Real Life

I am not myself these days. Failing to do much but ponder who I am and what I am doing. Stressful – that’s what it is. Self-existentialism is not a normal part of my selfish lifestyle. I want to be selfless – to be a better person. I’m trying to deny that you have any part in these desires because you are bad for me. You are selfish and fleeting and I see myself in you everyday. But you need my help, and I think that I need you too. We’re sort of cleaved together in this twisted, magnetic way. It’s messy and I don’t like it. It’s out of my control and I don’t like it.

Intertwined together I think about how I don’t know you at all. I think about how you don’t know me either. I think about how we’re friends. Yes, I am your friend.

I like to make coffee. I make it strong and bold – I imagine it is me. This rich, savory thing is me. And I drink it, and it is delicious. And you sit there – your fingers wrapped around my pretty mug and you drink it and you think it is delicious also. You tell me so. And the coffee is me and you don’t know. You add more sugar and I take it as a sign I could be nicer.

We sit on benches and stare at the sky and we laugh. We laugh so hard, so much. We philosophize about things that others would laugh at and you laugh at me because I am silly sometimes. You tell me I am weird and wonderful and I tell you that it's cold out. I can’t let myself release the reigns I hold so tightly. I hug you and hope you understand.

Satanic

Wind howled through the trees—gusts rushing like mustangs sprinting down the side of a mountain. It rushed up the road towards the stain-bricked, burned-out church where Old Man O’Reiley had met an unfortunate end. Red lights flashed on the “Church of Christ” sign like lightning in the desert—blinding and terror-inspiring. Had anyone else been around that night, they would have heard the screams rising above the siren as stern-faced paramedics wheeled the stretcher out of the crumbling structure. One putrefied hand dangled off the edge. The nails hung loosely from some fingers and vanished all together from others. The appendage had bloated to more than three times what a normal hand should look like. Flies swarmed around the body so ferociously that the paramedics continually removed their hands from their noses to swipe them away from their faces. Of the body, they took little care, hauling Mr. O’Reiley into the bad of the van with disgusted eyes and twisted mouths.

“I hate it when we get the squishy ones,” one man complained through the gaping window of the coroner’s truck.

In the morning, newspapers throughout the town square headlined “MAN FOUND DEAD IN LOCAL CHURCH.” Policemen surrounded the scene; photographers clicked feverishly at the perimeter of the atrocity surrounding the scene like children at the zoo. Inside the structure, bats roosted in the rafters using opague spider webs to cover their dwellings. The mosaic floor below the alter lay blotched with blood which stained the angel’s wings black and red—making the scene seem more like a romp from hell rather than joyful seraphim. Outside, the chaotic milieu continued outside the church christened with death, fire, blood, and curiosity. All humanity baffled at the scene.

I smiled up through the fire. Aren’t all churches built of the same?

Cemetery

There’s always a pale yellow light, from whatever is able to sneak through the trees. The air is stagnant, untouched by the wind that sometimes protests against the surrounding trees. But they’re strong, they keep the inside preserved like a beetle caught in an amber mold. There are no flowers. There’s nothing but kudzoo and weeds, cruel encroaching plants that blanket the hill and devour the headstones covering the already faded names. Nobody visits them anyway except the things that skuttle through the underbrush or the creatures that slip from the woods and up from the ground, far more terrifying than the souls of the bones that lie in the wooden boxes below.

On the ground little bits of amber sometimes break through what is not green or brown. Little bits of amber left by winos and hobos and delinquents of decades past who don’t remember the names on the stones anymore than anyone else. Digging into the ground, nails fill with dirt and turn the ruddy color of dried blood from the clay that lies beneath the brown. Out come bottles of different sizes, all thick and all dark amber. The dirt’s here too, inside, with sticks and webby clumps and the skulls of small rodents who made the unfortunate decision to slip inside only to trap themselves. Put the opening close to an eye and spin. The loose contents follow one another round and round, occasionally light by the sparse saffron light that’s able to evade the dirt covered interior, a kaleidoscope of decay. Not beautiful but horrifying.

Water can take care of that, forceful rushing water that wipes out the decay. The new bottles line the windowsill and turn to honey with the sunlight.

Delicate Structures

Saturation is full blown, signaling change. Edges recede back then, disease or weather wears on, small patches/holes appear and eventually breakaway happens to most. Fall in fall, grounds strewn with remains. Crunchy, veined paper.

