirt came off and was discarded. It hadn’t even touched the ground that his hands moved to his belt: he bent his knees and his hips came forward as he guided the smooth leather through the buckle. When he set aside the ends and began working on opening his jeans, my breathing jumped out of its natural rhythm and I pressed my hands against the door behind me. My eyelids dropped, as if something inside me tried to warn me that what was to come would be too much for me to bear. He noticed, and yet he carried on unperturbed, and I reopened my eyes to see his thumbs hook under the waistline of his jeans and the black cotton of his underwear, pulling all of it downwards in one easy movement which left him stark naked, standing in front of me.
I waited for the impulse to avert my eyes but it never came. Instead, I looked at his face: his expression was relaxed, his hands open, palms forward, held out slightly from his sides. I suddenly understood: he wasn’t teasing any longer, he wasn’t flirting. He was coming at me unguarded, undisguised, no tricks, no weapons. This was the last layer, effortlessly falling, right before my eyes.
May 20th 2013.
This is the most confused I’ve been in a while. Nothing makes sense. My apartment feels like a prison, my old town feels like an empty cavern, and Victoria doesn’t make sense to me anymore. There is anxiety in these walls from the previous tenant and I worry that some of it might be my own. Packing my life up again doesn’t quite feel right, either does staying. Nothing does in this in between stage. A phase of becoming, Clarity, I beg for it and as I search for it, fog settles down upon me, and I’m lost in it all. Buzzing in a hot, chaotic mess.
Vacationing
Some people buy easy-chairs, Jack, but all I’ve got is you. I’m ringing the doorbell at your apartment again in every dream I have after midnight. I haven’t been sleeping at all, but I have been dreaming of you. You look good in the moonlight.
I don’t live in the house by the lake anymore. I think you are cross with me about moving to a well-lit street where you cannot pin your shadow to mine. I’ll have someone stitch them together like in Peter Pan, and then you can haunt my step forever.
Are you spending your summer in Neverland? I cannot tell from the postcard. You burned the first side black and left the other blank.
