A Shadow on Me

I was listening to the radio. I was in my car and driving to my house. There was a classical song playing, the kind where the notes go up and down quickly. I felt that I could have written it, that how hard could it be. But that is the way I think about everything.

The sky was overcast. In the distance the clouds grew darker but over me the sun could still shine through. A spotlight seemed to follow me down the road, and I looked around and saw that I was alone. A shadow crawled across my car and the interstate lights came on. One by one they came on as I passed them. They were all for me. The storm was all for me.

Runs and trills and strings and brass. A tympanic heartbeat. The song lived on and on, grew faster and faster before slowing down, there were movements and the movements changed. A dancing piccolo, a strutting bass. Everything was moving, around me and in me, everything moved. And yet I was completely still.

Static, flooding. I could have done that, too. I drove with my knees and put on my coat. I was in darkness and suddenly cold. I turned off my lights. Lamplight soared like fireballs, and I was the only one.

Someone Who is Only Sleeping

Waiting in bed for you to come home has become my national pastime. I think of all the different ways I could pretend to be asleep, different positions, breathing and snoring patterns. Or perhaps I'll be awake, and glaring, or smiling, or staring at the wall. Maybe I'll pretend to be dead. Hold my breath and strip the life from my eyes. I'd add a ketchup effect if our sheets weren't so nice. Would you notice? How long would you take to revive me? I've often thought a dead person looks like someone who is only sleeping, but I'm not so sure. Now I think it might look someone who is alive and well and waiting for the door to open.

Schrödinger's Phantom Vibration

I could reach for it, and look, and find nothing. I could find another person, a non-entity, some faceless corporation asking for money. I could find you. If I never look it could be anyone, anything. It could be you. I could hold it in my hand, feeling the pulse, waiting for another on a different day where I might happen to see who called. It could be nothing, my trousers grazing the side of my hairy leg. Damn these Austrians and their paradoxes. Damn it all to hell.

Burr

I can see myself, immovable, in that I refuse to move. A mantra of good things coming, waiting, biding my time. Watching, standing by as men with far less talent soar up to the stratosphere. They will be remembered for a great many things, and I fear I may be remembered for destroying one.

Trust

I thought I was crazy because they looked at me. They kept looking because they thought I was crazy, too. The more eyes on me the more thoughts in my head, the more that head turns, the more my eyes don't blink. Trust goes, loneliness obstructs. A laugh is right at me, any sound becomes my name. I turned into some peasant walking through a mocking crowd, where even the animals and the earth were on their side. And the more I walked the more they stood, the more I moved the more they saw, and the more they saw the more they could not look away.

Even Am I

Champagne wine beer liquor coffee water tea. Small bite tuna salad steak or grouper cake and assorted pastries. Dollar bills line the floor, a mix of old and new, adults sitting watch the kids thinking when they used to dance to these same songs. Spoons and knives and too many forms, the mugs still have their tags. Outside are turtles, bobbing up and down in the water. Someone tells me they're good luck. Sounds right to me.

He's a man I've met and you're a woman I've known. What k say at a time like this? We were in school together, school after school, wound up in the same high-rise unbeknownst. It's the kind of thing that makes one wonder and they call it by a name: fate. It exists. Just not for me.

You're both so happy and even am I. A woman in a green dress tells me her name five or six times and I think I'm in love. Love is in the air, however, and it's floated into mine. Perhaps I've breathed it in, perhaps it's in my blood now. I can feel it, bass and kick and tradition. Everyone is happy and brilliant and thinking of only now. So now, I decide, is a wonderful time to start.

Whole

A blue light hits me constantly, one two three, every few seconds. It wouldn't be a problem if I was dancing, which my friends are, which I'm not. I need drinks but I don't want to drink because as soon as I do I'm dancing and I don't feel like dancing, which is the song that's playing. Come over, come over, come here, my friends beckon me. I shake my head. They persist. I persist. There is a whole lot of persisting going on. I prevail, and it feels like a hollow victory.

The bathroom is downstairs and humid, empty glasses left in the sink and on the floor. Theoretically they were brought down fuller than when they were left, which in my mind makes no sense. There's not a whole lot of sense to be found at 4 AM.

It's clear that they've forgotten me. My friends are huddling, swarming; they are, it seems, one. Only whole when I removed myself. I walk home, it's a half hour, over, the faster I walk the longer it goes. And I wake up half a day later covered in messages of where are you, where are you, where have you gone.

