#16

he droned on. something about disassociation or repression. one of those clinical words that come a dime a dozen. she remembered her last bill. okay, maybe more like ten dollars a dozen. either way, they meant nothing to her.
he had been recommended to her. he was the best in town. after this appointment, she would decide for herself. after all, she'd already been to all the others.
more talking. she thought about newspaper awards. they always give crappy pieces of paper away that read "best burger in town", or "best place for a manicure." and each establishment would place it in a black frame from the dollar store and the manager would point it out to new customers and walk around with his chest puffed out for a month. and 3 years later, on the verge of being shut down by the health department, the sign still hung in the lobby.
"...and it seems to me," she snapped back to the present at the harsh tone of his voice. "It seems to me that you have layers of repressed memories that we need to dig through. Go ahead and make a few more appointments on your way out."
she nodded and left. remembering the bill again, she breezed by the receptionist on her way out.
a young man, maybe 25, dressed in black grunge clothes stopped her. "you got a quarter? i want to get drunk tonight."
she gave him a dollar, smiling, and thanked him for his honesty.

Fifteen

The truck radio gets horrible reception out here. He usually just hangs his arm out of the window and taps the outside of the door with his fingertips, a beat of his own making. After only a few self-composed tunes, the city lights fade. If the clouds weren't so oppressive, he could see every star. Maybe mortals aren't meant for such things as they willed.

A half-worn sign tells him the next town is thirty-seven miles. Maybe they have all the stars.

#15

the music. it sprouted from him and grew. sometimes in waves, big, glorious swelling, full of agonizing violins, bony fingers holding the bow, almost shaking with tenderness, holding each whole note as long as possible, reaching out to grasp the final bits of sound fading away.
those songs would make him ache, from the innermost part of his being, every song a story, every song more than a story.
his eyes would close, involuntarily, and the music would continue, like a cold fast wind across his lips, taking his breath away and carrying it. maybe to the next town, maybe north, to an even colder and faster wind, and maybe someday he would breathe in that same breath. and it would hold the same music and he would remember and he would be full again of that same aching tenderness.
and it would all be more than a story.

Fourteen

There were always people to greet him at the train station, but he often wondered what it'd be like if there weren't. He knew that one day, enough people would forget, or be too busy, or think they wouldn't be needed, or wouldn't be welcome, and others would better take the place. Small mysteries are all he had left to occupy his thoughts. A number on a billboard reminded him of a math problem reminded him of its application in the observation of nature reminded him of botany reminded him of planting a sapling in school reminded him of that dusty library reminded him of Aristotle.

Who was picking him up at the train station?

Thirteen

Campfires only provide so much heat. Too big, and the forest goes with it. Too small and it goes out. Just right is too small.

Their eyes met, but not in the way they used to. Love gave to despair, as happens when tavern stories become eulogies. And eulogies are never long enough, or honest enough; it's a silent agreement everyone makes.

The tree line and tents set to deflect the wind racing across the plain were thankfully effective, a small comfort in the face of days ahead and weeks behind.

Twelve

The room was dark, darker than it was outdoors. No moonlight casting shifting shadows through waves of leaves. No sparkling cobblestones or stray pennies or cats' eyes. Only the occasional glow of a lit cigarette. He waited.

Quiet, too. Only breath and heartbeat and a creaky, ancient ceiling. Sometimes he'd mutter to himself.

He waited for her, but he knew she wasn't coming back. They only came back in movies. Bad ones, usually.

#14

It had been sitting on her dresser for awhile now. Crumpled when she got it from the postman. Half of the envelope flap was ripped open before she even pulled it from her mailbox.
It stared at her, the flap still only half open. Already she had held it up to the light to see if any words would shine through. She peeked into the opening to see blue paper. The color of the sky on muggy summer mornings, tinged with a little git of gray- or silver- depending on how much the observer likes muggy summer mornings.
Some days, curiosity almost got the better of her. Slowly crossing the room she would pick it up, weigh it carefully from hand to hand. Once, she even had her index finger tucked under the fold. She felt the crease on her fingertip; rubbed it slowly, back and forth, till finally she shook her head and laid it safely back down.
Part of her already knew what it said inside, the rest of her didn't want to know. If it was certain, if she knew, if she read it for herself, what would then be left to live for?

Eleven

The soles of her bare feet sported near-permanent stains. Grass and dirt and years. Not many, but enough. It's something she didn't even think about anymore, now that she didn't get tiny cuts from walking across the lawn.

The stains were truth. Or, more, an absence of falsehoods. The truth of the oneness of herself and the earth and everything on it. It was all she could do to stave off the loneliness a little longer.

