December 2008
26 posts
pictures of sylvia
Oh look, he said. Pictures of Sylvia.
They’d been pressed into a Billy Collins poetry book, and had that grainy, almost-vintage look that some disposable cameras give you. She was wearing that blue peacoat he loved when he caught her face, now blushing, now smiling, now hiding in her hands.
November 2008
19 posts
thanks
My bags were packed, I was ready to go. I stood in the front room looking at the grainy-colored photographs that had never looked so old. I wondered what it was like to invent a little person, so dependent on you for everything, and then watch them leave. So long.
the intellectuals
They called him a sentimental fool. He stumbled outside of their parlors, clutching his derby hat in an ill wind. He’d wander alone for days, leaning on his cane, cast out by the intellectuals for believing in something better than earth. The rain clouds scampered behind him like new puppies.
morning run
He had started running when things got really bad. He’d breeze through the morning air in a steady jog, breathing to the rhythm of his heart. After awhile, he’d feel the sun warm the nape of his neck, warming the blood there until it pumped through him like hot syrup.
asbestos
Gerry lay awake under an asbestos ceiling. He wasn’t sure if the stuff ever caused cancer or not, but he hoped it did. He was thinking about every possible thing wrong with him, from his inability to wake up early in the morning to his nails, blunted by nervous teeth.
summer breeze
The way the dirt kicked up around the car brought back memories of his boyhood road trips. His head would be out the window as they roared past the creek near their house, gasping against the rush of summer breeze while Dad laughed at him. Breathe it in, he’d say.
bored
His apartment window looked out over a crumbling parking lot, surfaced and resurfaced in dark patches and long drips of asphalt. He saw birds, still as statues on the fence, and watched until one flew off in a frenzied flapping. His books stood shut, his heart gray, his eyes half-lidded.
let's just be friends
Henry nodded imperceptibly.
It’s wonderful, he would say later, to feel your heart melting in the hands of heartbreak. It had been stainless steel before, maybe even a hollow iron, but in the red hot hands of heartbreak it steamed and sizzled and dripped into a pool of bubbling silver.
erik
All bets were definitely off. Raoul was in town and Christine would probably be seeing him. He’d catch them singing under his chandelier, dancing in slow circles under those gold-burning bulbs. Or maybe he’d just stay below, mind his business, play his organ, wear his mask.
Yes, that sounded nice.
cold
It would be a cold winter. The wind cut into them as they walked under the naked trees. They didn’t hold hands anymore because it didn’t make them warm. The sun was a slow-thudding heart behind the white cobwebs of clouds. They sighed in puffs.
That’s how cold it was.
you said
It’s darkest before the dawn, you said, every cloud has a silver lining. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s never as bad as you think. You’ll know it when you find it, there are other fish in the sea, she’s out there somewhere.
You were right.
old to love
Old to love, their first kiss was fireflies, not fireworks. When they held hands, it wasn’t electricity but a warm yellow light, the kind he read by some nights. Instead of the wide world, her eyes were a wading pool he walked in until the breeze picked up just so.
pockets
It had come to him in a dream, this folded weft of cloth, enclosing items he’d carried only in his hands before. There would be an uproar among the shopkeepers, surely, to see their goods disappear behind the layered cloths of his person. They’d want to take his pockets away.
my archenemy
The fat white flakes made him sleepy and depressed. He longed for the damp darkness of his room, the tall walls, his lamp with sickly light. While he snored fitfully, his archenemy drew strength from the blank blankets of wetness, looked out over trackless miles of it and laughed triumphantly.
how it ends
So this is how it ends. He can’t tell it’s raining but for the whispered drops on his windshield, a spider web of cracks. Devotchka is somehow still playing, thrumming into the night, surging out his broken windows, coloring the gray skies a rusted gold. This is how it ends.
lifesavers
We stood in the bathroom, in darkness, crunching the Lifesavers of life, watching the sparks of romance wink in each other’s mouths, waiting for an explosion. We were merely study partners, enduring the rigors of college, suffering the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” eating mint candy in the mirror.
shy kisses and black cats
She kissed like a shy girl, eyes open for approval, in a hurry but not wanting it to end, not knowing where to put her trembling hands. A black cat wandered out of the shadows and startled them both, but they pretended it didn’t mean bad luck and kissed again.
scratch
He remembered that first knee scrape, the itching sting, the thin red line drawn across otherwise unmarked skin. He couldn’t believe it. After an entire childhood of watching his step—carefully avoiding doors, dogs and corners—he’d drawn blood anyway. He’d wanted to make it through here without a scratch.
detroit
There used to be over a million people here, the cabbie said, pulling my luggage from the trunk. But a lot have gone away. We looked out over the water of St. Clair, where the skyscraper light was a reflected haze. It’s a great city, though. We’re making a comeback.
my cracked romantic lens
Tepid cocoa streamed from the eyes of every bohemian damsel until the ringing electronic sound stuttered into silence. When the lights renewed their soft gloom, the cocoa was tears and the damsels were real girls again, just like before I saw them that other way, through my cracked romantic lens.