picture by christina tsui

for frances dinger

The way she approaches him makes him feel she has been thinking about approaching him, and he feels about five years old, because she leans in, that’s great. It’s about making someone feel private, she says, making an effort to converse. The word converse makes her lips bigger he thinks, that’s great too. Drinking something warm from her cup, perhaps whiskey, she makes her eyes somehow greener staring at him and Jesse knows he drinks too much too, feeling sentimental already. Him and his friends just got here, and the scene is booming, the turn out numerous. Warm people and bold laughter, everywhere. He moves in his knees, knows not what to say. Pretends he can make the music turn louder by thinking it. Bob Dylan is pledging his time, through the old wood of the raw house, singing in the next room through the record player‘s little holes. Harmonica. I love this album his says. I like to imagine I’m him singing. And no one knows I can do that.

It’s a surprise to be so good. So penetrating, he says. Jesse feels as inanimate as the wall he leans against, mouthing lyrics. Feeling good and absent. She does not look pleased but she tilts her head, rather harmlessly.

Bob Dylan has the voice of an angel, with throat cancer, she says. Where are your friends?

Everywhere. Or finding their own ways of penetration.

Awkward, she says. What if I didn’t like that?

A group of three girls walk from one room to the next. Each of them painted a different color. A red face. A white face. One naked.

I wasn’t thinking about that, Jesse says, distracted. My friends are too voyeur. They prefer language over the body. I am fucking drunk, he thinks, swimming, standing. A new dozen arrive into through the open door and immediately begin dancing near the kitchen. They wear costumes like musketeers. Jesse pretends to recognize them all. Forgets he has a drink too, a beer in his left hand.

You’re so voyeur, she says. But I like that, surprisingly enough.

Strange paranoia vibrates in his limbs but melts down once Jesse sees a good friend of his, talking to a girl, near the balcony. Someone pretty. His eyes crave cigarettes. Dylan has visions of Johanna.

But that’s what I mean, she says, seeming flexible. Feeling correct. When you find a stranger and you begin talking, it’s about making someone feel private, she says, making an effort to converse. It’s about making someone feel safe. Like making a small corner in a large room, at the large party, feel like it’s the entire house. Humming pulse. A lovely vacuum. Just you and her, and good, breathing air. Maybe beer too.

Jesse watches his best friend touch the girl’s face near the fire and Richard smiles like he jokes well. Like the masks are off, and the lights go off and there is the presence of your older self, in the future looking back on your life, feeling proud of you. Like you’re true as blue and she appreciates that. They begin playing rock. Paper. Scissors, and Jesse wonders what is at stake. The room moves with wind and the bulbs burn florescence along orange, dim walls.

See that guy there? Jesse asks. He’s my best friend. He pulled me out of a car accident last year, and I was bleeding all over him for ten minutes before the ambulance arrived. He taught me Italian, French, and Cantonese, he says. The evening quakes. Everyone cheers because the clocks turn midnight and those that stay quiet, feel incandescently out of sync, like significant people. Perfect and whole and hopeless. Jesse feels like how vanilla melts and understands gratitude. What were we talking about? He asks her, the girl who talks to him.

Just making conversation, she says, killing time. She is very pretty. She is very tall. She has new eyes and finishes her drink. One last gulp. She asks, how do you say hello in Cantonese?

He tells her the word for vulnerable instead, like he’s saying hello.

I do feel private. Both of them.

1
But in doing so
you cross an
invisible
border line, like imagining
violins soft strings the score
of the film you’re in

riding up escalators

the same posture

stony with a breeze
and camera

pretending no one
sees you.

like monologues

talking to yourself
ten hour shifts
standing up to sit
back down
and maybe

I can check the back for you.

Let me just get my manager.

2
Debasing:
both of their expressions
glaze over
as eyes do
when the owners decide
dreaming
over looking, staring

Not windows
but like curtains,
soul food
the minute happens
outside before it rains
and you feel hot

Sun arches going down

She moves
like letting a balloon go
of deaf videos

but I have a
missed phone call and she is half
of what half naked is

I have to get this.

My father.

Light inside outlines the door
Black air and light wood, holy yellow
I walk to the patio outside the evening
burn cigarettes

I regret how motionless she lays
in bed, the malaise and five
hours of sleep before work
maybe four. You forget
you’re young enough
to feel surprised

under toes

When she follows you
outside too
mouthing your dad’s words
downstairs
dancing her pelvis
her birthmark and séance

Cold and Papa says
I have to buy new bed sheets for your little sister
Because she wants new bed sheets

A girl moves away from her entourage in the crowd smoothly like a criminal, so cautious as if rushing off because she knows something is feeling too peculiar for her heart‘s very perceptive content, a feeling that maybe the ceiling is about to cave in over everyone. Perhaps this is the best time, as any, to get away from here, and now is her chance, she can see her cue.  A light turns on near the judges, on a pole from the floor. Blood droplets surround the trembling canvas, center ring, in slow motion and scattered rain, like accidental art shows, applique; more bleeding happens, more blood droplets ricochet from the glove and face, from open lesions and the spray of eyelids, to paint the perimeter around the fighters a gentle red color. She is almost there. She slices through the heavy aisles of people donning a trench coat and the girl has legs. Knees peak through the open lining of her hemming and big buttons like flashing seductive neon, and there goes a slow, gradual distraction to all things men see. See a glowing figure head to the stage. Blood on her shoes. A woman in a bikini.

A perfect bottom.

She seems to not quite smile but what else can be rising on her face if not pride or self-love? Blue eyes glisten and pat the crowd, every last one of them, and she stares out as if she can see speech rather than hears it like writing born in the air, and her eyes water. Everyone is saying all of her favorite words, everything a girl could possible want. Waving like a monarch, she takes off the coat and lets the thing fall from her back as if she is shedding; she walks up the steel steps taller than she should be, thighs shining tan, lighter than air. Rivers remembers something Samantha had once said about high heals and training the muscles in the vagina, and Sam says a girl can smile twice. Once here and once here, or down there, when the lights go out.

The girl is definitely smiling.

She holds a sign above her head and walks around, traces the ring. Echoes the crowd shaking her breasts.

Round 9.

She says good luck, Rivers. I have my eye on you. She blows him a kiss and exists the ropes without her long coat. Fucking life Rivers says. Spits out blood in a bucket. The bells ring. Ting.

Apathy, he realizes, is what I’m feeling. An ancient feeling born in each person as real as a mole or a tailbone, and when it shows itself again like raw wind inside a warm home, in the most inopportune fucking of times, somehow someone somewhere, has to say okay. Fucking okay, Rivers says, everything looks colorless. Stale as the back of my tongue. I have lost my reliable point in the world.

Breathing heavy in his corner like a smoker, he stands up, allows the blood to drip inside his left eye because he knows damn well, as surely as Mason does too, blinking means a weaker man. The crowd is loud. In their mist among them are some of the greatest minds of his generation he knows, like scientists and doctors, and yet they only want gore tonight, the way they scream unsociable things to get free. The way they want to get free or feel less important, less connected. Men and women that can solve boredom and cancer and know where God is hiding, and Rivers feels sacrificial, like a cheap thrill, for their greater good. They scream KO. They scream kill him. The stadium seems twice as large as it did before, because everyone in the house is standing up. Even the judges.

Rivers thinks am I the one that lives forever? Among them?

Mason has not blinked once for three minutes. His face hangs like salami, aggressive. His pulse is seen on various veins throughout the body.

