A story fragment from a while ago
“I can’t do it, alright?”
“Why not? Too scared?”
“It’s not for me Fred, I’m not ready to move on.”
“Karlos man, you’ve got to accept that she’s gone.” Fred grinned, continuing, “Gone like Shakespeare, like Jefferson, like Keats. Gone like a car that got totaled. Gone like the food I ate for lunch.”
Karlos scowled. “She’s not dead.”
“She might as well be. I’ve never met her.” Fred leaned back on the bunk. “Look, we’ve been here a month or so and you haven’t gotten to know anybody. Just go on one date with this girl and I’ll leave you alone.”
Karlos looked around the room, frustrated. The dorm was a mess. There was underwear hanging from a hook on the wall, a sock was stuck to the window, a moldy sandwich sat forgotten on a plate in the corner. “Clean up the room and I’ll go with her.”
“Go out with her and I’ll clean up,” Fred countered.
“Just one party.”
“Just the one.”
Karlos glared at his roommate, who for his part stood there with a grin spread ear to ear “If we get caught I’m blaming you.”
“You won’t get caught. None of the priests care if we have parties. As long as no one gets hurt nobody needs to know.”
“Whoever said co-ed dorms were closely watched?”
Fred laughed, “Someone had to say it, or no one’s parents would send them to a school like this.”
“Whatever.”
“Tonight man.” Fred stated. “You’ll be there right? At eight.”
Karlos held his hands up, defeated. “Sure.”
So, it has come to this
I cannot write, cannot put pen to paper. If held at gunpoint, threatened, I’d cave in, lie under. My hands are crippled, my tongue hog-tied, my brain is a twisted series of turns I cannot follow for the life of me.
Somewhere just beyond my reach lie words, untouched, untouchable universes.
Quantity? Or quality? Which matters more to me?
I conclude cannot sacrifice either, and by that conclusion am damned to posses neither.
among the first forged photographs
As morning breaks
Come my love, for morning breaks
Across dew dappled dawn
And thrusts itself upon the earth
Dispelling night, impelling mirth
Kissing flowers wet with rays of
Ruby-red goldenrod peach pink
Come, press yourself to the window
Fog the glass with breath slow and
Soft-ly fall unto the grass with feet
Kicking high as if to stroke the sky
And fling the sun into the great beyond
Once more as morning breaks
Against the wall of the men’s truckstop bathroom
Until then she had believed that beautiful people had hideous thoughts and that rough exteriors disguised hearts of gold. She had been so wrong.
The Day the Dawn Was Theirs
Sometimes she looks back and remembers things, fondly. When she is sitting in a crowded bus under the gray Vancouver sky, or when she is by herself at home, humming a song she can’t quite recall while brewing a cup of tea. Occasionally she remembers at embarrassing moments, like once when she was on the toilet and the memory made her blush, almost as if he had walked in on her relieving herself. For the memories are, for her, an intrusion. Even though she appreciates each memory, treasures it and tucks it away somewhere small in her brain, saving it for a rainy day, the memories come unbidden, unbeckoned. Her ghostly-soft smile might be tainted by tears, searing rage or simple sadness, if it appears at all. He is gone, gone, lost to her. She will never see him again.
At this particular moment Alice is sitting in a coffee shop she has never been to before. She is sitting at the bar by the thin glass window which separates Alice and her fellow escapees of the weather from the torrents of rain pouring from the clouds above. She has been drinking her coffee slowly, for nearly an hour now and is loath to drink the last few icy sips. Alice won’t be coming back to this coffee shop. She just ducked in to escape the rain, really, but the coffee is terrible and the owner must not have paid his last electricity bill, she’s concluded, because the interior is frigid and Alice can no longer feel the tip of her nose.
It is here, feet dangling above the ledge below the coffee shop window-bar that Alice remembers. Staring out at the rain-coated streets she recalls that fateful morning just a half year ago on which Milo and she went for a run in the morning rain. She’d awakened moments earlier to a cacophony of shrill bird calls, pattering rain drops on her roof, pebbles smacking her window and Milo’s voice, calling her name. The sun was on the horizon, somewhere behind a cloud or obscured by trees. Alice jumped out the window- a small hop, really, and onto the moist green grass. Then they ran and ran, through streets, holding hands and tugging on each other’s arms. Their souls whispered innocent sweet nothings into the breeze as though they could hear each other, somehow. And they found their way, slowly, to the bay, to look out across the water to the world they’d sworn they would one day see together.
Milo took her hand in his and they watched as the rain stopped and the sun rose and painted the world with cloud-softened light. They were the dawn’s and the dawn was theirs and the whole world heaved a heavy sigh, then let go of all it’s burdens. And they, along with their world, were free.
(Source: sh0000)
There’s nothing wrong
There’s nothing wrong
With an empty Cup
Or empty Arms
Or empty Love
But lovers lie
I know they do
For each of mine
I once spoke to
Swore and swore
And swore again
That there was nothing wrong
With me
26. Have you ever read a self-help book?
This is taking awhile, still I keep coming back. It feels ridiculous.
No. I don’t believe in self-help books. They don’t impress me.
from a tour bus, of all things.
Any minute now the dam will break
And you’ll come tumbling through into a bright new tomorrow, with sun-spotted silk sheets and colourful paintings. In eerie silence you wait for the moment, the moment when life might arrive. Still drinking from bottle-necked glasses and crying. O for all the things you’ve given up- how can you keep going, how can you? For today is not the bright new tomorrow, and yesterday stretches endlessly into the gray past. In a world of silence and shattered hopes, fragmented dreams, you’re a spill of wisteria. Whimsical, noisy, and unloved. Some might call you bizarre, or awkward at best; you’ve yet to find a way to fit yourself into the square hole you’ve been offered. That’s fine- you’ll make it. It’s not as hard as you’ve convinced yourself it is. Just give yourself a chance, a chance to be wrong. To make mistakes, to break the dishes while you rinse them off. For everything that was once unloved remained unloved until it taught itself to love its brokenness. Keep going. It may or may not be worth it, there may well not be a light at the end of the tunnel if such an end even exists. But if you reach the end and the light’s gone out, strike a match. And keep on going. Any minute now, the dam will break. And you’ll come tumbling out, out, out-
