Tangent #4 - Ice

Dammit.

I've been driving for forty-five minutes and I am nowhere. I'm someplace between Hadley and Scott, but I'm not sure what direction I'm supposed to go this time. A smarter woman would have refused to come out in this shit.

I'm two cigarettes into this drive and I've got one left. We keep saying we'll quit this time, but I'm not ready. I'm ready for everything else, but not that. Work tonight was slow and I got caught up in the daydream stuff that always keeps me from making much money. Or is it the hangover? I'm not sure. Maybe I'm still drunk or high or something-far-from-reality and this ice storm is just a figment of something else that's blocking me.

Doubtful.

This is real. Traffic is crawling and all I want to do is see him. I'm not even sure why anymore. I can't see through the her-and-then-now or the fact that she's likely beaten me to the house. At least, I keep thinking this when I try to speed like this and smoke like this and every time, she's not even there.

Why do I care so much? I'm only a quarter way's away from my past and all I can think is future - future - future - future. Do I even have one at this rate? I could careen over the edge here in my car and never get out. Nah. Life's not this short, is it?

I'm on my last cigarette and I want to quit. I don't even know why I want to quit. She smokes. He smokes. I smoke. We smoke. She doesn't always smoke.
And never with us.
I wonder why that is? Why am I so obsessed?

She makes it look so easy. Makes it look so easy to love someone.
She makes everything look easy. She's easy.
I should keep that in mind.
But I can't.
She's got all those checks and balances in her favor. I hate her.

And I love her.

And she's already checked me and has me in this compartment.
She doesn't think I know about it, but I can tell when she looks at me.
She thinks I'm small. She knows she does it better.
Knows she does it smarter.
Knows she had everything first.

Only thing I got on her is him.
And the fact that I am eventually going to hit her.
In that smug piece-of-shit mouth. She honestly thinks I wouldn't.

I would.
I will.
I just don't know when.

But that's only going to make me look stupid and I feel stupid anyway.
He thinks I'm stupid.
I really don't know if or why he loves me.
But he does.
More than her.

The why would make me sleep at night.
And I can't ask.

Perhaps I'll never get there.

Trick or Treat : Donatello

I am getting really sick and tired of this display. A month ago I'd have said it was over, doomed to failure. And here I am, eating my fifth or fifteenth piece of candy and I really can't tell if this is the beginning of it or the joy before the end.
All I keep hearing is laughter.

I don't even know what that means.
It's on the other side of the door and I can't even tell you who it is.

Where is my life?
I keep asking this question - the one that's equivalent to 'who am I?' and I keep turning up the lower case version of myself.

I don't get that.
I'm such a poser.
People think I'm this. I'm this for awhile and then go for that when that is more appealing.
I think that's why they call 'em costumes.

I went as a Ninja Turtle for Halloween once. I never really thought I was one.
Maybe just that day I really was?
Probably not. My bow staff wasn't the right measurement.

But when the holiday was over, and my mom took the turtle stuff and packed it away, I still knew I was a boy. I was nine and had dinosaur PJs and a green sleeping bag.
I never thought that wasn't cool.

Now, when it's over, I'm just this guy.
Sitting cross-legged on my bed eating old candy.

I know there's more to this man than that.
But it's the not knowing that keeps me here.
All the time.


Some days, I wish I was Donatello.

Tangent #3: Two half-dressed women pass in the hallway...

It was dark - someplace between 2 am and 4 am - the time when only anxious bodies rouse from sleep. There's always a reason for the waking.

Disoriented, the first stumbles for one bedroom door and opens it. Her eyes really aren't open. She uses her other senses to trace her path down what was becoming a familiar hall. With one hand on the rail, she moved slowly, adjusting to the dark and the T-shirt she was wearing. It wasn't hers.

Still mid-sleep, the second walks assuredly out into the hall from the other direction. She never sleeps in pajamas. It's the weekend and her eyes are weighted from the makeup she never removed. But it is the weekend and this is not her house, so she pulls a sweatshirt over her head. It isn't hers.

Someplace between the stairs and the wall, the two stumble upon one another.
"Hmmm...rrrffff...hmmmm...rrrmpph" said the first through her sleep.
"You still here?" the second mumbled with one eye open.

"Mmm hmmm. Yes." said the first.

"Well then, me too." replied the second.

She's home from the hospital. There was a yellow tulip at her door.

Weeks, months had passed since the disaster. She sat on her patio drinking coffee in the early morning fog and as usual, her eyes fell on the browned, crisp yellow tulip standing rigid in the bud vase on her patio table. She'd let the first frost get it. In fact, she wasn't sure why she still had it out there. She never brought it inside. She knew where it came from.

There was a letter someplace. He never gave it to her, but she knew he wrote one. It was his way to try and say it without words.

Yellow tulip means friendship.

That's what all the books say.

She sat in the quiet, the steam from her mug swirling delicately upward.

How can you be friends with someone who no longer exists? she wondered in thought.

In her world, friends were around, in her orbit, tangible and reciprocating. Most of the time. Since the attack, she had so many......friends.

She would have rather had the letter. She hoped the other woman was beautiful.
Even more so than she.

She hoped it was worth the cavernous abandonment in the hospital. Worth leaving her to doctors, nurses, none of whom filled that void.

The one that was slowly filling now.

With herself.

And the promise of something different. A new year. Someplace after the growing snow and ice and wind and all that other natural stuff that has to arrive before the thaw.

Before everything warms up again.

She didn't miss him much anymore. He was only a memory.

The tulip would eventually turn to dust with the cold.

Autumnal warning...

If she could write poetry, it would sound something like this....

So...it's like that.
Burnt down beneath a camp fire
Where it seems you can't tell
The marshmallow breath
From the sugar of skin.

To most it would seem natural
To fall in love that way
But some of us know better
Than to put our salt
Into passion

They say, it's about the talking.
And really looking into someone
Like you mean it
For a change -

In the season when skin
Smells most like the fall.

Someone should tell you
It never really lasts.
It switches over someplace
Between the first kiss
And the past.

Fall Memory #4 - Girls' Bathroom

She stood a moment, the room spinning slightly amidst the fluorescent lighting and the brightly drawn scribbles and scratches.

She did not sit down.

Instead, she stood, jelly-legged inside the middle stall staring. Just staring.
She read line-for-line everything scrawled over the years.
And she wasn't sure who she was anymore.

With disappointment as she scanned the lines, she realized...
"I'm not here," she whispered, her breath catching in the tinge of her last shot.

"There you are!" a voice called. "Wondered where you went."
Silence.

"You okay?"

...................................

"Yeah. I'm fine. Coming."

As she rejoined the waning crowd, she made a mental note to do the one thing she had never done before and swore once she was too much of a lady to do.

Fall Memory #3 - In the Girl's Bathroom

12:35 AM
From outside the dank cube, they could hear the faint pulses of music, chairs and feet scraping, and the tell-tale sound of bottles popping and clanking.
But inside the bar's girls' bathroom, everything seemed a bit muted and inexplicably more colorful than the party outside.

"I don't know what else to say, woman. I don't like her. I'm not gonna like her and I really just want her to dis-a-fuckin-pear." the first said, pulling mascara from her purse. "I mean, can she really expect me to be fucking pleasant?"

She dragged liquid across each lash, then reached for the concealer she hoped would hide the fatigued red lines beneath them.

"I guess I get you," the second started, washing her hands in the tepid sink. "It's just, I mean...well you know, she's trying. She doesn't have to you know, she could not talk to you back." Her words fell dully away.

"Are you kidding me?!" the first answered, a ragged eye piercing back. Suddenly, she looked vulnerable, a wounded animal protecting something there inside the bathroom. "I don't like her. I never will. And I don't want her around. I'm going to see to that too. This is my time. She had her chance."

"It's just," the second stammered, "It's just I don't think that's it at all....it's that. I mean."