Rivers can say the same, he has not blinked. His face is also, like a Picasso, rearranged but bloody. If he decides to breathe in through his nostrils, because all of the profuse bleeding, he can choke, so he keeps his mouth barely ajar and he seems as if he is whistling. A good idea. Rivers locks eyes with the girl sitting down in her bikini near the ring, and he says nice ass, whistling, feeling mongoloid. He says perfect ass. Thumbs up.

She says thank you.

The eye breaks. Cold rises like love inside Rivers’ chest and he begins laughing very loudly, uncontrollably. Shaking too. He covers his mouth with his gloves trying to contain himself and walks around the ring like a drunk, happy.

Mason hovers close.

Samantha listens at home on the radio.

The announcer says, truly bizarre, my dear audience. I do apologize for this. I believe we are nearing the end of this match. Daniel Rivers cannot seem to stop his maddening laughter.

No, he does not know how the metal gets rusty when it never rains here, and Sam is asking about the brown golden color, she can notice now in the wrought iron bars surrounding their private Jacuzzi, and how they steam upwards in the rain like something cooking; she says that’s funny, they look like scars or scabs or something, the rust. It’s raining now though he says, barely emoting, speaking very matter of factly, holding his palms up catching droplets, just staring at his toes beneath the water and he wiggles them. She thinks, fuck. Rivers can be so quiet when he does not say anything. Obviously.

Fuck she thinks. This word can get you anywhere.

The wind blows blasé. Overcast feels like a spell. The clouds move lovely shapes like antelopes and mash potatoes, seemingly all strung together like a mobile, and Rivers decides not to talk about the weather. Refuses to talk to Sam about the weather. Will never talk to Samantha about the weather. They both look genuinely bored. She smiles and stares down at the jetting water, pretending her hand is going at an immense speed within the Jacuzzi. The vacancy in the blank expression of her eyes, feels like a camera panning farther and farther away and he wonders if he is still there with her, present with her, and what if she has already left, and now her body is just the motions?

He imagines making love to her but regrets and stops midway day dreaming. Does not dare to climax even in his head, into her beautiful thrusting phantom. His right is gone. His role askew. Skin is heavy and late at night there is something appealing about weight. Rivers rejects the idea of levity for awhile, admiring those loose pounds she has gain in her thighs over the years, and begins to want to enjoy things closer to the ground.

The Jacuzzi is three and a half feet deep. Their knees touch.

Samantha jettisons from the hot tub and begins pacing around, but back and forth. Perhaps this is it. They can be real people again. She says the chorine is making me tired or something. I needed to get up. She says you know my father owned a restaurant when I was much younger, maybe eight or nine years old. This is something I never told you, I don’t know why. I remember the smell like it was yesterday, and cliché as it sounds, I think it followed me deep underneath somewhere, until right now all my life. That’s corny, but I can recall it like an epiphany, like a light bulb. Like a light bulb. Because now I can finally use it for something, it’s strangeness. Mold it into language. To talk to you. Really talk to you.

Our scenes together have been so freezing, haven’t they?

I know you’re hating me. I know I’m doing something to you.

Fuck. Anyways, off topic. I’m weird. The restaurant in the kitchen, it smelled like milk and honey. She says my home away from home so to speak, she says someplace I used to go and get away and sit on the floor, be still. Be dumb. Be primordial or evolved or Walden or whatever. I listen to sounds like sounds can listen back to me, getting to know me like unconditional good friends. Most of the time, there would be Spanish men in the kitchen cursing in bad English and water pumping at high pressures in hollow sinks, sounds of plates getting heavier. Doors opening and closing and the palms that push them.

Sometimes I peak into the dining room through the round glass window thing in the doors, and see everyone eating so carefully and I feel like an alien. Or the only person.

But that was my metaphor.

My black light.

I always thought my life as a simple working moving restaurant with dangling lights and perfect room temperature. People I know, everyone I have ever met, are people entering the restaurant to meet and eat, salutations and greetings, and everyone is very dressed, very debonair. They all sit there with me until they are done with their meals, and sometimes they are happy. Sometimes they don’t like the experience. Sometimes they are simply there, easily forgotten when they leave, like it’s just a Tuesday.

And some people stay. They sit down and look at me and talk with me and even after closing time, they stay.  What the fuck they stay?  They keep me and I keep them and we have our own private little sect or universe or something, spinning within the larger one. Samantha stares to the black like she is no longer in disguise, like she is no longer menstruating or concentrated of her sex or messy and she says fuck, that’s who you are, Daniel. Someone permanent. You’re going to stay with me now.

Daniel Rivers has no idea what he looks like and his eyebrows clench like they do when he nears the end of a match that must come to a ringside decision of points and tallies and he usually waits for it, because there‘s nothing he can do. Fog is beginning to hang and there is one long wind gust that revels through and keeps for a few uncanny minutes. Sky is banal. Just now, he cannot stop thinking about his match, happening when? This weekend, and the water jets.

He says, but it’s over. There is no way I can be permanent for you. Unless you think it when I leave, like it’s just a Tuesday.

for thomas crowley. the sound goes deaf near the end of the blues song. Every smoker smokes too much they say out on the balcony, enjoying the mist out there suddenly clouding the city. I ask her how tall she is and she says short. Maybe five feet, three inches, three and a half inches and she touches my arm like it’s new.

Good height.

She stares at the men like a snake unhinging it’s jaws and says hello, where are you from? I think Portland and say where ever. Another cork pops from a bottle. Shy ones wonder if they should sit on the couch or take a smoke too or stand over there. The girl goes right ahead and asks me the question she’s been saving for a moment like this:

Do you ever feel like we’re just waiting to remember everything?

Scientists say. Babies can dream up their entire lives in their perfect sleep and soothing rocking cradles, and Thom says this is what deja vu really is. This is why we are so in love with serendipity and why we are so quick and easy, to dismiss it. Why friends are such a scary thing.

The room is quiet even when the band plays. This leaves room for a voice over narration, and I am thinking: your voice.

photos by lena nans

Then he realizes November always starts out in this way: the leaves change color, trees bloom red, and the worried people where he lives all stop going to the residential swimming pool because the water is too cold and it’s too hard to swim, and really enjoy it you know? Neighbors speak and close their doors and windows. Leaves and rocks float in the chlorine arduously without concern like a dream he once had, someplace post the ending of the world and still we have buoyancy of water and what murky colors are perceived, like the descendant of blue, feel really good. Still there is the incomprehensible nature of the earth and her forces, the way seasons change over people like some anxious puppeteer, and Rivers thinks how much he never wanted an answer, but only someone willingly enough to ask him all the questions. The water jets therapeutically and softly into the psyche and alien pool lighting.

Samantha asks him if he wants to swim.

Rivers says nothing but begins undressing. Giddy does he moves and finds his swimming trunks, she says that’s much too small for him. The day blinks into rain and black crisp evening suddenly yet the stars are still closed like sleep, and Sam does not take her shoes purse or jacket when she bursts through the apartment’s heavy door into the carpeted hallway and she says freedom like she can smell it. Like poppies embed the walls and low ceilings, to resuscitate her. Barefoot they are together simultaneously but barely. Samantha speeds ahead, ass perfect like an ugly duckling that knows too well how her narrative is going to end and walks rather too safely from harm. Rivers hates that she never waits up for him but learns quickly to brush it off, like he does the rain and the June bugs, how he endures cold weather.  Beauty like this, becomes a nuisance. Makes a clapping motion in the heart that’s painful, much too late too ugly to communicate. They are getting to a point, there is not much to talk about but stew and moot. He refuses to match her pace.

A man only becomes a misogynist only after he knows what love is, Rivers thinks. After his hands have occupied a few holes in his life and the smell always changes. He would like a rose to smell like a rose every time. God damn it.

