Kinda, maybe, sorta.

Cold that night, at least I think it was cold. All of my memories from that winter seem to be covered in a permanent frost. Must have been too cold for walking anyway, because we were in the car; we were roaming along back roads and unintentionally circling the small town that had become such a trap. Music playing, country probably, and I was probably rolling my eyes and secretly wishing he would sing along.

An unused logging road, or at least that's what I would think of it as. I have no idea if logging ever happened in that tiny town, but to my northern brain that's what seemed logical. Turning the lights off, kissing, and staring and kissing again. And cliche, cliche seemed to have become my life I suppose. And I suppose it didn't really matter after all, cliche or not for that moment it was perfect.

And soon, too soon we both grew sleepy and turned the lights back on and drove home. Later we discovered that the car was leaking fumes, that we were lucky to shake off the sleep and drive away that night. But in blissful ignorance of imminent danger, we lingered and said the things that are sometimes more important then death.

In the next months and years I would replay memories like my favorite movies, again and again until I could recite the lines along with the shadow people in my mind. This night however I purposefully didn't re-watch, didn't want to remember in the same way. I wanted the corners of the picture to remain crisp and exact, so that on those days that I gently took it out it would still be shining and new. The details have faded because of this I suppose, but the feelings are as wonderfully spontaneous as they were on that chilly chilly night.

Failure.
Trying to think of a more poetic way to put that.
And failing.

True Love

He's sitting there with the TV flashing-talking into a headset with a wire that needs replacing; thanks to his habitual chewing on it. He's so engrossed in the game he doesn't even see me. Ten minutes I stand there, watching-more then watching- observing him in his natural habitat. Fingers flick deftly back and fourth, when he's not chewing on the wire he bites his lip. His head never moves, only his eyes follow the fiction living onscreen.

"Well, you had the second most score of the match...I got three Molotov cocktails that last match too."

He stretches, and for the first time notices my reflection in the TV. Reflections are funny like that, you don't see them when you watch what's on the screen, you only realize they're there if you're looking at the surface of things.

His finger pauses on his virtual trigger control as my fingers tense around my actual kitchen knife.

He cocks his head slightly to one side, confused. For a few long seconds, neither of us move, we are suspended taking each other in. Then he stands, still confused, eyes darting around for a defense. But here in this living room there are no convenient hidden weapons, no second player to back him up. It's just me, and him, and the kitchen knife. I speak, finally. I feel like I should say something fitting.

"You're not going to regenerate from this you know."

Trying to sound tough, the sentiment falls pathetically in the air. Leaving words for action, three steps of action, I am in front of him. He doesn't do anything, years of controllers have paralyzed his defense. First cut the cord, taking care to leave his headset intact. Then press the knife slowly and firmly into his chest.

I didn't think about ribs, but they crack as I twist and jiggle the knife. I scrape away flesh and muscle, searching and ignoring the shrikes from the still conscious man. Then I reach both hands into the small cavity I have created, feeling around and squishing fat between my fingers. I brush more satisfying muscle, and grin. He is virtually dead to the world as I use the knife tip and one hand to pry the side of the organ out, ripping and tearing at the sinewy strings that are still attached. The severed arteries pump blood onto the old gray carpet, and I am finally holding the mutilated and still twitching heart in my hands.

And for a second I think I see his eyes twitch, and I know that for the first time in years he has seen me in actuality.

Stratagy Game

You revel in the stench of death. It seeps from the clothing, the tent, and most of all your skin. This is your love; you need nothing but this and the grey-brown lifeless environment that stretches for miles and miles. In the sticky sweet sun you hoist your gun, black and shining. You take better care of it then you do yourself. You don't have friends, a woman, or even enemies you love to hate. Instead this gun is everything, it has personality, you live and die with it as you would live and die with any comrade.

Standard issue camo, sure. All of this comes with the part, but you have made it exceptional. Boots, heavy, scuffed with devotion. Instead of a shirt, white Hanes wife beater, grey streaked with desert and sweat stained. If you weren't so terrifying you could be Brad Pitt's next big role. Pants, neat but by no means clean. Dirt is caked around you shins and crusts slowly off, leaving small whirlwinds in your wake. All this is nothing to the maniacal elation in your eye as you level the M16, waiting, watching and waiting.