"What?!" the first responded, exasperated.

"It's just that I think she's happy where she is and just wants everyone else to be okay. You know? So she doesn't have to worry about stuff."

"Well she better worry," the first retorted. "I'm gonna cut the bitch."
And with that, she pulled lipstick out of her purse and scrawled the words next to the stall.

"Here we go."

Fall Memory #2 - Tuning out.

"Hey man."

"'Sup."

"I gotta talk to you about something. It's kinda important."

"Yeah?"

"There's this thing."

"I know. So, how's the music coming?"

"Dude, I can't seem to breathe anymore, you know? I gotta tell someone. You are..."

"It's gonna be a great tune, man. Keep working it."

"No really, seriously man...I've never seen this kind of thing before. I've got this feeling that..."

"What? You can hack this job, man. I mean, you been doing this for years, right? Just mix it differently. Cut the static back a bit."

"It's tough, you know? I didn't intend for it to come out like that. It kind of just came to me, just happened. It played this way. You get that right?"

"I trust you can do it, man. Just change the lines around a little. Pull back on the tempo and hit the soft tones more clearly. You'll see."

"You know what? You're right. It's going to be the most beautiful song."

Memory #1 - The Beginning of the Fall Series

It was the fall again, the second year of displacement.

Two bodies passed on a rainy, wooded path - the wet mashing of leaves beneath them.

The sounds seemed muffled, though still audible amidst the platting of drops against the darkening floor.

The sun could barely be seen above the trees and yet the light was so beautiful despite the clouds.

As they passed, their steps slowed and the travelers exchanged knowing looks - for they were the only two braving the afternoon in the woods.

"Do you know the way?" the first asked.

"I do not," the other replied.

In the pause, the wind picked up, rustling and kicking up tiny sounds in the trees.

"I do know one thing," the second started, the wind winding its way around her hair.

"Truth," the first answered. "Today is not a freeway day," he said.

Tangent 2 - Martha goes to confession....

"What do you have to confess?" the priest asked her through the murky partition.

She sat a moment, nicked at her fingers, and bit her lower lip.

"Remember child, God will love you anyway. Purge yourself of your burdens and you will find the light," he added.

"You know," she started, "I think I'm okay. I don't feel it yet."

Realization one

"It's the beginning of the fall and all," a friend told her.

She smiled. Looked up at the stars and thought to herself,

'I am not that girl I thought I was.'

And she resolved once again to grow her hair.

Visual

This is what freedom looks like, my friend.

Have a good laugh and toast only the good times.
It's really not that bad, after all.

Cheers to the past and cheers to the future.
For in the right now, all is as it should be.

Truth #1

Life tastes so much different when you're young. But unlike what they say in all of those songs - despite what everyone likes to say or think... Life tastes so much sweeter when you're old enough to appreciate it. This is the first day of my life where I knew I wanted to be older.

How else are we ever expected to understand beauty?

Sensation #10 - Knowledge

As much as it would be so beautiful to pretend,
This life is never going to be simple or easy.

It plays out through the senses and causes us to feel like that one image
we know, deep down, is actually us sometimes.

And you know what?
For the time being it's better to be the monster and know,
Than to pretend.


Afterall, it tastes like salt, feels like renewal, and smells like beginning of the fall.
And what eventually blushes green.

Sensation #9 - Frustration

What you do not realize, this time, is that I do not owe you my kindness. I do not owe you this courtesy nor are you entitled to my compassion or understanding.
You did not earn these things.
Just as you did not earn my trust or adoration, which I would give freely if I could.

But I do these things. I give them to you - my kindness, my courtesy, my compassion, and even my understanding.
Not because I love you.
Not because you deserve my ability to see you through this lens of adulthood,

But because I can live with myself.
Because this makes me feel like a human.
Because it is that which we all strive for.
Because it is RIGHT.

And this knowledge makes me feel ALIVE.

Tangent #2 - Two men pass in the hallway.

Sometimes when I look at him, it makes me angry that he's alive.

Walks around like he's this person no one really knows. Truth is, I know. He told me.

It's not as mysterious as a lot of those women like to think.

It's just that he handles things in a way that I can't - carries it on his sleeve or something.

It's as if he doesn't give a shit if someone hates him or loves him for it.

I mean, damnit, doesn't he have any f-ing pride at all?

Truth is, he's got what I want.

He has it and he already knows it's coming.

I see it coming.

He's going to get it. It'll happen.

And I'm going to hate every single minute of it.

Tangent - She meets God on the subway.

He is wearing a very nice suit.

She leaned in and said very carefully, "I'm really sorry I'm not getting this right."

He looked down at her and for a moment, she thought he looked like her father. But not quite.

"If you were supposed to get it this early, I'd have shown you. You have to straighten up, deal. You know how."

She looked at her shoes and then in a moment of courage said what she needed to. "You see, I am so tired of doing the right thing. Everyone else seems to be having a lot more fun mucking up the world around here and for once, I want to go to the party."

He laughed, strong and hearty guffaws that startled her.

"Girl, if you were doing the right thing all the time, we wouldn't be here."

Sensation #8 - Five cigarettes in

I should probably stop doing this for the third time. The first is always one hell of a high, the second an excellent chaser to the first.


But by number, three, four, and the inevitable realization that many follow, well, your mouth becomes paper.


Not the good kind. Not the paper on the back of candy buttons with its sugar residue or even the quick 'oooh gross' that comes with licking a stamp. This paper tastes like old news - stale, black and white, a little gray, and ultimately a sign of dying childhood.





Cigarettes were cool about ten years ago.
Now they just cause cancer.

And the stink eye from people who watch knowing you're ultimately getting cancer by choice.



I wonder if anyone thinks about liver cancer when they watch people drink? We're probably going to get that too.



I don't know, man, but that's what it's like. Your lungs squeeze together and resist your own actions. It tastes good and bad together, like something foggy up in your brain and your nose at the same time. It's tantamount to sneaking out of the house for the first time.


Sure, the fear of getting caught smoking is almost that great these days. Especially in a town where they hate you for it.





None of the pretty people smoke anymore.
And I don't know what that means.

What she would never read...

Crumpled on his desk at home lay the other half of the note. He kept it. Just in case.



And I am so sorry you know. I can't be that man you want or need, or even the one you deserve. You don't see this, but I can - every time you look at me with those "I accept you as you are" eyes that makes me die a little inside every time you smile.

And I am sorry that I can't make that mean forever and ever and the stuff that dreams are made of. I really want to. I want to promise you that it'll be good and that we'll be happy.
But if you know me by now, you know,....damn you really know....I break all my promises.

I hate me.
I hate myself for being this person who can't live up and who can't let go.
But I'm working on it.

And I will keep trying.

The truth is, you are my someone. Through this guise of broken down habitual failure and despairing fear of anything beautiful or good in this world, I'm still in love with you.
You haunt me and take me to places in my mind that I've never viewed through this lens before.
When I'm sober, your face, your influence, makes me hope.

I have never had this before in my short life.
And though it hurts - God all the time it hurts - I still want that.

With you.

Please forgive me.
This part of me that can keep moving forward, the part that still thinks there's a crucible out there with my name on it, is hopefully and hopelessly in love with you.

Take me back.
I promise to try. I promise to be a better version of me.
Because I not only want that for you, but for myself.

Find me again.

Me.

Mrs. Weedgrass takes the stand tomorrow...

The light inside the tiny cell in county lock up glinted and reflected against the muted steel of the toilet. Mrs. Weedgrass crossed her legs tightly in defiance and drummed her knotted knuckles against the edge of her cot.

She felt caged. Like an animal. Like those drunks she always saw on the corner of Calhoun and Creighton. She wasn't one of them. She only goes there for her charity work. She leaned her back against the cinder wall and sighed heavily, the weight of her situation settling someplace between her shoulders and lower back. Funny, she couldn't feel anything inside.

