#183

often i wake up in a cold sweat. my wife thinks it's a compassionate lie when i tell her i don't remember my nightmares. it's good to tell the truth.
i haven't dreamed in probably ten years and the last nightmare i can detail was of my best friend. he wrote me a letter saying thanks for being like a brother to me. he wrote i love you, thanks for everything you've done for me.
the only difference was in my dream he didn't write "but" and in my dream they didn't call it a suicide note.

#182

today's list included fresh fruit shopping at kroger with my own basket. it makes me feel freer and more aware, and environmentally conscious. while in the store i will make the same joke twice to different people about my pale legs and the newly discovered springtime sun. the conversation will begin as i'm perusing the fruits. the toothy-but-boyishly-handsome stock boy will ask me if i need help. i will laugh say something about always needing help, but then i'll comment on the weather and out of politeness he'll reply. then my charming self-deprecation will take over and maybe he'll wish we could go on talking, but then i'll find exactly the right apple i was looking for. smiling and tossing my head, i'll walk away and i won't look back to see if his eyes follow me, even though it will be hard.
on the way home i'll rent a movie. comedy in hand, i'll answer fake phone call on my way up to the register. i'll chat away about how it was such a hard decision and Oh! you wanted to watch a horror movie tonight? well, darling, let me just change this silly thing out for something we'll both enjoy. after hanging up, i'll smile apologetically at the cashier. i'll be just a minute, so sorry!
driving out of the parking lot of course i'll let the gentleman beside me go first! i haven't a care in the world! i am such a free, happy spirit!
i like to do charming and ordinary things to make it seem like i don't go home at night alone.

sixtyone

I had nowhere else to be, but the phone invaded my half-sleep. It was old, the color of key-lime pie, with a spiraled plastic cord tangled on itself. The numbers on the dial were half worn off and the bell sang a labored breakbeat. I picked up the phone and and it was a senator. I'm still asleep.

sixty

Day 37:

I can't do this anymore. I can't read my own handwriting and I don't know that I want to and I don't know if it's because of my hands or because of my eyes. I've run out of things to say to you but I can't tell no one else has because they're talking a mile a minute but the substance of their words only reaches a foot and a half.

I'll just have to leave and be someone else.

I can't find my keys.

#181

i almost approached you. but these days you always have to be careful. which you weren't, because you were backed up against a brick wall, too close to the corner to make a quick getaway.
the black leather jacket you were wearing looked like it may have been from a thrift store, but i'd like to think you've just been a leather jacket kind of woman for awhile now. i couldn't tell what book you were reading, but i love a girl who reads standing up, even though it was nearly dusk. to be honest, i was hoping you'd come upon some funny passage, that the author would be gracious enough to let me see you smile.
your face is too pretty to have all that hair falling in front of it.
anyway, i'm sorry i didn't say hi. i wish a good, non-creepy pick up line existed so i could know your name. but i'm a little too tall and my hair wasn't quite clean, and it wasn't exactly daylight when i saw you.
what i'm trying to say is, you look like the kind of girl who'd mace the hell out of a guy like me.

fiftynine

It was his first day back at school since the crash. His hobble had gotten a bit stronger, and he could almost see more than light and shadows from his left eye. Navigating the staircase with his cane was easier than expected, but still made him feel like an old man. History class had just ended, and his classmates filled the hall. And she hugged him even though it hurt, and she kissed his cheek even though it wasn’t allowed, and she smiled from inches away even though she didn’t love him.

fiftyeight

The leaves fell from the tree like a slain crow’s feathers, and the warm wind thawed the frost from the night before. The house was abandoned and the yard was deserted except for the leaves and the frost and the wind and the echoes. So much paint had flaked off the outside walls that the dirt meeting the foundation was half-brown-half-ivory. And it’s far enough away that you can’t hear the city anymore, but at night a corner of the sky is orange and white and artificial.

#180

twisting twice through the revolving doors, her mother was quick to chide her behavior. "how old are you?!" she hissed.
so she thought oh my! what if i really didn't know my age? i could be six or nine or twelve! looking at her hands, her legs, catching a glimpse of her long features in an ornate mirror. okay, maybe sixteen or nineteen or twenty-two.
nineteen was good year.
picking up her handpainted bag while her mother flirted futilely with the square-jawed concierge, she played with the ends of her skirt. each lobby painting was subtle and chosen for its extraordinary mediocrity. unoffensive fake flowers lay in beige pots on the coffee table. she pulled a locust shell from her pocket, setting it lightly on the fake peat moss. coyly, she smiled.