#13

"all of your writing" he stated, "is about relationships. one on one relationships." he pointed to her third entry of the semester. "this one has some children in it, but it's a vague reference. It’s ultimately about the progression of the same two people." he seemed slightly concerned, "why do you think that is?" as if he expected her to divulge some angst-ridden tale of unrequited novel-worthy affection. there was no such tale.
she gave him a processed answer along the lines of "relationship dynamics are interesting for readers."

the truth was that she never have enough time to create her own relationships.

the truth was that she took ideas from overheard conversations for her writing. That she disguised a bit of herself in all her protagonists and called it fiction so that no one could feel sorry for her.

the truth remains that she had never loved anyone well enough to be worthy of a novel.

#12 (Sunday)

the whole house smelled of roasted chicken and the spices of sidedishes and finally the table was ready for dinner. every room in the mansion was spotless, like an advertisement for interior design.
quickly she ran upstairs to change. she was still wearing the worn out jeans and bleach-spotted t-shirt she had donned early in the day. her hair hung lifeless and she quickly pulled out the curling iron to see what she could do.
her son ran in the room. "mama, what else should i take on vacation?"
"just what we packed this morning, honey. but remember, we might not take a vacation, so don't say anything to daddy. it will be our little secret okay?" she tousled his hair.
he stood up on his tiptoes. his kiss missed her cheek and touched her chin. "i love you mama. i love you most." he smiled at her, a chubby-cheeked, innocent smile, and galloped out of the room.
she finished dressing headed to the dining room. the front door opened and as he entered she was pouring a glass of his favorite wine.
he gave a disapproving look at the table of food. "what's all this mess? what's that get-up?" he asked, motioning at her.
She looked down at her blue honeymoon dress. Finally she could fit in it again. "I thought we could have a nice dinner together. Talk. Relax a little."
"I'm playing poker with the guys again tonight."
She threw her arms wide, an image of dying Christ.
"But we..."
He turned and headed out the door.

She called to her son, "Honey, we're going on vacation."

#11 (saturday)

she scanned the headlines every day, fervently. clicking on the links, she placed the images into photoshop, magnifying the faces, comparing to the faded and crumpled picture from her wallet.

arrests, convictions, rapes, unthinkable schemes and crimes that only the most insane could conceive.

in walmart, she joined the other shoppers in dismissing the pictures of kidnapped children. but when she passed the most wanted, without fail, she leaned in close to the posters, so close that her breath fogged over the scowling eyes, the downturned lips.

one of these days, she would find him.

her son.

Ten

He liked to spin his grandfather's old globe, slapping it until it reached blurring speeds. And then, a sharp poke to bring it to a halt. Wherever his finger landed, there he would wonder what the people being crushed by his pointer were like. How did they dress? What do they eat?

What do they call their parents?

What music do they listen to?

Oops, water.

That country isn't there anymore.

#10

bright lights flashing, flashing

the crowd undulating, coalescing with the steady movement of music

bright lights flashing, flashing

brief seconds of eyes, open-mouthed faces, hair and sweat, arms raised, hands touching
unified, no thinking, no questions, no inhibitions
smeared lipstick and eyeliner, the smell of hair dye and cigarettes, musky cologne.

bright lights always flashing

a single girl, an anomaly of sorts, huddled to the ground, black fingernails clasping pale skin

stop the lights from flashing, flashing

Nine

"You always say it's going to be fun."

"I know."

"But it never is, it's always awful."

"I know..."

"I wish you'd stop trying to make me 'meet' your friends."

"It's good for you!"

"THIS? This is good for me? I could be at home, not half drunk, not already having spent twenty-seven dollars. And it's not even helping me relax!"

"Well, maybe that's your problem."

"What is?"

Eight

Fifteen years ago, "no bars" meant "dry town."

The outgoing calls would ring once or twice and then silence and then beep.

She noticed the rain was strangely arrhythmic, bouncing off of brick and car hoods and gutters. The toothy scowl of a homeless man reminded her of the oak trees in winter, and his skin of the dried up riverbed in the summers back home.

Finally, an answer.

"Oh God! I'm so glad you're home! I hope you can hear me, it's raining pretty hard, I just needed to tell y-"

Beep.

#9

there is an old thrift store couch. It is worn and comfortable. A glass lies on the end table- leftover from the night before. behind the glass is a picture frame. a boy and girl have their arms resting lazily across each other's shoulders and they are grinning widely. their skin is tan from summer and they are both squinting slightly- because of sunlight or because their smiles are so big.
it is a comfortable room and the window is covered by an Oriental green shade- it looks like a remnant piece from the Walmart discount fabric bin. but still... it is comfortable.
a note lies on the coffee table. the blue pen it was written with is teetering treacherously on the edge of the table, ready to fall at the slightest nudge.
the carpet still has lines running through it from a recent vacuuming. the whole room is comforting, not too new or too dirty or too formal. nothing matches very well, everything has color- it is bleeding in from the sunlight through the blinds, it still clings to the faded couch, it runs in circles over the glass frame of the clock... it is late afternoon and no one is home.
a few spots on the wall are pockmarked from old nails. the wall hangings are sporadic and unique. thrift store treasures maybe, or gifts from friends. they don't look new, but they are nice.
it is warm, and it is worn, and it is home.

