Latham

I will go out on a limb and say I will never know what it is like to see my boss impaled on a sword. I will never know battle, the absolute terror of metal clanging against blood. And when his commander was felled I cannot say I can begin to fathom what was going on in his mind. If he was looking for the nearest door, if he was sad, or angry. If the choice to continue fighting was anything more than This is what I do now. I will never know what it means to fight for freedom, and certainly not for mine. I have no concept of prison, personal or otherwise. I can see and read all I can find, I can look at black and white, I can think I am an educated and worldly man. But I have never known pain, never known hunger, never known fear. Never known what it is like to travel half a world to die for someone else, and yet to die for you. Thirty-three wounds and untold enemies.

Georgy

"Son?" I was barely awake.

"Dad?" He was sitting on the foot of my bed.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news." He seemed calm enough.

"What is it?"

He took a breath and put his hand on my leg. "I'm afraid Georgy died."

My guinea pig! "What happened? What happened? Where is he?"

"Mom threw him in the trash."

 We had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.

Abdicator

He has freckled skin, salt and pepper and caramel hair, sturdy fingernails, and his name is Gabriel. He drives a taupe Audi TT, a car he saw at church as a child, the color of the walls, something soothing that speaks luxury to him. He still goes to that church and after he stops at the deli on the way home to get a few things for lunch.

He goes out for drinks with The Boys and Some People From Work and his wife knows the difference, but he doesn't do that so much anymore, not since he had a kid. His wife also said, "You can't go out so much anymore." Gabriel now drinks in his chair at home, or on the porch, or sometimes at dinner, although he'd be lying if he said he still has the taste for the stuff that he once had.

He mows the lawn every weekend in one hour and ten minutes flat. He has a garden that he tends and flowers that he grows. He has a shed filled with fresh tools in fresh dirt, spiders and creepy crawlers in the corners that scurry when the light hits. He has always had the hands of a worker, though he is only now beginning to use them.

He isn't sure if he met his wife now that she would love him. He doesn't doubt her love for him, or his for her, but the question lives. He called her beautiful until she went out with him. He praised her hair, her dresses, her smell and her shoes. He praised her lipstick and how it left just enough of a mark to make him feel proud. He recognized and understood her better qualities and was silent on them, mostly. He praised her continued adult education, if only because she seemed bored around the house. She was a good mother, a good wife. She is a good woman, and he is lucky beyond measure.

He doesn't get seated without reservations anymore. He doesn't get out of fender benders. He watches his neighborhood change, slowly but surely, there is a bus route now. He visited his hometown recently and hardly recognized it. This was the corner where the auto shop was, and now it is two Mexican restaurants. Everywhere around him are Mexican restaurants. Gabriel has never been one for tacos.

He has never been one for asking. He has never been one for wanting. He has never been one for waiting in line. But as the wealth gap widens and the sea levels rise, he cannot help but look out the window, at the bicycles, the chalk lines, and all the drawn curtains, and feel like he doesn't belong.

H

I saw that every "him," "his," and "he" was capitalized, and I knew what that meant. It meant I would never be the number one guy in her life. I would forever strive to reach however high and perfect she'd put this Father. How could anyone compete with that? Didn't matter how clean I got myself, no amount of sponge and soapy water was going to get me to where I needed to go to get the time of day from her.

I relayed this much to my friends. I told them that I met her today, that she was cute, and funny, and we got along for those few minutes. They looked at me cockeyed, they didn't get it. Who cares if this girl loves her god more than she would ever love me? Who's to say she'd even love me at all? Who's to say she even likes me as a human being? But they were missing the point. I at least wanted the chance. The chance to fail, to say something stupid, to make her a picnic and forget that she's allergic to mustard.

I wonder how many people have seen those H's and given up. Slumped in their skin, turned off the screen, killed the fantasy. I wonder how many people have seen those H's and thought, yes, perfect, here is someone who finally understands what so few people understand. Just how small we are.

A Morning with Roger

Roger went out to get the paper from the driveway. The plastic bag was covered in dew, the sun was rising, things were fresh.

"Roger!" called his wife, Karen, from the house. "Could you do me a favor?"

"What's that, dear?"

"Could you stay out there and never come back? Thank you!"

He sighed and looked at the headlines. Another strike, another plane downed in some vast unknowable body of water, another politician saying the same thing. The weather that day called for umbrellas, the upcoming week looked wet and grim.