Logic shakes his own head. He does not know what he is really saying no to. The pool is perfect and vacant and the water moves like it’s breathing. They jump the wrought iron fence despite having a key to get in.

Earlier in the day they decide to call off their long engagement to get married, publicly mutually. Earlier in the week, they send out expensive beautiful invitations, announcing how exciting everything was. How lovely it is to see everyone to celebrate their union. RSVPs arrive back with letters, money and congratulations: yes, we’ll be there.

Together they pull the slow dragging blue tarp from the water along the concrete and stare at the no horseplay sign beneath the diving board.  The Jacuzzi opens like an orchid but purrs like a machine it still is.

I would love for a swim Sam says.

He dives in first. The water feels good.

High speeds and cruel worlds flow into his imagination through his ears, like a deep deaf day dreaming session under water, and he imagines how life is going to be like from now on. How much uglier are his secrets going to get? How more so alone will the training feel? Touching the bottom, the depths of the pool pop his hearing, and magically in the moment, Sam dives in too and he can see her descending; everything foams around where she touches. She curves beneath like a mermaid appearing so free and expansive, and it’s a tragic feeling, feeling so distant from her like she’s a new species. Rivers’ anger stirs his mind darkly until he breathes out. Realizes his lungs are still there and thinks and ponders, it’s not worth it. It’s our last night together. Stop this.

Who would play the asshole tonight? Or the man?

They both surface. Lights murk with the water and her hair looks flat and at peace like seaweed.

He imagines an empty seat at the arena, close to the ring. Another lonely box.

You look like a swimmer he says.

You look like a champion she says.

Do you want to get out? Try the hot tub?

Sure she says.

He follows. Wet footsteps. The Jacuzzi.

Right now he does not feel like a fighter, but she is easy to be around.

Before anything he is a thief that discovers cunning. When the veins and muscles release their special take off, from the bicep like a smooth shuttle intending for mars, he imagines his hands going right through his opponent’s head, all the way through to the other side where there is an audience and a mosaic of people watching. Closely does their lips stay open without breathing and carefully watch how drool becomes air and the dumb struck way bright eyes follow. Over there, flashing cameras and writing on notepads, ugly men in matching hats and ties, breasts and roughnecks, see something angelic yet terrible. The fighters are losing weight at every blow, evaporating. Gloves glow like neon. Appear like phantoms moving alive. The fighter thinks, never has there been so many people listening to me, and he punches like he doesn’t remember who he is. A blonde woman whispers to her husband in the crowd, god in heaven, he is going to kill him, and the husband thinks of his three thousand dollars, pumping his fists like he is rowing a boat, screaming curse words towards the main arena. He has money on Rivers. Ignores the dismay of his beautiful wife, biting her lip.

Maybe the crowd cheers because they can see something that belongs to them. Or they scream to be rid of it.

Two men in a large box that‘s see-through, pretending to be alone. Brothers chiseling each other down like ice. To possess a belt much too big for either of them.

The bell rings to end the round.

Rivers’ eyelids feel shattered.  The mouth serves almost no function except as an air hole. Lights hum above them like a floating city. Sweat is the most obvious thing that happens here, Rivers thinks and he walks back, hoping for no wobbling in his step. His trainer wipes him down with a rough towel and he feels predictable on his blue wooden stool, absolutely loveless. He cannot see anyone in the black orbit behind him, or in front of him, but he knows everyone is there. Or anyone who’s anyone, who’s anyone, watches his arms like wings from a dragon. Air conditioning pumps manically down on the thousands and the temperature down here, is crowded, both hot and cold. He feels so warm and moist he believes he can glide everywhere or slip anytime, just sliding. The roar of the people around him collectively, makes him feel rather shaved or skinny.  Even shiny. But he begins to calm himself down and produces the color white in his head, closing eyes, isolating sounds one by one, like crumb by crumb. Rivers wonders if Samantha is at home watching.

HBO. Showtime. Cinemax.

He feels himself being filmed by large, elephant cameras, and pictures white bold letters near his face on screen: Rivers vs. Mason 1997.

Round 3.

He can see almost too much detail, like lines on the face, hairs on the ears, and all three dimensions. Beads of sweat linger on eye brows like perfect jewelry and there is air and dust illuminated. So many things are freezing and so many things are moving and Mason gets up and rises from his opposing red corner, almost absent minded or disturbed without speech or affection. Or loveless too. Slow as gravity pulling up and Rivers obliges.

Charismatically they meet in the center and the two men make circles.

Almost wink at each other with bruises.

They pace.

The ring is a fighter’s favorite place to contemplate or reminiscence. Day dream like a butterfly, day dream like a bee.

Mason decides to see feathers in his head. Something to keep him standing strong and sharp. Deaf to the crowd.

Rivers imagines Samantha. Her large green cruel eyes. Their short brutal romances. The way she looks down when she says things hard to say. I don’t think I want to be touched by you again tonight, she says. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be here. Us together.

Even if murder ends the match, neither men will face a judge or jury because sports are a consensual act. Even marriage can never be this safe, Rivers thinks and forgets. Love less sacred. Mason swings a good one and lets Rivers falls down. Left homicidal hook. The audience screams with flash photography, thrown hats and floats behind him, in sound and in unison so loud together. The canvas floor is as cool as he wants it to be. Blood levels in his head and the small referee begins a short count of five. Six. Seven. The lights glimmer worse than what frightened insects can do, simultaneously blinking, and Rivers wants to go back to sleep and begin sinking. But fucking asshole he says. I am too busy for this.

Where is my mind?

He gets up and whispers eight to the referee, so Mason can hear it or at the very least, sense his apathy, the way he continues to grow despite his grapefruit wounds and pale complexion. Rivers rises like a giant in his shoulders walking away. Makes the number eight inside his gloves and shows everyone. Leans on the high rope like it’s the last open bar in Memphis and the bells ring again. Even marriage can never be this safe. Who are these people? They are getting even louder.

Round 5.

The Rapist

by jenny alton

The drawing of the rapist in the wanted posters looked familiar now. When the flyers had first been posted on bulletin boards and behind glass cases she couldn’t even recognize the baseball cap and pinched features as human.

She wondered how exactly one became a police sketch artist if one couldn’t draw– she wasn’t surprised that the rapist hadn’t been caught. It has been months and now he looked familiar, and not because she knew him. She wouldn’t know him if she saw him, and that bothered her.

His chin didn’t seem like a human chin. No one’s chin comes to so fine a point as that. The eyes were small and watery, that part translated fine into reality, but the cheekbones were too high and his mouth was out of the question.

No, the rapist looked familiar only because she has seen him hanging there, smiling placidly for months.
What must the victim has said for the artist to render him smiling in such a way? It wasn’t the smile she imagined a rapist would have. The corners of his mouth did not turn up in the challenge. There was no territorial gleam in his eyes. His features were delicate, pretty. Rendered with care through distorted, as if the artist has drawn each of the victim’s answers to his questions separately. Everything was incongruous, didn’t represent a whole.

Why then has the victim approved this drawing to be sent out, seeking answers? Didn’t she want to warn people to look for his grimace, the way his eyes were cast down and jumpy when he sat across from her on the last train from the station?

She imagined the heavy footsteps behind the victim as she walked. The posters said the rapist has pushed her from behind, has forced her in a parking lot. She imagined the feel of asphalt against the side of the victim’s face, how clearly she could smell the beginning of rain. And then the roughness of the ground on the back of her head when he turned her over and she wondered if the stars would have been obscured by his watery eyes and smiling face. That’s how it must’ve gone, for the drawing to look like that.

