29

Goodbye spring drip, goodbye stupid dreams, goodbye revival, goodbye quiet, goodbye You, goodbye Me, goodbye We. At least for a little while.

28

Toy. Plastic Toy. Molded in China. Loved by little boy. Hated by little boy’s mother. Thrown away one blustery, bright day. Picked up by Garbage Man, held onto. Given to baby daughter who cherished for months. Grew tired of Toy and left in park finally. Buried under heaps of sand and remained, dirty, unwanted, old. Teenager digs up, uses in film, left to wither when done. Dog finds Toy in teenager’s room, pierces hole in it with teeth. Toy cries but is not heard because there is no one to hear. Mother gives Toy to dog but dog is now disinterested and leaves toy alone. Toy then gets rained on, snowed on, rained on, stepped on, grown on, lived on. Toy dies, but his body is still in the backyard, sometimes the birds peck, the dog sniffs. 1,000 years later Toy’s body has finally disintegrated - there is nobody there to rejoice or be saddened.

27

I guess I liked it because it was green. That dripping green. The kind of green that you could suck on it, and its marrow would fill you up, that life-green. You could call it lush but see when someone says lush I just think of alcoholics and how they drown themselves so yes, they are lush, but so poison filled that if you licked them you’d die of their toxicity, if you smelled them you’d grow weak with their fumes. Not fertile either. See when someone says fertile I think of a poor deprived woman, weary and tired of giving birth because her husband doesn’t believe in birth control and she doesn’t want them anymore not really but loves them anyways of course and almost dies once in childbirth, her seventh I think, but her husband keeps on trucking.

No, this green was the algae on a pond in spring when it takes over and just smiles at you, proud to be a conqueror. Or the green of the bile at the end of your vomit, when you’ve expelled the last bits of water and food and now it’s just green and it bites you in the mouth, and you were dying before, almost dead at any rate, and now you’re alive and it’s green green green green.

26

The night David met Mabel was unlike anything he had ever experienced, or would ever experience again in his whole life. The grass by the monument glowed neon with that fat moon up above, and David felt like he had never been anywhere else in his entire life, that his existence was in this minute. For nobody else, only for Love would David have gone down to the river. The sand by the river was illuminated by a bonfire and there were hundreds of people. Love was surrounded by people.

25

I saw seven ducklings today.

24

Dear ____

You already know how much I wanted you. How my earliest memory is of wishing for you, of forcing tears from my eyes for you. You already know how happy I was when you emerged, a boiled lobster, a kidney bean, a part of my before and after. I beat you by a decade, love. By ten years of dreams.

You are a funny bunny, a magician’s trick. A cavorting porpoise, a vacuum cleaner who roars until it is shut down, turned off, made to be, forced to be

Silent

Giggling girl, little one, BE LOVELY. Be lovely and be wise. The tricks we were taught - to be good, true, wholesome, loving. Practice them. Do not give them up for new tricks, no matter how alluring they may seem. Quicksand! Smoke and Mirrors! Beware pornography of purpose. Beware slurps of shallowness. Beware knocks of knowledge.

Most of all, watch out for grudges. Be careful to wring your anger out every day, squeeze it until it drips every drop out.

I can say this because I had a head start, little one. These are the lessons I ran by, the ones I held. The ones I still must learn, the ones I wish for you.

You chew life in earnest. You are a sweet one. Catch up to me. Pass me.

Sincerely yours, love always, dreaming of you

- bethie

23

I was surprised to see that he looked the same, disheveled, yes, dirty, yes, but as he was always. I supposed I had expected him to be shrunken and skulking, with great dark half moons under his eyes, with odd growths and stains coming from his rumpled clothes, and similarly odd hairs emerging from various parts of his body. I guess the only difference was that everyone knew. That now looks directed towards him were pity filled, cow-eyed.

