And oh, most incessant of woes that ever prickles in the back of the head, the underside of the eyelid, that has you forever twisted within its miserly fingers, that refuses to loosen even a bit on you, let you go just a little.

It was the beginning of a taste. Too mild to be identified, too quick over the tongue to be called upon.

102

Today was the first day of the rest of her life.

101

Plans laid ever so carefully and mulled over and over in the difficult gray folds of your brain, often disintegrate so easily.

100

Did you ever meet Maybe? I did, once. That's the stupidest name I've ever heard, Maybe. Like her parents looked at her and weren't sure about her yet, and said to each other "Maybe," and the nurse thought it was some new-fangled name and scratched it onto the birth certificate and by the time her parents got around to naming her, it was already too late, the ink was dry, the nurse was done with her shift and off to sleep for hours and hours and play with her little dog, whose name was Molly, a common, sensible, nice name, not like Maybe.

99

And the moment of flying
And the small burst of light
And the the fire's red glow
And the essence of flight

How you're tossed in the air
How you're spread in the sky

How you will be millions
How you will soon die

In pieces and pieces and pieces and pieces and pieces and pieces.

98

There's a sort of camera in some people's minds somethimes. It's one of those extra special, extra sensory cameras that can zoom real far and see real wide, those panoramic shots like from above or below that take up the whole sky, or your whole face, pores and all, just everything.

97

October 6

you can't explain heartbreak, you can't define love

but our infinite feeling transcended that dripping grass and that sky and that day

96

I first saw her sitting on a bus stop looking just like a ninety-year-old woman. Her mouth was thin and her skin was juiceless. I asked her how she was.

"Adequate," she replied, with a snap so vicious I believe she may have broken her teeth.

95

I screamed so loudly I couldn’t even hear it myself. You know, like when the water’s so hot it feels like cold? When you’re so happy you feel sad. Yeah, like that. I probably woke people up for three miles. I didn’t care. I guess they should have known not to leave a dead guy on my lawn.

94

The womb is not a prison,

The mother’s not a saint

93

One day the wind blew in from the west gently taking with it the winter and the sounds and smells of winter and leaving in its place the softly molded spring. On that day, I decided to get into my car and drive to a place I had never been before. It didn’t really work I guess. I found myself at all the same places I’d been before.

92

She dreamt of elevators, cables snapping they would fall and fall and fall until the second before they slammed into the floor, then they would miraculously save themselves.

91

They felt like mosquito bites throbbing gently, itching quietly, on the surface of her heart, each one a little bit different in size and dimension, reminding her from time to time of their existence. She never forgot any of them. Her embarrassments, blunders like bubbles swaying mockingly in the wind that surrounded her.

90

"I will always be my father's son" he said as he chugged air like water in greedy gulps

Floyd Wallace was a sensitive soul.

86

When he was a small child, his brother told him that if you smiled often, eventually the smile would start to make your face collapse until it was all gone, and you would be faceless. So he never smiled. Not once.

85

She craved that swoony feeling more than anything, wanted to feel it from her gut to her legs and in her head in the middle of the night when she awoke for a glass of water, savoring the unforgettable, the blissful, the extraordinary. But these feelings, as most, have an expiration date, and theirs, like milk or eggs happens much more quickly than others, so the swoon turns into the memory of a swoon, and by and by, she couldn't remember the feeling at all without also feeling a quick little pinch of distaste, a sour sensation, a rotten egg.

85

I noticed the car was gone at midnight. Did you have work at midnight?

No Ma, I got hungry

You got hungry?

Yeah

84

Laura was unique in her ability to pull people into her mood, to make them feel exactly what she was feeling at the time, and to believe that it had been there own doing, so those who came in contact with her were often left wondering what had made them so joyful, so sad, or so lonely. Tonight, Laura was angry.

"Aggie, where did you go last night?"

83

the salt of the day had most certainly dried her mouth

82

A blank page

The grass in the beginning of spring

wonders how tall it will grow

the pencil marks, ink marks, marker marks

begin to cloud the page

I wonder how far it will go

81

Every morning he walked the few steps from his front lawn to the wide expanse of park in front of his house. Long ago he had chosen this house for the park, figuring that he would always have something to watch. You see he was not content unless he had his eyes out, searching for something, then finally sticking to it and holding it close. Even when he dreamed his eyes behaved like this. In the midst of fog or confusing shapes or whirling colors, his eyes would find something and stay there, and when he woke up he would remember just one image down to every minute detail - the folds of greyish pink on the elephant's trunk, the rippled, grained glass of the building he was to fall off of, the sunset glow of the poker he prodded into the fire in a strange house on a strange day.