In the distance, she could hear the night time rustlings of women and men chatting and barking orders. She could hear the buzz of monitors, doors heavily swinging open and shut, mouths blurting out sounds like "Number 4, this way." At one point, she thought she heard a woman protesting, but perhaps she imagined it.

Mrs. Weedgrass had no idea why she was even worried about her trial. She had gone through this several times, each time a bit more serious - each time a bit easier to lie through. God told her to do things. He told her her son was a bastard from Satan. So she raised him and loved him that way. What else was she to do?

Afterall, even Jesus was crucified, right? Better to go down in Christ than not to go down at all, she supposed.

She didn't know he was going to go and shoot that girl. That stupid, stupid, nosy girl. He had always threatened to use his father's gun, but it had always been to fire it on himself, never to gun someone innocently down in a public place like this. And how in the hell is that her fault? she wondered.

Her son died because he committed suicide and assault. He tried to murder. She always knew he was a bad seed and how else could she have raised him? What did people expect when your son is a spawn of hell and worse yet, you know it at infancy?

She tugged at her whitening hair and wondered about Alana. Beautiful, successful Alana. She was curious if Alana would show up this time. Maybe she'd wear that gorgeous suit she bought her in Abilene.

Mrs. Weedgrass glanced over at the toilet again. She crossed her legs more firmly. Best to keep them closed in a sinful place like this, she muttered lowly feeling the electric 'sssshhhh' of her pantyhose rubbing together.
She really needed to go.
Badly.

Progress

Back in the hospital, in the deepening night, she rolls over and sighs in her sleep. Dr. Macafee makes a note. He takes another glance, notes his record again.
She breathes.

Next to the note, he attaches a Post-It and doodles an image of a small sun peeking over a wispy cloud. He really needed to get a grip on this mushy stuff.
Crumpling the paper, he stood up and then pitched in the direction of the waste basket near the window.

He sits again.
She breathes again. Turns over.
Mumbles in her sleep.

Dr. Macafee makes another note and puts his pad down. He looks out the window and sighs audibly. This round ought to be over, he thought.


Through the window of Room #126, Noodle watches Dr. Macafee and the sleeping woman, the yellow tulip in one hand and the note in the other. Outside of the hospital room door is the wall folder that typically holds medical charts for patients.

Noodle sighs. Wipes an eye.
She looked so vulnerable there. So incredibly innocent despite her age.
He slides the tulip into the wall folder, watches it droop slightly to the side. For a moment, he remembered the one bouquet of flowers he ever gave her and the way her face lit like a sunrise when she saw them.
Every now and then, she'd take a surprise.

At that moment, he would have rushed in, taken a quiet hand, and confessed it all into her sleeping ear. But she was not alone anymore.

And so he ripped the bottom half of the note, pocketed it.
He placed the other half in the folder with the flower.
He hoped deeply that for now it would be enough.

Silently, he slipped down the hallway, head down, watching the scuffing of his shoes as he left her the second time.

Still Birth

You would have been born

Six months after we broke

Down. You would have slid

Into this unhappy spiral

Innocently smiling.

I would have loved you anyway

Though you may not have known

Much. Love at that moment

Was insurmountable

Like glass sliding through pavement

Or men of war.

No one ever wins when life

Shatters and spins out

Into the atmosphere.

But that doesn’t mean,

I mean, it doesn’t hurt

To keep something warm

Deeply buried somewhere

Inside. I would have carried

You. For as long as you had let me.

Perhaps I dreamed

You? I cannot feel anything like that

Anymore.

It is no one’s fault.

Perhaps my life has been wasted

Never knowing, never feeling

What everyone tells me

Means everything in this tiny universe.

Relatable Quote #5

Some of the most hurtful of things are indeed what makes life the most beautiful.
Some of the ugliest of people, have the shadow of hope inside.

The motivation to love in the face of adversity is what makes a person,
A person,

And nothing else in this life.

What Quiet Feels Like

Really, when I think about it.
When or if you think about it.

It's not that I can't say "I love you."

It is just that I can't mean it.

How do you mean what you do not know yet?

Is this called faith? Flying blind?
Is it even that sensory really?

I don't know, friend.
But when I mean it,

I will say it.

So until then. This is what quiet feels like.

This is life, or something like it.

I don't know what to say anymore.

All I can tell you is this.

I feel things.

All over.

I feel things.

She is sleeping. Dr. Macafee watches. Noodle arrives at the hospital.

She was resting now. Hours earlier, she'd struggled again against the heart monitor and the IV. She kept telling them she wanted to go home, was tired of being in the hospital. She kept insisting that it was time for her to leave.

Dr. Macafee kept adding days to the chart. This evening, he sits at her bedside calculating how long it may take for the wound in her chest to heal. He'd have released her far earlier for rehabilitation had she not gotten an infection. Hospitals, you'd think they were sanitary. She was better now, resting, her fever back to a startling low 95 degrees. Apparently she ran colder than most.

"I don't know why you keep doing this," he muttered as he checked the rest of her vitals. "If you'd just sleep a little more, eat like we asked, you could go home any day now."

But she was defiant. She refused to eat the amount of food he prescribed and insisted she didn't want reconstructive surgery for the bullet wounds. She asked only that he fix her face. When she went down in the cafeteria that day, apparently the shock to her body forced her forward, her face thwacking the sharp edge of a table. The ragged edge of the old table ripped shreds down the left side of her face and the impact on the floor broke her nose.

He didn't know why she wouldn't let him fix her chest. The two bullets that tore through her heart tissue had been removed, but the exit wounds blew large holes through the front of her chest. The scarring could be helped, he thought.

Sighing, he sat down again, glanced out the window at the setting sun and then turned his face to her. She really was a lovely creature and quite puzzling too. He couldn't explain his fascination with this patient.

Meanwhile....minutes later.....

Noodle walked slowly toward the hospital emergency door. In his left hand, a letter. In the right, a single yellow tulip.

In his mind, one phrase,

"There is always hope."

Relatable Quote #4

Live in the present.

Forgive your past.

Sensation #7 - Fury

It doesn't happen all that often, but when it does it feels a lot like someplace between a 101 degree humid day and 30 below zero all at once. It's as if someone dipped your gut in boiling water and then sank it into an ice bath. Yeah, that's what it's like.

And when the heat roars through it feels like unrequited violence - a slap that can be felt but never offered the face that earned it. And then the numbing part that wets over the hurt, well it's just as scary. It's enough to turn an ordinary person into a raging lunatic.

Nothing hurts more than betrayal except betrayal over a falsehood.

And it feels someplace like hell or Indiana.

Noodle's new girlfriend looks like her only different

"You want the last tuna roll," she asked, eyeballing him across the table.

He watched as she clicked her chopsticks and then rubbed one along her bare arm. The tattoo was no longer startling even next to the blanched utensil.

"Huh? Umm, no, no thanks," he replied. He glanced around the dining room at Lin Seng's and wondered just how much time had really passed. How long had he been out of it or how long had he been too invested in reality, he wasn't really sure.

"You okay?" she asked him, between chews.

"Yeah."

"I mean, you haven't said much at all and this is your favorite place. You seem distracted."

Noodle looked down. He had no idea why he'd done this. He wasn't ready, didn't know this person either, anymore than he ever knew anyone else before. And damnit if she wasn't just an edgier copy of the one before her.

"It's nothing," he began, twisting his napkin. "I mean, I've had a rough week, man. You know? I'm all, well you know how I can be sometimes."

Rough wasn't exactly it. He'd found out too much reading the paper. She was alive and in a slow, painful recovery. Guilt was eating him and now....well, he didn't know just what now. All he knew is that he couldn't turn whatever the gut check was, off.

"You know you can tell me," she interjected, breaking his silent pondering.

"Huh?"

