"But do you love me?"
Love? What is love? Love is a social construct. Love is an excuse to screw someone you think is hot. Love is a joke, a trap, an illusion. Love is what you wish for when you don't know how the world really works.
I see your skin and I think of you naked, wish for you to fall into my arms so I can possess you. Part of me wants you now, part of me wants you always.
There's only a limited extent to which these parts overlap.
Lust after you, to be sure. Like...
My feet ached, but it was well worth it. I mean, how many times in your life do you have the opportunity to attend a championship? Sure, I had to park about three miles from the stadium. Sure, I somehow missed that city bus that was barreling directly toward me until it was too late. Sure, once the bus rolled over my feet, I experienced agony beyond anything I could have ever comprehended to that point. But we're talking CHAMPIONSHIP, man!
I had to drag myself the remaining half of a mile, crawl to the turnstile, beg to be admitted...
Kandace made me kneel, which was hard to do since my hands were tied behind my back, and jerked the burlap sack off my head. I'm sure she took a few strands of my hair with it. I was kneeling in front of a small wooden table, upon which sat three tea light candles, their tiny flames stood perfectly still. The room beyond was pitch black. The scent of melting wax thickened the air I was trying to breathe. Kandace doesn't know I have asthma. She has stuck a piece of duct tape across my mouth, keeping my complaints muffled....
I awoke, pissed, the activity, not the feeling, took a shower, got dressed, made coffee, drank the coffee, fed the dog, the fish, the cat, watered the plants, left a note for the cleaning people, heard a story on NPR that made me think of you, began to write a poem about the us we were, before we became the non-us, still it felt good to think of you, your smile, shoes, the way you opened your eyes after they were closed in the aftermath of our coupling, when we were a couple, it turned me on, I went back...
"Wow, that was a fun."
"Yeah, it was."
Water dripped on the floor as they ran through the house and out onto the deck watching the lightning. It scared her at first but then it was like she had never seen anything so beautiful and menacing. Except perhaps her 8th grade Science teacher, Mr. Hanson. He was an odd man, with a thick black unibrow and wrinkles that resembled an old cartographer's first attempt at the East Coast of South America. He had a sinister laugh, not unlike the thunder shaking the ground under her feet.
She remembers thinking he...
Water. It was flooding into the windows and through the doorway. It continued to rise and I continued to panic.I couldn't die. I couldn't die. I HAD to make it out of there. No - I gave up. Just after letting myself slip beneath he water I felt two stong arms wrap around me and pull me out of the water that was killing me. When I was above the water, Ilocked eyes with him. He came back for me! I was shocked - especially after what I'd said to him earlier that day. "Why are you here," I managed...
Fourteen fish
bunched
like a silver
artichoke
They are traveling
farther
than their fathers
who never
left the river
Their futures
are
in lemons
and
bread crumbs
My eyes were tired; I rolled over in my bed, and stared briefly at the moon.
I turned back to face my fan; the 90-degree summer heat only dropped to 78 overnight, enough to make me sleep in shorts and a tank top.
My phone buzzed and lit-up its orangy color. Message from: Alex. I clicked to read the message, and it was some drunken rambling. "Oh boy," I thought, "what now?"
Our messages would go back and forth with when we would meet again, to what each other did that day or night. That was the summer I owed...
He'd sat patiently on the threshold of the kitchen all afternoon. She'd dropped countless morsels of crust, of walnuts, chunks of apple and even some of her own snacks, the clumsy klutz. Yet he'd abstained, withheld, conquered himself.
Now she was taunting him -- he felt it deep in his soul. She'd left the pies to cool -- small round pies, aromatic sweet pies -- at eye level. His eyes. She'd gone from the house (where? did it matter?) and left him to conquer himself.
Taunting his resolve. He thought to his mother who'd trained him in her ascetic ways....
The voyage was all fun and games until the iceberg came.
Nobody had invited the iceberg, and it seemed to show up out of nowhere. One moment, Rockwell was painting the dog on the banister, the next, the iceberg was full frame in the painting, like someone who hasn't noticed that you're taking a group photo and decides to walk right in front of the camera.
There was no use reasoning with it. It was obstinate, unmoving, rather dull to boot. At dinner that night, the usual good cheer in the ballroom had evaporated. Everyone was silent. The old colonel...