Those blue lines that signal life, they weave their way throughout but are especially prominent on hands. Trace them with a finger, feel those tubes move side to side, gather some sense of vulnerability.

They sway when wind blows. Some are strong enough though their hands at a certain time may detach and relocate below. Perhaps the wind will take them too, gather them, scatter them, dance with them. That dance seems magical, wish it could be taken and kept inside. Like American Beauty and the plastic bag. Grasping that beauty is almost too much to contain.

At that final season, blue lines become more prominent against a crinkled and thinning surface. Perhaps it’s even crunchy, delicate and weak by appearance at least. Hold it, feel a personal history in its gnarled structure. There's warmth but fading, color but fading.

Those dead brown hands(maples most similar), they sit on the dresser among the rocks and shells. Each is held, noticed, and cherished. Dignity and splendor that few will notice emanating from those curling edges, those intricate fractals within, twirled by the stem and set lovingly down again.

The City

The sky was the color of sorrow that day—a soupy mixture of grey and melancholy that weighed the clouds down so you could almost reach out and touch them. But the city moved on, unfeeling. Unaware that the world was still revolving. The city moved on, unwelcoming. Filled with souls that were lost and searching for their own meanings, oblivious to the fact that at any moment the sky above might break open and pour down salty tears. Each soul with a face that told a story maybe no one wants to hear. But it’s easier that way—easier to walk briskly, eyes cast down, searching the sidewalks as though their futures might be found within the cracks.

If only that were so. If only answers truly were found in fortune cookies or sidewalk cracks. Then perhaps there wouldn’t be so many searching in all the wrong places for the answers to questions they can’t say out loud. If only answers truly were found in coffee grounds or horoscopes. Then maybe the sky wouldn’t mirror the feelings of so many hearts that day—heavy and unsure.

Blurred

Vision blurred. Maple-freckled stretch of arm around me, purrs like a kitten bathed by its mother, bathed by my tongue, rumbles like the heart of the earth. Our hearts. Heartbeat. Thump-a thump-a thump in my ear and I don’t have to put on music when we’re together. It’s the best music, the soft sounds and the demand of that magic pulling me forward, downward, where I need to be.

Our hips bear children, hold men, have purpose but no, no, we are not just straight lines ‘cause our lines blur and our hips, they curve, they are boats beat against the waves, they—are not—they are not—

Melting. It is all supposed to be softness and slickness but it is molten, the air is molten around us. Molted. Naked but not shivering, symphony of

There and

mm and

don’t stop.

Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop

Don’t. Stop.

This is not the beat of our music, these are not your maple-freckled arms pulling me back, grinding bruises against my shoulders so hard I feel the fingerprints in my bones, and

Don’t! Stop!

His words or mine, don’t know, just know the hand on my face is not your hand on my face, don’t pull my hair, don’t touch me, my hips are more than a goddamn holster and it’s not our ocean waves, motion waves, my ribs are exploding, world blossoms black

Don’t. Stop!

Your speech broken by sobbing, my nose feels broken, the floor is cold. Molted, not molten, and shivering now and I’m sorry I can’t save you, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Vision blurred.

Bluegrass

The lingering scent of dew sprinkled along the mahogany logs. Each stacked carefully, perched on one another retaining the warmth. The shining white scarcely existed anymore from the night before; yellow beams of heaven took care of that. Pools of murky water dotted the bluegrass, invading what was left of the snowy world that had conquered last night. Everything creaked, the mighty oaks to the slender planks on the porch, burdened with the feudal war of ice and liquid. The quaint cabin stood firm, worn from the repetition of seasons and oppressive environment, it pronounced itself on the hilltop.

The abandoned playground stood as a monument next to the forest. They had bonded over the years now, the forest encroached on the playground and it willingly accepted. A swirling contrast of man and nature in harmony played out eagerly between them. A dash of green here, a peek of red, the taint of black rot, the virgin white, and the plethora of brown made their debut. Branches swayed in orchestra with its swing brethren, quite the performance to behold marionettes of our world forever moving and jostling their parts to make the show last.

In those moments, the moment of seconds, everything was in tune, in place: the cabin, the playground, the forest, the snow, and the water. Entropy was going exactly according to plan in this brightening world.