"Damnit," she started, "This is the problem. Right here. This." She dropped her chopstick on the table. "If I wanted to be ignored and treated like everyday waste, I'd have stayed with him."

"I'm sorry okay? We good?"

"No, we're not good."

"Maybe we should split then," Noodle commented absently, realizing just then that he meant it.

"What the fuck?" she spat back, glaring, her eyes then brimming with tears.

Damn, not again. This is how the shit always started. He always got to this place where there was weeping, anger, and his slow skulk out to his car, alone.

"I can't do it," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Fine," she said quietly. "But I'm never gonna be her. Don't think I don't know."

He watched as she left the restaurant, her wet chopstick at an angle against the last of the tuna roll. He decided he was hungry afterall.

Unusual Circumstance #1 - What he thought about

This really is ridiculous, he thought every time her memory came to mind. His brain turned over her image and the spontaneity of her personality a little too often for his comfort. Sitting on the back patio, book splayed open on the ground next to him, he closed his eyes and tried again to figure out why he gave a damn.

Afterall, he doesn't know her. All he knows is what she tells him in her letters and they both know that's edited bullshit she makes up. He knows because he edits too. In this world, you don't just say what you mean, right? Eventually, she's going to corner him into telling her the truth and perhaps that's what keeps his mind going around.


Besides, Candace is a good woman. She writes too and has good intentions. She calls a little too often, but that's okay. She's interested. However, he couldn't commit to Candace despite her outspoken commitment to him. He had to figure out why that was too.

There's nothing wrong with Candace save the fact that she's.....she's....well, pretty ordinary. She was typical Midwest, homegrown, Bible belt normal. Maybe that was what was plaguing him and not this woman he met only briefly at a stupid cocktail hour party months ago.

He didn't really know much at this point other than her letters were starting to become a reliable and expressly meaningful part of his everyday existence. Perhaps what he wondered was what she thought too?

Sensation #6 - The Mood

It always happens someplace between the shoulder and the curve of the neck. The timing is between the flutters of each eye, syncing for a change and then closing into relaxation. It's in the fingertip on the opposite cheek and the way the forehead leans deep into the offered concave.

It's in that smell too - the one of mint chewing gum and the way the sun melted into the skin during the day and then cooled with the sunset.
It always leaves the skin smelling someplace like dew and distinctly human.

It's in the way the lips aren't moving, but are there just the same - the way the brain takes a backseat and the body falls where it would left to its own devices.

It feels quite possibly like music when it ebbs and crashes over the senses with meaning that can only be interpreted without lyrics.
Perhaps.

But it starts with the soft spot between the shoulder and the neck, the rest of the chin, and the sensation of a smile felt someplace overhead.

Noodle's Real Name

For so long I've lived this name. "Noodle" is so back and forth, so ever-fluctuating and inconsistent. To be this is to never lay a root down, never have to focus for too long on one particular thing. You know what I mean man?

I've waffled my whole life, I think. "Waffle,"... perhaps that's my real name, someplace down deep where my parents couldn't find it. Nah, Noodle has served me fine so far. Chicks dig the weirdness of it and it suits a tormented artist like me. It sounds innocent enough to make my mama proud and it makes a cool signature when I'm not being entirely sincere about my decision.

But I got a real name, ya know? I have a name my mom and dad gave me when I came screaming and wiggling into this God-forsaken planet. I have the real "me" under this bland moniker that I try to believe is spicier than it is.
I gotta a 'me' in here someplace, you dig?

That me plays the guitar and hits the keyboard too. That me indulges just as much as the other does and regrets it all the more. That me has the same history and the same disappointments only this guy thinks on them a hell of a lot more and puts a lot more feeling behind it.

That's why I shut him up a lot. He's a pain in the ass wimp with realness to him I can't seem to stomach yet.
He's the asshole who fell in love with her too. Who does that so quickly really? Who thinks about houses and children and vegetable gardens in the country that early on in a relationship? Seriously? Good thing I gave him a push before he got all limp on me.

But I still got that name.
He's still there.

I can't even say his name because it hurts me.
Makes my breath stop short and causes me a moment of insecurity I can't seem to understand yet.

God, who knew there could be so much wrapped up in a name? One so simple as mine?
For now, I guess my initials is all I can do.

Portrait of a Fort Wayne Council Member

It's really a shame, you know. This town could be a city if it really tried hard enough. I'm not the man to do it though. I never have been. I've just lived here too long.
Perhaps everyone feels that way?

And we do an awful lot of talking in this town and not nearly enough doing. We do some great things, but we're always falling just short of doing the right thing. You know what I mean?
Too many people live here. Too many people want to hurt people here.
It's a shame.

Every time I turn around, someone is dying. Someone is being taken to task by an ill-nurtured pitbull. Someone is abusing the financial assistance system. Someone's baby is having a baby between lunch hour and study hall. Someone is always running a red light and cranking down inside a pothole. Note - I keep asking the city about the potholes. No one wants to talk about that or the Illinois Road project.

I can't help it that it happens like this. I'm nice to people. I say good things. For some reason it doesn't translate between me and the doers around this town.
I'm not even sure I work here anymore. Now that I think of it, I was filling in for someone else for awhile.

Right?
*Sigh.

I think what frustrates me most here is that everyone is distracted by garbage. No one says anything meaningful anymore. It's all surface and babble and teenage antics in the most inappropriate places. Have you ever been to The River? They don't card there. Piere's makes me nervous. Why talk when you can bump up against someone for three minutes of drum beats?

I'm getting too old for this. I just want to have a responsible, intellectual conversation with someone here. For a town filled with colleges, we sure are meaning-deprived. We have a lot of churches too.

Makes me worried you know. When the floods finally come and when there isn't a damn big enough, well...I just don't know. We're all too preoccupied with ourselves. I'm not sure we'll even see it coming.
And it's starting to rain. Again.

Rule #8

In the most passionate of moments, marry the body to the mind.
Only then is it comfortable and easiest to recognize the self.

Rule #7

Know when not to fall upon your own sword.
Know when it's best to put someone else first.
Try to distinguish the two.

Only then can real happiness take place in a world filled with such chaos and suspicion.

The Call - Alana Weedgrass is out of state

It was 3 AM Arizona time when the phone rang. Alana, groggily and blindly reached out into the dry darkness to find her cell phone. It was her father's ring tone. As she reached, she smacked Jackson by mistake; however, he didn't stir, just rolled over snarfling a little.

Jackson was a new boyfriend. They'd been dating only a few weeks. Alana's divorce wasn't final and the company Jackson contributed to her life wasn't all that bad for the time being, but moments like this pissed her off. It was too ordinary, too soon. She clutched the phone and stumbled into the living room of her first floor apartment.

"Dad?" she sleepily said into the darkness, hoping her eyes would adjust to the scene.

"Alana," her dad said tiredly, "Mom's in trouble."

Her stomach turned. She felt sour. Surely this wasn't coming up again. Years of failed relationships, affairs, workaholic tendencies, Prozac, and a hefty therapy bill had led her to finally accept that her mother wasn't like the other mothers on the playground.

"What happened?" she asked, suddenly wide awake.

"Mom's in jail. They're questioning her again. This time it's a bigger deal. That thing with your brother. I think it's finally happening just like you and I thought it might. Just like we talked about all those years ago, at the park."

Her dad sounded wounded, exhausted, and yet strikingly unemotional. Alana always wondered how he dealt like this. It was eerie how he didn't seem to care on certain levels.

"I think you should fly home. Now. They're going to want to talk to you, I think. I'm going in tomorrow to see what the deal is. They wouldn't let me see her today."

"Okay," was all she replied and hung up.
She sat down on the cold floor with a thud. Legs crossed, her mind reeled. Her brother was one thing. His death was tragic and yet not entirely unexpected. He'd been threatening to off himself for years. She knew the hospital wasn't a good idea. You can't deter someone that bent on hell.