Documentarian

And I'm here trying to impress some 22-year-old Snapchat celebrity, a Snap Celeb, and I want to ask if she thinks that indicative, that her fame will here for a moment and then gone forever, and then I remember we're all gone forever soon enough and at least she's somebody and I keep my mouth shut, opening periodically to put more beer in it. I've decided maybe that's the only opening I should be doing tonight.

This crowd is good, young, it makes me feel both young and old. Jeremy dragged me here, his girlfriend, Joanie, started a theatre company a year ago and happy birthday to them. She's discouraged but smiling, frustrated with someone there though she won't say who, thinking about leaving and what she's doing with her like and I want to grab her shoulders. I don't think that feeling ever goes away, but I guess I have a lot of time to find out.

Everyone ends up at Jeremy's place, or most of us, I've met at least two Kevins and three or four Lilas. It gets late soon, beer and wine and liquor flows, potato chips and pizza. The numbers don't dwindle, suddenly everyone is gone, Jeremy and Joanie have retired and I'm on the couch with the celebrity. If you asked me how things like this happen I'd reply, beats me. They just do.

In the morning she leaves, kisses me sweetly on the lips, and I thank god for guest bedrooms. After a breakfast of strong black coffee I do some sleuthing, which is my polite word for stalking. I see the night unfold in three to ten second increments. I replay the dances and the songs and the bits in my mind. I see the apartment around me, the mess being made, and I see her leave. Her walk out the door, on the street with friends. I see her say good night to the world. A master of public and private, and true documentarian, and I am amazed that all night long I never saw any of it happen.

Installation

I say your dress reminds me of a T-shirt I have, that I almost wear it, that isn't that funny. You say it is but you don't laugh, not that it's the kind of funny that requires one. I ask you what you do, you tell me where you're from. Far enough.

So many people I don't know. I come in with a chip on my shoulder, placed there by years of thinking I'm somebody. Gradually it's chipped away, introductions and niceties and those laughs I covet so much. It really ain't such a bad crowd.

Later I sit alone in a corner, the midst of some art installation. Photos and paintings and wires on the walls, a television displaying AOL. Kids, kids are laughing and drinking cheap beer, they don't know what they don't know yet. And there you are talking and I wish I'd worn that T-shirt.

And maybe I outstay my welcome. One by one, two by two, people start to wander home, wander off to other ports of call. And with each leaving your fraction grows bigger. They are cleaning up, you're sitting next to me, you ask me where I'm going. I never thought about what comes next. It's rare that where you're going means anything at all.

Piano

I sit down at my kind piano, I usher out some notes. Maybe I tip over my feet once or twice but they all get to their approximate seats. I am harsh but they are forgiving. A mirror hangs eye level, my hair, my flinching eyes. Maybe I look at myself too much.

The window is open, I hear the neighbors fighting. Some indiscernible he said she said I said you said. I score, rise and fall with them, stop caring about the notes on the page and start playing the right ones. Chords, octaves, staccatos, pedal, crescendo, the long gradual ritardando. And I come to a complete silence and hear nothing through the window.

The doorbell rings. My fingers rest lightly on the black keys. I answer the door. The next door neighbors stand on my doorstep. They're older than I remember, they fight like they're in the prime of youth, when love is still fused with passion. They don't say anything and neither do I. They don't look angry or happy, but satisfied, at peace. They have a piano in their house, she said, but they never play it. It hasn't been played in years. Would I like to come over and play it sometime, he asks me. Sure, I say, that would be nice.

They smile softly and walk back. He takes her hand in his. For a moment I stand with the door open, listening to their footsteps, and the small trickle of a laugh.

Strawberry Moon

He walks to the water. He's afraid he doesn't walk the walk. Money talks and bullshit walks and that just might be what he is. He thinks about action, he thinks about what he says, he thinks about her and the impotence of his last five years.

So what does he do, he walks to the water to see this strawberry moon. He walks and he sits and waits for things to get dark enough, wondering how can he overcome this. Overcome, like thoughts and feelings are obstacles. If he jumps high enough, if he says the right words, if he does the right thing.

Where does he go from here? He thought he'd be more enlightened by now. He thought wrong. Lights come on and lamps. Sitting and looking out east, the night in front of him and the day behind. Always a day behind. A day late and a million dollars short.

And then the moon. People around him asking are you here to see it, how much longer, where do we look. The bright edge of a cloud gives him pause. It grows, it brightens, it is unveiled. It's the moon you see in movies, postcards, paintings where the paint is rich and thick. A couple takes their picture against the light reflecting in the water. He rolls his eyes and stops halfway. Everyone wants to be in the moonlight, at some point or another.