Roger returned to his coffee and oatmeal. "Oh," she said, "you came back," and kissed him on the cheek. It was a routine of theirs turned habit, starting as one thing and becoming another, and now he wasn't sure if the sweetness detected in her kiss was of his or her devising. There was strange toast next to his oatmeal.

"What is this?"

"It looks like toast. Mary Lou brought over some cherry preserves yesterday, you know that, I thought it would be nice to try."

"Why is she always bringing us things?"

"Because," sat Karen, "she is a lonely old fool who thinks we like her. You don't have to eat it. It isn't very good." He was already halfway done with the first half. It tasted fine to him. The coffee was stronger than usual, the oatmeal filled with small clumps of brown sugar. In the fridge sat a chicken salad sandwich he had made the night before, and an apple, in a bag marked ROGER P. He shouldn't have to label his lunch at this age, he thought, but people are animals. People do what they want.

Karen followed Roger to their Corolla parked out front, incoming clouds gathering over the rising sun. She kissed him again, standing in her nightgown, and he wished she could stay that way. He liked nightgowns. She smiled at him.

"What if we stayed like this?"

She looked at him, quizzically. Her smile faded, and she went inside. Tomorrow morning, would her words be routine? Should he buy a new car? Was the Thordarson meeting today or on Friday? He got in his car and drove away, realizing a little too late that he'd forgotten his umbrella.

So Long, Self

Sometimes I become sick of myself. Not depressed mind you, not suicidal, nothing dire. Just a little sick of myself, the way you might become sick of a friend who has outstayed his welcome in your home. You think, OK, I've seen quite enough of this person now, and you can remove yourself. But I cannot--I think--remove myself from myself. Not without resorting to violence or years of some eastern meditation practice, which, no thank you to both, thank you.

If there was only some way to say, So long, self, and walk the other way. I could come back in a week or two, perhaps even a few days, depending on the grievance, the level of annoyance with my actions, words, etc. I cannot change who I am, I do not think I necessarily want to. Perhaps I am looking for what is easy. But I suppose there is what is easy and what is right.

Even this inner monologue makes me a bit queasy. Snap out of it, man! There are worse people than you who are worse off. Bastards who loathe themselves, who wake up thinking, Damn it all, I woke up. And we're not there. We're not to that point. I suppose it's natural to want an out of body vacation, I hope it is at least. That I am not alone, walking on the pavement of a hundred thousand people who would love nothing more than to step out of their skin and pick it up after they've caught their breath. But I guess this, here, on the inside, this will have to do for now.

The Honest One

It was hard for her to look into the crib at the child and see anything other than a reevaluation. Years of I-will-do-this's and Someday-I'd-like-to's sucking away on the rubber pacifier her mother had warned her against. The rest of her life—what a phrase—was summed up right there in those swaddled eight pounds, eleven ounces. She was large for a girl. She hurt coming out.

She was tired but she couldn't sleep. How long would that last? She was hungry but she couldn't leave her. The child looked up, oddly wide-eyed, oddly present, staring at her mother. Not looking, but staring, with purpose, with knowledge. She knew that children were the honest ones, sometimes brutally so, sometimes wise beyond their little years. Could the wisdom start so soon? Could her daughter possibly know what she was thinking, feeling?

Somehow she knew she was about to cry. She picked the child up and nursed her. She was hungry. They were both hungry. They were both feeding. It was late, and they would sleep together.

Detention

The quiet way dull daydreams develop you'd think people would be more accepting. But no one likes thinking they're not the most important thing going on; My ego trumps all, a common thought. And so little Daniel was sent to detention for staring out the window, being lost in the wind in the nearby branches. Daniel never understood this particular punishment. In this room he could dream up just about anything, be anywhere, be anyone, without having to drown out any geometry teachers. Strange, then, that he should think so much on being anyone else, anywhere at all.

Spider

In front of me, against the blue seat, a spec of off-green something started moving, moving up. A spider, fragile and minute, crawling up its invisible thread. It fell, and crawled again. It got to the top of the bus seat, trying to walk along it, but the smooth blue plastic proved an impossible surface. It took a step or two and fell, then crawled and walked and fell again. It dropped inches and inches, caught itself, crawled up, pulled itself up the plastic, walked and fell again. Falling, crawling, and that was it. 