She felt cold, numbed by circumstance and irony. Leaning against the wall, she tried to cry.
It wouldn't come.

Mrs. Weedgrass is in a lot of trouble...

The officer looked the old woman over for a few moments before beginning to ask questions. Having read the old, painfully thick file, he couldn't believe what he read translated into this 60 year old, washed up, wrinkled, and smirking woman. She could be anyone's grandmother.

He watched across the table as her papery hands twisted around one another and as she clicked her tongue against her front teeth.

"Officer, this is really a waste of all of our time. Surely you know that file is riddled with untruths and gaps. I am a God-fearing, Christian woman. I go to church. I help the Africans. I am a teacher of children. This must be a horrible mistake. I don't know what this woman was talking about."

Officer McKinney had been on the street for five years. He always had wanted to be a cop. His dad was a cop. His grandfather was a cop. After patrolling for two years, Officer McKinney was promoted to vice. Quickly however, the force determined he was best set for the tougher cases. He was now a detective working cold cases, the ones the force always had on the burner, but the ones that weren't all that hot anymore. His job - reopen them. Find the loopholes and missed investigations. Track down the bad guy. Bring him in. Make him pay.
The 5th district investigation grant from the feds covered just McKinney. Just McKinney had to deal with this old bag. His mind peeled through other women he knew who looked like her - his fifth grade teacher, his neighbor Mrs. Pinsky, his own mother.

"Mrs. Weedgrass, surely you know why you've been called in here. Your son...what happened at the hospital. It shed some new light on these old files here," he said slowly. Looking at her, he felt a burning inside that made him feel nauseous. He had to remember that this woman would have been in her 20s, 30s, 40s, when some of the real shit went down. For all he knew, she never really stopped.

"Officer, honey, check with my minister. Check with my husband. Ask my friends at the Service of Life Center. They'll tell you. I'm an innocent lady accused of some horrible things. What that says in there about the private schools, the tutoring, the nutrition habits,...that's just propaganda to ruin me. People have always been trying to ruin me. I'm a good woman. A Christian. You see?"

Officer McKinney stared at Mrs. Weedgrass hard. His teeth clenched. The weight and severity of what he was dealing with struck him. He mashed his fist on top of the file.

"Mrs. Weedgrass, we're going to go over this file and you're going to tell the truth. Now. But first, I have to read you your rights."

Sensation 5 - Euphoria

It means laughing at nothing whatsoever.
It means stealing kisses.
It means sharing a dream and blanket.
It means fingertips at the lightest places.
It means a warm hug and soft smile.
It means rain and sunshine all at once.
It means joking about things that are all sorts of inappropriate.
It means endorphines.
It means fire power and endurance.
It means driving out of the way.
It means pushing a bit further outside the comfort zone.
It means an undetermined outcome and a certain history.
It means challenging the what ifs.
It means breaking the lines of society.
It means distracting and attracting.
It means saying good bye to old ghosts.
It means acknowledging the here and now.
It means arms, legs, faces, fingers, toes...
It means expectations and the lack thereof.
It means a simple honesty.
It means truth.
It means breaking the silence.
It means.....all of these things.
It means....
Being....
Living......


Moving on.

Cold Memory #8 - What she never tells anyone.

It happened just long enough ago that she thought she forgot about it. She was never one for nightmares or silly bouts of timidity.
In fact, she had a terribly high pain threshold for her age and station in life.

But this one thing, well....it always resurfaced somehow...usually when life got a little more emotional or a little more complicated.

Sometimes she wondered what happened to him. Wondered if anyone ever got him back.
She often sat at her desk, twisting the ends of her hair and wondering if she'd ever be able to recall everything. Part of her wished she could.

A part of her was relieved she never knew all of it.
Though the worst part was being informed after the fact.

Perhaps this is why numbness always made her nervous, that sensation she sometimes woke up with having slept on her arm for too long or having a leg twisted out of sorts during a dream.
Never again did she want to not be able to use her legs and arms.

Even now, she sometimes pinched herself to make sure she could feel things.
Being human is like that, you know.

And she always has her teeth.
Takes more than a few things to numb your face.
Not even a good hard slap will do it right away.


Now...she imagines someone has bitten him hard enough.
To make it stick.
Takes a lot to earn that kind of desire, she thinks.
He worked on it for years apparently.

She hopes it's really not what it appears now. How does someone like that get the girl, the dream house, the luxury car, and the career?
Surely that's not what hell looks like.

Or is it?

Warm Memory #8 Continued...What She Thought of Him

She found him fascinating and wanted to know him.
She didn't know why.

She didn't have to.

Warm Memory #8 - How They Met

Even when his memory was fuzzy, he always remembered meeting her. She was a lightning bolt of energy the night he was introduced - bouncing from person to person throwing candor and spunk into the atmosphere.

He wondered what compelled her to do that. Sitting near the corner of the room, he watched as this imp of a woman chatted aimlessly and poured through guest after guest with inane conversation topics and witty banter. There was something magnetic about this woman and yet something irritatingly bothersome about her behavior. She went from waving excitedly to swiping drinks from guests. She danced about as if she hadn't a care in the world and yet there was something artificial about this display.

He took a drink. Watched.

She took two drinks. Continued to move about.

He was beginning to wonder why she hadn't landed in his corner yet when he felt the reverie-shaking 'thump' of a body falling down next to him.

"So, who are you?"

Startled, she was now staring right in his face demanding an answer to her question. She introduced herself and then waited, the awkward hanging in the air for only a few seconds. Up close, she didn't look nearly as young, nearly as immature as she had seemed across the room.
In fact, he wondered why she looked so incredibly tired.

He answered.

She nodded, her hand brushing his curled up arm. She asked him questions. He gave her answers. She laughed. He laughed back.

He hadn't laughed in awhile.

Neither had she.

She whispered something to him that no one else could hear.
He understood.

Watched her bound away.
Wondered why she told him.

That's how it happened the first time.

At least, that is what he remembered...

Temporary sensation...

Continuing to look around the room, she wondered about herself. She ached everywhere and the sun was starting to tear at her eyes a little.
She occasionally brought a hand to her face, hoping to recognize herself by touch. The mirror didn't help her pinpoint the person she thought she had been before.

The heart monitor tugged at her skin as she tried to settle into a comfortable position. She wasn't sure what it was doing there.

Had she nearly died?

No one had said. They all kept saying the same thing, these nurses in their loud, freakishly pleasant scrubs, "Wait for Dr. Macafee. He'll explain this. He'll help you."

The room was eerily silent and yet peaceful. It was then that she realized the sensation in her brain...

She was alone.


And now this time...she didn't even know who she was.

Time passes - Noodle is no longer in town.

He stood on the back balcony and looked out over the water. The sun was slowly rising and he knew he had to be at work in a matter of minutes; however, every once in awhile he found himself pausing out back, coffee cup in hand, wondering about his most recent decisions.

He leaned back on his heels and took a long drink from his cup. "I mean, how can it be my fault?" he found himself asking aloud, his voice dropping over the deck towards the ground.

"But it is my fault. God, why can't I take myself more seriously?"

His eyes surveyed the new landscape behind his house - the fresh grass, the newly planted shrubs - it was nothing like his apartment back there. It was a lot quieter here too. Hell, his life was always getting quiet like this.

He'd only gone to see her once in the hospital. She looked so vulnerable, so messed up, he couldn't bear the thought of how much pain she'd actually feel when and if she ever woke up. In fact, he didn't know what he'd do when or if she did.

She would have eventually needed him - needed him to help her with therapy; run errands; move her to a more comfortable spot; help her tie up the loose ends. She would have needed to cry on him and scream in agony when she tried to walk. The thought had sent him reeling when he peered down at her pale body, lying attached to the bed. The bandages alone freaked him out.