#179

after graduating summa cum laude, he went through a period of life that was nothing like anyone expected. of course, it was the first time he made a decision based solely on the fact that it might be the wrong one. social networking wasn't all the rage, and the bulge in jeans pockets was round containers of chew or powder compacts and the occasional packet of gum, not cell phones.
he was dirty and artistic for a whole year. his chocolate hair grew and curled at the end, he learned to brush it behind his ears before it surreptitiously ended up right back hanging in front of his eyes.
he wrote. pages and pages worth. there were always girls and bottles and music- from guitars and from stereos and it was all just a two year-long blur of self-destruction and creation. just as quickly, he left that life and those lives.
that was so long ago.
he passed a girl on the street today. two steps later he turned quickly; surprised when she did the same. they locked eyes longer than social niceties allow for strangers. instinctively, he reached up to brush a non-existent curl from his eyes. he looked down at his navy suit and conservative tie, then back to her open-toe kitten heels, and pencil skirt. a flash of pale skin, then only the back of her head- a sleek bun and retreating back.
and isn't it funny how we expect people to stay the same?

#178

it was the same diner you find in every little dive town. mugs the color of old cream with a brown stripe around the top. chipped pie plates served on long-stained tables pressed against faded orange-or-red booths that would look obnoxiously bowling alley if not for their age. in the corner, an aged, inured waitress who never bothers to carry a pen or paper anymore.
the talk is always of grandkids or conservative politics. the only talk of what's to come involves the crops versus current water table.
walking in, the smooth face, hair dye and lack of the obligatory layer of dust was immediately suspicious. steaming pot of slightly burned old coffee in hand, the waitress started to pour him a cup. "you're not from around here, are you, son?"
an unneccessary question.
he looked at her. their eyes were strikingly similar. "i could have been."

#177

i want you to kiss me in the back of a darkened movie theatre. i know it is so cliche. but maybe we'll both reach for popcorn, our fingers already buttery (i can never resist) and you'll let me take a piece first, just like you always do. i'll snatch it up quickly, faster than usual- like the way you speed up to cross the street when you know a car is waiting patiently. i'll smile a thank you and let it rest on your face longer than necessary. just long enough that maybe in that moment you will remember how much you loved me in moments before... back when moments were longer. then you'll kiss me, hard, and i will reach to meet you. you will wrap your arm around me, resting my head on your shoulder and i will still be smiling, feeling safe.

you're coming out of the bathroom, pulling our tickets and your wallet from your back pocket. "you want popcorn tonight?"

"yes please. with butter."

#176

she said my name and it sounded like an aside so instead of acknowledging her, i looked around for the audience.
the theatrics of trying to pull me into bed. lying to myself that it was about love and sexual honesty instead of another war game. all the spoils to the prettiest player.
i am her security but i am not her protector. no one ever told me about the dark side of truth. she is weak! i thought. she needs me! i justified.
turns out she's been frighteningly lucid this whole time. turns out i'm not much more than her demesne. the conning and fated Drouet to her Sister Carrie. turns out, it's not so much what she says, as how it looks in writing.

#175

"so what makes you think your life is so bad?" he didn't really know why he was asking. as a bartender, he usually grew weary of hearing every sad story, every backwards life decision followed by a snowball of regret, financial ruin, lost love, and just when things start to look up... then the obligatory dicey choices to start the cycle over again. but there was something about this guy. a kind of desperate faux joe cool that wasn't like the others.
across the counter, he pressed his lips together and took a slow sip of blue moon. was this four or five? doesn't matter much after the whiskey. he looked over the room. to his left, down two stools, a short girl with tanned skin sat nursing a rum and coke. she was young to be in here, especially alone. the only other person in the bar, picking up his coat and leaving through the front door.
he turned back to the bartender; proceeded to talk of how his father was never at home when he was a kid. his unhappy middle-aged housewife mother who thought an elite education was better than spending time with her son. "my high school graduation was spent with friends i knew were there only while the weather was fair. and what did i do? i turned my adult life into the same thing my childhood was. i used money to get whatever i wanted. my wife doesn't love me. not that married her for that anyway."
"it's a tough break man."
movement from the stool to his left. the girl turned a pretty-but-bored face to him. slapping a few bucks on the bar, "keep the change, Jerry" and as she began to walk out, filled the almost-empty bar with her voice. "sounds like first world problems if i ever heard them."

#174

they flocked to him, cameras glinting, microphones in hand, a flurry off interrogations. it was the part of all of this athletic prowess that he wasn't familiar with; had never grown accustomed to, even though she had breezed through it laughing, with a simple grace, often joking about broccoli in her teeth and later dismissing it all as the media's blustery fickleness.
now they turned to him as she lay unresponsive, finally stable, yet unable to set him at ease, to flash the strength or the smile that made a nation adore her.
carefully he began to speak of her tragedy, and when they inquired about regret he answered only, sometimes, even i forget that she is fragile.