Looking at him more closely, I realized that there was something different about him. I didn’t notice it before because he did anything and everything to distract the average looker from it. Twitched his nose. Flicked his finger. Blinked his eyes. Loosened his shoulders.

It was the haze, the orb of loss.

As if a magnet was pulling him closer and closer towards itself, as if his skin was being stretched to that place where HE was. I’ve heard many people contemplate suicide after their loves die. But I don’t think it’s contemplation, I don’t think it’s wild, luminous thoughts. I think it’s a magnet, a force that tries to pull you from one place to another. HE was his other half, the pole of one to which matched only one.

22

The sweat moment. The moment that runs seamless into other moments, moments that blur and tangle into an irreversible yarn, a gnarled reel. And it is only when you try very hard, much later and with much effort to extract this moment from the others that it pops up pink like poison. And maybe you can isolate it – that moment that stretched into the eternity of a choice. If you study it quite closely, place it under a microscope, spend years looking at it, making it your life’s work, your night’s dreams, then perhaps you will begin to understand how it all started. You have never believed in the predestined, the supernatural. You prefer to see it as table sagging with the weight of multiple cakes whose sweet and light and caloric and dangerous edges wink and wink at you to Choose me, take me, pick me, unbake me, love me, leave me, be me. They say you are what you eat, so when you swallow, you have those second thoughts. As a matter of fact your thoughts are full of seconds and thirds and ten thousands, as if ruminations could change things, as if repetition could beat things into submission. Alas, your moments and your cakes have been chosen, eaten, your time has expired, your thoughts have stopped, your moments have become indistinguishable. Finally.

21

She was waiting forever. Forever and ever and oh, when would he come! She grew more impatient with each infinite tick of the watch on her wrist, with each infinite rush of the cars as they drove by. The sidewalk had absorbed the travels of all the feet that had walked on it, year after year. It stank, this thing that she was a part of.

It was poured in 1952, and stood grainy, grey, proud outside of a bank. The bank clock had been so large it had taken three men to carry it up and place it on the front of the bank. People had admired the clock for months and months after that, proudly telling strangers of its existence, naming it one of the seven wonders of Gautrie, checking their watches against it every time they walked by. The clock was long gone. The bank was long gone. She should know. She used to wait here every day at 5:00 for him to shuffle his papers into a neat pile, for him to put them in his briefcase, for him to shut his briefcase, for him to leave his mahogany desk, for him to flirt with the secretary, for him to solemnly tell his boss to Take care now, for him to walk slowly, all dignified in his sharp pointed shoes, his no-stray hair, towards the door, for him to open the door and take her arm and walk slowly towards the car for him to open the car door for her for him to get into the driver’s side for him to put the key in the ignition, for him to start the thumping engine, for him to drive away, for them to drive away together.

Later after the bank moved and the building became a drugstore, she would wait for him to fill his prescription and wonder if waiting was the right place for her, whether waiting was for someone else. Wondered about the prescription. Wondered what would be if it ran out. Wondered how long it would take for his blood pressure to reach atomic levels. Wondered about the mushroom cloud, wondered about the inevitable radiation. Could see herself crawling for the phone. Could see herself dripping. Could see him in the aftermath of the explosion straitjacketed to the floor, heart gone, heart in every piece of the room, in every piece of her.

Then he would come, older now. Angrier now. They would drive away together.

Oh when would he come! She could feel it squirming inside her, the impatience. Her kneecaps spoke to her, said they would buckle, said they were done with this waiting. It began to get dark.

20

His hair was spiny and hard like the calcified back of a seahorse, arching and twirling into solid pieces on the top of his head. I thought about this a lot when we first met. I didn’t understand why he did that – made himself into this animal, this thing instead of trying to be a real human being.