"She would have needed too much from me," he barely whispered. Realizing just how selfish it sounded out loud, a tear escaped him. He never gave her a chance to wake, never gave himself a chance to see if he could handle it - handle her - in all of her visible need.

Even today, months later, the idea overwhelmed him.
He hated himself for leaving and each time he paused on the patio, he considered whether or not it wasn't the best choice he ever made.

"Someone else is better for her," he said, "She deserves someone who can deal with all that. Someone strong, someone with nerve, someone older and wiser than I am."

He was always defeating himself like this and it hurt more than all that other stuff he thought about and wondered about. For all he knew, she had died days later though he checked the newspaper every morning and never saw an obituary or newstory. He'd moved away shortly after that day in the hospital, to start over, work on his music, and some of those other things he always said he'd try.

But he always wondered about her. Wondered if she ever woke up.
Wondered and hoped a little that she would remember him.

Because he remembered her.
All the time.

Mumbling to himself, he headed back inside to ditch his coffee and head to work. At least here alone, he didn't have to worry about failing her too.

Dr. Macafee

He had been sitting in the lounge when the night nurse from the neurology floor came off her shift on Monday morning. "She's awake now," she commented as she pulled her purse from a locker. "Guess you'll finally get to meet your patient." The nurse turned and left the lounge, a heavy breeze followed her.

Dr. Macafee had been treating her for six months. Maybe it had been seven - he could not quite remember. When she came in she'd been a crumpled woman pile of blood and shattered bone. The bullets had torn through her doing damage he hadn't seen since he'd been overseas. He shuddered at the memory.

Since, he'd spent each day checking her chart, her vitals, and inspecting his handiwork. It'd taken 32 hours of surgery, but he'd removed every bullet save one, the one lodged behind her ear. It was too dangerous to remove it. He couldn't bear the thought of taking her hearing and likely her eyesight in one eye with him.

She arrived on the day he had decided to quit his job, move to the south, and start over. Rita had left him long ago and the work just didn't motivate him anymore. He had no longer cared about saving anyone. But this woman, this mess aboard a stretcher, had taken hold of him someplace deep - a place he hadn't recognized since his interning days at U of M.

He looked down at his newspaper and the unfinished sandwich. How was he supposed to tell her? What was he supposed to say when he met her? In the past months, he'd formed a subtle bond with the comatose woman, caring for her bandages and making sure she was not disturbed. How do you tell someone they have to learn to walk again? How do you tell someone they'll never have children because some freak who skipped his meds opened fire in a crowded lunch room - a gun the police later learned had been slipped in by the patient's mother.

Marc Macafee rose and looked around the quiet lounge, the dank space he'd spent the last several months eating lunch in - a place he swore he'd leave behind a long time ago.

He had no idea what he was going to say. In fact, he'd spent several evenings sitting by her bedside, reading next to her and wondering what her life was like. She was so young and yet looked wise and tired beyond her years.

It was time. He had to do something.
Clearing his throat, he left the lounge and headed for the third floor.

Sometimes...

Sometimes it is what goes unfinished in life that brings the most incredible joy and the deepest of sorrows.


How is an author to compose through the most intense writer's block to date?


Answer - Make it up.


Fiction, afterall, is a genre too.

Lost Settlement

Cement steps are more brittle
On the southern side of Oak Street.
Denim against pasty skin,
Icy even in late summer sunsets.

You know how it feels when you put your clothes on too early,
That “cling and stick” because you’re still wet?

You see, everything is cooler here
In this broke down place.
They’ll mark your tomb with historic curlicues.
“Here laid one warm body.”

Everyone lives to die here,
In this middle finger of land.

We don’t pay for movies,
But waste around the back door,
Communing together – with broken pavement,
Crackle scratch of dead leaves.

We burn on with tapped cigarette
While paper curls and chill ash falls to stone.
We all smoke when we’re drinking.
Honestly, we smoke all the time.

Buzzed hard as the sun drops,
We forget – we forget – about the money
We all don’t have.

There’s not much work,
But lots of labors,
In this town.

That’s okay with us.
Dragging, drinking, puffing;
Bound together in one smoke ring,
Waiting to die.

Years from now, when they scroll up our tombstones,
Children will honor the cracks in the cement
Arms linked in the haze and scratch of leaves,
Clinging to the chilled bones of this town.

What Eventually Blushes Green

Because she knows
It will be painful
In the end,

Tendon slap bone slap skin
Marry the salt taste
Above the brow
And someplace down below
Where –
When you think on it
Feels like everything else

In her life,
The sweat tastes like sweat
And something green
Brushed over naked miles
Where –
If she had words
She may say love.

Light carries dark carries flame
Flame a fresh jade onion
Or something just as crisp,
Where –
If you could see her
She may feel like saline
Smell like tendon slap bone
And forever sound like
What eventually blushes green.

Organ Donor To Do List:

One: Read all of it first,
Even the fine print,
Or else the leftover
Will seep out into light
And do significant harm
To the recipient.

*Note – If the latter occurs, you may experience some discomfort.

Two: The guideline, source, and outcome
Are all subjects to change
At the request,
Or even an uneven gesture,
Made by the recipient.

*Note – You may experience nausea, increased anxiety, or depression depending on your hereditary predisposition.

Three: The procedure is not quick.
In fact, it requires profound patience
And site must be clean,
Packed tightly from the outside in.

*Note – If hole seeps, you may experience tenderness or fits of shuddering.
Green ooze is indicative of infection.

Four: Bear the hole.
You are now without.
Recipient claims all rights of disposal
Or promulgation.

*Note – You may experience suicidal thoughts or just sympathy pains.


Disclaimer:
Rights and details not for the public.Copyright the brain

Cold Memory #7 - The Letter

It was a Saturday morning when the letter arrived. Snuggled in with the cable bill and an invitation to a summer wedding, the long envelope looked innocent enough.

She opened it with a smile on her face noticing that her dear friend's address was on it. Surely this was something fun. Just days before the two of them had walked and talked, finally saying those things they often never could before. She eagerly tore the envelope to see what she had written.

Joy slipped quickly to sadness as she read the curlicued script. "You are so bitter. You have such animosity," it read. "You hurt feelings."

Trembling, she put the letter down, half of it unread. Shock faded into despair as she realized she never really knew her friend afterall. Tears blurred her vision and she stepped away from the letter as it hung halfway off the edge of the counter.

Inside, she felt her stomach lurch with fear, trepidation, knowing her confessions were no longer safe - knowing her friend deceived her confidence and did not care for her afterall.

The phone beeped. It was time to meet someone else, someplace else, some other commitment for the time being.

Wiping the tears from her face, straightening, she grabbed her purse and ran outside into the sunshine. Surely she could feign it for another few days until she could deal with this.

Warm Memory #7

It had been an evening when the sun fell lazily over the water. Wrapped in a blanket, she had peered through the glass at the setting sun, wondering if everything she felt at the moment was indeed really happening to her. Somewhere behind her, she smelled the slow simmer of food and could hear him moving about in the kitchen.

Goosebumps surfaced on her arms and she smiled knowing she wasn't really cold at all.

"You okay?" she heard from the distance. He was only about six feet away, but her mind, senses, were someplace else wrapping around the moments of the past hour and a half. She always got this way when they talked this much, when they connected in the ways she hoped they always would.

"Mmm hmmm," she responded, turning to face him.

"You know, I never want that to happen with you," he said. "This is different. I don't want it to happen that way this time. I love it with you."

She smiled. She believed him.
Someplace inside she relaxed her boundaries, finally accepted that this was going to be something far beyond what she ever knew before.

Day Break

It was summer when she finally awakened. Slowly, she felt her senses returning and a fog lifting someplace below her brain and between her heart. Her legs, arms, hands, and feet began to twitch a bit from unuse and the snap-fizz of returning energy. She opened her eyes to find herself in a quiet hospital room, light shining pleasantly through a nearby open window. Somewhere, birds were singing and cars buzzed along the streets below. From where she lay, she could only see clouds and sunlight and a few trailing leaves from a tree outside.