Every morning he sat on the same bench. It was stone, flecked with shiny pieces that looked like silver.

80

Her mother was a very tired woman. If you looked at her long enough, your eyes would begin to droop and you would feel your mouth stretching out into a vicious long yawn, and your conversations would slow to a crawl. Her mother had gotten married very early, falling hopelessly in lust with a lazy boy who would never amount to much, according to those standards. But her mother was blessed, or cursed, depending on the way you looked at it, with child-love. You see, she had never had her heart broken, so she never absorbed the break and her heart never had the chance to grow back stronger and wiser.

79

Tired was not a feeling any longer. Now, it was a part of them. Scaring away productivity and laughter, it was a longing, all consuming. A longing to shut their eyes for just a moment, a bask in that which was nothing and something all at once, the touch of both worlds, and oh how they wished this space of in between was true and they could be forever caught in its grasp.

78

She swore up and down that it came from the bottom of the ocean. From an unfathomable cave or from the stomach of some creature who could produce perfect rocks, swollen and round, shiny and at the same time pulsating with a sort of glow that spread outward onto her fingertips, onto his face. He believed it came from outerspace. Chip off a meteroite. Belonging to some foreign, unlivable surface.
And so they differed. She thought she could capture the earth, in all its burgeoning, expansive glory. He believed he could capture the sky and the great beyond, and furthermore, he believed he could fit it all in the scaley skin of his palm.

77

and i suppose it was the way she looked at others, in immense rows, like classrooms filled to the top with various feelings

76

they all went together in her head, the murky blues, solemn greens, the browns waiting to be reds...

75

and they held hands together, waiting for doom, waiting for the apple to fall from the tree and smack against the concrete, for the ball to deflate slowly, for the vase to topple over, helped along by a great wind.

74

once upon time. the end.

73

i want to sleep and sleep and sleep until i can't think anymore, can't really breathe anymore, until i wake up and realize i have to think to breathe again and then that breath will feel like my first and it will be such a new, new start.

72

brain's broken

71

when we find something, we begin to think it's ours. the laundry especially.

i wear an appropriated wardrobe always.

the neighbor boy's green shirt. my brother's shorts.

a rained on, soggy, splendid pair of boots that smell all of outside and none of the mold that should have grown and grown on them

70

look at that dear old cowboy sitting there with his guitar. and the rocket ship with the great red engines and butter-shine yellow sides. and the mannequin stuffed to the seams, probably cobwebs by now. and the bike all digested in rust's stomach. and the dress ten seasons too old. and the rhinestones, black like sin.

69

And does music swell or just grow - grow so large that it bursts inside of you and creates an irreversible place where you are forever expanded

68

Every day at 5:00 PM, he brushed the leaves from the bench and sat, sinking into the metal like only old bones can, because they are softer, more fragile, and welcome the unbreakable more than the bone of the young. Every day at 5:00 PM he opened his eyes for the first time that day, really opened them. In the mornings when he drove to work, his eyes were squinty, he believed he was born with two pairs of eyelids, like a reptile, one a filmy, thin lid that protected him from the harshness.

67

Her mother’s voice was strangely low and rumbling, a lowing moose, an insistent washing machine, and it suddenly surrounded her.

“you can smell the chemicals all through the house and the backyard and you know I don’t like you staying up anyways, you need your beauty sleep.”

These things that her mother said. Beauty sleep. Pocketbook. Diddly darn it. Fuddy Duddy. In reference to herself, to others, she made them a part of her thoughts about them, made them believe that they would be beautiful if they slept, made them believe that she was old-fashioned but principled and so they must listen to her, made them believe that profanity should be softened into something ludicrous, something so foolish that it would hurt nobody’s feelings, as tender and slimed as oysters.

“Ma, I need to finish this”

She shut the door. On her mother. Adolescent.

Many insects had perished in this room. Her sloppiness had attributed to three deaths that very night. A paint drip that charted its course from ceiling to floor covered a tiny jumping spider who was attempting to crawl away from the fumes and the light, and her.