Through the clouds there are faraway storms. An idiot sets off small fireworks. The moon rises. It is big, and beautiful, and he got to see it. He might not see one every again, but he saw this one. And as everything around him gets darker, as the nighttime settles in, the moon shines beyond words.

It's Nothing

You walked in and saw me wiping the tears away, cocked and furrowed your eyes in a "What is this?" kind of way. I shook it off, brushed the air aside with my right hand in a "It's nothing" kind of way. Thank god there was music, I grabbed your hand and waist and started dancing. You started laughing. I felt good. I never wanted you to see me like that, I never would again. I know you knew it wasn't nothing, and you knew to not ask questions, and I thank you for that.

Time goes on and people change, that's something I've been told. I don't know whether or not it's true. Any changes I've made have been too gradual to notice. And I can't ask anything of anyone. But one day, maybe, I'll look back and say, well, we had a dance, we shared a moment. And that's more than a lot of people can say.

Dinner Party

The saving grace was that the vast majority of the chips were in tact. It was a small and silent victory I took for myself. The rest I put firmly in the negative column. Even if I had just polished my cowboy boots it was clear that I was misinformed as to the dress code. After putting the chips and salsa on the counter I hurried myself into the bathroom, tucked in my shirt, combed my fingers through my hair, splashed some water on my face to snap out of it. These people were going to be my family.

Emily was waiting for me when I got out, wondering what was wrong. I hadn't said anything to anyone, just ran straight for the toilet. I told her I didn't use the toilet. I don't know why I had to fight her on this.

I was still getting used to dinner parties. They weren't a thing I did, or went to, or got. I've grabbed pizza and beer, I've cooked, but here I am showing up with a five dollar contribution and the thing is catered. By a staff wearing nicer shirts than the ones I own. Emily said I was being silly. And she was right. I was out of place, and being out of place makes me feel silly.

I walked in to greet her parents, their neighbors, an aunt and an uncle and some people from church. People that had known her her whole life. They smiled and shook my hand, they asked me what I did and how we met and where did I get those boots. They were my father's, I told them. They liked the lie.

Dinner came and went, people left, Emily and I were on the couch, sinking into it. Did I have fun, she asked me, did I like these people. And I hadn't even realized until then that I did. I opened the chips and popped the salsa's lid. I wasn't hungry, but I thought it would be nice.

Bare Bones

I am a skeleton, and I know nothing. Pull flesh and sinew over me, ask me some questions, see if I know the answers. Stripped of a facade, stripped of excuses, I have only myself to blame. Who knew?

Associate

One hundred thousand warriors

One hundred thousand

One hundred thousand dollars

Doll hairs

American Girl doll

Dollhouse

Tom Petty

Joss Whedon

Miniatures

The Louvre

Love 'me and leave 'em

Leave it to Beaver

The Angry Beavers

Timber

Timberland

Land of ten thousand lakes

Ten thousand maniacs

10,000 Maniacs

Horns

Horn-a-plenty

Hornet's nest

Net

Not

Nut

You're a nut

You're a crazy nut

It's about him being a crazy nut

She's a nut you just can't crack

Step on a crack

Break your mother's back

Break the bank

Zero down

Cash settlement

Credit

Debit

Cash

Money

Fame

Love

Death

Sleeper

Cell

Sell

Buy

Bye

The Kinds of Stories I Like

Eyes spring open and it's like I've had a full night's sleep. I check the time: 2:49. Vibrate.

u up?

I am flat on my back, the window open, no breeze, no coolness save the sheets. Vibrate.

u up?

If I'd been quizzed I'd have said 3:30. 3:02. The air is thick and time moves slowly through it. I watch some show, my eyes can't focus yet I'm not tired.

hey

I pick up my book. Some sad man trying to out his family back together. Will everything be all right in the end? I hope not. Those are the kinds of stories I like. Where things don't work out. Things are always working out and it gets old after a while.

come over..

4:10 and I've gone through ten or so pages, which I will end up re-reading. Some sort of snack. Glass of warm milk maybe? I move to the couch. I set my phone next to me, but I don't know why I brought it, but I do. I left the ceiling fan on again.

u up?

I stare at the wall, try to free my mind. Every task, every checkpoint, I push them all aside, they rear their heads and I say no. I don't want to focus on anything, I don't even want to focus on myself. There is nothing but this wall. This wall and sleep.

