torn burned
under a moon. lifeless
hopeless
the eye.
you
almost whole inside
the sleeve. (tried to hold
ashes
of yourself) don’t
voice up
your hand. snug
blade
carved out
of
the stain. quite
out of mind waiting
again.
Category Archives: frags
abandoned pieces, fragments, scraps
can I?
can I make
moonlit candle music
by melting shadows
in you?
the feel of my hands
along your eye.
you run a lost slip
of cloth
to my lips slowly.
above the silk
painting,
across and within you,
I held my fingers tight
withdrawing your hand
from my chest,
I can taste
the faint imagination
of release.
so vivid
to smile like you
saying my name.
can I make you?
all in twenty four
to start with her, because it had started with her. She had spread her legs at a point I’ll never remember and somebody must have PUSH! And out I came (and isn’t that strange that we never remember, blessed to never remember, that, but keep track of the day as the years go by)
to start with her because I did. This, this book did not start with her, but I’ll get to that at some point, maybe, maybe not, depending if I have much of other things to say, but I doubt that will happen, I will get to that because you’ll need a reason for all this, an explanation for these words, these inks stains that are never going to be seen as simply stains, but as ‘words’, as ‘never going to be seen as ink stains’ (and there’s something fascinating to all that, to the idea of writing on paper, drawing lines that mean much less than what the writer writes and much more, as in, other than what the writer intended)
to start with her and I write of things other than her
to star with her and the things that brought me to her, her to here, here to the life that had happened upon her. But the words: ‘life happened upon her.’ Listen to that, another digression from the start. Life happens upon us. We, in being born, did not ask of it. People, such as parents, are accidents. Nothing in life is ever planned out. One can say, ‘I will go out and do the laundry today’ and go out and very well do the laundry. One can then turn and say, ‘am I not now a prophet?,’ smirking. Yes and no: you did what you wanted but you did not expect for there to have been so few people at the laundromat; you did not expect to be caught staring at someone’s underwear by an eight year old girl; you did not expect for you to have lost a sock, or for the day to be sunny when the forecast was for rain. The fact that a car heeded the traffic light and did not mow you down while you were crossing the street; the fact that you are still living and breathing is a culmination of random events. You think you have control over your life and, to a very limited extent, you do. However, one never knows what people they will meet today, even if they’ve seen the same people for years. Point being: suddenly, every time, anytime, all the time, ‘suddenly you are alive and breathing and you have nothing to with it.’
to start with her, and it is very difficult after the initial push to continue. The idea fades or becomes something else until the motivation changes also. It had started as: ‘To start with her…’ and it is now: ‘My throat is dry. The phone has not rung. I am waiting. I am thinking ‘someone else has not called’, and I wonder if anything had happened. I am waiting for someone who is not the her of the moment, or the her that I began with, but an other her someone else entirely who, when I pay attention to, receives much of my attention. This other ‘her’ who we’ll get to at some later point other than this page.’ And, of course, it is much more than that. Lost in the translation, so to speak and so, to ‘speak’, much of the translation has to be lost or I wouldn’t be speaking, I’d be thinking, and I’ve done enough of that, for now. Now I cannot simply ‘think’, I don’t have much time, I need to think and write, that’s the point of this: to see how much will I think to write and what I write of my thinking. I don’t have much time to just think anymore than Life at its end
to start with her, that brought about me, that brought me up. That, the latter, I know, or most of, from about age 2, everything before is retelling, from her and a smattering of others, it is not much, not chronological I don’t think she has even tried to place it in some proper order, or maybe she does not want to speak of it, or maybe it’s left and a little sorrow rest in her mind for that blurry thing that was once the memory of her childhood. I think it’s a combination of it all, I could be very wrong. There are a limited amount of truths that one will get when one asks questions of another. There is only so far that another will let one prod. There is a border that defines another’s sanctuary, a place that nothing in the real world is allowed to trespass, a line that, once past it, even her son is held as a stranger.