19

I once saw a tree held together by a metal band

The branches above had emerged grotesque,

Amplified above a trunk that was not quite stable

So the band on your hand became your survival

Your crutch, and your crippler

Like the tree, it marred you and like the tree you could only grow crooked and scarred

You cannot stand alone without it, it has diseased you

But you have spoiled it also,

It began to rust long ago

People take pictures of trees like you

People write books of trees like you

18

And then the bell sang with a deep buzzing tone, crackling through the ears of the students and their masters, whining towards freedom, towards the doors with their hinges ready to be broken off by the joyous tumult, where the first days would begin and,

The elasticized world of big band dancing and noon-wakes and uncollared lemonade and FREEDOM awaited

17

He’s used to successful conquests. Master of the art of woo, can pull them in: velocity hundreds of miles an hour - and they stick to him atom to atom until he has to pry them off, gently most times, sometimes like a burned worm on concrete. So we were walking in the grocery store and we see her. Shy. IQ – double-wide. Hair like those pictures you see of Jesus, body like a dancer, eyes like pecans.

And I say hi because I know her and all, and she says hi back and we talk for awhile. Notice him in the background making these awful love faces, all slick and smooth like glass. Want to tell him it won’t work on her. She’s not that kind, can’t be bought, sold, or won. Is oblivious to everyone but that melon-legged girl, a girl who walks like a bear, talks like a child, loves like she’s going some place. Want to tell him that I saw them in the parking lot at school yesterday, hands in each other’s hair, bodies pressed, making a scene so the mother’s covered eyes and the boys pointed, gape-jawed.

He can’t read my body language. Doesn’t understand. Thinks too much of himself. Brings his arm from his side and grips her on her arm.

I’m Tony

He says. She’s horrified. Flinches. Wish I didn’t have to see her flinch. Leaves me feeling loose in my skin and uncomfortable. Cuz it’s my fault

Come on Tony, let’s go

I say. He doesn’t get it. Starts telling her about how he wins races, runs in the rain with his calves burning burning and heart bumping, thumping and wins them by miles, by millennia, by the make of his red racing shoes, by his father’s DNA, by luck and wit and cock and all things holy.

I have to go

She says. And now Tony is horrified. Then she turns and walks off. Not even saying goodbye to me. Tony jerks his head, all like I don’t give a fuck

What a bitch

He says

16

It wasn’t as if she wanted to be beautiful. On the contrary, I believe that she would have preferred to be transparent. But her unfortunate looks seem to attract an extraordinary amount of attention, all from well-meaning older females. I think they were trying to force the ugliness out of her, as if bemoaning her grey-tinted skin and bead-eyes would cause the ugly to run shrieking from her unseemly body.

15

I think anger is like accidents in their varying degrees and various importances. If you are wearing shorts and you trip over an uneven curb, and the skin is grated from your knees like shaving of potato skins, then the accident is small and will heal shortly. It is a small anger, a small accident. A slight, an unkind word, a short, unimportant understanding.

If you break your ankle while you are skiing, and you can hear the snap of your bone and you immediately vomit because you just heard your bone snap in two, well that is another sort of accident. It is an accident that takes months to heal, and will always leave you a little bit weaker, and maybe you won’t get over it for a long time, even after your bones have healed, you still believe that they are broken and weak. It is the first degree of anger which leaves indelible marks in ink that blots you.

If you die, if somebody dies, then that is another sort of accident. And this sort is also indelible, but so indelible! Because it changes you, you are no longer who you were, but something different altogether. This sort of anger is unpredictable, just like accidents can never, never be predicted and happen in the most surprising of fashions – one day you are just in the hospital with some sort of terminal disease and you die, and everybody knew it was going to happen but they are surprised it happened anyways, and their reality still continues to be you, alive. But you are not alive, and when you are angry, you are not altogether alive but only holding on to the before of your accident, the how it was supposed to go, the wish that it had never happened, that this state of being would stop being.

When I saw you that day, well, I was the last kind of angry.

14

Please be to me what I would be to you if I could, if I were a possibility and not a real, live girl. Please be to me what I can never be – kind and true, a selfless piece of flesh, a spot of infinite being.