66

She was fly in a bottle, she could see the other side, the dirty dark sky, but this glass, the one she kept flying herself against, would never break, bend, or crack for her. And she could see the great golden moon, the moon she would fly to and over if only if only she could make this bottle vibrate and turn over on its side and shatter and somehow she would emerge from the rubble and fly, even with glass sticking in her wings and pinning her down, she would fly higher and higher, and maybe she would fall, or be wounded half way there, but at least she could feel this real thing, this black, and be covered by it and kiss it and this was life this was real life.

65

i wonder what the sunrise looks like

in a post atomic

sky

64

Dreary day. The sun was screaming at her, the clouds were chuckling innocently, hiding behind their fluffed coats. Something grey permeated, despite the bright, despite the birds' melodious chirping. She began to think the grey was on her, covering her like a pair of sunglasses, blocking out the beautiful.

No.

Perhaps the grey was in her, drumming gently at her skull, stretching its arms through her intestines.

63

It was yellow when she was young. Urine, mustard, taxicabs, sunlight when you close your eyes. She was covering up the last of the yellow. She closed her eyes for a few seconds and thought about the yellow. Then she rolled across the last bit.

62

He was sad. The room made him sadder. So he stayed in it. Sometimes people like to get sadder. He passed in that room. Passed, not died because he passed through a fiery hoop, a test, and he went on, to where he belonged. Perhaps some do not belong to this world at all, and the pull to the other ones, or theirs in particular, or the absence of one is so great that it feels like sadness, but it’s really like separation, like when a little kid loses his mother in the supermarket and gets that feeling, emptiness, separation. The details are not important. The aftermath is, because it got her here. His parent’s could not live there anymore. Because he was splattered all over newspapers in that room, and in them the next day, they sold the house to the woman with a twitch (her mother) and the man with the grave, comely face (her father) for too few pennies. Her mother brought a priest in to bless the room. Bless the house. Like after a sneeze, God Bless You. And the boy, who was still inside the room really, laughed and laughed. As if his passing was anything to Bless away. As if his passing could be Blessed away.

61

When Leroy showed up that first day, the kids were so frightened. Leroy entered like a huge gust of wind, and the kids were leaves, all blown into a pile crunched together. And you know how leaves get when they’re together, well they look the same, every last one, and that was like these kids faces, all wide and waiting, like Leroy was going to eat them. I guess he looked like he was going to. Later I would find that Leroy just looks like he wants to eat something all the time – you, your surroundings, cars, buses, animals – some people are just that hungry. It was scary, see having this man, this beast, I don’t even think he was all the way human at this point. I think a point comes when you’ve been away from things too long, and you lose touch with what’s real and what’s fake, and Leroy is outside in broad daylight for the first time in nine years, and he doesn’t belong, no, not at all, but it’s not even that. Talking to fake people, electronic people, people changed by the darkness had changed Leroy too until he was half robot really. I almost expected his voice to be like one of those robots you see on television.

60

Later, Jackie would die in a car accident. Much later. First he would be a collegiate athlete. Win all sorts of awards, shine all sorts of hearts up with the polish he held in his pores, make love to all sorts of people – professors, students, his garbage man, the woman in front of him in the grocery store, his bosses – not in the carnal sense, but the old fashioned one, you know, how in the olden days they could manufacture love out of thin air and spread it all around, all over the place, and tie it to a string and carry it behind them and sell it for absolutely nothing. Well, that’s what Jackie did. And when the accident came, he was thirty-three, like Jesus.

59

fed up torn up filled up

ill-up

pilled-up

thrilled-up

58

i guess it's half of being heartsick - the feeling of weightlessness followed by the dip of your chest into your thoracic cavity, the sweats that run salty multitudes out your skin, into the fabric of your clothes.

i miss you.

57

Good things about today

Telling the man at the paint store that the paint color was OK when it was perhaps not, but noticing his furrowed brow, cracked hands and slicked hair and deciding to give him a break even if it means that I will always look at the walls of my room in not-quite satisfaction

Making my sister perfect. Finding her the most beautiful dress, the most beautiful sandals. Being able to take the binder from my hair and the bobby pins from my hair to turn her hair into a wonder. Assuring her that her legs looked fine.

Hearing that song on the radio, the one we sing to each other. The heart break song. Malice filled. The one we sing to each other because we are in love and we are helium high on it and heart break seems such a funny, funny notion.