And then it fell too far. Then it seemed like all was lost. And suddenly it seemed to crawl along a different line, some other webbing indiscernible. And when it's my turn to leave I am careful not to disturb it. I kill most every spider I come across, but this one has worked so hard. It has had enough for one day. But I get up and the spider falls. And then I realize somehow the spider had become attached to me.

Service Assistant

He sits, slumped, legs spread. His music shoots past his red headphones. His baggy black dress pants and scuffed black shoes tell me he's a busboy, he's watched people eat all day. Cleaned their plates, gotten his food in his hair, his fingers in their water. He smells like sauces and stale dishrags.

I see his head go down and jolt back, down and jolt back, the steps of a man fighting sleep. He settles into his body then, his head moves slowly to the right, and rests on my shoulder. I don't know how he sleeps with the music this loud but he does.

A woman sits across from me, old and severe and in a fur coat. She scowls at the boy, mouths to me loudly, "Wake him up." I ignore her. She mouths it again and again, she scolds me, she cannot believe it. I do not believe she has ever been tired.

Bury

We differ between what the two kinds are but most folks can agree that there are two kinds of people in this world. And it wasn't until I was asked that I knew for sure. Not which kind, but just the question: Will you help me bury him? And I realized, there are the people who will help you and the people who will not. And I realized, I am a person who will. And I guess it was reassuring, to finally know. I couldn't stop smiling.

What I Did Wrong

I made some jokey comment about kangaroo sausage, we had been talking about it last week. But I didn't hear anything back. So the next day I said something real, or at least less odd, even though she was odd and it should have been fine. Something about parking tickets, the outrage of it all. The next day I got something back, Yeah they're the bane of my existence too. So I was somewhere.

I told her—reminded her really—of my upcoming schedule, how busy I was. But I still wanted to make time for her, I wanted to hang out, I made that clear, or I tried to. I didn't hear anything back that time. I let it rest, and rest, and rest, but still nothing. And I thought, well that's strange, we had a good time, I think. And it's true, we did. So I don't know what it was. If it was the idea of scheduling her in, if I was too blunt, if it was "hang out," if it was the week of silence leading up to all of this. Maybe we didn't have as good a time as I thought we did

I'd like to talk to her again, even if it isn't face-to-face. Apologize I guess. Or just to figure out what it was, so I don't do it again. Because I'd like to change whatever it was I did wrong for the future, to learn, to be different going forward. But, really, if I don't know what I did wrong I'd just as soon assume that it was her. That this was all her doing. And I know I'd be wrong about that, too. But it's just easier that way.

Buttered Guns

Crazy, jealous, never changing. Always changing her answer but never changing anything real. I should've given her more time. I should've given me more time. I should've let myself know what it was like. For myself at the very least. No one can truly be alone for only three days.

I heard her out, that was my first mistake. I should've stuck to my guns, I never stick to my guns, my guns are smooth and slick and covered in butter or something. I should know better than to listen. I have listened. I've listened plenty. Heard you much and believed it all and now is no different. Me and my goddamn ears.

Am I this desperate to be close to someone? Am I, somewhere down deep, lonelier than I've ever known? Could it really be as bad as all that? And is this? Shouldn't I be happy for what I have, when some people have so little, when some people have nobody. I guess I should be grateful.

And this is how I get stuck. This is how I'm always in the cycle. Excuses, excuses. This is how I go to bed at night.

A Scar

I always thought it would go away. It didn't look like much, I didn't even feel it when it happened. As I drove away I just noticed the blood on my arm, a scratch, an inch and a half, hardly anything at all.

I woke up tired, cramped in a twin bed with her next to me. She'd wanted to spend the night, I said it wasn't a good idea. She'd laid some reasoning down that would make sense to a reasonable person, and I felt bad and agreed. It would be easier this way, and we had a perfectly fine time.

But in the morning I had things to do. Dishes to wash, clothes to pack, food to eat and stuff in the cooler. I'd acquired more than I'd realized that summer, the town was filled with so many record shops and bookstores and homemade interesting this-and-that. I had to fit all this into my little two-seater, I had to be on my way. I didn't have time for a walk, or breakfast, or anything she wanted. I had to go.

Goodbyes are never good when they come from me. I care too much or I care too little or I outstay my welcome or say nothing at all. I'd walked her down to the front door, given her a hug and a final kiss, and sent her on her way. Then I went back up to pack. Perhaps we could've eaten a little something. I had much more than I'd realized.