She’d always had a plan for being raped. Nothing so common as a whistle or pepper spray always within easy reach and she was never one of those girls who’d position their keys between their fingers on the way home, the modern female version of brass knuckles. No, she’d overcome them with her willingness, with a feverish desire that she imagined matched their own.

And there was more to it than providing no resistance; she’d thought of that long ago and had dismissed the idea– they’d keep in going even when the thrill of the chase has been done away with. Her reasoning was this: if it was going to happen either way, she may as well enjoy it.

And so she decided that if she ever heard the heavy footsteps behind her she wouldn’t wait for his hand to cover her mouth. She would listen for the perfect moment, the ideal distance. She would suddenly turn and seize his hand and instead of keys there would be his fingers between hers and her mouth would be upon his. She wouldn’t close her eyes and every one of his blows would only be a response to one of her own. And when she’d finished she would button up her coat again and leave him panting in the parking lot alone.

animals with expression living room on a normal day classically trained classically trained 2 act normal act normal 2 maybe sprout wings

photo by eliza lunny

animals with expression

Cigarettes can levitate you and the bare weight you have very bored in your head, and you have not even known you were unhappy, until it all leaves you like imagined geese from hills eager for migration. Birds are so fun to imagine. This all comes from years of wanting to know how to fly and standing out on balconies pretending sex is the same as flight, and surely geese can feel glowing underneath their wings like I do when her eyes go crossed. When rooms feel thermals. And language works like animal speech. Only by repeating each other’s names. I do believe all birds are named Chirp.

In the moment without thinking I whisper my thoughts of making her feel like how geese might feel, small in her ear like putting a marble there. Shadows circle the walls near the bed at the center like hammerheads choosing not to feed because there is no hunger available. Something is very full in the way we lay. A few minutes ago out in the hallway there is a telephone ringing she tells me we should ignore.

She stares from below and ponders me like a good aroma and she smells something brilliant to say. Wincing her eyes to light clarity and when she focuses.

She says you should not be smoking. Love is not like cancer.

And I say geese.

So many days on a balcony, we can feel at the glands in our throats and witness cool air burning against neon. Lights turn on slowly and there is too much metal in smells these days, I notice as we dress and get along. Peeking through the open window we like to narrate, soothsay and pretend the hand of the omnipotent. Poet be like clouds and not what hovers, not economy. My days these days move like stomachs without food or sugar, but the people are not getting softer or more cohesive. Better yet, they are making plans to swim in pretty trunks, the very root of my madness to be. Later there will be violence for love.

Outside traffic sounds hollow and far away and everything looks like digestion. Cars glimmer down black highways to see more cars, all seemingly empty.

The population is so in love with the speed of light.

But I am only as fast as her face. Moving into expression.

She stares at the warp of the metal inside the bus and says what a shitty day. The machine exhales natural gas and Belle has to be at work for her housekeeping job in about twenty minutes and she’s worried. Relationships have pipes and I can feel her pressure seated right here next to me quite heavy. Sunlight can make her feel unattractive when she is thinking about time, so I have my hand at her thigh where I create new language through small squeezes and tightening.

Behind her ear, I am communicating. To the lobes. Employee of the month.

And she calls me a strange bird.

And I say geese. Have a good day at work.

living room

On the balcony there is a good twenty minutes she feels like she wasn’t thinking about anything at all but how fast the cars are moving and what to eat for dinner later. The sky appears to be thinking about clouds but does not quite produce them and there is some gray that gathers she ignores. Richard watches blue smoke rise from his cigarettes in the ashtray and leaves and says, I have to go to the bathroom real quick. She says okay and watches a man on the street stumble home while crossing a red light. A yellow car nearly hits him and goes honking off in the distance.

An ambulance is screaming red and blue sirens en route and Belle follows staring and takes a moment to feel corrupt inside does not take a breath and can you imagine, its almost like her eyes are changing color. Barely noticing that she is biting her lip. She imagines a white man pumping his palms into someone’s unconscious chest and shaking his head, because too much time has already passed for the man laying down there. No longer a man, but pen and paperwork to take place much later. A hairy wrist is rising and the paramedic will look to his watch and ignore the reflection of the face and say John Doe, ten seventeen pm western time and then Belle turns around to the kitchen and wonders if the chicken has finished simmering. Crisp smoke already hovers a deep aroma. Makes home in the nose.

She wonders if she should tell Richard about this but decides not to. Something is burning.

Her buttocks march back and forth underneath cotton like a gentle unbreakable code, back to the kitchen where the air conditioning is humming slow octaves and cools the skin like a song made of hair. She judges that the meat is still good to eat. After a few pokes from the fork and she turns around this many times to find either salt or saffron, her favorite two spices to pinch between thumbs. Richard brings her pepper and thinks, I am definitely an ass man. He says there is a kiss on your neck from the future and I am here to deliver, honey babe.

She says wow and wonders what she means. Does she mean to be either cruel or delightful? Or does language fail again like it does when she has nothing clever to say and something moving too as well like Richard, wrapped up all nice and pretty and delivered quid pro quo, I like you too. A hand to be shown to be impressive deserving applause. Richard does not care and watches her smile while he continues to travel through time on the back of her neck despite her hesitating and believes I like you more than behavior. Faint orange light swings around the surfaces of wooden cabinets like wind chimes in air and Richard decides to leave his hands right where they are. Between the bars on the small of her back and he smells chicken.

Chicken and rice and green beans.

Red wine and burning candle wax on top white lace linen where dinner is waiting.

He says I thought we were vegetarian.

I don’t know she says. I’m feeling weird.

She does seems quite transported. Her voice holds like weak tea and there is no stimulus or a way to go talking but down to business. There is something obviously wrong that is not so obvious and the investigator inside him, inside Richard. Now has his hat on.

What happened?

I’m not sure she says. But I was angry.

Why angry?

Do you remember the man I told you about one time? When I was young?

Wait Richard says. The man that touched you?

Yeah she says without levity.

I think I saw him today at work.

on a normal day

No one talks in the family and it’s absolute madness hounding all the time, her mother says. Much too quiet for a kid growing up, especially for a girl like her always upside down somewhere, on a couch or hanging from a tree. Seven people in the house all the time and no one had a damn thing to say to anyone else, unless it was to get out of the way, or to borrow some money or to scream recklessly because it was too hot outside.

Maybe she is trying to break some long-going, bad tradition, by moving away so far from her mother. Generations of sad people brooding sadder people, never talking about anything substantial or finding out why.

Maybe that’s why my baby doesn’t pick up that pen anymore.

Baby does not write her mother, and I remember that my girl never wanted to be princess. Dresses were the devil and shoes constrained her until she reddened to tears. A face so pink, you could have sworn I had a knife on me or something, so I let her run off and away almost nakedly. She preferred birds, climbing trees, and eating strange fruit. Falling from various points of the tall oak tree in the backyard and marking them down in her spiral green notebook. She surveyed and survived every fall and came home to tell me about it. Belle said she could survive anything. She told me everyday.

Late autumn one year, I remember being a cruel mother.

I remember telling her, green eyes are a recessive gene, Belle darling. You are going to have to stare at people twice as hard and twice the time, for them to really see you. I think I stopped being her mother there. And Baby Girl was always such the listener.

Her eyes developed this seductive color when she looks anyone in the eye. And any man or any boy, it doesn’t matter, she could make him feel a greater part of this society, like he has a fine suit on, immaculately blinked from nowhere, like he’s superman. She is dangerous I am telling you. Her eyes carry an affinity that is very heartbreakingly easy to feign and she does not know what she is doing.

She won’t be able to love you back, Richard. Because no one really sees her. Not my angel, her mother says.