56

My shorts smell like sweat and outside, and mushrooms bubbling in butter, but I put them on anyways because they are a memory I wish to keep. I can smell them even as I stand above them, my nose elevated but aware still of their pungency and then I wonder if their smell has leaked somehow, onto my shirt into the skin above the waist band, and will it leave a stain of that summer day, blue and green and black, soaking into me, a tattoo of a time. I laughed when I went under the water, loud.

sometimes the wind, the water and the sky steal the breath from your lungs in little bits.

54

And I often wonder how meaning is assigned, whether in some cosmic designation, where it means something no matter what, hands down, world without end, amen. Or is it something you make, create for yourself, every single moment of the time you exist.

52

The smell of your parent’s house, a smell that brings tears to your eyes whenever you smelled it, so strong, so sweet, like the outside air and the sweat of seven and your mother’s laugh, how you can hear it from anywhere in the house and sometimes you can’t tell if it’s really a laugh or maybe a cry, and how this is the safest place on earth, and that if a nuclear bomb exploded you would want to be here, just here, smelling that smell and so you sit on your stairs and it’s so hot you start sweating behind your ears, a place you never knew could ever sweat and if you listen really closely you can hear your brother shift in his sleep, and your father breathe, so loud it sounds like snores, but really you know that he sucks in half the world with each breath, and you think that he’s trying to figure it out, even when he’s sleeping, and you can feel your sister’s itch, her skin beneath her blanket, like spaghetti sauce on pasta, red spread through the white in chunks, and you shift and the stairs creak, like when you were little and you would sneak down in the middle of the night to get a drink of water and you tried to be quiet, quiet, but now you are 20 years old and you don’t have to sneak any longer and this smell, this smell, like a magnet, pulling you always closer to it, expecting you to stay and stick, it repulses you somehow because you know you don’t belong, really, any longer, but you are sitting on the stairs in your in between time, where you can still feel the pull, in your back and your gut and your fingers and especially your toes, how they refuse to carry you very far away in this summer and you wonder when you will forget this smell, when this smell will cease to exist all together, when you will be immune, if you will be immune and you wish then that we still lived in caves, all together, for as many forever’s as it took to stop this feeling, the feeling you get whenever you leave - how getting in an airplane still feels like getting lost in the grocery store and the people in the plane are the vegetables, looking at you baldly, and they can never replace this perfect safety and you breathe in this smell, still, because you still can, for awhile yet, and the tears are escaping from your eyes so fast now

51

i couldn't remember anymore what it was supposed to be about.

50

take frustration and turn it into a physicality. it's a fish, right? cold and smooth and no matter which way you look, its ugly as sin and still a fish, and you want to release it back, right into the water where finally it will be free.

49

it was the first thing they thought of, first thing they dreamed, the inexorable, unimaginable, for weren't humans made to desire that which cannot be attained, cannot even be felt or seen but we must be able to feel it a little bit, like a curtain with a shadow showing through, a bright light around the corner and they wondered always what it would take to tear a eye-sized hole in the curtain, to poke their head around the corner just for a moment, but they knew it would be a terrible god, and they would be shamed and blamed if not by it, by themselves, and they would cease to be them and begin to be different beings all together trapped by that sight, in that sight, irrevocably changed, like when you begin to learn the secrets of the universe, the first time you find out about how sex works, the crudeness and the mundane, beautiful, soily, thought, or how you find out that saline drips and operations cost real money like food, and the lessing of it afterwards tunes you into just important your sickness was, or how you believed silk was satin and the confusion of it just made you hate fabric for the rest of your life, but suppose you kept on believing, suppose you knew these things, suppose you remained without - you would be happier now, wouldn't you?

turning lights off is the saddest thing. each click of the switch, you turn a little world black.

48

That I love you more than anything

Is what I whisper inside my head every time you

Love me harder and softer than ever I’ve been loved before

47

I like late nights and quiet laughter, from your core not your throat. He likes early nights and loud, booming chuckles, the ones that skip shallowly from your mouth, across the room. Laughs without depth. I guess anybody could tell we were doomed from the start.

46

She came out long-limbed, with glittered pores that hypnotized male and female alike and, ascribing to the school of thought that preached do what you're best at, she did. She was a snake charmer, a psychotherapist who had you on the floor crying about your childhood without ever knowing you did.