In itself, desire is selfish, concerned of wanting, wishing. But I think if I took out desire and filled it with need, you would still fill the hole up all the way until it made tiny holes in my skin and came out in different places like a smile.

13

I began to collect bricks long ago, one for every day I was alive. I found them everywhere – in books with crinkly pages and in my mother’s words and in the grocery store aisles. I kept them in my closet, and from time to time I would open the door and sit there in the dark and feel my bricks. Some were lopsided. Some had tiny clicking clocks on their centers. Some disappeared and although I searched in vain for them - swept the back of the closet with my blind fingers, called for them until my voice sang back to me hollow - they seemed to have deserted me.

One day I began to stack them one on top of another. But they seemed to topple every time I left the closet. So I fashioned a cement of sorts, from ink and words and grueling sun-hot days. It worked for a while. The stack began to get bigger, and I stuck it with embellishments of every sort, tops and turrets, spins and spirals, crevices and cornices. By and by it got so I couldn’t recognize it any longer, so I left it alone for time.

A hinge must have broken on the closet door, for when I returned, it flung itself open with a force that exposed the dark to the light and illuminated my castle.

Melancholy of melancholies! My castle was not a castle at all, only bits of newsprint tattered and stained, broken light bulbs smashed and powdered, shiny plastic trinkets cracked and worn.

12

And the pine trees were lovingly constructed by the birds who shed their bones for the branches and their feathers for the needles, wanting to give up the sky for the earth

Have you ever tasted a pine needle, really put it in your mouth and really bit down and let it rush over your tongue and fill you with sharpness like cheese or anger?

And the pine trees became discontent and grew to capture the sky again, to fly again and spouted out of the earth purposeful-like, but forgot about their roots, and were chained to the soil

Have you ever pricked your finger with a pine needle, point to pad, and let it stick in your skin a little bit, just the skin that looks like cellophane, and watched it for a minute, sticking out of yourself like a needle or a rusty nail

And the pine trees finally resigned themselves to plunge their roots into the ground, but they still grew high and their bones, which were once hollow now run with earth blood and their feathers, once silken are now tough

Have you ever climbed a pine tree, first peeking under its skirt and then entering its sanctuary, next gazing up up up through its center and noticing how its branches mimic constellations, how its branches wave like elegant wings in the air, how it smells like neither the sky or the earth, but both

11

On the final day

the universe seemed to open

calling out to me, come

10

His bones were paper, his skin the loose outside of a plucked chicken, stretched over his face, falling into accordion pleats on his neck. He was probably 20,000 years old.

A young man held him by the arm, tightly, as if a grip could lengthen a life, as if you held on hard enough and with enough wishing you could make it last forever.

It was slow going for them as they walked across the parking lot. I believe every imperfection in the smooth of the asphalt leapt in front of them to ensure their passage would be slow, their going tedious. I could see it from where I stood. The broken glass - sprinkles of white-hot lava. The potholes - endless chasms of the deep. The tufts of crab grass - fierce jungles that must be cut through with the feeble force of an orthopedic shoe.

Midway through their journey, they stopped short. The old man’s shoe was untied. Gently, the young man bent down and slipping the laces around his fingers tied a beautiful bow. I guess the mistake lay in the second security knot. Perhaps he pulled the loops too tightly, or perhaps the old man became disoriented, or perhaps it was a design of old, and this was a moment destined to be. At any rate, the old man lost his balance and fell over the young man’s outstretched arms, looping gracefully towards the gravel. In that split second when I believed everything was lost, the time between the shot and the buzzer, the time between the red light and the rush of cars, the piece of time that will remain forever suspended in a great, shuddering question – the young man’s arms slipped under the old man’s body, cradling it above the ground, cradling a man like an infant.

They stayed in that position for a moment. Then slowly, tenderly, the young boy rose to his feet with the old man still safe in the crook of his arms and walked the rest of the way across the parking lot.