And Richard breathes into the phone, staring at Belle while he does. Already early in the morning around six o‘clock, Belle is getting dressed for work and she is a hurrying balancing act of coffee, keys, and many small bags. Her mother calls everyday, every morning, like a rooster crowing the day wide open.

But I am superman he whispers into the phone.

Belle kisses Richard on the cheek and rushes out the door to catch a bus and through the window, he fingers an opening in the blinds and watcher her jaunt away.

You never protected her, Richard says to Belle’s mother. Please don’t call back.

So do you think you can? Do you think that’s what she wants?  Richard?

classically trained

A man dies today Thom says and he looks off vacantly at the sky like he does not possess eyes but holes in his head, and he does not care what to see out there. Witnessing alive things like birds making V’s and the sun setting beyond the cafe. By the way he is speaking, Thom seems to be suffering from an old memory he usually keeps secret and underneath his sociability, but he pretends everything is fine. A breeze does not move them. The sky is courting the earth with darkening blue and clouds and Richard plays the table with his fingers like a piano and forgets the name for cilantro and picks up the cilantro a little bewildered and feels strangely blank. Stares at Thom exhaling white smoke rings a perfect circle in the air and Richard stares back questioning what he has in his hands. A pale green thing. What is this called, he is thinking, what the hell?

A man dies today Thom says and he speaks dramatically but calm. There are a group of officers around this John’s body and his eyes are open because he dies very comfortably resting at home. His feet are up against his red expensive ottoman. Television’s off and there’s an open book at the coffee table. He doesn’t finish his last story but he watches the shadows on the wall and how the ceiling never moves. Wind becomes useless. Everything is seemingly okay and the carpet is spotless and the kitchen beyond where he lays, is how he would like it to be dirty. Because a few scattered beer bottles here and there are not likely going to kill anyone, right?  Dead solders the man calls them and he drinks many bottles until they’re empty and he leaves them wet on the counter, without thinking about cleanliness or tomorrow. Officers write things  down in their notepads and clipboards and the man just lays there, dead and buzzing and grinning his last beaming expression. Looking down, the only female officer there present at the scene, thinks he looks happy. There is a hole three inches deep in his head and the wound resembles apple pie.

There is permission to give an autopsy and information is later unveiled that the man had died of three natural causes says a doctor. Three particular objects are lodged inside the hole at the center of his head like candles on a cake and there are no exit wounds. Like the John wanted to keep them for some personal reason. His hair is rinsed and he is slightly shaven with a buzz cut. Appears as if he is joining the marines and the doctors did that. Detectives involve and undergoing the investigation worry about paperwork and complications about the case and barely realizes the brevity of what happened to the John. A moment of true art. The first object found is a small pocket knife.

This knife is thrown from an incredible distance maybe twenty or thirty feet away, by a young boy who has never seen a naked woman before. Four days later he is courageous enough to ask out his first love without being afraid.

The second object is a slow bullet from a Colt .45 like an old gun. Shot by a woman who cannot speak English only Portuguees but she wants to learn. There are men on her floor she finds attractive and she is curious for them to make sense. Her first words in English are honey and babe.

The third object is unidentifiable.

Looking down again at the John after the autopsy, the female officer changes her mind and holds her chin in front of her other colleagues. The room has a nice stillness hovering around them and the doctors are puzzled reading X ray scans. She decides and says out loud maybe he’s in love. He has that look. That’s it.

Richard is looking at Thom like he is burning one hundred dollar bills. He says fuck you. That was a gorgeous story.

Thom says that’s how I view people. Sometimes I don’t know what to say.

classically trained 2

There is an eight-beat silence between them where no wind comes, Thom can hear with his musical ears classically trained. He decides today that he is alive and Richard takes a slow drag from a new cigarette and exhales. Feels a deep reservoir of peace in what the people do here everyday in the restaurant, the same thing they seem to always do in routine, like wait tables clean floors and talk about bad parking. A young woman stands slanted waiting to pick up an order and her eyes follow drowsily at the people passing outside, all walking the same direction like a slow monotonous parade; something no one claims to admit that they are walking sometimes, to get from point a to b and then another. He imagines undressing Belle when he gets home from collar to navel and he ponders the people again inside the restaurant. Wonders how he can make them all stop what they are doing without a gun, and just go ahead and do something else. Anything else really he thinks, just not what y’all doing now, and he smells his black coffee from the ceramic cup and looks across the way. Steam masks his face as a moment of warm pause and he begins to miss Belle much too much. A group of pigeons take flight across the street and reassembles on the ledge the building opposite at the exact same height and they do this a few times. Thom says the sky looks like patches of turtle shells.

Richard wants to say but thinks we talk about the sky too much. But well, its always there, he thinks quietly in his inner monologue and he takes comfort in that.

Inside the cafe there is a beautiful couple dressed in black and silver like a real lucrative looking couple, and they are having small salmon with the head still attached. The man seems to be like a doctor, by the way he carves the knife so meticulously, and his lady caller must be one of the gorgeous people that follow doctors, like sunshine to water, never-endingly. Judging how closely she leans in, he must know what a real human heart looks like and gets paid for the view.

If she was an actress, she would steal scenes Thom says. I would fuck her for free. And Thom exhales another smooth white smoke ring. So why are we here? Why the meeting? What’s up?

Just then the women inside makes a face, which Thom feels is more like a grimace, rooting from a nasty seed of thought and she even points to the two companions, sitting just outside on the patio. Staring at the smoke from the cigarettes like a swarm of locusts she can hardly deal with and cannot further more, go unnoticed.  Again with the finger she points and more so, the terrible grimace, which her husband boyfriend or whatever he is, complements well with snide eyes.

As if a thin layer of restaurant glass can stop the honesty of these two friends. Thom thinks about a scene as if it were to happen, him smashing his head into the window glass fucking thing and showing the man and the woman a thing or two about people smoking and having a good time. There would be a small film of blood running from his head which he would use as prop somehow and Thom would of course then, sing a song. I don’t know he thinks. Maybe something American that everyone knows. Yankee Doodle stuck a feather in his cap. And called it macaroni.

I don’t know what to do with people like this Thom says.

Just stare at them like you know who they are Richard answers. With compassion real calmly.

With slow eyes Thom smiles at the loving couple and pretends he is a clown that never changes his face. This frightens the couple dressed in black and silver and not once does the glass fog up or become hard to see through, which Richard finds hilarious. They are suddenly very intent about finishing and chewing their salmon and  drinking their wine and every now and then, when they look back, of course Thom is still staring, earning his performance as the under appreciated clown.

So what does Belle do? Thom asks.

She’s an inventor.

Oh yeah? What did she invent?

Everything Richard says. But no one gives her credit.

Another silences passes through them and Richard finishes by saying, but she’s a housekeeper for now. Working for some hotel downtown. The couple inside has asked a hostess to come over and scope out the situation and Thom is there smiling. The hostess, another young gorgeous women, seems to be touched by what Thom is doing, or tired from what her hard day has dished out to her, and replies back to the couple with short and apologetic moves from her shoulders, as if saying, there is nothing we can do sir.

Actually that why we are here Richard says. There’s a man Belle remembers from her past that she’s seen at the hotel. And I think this is the same guy that molested her when she was young. Richard sighs with banality but brushes it off.

So we’re showing him a good time? Thom asks.

The best of times Richard says. A night to remember.