and to start with what I know and don’t know; to piece the little I have and to start with her, by filling in the spaces around her, of what she had come into, of what was around her, and eventually, brought her here, to get here eventually; the here and now because I know more of that, of the her and now (But when one reads a novel, let’s say a mystery, with a number of pages missing in and in-between the beginning, can one ever understand where and what exactly is going on in the novel’ Can one actually see the ‘whole painting’ when it is not presented in its totality’ Is it the same painting’ Is the outcome and all the loose threads tied up just as neatly when one has not had all the facts’ But there is the limit of what can be asked, a point where one must understand and accept what one is given only, and to interpret as best as one could and to move on from there; to accept and discard; to, somehow, face incompleteness and, not fill the holes, but to move through and reach and forget)
she had started in a shack and born, literally, onto the earth, for there were no floors. Where she was born was in a shack and onto the earth, her mother giving birth without painkillers or delivery rooms or doctors or nurses; without any release except to give birth, to release the seventh child from her womb. To pause, to side step, to regard ‘the seventh child’: there were six previous others, five of which survived; four boys, two live to this day, and the rest were girls; three others came after the seventh, three more births, one of which was stillborn; the first birth to die was a set of male twins, that starved, or were strangled, depending or your point of view, from lack of their mother’s milk. It sounds harsh, almost inhumane to even consider such a possibility in this day and age, but this is not then. Then was a shack that a man and woman put together with their bare hands, where electricity was seen only at night, in the clouds of storms, where all their children were born in this shack, for there was no way to reach a doctor (he was in another village and that’s what doctors did: traveled within a particular ‘state’, for lack of a better word) and so, also, the majority of times without medical supervision and in the beginning, with a mid-wife until the mother could do it on her own, onto the earthen floor, in sunlight or candlelight, with, as the first born got older, one of the siblings running to the creek to fetch water (most probably; these things are imagined, assumed, filling gaps, for there was no running water, before they even had a pump, there was only the creek, five minutes away running time) and another cry, another baby.
this is mostly snippets, this starting, this moving in time back to proceed forth from now, to here. This not of her memory, it is what is left of mine from what she has told me. To break the sequence of the beginning and to have my own memory before: there, going home from somewhere, I do not remember, it does not matter
under the right conditions
not a word
a word in my skull my skull rattling on
and on sideways against the floorboards: I mourn
for a world that I will never know and only know
in forgetting, or is that in passing? the passing lights before my eyes
the flash before my eyes tells me something tells me that I am
late for my own wedding I am late for my own funeral
that I am late (again, again, and again)
with the word of the moment that the word and myself haven’t arrived
and look who’s attended, look who’s here.
I am building a thing
I?m writing to not say anything. I haven?t much
of a choice: it all falls rather over and over.
I?m writing to forget
that I do nothing by writing, that there is nothing further than this
pushing
and its entrails.
fingerstalks of knowing and a trace, just the barest trace that it can be added up to seem
that if looked at the right angle, it would appear to be
solid, that it would solidify under the conditions.
there is no one condition, no living condition to which to all to apply:
just a plurality of conditions, party favors, and old torn magazine ads.
and this pushing implodes: it has yet to bloom, explode, carry itself
instead of being pushed, pushing
this struggle to grasp anything in my head. there?s nothing. it all goes. I can not say
surely that I know one thing. not even my name: it?s been passed around. Wherewhat am I? wherewhat when I thought it all boiled
down to ?who..??
psyche of logic, reason of the soul: a word for the mind, but
after all the exegesis and theorization beyond the neuro-scape and pre-wiring, one thing:
I move through a world I can not and do not see for what it is
I feel a world that can not and does not belong outside
that the world is a figment of the systems within me, the imagination of the wiring and never ever really there.
The realization is this: there are no words
for the discomfort, no association to link myself up to, no memory to call all my own:
I forget much more often. I?m not forgetting
more, as in ?more?, but rather, ?more quickly vast timely amounts.?
in other words:
everything is a surface
with no tensile strength, no weight: every word is as it appears.
I?ve been talking more
and more out
loud rather than writing just to feel my voice leaving.
It was the promise of language that held me together.
although offered a line of flight, never the props of wings: offered chance to redemption
effaced
as often I have seen. sometimes I feel
as if my fingers have a mind of their own often times making such typographical errors (leaps of syntactical structure, word forgetting)
such beautiful errors that I am
forced to take credit: are they mistakes or a jump in logic, a short circuit
of copper-less wires that has given breath to light?
I?ve just read the phrase ?the appropriate dna samples? and felt immediately a pull to write, to tie them down, to ?appropriate?(verb) the phrase. I read about a yawning of the mind that the skin loses itself in its own consumption, obsession with form: I?ve read and read and realized that I?ve learned nothing. what can I recall, what can I put into words for you? What representations of dna strands can I mangle in representation for your pleasure? What sense of right or wrong can I bring forth to the page with a level of honestly having been there?
what can I say to you but of all things that I can not say?