For a moment, she couldn't do anything but stare. Her focus scanned the room - the quiet TV against the wall, the broken-in chair next to her bed, the bedside table with a chart laying innocently on top. She realized she couldn't move - her arms tucked tightly at her sides beneath blankets. In moments, she realized she was also bandaged.

She wiggled a bit and freed one of her arms so she could pull back the covers. Looking down, she saw her mid-section bandaged tightly with crisp, tan bandages. She reached up, felt her head. Her head was wrapped tightly as well. Puzzled, she continued to look around.

What had happened? Where in the hell was she? She felt an ache that seemed to possess her entire body, but it hurt most above her eyes someplace between them and her brain. As she gained consciousness, the pain increased.

She tried to speak, hear her own voice that morning only to find it was muffled and sore. She lay flatly in wonderment without knowing exactly how she had arrived in this position or how serious her situation at the moment was.

How can such a beautiful day hurt so much? How can such a wonderful morning feel so empty, foreign, and cold?

She hoped dearly to find out.

For the City of Fort Wayne, Indiana

Rusty York and Wendy Robinson sit in a Coliseum pothole
eating DeBrand chocolate with Chuck Surack and Barbara Bradley Baakgaard

It was a time
When motorists feared
Snow like they possessed
Paper assholes.
It was a time
When our idea
Rolled through brains
Like loose carpet change.
It was a time
When we couldn’t push
Enough oxygen into the room.
It was a time
When we shoved fingers
Into inappropriate places.
It was a time
When we cured
Psychic pain
With everyone’s malignancy.
It was a time
When babies were born
With aluminum brains
And titanium stomachs.
It was a time
When men still carried big
Sticks and talked
Over everything.
It was a time
When gold was silver
And silver was glass.
It was a time
When we only paid
Inattention.
It was a time
When we touched
Dead bodies
And averted eyes.
It was a time
When robots knew most
About love.

Snow Snaps

I.

It is March of my 28th year
And bitter snow
Keeps falling through tree limbs.
It never ends

This cold.
Like needle through flesh
This shot
Burns down and calms me.


II.

My mind only rests
Beneath a blanket,
Fresh frozen water
Who overstayed his welcome

Long ago.
Two cardinals converse on a branch.
Like me, they do not know
It is spring.


III.

I am too old
For winter anymore.
Each year, wind feels
Colder. I am beginning to think

The weather here hates
Me. His wicked breath
Smells of petroleum
And rotting pine.









IV.

I do not have answers
For this winter,
But he keeps asking me
About the season
Of tulip nectar and honeybee.

Maybe if he slept
Or ever listened
To quiet music,
He would lose his need
For tedious conversation.


V.

Too soon we reach the worst
Frost to date.
It is a difficult time
In Indiana
Somewhere,

The president rants about war,
Terror or something like it,
While we, in our blue finger madness,
Dig the newborn
Out of the snow.

What the Body Says when She Refuses

Next time, when I design the map
It’s going to go a little something like this:

Alright, listen to me.
Feel what I am saying to you,
One who turns the blind eye to the fact
That I control just about everything
Around here,

The forgiveness must stop.
No more apology take back talk throughs –
They don’t do anything to protect
What is left in this green, yet cracked home
You and I built together.

Map of the Body –
*You get to choose:

Path number one:

No, I don’t want salad almond faux chocolate paste nutrition landfill. No, I will not have you on top this time. No, you do not get a say in this transmission. No, it is not just about the lime. No, taste my face once and realize it does only as it pleases. It is not concerned with you or any of your accouterments, regardless of how big they are. No, I am not impressed by the status of your death brain noodle education. No, it really is just about your green glass eye, shitass. I expected it to feel like the place between water and sand. It did not. And you knew this all along. No, I did not lose the forty and some odd moments that made me this slenderized, tenderized version who really could rotate your tired face and wash her hands of it.

Path number two:

Yes, I require more than a moment to intensify and do you justice. Yes, I really did work the body to peak position without panties. Yes, this is what I look like – all over, the place you keep saying is somewhere between imperfect and monsoon white light disaster. (I will have to look that up; I don’t think you are right about that one.) Yes, my thigh can meld you into the metal you were made of and then pour you out through the eyeglass of those nine months you said it would be okay and then took it back. You are an Indian giver and yes, I know that is not politically correct. Yes, I told her she had to wait a bit longer for my derailment. From my own mess, I came up green and smiling. Where were you? Someplace I imagine – the transition that exists between water and the steam of this mess.

Path number three:

I can only be one composition in this spectacle. Night blankets the discord as I – in my own mistake trivial pursuit without chocolate money – watch burning people burn on like they are only dipping spoons into bread. I do not understand this smoldering. They always ask – what are you made of? I answer just this, because I have not found my way in the universe: I am blood orange and concrete with a sprig shooting up – always – someplace searching for what is next on the earth. Did I mention to you that one time that my real eyes are green?

Sign

In those days
I was only five feet,
Six inches tall,
And angry with everything.
Everything. Even the snow
Wasn’t enough
To distinguish cold
And flush of old heat.

I stood at the corner
Of the bar and seam
Where people walk
And sit down together.
The room smelled
Of stains and old money,
Red wine and oyster
Cracked open,

I watched the boy
Approach my 28th year
And flash arrogant smile.

You’ve never been in this place
Before, he said.
You have a name
You can get around on?

What is wrong with your eye?I asked.

And your hat tips
Over the other lid.
You have a problem
With women,

I think.

I have mother trouble
Here. He said. Reaching
Into his pocket,
He pulled out a note pad
Signed his name on it
And handed it to me.

Ever take an autograph
From someone not old enough
To have a name?

It feels like paper
But something different,
Like pennies in a water glass.

I took it.
It wasn’t the man I needed,

But I took it.

Her Inner Poet

While she was sleeping, buried deep someplace beneath the buzz of reality and the cool, dark weight of the unconscious, her inner poet emerged.

He only appeared when she was so tired, so quiet and tired, that all she can do is lead with her senses and psychic energy.....

He was a strong personality, much bolder and spicier than she, and insisted often upon sharing what often many others did not wish to learn or hear.
And when he surfaced...he spoke anyway...

Afterall, someplace there is an audience undiscovered.

Be still a moment, while I attempt to explain this

It won’t come out right,
But I am trying to tell you.
So bear with my arm, my eyes, my lips,
For I know no other way than this.

I.
When you sleep – those rare moments,
For it seems you never dream,
It is vulnerable, so silent,
Like snow blanketing the shards
Of your splintered wine glass.

II.
I had parents once.
They shared a room in a house someplace
I was too small to remember.
When I became a man,
The room, the house, disappeared in a sunrise.

III.
The brush of your fingers,
The way it makes my skin stand up, erect,
Makes me write poems again.
And when you are not here,
I cry alone in salty anger.

IV.
When they look at you
And I feel them reading me,
I touch your hand to make it real
And remember Sara, her brown hair
Waving back at me in the wind.

V.
It is only in that moment
Before we meet together for rest,
That I want to push
And show you the length
Between the cherries and their blossoms.

VI.
It is not your fault
I cannot remain numb.
They make drugs I cannot take for that.
But you feel like summertime
And here, snow falls for six more weeks.

VII.
I must not say this in words,
But at night, when it feels blackly dense,
And I can see my own hair on your cheek,
I dream of ways to show you
Cherries, snow, blossoms, and summertime.

Even Dogs Give Apologies

If I could take it all back,
Trust me
I would.
But you know how a dog loves
A cat?
Just curls up alongside him
To stay warm,
But cannot express the need?

