#197

after our first date i still didn't recognize your number, but i answered anyway. i felt like we really connected you said. i'm not sure if i agree but our dinner and a movie date felt familiar, like a modern version of something i'd done before. it wasn't exciting, but it was comforting, and maybe that's the most we can ask for. after all, we are a generation that tries to define itself with nostalgia. how else can we explain all the hollywood remakes of movies and shows we saw as children, in happier times?
so i thought of his face when you kissed me and felt his long arms when you hugged me. his voice resounded in my head when i read your email. maybe that's what we're all doing here, because we've let the best ones get away or we've broken their hearts to fully.

sixtyfive

It's a strange thing, civilization. And even that is a strange thing to say. But if I had to guess, I'd say that we invented civilization so that we could die peacefully, instead of dying hungry and alone and afraid and young. We were smashed with rocks and stabbed with sticks and starved to death and eaten by animals, and we didn't want that anymore. We wanted to die quietly, asleep, in the dark, when our hair is grey or gone. And so we created fictions and we created truths and we created Aspirin. And so, like Apollo 13 catapulting around the moon, we created bullets that can travel miles and bombs that can travel continents and atoms that can melt the world.

So really, we created civilization to sate our hunger for irony.

#196

"you told me to think about my early twenties. all the places that my life revolved around; the people. and my memories feel like i'm reading a book, like it's far away and the writer is searching for a way to draw me in, so i can identify."
he scrawled a few notes. "do you? can you feel a personal connection?"
"i'm skeptical at first. will this character turn on me, break my heart? maybe she's not trustworthy, or she's waiting for the right moment to pounce."
"she is you. you can know her motives."
she shifted. "no. i can't. it's like watching a movie, and she looks like me. i can see her from any angle i put the camera. but cameras don't go inside. not in here." she placed a finger to her temple. a palm across her chest. "but those familiar lpaces. every detail makes them feel closer to home, closer to now. there she is, in my mind, the first week of classes, crying alone on campus after hearing of her old schoolteacher's death. months later, overwhelmed by the brashness of overstimulated delta sigs."
"is that how you feel now? is this where you identify with her?"
"beyond all that, all those scenes, i see a girl who handled it all with grace and clarity and maturity. i look at where i am now and it still feels like a book. but now? it's like a first draft written by a first year, middle-aged ESL student. i am choppy and hazy and on the second read-though, the author herself can't remember the meaning behind the third paragraph."

#196

What happened to you today? They asked.
Well, there was an ant on the sidewalk, the biggest ant of the whole spring so far and it was carrying something big. Maybe a French fry. Probably from the Rally’s down the street. Did you know that ants are indigenous to every continent but Antarctica? Isn’t that funny because Antarctica starts with Ant? It’s like a joke, like a continental joke and isn’t it funny?
He flexed his skinny arms. Ants can carry 20-50 times their own body weight, you know. People aren’t like that; most people can’t lift much more than their own body weight.
Interrupting his thoughts again, the officer tapped his pen, asked something about what he saw when he got home. He’d had a snack. He always got pudding in his lunch sack even though he didn’t like it. But it was okay because the other kids at school would trade him, pudding for cream pies, pudding for fruit snacks. The house was quiet, not like usual, so he got some milk and drank it with a straw. You can slurp loud or blow bubbles with a straw. It was a green one. Green is his favorite color today.
He asked to see his mom now because Thursday is when he takes a bath and today is Thursday. The officers exchanged glances; this might be harder than usual.

sixtyfour

I think we might have set some sort of record for awkward half-glances, if anyone keeps track of such things. It's strange when you don't know what to say, like anything you say now you'd regret later if you ever thought about it. And it's strange when someone wants to do amazing things with their life, only without you in it.

#195

you reminded me of a time before instruments were mass produced, before every guitarist pulled a trophy room of fenders on the stage each night, two-thousand-dollar martins, switching colors for every song. before musicians traded love and grace for showmanship and violence, pulling at each string like coyotes ripping feathers from a chicken.
it used to be a browned cowboy with thick hands, made suddenly beautiful and cautious, careful not break a string.
every show is coarse, songs interrupted with bad jokes and impatiently tapping toes while a technician changes strings and mechanically tunes E A D G B E.
for the first time i watched you play, and you seemed so old, so spiritual. everything affected you, each eyelash quivering by sweetly vibrating soundwaves, and i believe you felt it. you held the neck like it was a newborn, you were a proud and gentle father, your voice coaxing and aching. you reminded me of a time that held love and work and gratitude.

#194

cowering under the table, the hardwood reverberated with his pounding footsteps. the tip of his brown boots piked under the tablecloth. steel toe. they were worn, a present reminder of a past in which he worked each day with his hands, on his feet. his hands and feed were used for such different purposes now.
a shattering noise. it was a picture frame and her confidence all at once. she pinched her eyes tightly shut and willed the table to remain standing, not to buckle under his raging fists.
shards, stuck between piano keys, stuck in her bare feet after he passed out on the floor and she trembled out of her last hiding place.

#193

look, princess. i get that you crave attention. your insistent flirting and "look at me! look how cute i am!" demeanor used to make me pity you. low self esteem perhaps. maybe you weren't hugged enough as a kid. (looking at you now, maybe you weren't clothed enough as a kid either.) obligingly, i put up with it. smiled at your purple rimmed eyes and suffered through a few double dates. i said nothing when you tried to tickle fight my boyfriend. i kept silent when you ran your polished fingers through his hair, when you full-frontal hug him for much longer than necessary.
no part of me believed you'd be around much longer.
so imagine my dismay when you told me you're moving in next door.
i know our relationship has taken a turn for the worse. it's just a lot easier to be nice to somebody when you think they're temporary.

#192

the gifts from my mother are always the strangest. every once in awhile on a foggy day in june a box will be sitting expectantly on my doorstep, with HAPPY BIRTHDAY or CONGRATULATIONS or some other such nonsense written on the side in colored sharpie.
they never come on my birthday, and i can't remember the last time i did something worthy of a "congrats", much less the full word, spelled correctly or otherwise.
whatever's inside is always wrapped in paper from who-knows-where with the ugliest or strangest patterns available.
it was a plant once, still in the pot. a variety pack of chapsticks from somewhere in asia. moccassins, which would have been cool had they been colored, or hey, made for a woman and not a man.
obligingly, i always send a thank you note, explaining my joy at finding a new package. she doesn't like phone calls. if nothing else, i've learned the joy of giving. and not to open a new bottle of wine before internet shopping.