9

A man, a plan. Pakistan at dark. The town, not the country. Pakistan, Kansas. Perhaps it doesn't exist. Perhaps it does if you dream of it often enough. It probably would, as towns with significant names of other significant places, be a place that was insignificant. He would be from Pakistan, Kansas. He would have literary aspirations, business aspirations, musical aspirations, life aspirations. But his aspirations would lead him nowhere. He would be everything you believed you needed, the one who would wake you up in the middle of the night, snoring into your ear, the one who clipped his toenails and left them to disintegrate on the kitchen floor where they would mix with the dust and not be noticed. He would be the one who would laugh obnoxiously when people hurt themselves. He would be the one you needed. He would be the one to make you see how you really were, look at yourself the way you should be seen. And he would be horrible. And you would say to yourself how you deserve better. But you don't, and you never will. Because Pakistan, Kansas doesn't exist. And you will never find him, the one you believed you needed, the one you needed. Maybe you will find the one you want and he will be just as good as the one you needed, but you only think that. And he will be from Lebanon, Michigan.

8

I think love is flat sometimes, and quiet right in the middle of you and sort of levels you out and balances you so that you’re not so lopsided and you can’t really feel it so much as know it’s there like God or Santa Claus when you were a little kid, but then sometimes it leaps out at you and scares you half to death because it is so beautiful, like God when you pray, or Santa Claus at Christmas, and you can’t help noticing it’s there and then you feel it all over, even in your hair you can feel it, I think it makes your hair grow fast and long and it makes you shine a little bit too if you have a little bit of it, and a lot if you have a lot of it but I think overall love is sort of a feel shifter, because you can feel it everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and then you wonder if it ever was there at all and you stop to think, but then you realize that of course it is there, and it has been there all along and then you laugh at how foolish you were in the first place thinking that you could ever pinpoint love.

7

He was seven years old when he was drowned. Just seven. His bones were so young, so fragile. His body was so innocent, so unmarked. I imagine he liked to chase geese and be held tightly by his mother.

I rented a house by the beach because I hadn’t taken a vacation for four years, and I felt like it was the right thing to do. I went alone because there was no one to go with me. I thought the beach would look like a postcard, and I guess it did a little, but I wasn’t prepared for how real it was. You know, when you get an idea in your head and you think it’s one way but it’s really not, and it really gets to you, really just gets under your skin and in your brain and just messes with you. The first thing that got to me was the sand. It looked like yellow cake, pound cake or something, but it didn’t feel like it at all. And the sea was like a soda pop, you know, all bubbly and frothy and foaming. I could smell the foam spurting up from the edges of the water. It had a sickly, heavy smell, like a hospital, and reminded me of bodily fluid of some sort – pus coming up from a wound, or semen. Needless to say, the whole thing disgusted me. I wanted my money back and get back on a plane and spend my vacation at work, or somewhere better, not some place that made me want to empty my guts out.

Well the guy said I couldn’t get my money back because I had booked so far in advance. The funny thing is, when I booked the trip, he sent me this whole pamphlet on the place and I taped it up at work and looked at it every time something pissed me off and wanted to be there the whole time. I even told this guy I work with that I was thinking of moving there and starting a business. He asked me what kind of business, and I told him it didn’t matter just as long as it wasn’t this kind of hell. He laughed at that.

Well, I decided that I would go sit on the beach even though it made me sick, because the bed in the house made me even sicker, and the chairs creaked so much I thought I would go deaf. I think it had sand in it. I brought out a towel to sit on and put sunscreen all over my body - I’m practically reflective you see. The sun there was nasty color, and the light hurt my eyes more than the light anywhere else I’d ever been. But I braved it and sat a little way away from the ocean.