I?ve lied. I cannot and will not build a thing (to wordlessness): I want this to lean
towards meaning, to the facilitation of words
again. I want to start from the ground and word myself up from the soil like Adam:
I want to roll the dust in my mouth
and make work.
I want to make words real and I don?t know how. Did I ever? How could I have ever. But how did I then? If I knew
from the elemental truth then how did I ever get here?
You were young
and now? Now why here, why come this far?
even if I could ever truly feel the distance crossed across the base of my heel and the palms
of hands, if my mind could crawl
the ground for me, how could I ever know of the distance crossed? Has there ever been any?
Have I come this far only by a sense of proprioception?
(there is something in its meaning, in this word, of all things -a word-, once known, that makes this word above all others ring with a truth, ring with grit stuck between this thought and the tooth. it gnarls itself into my thoughts and continues the push, to push, this push. Is it/it is this word I have lived for and continue to write for, even now, even in this age of cybernetics, of regulation and line/s of flight/s)?
this word, proprioception, means: an internal knowing, an internal sense, of place, of where, of distance;
an alignment of the bowels with the motion of the earth.
how grand, how wonderful to be able to find place
again, to know where you are and where to begin. I read recently
(reading, reading, and only scraps, romanticizations of writing, stick)
somewhere,
?…as feminists writer were figuring the relationship between the body and writing…?
and I thought to myself, yes of course there, it has always been there:
writing as a body
and working of the body and the body as a writing of work
and the fractalizations, the impli-multiplications of thought-strands
became blurry and lost to me but the singular strand remained: ?the relationship between…?
somewhere else, I heard, I remember, a proposition:
?..that the mind-state is actually one of anxiousness, of anxiety, and that we construct ?causes? for this state of being post hoc, post mortem, and we cannot reconcile ourselves precisely with our ?selves?. We cannot bear to…?
I am still and always will be lost and frazzled and confused: I will always be unsure of my place.
even when sleeping in your arms
of all the things I could have said with this
I am brought to tears
that I did not.
funeral
I’m a pallbearer at her funeral. They told me not to do it. They told me that it wasn’t the best thing. I came close to hitting one of them. He didn’t mean any harm, I know that now. But when he put his arm around my shoulders and tried to explain it all to me, I think he knew. He stepped back and talked slower. You can tell. You can tell when they know that they don’t have a chance. If you really wanted to. I might not be as sharp as they are, with their visiting dignitaries and New York Times, but he stopped talking. “Maybe I’m wrong..” he had said.
I knew the priest, said my name and nodded his head, but didn’t say anything to me. Or maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. They had her casket open and when I went to pay the last respects I whispered to her: c’mon, stop this, wake up, your mother’s crying. I said more and they wouldn’t even look in my direction when I walked off. Her father looked embarrassed, as always when I was around. Her mother though, cried a bit heavier. She was the one that didn’t really mind me, I guess for the sake of keeping some sort of contact with her daughter. “I was young too..”, she’d say about us. One time she let me listen in on a conversation with her father. “I want you to know everyone is full of shit” she had said and that time he was saying, “You’re doing this to embarrass us, aren’t you..” It wasn’t like a question, more like an accusation. She’d say, “Fuck you dad” and laugh and not hang up the phone. Like I’d expect her to and he’d just sigh and say something like, “Very well..”
You should see some of them, so well dressed and grim. It’s not real. Only that coffin and the dead thing. That used to be her. That has me convinced that it’s still her even though she’s not breathing anymore. In that slow way that had me wonder sometimes at night how someone could breathe like that, so still. Then I see Seline come up to the coffin and I wish I didn’t have to hold back. Seline was the one that always insisted on cooking the stuff up. Always wanted a taste of everybody else’s even though she was the one that could afford it the most. Crying and almost falling onto the coffin. They had to help Seline back to the pews. Right in front of me, wailing. “I’m sick of it” she had said when I found her that night when the animal in front of me wouldn’t come with us to the hospital. She was sitting out on the balcony and throwing up over the rail. Her face was old and puffy, “I’m jus fuckin sick of this shit.” And Seline didn’t want to be bothered, the end of a hose between her teeth. “Ffug off muhn, cheesus kraheesst.”