Before departing and leaving a generous tip, Thom shapes his fingers like a pistol and shoots a breath of fresh air at the couple inside, like one quick twitch of the wrists and he tells them you’re dead. You’re dead. Richard looks around the ceilings and the walls of the restaurant looking for a no smoking sign but finds none.  He gets distracted with flying sparrows along the black sheet of sky and the freezing cold in the city, a cold of which he feels belongs to him and him only, more so than any other man that might be walking and thinking his same dark thoughts.

This is for me Richard says. Something selfish.

act natural

A cloud moves and she can see her face brighten in the reflection of the glass, filling a sweet little agony in her eyeballs and she begins to admire the feeling. Her eyes, crows feet and she yawns like no one is watching her and she feels better with her lips almost wet and her eyelids too. Belle sighs and says revolution jokingly, walking through the Luxury Suite on the balls of her heels, completely unaware what day of the week it is. Belle feels it is maybe Tuesday today. Towels are in her arms and wrapped around her waist, and her hair is up, very well and tightly, and it does not move when she passes, whistling and killing time, meandering the steel alloy life of a house keeper. If Belle listens very closely and she often does, there is music playing above her from hidden speakers. Violin strings accompany her pacing back and forth and up and down the hallways and the long green carpet, raining down from the intercom system, overhead radio, and everywhere there is people, there is elevator music. Elevator music, fuck my life she thinks.

The classical strings move her body strings and make Belle feel like a voodoo doll, at the mercy of every song or mighty symphony that scores all around her. Every breath she inhales feels ridiculously romantic, moving in slowness like she is being filmed delicately. She is far too emotional walking over to the next room to go clean again, as if feeling serendipity everywhere or within every simple basic human task. She is susceptible to this music, doing chores. Doing laundry feels like a true love lost at sea forever, and she fucking hates violins, she can not even describe it. But Richard is good in her head.

Sometimes she stares at the clock and wonders what Richard is doing. Waiting for the heavy clothes to dry. Waiting for the dumbwaiter. The air conditioning cools her skin and she slows down herself. Allows a difference in how she breathes and even how she squints her eyes at people passing by, giving her tips and pocket change. She folds her towels with intrigue feeling high and happy.

Inside her arms, methamphetamines waiver a sense of slow popping relief, a feeling as if nothing can really touch her or do harm to her, unless she gives them privilege to disrupt her good days. Slow possession is what it is, she thinks, like she is flying or being elevated from the floor in a dream vessel and she does not feel like she is using again.  It becomes merely survival sadly, to stay awake until the next day and she remembers telling Richard in bed, what the drugs mean. The high she gets and these calming feelings of flight account for the only times in her life when she truly feels like a Princess.

Not even her mother knows that.

She has about forty five minutes left until her shift is over.

She enjoys catching view of any clocks, any watch face surfaces, like a secret hobby to do at work, to pass the time and the soul.  She’s counting down the minutes before she sees him again. She says Richard is so fun to miss and more people pass her in the lobby, maybe a few dozen, and no one bothers to listen. She receives a five dollar bill when she cleans up a man’s dinner, and the steamed vegetables go untouched on his plate.

Something like Mozart plays again.

People pass like parades.

Belle has bags of dirty clothes to lug over to the great hamper bin at the end of the hall and her arms hurt.

But commotion is now stirring throughout the hotel, and the guests are suddenly leaving their rooms, suggesting an eerie spectacle happening outside, because everyone is remaining quiet but worried, all heading one direction toward the exits. There are a lot of hands over mouths and warm whispers, steady shuffling of feet and torsos. She brushes by a pretty coworker of hers on her way outside. The girl says I have to close the registers tonight. I wonder what’s happening outside, the girl is asking inquisitively, and Belle says I’m not sure, hold on. Belle interprets panic on everyone’s faces and this causes sobriety in her.

She has two hands and ten fingers. She is awake. Follows the crowd to another crowd, outside the lobby of the grand hotel and there are two police cars, an ambulance, and a red fire truck. Only one siren light remains turned on and rotating blue and white lights, as if the mystery is already solved before she gets there and she wonders what is going on.  The crowd is too large for good news.

Someone jumped from the rooftop, some older man, Belle learns. They think it might be suicide and it’s really tragic really. She meets a family on the outskirts of the large crowd, all of whom seem very excited more so than afraid, and they tell Belle everything they‘ve heard, very engagingly. The father holds his daughter in his arms, raising her on his shoulders so she can maybe catch a better glimpse of things and Belle feels demented watching.

Not really knowing why, Belle asks someone else in the crowd for a cigarette and a light. While she smokes her first stick in years, she asks a woman for the time, who has a pretty watch on. There are too many high shoulders for her to see anything but it’s not like she wants to see. She feels almost excited to be killing some minutes while still working on the clock but excited is not the right word, and she’s too tired to care how else to say it. There is sadness though.

The pavement looks wet but isn’t really. She likes this color black and it tickles her skin somehow, the way nostalgia would and she realizes how many trees are surrounding the hotel, and there has to be hundreds.

I have twenty two minutes left until I go home she says. That’s like one Simpsons episode.

act natural 2

The door takes a while to open and when she manages to get through, she finds Richard reading calmly on the couch, and there is a bottle of wine opened and a ruined package of cigarettes almost empty, next to him. There are only a few smokes left in the pack, and the television is turned off, and the room is clean and spic and span. He must have cleaned she thinks and she tries very hard to be quiet, breathing even slowly, trying to surprise him maybe. The evening feels cool and happy to be home again, and the moon blows a sparing wind, giving fuzz to the carpet. Shine to the wood floor boards picture perfect.

Richard wearily smiles and looks goofy towards her. Belle moves her body and hovers over him, says hello, and kisses him on the cheek where it tickles him the most and she loves doing that. His face often turns very singular and noble with his eyes closed when she kisses him right there, like he is getting knighted or something.

The blood in his head almost centers itself at one decided, loved location, underneath her lips, on his cheek. She thinks all boys must dream of such grandeur of kingdom and great modern damsels, where the kiss is the only reward. When they do, they can sink so deeply into this keen, behavioral chivalry and they don‘t even tell their lovers, because she assumes it’s more fun that way, like a secret they all share with very close male friends. A covenant even, replacing God with the happiness and the praise of women and affection. Brothers being ridiculous and fun, honorable. Godless.

No one but me knows how soft his cheeks are she thinks.

Richard rises and says, I’ve made dinner. Its in the kitchen.

Belle says oh yeah? She turns around and unravels an image of a whole suckling pig already roasted on the counter, resting on a metal tray and aluminum foil, and lie the smells of salt and oils. There is an apple in his mouth and his eyes as baked as bread, looking very easily to crumble and delicious too. There seems to be no side dishes to go with the meat and she asks, you made a whole pig?

I know right? I guess I got tired of vegetables too he says.

He seems to be already chewing something and looking very exhausted and worn out, placing his book down on the cushions. Richard takes a long drag from a thin joint. And light bulb goes his eyes, he gets up almost habitually towards the food and Belle watches him hurry off. He swings his hips into the kitchen to fetch a couple of clean plates and utensils, and Belle stares at his departing shoulder blades, shimmy shimmy shaking, steadily in rhythm like from the old days of jazz and spontaneous foxtrot. There is almost a spotlight beaming on him when he changes his mood like this and gets into new character. The light carries dust.

He is performing for her. He is trying to make her laugh. Those eyes he has, maneuver intentions to woo her out of her shell and make her float there in the living room via laughing. Richard pumps his fists in the air and mimes doing pull ups like a new way to dance, and his head pops up and down, eyes like Chaplin.

Because it all means he is paying attention to her and he sways like one giant muscle, smiling.