A month, how long you were calculated to survive out here. Who knows, you have been here a day, a year, perhaps you have died already and your body has yet to notice and stop functioning. Except for killing, you have left your senses safely behind with your humanity. Grey eyes, blue once perhaps, vapid and dessert worn.

The wind flaps at the remains of your tent, now a single piece of nylon stretched across the ground that your crawl beneath at night. Today it bothers you, noise bothers you-gently place the gun on the ground and kick sand maliciously at the sound, burying your shelter without thought of the future. Your hands are cracked and sand now is buried deep in the rivets, your flesh is slowly becoming part of the desert.

Out on the horizon something white, fluttering briefly then disappearing. Nature does not flutter, not out here. Slowly you drop to one knee, cradling your companion. Lying belly down in the sand, your patience has now run out. Waiting, watching, they are fine, but here is Action and you want it now.

Someone is coming this way, someone clad in white, an ironic shroud. Did they know today would be their death-day? The figure must be a great distance away, an ant on the horizon. But they are coming this way at a good clip, running and stumbling across the dunes. A piece of black falls from beneath the white, whips and dances. Hair, you realize. A woman. More like a girl, alone out here in this wasteland. She is half running half dancing to the top of the sand drifts, she pauses now and cloth the white fall from her head. Floating out behind her the white shroud reveals her long hair and uplifted face. Wings, floating behind her, she is free and so very alive.

Too far away for a direct shot, and a direct shot is what is needed. You know she is not a girl, not a human even. A dot to be exterminated before it grows to it's full monster potential. You trust no one, not even Death.

She slips down her small sand wave and spins, face turned upward and eyes closed. Arms out she turns, letting centrifugal force take over her body.

A squint, a tensed finger, and a crack. The spinning ceases and the shape crashes to the ground. The white cloth takes on a life of it's own, no longer a captive of grasping fingers. You don't even pause to think. You know one shot was all it takes, and even if you did the unthinkable and failed to cause death instantaneously, the desert soon would.

Spring up from the sand and grab the only corner of nylon that the wind hasn't completely covered. Your shelter in one hand, gun in the other, stride away from the once human life form and off towards the distance, already thinking about your next opportunity to kill.

A gift

There is a box. It's one of those square old-fashioned ones, with the lid that fits on top and a ribbon wrapped in two directions. The ribbon is red, or maybe even pink; it's wrapped in stripped orange and red paper. It must have been a very bright and cheerful box once, the kind that children dream of for days before Christmas and birthdays. But now the paper has faded, and there is a layer of dust turning the ribbon to some unidentifiable hue.

Once, a very brave soul opened it. She knew what she was doing, knew that the lid was meant to sag eternally, and still she pried it off. Out burst whispering clouds and images, faded and cracked in sepia tones.

There was a boy, he drifted close enough for her to hear his faint articulations.

...But material possessions, that's all we care about these days, you know? It just seems silly. People sleepwalk through life...

He adjusted his cap and settled back down into the swirl, an image of two people huddled together took his place. The bedspread was tacky, and she kissed his shoulder and sighed

...This could be forever...

The picture melted, and then the girl was alone, dipping and weaving across a dark road. Coyotes in the distance made her jump, she thrust her hands deep into her long black jacket and shuddered onward. Her drunkenly sober steps had her stumbling and almost falling into a ditch before she caught herself on her hands and knees, turning a tear stained face to the starless sky.

...it will work out, it will work out, it will work out, it won't work out...

The vapors were frenzied now, the breeze was enough to rustle the happy go lucky paper and faded ribbon. No longer many images, one picture floated above the box. The girl, one hand clutching the phone, the other her stomach. Words, indiscernible, she was sobbing without control. Dropping the phone she writhed and choked out half-sentences through the tears.

...I'm sorry, I love you, I'm sorry, I love...

The not so brave soul quaked at this, and with all of her strength slammed the lid down on the mist, forcing it back to the box of nightmares.

There it remains, tucked neatly in the back of someone's mind until some fool once again becomes curious.