kernel
Well, we didn?t have much to begin with, a couple of old kernels that we had roasted. They were so precious there on the tarmac as we were leaving coney island. Samantha had said how she always dreamed of corn kernels on the boardwalk, so finding them where we did threw her off: she didn?t know what to think. Maybe I?m psychic, she?d say, jigglin? the kernels in her cupped hand. Poppa said, Stop foolin? around with them, first decent meal we?ve had and you go playin? them like they Mexican beans… momma said, You wish, and then she wouldn?t say much else after that. It?s one of the last things I remember her sayin?. The very last thing was, Well, never now, and that was it. It?s hard visitin? her at the nursin? home that she?s in now. Samantha hasn?t been there at all. Aggravates my ulcers, she once told me.
Well anyway, I?m gettin? off the point. I have a habit of doin? that, which was no good for school, bein? that we kept movin? around, I was never around a school long enough to know what attention meant. A teacher once said to me, Pay attention Marcus, and I?d turn all red as the other kids stared. We?re so cruel as kids, so full of ourselves and what we are, and I?d say, But I got no money Miss. The class would break out laughin?, I was real popular then, everyone thought I was crackin? jokes when I really just didn?t know what was goin? on half the time. Today, they call it attention deficiency disorder, my poppa called it, Plain old stupidity. But, I?m doin? it again, veerin? off, not that I have much to say, somethin? in me just remembers that day so clear, like the beach back then, before everyone forgot their manners.
On Saturdays, I keep thinkin? it was Saturdays because everybody talks to me about those great Saturday matinees, but I don?t think we ever went to the movies on Saturdays just because everybody else went on that day. Meanin? that it was more expensive than on other days, so probably me and Samantha went on Tuesday. I remember the streets bein? empty, and we wouldn?t want to leave the movie house, it?d be dark, so we?d run home, laughin? and terrified, holdin? onto each other?s arms, like we were in a potato sack race, our breaths as sweet as candy. We?d go and see somethin?, none of it I remember, even when I visit my sister, she?d say, Hey, there?s one of those movies we saw as kids on t.v., you always had a knack for timing. We?d look at the b&w set that her husband made such a big fuss about, and she?d ask me if I remembered this scene or that, I just sat there and nodded my head. Even when I had somethin? to say, I usually kept it in my mouth, stayed nice and warm there. so when I?d just nod my head, Samantha thought I was just bein? my usual self when I didn?t have a clue as to what I was watchin?.
It?s good not lettin? on what you know and don?t know, people tend to treat you nicer, I don?t care if they think I?m slow. It?s better that way, even if it was hard when I was growin? up, my sister had to hold my hand when we crossed the street up until I was thirteen. But it wasn?t because I was clumsy, don?t believe what they tell you, and I know what they say. The truth is that I just liked the feel of her hand tuggin? on mine, this soft thing around these paws, gentle but firm, as they?d say, gentle but firm. I think of those days, of runnin? home, of crossin? streets, of sharin? a bag of popcorn that we soaked to the top with so much butter that the sides of our clothes were stained with our hands wipin? it all off, and her starin? at the movie screen and me starin? at her.. Think of those days, her all goldilocks, and I stare out the window until my eyes fill with tears. I know what you?re thinkin? and it was never like that, even if it crossed my mind, like all of those stupid things that cross a boy?s mind does, but no. I just loved my sister a whole great deal that it was terrible.
But it was on that day, the day we found those hard roasted kernels that I remember the best, that I keep rememberin?, nothin? much comes after that. Hard to say it was when I was fifteen that we all went our separate ways, but we did. Me and Samantha had really disappeared into our little world for good, and poppa kinda just sat there doin? everythin? he could not to look at momma. I figure it was hard for him, he hadn?t worked out the best for her, Not quite the catch, he?d say and it?s hard not to look at someone when you?re around home all day, wherever home was. It always turned out to be someplace small, it was no surprise that we were usually climbin? over one another every mornin?.
