#211

i talk about you from time to time. don't worry, i don't use your name. and even if i did, no one here knows who you are.
but, like most things, that was your choice too.
at first i was hurt; it confused me that you got bored. we were spontaneous and brilliant together. you brought words out of me that i never knew i had. for awhile, i thought i showed you just how much love could be real for you.
now i get it. you thrive on instability- you create mistakes and insecurities, and i saw too much in you that was strong and complete and good, and that... well, that wouldn't fit with your constant need for misery.
you have found nothing. exactly what you are looking for. you just don't know it yet.

#210

we slept to an hour that is usually considered late, like we slept in, you know what i mean, but he didn't comment on it or apologize for seeming lazy. the sun was up and high, trying different angles from the drawn blinds like a peeping tom.
i sat next to him, eating our apple jacks, and staring at my still-winter-white legs, flexing and stretching my muscles, and he puts an old Cash record on. i feel like a dreamer again- planning for the next stage of life, hoping for the best and ticking off mental laundry lists of everything beautiful coming in big numbers; ignoring the firm reality of input vs output.
today, for now, we are staying here, in a single moment.

#209 (compliments to w. whitman)

she pauses for moment beside the last picture in the hall, placing a trembling hand on the glass. a crooked-lipped boy grows from infancy to adulthood in the space between the foyer and the den.
"A child said 'What is the grass?' fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he."
she knows that all things begin because they are meant to end.
"I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps."
there is no need to look. every smile is memorized, the cowlicked hair (so obvious no matter the style), the creases of every ironed shirt etched into her mind.
"All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier."

seventyone

He noticed that her dress was only slightly darker than the wine, and the corner of her eyes sparkled like the glass. And they shared stories, but ones that people tell when they want to be only slightly more vulnerable than they would be with someone they met on the train to work. They didn't notice that they were taking turns trying to surreptitiously make contact with hands on the table, but they both noticed the resulting awkwardness. And there was laughing and stolen glances and a magic trick in which a cloth napkin hid the transmutation of a fork into three grapes.

And this became a story he told his grandchildren, but not for any of the reasons he expected.

#208

the venue was smoky, but not from cigarettes. machines spewed faux smoke to keep up appearances. blue and purple and green lights faded and changed and adjusted with the mood of the music. behind the fog was all eyeliner and collarbones and legs. deep voices laughed louder as the night wore on; the sloppy laughter of red stripe and pbr. of whiskey and coke.
the singer wasn't great, but the songs were, and by this point no one cared either way. she looked older than she was, hollowed cheeks and tired eyes, hidden under layers of L'Oreal.
and everywhere, the fake rhetoric of a generation based in hyperbole and disenchantment.

#207

she admired the plaques on the wall and medals hanging from striped and faded ribbons. each one had a story and he felt equally proud and uneasy relaying events to her, trying to make her understand the feeling in the pit of his stomach before a race, like a fist inside of him, growing and sending shivers and cold through his body, from the inside out, down to his toes, out through his fingertips. how even his jaw clenched and his heart beat faster waiting for the gun than during the run. studying a photo, he wondered what her thoughts were... maybe surprised at how dark his hair was, how twenty-five years can turn a runner's lean and muscular frame into a film critic's body.
he wondered if her respect and admiration for him today was contingent on his former glories. it's easy to be brilliant in the past.

#206

it's near the back of the store, not really "tucked" into anywhere, but set back behind all the innocent bottles. aspirin, allergy medicine, cough drops. behind all that is a line of women and men and they all look tired, but in different ways, and his mind raced, "who here is scared?" some approach the counter with a bit of hesitation. you can tell who has been coming here for years. you can see who is grasping their doctor's note in a white knuckled hand like a first time traveler clutching a brand new passport.
the pharmacist is bored, checking her hair for split ends and waiting for the credit card machine to run.
he steps up when she asks can she help whoever is next and she cracks her gum but doesn't flinch at what his card says. he wants to tell her how a neighbor man taught him to ride a bike when he was ten. he wants to tell her how he doesn't mind this abnormally hot summer so much. he wants to ask her who she would visit first, if the words on that paper belonged to her.