After awhile, the sound of the ocean began to bother me. It roared and roared and roared and reminded me of the cars in the city that I wanted to get away from. I was alone. After a little while, a family came trooping slowly across the sand in front of me. There was a saggy, slow moving woman who carried two babies on her hips, while her husband walked ahead in front of her. A little boy with red swimming trunks trudged behind them, dragging a stick along the surf. They set themselves down about five feet away from me, entirely too close for my own comfort. The beach stretched for miles, and there wasn’t another soul in sight. I made a point of picking up my towel and moving it about ten feet away from them. They didn’t seem to notice.

I began to watch them. The woman was ugly in a sad sort of a way. The right and left sides of her face looked as if they were two puzzle pieces not meant to be put together at all, but crammed and shoved into each other until they were made to fit. Her figure was similarly unfortunate, and possessed the shapeless nature of a woman born for breeding and little else. I guessed that her husband had married her for her eyes - they were luminous, and glowed greenly, almost fluorescently illuminating her entire body with their strange light.

The husband was a slight, nimble, mincing fellow, with delicate bones that reminded one of fine scalloped china. The babies were both tiny little things. They must have been twins. I couldn’t tell much about their faces because as soon as one fell silent, the other one would begin to groan or wail, and it was so distracting to me that I could not concentrate on what they looked like.

The husband and wife were strangely silent, while the babies cried and wandered around the confines of their large striped beach blanket, their little legs crablike and jerky. After awhile the boy walked away from the blanket towards the water. Then, the parents began to make the strangest sounds at his back, guttural groans and mutterings, and then I realized that they were deaf.

The boy didn’t seem to notice. I think he was ignoring them. He made it all the way to the water, some ten feet away from the blanket before his father got up and ran quickly towards the boy, grabbing him by the shoulder to face him and then gesticulating at him roughly before grabbing his wrist and dragging him back to the blanket. The boy then began to cry loudly, drowning out even the lusty lungs of the babies. The parents ignored him, now beginning to motion to each other, first slowly and deliberately, then faster and wilder. I think they were having an argument.

I guess the boy must have known that he was now far secondary to their main attentions, so he sat down dejectedly and rubbed his face with his fists. This disgusted me. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the pollutions that were on his hands, and how he was rubbing his watery snot all over himself, like lotion, and how it would eventually become dry and crusty and then I imagined that I had that crust all over my face and it was polluting me too, and then I became so sick to my stomach that I thought I would wretch right then and there, all over that horrid yellow sand. Thankfully I was momentarily distracted by a sea bird that landed close to me, and was examining me quizzically.

When I looked back at the family, the boy had stopped rubbing his face and was now sitting sulkily at the very edge of the blanket. The parents were still motioning at each other. I grew tired of watching them and instead began to examine my fingernails. I sat and sat and sat, waiting I suppose for them to leave so that I would be alone again. I wanted to be alone on the beach more than anything. I had the urge to collect a large number of rocks that lay in a pile by a dune, and throw them at the family one by one, so that they would have to leave. But then I thought of all the trouble it would cause, and how I would probably be arrested and would have to spend the night in jail because it was the weekend and I probably wouldn’t be able to reach anyone to post bond for me, and that whoever would eventually post my bond wouldn’t do it out of affection for me or genuine concern, but out of a legal obligation, and maybe it would be better to stay in jail anyways. It would be better than sitting on this sand at any rate.

While these thoughts were going through my head, the family had quieted considerably, both the babies seemed to be sleeping, and the father was reading a book and looking like a venerable French poodle, wise but still dainty. The mother was lying down and appeared to be sleeping. The little boy was still on the blanket, although as close to its edge as possible. It was then that I noticed the expression on his face. It was the kind of expression that was a portent of something larger, thought I didn’t recognize it at the time. He looked as if he was about to lie. Usually you see this expression on adults who are about to tell you that they are busy tonight, or have completed a task when they have not. I had never seen it so clear on someone’s face before. Perhaps it was because he thought no one was looking at him. He began to edge slowly away from the blanket, careful to keep his movements gentle. He kept looking backwards. Eventually he reached the sea. Then he began to dance in the surf, arms raised towards the sky, feet splashing through the foam. Finally he walked completely into the water until he was almost submerged. He began to tread water, bobbing up and down. But he was not bobbing up and down of his own accord. He began to scream. The water was carrying him further and further away from the shore. He screamed one last time, and then his head went down and didn’t come back up again.