What you need an alarm clock for? He?d ask Samantha the one time he felt we should stop movin? about and Sam was gettin? settled in school. I need it to wake up on time, I get no sleep with you all snoring to high hell. Poppa turned and pointed his finger at her, all rough like cement, watch yer mouth girl. Sam would point her finger at him, heavy with his drawl, sarcasm they call it, no, you watch dem smelly feet, stompin? all over us every mornin?, and they had this kinda standoff, and it hit poppa like a great idea. He?d started laughin?, Samantha still holdin? her ground, and then he?d nod his head, there?s yer alarm clock, I got em right here for ya, first thing. All through high school, right on the dot, poppa had his feet in her face, and every mornin? Samantha jumped up earlier and earlier to avoid them.
corpse
He stands at the doorway looking at her. He has been staring at her sleeping. He thinks, I am a corpse fascinated with this beautiful thing that is sleeping. She is naked underneath the sheets and he sees this also because he is the one that undressed her, even though the beige bed sheet covers the lower half of her back. For the first half hour after he awoke, he remembered the night with her, the things they had done, now he is simply studying the curve of her shoulders, the way the wrinkles of the sheet wrap around the rise of her bottom. His eyes often linger at her mouth; the lips open on the pillow, the bangs of her black hair fall over her eyes and jaw. Both of her arms are underneath the pillow, holding it tenderly, as if she was still clinging onto his face, as she done so the night before.
He thinks, I am a corps-
The alarm clock goes off and he springs from the doorway, dropping to the floor, his shoulder grazing the dresser on his left, stabbing into the room. On his knees he clicks the off button, less than a foot away from her. He does not move. The suddenness of his actions and the shriek of the alarm have not disturbed her. His heart is racing and he does not know why, it is not because he rushed to the alarm. A part of him answers: it was your rushing to her, and that is something he is quelling before it has a chance to mangle the peaceful moment he has with her, while she sleeps. Even this rationale disturbs him and he cannot move away, not even his eyes. Not even once does he wonder if he deserves anything, any of this, and he feels guilty for being aware of the fact that he does not question the appropriateness of her in his bed. He merely remains kneeling alongside the bed, breathing, trying to settle it, create some sort of rhythm that will get him on his feet, out of the room, away from her.
Slowly, he reaches out and gently places his fingers on the fold of her arm. A sad strength fills him at the touch of her, he pulls his hand away and he pushes himself up off the floor, turning his back on her as he has done countless of times before.
______
When she awakes, she rubs her eyes and stretches. She pauses, he is not with her in bed, he is not even in the room. She turns and sits up, looking around the room slowly, straining to hear something, anything, that will tell her she is not alone. After a minute, she works her way out of the bed, touching the floor with her feet lightly, bracing herself for the crisp cold of the wood, then gets up. She picks up his robe up from the floor and covers herself in it, not slipping her arms into the sleeves, careful of the dark brown dresser near the side of the bed. It is then that she notices the index card taped onto the mirror atop the same dresser, centered. She reaches out and touches it, her fingers pressed on the edges. On it he has written that be has gone out ‘strolling’ and that he will be back soon.
Pulling the robe tighter around herself, the room is not cold enough for her to do that, she walks out into the carpeted hallway. Just as she passes the bathroom, she smells something. She cautiously moves through the length of the hallway, crouching somewhat head first, her hand palm open along the wall, mapping ahead of her. Before she enters the living room, she peers into it first, on her right, empty, blue blinds closed, then glances left, into the kitchen.
It is eleven in the morning but the curtains are drawn. He is just setting two plates of omelettes, his cigarette burning in an ashtray by the sink. Like a child just caught in the act, he looks up at her, smiles.
“good morning”, he puts the dishes down.
She loosens her grip on the robe. “yes” she says, “yes, it is.”
_______
After he takes her home, he drives. He drives aimlessly onto one parkway then another, not quite understanding his direction. He needs this, this emptying out, this wandering at high speeds, it is something that he has does often enough for him to keep doing and slide into comfortably. Surprisingly, he does not think that he thinks too much when he is driving. Words drift through his head as does the scenery; approaching, arriving, fleeting, gone without regret or feeling, objects on the roadside merely to be seen while passing through. He winds in out of counties, east then west, turning south, then westward again, until he finds himself back where he started, not too far from her home. This is familiar territory despite her, or rather, before her, it is old haunting ground for him. The idea that he might wander here again and to have to be scorched by the memory of her,-her having left him at some point in time (some time soon, he thinks)- hurts him more than whatever scars she will leave on him. Nowhere provides him with enough comfort, but knowing streets, particular alleyways, bars, having a sense of place, is the closest any one place can provide for him, and to have the scent, of her, mingle with street lights, or a certain curve in the road, would be adding salt to a wound. Not only would his mind constantly remind him of failure, but structures outside of it, cement, tar, glass, and doors, as well.
