Thirtytwo

Rainwater drips from the roof onto her face. She looks towards the sky. It stopped raining only minutes ago, but the sky was alight and the sun was on fire. She twirled her keyring around her finger, metal strips of melody. Everything was alight and on fire.

Thirtyone

The stars here don't look much different, except I can see them. I can still see them in the city.

Isn't that something.

We talked about temporary things like yesterday and we talked about permanent things like right now, and how everything that happened happened right now and everything that will ever happen will happen right now, and there was no one there.

#36

he kept pictures of his hometown in his suitcase. everywhere he traveled he sent postcards to his family, his friends.
they were not of buffalo in wyoming, nor were they, later, of the castles in england, the eiffel tower, the glory of water in a mideast desert. rarely did he even remember his camera in these places.
they always arrived with slightly crinkled corners and scrawling cursive on the back. red and yellow sunsets, the long, winding road out of town, the mismatched houses of the west side of town, a shoe left on main street.
he traveled to learn, to grow, to feel, but he always knew he would never find anywhere that would change him concretely, so painfully, so poignantly as that place he knew as home.

#35

garages were always her favorite places. she could be anywhere. as a girl, they were caves, they were mountains, her neighbors garages were grand adventures of derring-do.
she got older and hung a hammock, spend days reading, climbing those same mountains with the characters; it became china, it became switzerland. she thumbed through the pages, surrounded by cool concrete walls and she was in the rainforest, the jungle, tiptoeing through a herd of lions while on safari.
in college it was endless guitars, resonating from the walls, sweaty girls and boys and cheap drinks. the walls held the effects of vibrating guitar solos, even after the crowds went home.
there was no room for imagination anymore.
he told her to park her car in the garage.
it was clean and neat.
nothing stacked arbitrarily with a blanket thrown on top. no mountains.
5 blue plastic tubs, 3 drawers and a tall cabinet. white walls and a tall ceiling. no stains on the floor from junker cars.
she longed for the days of adventures.

#34

they were always heralded as great pieces of writing. "the most alluring piece of fiction i've read in a very, very long time." another wrote "i was hooked from the first sentence. it seems she has thought of everything that has never occurred to mere mortals."
and her pseudonym rose up on the tower of successes, hit the peak and refused to move.
and she too, refusing to move, battered herself with words, obsfucting them into fiction, while still remembering, still feeling every story so acutely.
"the greatest fiction writer of our time!"
and if they only knew.

Thirty

He wasn't in class again today. Usually once a week, his chair is empty. I hear the other kids telling stories about how he does drugs in the bathroom, but I know that's true. How boring would that be. That's not a question.

Whenever he wasn't in class, he was sitting in the shadow where the west staircase bends against the window outside. He'd sit there, and I'd sit there, because he was too terrified to be anywhere else.

Twentynine

The water burned the inside of her nose, into her throat, and she coughed the way an emphysemic coughs. An epic, earthshaking cough.

She struggled onto the beach, and made deliberate and exaggerated footprints in the sand. And she laughed the way a lover laughs. The kind of laugh that creates worlds.