Dead

A stale fog hung on the edges of evening. Joe slipped the pint out of his pocket and took a deep drink. It burned. He was not a drinking man. He did not consider standing because he was not sure he could. The building would hold him up until he was feeling better. Through the grime of tears, Joe stared numbly ahead, watching the parade of commuter thighs.

            It still lived in him too strongly. It was too bright and too strong for him. Drinking stopped it. He tried to remember the last time he had felt right – the last time that he had looked into his home. The blood and lingering smell of gunpowder had gagged him. He would never forget the smell. He was speechless. Then it was pure shock. And that was the last time he had been home.

            It had been weeks. Months? Shit, he had no idea. He could still hear the police…someone to call?  Someplace he could go? But there was no place. There was no one to turn to, no place to go, just the streets. On the streets, he could almost convince himself that he was on his way home, ready to see what Jen and the kids had made for dinner.

            He wasn’t even angry. That amazed him. There was nothing to be angry at. A force. A disaster. Like being angry at an earthquake. The anger had left quickly, replaced by a deep hole that he could not fill with anything resembling decency. His faith, the little he had possessed, was now gone entirely.

            For days he had read the paper, read about the murders, and he had not been able to understand that they were talking about his family. He knew it – knew it in the way that you know you have offended someone – it was a glancing acceptance. But a larger part of him did not believe it was true.

            An image sliced through his brain and he winced, reached for the bottle. He would always see it. The small, innocent faces he had cupped in his hands. The woman he loved.

            Don’t think. Just don’t think about it. Don’t ask the questions. Don’t start the goddamn questions. Why? Why not just rob the house? Why this? Stop it. The police. They were looking. Sure, they were. He could still hear the young cop ask, “sir, is there anything missing?” He could feel the gape-mouthed incomprehension on his face. Then the older cop pulling the younger one aside. Anything missing? Don’t fucking think about it.

            He took another drink and tipped the bottle high. He was forgetting. He was becoming wooden. His mind was skittering slowly over something, like a scratched record, pebbles in a stream. A whisp of dream. He was no longer there. With the liquor in him, he was there – death – the real home he had chosen. The body could give up any time it wanted. As long as there were buildings to hold him and liquor to drink, he would just be dead. And if he kept being dead long enough, the questions would stop.

Eyes

She looked into the mirror and hated her hair in fifteen distinct ways. She felt the past behind her like a dragon’s tail. She looked into her eyes…green. She tried to see herself. She couldn’t.

So many years ago. It all seemed like a vague memory. It wasn’t a dream. It was déjà vu of a dream. It was looking into a mirror for ever and ever.

The sound of the door shocked her. Then she knew. Time had been moving quickly again. He was home. She should have known that he would come home. Any minute. Goddamn, what time was it?

There are things that no one wants to remember. Then there are the individual things…things the rest of the world ignores…the personal indignities that scorch and burn. Knife cuts. Abandon.

He was making his usual noises. Goddamn, he was so fucking noisy. He made animal grunts as he heaved himself around the house, breaking the calm. He would want to know things. She would hear questions behind the screeching in her ears. Concentrate.

Look into the eyes. Just the eyes. The eyes are everything and they hold the answer. Don’t break the stare. She heard him calling her name. She ignored it…just stare. 

When she was a little girl, she had wanted  to do everything. She often did nothing because everything was too big.  He didn’t know about any of THAT shit.  He didn’t know as much as he thought he knew.

A tear kissed the eyelash. Don’t let the tear drop. Keep the eye contact. Don’t answer. Don’t hear. She had been in love with a guitar player when she was in college. He was not a good musician, but he thought he was, and she had loved him for it. That was long ago, but it was all jumbled really. That was the problem.  She had been shaken.

Eyes. Always the eyes. They were sometimes unkind, but they spoke in truths. There was no avoiding their honesty. They had no stake in the game.

He was in the kitchen. Probably making a drink. She tried to remember how to greet someone. The right way to smile. The words she would be expected to say. She couldn’t. She accepted that it would be awkward. It always was. She always knew it would be and that was that.

He stood when she walked into the room. He was sweating. Tired. He looked tired and broken. Like something that needed taping. She fell into the hug and let go. Closed her eyes.

1:59

I am sitting in a dark room. There is no light, just the glow from the laptop screen. My eyes shudder and try to close, and I force them open with terrible memories of the past. This is not normal human behavior. I force myself to watch friends die in my mind. I wonder at the last clutch of breath, and I can't fucking stop it. Sleep is a narcotized darkness. But it will come. And then morning. And then I will prick my brain again to make it bleed onto this little white box so there are words where before there was only potential.

Upon Impact

Leaning on the cold shoulder. Car idling. Heart racing. The ground is hard. Pebbles, each one distinct. All meaningless upon impact. The impact pulverizes the body, turning the inside into a kind of soupy mess. Bones snap like twigs. The car still idles and will do so until it runs out of gas. It will be auctioned and purchased by a family happy that there are no blood stains. It was a good car. Life was not so good. But the impact solved that.

Blurry

John lay on his side on the edge of the bed and watched the texture of the wall go blurry.  Outside, the sun was shining and birds were probably chirping and all that shit.  But inside of his room, John was a monument to darkness.  The room was dark.  His mind was dark.  The skin under his eyes was dark.