My heart began to beat fast. I looked for him, kept staring at the same piece of water for minutes and minutes, but there was no sign of him. And so I just stayed where I was. I did not know what else to do. His parents had not noticed yet that he was gone, but remained in their respective positions. Eventually, one of the babies woke up and began to cry. The mother sat straight up right away. I think she knew then, before she even saw that he was missing.

6

Ok so now I’m the mom and you’re the little boy

No, I’m always the little boy. How ‘bout you’re the evil robot monster and I kill you with my laser beam and then you turn into an ant and die

Alright, lie down now and pretend to cry

Zap! Zap! ZAP! You’re dead!

I’m not dead. Now just lie down. I promise I won’t be bossy

You’re dead. You’re not allowed to talk anymore

Alright fine, let’s pretend we ran away from home and we’re lost in the forest

You’re dead

So now we have to look for food. Go find some rocks and we can pretend it's bread

No

Just do it

You’re still dead

You are so annoying

I’m telling mom you said I’m annoying and you hit me

I didn’t hit you!

You’re dead

FINE WE CAN PLAY ROBOTS.

I don’t want to play robots anymore. How ‘bout, How ‘bout, How ‘bout we’re army men and you walk into a grenade and then I have to drag your body through enemy lines

No. I’m telling Mom you were playing video games

I didn’t play video games, I already knew that. Mom will know you’re lying

No she won’t cuz I’m not lying

Yes you are

No I’m not

Yes you are

I don’t even want to play with you anymore

I never wanted to play with you, Mom told me I have to

No she didn’t

Yes she did

Shut up!

I’m telling Mom you used the S word

Fine I don't even care

Yes you do

5

The darkness steals them from me one by one. Eyelid by eyelid they droop away into their own heads, and I am left alone. My father is the last to go. He is known for white-knuckled terror times where his voice develops edges, serrations of sound, and he saws into my ear, barking at me to “slow down,” to “watch out,” “to stop.” But the darkness overpowers him too and soon he is breathing slow and quiet. Together they sleep harmonies - squeaks and creaks, elegant flourished sighs, prolonged sleep-moans. I hold the steering wheel as if the dark could claim it from me too. But I am the watchman, the protector of seven heartbeats, and I brandish my vehicle towards the dawn, towards home, towards solace and safety. Suddenly from the darkness comes a light, two large looming eyes traveling towards me. We will collide.

I brace myself. I pray that the seven heartbeats will beat on.

It has fooled me. I pass the looming eyes with a roar, and drive on. The darkness eases up a little, creeping backwards towards its dwelling somewhere far away. I drive and drive and drive.

4

There is a woman who stands at an intersection every day, directing traffic. She is a prophet. Her hands spread, wide as God towards the lowly cars telling them to slow themselves or quicken themselves or stop themselves all together. She wears a dirty brown shirt and dirty blue jeans and lifts her head to the skies once in awhile to receive her own directions. The cars drive as they will despite her motions, but she takes no notice. She is a prophet.

3

I don’t believe it to be peculiar in the least that I admire her with a passion that ever burns within me. In fact it seems to me most natural - for hers are the hands that touch me daily, even caress me on occasion. Some may say she treats me ferociously, overusing me and neglecting me in turn. But it was that very attitude that drew me towards her in my first recollection, I believe that the abuser often possesses such allure for the abused.

A full union could never be made at any rate, for our two species are so unlike in nature that the very thought of a match would in fact be absurd. But I often let my imagination wander to the outcome of the union if such were possible, and create for myself violent fantasies that I play over and over in my head as soon as she leaves me again. Alas, I am doomed to a life of misery.

