Category Archives: internals

thoughts, musings, life, etc

internals

trick or treat

“let’s go to that one!” and she runs, her bag already open, as fast as her little legs can carry her and she manages the big steps and almost trips over the little ones and she screams in delight as the next house comes into her field of vision, with its ghosts and frankensteins and halloween elmos, and she knocks on the door, rings the doorbell, extends a careful hand into a bowl of candy, then runs off saying “thank you!” already lost on her way to the next stop on her halloween dash.
(the wife later tells me, after i left, the little one gathered all her little purses, filling each one to the brim with the night’s bounty)

general, internals

mouse trap

we found a mouse in the house. a little mouse, a house mouse. i did nothing about it the first day, but with the newborn and all, she went and bought glue traps, snap traps. she set them on the kitchen floor with little pieces of cheese, straight out of the cartoons. a trap snapped within the hour. couldn’t even tell what was sticking out of the trap, whether it was its hind legs or torso but it didn’t twitch or anything, so it was dead. turned a plastic bag inside out and i scooped it up like dog poop. but the very same night we caught sight of the tail of another. there had been two, so the wife breaks out the glue traps and i placed where we had seen it. i finally read up on it and it turns out that peanut butter was the way to go, not the salami i had replaced the cheese with. so i dab it here and there and set the snap traps by the glue ones. an hour later there was the other one, stuck on its side, moving its head as it saw me approach. turn another bag inside out and scooped it up, still twitching. i tied the bag, then slammed it on the granite counter. it didn’t move after that.

frags, internals

all these with no place to go

all these with no place to go. an old chemistry set, the wick of a candle that’s been burned off prematurely, a quilt that’s been stretched open like a chain link fence. they leave grooves on the skin when pressed, the stray eye lash that falls in your coffee. a rock that tumbles out of your shoe to alleviate the pain of having crossed over, clean and unblemished. your son wobbles his head as you hold him tightly above you, up and over, erupting with a laughter he has yet to understand. rubbing her eyes in the dark, your daughter asks you to sing a song that you can’t possibly remember until you begin to whisper the words in the dark. the sum of a foreign set of limbs that were once your own curling up for warmth.

internals

barefoot on slate

i walk barefoot on slate, mice run around about. she sleeps above me, nestled in a odd mix of sadness and delight: she has a son, her husband has betrayed her. it is like walking on ice, feet pressed firmly with toes splayed, the night hints at winter but i am not cold. she wept into my hands and i shivered and shook, cigarette now dangling from dry lips, hearing the distant echo of a car making a tight turn.

internals

dreamt i was missing

i was lost in the city that i used to know so well, around and around the same block, it was getting later and later and a simple cup coffee with old friends turned into some nightmare where i couldn’t find a phone to call you, to tell you i was so lost, walking into the same bodega asking the clerk behind the counter if i could use the cell phone he was talking into, and he kept smiling talking into the phone in his native language while taking condoms, batteries, cigarettes, cheap cigars off hooks from behind him and offering each in turn to me and i wasn’t smiling and he didn’t seem to mind and it was getting impossibly later into the early morning hours, over and over, until the doors of the bogeda were even locked and he no longer paid any attention to me, knocking on the other side of the bullet-proof glass.

internals

he breathes

he walks into a room he looks at her she weeps
he moves forward he says her name she moves backwards
he breathes
he touches her face she looks at his hands he closes his eyes
he moves a stray hair she weeps he draws his hand back
he breathes
he pulls away she opens her eyes she says his name
he weeps shes draws her hand back he opens his eyes
he breathes

ach, crap. let’s try this instead

he breathes her into a room where she is weeping and finds her beautiful. he moves a stray hair from her cheek and she touches his hand. she says, don’t. he moves across the room where she is breathing him weeping into hands that are calloused from rubbing sandpaper into walls. she says, don’t, again and he opens his eyes. she is still beautiful breathing and he pulls away into the corner where the lamp sits on a dresser. he says her name and she moves forward around the corner of the bed by him. he breathes her touching his cheek but he is no longer beautiful. she takes his hand and pulls him to where the sheets meet the bed.

frags, internals

blunt piece of metal

the day ends with a soft chill that traces its way up my leg and stops short. in the middle of the night i heard a thump and i snapped out of bed grabbing a leftover tool with a metal edge whose name i didn’t know. i prowl around peering into mirrors, waiting to confront some one, any one, to put these goosebumps across my skin at ease. i work through hallways the way a mouse burrows within the veins of a corpse. hungry and sterile, blurry eyed and angry. hundreds of times i’ve done this and it never wears out the tread. alone with a blunt piece of metal in the dark, waiting for an excuse.

general, internals

spider song

i dreamt of spiders coming out of my hair with lilacs and orchids and they each sang a song i once remembered and i tried so hard to separate the orchids from the rest as they rained down my face carrying with them the words i couldn’t put my finger on and a part of me wanted to cover my ears to keep the song out of my head but i didn’t want the spiders to leave they were so graceful and soft but they had much better places to go and sing their song and the lilacs kept sticking to my hands