That's when it must have happened. Or when I was loading everything into the car. My arm must've grazed the trunk, or the edge of a cardboard box. I hadn't felt anything. I was bleeding, I was cut, but I hadn't felt a thing. I assumed the wound would heal and vanish and that would be that. But after days and weeks and months and years I am still left with a scar on my forearm. It is strange to me, that something so little, so unnoticeable, should leave such a lasting effect.

Watermelon

It's late and she can't sleep, she needs something to cut through the humidity. She goes to the kitchen and pulls a chef's knife out, stabbing into the center of a watermelon. The juice seeps slowly from cut as she goes, finding its way to the counter edge, dripping onto the floor. She slices off a cross section and breaks it in half, the juice is running down her fingers, and she goes outside.

The air is blue and the moon is orange, it is a fruity night. The humidity is like a character in the movie, she can feel the approaching showers. Barefoot, awake, she lies on the grass and dirt in her shirt and underwear, watermelon in each hand. She looks up at the stars, takes a bite. She only sees a few and begins to count. But the more she counts the more she sees, the more her eyes adjust. She lets the juice drip down her arm, down her chin and neck, across her face. She comes across a seed. There was a time when she thought swallowing a seed was as good as planting one in her stomach. Now they are few and far between. She laments the loss of the seeds. She used to spit them with her cousins. No more.

She feels the ground underneath. Her blood vessels move when she breathes. The sky is so bright there are so many stars. She eats the second piece and clutches the used rind in her hand. It is soft, wet, sticky. How many insects are gravitating to her at this very moment? How much juice has fastened her to the earth? How many seeds would she have to swallow before one started growing?

It is the last bite, she takes it. She feels a seed in between her teeth and swallows it. The first few drops of rain begin to fall. She leaves the rinds at her side and scoops a handful of dirt into her mouth. Sticky, warm, sweet, and alone, she opens her mouth and closes her eyes, and waits for the morning to come.

Viola

A silver tablecloth, like an astronaut blanket, was half off the table. Kept on by bottles and cans, a dozen wounded soldiers, my money. The floor a ball pit of red and blue and green, Solo after Solo after Solo. There was no walking, there was only wading. Streamers hanging on the lamps, on the counter, sad neon boas. And goddammit, a whole frozen pizza—cooked—was in the sink, water dripping on the pepperoni. I was so hungry. I didn't care.

"God almighty." Luke was just seeing it, the wasteland, the battlefield. "What in the fucking world."

"Gerri," I informed. "And her fucking crew. Used this place for their goddamn frivolities, they asked us, we OK'd it."

"I didn't OK this shit," he said.

She could play me, like her violin or whatever she was majoring in. She knew I wouldn't put up a fight. Or maybe she had just done shit like this so often that she legitimately thought I didn't care. She didn't have to work for much, and what she had to work for she didn't want. They needed a big apartment. She'd been over more than once. I'm a sucker for blonde hair, dark eyebrows. I'm a sucker, plain and simple.

Luke started picking the cups off the floor. "No," I told him, "stop."

"I can't live like this, dude. I gotta have this place fucking clean."

I nodded, because I knew. I called her, called Gerri. No answer. I called again. Again. And again. Again and again I called her, message after message, texted and barraged her with words until she had no choice but to call back. She hadn't even been to the party. She wasn't even there. She didn't know who was there, and she had to go practice her viola.

I remembered back to elementary school, when I wanted to join orchestra. The director measures all the kids' hands and that determined what you'd play. The bigger the hands, the bigger the instrument. The girls who played viola, they got made fun of. Kids are kids and kids are mean. But, still, a girl with large hands was never something we were taught to like. Gerri, she's not so great.

Walking Stick

She got back from the bathroom and I didn't notice anything different. We were drunk and dehydrated and dancing to some strange funk-techno-fusion nonsense, not what I thought it was going to be. She looked at me, asked me to repeat myself, eyes somewhere hazy and distant. She was here physically, I thought on that, tried to focus, tried to keep drunk.

She kept slipping, grabbing my hands, something wasn't right. I took her to the bar, promised to return with waters. And we stood there, clear cups in hand, as I finished both of them. I asked her how she was, what was up, was she OK. She asked me to repeat myself. I drank more water.