            

The walls weren’t doing much except giving John something to stare at.  And there wasn’t much else in the apartment.  A few milk crates to serve as tables, chairs, stools, etc.  John had only been living in the apartment a few days.  It was a mistake.  He knew that.  It was all a mistake. 

            

John’s brain was about the size of a nerf football with the ends chewed off.  It was a lump of magic that he did not understand.  He had never given it much thought.  But now it was all he could think about.  This is because John was lost in the Guantanamo Bay of the mind.  His thoughts were water-board nightmares.  He did not know how to make it stop.  He did not have the energy to make it stop.  It wouldn’t stop.

            

John’s brain was asking questions.  It had doubts.  It wanted answers that John did not have.  He did not know why he could not remember important things.  He did not know why he had sabotaged his life.  He wasn’t even sure if he was the one who had done it.  So, he spent hours lying on his bed, turning the wall blurry, and wondering.

The Ice Cream Man

The ice cream man is your life. You are forever late and chasing the dangling bells. It's hot, and an ice cream would have tasted all right. But they don't stop. Weird fucking business. Park outside. Let me scramble to find the loose change in the pants that cover my floor like roadkill. Give me a minute, brother. I'll be there. I'll take the rocket pop. But you don't ever wait. It's a 'right place at the right time' kind of gig, and I never am. In the right place. At the right time.

I might make it in time to see all the smug motherfuckers eating their ice cream. I smell exhaust and sour milk. What kind of business strategy is this anyway? It's like a drug dealer that runs full speed through the neighborhood calling out 'buds! thizz! shrooms!'. Ain't no way your customer base is gonna chase you down, brother. I don't see any flocks of kids chasing your little wagon. Why don't you chill the fuck out for a second and let me think! Shits always gotta be all rush fucking rush all the time. That's not the way I want to enjoy my ice cream.

So, fuck it. I return to my oven apartment and let the cold water run for years until it is actually cold. I'm all propped up in front of my fan. Whatever. But listen Ice Cream Man; I'm a businessman, too. I got no beef with you, but you might want to reconsider your MO. I would've put that buck 35 right into your hand if you'd been patient. But I guess you're chasing something, too. I wonder what your ice cream is.

The Sensitive Child...

Every report card...mixed in the with the B's and C's like little mouse turds. Your child is "sensitive". Man, I knew cussing. Fuck. Shit. Butthole. That had to have been the worst word I knew. Sensitive. It made my dad's eyes dark and it radiated shame. It made my mom hug me and tell me it was a good thing which always meant it was a bad thing. Shit.

In my room. Playing with my knives. I was strong. I was fast. I always won. Except at fighting. Oh, I won. But damn, I couldn't do it and not end up crying. Being angry always made me cry. On the inside, the anger was a deranged fucking cyclone, but on the outside, I cried. I yelled and demanded justice and ended up crying. That's how I learned what a faggot was. But I wasn't one.

Scared. Big sisters and brothers do such horrible things. They do it and then it is done and it all seems right, but twenty years later you think back and think, 'holy shit, did she know?!?'. Did she know what she was doing.  It wasn't fun and games.  Not a bit.

And the fucking predators. They see it like a wolf sees a wounded rabbit. Fuckers.

Hit me. Just fucking hit me. Don't yell at me. If you touch me, make it HURT! You can hit me all you want, stop fucking yelling!

Lay on the bed, mind of cold, dripping fire. Sensitive child. Fuck you. Fuck you, school counselor. Fuck you, condescending teacher. Fuck you, speech therapist. 'Talk more, you have such a good vocabulary". Fuck you; I stutter. Leave me alone. Just leave me the fuck alone, so I can disappear.

Sports. Bikes. Guns. Fire. No need to talk. Fucking A. Let's go. Music, pure emotion, but it works. Whiskey, tastes like shit, makes everything black. More. Drugs. Fuck it.

Hate. Ahhh, finally. The antidote. I don't give a fuck! That's it!  I. Don't. Give. A. Fuck.

The years pass in blurry old slide-show frames, and the sensitive child twists his brain and speeds his heart up, slows it down, wakes up dirty and bleeding. Hides in corners clinging to cigarette life rafts. I. Don't. Give. A. Fuck.

Birds were the only thing I could ever count on. No one cared if they were sensitive. They were free to soar and dive. God, how I wanted to be a bird. So, the years passed like stop motion photography. Slomps and glamps of stuttering images. Until the crescendo. The sensitive child was not dead, only sleeping, and woke up on the wrong goddamn side of the bed. Emergency rooms. White-light-cleaner-smell and doctors and take this pill and come to this group and you know I'm not gonna fucking do it. Maybe the pills. Depends on what they do.

The sensitive child. Man, how I tried to kill that son of a bitch...but I never did.

I see them everywhere now. I want to tell them it will be OK. There is room in the adult world for the "sensitive child". It is a blessing. You don't want to be rock. You don't want to yell. You don't want to hurt people and be a frat boy asshole. You want love and learning and books and art and THERE ARE OTHERS. Just wait. Be brave and strong and don't let them get inside you. Because they will try. And you will lose so much.

All the years. And no one really told me. No one showed me. God, I wish they would have.

Addendum courtesy of one of my favorite Canadians.  No pity sought or required.  Pity the INsensitive children.