Women too are dazzled by bodies. Belle chews her lower lip like the skin of an apple she is saving for later or hoping to have. Shadows repeat in the living room because of the headlights, of the traffic flow. Belle wonders how the light gets all the way up here, near the seventh story so high up and she sneaks the joint she sees from the dining room table and the smell almost speaks to her out loud like: Long day?

She takes a hit. The weed pulls her mind to the back of her head and she feels slowness. The windows are cool and perfectly see through. Belle exhales like how people should be exhaling, watching her own breath travel to the ceiling and feeling so good to be stationary. Her eyes feel at home. She theorizes the size of the room and how lovely it feels to be walking around barefoot, closer to him. The kitchen dims in gloss and she doesn’t know what she is really thinking or if it makes sense but whatever, life is seamless. Belle leans her chin on Richard’s neck and says, I think that’s why your pupils get so big when you‘re high. Because you’re trying to see everything.

What?  Richard asks, grinning and admiring her. Man you’re really stoned he says.

Shut up, Belle says and she kisses him. Tries to communicate solely with her lips and she tip toes. The massage from her tongue makes Richard feel like an anchor, slowly reeling towards a low depth, and she guides him towards the closest piece of furniture he can sit in, which happens to be the leather love seat in the center of the living room. Refusing to let go of the kiss or opening their eyes, they move like people blindfolded willingly. Richard bumps his knee against the coffee table and the sound of his pain like a sudden balloon popping, causes a smile on Belle’s face and she sucks his lower lip rather in a little harder. As if to say, it’s totally worth it, do not worry about your knee.

She straddles over his waist and moves like she has many brains, accounting for every ounce of her one hundred and fifteen pounds, collectively getting very warm and swarming him. Her lower thighs remember his shape and hold him there and push him like a domino, and Belle amazes herself when she rolls down the slope of being very horny. She continues to follow through. Moving somehow irreversibly, she turns a sexual being and keeps falling.

She enjoys these transformations and thinks birds do the same thing when flying.

But he says wait. Hold on.

Richard gently sways Belle from their union and become two people again. His hands pushes her shoulders away until he can see her face again, out from the blur and into warm blood focus. The way he is being delicate makes her feel apprehensive and eerie. Strangely rejected and misunderstood and there is a look in his eye that slows her down a bit, because he seems prepared to say something heavy. A solid brown color in his eyes like he has been rehearsing and pacing back and forth at home forever before she came back. She knows he never says, I have something to tell you. Richard always skips that part.

I did something honest today, he says. Thom and I did.

She moves her hair back and her body winds down the hot knot it previously gathers, and she shakes her head grudgingly. She looks around again at the clean house and imagines his anxiousness, trying to calm itself through chores and cooking. Out of her head, Belle bursts into the present, feeling weary but sober again, and she washes her face with her hands. The vagueness in his voice scares the idea of loss in her.

What are you talking about? She asks.

The man that touched you.

I pushed him off a building, and Richard shrugs his shoulders and stares at her.

I don’t know how to say that beautifully, he says.

maybe sprout wings

Before leaving he takes another slow drag from the joint and begins walking downstairs outside like he has new feet. The smell of wet leaves rolls down the hill in the morning and he knows that it’s coming, or that it will come, and it’s only a matter of patience and he has to go out walking to find it. He leaves his wallet, his watch, and his pen at home, and he throws his cell phone over his shoulder and refuses to look back. The sound of the thing crashing into broken plastic sends relief spinally to his heavy head, and he feels perfectly alone with the birds. The population is Richard and his streets and the ocean he will see soon enough. Breathing feels good and he looks forward to the cool waft of some new hours. Some time in his hands and his pockets. He watches the clouds make silver with the moon.

He begins to urinate in the rose garden outside his apartment, which makes him feel hairy at the neck.

On the street, a young hip couple crosses the street drunkenly, to the sounds of the pied piper, mechanical bird chirping. The girl leans her head in at the boy’s shoulder and they stumble like the ground is crooked or being aggressive. The boy leans too and bites down on the girl’s ear and Richard can hear them laughing and getting louder with glee and horseplay.

Most days Richard wishes for a camera for a shot like this, to capture it beautifully and take it home. Tonight he wants rocks and a good arm. He thinks survival takes a long time and starts to laugh for no reason. He stares at a real sparrow sleeping in the tree and says chirp.

Upstairs Belle finishes the bottle of wine he’s left behind and her anger and disappointment vibrates where her ears make bone, and she doesn’t know what to do now. Maybe sprout wings. Their last conversation replays in her head and knocks on her solitude like cruel strangers at the door. When she yells at Richard, it is the first time she raises her voice in front of him, and it’s like she wants to kill him. Or blow his house down.

She says I don’t need protection and that was incredibly selfish of you and you shouldn’t have done that. I can protect myself. I can survive anything, Richard! When she yells at him, she unhinges. Feels like she is talking to her mother on the day she leaves home and never bothers to be contact again. Everything in the body rises and even her teeth cramps. She sighs terribly and asks herself, who needs a drink?

On the street, another young couple crosses the street and Richard wants a dry scotch or perhaps cheap beer. He wonders if Thom can accommodate and imagines his very deep liquor cabinet and decides for a detour. An ambulances passes by like a banshee and Richard pretends he is making the siren sounds with his heavy staring. Eyes like sharp diamonds.

The sirens sound and his chest hurts underneath gradually. He dips in hands in his pockets and stares at the air and says it’s cold outside but I don’t need a jacket. He walks and hopes for sun rise. Belle dances in his head and he even sees her in the ocean, a few moments later, knowing it’s not really her. It’s a different girl out there swimming.

In the morning many hours later, Belle makes coffee but makes too much of it. She realizes Richard has not come home quite yet and his phone is off. Why is his phone off? She moves her body outside the balcony and hugs her knees, takes her coffee black and even drinks his normal share of two cups. The caffeine makes a grand assembly in her blood steam and every cell feels much larger, and she can hardly sit still. There is a nice cool fog and the smell of wet leaves coming from uphill and she breathes the freezing cold in, and her lung caresses back, trying to be calm. She watches a walking stick bug rise from the pile of sticks and stones beyond her feet in the balcony and wonders how long it has been there, and what makes it finally come out of hiding? Inside her, there are wet organs irrigating what she thinks her soul is, and she gives up the dream of wanting to be dry, of wanting to be so self-sufficient.  She wants to go see the ocean too.

Before leaving he takes another slow drag from the joint and begins walking downstairs outside like he has new feet. The smell of wet leaves rolls down the hill in the morning and he knows that it’s coming, or that it will come, and it’s only a matter of patience and he has to go out walking to find it. He leaves his wallet, his watch, and his pen at home, and he throws his cell phone over his shoulder and refuses to look back. The sound of the thing crashing into broken plastic sends relief spinally to his heavy head, and he feels perfectly alone with the birds. The population is Richard and his streets and the ocean he will see soon enough. Breathing feels good and he looks forward to the cool waft of some new hours. Some time in his hands and his pockets. He watches the clouds make silver with the moon.

He begins to urinate in the rose garden outside his apartment, which makes him feel hairy at the neck.

On the street, a young hip couple crosses the street drunkenly, to the sounds of the pied piper, mechanical bird chirping. The girl leans her head in at the boy’s shoulder and they stumble like the ground is crooked or being aggressive. The boy leans too and bites down on the girl’s ear and Richard can hear them laughing and getting louder with glee and horseplay.

Most days Richard wishes for a camera for a shot like this, to capture it beautifully and take it home. Tonight he wants rocks and a good arm. He thinks survival takes a long time and starts to laugh for no reason. He stares at a real sparrow sleeping in the tree and says chirp.