We all walked for fries after, we were going to gorge ourselves on fried potatoes. Others were going on about dipping sauces, all the different kinds, and I just hated myself for touching that water. It was getting dangerously to the point where I couldn't do anything about anything. She clung close to me and didn't order. We didn't talk to the others. I was her walking stick.

Her place, keys, doors, more water. I told her to take off her bra and I meant well by it. She got her shoes off at least. I fell beside her and stared at the stars on her ceiling. Glow-in-the-dark stickers, random and few. In the morning she asked me why she slept with her bra on, and I took a taxi home.

No Answer

A phone was in my hand, the way things appear, and it rang. She's dying, someone told me, say your goodbyes. How, I asked, how is this happening. No answer, the phone was gone.

I ran to my car outside, somebody's car, and drove. I was right next to the hospital. I drove up on the sidewalk, ran through the doors, they never slide open fast enough. I knew which room, somehow, to go to, run to. And there she was. Beep, beep, that awful little line, and her just holding on by it. She died, right then.

It was vivid, tangible, the way the best and worst dreams are. I woke up, wouldn't be early yet for quite some time. I wanted to call, or text, I knew I shouldn't, so I didn't. It ate at me. It sat right there, that knowledge, I knew. She was dying. She had died. She was dead. I was sure of it.

I called her early in the afternoon, I let myself have some time. I thought you were dead, I told her, I was sure you were dead. Even when I woke, I was sure. And I just wanted to say, I wanted to say that I care about you, because if you really died and I never said anything I would hate myself forever.

There was a silence, a long one. No answer, the phone was still there. She was on the other end. Yeah, she said to me, I know what you mean.

The Picture

I always thought she looked old in this picture. Old for her age. She was thorough and laid-back, a good listener, she asked me questions. Her mouth was soft and her tongue was wet, she had a woman inside of her. She was a woman. She made me feel like I was a man. We were sixteen. I guess that's men and women for some.

She's on my rug, some thing I bought at a record store. She has red lipstick on, not much else, I fancied myself a photographer. They were cheap, disposable cameras, I would buy them and never use them. Then some day would roll around and we'd do stuff like this. It was finding things out, learning what we could and couldn't do. We could do this. We liked it. She's arched, biting her lip, looking just enough at the lens. At me.

That day we went out for pizza. She walked along the water and held hands, we fooled around on a picnic table after park hours. I had the flask my brother gave me in secret, half-filled with scotch I took from the liquor cabinet, and we finished it. I stumbled her back to her place where we kept making out, and I stumbled home to mine.

I look at the picture and blood rushes. I don't feel like this much anymore. My heart races, my teeth clench and loosen, my hands wander. I realize now how young we were, and I look at this and feel young again. I'm with her on that stupid rug, pulling her clothes off, she's pulling off mine, passing the camera back and forth. I put on an English accent, I tell her what to do. She looks at me the way kids look at each other. We don't know of the billions, the billions of other people. She knows me and I know her.

But I'm not young. And it's not right. And it worries me, that maybe that's why I feel these things. I worry about what the picture really is. But I keep it. It lives in an envelope in a book in the bottom of a box in the back of my closet. And from time to time I take it out, and the blood rushes, and I feel wonderful and horrible at the same time.

Laundry

I get home and go to the fridge, grab a beer. I check if Mara's home, which she isn't, so I use the bottle opener fastened to the wall. She hates it and it makes a mess but boy is it fun. I do my best to be careful but it's still no use.

Something isn't right. I go into the living room and I know, something is not right. Wasn't there a picture there before? The bookshelf looks oddly sparse. I see a note on the dining table. She's sorry. She's gone.

Her shoes aren't by the front door, her coat isn't hung. Her toiletries aren't cluttering the bathroom. I go to the bedroom, the bedroom I shared with her. My closet, our closet, her things aren't there. It's as if she was never here at all.

There's a pile of laundry on my bed, a white load crinkled on a black comforter. A final act of kindness. I fall on it, hold it close. It is still warm. I see a hair, long and dark, stuck in a sock, and I pull it out.

Bottle

John's eyes creaked open and he didn't know if it was tomorrow or the day after. There is something about those two kinds of sleep that feel exactly the same. He didn't recognize this wall, not from this angle. It was not his bedroom, it was the dining room, at least where he kept the dining table, and his drool stuck him to it. There was tack on him, tack on his face, tack on his mouth, tack on the tips of his fingers. Around him was half-crumpled foil, congealing grease, mayonnaise or some such sauce dried on his arm hair.