Seven

The forest seemed to go on forever, but she finally reached the other side. At the break of trees, she stumbled upon a fallen branch which was not a branch at all. "Oi!" the branch which was not a branch said. "Watch where you be goin!"

The girl, she shriek, which startled the branch which was not a branch. It was, in fact, a goblin, or a passable facsimile. Large yellow eyes and large yellow teeth and large green ears and tiny little fingers.

"Who-... who are you?" Her voice wavered like the leaves 'round her feet.

"Who am I?" asked the goblin, shocked and dismayed, "why, I be your brudder and DIS be your mudder!" as he excitedly gestured at the pinecone he'd snatched from the ground.

"You don't look like my brother, and my mother is dead..."

"You should say sorry for kickin' me just there just now," the goblin announced, exalting the pinecone high. "We both know mum raised ya betta!"

#8

she checked the message.
his usual deep voice. passionate only during apologies.
the longer they were together, the more passion she endured.

excuses for wrongdoings (some she already knew, some just now coming to light) flew through the air as her phone hit the ground somewhere between arizona and new mexico.

her tires tossed dry sand behind her and she never looked back.

#7

Her father never beat her and her mother never drank. She got along with her brother, 7 years her senior, too much older to be close, not old enough to be estranged. Generally, her sunny attitude was genuine.
There was nothing, really, to blame it on. She didn't feel inadequate; she never read those skinny-model magazines, her grades were slightly above average. She wasn't great enough to feel any pressure, not poor enough to get attention.
She sought out those with problems, tried to blend in as one of them at any meeting she could find. AA, cancer survivor support groups, she drank coffee with the insomniacs and waved hello to the bulimics.
Her only vice was that she had no vices.

awkward

He had an uncanny knack for making an already awkward situation even more awkward. They used to take walks together, but he never felt the urge to just run through the dew soaked fields. This made her feel, at 21, that time was running out. He was always responsible, always made the right decisions, he was always safe. “Versatile” it said on his resume. Welcome to a world where versatile means mediocre. But she stayed with him, because it was easier to be with a safe man who loved her, than an adventurer who would always make her question.
At his family reunion she was asked how they got to know each other. She gave the stock answer and it was sweet and it was expected. But all she could think was, We never talked about him. We never talked about me. We never talked about us either. Oh, we talked, sure. But, for the life of me, I can't think of what.

Six

The coffee nearly spilled as he sat at his table. A pile of papers in imminent doom of permanent staining. He plucked one from the mire, and clicked his pen. Click. Click. Read and scribble and read and read and read and scribble. His writing made a scraping sound through the paper on the glass, so he wrote about that. He wrote about the spilled coffee that didn't spill, and he wrote about the events of the day.
The waitress brought him breakfast. He cautiously covered his scattered sheets, but thanked her for her kindness.

sunday #5

As he drives the old convertible he looks up from the road and points at the clouds. One is moving faster than the others and he tells her to look at it.
Her eyes tear up and he looks worried. She tells him the sun is too bright, and she pulls her sunglasses from her purse.
She doesn't tell him about the visit to the doctor; how after she found out, she sat in the bathtub for 3 hours and cried. She can't look him in the eyes anymore, knowing that he'll find out sooner or later, when the bills start coming in. She knows this is the last trip they'll take together, that all of the it's-been-awhiles will be her goodbyes.
Maybe it's easier for him to think she left him. It's better to make him hate her for leaving him alone, then let him think he could have saved her.

Five

STS... STS... STS.. STS...

Wet grass is a poor substitute for a bed.

STS...

No matter how much we water, it's always brown and shaggy.

STS...

Cold, fake raindrops.

STS...

Everything is a poor substitute for something.

Four

Scotch.
It’s always scotch first.
The weight of the dining room chair kept his lungs from fully inflating. It felt like running, without all the pesky motion. Facedown. The shattered ceramic vase was making tiny imprints on his face.
Sleep it off.

another one

All I could see out the window was the pelting of the same gray rain that had been falling for three full days. I knew he would be walking by my window soon. He always walks by at the same time every day. I couldn’t go the window this time. There is something inside of me that he unearths; it moves in orbit around my heart and I feel dizzy, queasy, abnormally unnerved. I wonder if he loves adventure at all; if perhaps that is what he wishes for it in the dark, with only the moon to witness the transaction between he and God. Certainly it is what I longed for yesterday, what I wish for today, and what I will still be seeking tomorrow. Single drops of rain hit my window, inch towards each other, hesitatingly at first, then they meet, take each other's from and slide quickly down, running, frantic, one. Without taking notice of myself, I am daydreaming again.
I sat with my book, reading but not comprehending, finding myself at the beginning of the same paragraph I had started an hour earlier.