45

i don't fit in this skin

44

They held their cigarettes like beacons, shining through the night towards a vast moving audience. The audience was the city, the audience was the luminous future, the audience was the multitude of people who had bent themselves into step ladders, stacked one upon the other. For surrounded by such, who could help but climb upwards?

43

sweet pepper fries cold, cold, car coming at you like it’s gonna take you away, man chiseled from stone until his face moves and you realize he’s just made out of wax and you’re holding a candle to it

42

She was dreaming of temptation. Specifically, the temptation that crept stealthily into her fingertips every time she put her them near an electrical socket. The temptation that told her to stick her fingers in, as far as they would go, to be connected to that inexorable current, to be part of a winding spark that lit up the world, her house, the lamp beside her. That made her gadgets whirl and hum, that soothed her to sleep in the night with their constant speech.

Out of her dream, she heard a voice. It spoke in a monotone, and even from the haze she could make out its rhythm, clipped, short, sloping sharply downwards at the end of each sentence as if to clip the toenails of the words off and let them fall to the floor. Quickly after this first realization, the first part of an idea, came the feeling that something was not quite right.

41

And the plane took off and it swallowed time whole, and the clouds looked like the bottom of a boot, when the snow is packed in real tight, and my tears went back into my eyes like they were never there at all, way back into my head where they sat and drowned me, from the inside and out and I’m sure I looked like a broken baby with three fingers or a head swollen to ten times its size and I felt like that too, like I would never get it, never understand why you can’t trap things in little bottles and screw the lid on tight, so tight and carry them around with you, clinking together, and never open them again but know they are there, know that you could open the bottle and be back there, one time only, and experience it all again - how I can tell when you’re dreaming while you sleep, how we make a nest in my bed, how you breathe in and out like a vacuum cleaner, how your leg and your arm are the safest limbs in the world, like guns, like bars to keep me in, cage me maybe, but that you and me are glasses that stack perfectly on top of each other, into each other – but perhaps it will never be that way again, perhaps I will chip or you will warp and there never were any glass jars to put you in, to put IT in, to put the whole of IT in, the days and hours, the parts that defied everything I knew.

My nose is running now, I suppose some part of me had to weep. For you. For how frightened I am. For the plane and the clouds and the tears that wouldn’t come. For the future.

40

Once upon a time I believed we were two pieces of the same bolt,

Lighting and fabric

Once upon a time, I believed in forever,

The friend part

Then the clock clicked, time time time

And I barely think of you anymore

39

Oh gawd it was just horrible. I’m just driving and driving and I have the kids in the backseat, all three of them and they were bored all day and fighting, just making me and each other miserable and pinching each other and screaming in my ear and it was hot and everything smelled, and then the baby soiled his diaper and we were 100 miles away from the next rest stop and it stank something terrible so we had to smell it until finally we came got to a Shell and then when I tried to get gas, I couldn’t find my credit card anywhere, turns out I left it in the last gas station we stopped at it and some nice old guy found my new address, who knows where and sent it to me months later, well anyways so we’re driving and it’s dark as all get out and the heat isn’t working very well, and I’m freezing and the kids are shivering in their sleep and then, oh yeah THEN we get pulled over.

And the cop shines this flashlight in my face and I’m sure I just looked real crazy you know, cuz I was trying to get to Phoenix by the second, and we’d been driving, two days straight, no stops, well, he asks me to get out of the car and then Michelle wakes up and starts bawling cuz she’s scared and all and the cop just looks so annoyed and then he finds my heart medication and I’m standing there, about to fall over with how cold and tired I am and he says all angry

What is this medication? Why isn’t it in a bottle?

And I just break down, just WEEP and I can’t even talk but finally I say, it’s beta blockers, beta blockers for my heart and I’ve been driving forever Officer, and please don’t scare my kids with your guns and all because he took it out of his holster and he told me to put my hands behind my back and right there and then I’m so confused so I shut up because I don’t know what’s wrong, how I got here even, whether I’m hallucinating cuz I didn’t sleep or anything and he tells his partner to get the kids out of the car and makes them stand in a little row, and then calls for another squad car to come get them, and all this time, they’re crying from the car and I can here them but I just can’t say anything, my voice won’t come out of my mouth at all and

38

He considered the first time he wore them. They were stiff. Black. His high school prom. Nervous, dripping. Later, he sees her in K-Mart. She’s fat, really fat. Has three kids, like ducks following her. Noisy ducks.