He sat upright, it was a chore. He looked at this simple disaster and decided it could be worse. He started to stand but a sharp pain in his foot sat him back down. Blood, glass. Small shards imbedded in the tough skin of his right foot, the rusty liquid coating them. He saw the dent in the wall, the cracking paint, the faint streaks of dark amber trailing to the remains of the bottle underneath. It wasn't difficult to put it all together.

Both feet filled with glass, John kneed his way to the tweezers in the bathroom. He sat on the toilet and plucked them out one by one, dropping them in the bowl beneath, giving little thought as to whether or not glass could or should be flushed. When he was done he swung his feet over to the tub, lightly massaging them with soap and warm water, letting the tub go pink. The wounds weren't bleeding, but there was a lot of blood going down. John had no proper bandages, only ones with cartoon characters, and not enough. He made do.

He got the dustpan and returned to the site. He got back on his knees and swept. Glass was everywhere, even in places he was sure it couldn't reach. Were all glass bottles this fragile, or did this one just particularly want to break? John had always wanted to finish a drink and hurl the bottle at the wall or the floor. It was a romantic idea he played over and over, never finding quite the right time to act it out. Now here he was, and he couldn't remember a damn thing.

The pan filled up with glass. His knees hurt. Hiding under a dining chair were a few larger pieces held together by some remains of the label. John picked it up and read the letters: REDEMPTION.

Fingers

I kept it long for two reasons. My father, he said to me once, "Grow it out, son, because one day there won't be anything there to grow. Grow it while you can." It was years before I put his advice into practice. I guess it's usually years, isn't it? The other reason, I'm sure you guessed it, is a girl. It is always some girl.

All it took was five fingers, her little hand, going to work on my skull and I was hooked to the shag forever. We lay there side by side that first time and I remember thinking how cool it was. The middle of July and a busted fan, but still so remarkably cool. Is it possible for the heat of two bodies to cancel each other out? Could our magnetism be pulling us together and pushing us apart? She rested behind me, we stared at the wall, I felt her creeping hand walk up my neck. My neck, the back of my head, the top. She was careful and delicate and her fingernails were just the right size. She would stretch the hairs, let them dangle in the spaces between her middle and ring, let them fall back to me. "Promise me you'll always keep it long." So I promised her.

Of course I knew, even then when I promised her, that it would not last forever, that it couldn't. I was a shedder and, looking at my father, I knew what that portended. I tried to keep the promise as long as I could. But the strands that were left on the pillow, that rinsed out with the shampoo, they were growing in number, gaining in steam. She would remove one from her mouth in bed and say, "It's OK." She knew I was embarrassed. And the more I lost the more I knew that the length wasn't long for this world. The fingers, they would soon be gone. They were not the same against the smooth, unknown terrain of my bare head. It was not a sensation to which I wanted to grow accustomed.

I stopped buying razors. I stopped buying shaving cream. I let the beard grow wild and free. I finally understood why they were ever worn for protection. The hairs are not the same, and the length will never be equal. But it is a short distance from my neck to my cheek. It is good to feel her fingers. It is good that now I may kiss them more easily.

Laces

I'll probably never know him, whoever he is. He's black, had a purple and yellow Bulls cap, matching shoes. I don't know who he is, what he's gone through, what life will be like. But I look at those shoes, the purple and yellow high tops, and I see that he laces them the same way I lace mine. And I think, hey, that's something.

Winners

They'll say we were winners. That we knew what we were doing, had a plan. They'll see the bodies and the turmoil and say, well, of course, they did what had to be done. In a hundred thousand million years, I would have done the same. If I had had the chance.

They'll call us leaders. What a people! What hoards behind, the hoards that do our bidding! We'll be showered with crowns although we'll have already brought our own. Nobody makes a crown like we do. They never make it big enough.

They'll call us defilers. But what do they know?! They'll say we built our lives on the lives and deaths of others. They won't be entirely wrong, but we will say they are. We will denounce them. We will ruin them all. They'll say we were right. They'll call us winners.

What is a Lid

It is a tiny thing and often impossible to lift. Resting it gives us the time to gain the strength to move it, we say we will give it only seconds. Seconds may turn to entire nights, plans ruined, temperaments compromised. It is a tiny thing and can control us while we are none the wiser. But we let it, still, somewhere, knowing what we are getting ourselves into. Tricking ourselves into adding to its weight. Becoming the lid ourselves, unable to lift ourselves for fear of exhaustion. We are light, little things, doing ourselves in, moment by poorly-rested moment.