Upstairs Belle finishes the bottle of wine he’s left behind and her anger and disappointment vibrates where her ears make bone, and she doesn’t know what to do now. Maybe sprout wings. Their last conversation replays in her head and knocks on her solitude like cruel strangers at the door. When she yells at Richard, it is the first time she raises her voice in front of him, and it’s like she wants to kill him. Or blow his house down.

She says I don’t need protection and that was incredibly selfish of you and you shouldn’t have done that. I can protect myself. I can survive anything, Richard! When she yells at him, she unhinges. Feels like she is talking to her mother on the day she leaves home and never bothers to be contact again. Everything in the body rises and even her teeth cramps. She sighs terribly and asks herself, who needs a drink?

On the street, another young couple crosses the street and Richard wants a dry scotch or perhaps cheap beer. He wonders if Thom can accommodate and imagines his very deep liquor cabinet and decides for a detour. An ambulances passes by like a banshee and Richard pretends he is making the siren sounds with his heavy staring. Eyes like sharp diamonds.

The sirens sound and his chest hurts underneath gradually. He dips in hands in his pockets and stares at the air and says it’s cold outside but I don’t need a jacket. He walks and hopes for sun rise. Belle dances in his head and he even sees her in the ocean, a few moments later, knowing it’s not really her. It’s a different girl out there swimming.

In the morning many hours later, Belle makes coffee but makes too much of it. She realizes Richard has not come home quite yet and his phone is off. Why is his phone off? She moves her body outside the balcony and hugs her knees, takes her coffee black and even drinks his normal share of two cups. The caffeine makes a grand assembly in her blood steam and every cell feels much larger, and she can hardly sit still. There is a nice cool fog and the smell of wet leaves coming from uphill and she breathes the freezing cold in, and her lung caresses back, trying to be calm. She watches a walking stick bug rise from the pile of sticks and stones beyond her feet in the balcony and wonders how long it has been there, and what makes it finally come out of hiding? Inside her, there are wet organs irrigating what she thinks her soul is, and she gives up the dream of wanting to be dry, of wanting to be so self-sufficient. She wants to go see the ocean too.

The door takes a while to open and when she manages to get through, she finds Richard reading calmly on the couch, and there is a bottle of wine opened and a ruined package of cigarettes almost empty, next to him. There are only a few smokes left in the pack, and the television is turned off, and the room is clean and spic and span. He must have cleaned she thinks and she tries very hard to be quiet, breathing even slowly, trying to surprise him maybe. The evening feels cool and happy to be home again, and the moon blows a sparing wind, giving fuzz to the carpet. Shine to the wood floor boards picture perfect.

Richard wearily smiles and looks goofy towards her. Belle moves her body and hovers over him, says hello, and kisses him on the cheek where it tickles him the most and she loves doing that. His face often turns very singular and noble with his eyes closed when she kisses him right there, like he is getting knighted or something.

The blood in his head almost centers itself at one decided, loved location, underneath her lips, on his cheek. She thinks all boys must dream of such grandeur of kingdom and great modern damsels, where the kiss is the only reward. When they do, they can sink so deeply into this keen, behavioral chivalry and they don‘t even tell their lovers, because she assumes it’s more fun that way, like a secret they all share with very close male friends. A covenant even, replacing God with the happiness and the praise of women and affection. Brothers being ridiculous and fun, honorable. Godless.

No one but me knows how soft his cheeks are she thinks.

Richard rises and says, I’ve made dinner. Its in the kitchen.

Belle says oh yeah? She turns around and unravels an image of a whole suckling pig already roasted on the counter, resting on a metal tray and aluminum foil, and lie the smells of salt and oils. There is an apple in his mouth and his eyes as baked as bread, looking very easily to crumble and delicious too. There seems to be no side dishes to go with the meat and she asks, you made a whole pig?

I know right? I guess I got tired of vegetables too he says.

He seems to be already chewing something and looking very exhausted and worn out, placing his book down on the cushions. Richard takes a long drag from a thin joint. And light bulb goes his eyes, he gets up almost habitually towards the food and Belle watches him hurry off. He swings his hips into the kitchen to fetch a couple of clean plates and utensils, and Belle stares at his departing shoulder blades, shimmy shimmy shaking, steadily in rhythm like from the old days of jazz and spontaneous foxtrot. There is almost a spotlight beaming on him when he changes his mood like this and gets into new character. The light carries dust.

He is performing for her. He is trying to make her laugh. Those eyes he has, maneuver intentions to woo her out of her shell and make her float there in the living room via laughing. Richard pumps his fists in the air and mimes doing pull ups like a new way to dance, and his head pops up and down, eyes like Chaplin.

Because it all means he is paying attention to her and he sways like one giant muscle, smiling.

Women too are dazzled by bodies. Belle chews her lower lip like the skin of an apple she is saving for later or hoping to have. Shadows repeat in the living room because of the headlights, of the traffic flow. Belle wonders how the light gets all the way up here, near the seventh story so high up and she sneaks the joint she sees from the dining room table and the smell almost speaks to her out loud like: Long day?

She takes a hit. The weed pulls her mind to the back of her head and she feels slowness. The windows are cool and perfectly see through. Belle exhales like how people should be exhaling, watching her own breath travel to the ceiling and feeling so good to be stationary. Her eyes feel at home. She theorizes the size of the room and how lovely it feels to be walking around barefoot, closer to him. The kitchen dims in gloss and she doesn’t know what she is really thinking or if it makes sense but whatever, life is seamless. Belle leans her chin on Richard’s neck and says, I think that’s why your pupils get so big when you‘re high. Because you’re trying to see everything.

What?  Richard asks, grinning and admiring her. Man you’re really stoned he says.

Shut up, Belle says and she kisses him. Tries to communicate solely with her lips and she tip toes. The massage from her tongue makes Richard feel like an anchor, slowly reeling towards a low depth, and she guides him towards the closest piece of furniture he can sit in, which happens to be the leather love seat in the center of the living room. Refusing to let go of the kiss or opening their eyes, they move like people blindfolded willingly. Richard bumps his knee against the coffee table and the sound of his pain like a sudden balloon popping, causes a smile on Belle’s face and she sucks his lower lip rather in a little harder. As if to say, it’s totally worth it, do not worry about your knee.

She straddles over his waist and moves like she has many brains, accounting for every ounce of her one hundred and fifteen pounds, collectively getting very warm and swarming him. Her lower thighs remember his shape and hold him there and push him like a domino, and Belle amazes herself when she rolls down the slope of being very horny. She continues to follow through. Moving somehow irreversibly, she turns a sexual being and keeps falling.

She enjoys these transformations and thinks birds do the same thing when flying.

But he says wait. Hold on.

Richard gently sways Belle from their union and become two people again. His hands pushes her shoulders away until he can see her face again, out from the blur and into warm blood focus. The way he is being delicate makes her feel apprehensive and eerie. Strangely rejected and misunderstood and there is a look in his eye that slows her down a bit, because he seems prepared to say something heavy. A solid brown color in his eyes like he has been rehearsing and pacing back and forth at home forever before she came back. She knows he never says, I have something to tell you. Richard always skips that part.

I did something honest today, he says. Thom and I did.

She moves her hair back and her body winds down the hot knot it previously gathers, and she shakes her head grudgingly. She looks around again at the clean house and imagines his anxiousness, trying to calm itself through chores and cooking. Out of her head, Belle bursts into the present, feeling weary but sober again, and she washes her face with her hands. The vagueness in his voice scares the idea of loss in her.

What are you talking about? She asks.

The man that touched you.

I pushed him off a building, and Richard shrugs his shoulders and stares at her.

I don’t know how to say that beautifully, he says.