It’s okay if you want to explain
Your mistakes.
Fill in all the punch holes
After wind blows through them.
But you must say it
To yourself first.
Accept,

Like that bus ride after the fans went home.
Moon falling over gray seats,
Just you and the bounce in the cold.
No one is ever really at fault,
When a team plays.

Fireflies at dusk, if you ever held one,
Stop burning yellow if you clench.
The light goes out with the sun
While the rest still fly. Your parents still call.

But you cannot be a firefly.
Your life is dog curled ‘round a cat.
Dreaming of running, chasing, even biting,
With tufts of fur in teeth,
But instead rolls over,
Stretches.

A Break in the Action...

After it all shook down that afternoon in the cafeteria, she was in the hospital.
Unconscious.
Someplace between a deep slumber and life.

It went on like this for some days.
She lost track of time, space, whatever else was going on in the immediate world.

The only sounds in the room were the quiet drips of an IV bag and hum of a small monitor, its winding octopus legs attached to her by sticky circles.
Once in awhile, people came in and out.
There was talking.
But she heard nothing. Saw nothing.
Rather, nothing registered about her relationship to earth.

But while she was away, her mind kept moving forward, simply creating pictures while she slept...

She had been in such desperate need of sleep.

Post-traumatic Stress

You don't know this yet

But sometimes when it it's really dark in here,

(and honestly the midnight blackness is beautiful most times)

It becomes imperative to open the eyes.

Adjust.

Seek out what really hides underneath the bed, you know?

I mean, they say there really aren't monsters under there, but you just don't know sometimes.

I saw one once.

It was around for only a few minutes, but damnit it bit me.

Left one hell of a mark.

Call it my battle scar if you will, but honestly, had I had a real weapon, I'd have shot it right then and there.

But it got away.

They're fast suckers. Slipped out the door into the winter 4 AM

and just freaking disappeared.

By the time I'd grabbed the rifle and my shot, it was long gone.

So you see, when it's really cold outside, and a bit insanely black in the room,

I get a little angsty, a little pre-war inside.

It was only ever that damn monster's fault and I really don't know where it is.

But we still gotta check under the bed before going to sleep.

Okay?

You just never know, because it's dark.

And it's so cold outside, because it's January.

Now that I think of it, it was January then too.

What do they look like? Monsters?

I have trouble remembering it sometimes.

Bigger than us, but not by much.

Not a lot of hair really, but more scaly, slippery, like a fish with claws.

Someplace between crab and octopus.

You really can't pin one before being bitten.

You gotta just tear off after 'em when it's over.

Or that's what they all say.

I haven't seen one since that morning.

I don't think I'd even know what color to look for.

All I know is that the monster that bit me is missing part of a tentacle.

I mean, hell, I bite too.

Doesn't everyone have teeth?
Somewhere?

I just gotta tell you this.

It seems simple, monsters under the bed.

I won't bring it up again so long as we just check.

Maybe keep something sharp beneath us.

Just in case.

Because you just never know.

The Thing Is...

The thing is, in this town, no one really wants to get to know anyone else too closely. There is danger in that, knowing someone, you know? I mean, something turns in on itself when secrets are uncovered and you begin to understand where another person comes from.

It's a bit on the scary side, really.
People become all that more human, more fleshy and stupid.
And more prone to make mistakes.

Is that the terrifying part?
The mistakes?

Or is it the understanding, the inherent knowledge that we all do it -
All belong to this community of perpetual falling down and getting back up.

Yes, it's in the spiraling up and down that the fear comes, its unique blend of warmth and coolness that keeps people going, you know.
Yet it is also the fear that brings everything to a hault.

And in this town, we don't discuss it much - this fear.
But none of us wants to die too soon and none of us wants to live without that one thing we all keep hearing so much about.

Right?

It was on a day when the wind felt like a knife. She felt wounded, vulnerable, especially when the icy fingers got through the weak spots in her coat. She always loved winter's beauty, but not its feel. It made everything feel dead inside. It heightened the numbness, the thickness, that had been growing so dense over time.

But on this day, upon opening her mail, a bit of warmth trickled in where it hadn't existed before - an anonymous postcard.

You are wonderful.
Just wanted to remind you of that.

No name. No postage to offer a hint.
Nothing but a card and a business envelope.

And despite the ice and snow on the mail center stoop, she sat down in her business clothes and cried.

Lunatic Lunch Hour

Her morning in the greenhouse was a quiet one. James refused to speak to her about much of anything. His few comments were somewhat bitter, irritable, and always pointed to ways in which she was pruning incorrectly or performing a "completely unnecessary task," like making sure each leaf got a bit of moisture.







"You don't have to soak down each leaf!" he had bellowed.







But she liked the way the leaves and petals glistened when she made sure each one got a dab of fresh water. She felt a bit sheepish when the morning ended, realizing the mental patient had served as her boss, her greenhouse 'master,' all morning long. It made her want to stamp a foot and retort "How dare you!?" but she remained quiet.







By noon, she was famished and unsure of where to go next so she returned to the main office.







"What do we do about lunch?" she inquired at the front desk.

"How the hell should I know?" barked the receptionist as she gathered her materials, "I'm out to lunch too."

So she returned to Dr. Heathrow's office, knocking timidly on the door.

"Come in!"

She entered the foggy office a second time, finding Dr. Heathrow at her desk, feet up, and reading a book, a half-eaten salad next to her.

"May I go someplace to eat?" she asked.

"The cafeteria is down Hall C, just pass the in-patient screening rooms. Help yourself to what's available. Your next assignment, Andrew, begins at 1 pm."

Dr. Heathrow was absorbed in her book, so she retreated silently and headed to lunch.

She felt utterly ridiculous, chastised by a mental patient and then brushed off by the staff. She was half ready to call it a day when she saw a door marked "Cafetorium" and she went in.

It was everything she'd imagined and then some - putrid wall paint, styrofoam serving plates, plastic sporks, and staffers in hairnets slopping up lukewarm, undistinguishable edibles. She got in line, made a small salad (because she knew where veggies come from), picked up a bottle of water, and sat down at a small table near the window.

She peered around the room, which was nearly empty save a few staffers near the door, a few policemen and security officers walking through the room, and two tables, a patient at each one.

One patient was thumbing mashed potatoes into his mouth, apparently not allowed to use utensils. The other was nodding to herself, muttering under her breath, her lunch uneaten.

She turned back to her salad and munched cautiously. It wasn't bad, but it sure wasn't good either. As she ate, she felt her phone vibrate. She looked at the incoming message, which was from Noodle.

"Dinner. Don't forget. You like red or white wine? Talk soon."

She smiled. Maybe the next four hours would speed by and she could end her day in the company of someone more sane, more fun to be around. She messaged back:
"Red. Cabernet or Merlot. 8 pm okay?"

It was then that her mind drifted again. Was this a starting over or merely a continuation? She wasn't sure.

Minutes later, a terrifying scream broke her from her reverie.

Relatable Quote for the Start Over...

"It's okay to lose your pride over someone you love, but don't lose someone you love over your pride."

In the Spark and Strange - His Side

For weeks he did his best not to think too much on it. What good does it do really, worrying about the "down the road" and the "what could happen nexts?"

His knowledge of footpaths and emergency exits, all those calculations and documentations, well they proved to be consistent. Relaxation and termination eventually follows.

But she didn't leave.
And she demanded he be just himself. Nothing else.
It left his mind spinning the phrases "what the hell?" and "what to try next?" all the time.

Who appreciates a real person afterall? Just for who they are? What do they inevitably want? Need? Require?
What is the catch?

It was late in the night when he realized that if it all changed it wouldn't only be his fault, his idea - that the processing wasn't just him anymore - that despite his natural instincts - she was taking responsibility too. Her mind had switched over and was tabulating and calculating at an almost indistinguishable buzz. She too, was on.

She accepted it. She accepted him.
And her capacity for the unconditional left him wondering if he could do that too.

The challenge alone made him electric.