He turns onto a main roadway, westward, and decides to go into the city. There isn’t much traffic on the bridge except for the end of it, where it opens onto Second Avenue. He snakes through taxis and trucks, shifting from second to third gear, then down to second, ebb and flow, heading downtown. Although it is cold, the sun is bright. When he reaches the part of the city called the Village, he looks for parking, finding a space with a broken meter. Not too far from 8th and 3rd, he walks into a bodega and picks up a pack of cigarettes, salsa playing from behind the bulletproof glass. The bodega smells of roach spray, and like many other ‘one-stop’ stores, its shelves are packed with many, many things, crowded.
Out on the street, He crosses Third Avenue, against the light, dodging traffic. At Broadway, he stops into a coffee shop, finds a both, sits and takes out a pen, a journal, and one of the books he is currently reading.
The waiter approaches the table, young, fat and familiar.
He smiles and the waiter is struck by some vague memory of the face seated before him. The waiter holds the checkbook to his forehead in disbelief and says, “oh shit.”
The two talk about what has happened in the six years since they last saw one another. It turns out that the waiter also works as an electrician, owns a stand on the boardwalk in the Hamptons, and is waiting for the summer to sell it, so that he can open another in Rockaway.
“So what have you been up to?” the waiter asks, leaning on the plastic divider between booths and the table, nearly over him. He doesn’t have much too say, “work and writing”, and he leaves it at that. He is not prone to tell anyone anything, especially someone who he does not believe is doing all the things that the waiter is supposedly doing, the waiter not being older than twenty three. The waiter’s story doesn’t sit well in his head, but he forgives him, he understand the stories that need to be told in order to make sense of out whatever situation one finds themselves in. He himself has said things, finding himself telling lies actually, more than once, almost against his will, but at the same time, eased by what came out of his mouth, that what he was saying was possible, maybe, a ‘one day’ wishful thinking, a placing of goals ahead of him so that he just might reach for by this telling.
The waiter notices he has other tables and asks what would his old friend like.
“just coffee, and keep it filled, eh?” he replies and winks, feeling stupid doing so, but the waiter nods his head, perhaps pleased that someone from his past finally believes him, turns away, bringing a steaming cup a minute later.
He opens first the book, then the journal, pen ready in one hand. Whenever he reads, he quotes passages, sentences, anything that strikes him as interesting, true, a gem of a line. After he is done with either reading the book or filling up the journal, he will reread what he has written in the journal, what caught his eye. He can’t ever quite get over what he has copied, all of the passages would be priceless in his eyes, each dances with wonder in his mind, what brilliance to be able to capture this in words. He has few dreams, but each is intense, sharp hopes, and this is one of them, to be able to speak like those he has quoted in his journals, to pierce and open with letters and phonetic sound. He reads and, at times, writes, entranced with what rests dead on a page before his eyes.
_______
On his way home, coasting over the bridge, a song comes over the radio, there is little traffic. He finds himself staring at some point in the distance, not that particular thing, somewhere else, so it doesn’t matter. He hears the lyrics and his eyes become watery as he whispers them,
“..and I won’t be raped, I won’t be scarred like that..”
,feeling just the edge of it inside, chill on the surface of his skin, but he doesn’t get where he needs to go, pushing to it, pulling away from it, he remains just close to it, but not there, not close enough. The song ends and he wipes his eyes just before he downshifts into a tight turn, the buildings frozen, bright, and sharp, at the end of the bridge.
_______
At home, he makes a number of phone calls, none of them to her, even though he craves her voice, her skin more so. He doesn’t want to simply talk to her, he wants her here with him, not to have sex, to just lie with her, feel her beside him, to believe in her, but it’s too soon for that. It’s too soon to believe that there is anything beyond the night and morning that they spent together. He lifts the receiver of his phone, flipping through his phone book, dialing.
One friend, from the moment she answers, the sound her voice, alarms him. He asks “what’s wrong?”, urgent.
She replies, half-convincingly, caught off guard, “..Nothing..what do you mean?”
He insists, there is a rough quality to her voice, too weary and exhausted, vulnerable, brittle, which is unlike her. His friend is one who speaks and laughs earnestly and brazenly and is not afraid of being heard. “tell me what happened”, he says blindly, not knowing at all if anything has indeed gone wrong, just going on a difference in treble or pitch which may or may not be there.