late post

the pavement shone black and wet, like most pavement does under a full moon. he checked his watch. how long had it been now? his passenger seat floorboard was a heaped up junkyard of cheetos wrappers and foam gas station coffee cups. when was the last road sign?
he sighed and kept going.
nothing caught his eye, but he looked in the rearview mirror anyway.
it wasn't that the road ahead was so dark... just that everything behind him was so bright, that anything else paled in comparison. he could have made a life with her. she would have dropped everything- her fierce independence, all those plans she made and mapped out and tucked away in that brilliant mind.
so he left in the middle of the night. if anyone could settle him down, make him stay somewhere for more than a few months, it would have been her.
he was portable and he liked it that way.

Three

Tiny hairs covered his face. His son comically rubbed his own chin, “Mine’s almost the same!”
“Almost! Just.... ten years away, I’d expect!”
The boy looked down at his hands, silent counting his tiny fingers. He presented a sum, to which his father laughed. “No, no, both hands.” He held up both hands and counted from one to two to ten.
The small hands poked at the stubble. “Does mommy make you cut it all the time?”
“Yeah, mommy does.”
“Why?”
“Some mommies don’t like it, I guess.”
“Oh,” said the boy, as he rubbed his own chin again.
His wife came into the living room, somewhat confused. “I’m... I’m sorry... who were you just talking to?”

post #2

We are in the hospital amidst tissues and half-eaten carryout sandwiches, looking up from the waiting room couches (makeshift beds with scratchy cotton pillowcases) to see if a passing doctor or nurse will look at us. They never just casually glance in. I can't blame them.
Our own eyes are glazed and glossy, our cheeks red and our voices already are scratchy from tears and from holding back tears.
even her fingertips are swollen, her skin pale; blue with lymph and broken blood vessels.
The doctor takes her parents in the next room for a long time and we hear more weeping. We are sitting in the next room and holding hands. The radio is playing an Indian flute version of "Oh Christmas Tree." There is a football game on. Sometimes we stare at the screen, but we don't see it.
she is braindead
And we don't understand.
Their baby boy is brought up from ICU. Their newborn baby who she will never see. He takes their son in the room. Of course he doesn’t understand, but this is the only time he’ll ever see his mother. This was all so unexpected.

Robotically, we begin making phone calls – she’s braindead but alive (is that alive?). He absently squirts more visine in his eyes to wash away the red.

This was all so unexpected.

Two

Her children don’t speak her language. The oldest was younger than the youngest when they left home. She tells them she fled because she feared for her life, that the bad men in uniforms would come and get them and separate them from each other forever and ever. Really, she worried that her husband would discover that the youngest had a different father. Sometimes, though, shame is worse than being beaten in the street.
And sometimes she confesses her sins to them while they sleep, in the tongue of her mother. As she does, she can feel the old words peeling away, replaced by new.
All she ever taught them was how to say, “I love you.” When they say it, they giggle and crinkle their noses because it sounds silly to them.
With some luck, that may be enough.

she

suddenly she blinked her eyes. the wind felt so strong in her face. she was... running. the realization set in and her feet slowed to a walk. one of her toenails had broken in half and the soft fleshy underside was bleeding on the asphalt where she stopped.
was she crying? no... no that was the rain. it was a greasy rain; the kind of thick drops that make windshields blurry no matter how strong the wipers are. a drop crawled down her face, making a shiny, jagged line from her high-set cheekbones to her jawline. it dripped on her tshirt.
she was fully conscious now. too conscious. she was aware of everything. the arrhythmic beating inside her chest, the screech of a bat (almost indistinct through the mugginess of the storm), the slight smell of day old hair products and the clinging of fabric on her legs.

steam rose from the grassy area beside her. she imagined a bog full of quicksand and quick death.

she stepped into the grass. it felt like heaven after the sharp pinch of concrete on her bare feet. a tree shielded her from the rain. it was not a bog, nor quicksand. she lifted her face to the sky, her thick mascara matting her lashes together and coating her eyelids.

she stepped back on the sidewalk. heaven was not for her.

One

She was the kind of girl who, when she walked into the room, ruined your life. You were never the same, and you wouldn’t want to be. We used to tell each other stories of the stray smile she gave us, the time she asked us a question about calculus, the time one of the buttons on her shirt came loose and we could see her bra, the time she got dumped at the biggest party of the year, the time she ran her car onto the sidewalk and almost hit the minister, the time she smelled like cheap booze by third hour.
I remember that I absently nodded to her father at her visitation. He didn’t see me.