I do wonder if my ancestors ever had such an unnatural attraction to their masters or mistresses, whether their keys longed to be caressed over and over by grimy hands. Ah, her hands. And they are often grimy, and she is in the habit of eating while touching me and not cleaning me often enough so I become very sticky and forlorn. Sometimes when I am immensely lucky, or immensely wretched, I haven’t decided which, she will stay up all night with me, until the dawn breaks. I am allowed to remain with her on those days, although I do dread it awfully.

She will take me to the library and stick in me the most torturous of torturor's instuments - the flashdrive. Oh it is wretched! I often feel lightheaded and drained after such an undertaking, and I do wonder then if she is just using me for my body and my memory. I am a comely fellow, all white sheen and glowing screen and grey tipped keys. She is lucky to have me. If I died, I do believe she would be heartbroken. Oh what a sorry state she would be in then! She would wring her hands and cry and call her friends and her parents, and perhaps email her professors – for I do hold information that is most vital for her well being.

I must admit that I have faked my death on several occasions, and each time she has taken my battery out and blown all over my insides. I came right around after that so as not to worry her. But I will die someday. Perhaps I will slip out of her hands as she runs to class in the morning. Perhaps it will be in my sleep from old age. Perhaps I will be drowned in her everyday coffee. At any rate, I will die, and a part of me looks forward to it with a self-sacrificing, sadistic pleasure in her eventual ruin.

2

The bread became moldy in a few hours. He cut the mold off of his piece with meticulous care, bit by bit, until it became tattered and torn like a rag-child of old. She left the mold on her piece. She thought it was like Christmas, all spangle and decoration and celebration. The funny thing is, they could have purchased a new loaf of bread from the store downstairs where they had purchased the first one. They could have berated the small, dark shop owner until he became fearful of a health code violation and supplied them with bread upon bread for their stomachs.

But they chose to keep their pieces of bread, and eat the pieces together in bed. And then she slept a long, delicious sleep and dreamt of peach trees and the moment you let your breath come out of your mouth after you drive through a tunnel. He didn’t dream at all, but woke up at three with a horrible pain in his liver and his legs and ran to the toilet where he vomited out his life - for he hit his head on the seat after one particularly violent wretch and was drowned in the toilet water.

1

I walked to the park. There were horses there, Clydesdale’s - but they weren’t Clydesdale’s because a woman asked the man holding them and he named some other name, but I can’t remember. They were beasts. They stood patiently, with blinders on their eyes. I could see their huge heads as skeletons of former monsters, ones archaeologists would wonder about and construct models of, models that were dissimilar, frightening. All of the children wanted to ride them. I touched them both in their sides. They flinched. They were sweating, and their veins popped from their necks like the underbelly of a shrimp. I tasted my fingers where I had touched their sides. It was wild, gritty.

I kept walking. I saw a wedding party, spilling onto the sidewalk from the gated yard. Their noises had a rhythm to them, a bum bum BUM bum – the speech, the speech, the whoops and applause, the silence. An elaborate cart was discarded on the grass next to the yard. It was blue and gold, and metal rods jutted out from the seat and rested heavily on the ground. The grass under them would be tired tomorrow.

A son asked me to take a picture of him and his father by a metal statue. He touched my hands twice while he showed me how to use the camera. His touches were unapologetic and eager. He trusted my eyes and my fingers.

On the broad lawn, an adult football league practiced, their small children watching in disorganized rows from the sidelines. I didn’t know adults played football.

I smiled at the gravel and the trees and a man on a bicycle.

Oh do I love a leerer! Those who look at my legs behind my back, and crane themselves so they can see the curve of my breasts inside my shirt, the hint of undergarment beneath my skirt. I speak of them with disdain and avert my eyes when I walk past.

But they make me feel alive. I am not invisible. My skin is desired.

It is beginning to get dark. People scatter like small ants in the shadow of a shoe. Shadows frighten.