Her voice drops to a whisper, hesitant.
“tell me.”, slowly, softly, he did not want her to hang up.
She begins.
What he hears does not make him uneasy, he is only listening. When she says, “I can’t believe I’m telling you any of this..”, he prompts her with “go on.” She feels torn between her commitment to her mother, who is an invalid, and her brother who is repeatedly breaking in to the home, turning all the closets upside down, looking for hidden stashes of money. “I swear to God, he looks like a madman when you tell him to get out..You know what he did last night? Motherfucker put a gun to my mother’s head, his own mother!”
Her older sister has moved to South Carolina and refuses to take their mother there, “..she says that she just doesn’t have the space for her..” Her younger sister went away to college and did not plan on ever coming back.
After all this, she pauses, he can hear her gasp, frightened by something that just crossed her mind.
He asks, “what was it?”
With much struggle to get the words out, stopping, shocked by the very words she’s choosing, she asks him, her voice rushing because of the audacity of it, “..is it normal to dream of killing him over and over?”
He tells her slowly, “..yes”, and for her to get out of where she lives now, to put her mother into a nursing home, until she too, can move. He explains to her that in the position she is in now, she can’t do anything, and that he understands why she will not involve the police, no matter what, family is always family. “..there’s a fine line between dreaming and doing,” he says, but she has been sleeping less and less.
She interrupts herself, while replying, “..believe me, I’m not the type of person who talks about..”, and he knows why she feels that way, he knows that she doesn’t consider him the most stable of people. This fact does not bother him -he agrees with her- but her current situation concerns him more. He knows the rage she feels is one that will not end up in homicide, it is self consuming. He is very afraid that six months from now, she might try to kill herself. “..I want so desperately to go to sleep, I don’t know why, I just want to go sleep..!” After a moment, she says she will think about he has said, then thanks him, apologizing, not as on edge, and he tells her that it’s alright, it’s okay, anytime, then hangs up.
Other people that he calls either no longer have the same number, or are not home. Many of those people are people who he has not seen in months, even years; people that he will not see again. He is not calling to see them, even if he misses them desperately, without reason. The reason why he calls them is to hear their voices again, just their voices, which he has not heard for quite some time. He doesn’t want to talk, he wants to listen. When he has gotten in touch with an ex-lover, he also reminisces; he can the feel the echoes of their touch again, their way of laughing, speaking, the shape of their hair. At those times he wants to ask them why they no longer remember him in the same way that he does, he wants to ask if they miss him at all. The distance of time beguiles him, he never quite understands it, but he never asks those questions, no matter what their answers might or might not be. He might not understand time, but he understands that something, that thing that once pushed their lips onto his, is gone, and they do not think of it as missing. The burden of memory is not one he is willing to share with people that have gotten on with their lives. He still longs to reach them, to touch the part of them that drew him, to cradle it for himself, knowing how selfish that wish is, calling them from time to time.
Still agitated from the conversation with his friend, he feels restless, and probably so because he has fed off of her, tuned in on her restlessness, her desire to leave and turn away from those that bind her. He wants to tear into the streets and run fast enough to rip the muscles from underneath his skin and become someone else, to run into someone else, into another life, to break this one. This is, and isn’t, his despair. This time, however, he has been pulled to it through his friend. He has, at one time, on his own, gone so far as to introduce himself as someone other than himself. Stalking through his apartment, into the kitchen and out, swinging by the living room, into the hallway, stopping at his room, half entering the bathroom, swivel out, circling back, nervous, angry, knowing better than to step out the door.
The phone rings and he is immediately cut off from the drive that pushes him around the apartment, almost against the walls. Calls are surprises, welcomed uninvited guests no matter their occasion, good or bad. Every phone call is a Christmas gift wrapped in bells, and whether the present inside is either a size too small or a flat out disappointment, it is the unwrapping, the lifting of the receiver, the discovery of a mystery solely meant for him, that pulls him to answer before the second ring.
“hello?”
“hi…”
He cannot explain the sudden urge to be with her, no matter what, ravenous, hungry, an explosion of need.
“hello…” he says again, raw.
“I felt you wanted me to call..”, gentle, knowing.
“what are you doing?”
“talking to you.” she points out, playful.
“that isn’t enough.” quick, almost harsh.
“so what are you waiting for?”
