January 2009
23 posts
this year
It’s just another night, isn’t it? Just another approximate orbit of the sun, another 365 days of glorious tragedy, another soon distant dream. Last year I lifted a glass of Martinelli’s to love. This year, while the pots are ringing and the streamers are singing, I’ll lift a glass to
December 2008
26 posts
the fellow sufferers
When Henry was inducted into the circle of heartbreak—boxes stuffed with photographs and poems and long letters, his room stripped of her decorations, her scent unlocking from his clothes, her hair in every in-between place, his deep dark ache keeping him up at night—he found many fellow sufferers.
the life
He lived the kind of life you only read about in books, so he wrote it down, from the Moldovan princess he loved, to the Nazi general he captured, to his days in Greece, shepherding goats on a slanting hillside, watching the sun bloom new over the horizon every morning.
mindy montier
Today he would say hi. This is what Darby said to himself in the bathroom. In the car. In the parking lot. In the back of class, behind Dan and next to Jeremy. And on cue, like a movie star actress making her appearance, walked Mindy Montier, gold locks bouncing.
venice
The candle smelled of Venice. She had brought it to him last summer, and now that she was gone he finally used it. The scent was rich and salty. He imagined the gondoliers standing astride their boats in the dark, floating like charmed sentinels, watching over her, wherever she was.
jack frost
She loved the snow, whether it was an untouched blanket or fresh with footsteps, thick flakes or hurrying gold sand, the crests of the small peaks or the caverns of the white mountains. She thought Jack was a prince, laying down light for mortals to walk on a small moment.
twenty christmas eves
Twenty Christmas Eves ago, he’d left letters for Santa in his stocking, wishes wrapped in red ribbons, the hopeful words of an impressionable boy. Twenty Christmas Eves later, the letters were written on his heart for someone else, prayers wrapped in sweet sorrows, the hopeful words of an impressionable man.
the letters
I don’t like any of them, she said.
That night, he swept the letters from his desk in a rage, swept them into the air like fifty-word bundles of fine-serifed sand. But now, floating in the twilight windows, they looked too gorgeous. He wished he could put them back again.
the goodbye
Yes I’ll be here. Always just right here.
Now the rain came, darkening the glow of the skylight over his flat, emotionless face. She looked for another moment before slipping into the darkness of the door, leaving him one and two no longer, the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.
love story
She wrote the beginning of a love story, bright hopes innocently told in little kisses and long talks at night. He wrote the ending, all busted hearts and betrayal. They met in the middle, on a hill in a park, where he brought her Shasta daisies and promised the world.
the deli
Her job is just off the subway at 50th, next to a forgotten old deli. The sting of their vinegar chips so wonderfully complements her pastrami sandwich she can only chase it down with cold chocolate milk. Their newspapers aren’t from here; the headlines are tragedies from only distant lands.
three minutes
David pushed and pulled at his toothbrush. He looked blankly in the wide mirror. Three minutes, he’d heard someone say once, maybe when he was small. Three minutes is a good brush. He scrubbed the edges of his gums. He’d give it maybe another thirty seconds, and then he’d spit.
the fall
He lay on the ice for a long moment, breathing cotton wisps into the morning air. Someone was watching him from the window, a motionless mannequin behind the glass. When he at last stood, his jeans were torn and his leg was bleeding, but his greatest fall was still ahead.
the window
It was something you’d see in the movies. The moon was white hot in his backyard, gilding the leaves a dark gold. When the shadows shifted in the warm breeze, he thought it was her waiting in the grass, waiting for him to call her name and open the window.
the nomination
It came in the night. He ran to the curtains and caught the dark horses hurrying away, disappearing behind his postcard of gray hills and skeleton trees. He froze, his breath warm on the window, knowing the yellow-brown envelope—sealed with wax and waiting in the lamplight downstairs—held his name.
war
They had come as strangers to this place, born on opposite sides of a spinning planet. Their differences were as deep and cold as the rivers they fought across, as immovable as the mountains they battled over, as stark as the stars they died under, gasping the same algid air.
one kiss
Henry had just made—and I mean just moments ago—the most ridiculous promise, just shaken on it as if it was the most regular thing in the world. Kiss one girl next year, only one, he’d promised, in the belief that some things, indeed, can last forever.
snowbell and the summer palace
We looked at our feet, buried in the green-gold reflection of the summer palace, water bugs flashing over them like microscopic raindrops. We shared a sticky peach, looking up at the lake’s palace towers, where the sun celebrated her sloping lines. We talked of things as we wished they were.
the chamber
There was a place inside Rebecca’s heart that she told no one about. It was the darkest of her four chambers, the glow there extinguished long ago. When she met someone new, she waited in secret for them to somehow, someway, turn the lights on and make her feel again.
fate
He’d made a mistake, but no one would ever tell him how big it was, letting him think fate had decided things. Instead of guilt and remorse, he felt a deep sense of destiny. The stars glared at his disobedient soul and he took it for the glow of approval.
the princess and the pea
She didn’t want to be loved. She wanted to be adored. When she closed her eyes at night, she was the princess that couldn’t sleep because of the pea, twenty mattresses and feather beds down, a small kernel of discomfort at her back, proof she wasn’t a little girl anymore.
liar
When Darby was tired of being hassled about the truth, he began to lie. He started easy. Fuchsia! he’d say, when they asked him his favorite color. Truthfully, he missed his closet of black suits and ties, but when they hassled him about fuchsia it didn’t bother him as much.
the razor
Jack had left his razor on the table downstairs. He was just remembering that as he felt the sharp black hairs on his chin. He’d left it face down, next to his fork and scrambled eggs. He’d been in an awful hurry, and now his razor was suffering for it.
dreaming of autobahn
Where else could he drive unimpeded by slow motorists or wandering pedestrians but here, where the world was but a square of blue sky stacked onto a white line of clouds, stacked on top of a red sunset, stacked on top of a gray-black road stretching both ways into foreverness?