Absence of Water

Georgia walks to the water to remind herself that she's doing OK. It is a short distance, a quick pick-me-up. Some people are without water, they've never even seen it. She at least hopes this to be true. Perhaps that's part of the problem. It seems she's found a place where the good in her life is only defined by the bad in others'. It is the absence of water. But perhaps this is a better way to be thankful. Georgia is privileged in many ways and she hates that word, hates admitting it. She can see the water there and knows she is more than OK. Georgia pays her bills. Georgia lives by three grocery stores. Georgia's been out of the country, not for years, but she's been abroad. Georgia walks home at night and never hears a gun. She walks to the water to remind her of these things. But sometimes her thoughts, through no fault of her own, turn to drowning. They even turning to drowning now. Some people, she thinks, could never drown themselves.

Two Guns

I knew when it was brown and not clear that he hadn't done what I'd asked. I couldn't blame him. I'd gotten his name wrong. Or rather, he'd introduced me to the board president and I'd gotten their names confused. But in my defense, Kevin and Karen are very close indeed.

I drank. I stayed and drank until he told me to stop. Until he stopped buying. Until it was just the two of us, lone gunslingers in our own little world. I called him Karen again. I think that's when he respected me, finally. He paid for my cab.

The Clothes

Even with the drastic shift in weather Jones was sweating. He left his house sweating and he would return sweating, he was sure of it. As the degrees dropped like hints and the beads came quickly he started removing his layers. First his hat, then his scarf. Then his topcoat, then his jacket. He loosened his tie and removed it later. He unbuttoned the top button, then the second, then—against everything he knew to be himself—the third. Soon he was down to his undershirt, his beater, with his pants rolled up and his socks rolled down. He looked a positive fright, the type of person he would roll his eyes about as he passed. But it was getting colder, and it was only getting colder, and the clothes were weighing him down. Jones should have liked to have thrown them into the fire, but he couldn't imagine getting anywhere near enough.

Countdown

Five four, three, two, one. It was easier to count them like this, descending. Five, four, three, two, one, getting closer to zero. Somehow that made it all make sense. Or, if not that, then tolerable. If it was leading to zero, to nothing, then he could wrap his head around it. If it climbed upwards then it was all a mess.

It was his way of hiding certain things, masking them and making them something else. History is written by the winners, and he thought, in some small way, this was along those lines. How many, he could hear the question in his head. And if he started at the top and worked his way down—five, four, three, two, one—then maybe, just maybe, zero would be the figure that stood out in their minds. Well, he could hear them say, that's not so bad at all now is it?

 

Liftoff, blastoff, something about space and the stratosphere. It was a positive spin, it was a lie, but he liked it and he didn't care. It's probably the only reason he liked it in the first place. That sense that it was only winding down so it could go back up. It could break out of this petty air we breathe and get to somewhere greater. That this was the beginning of something, and not the end.

Gurgle

When his stomach started gurgling, and when it wouldn't stop, that's when he realized something had to be done. Not just about his pizza intake, which was substantial today, but of his intake in general. Of fats and sugars and salts and alcohols and the idea of women. Some pointed thought toward a peer, spoke generally against a class of people, sent halfway around the world, without understanding or even the barest attempt thereof. He was digging his own grave, surely, and slowly sitting down.

He could sit for a while in it, he supposed, but the second he started lying down that would be the end of it. He had to stand, he had to climb out, he had to throw down the shovel at least. He gurgles at himself, felt the grease on his fingers, ten awful mirrors.

Tomorrow was going to be a good day, he had nothing to do. But he could fill it with things, choices, new ones. Things fresh and crisp, well-researched and well-reasoned. Tomorrow would be the day he would begin at least to brush the dirt off, even if only from his hands.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, licking his fingers, spouting nonsense, going to bed.

The Popcorn

Yeah, I'll watch your popcorn. You take your smoke break, I'll aid and abed. I'll watch your precious red cup and I won't even take a piece, not a kernel.

But the second you're gone too long, the first second past the ending time, I'll start painting a coat of buttered sodium, I'll give my floss something to talk about. I'll help. To a point.

It's not you. It's the popcorn. That's what I'll say.