“half hour-”
“twenty minutes.”
He hangs up, quickened by the sound of her.
_______
She hangs up the phone, her living room dark, lamp lowered to half light. Her hand remains on the receiver for a moment, her eyes lingering, distant. Uncurling herself up from the white couch, she walks to the French doors of her apartment, wide and clean, where she could see all three bridges leading out of the city and a majority of its skyscrapers. The night is clear and deep dark blue, pinpoints of yellow and red lights, still and moving, tremendous faraway block shaped castles, checkerboard-like windows off and lit. She turns away from the window and paces around the room slowly, folding her arms across her chest, head bent, thoughtful. She takes five steps before brightening, reanimated, biting her bottom lip, she spins and makes her way toward the wet bar. Behind it, she kneels before one of the lower cabinets, opening it, sticking one hand while the other holds the door, shifting through wrapped plastic cups and forks, crinkling, ducking to get a better view in the dim light, excited, her brows furrowed, squinting.
When she gets a hold of what she was looking for, she feels ridiculous, like a little girl sneaking a kiss to the boy next door behind her parent?s backs.
He finds parking about a block away from her apartment. Hastily, he crosses the street, snaking his way between traffic. When he gets to her apartment…
memory
[and you write “things” because you have no idea what they are or their consistency, whether they are patterns or memories or active synapses, whatever they are, they’re wound up in tight and taut muscles, somewhere in your mind, a bundle of nerves, wires, just above the medulla, atop the spine. Within this, that “thing”, that trembles.]
[It’s a matter of discourse and detachment; of coming and going and returning to where “she” is no longer.]
[This thing that haunts with one face, your face; “she” has melted into everything you remind yourself of, even though it is hardly ever just “her”; The parts that were never “her”, but there is no one here, besides yourself, and the trembling, to note “otherwise”, in the sparse margin you left “her” in.]
[Even in “her”, you struggle with what you wish to remember solely. It is, perhaps, a cowardly act to believe when something is no longer there, that “she” was that one thing to need, to have here always.]
[In the magical moment of fascination, it is all possible, all can in deed be answered. At the precise moment of disbelief comes “belief”, fashioned by the shape of “her” unrecognizable before you and you ignore the monstrosity of it. Of course it is not too large. Of course “she” is all you ever wanted, every time you have met “her”.]
[Every thought is just a half thought, not a half consideration, or half important, but because each is extremely so, you are here to begin with, and these are more than thoughts.]
[You wonder briefly, if these places are shared, if “she” walk into this or that particular memory and can, even more so, remember the things that you see there, or, if “she” didn’t walk, or remember, would it still be the same room?]
[It is only a matter of time, as always, that the walls of “her” room, compress themselves into the one remaining corner, similar to an escape hatch, that “she” breathes out and through all that you denied of “her”. You peer into this corner and wonder if “she” can so easily strain through, what of the memory of “her”? There is nothing here to hold this with, save perhaps your teeth, and this.]
[You remember because some thing is short of time, short of breath, you believe it to be your body, it is not quite clear.]
[And when memory and the memory of a dream become interchangeable, when nothing is clear and all permeable, the distinctions you make of “her” can not be trusted to be of “her” exactly. For exactly this reason is the membrane thin, you’ve worn “her” to the point where “she” has lost distinction.]
[In your head you’re in a place that you do not want to be in but that is relatively the safest place. Looking at her brings so very a point to everywhere else. Not that you do not feel pain here.]
[At this point you stumble to just one thing, always when you have just nothing to say, when you’ve said all that had to be said except for this, this “thing”, that trembles.]
fractions
Two fractions of one thing equal broken parts strung together by a hairline of a fracture and if fractions are held together by fractures where can we find ourselves in each other whole?
there were many steps around
There were many steps around his fingers, round and twisted distortions of feathers. The distinguishing mark of his vein seemed blue and realistic, as if the sun had set vineyards we were watching. He said, “There were many distinguishing features of our jawbones.” A corrupted tree was the sign of a new intention. And we were clever; all we had was sawbones, or bones that were sawed, it was hard to tell with racks of pain. She tried mangling her hair again, a sculpture of divine proportions and she fucked anyone who could afford it. I hated the incompetence on my part, I didn’t take up the rope and strangle all politicians. It was an impasse and the blades were drawn onto sand. She said she liked it, especially when my hands were a warped conception: as long as we weren’t conceiving.