Catch a tiger by the toe...

Things are spinning around so fast I can't catch my breath. One second, I am eighteen and alive, drinking in the wonderfully polluted city air. The next I am sixteen again, shyly sitting in a classroom and doodling fans and hoop skirts in my notebook. I am flying forward and back in time, until past choices and future all blend together into confusion and color and high pitched squeals.

This is a chance, an opportunity to change the past and the future all at once, right the wrongs and move on. And here I am, under the same old too-short comforter, cold feet sticking out and sticky tears on my face. The decision is no longer what the right thing to do is, but which right thing is actually the correct choice.

And if I fail? I fall apart some more, if at all possible. So for the time being I fly by the seat of my pants; eeny-meiny-miney-moo-ing my way through life and hoping to some greater unseen force that things just turn out.

I will write happy things again, I promise.

Cardboard reality

There is a gruff voice, voices always seem gruff in these sorts of stories. And there is a woman, no a girl-young, innocent, naive. And that gruff voice will be her corrupter, will usher her into Maturity; and everyone will sigh how sad it is, but really they will know that this is the Way Things Must Be. They will recall their own corrupter and they will smile with faint reminisce.

Then, at the end of the novel or movie or opera, they will exit and be blinded by the reality of light. And perhaps they will discuss the plot or the characters or the motifs; or perhaps they will forget about it and go grab an ice cream, sun themselves on beach blankets and talk of everything and nothing at all.

But what of the characters themselves, the gruff voice, the innocent girl, they are trapped in that reality of the plot. They live it without ever knowing that they are simply a form of diversion for others, they do not know that their struggles and conflict are seen as purely fictional, inconsequential to the vast scheme of things. A grad student somewhere groans over the Symbolism and Meaning that the characters embody, silently cursing their very creation. The characters, not knowing the hardship they cause, struggle on with no hope of ever knowing their meaning themselves.

And who is to say we are not all these characters? That someone will not come to the end of the movie that is our reality, take out the dvd, toss it carelessly back in it's case? We will be nothing then, until we are once again forced to play out our lives for someone else's pleasure.

Being a character, at least you know you have Purpose, your are part of a Theme and a Commentary in some aspect. Otherwise, how do we know we are worth the struggle?

Almost Lover [take your bow]

Baby, this is me.

I'm here in the summer, hot hot hot and I'm in two shades of brown, hideous. Hiding behind registers and sneaking chocolates...laughing about the eccentricities of our spiritual co-worker and ogling sweater draped men...one day He comes into the store, and my compatriot and friend tells me "he's cute, I could turn him." I am beet red, blushing for the first time in my life.

I'm here in the fall, as we giggle and pucker, bright red lip marks on the contraceptive balloons we have created. One night we call a ghost, and Ella continues to strike terror into our late night escapades and walks. Such amusement from a black sharpie, the back of class notes, and a shot glass.

I'm here in the winter, and I'm missing home. Four hours on the phone, He is feeling trapped and alone, like me. I am searching and one day decide to go to a party. Screaming and chanting and sorbet-don't talk with your mouth full, try to meet as many people as you can. Insanity. Emails come, telling us results, four, then three, then two...then sign your name and cross your fingers.

I'm here in the spring, and I'm lost and oh so confused. People who I have never seen before claim that they LOVE ME like a SISTER, and all I want is one person to talk to. I am slipping, and I stop talking to Him altogether. Instead, late nights in a chapel, explaining this whole crazy mess to one person. He listens, nods at all the right times, and then we fall asleep together, dreaming away under salmon arch meant to inspire heavenly ideals.

And baby, that was me. And I gave up after that, gave up the threads of myself and let the fabric untangle in a slow progression of summer into fall into winter again. And then, when spring came, something changed. All of those months and years, they are me. But this is me too. And I am

Walking to the fairgrounds, late late late
Falling asleep, waking minutes later with the painful impression of a cell phone
Dancing in a hot room, laughing as passersby wonder at the loud music and complete darkness
Clicking around campus, announcing my presence yards in advance


And then leaving, flying away, back to the place where dreams were once born. And I remember, and I hold on...but that was then and I am here and now.

And baby, this one's for you.