Incredibly Average

Last night, I dreamt about monsters. Teeth and claws and bloodshot eyes rising out of the ground.

It was horrific. But it made me think of you.

Of your lazy glances and laughs-that-weren’t-really-laughs.

Of the things I wanted to shout at you.

Like — we created this monstrosity between us together so let’s take responsibility.

This Frankenstein that fell apart as soon as we took it off the operating table.

Then I woke up in a cold sweat, clenching my fists around the empty sheets next to me.

Last night, I dreamt of you.

A thin telephone wire connects our hands, white knuckles clenched tight over plastic receivers. I feel a bit like the static today, love. Flickering in and out with your voice on the breeze. A gossamer string. And if I try I can almost pretend that your unseen smiles hold longing. But it’s like the radio towers have disconnected us, and nothing is getting through. Our voices have traveled thousands of miles only to die at our fingertips.

citoxiuq:

It’s easy to write late at night, when the weight of holding your head high throughout the day has compressed your spine and snuffed out the optimism you awoke with, like a heel to the end of a cigarette.  Words flow easily the closer you approach midnight, as the light from the street lamps outside the window, that do little more than block out the stars in the city.  The sky becomes the colour of rotting plums, and is as easily ruptured.  One intent stare is all it takes to make it trickle down on to the white of your pages.

When the moon has taken the warmth from the air, it seems obvious that the pavement is bruised skin, tender from the trampling of a thousand pairs of feet, because only the night is enormous enough to contain the immensity of the human condition.  Desolation feeds the creative spirit as much as good company constricts it, which is why I’m writing this in the light of a clean morning, when it’s hard to be anything but hopeful.

Much thanks to the editor who featured my post! I’m glad you liked it. :>

When I first met you, she said, it was a day like this. A day when back alleys smoked with the smell of regret and gutters overflowed with rainwater, muddy from cigarette butts and vomit. She had staggered down the sidewalk in her five-inch heels, too high to see the ground. The water had flowed down our necks, soaking our backs with something that felt that sorrow.

I had been dreaming about the sandy beaches of Florida, I told her. Where the sweat-soaked shirts clung to our skin and humid weather clogged throats like cotton, but the rain was never, never this cold. She agreed with a hazy nod, her eyes too bright.

I grasped her hand, because it looked like she was about to slide out of her seat. Let’s go, she spoke suddenly, I feel like the cold today. I nodded in assent. Anything for you.

We stumbled down the streets on a day like when we first met. As the raindrops flowed down our entwined fingers, it soaked our hands with something that felt like understanding.  

He always sent hand-written letters to her because he thought them more romantic. He keeps her responses in a shoebox under his bed. They are the memories of yesterday. Of cherry blossom days. Sometimes she presses kisses into the parchment (most times dry but sometimes wet) and her lip-gloss would leave a faint imprint. And as foolish as it was, he would fit his own over them. Puzzle pieces clicking together. If he closes his eyes, he can see it. The sun filtering through the branches, heavy with fragrance and thick blooms. Her eyelashes fluttering against his cheek like butterfly wings. They have never told each other, but they knew. The truth was there, in the pages and ink. It hangs in the air, and sings like music. As tangible as the words she sent him.

“I miss you.”

citoxiuq:

The 1960s, man.  Everyone was experimenting with psychedelics while I was learning what love was from a bandana-wearing blonde, with skinny arms and skinny legs and dresses for miles, and these green eyes that were more corrosive to my armour than any sort of acid they were dropping.  While they were searching for synthetic avenues to unleash their minds, she nestled in my chest, made it home, like the seed in a crack of the wall that refuses to die.  That somehow learns to live.  There were flowers in her hair when I first saw Daisy, when first I crowned her lips with my desire to kiss them.

It was midway through March.  The last of the snow, the stubborn patches that were compacted beneath the weight of an entire winter, even they were releasing their hold on the earth, shrinking away like scabs.  That afternoon was more like spring than the weeks that followed, pregnant with the possibility of rebirth.  Daisy was drunk with the same idea, vomiting on to everyone who would listen that now was the time for change.

What separated her voice from the other protesters was the force of experience.  Beneath her words, behind her sing-song speech, rose the hard edge of self-certainty.  She spoke broken glass, encouraging the passersby to cut their bindings, as she had.  To form bonds with their fellow brothers and sisters instead of continuing to tie them down.  I stopped walking to listen, for she was the kind of song that forced you to close your eyes — that you had no choice but to appreciate completely.  With a smile, she took me by the hand, brought me into the middle of the crowd, and without a word, made me one of her many flower petals.  I knew it immediately after counting them: that I loved her, and she loved me not.

Then the summer came, and with it, the harvest of all she had sown.  The protesters, once a small bouquet of myriad colours, had become an entire forest, a rising wave of the same shade, marching towards The White House like it was Dunsinane Hill.  All those feet, they were flammable as dry grass while the perfectly manicured lawn was flint.

“Come away with me,” I pleaded with her, reached for her hand as she did mine when we met.  “You don’t have to do this,” I added, but there wasn’t enough space between her clenched fingers to hold both my hand and the molatov cocktail she’d mixed.

You can’t stop violence with violence any more than you can loosen a knot by tightening it, but the flower, given what it needs to grow, with all its thorns, will flourish.

Snowflakes crystallize into black ice on asphalt. The lines are drawn tight over your face as you exhale. Your breath billows like smoke into cold air, and I know you wish you could taste the nicotine. Lung darts, you call them.

“So you know they’re killing you.”

Your smile is fleeting. But they work slower than the other things, you drawl, so why not? I didn’t understand you then, but after thinking a while, I take out the pack I had confiscated from you earlier.

In the dim street, the glow of the lighter flickers on your skin as you take a grateful drag. Sorry, I say. You are quick to forgive. In the dim streets and snow, our exhalations mix in a pale cloud of smoke and vapor. As I try to grasp the moment, it slips from my hands like melting ice. You can see my heart better than anyone, so you look at me, all broken smiles and dry lips. 

“We will never be back here again.”