He considered the next time he wore them. They were old. Black. His wedding, cheap fix. Proud, gleeful. Later, he divorces her in Richmond. He’s happy, really happy. Runs out of the courthouse, chest bursting. So content.

He considered the last time he wore them. They were broken. Black. His young son’s funeral. Drowning, lost. Later he scattered the ashes all over. So sad, really sad. Can’t go on any longer, sits down. Misses him.

37

And then we will weigh them, one against another in the pieces of time that create eternity, each soul spanning miles into the sky. And we will wonder if our scales weighed them correctly, life against life, or if we somehow missed something, if we tricked ourselves into believing that we were larger, more beautiful. If the sheen of our skin and the cleanliness of our bodies and the plump feelings we use to boost ourselves up, a little higher, a little farther, don't mean what we thought they meant all along.

36

His skin was the belly of a chip bag, greasy, and shiny, crinkly in places. If you licked it you could taste the grease, the salt that spread over him, and I was reminded of those deer you see at salt licks, opening their mouth’s slowly and sticking their tongues out, softly letting the crystals dissolve on their tongues. You know deer need salt to survive. You know we need salt to survive.

35

Time is a tombstone and you are the dead

Dread is a lover and you are the lead

34

like the backward end of a bruise, it hung on me, sapping the strength from me, unnoticable except when pressed

33

Once upon a time I couldn’t wait until this was over.

32

When this is over, when everything is said and done and finished, tied up in brown paper parcels with white-corded string, well then you will have time for regret. Then you can look back sorrowfully. Now.

Now, you must drive on, crack your whip, tuck your sleeping children into their beds, tell your wife it’s Now or Never, and maybe Never sounds like a better proposition in the long run, but Now is here, Now is glaring at you straight in the pupil, loud and long and ugly and about to run away.

31

When humans talk they dance like mirrors, reflecting, absorbing. Swallowing each other with intensity of purpose. After awhile, after thousands have twinkled into you, you forget that you can see all the way into them. You begin instead to look at your reflection in them.

Kids with Autism hate looking at your face. Even I hate looking at your face.

30

She imagined walking before the firing squad, her juicy satin pumps pulling her towards them, her red lined mouth, her red smudged teeth, set like a lady’s in an expression of composure - demure. She imagined a huge gust of wind blowing away her hood, her face stretching towards the sun, her dress, a lace frock flowing in the breeze, a magnificent tent. She imagined they were taken by her beauty. She imagined she called to them, Siren-like, one shrieking note, and it turned their hearts liquid, and their heads became balls of lust and their fingers betrayed them and they turned their guns to each other and the triggers quickened and stilled and they all lay before her in a miserable heap.

She imagined she was dragged, a laughing child from the yard and returned to her cell where she was not allowed to change, but remained in her lace for days until it became rank and scratched at her furiously. She imagined they brought her out finally and told her she would receive an injection, be strapped onto a gurney, and oh! she would kick madly until her pump flew across the room and into the tender eye of one of her Watchers, and she would shudder dramatically and finally lay still.

She imagined she was taken from the gurney and carried away, and in the hallway she leapt from the doctor’s arms, ran shrieking through death row, towards the sweet moving air. She imagined they caught her, dragged her back to her cell still dressed in her bedraggled lace, one pump remaining on her blistered foot. She imagined she stayed there for two hours while they faxed an emergency request across the border to Alabama where they hustled and rustled and sent the Spark of Death in a brown van, one-hour-and-twenty-minutes, faster than the devil.

She imagined the straps and wires, how she looked, a trussed whorey scarecrow. She cried this time, big sopping tears from her belly, and they made their way through a hole in the plastic covering the wiring and she exploded, blasting a hole in the roof and killing all five people in the room with her.

In 24 hours the fax would come back, stamped black. Denied. Hope was forgive and forget. Forgive her. The Governor. For.

Pinching pieces off of the Governor’s son with a blunt axe. In 1978.

When she was 15. After he had raped her.

And then came the trial. Forget, Governor. How you hired men to say she was a prostitute. How you called her an unforgivable slut, a callous demon. Forget, Governor. Forgive, Governor.

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.