Soon birds. Newspapers. The pre-rush hour-ers. I've at least closed my eyes. I am not happy, but I've done what recharging I can. Still feels like yesterday. I pick up my phone.

Yeah. Why?

Excellent Packaging

I hear the idea of a footstep. Not the foot itself, but something coming down, a hard shoelace, a bag against someone's side. I turn my head as if a car or house has caught my attention, Is that...? Behind me, some yards back, someone walks. The light is low enough, the lamps are far apart just so. A year ago two people were mugged within minutes of each other and it was lighter than this.

No cars but those parked, no other passersby, his step in tune with mine. When my right foot hits the pavement another sound, another. I take the knife out of my fifth pocket. It is small, Swiss, meant for a keychain, meant to open excellent plastic packaging. I fiddle with it, turn it over in my fingers, put my fingernail in the dent on the side of the thin knife. And what would I do? What kind of hero would I try to be? Go for the neck, go for it often, go for it quickly. The element of surprise. It paints a gruesome picture, but an exciting one. I think over the contents of my wallet and it's not much. But it is the principle.

I flick the blade out. I quicken my pace and he quickens his. Ahead is an intersection, void but filled with red, yellow, green. I slow down. The man complies. I slow further. I stop. He stops. I put my foot down. I hear it. I hear them. My own laces. Tapping against the side of my shoe. I turn around. No person, no man, no masked assailant. Just a long, dark street filled with brownstones and silver sedans. I fold the knife back into its body, put it back in my pocket. I've cut myself.

Science and Madness

It would be wonderful—simply wonderful!—if the shedding hairs atop my hair were not replaced three-fold on my chest and neck. If it happened t'other way round, then the days would pass much more confidently, and I likewise through them. But, alas, it must not be so. I am doomed to wander the earth with body of a mop-dog and the head of a hairless cat, some inhuman Moreauian creature made of science and madness. Science! And madness! They will put me on an island and I will become a thing of legend, something fathers tell their sons, a warning, a cautionary tale. Men and boys will heave sighs of relief and say, At least we are not him. If such a thing can exist.

Rip

And it's a time when I feel like Rip Van Winkle. That I've been asleep for years and years and wake up to find that the world has changed. But, really, it hasn't changed at all. We are no more free, no more civilized than we ever were. Our leaders are the same, our sons are the same, and we wipe the snot from our eyes. Every step forward is a step with our backs turned. It's what we call progress.

Sidewalk

They're ripping up the street next to these old abandoned storefronts. Putting in a sidewalk I think. And the storefronts, with their lopsided letters and boarded-up doors, will likely turn into a sandwich shop, a bar with a late night kitchen, a home goods store for a very specific type of living room. Potpourri will mix with college cologne will mix with freshly baked bread. After a while our noses will get used to it. And others will use this sidewalk only to pass by, and they'll take a whiff and say, ah yes, they've come and they've kicked the others out.

Sweet Savor

Savory or sweet, he asked me. I hadn't been paying attention to anything besides my drink, I didn't notice him sit right next to me.

Savory or sweet or... what, I asked him.

Should I make you a savory breakfast tomorrow morning, he smiled, or a sweet one?

Hmm... I looked at him and pondered. Somewhere between six and twelve, I think. And it'll be sweet.

Six or twelve? Well, yeah, he said, that's—

But my glass to his temple stopped him short evidently. I'll never know just how many stitches it was. But I was right. It was sweet.

Cinder Blocks and Smoke

Scaffolding goes up and it's either the beginning or the end. Over the next several weeks the ground will be broken, torn up, people will ask me what for and I'll respond I don't know. There will be signs for workers and hard hats, signs about permits and fines, machinery that I'll swear is always abandoned. Some time between asleep and awake men go to work on this new thing. It seems to be build by ghosts, piece by piece appearing over fortnights and fortnights. And people will ask me what it is and I'll have to respond I don't know. It is four walls and a roof, a home to un-new ideas, a place people go to feel worse. And every morning a little bit gets added, and a little bit gets added, and a little more.

This place is changing. It is good when big things change I think, but the little things I want to stay the same. I didn't ever enjoy the grass that was once there, but it was there for me if and when I needed it. Selfish? Yes. I don't mind being selfish about some things. A mommy meant to concrete, to the blandness of man, that is something I can do without.

In time it will be finished, it will be over. A sign gets put up with a phone number. A hollowed out block built for no one in particular, built in the hopes that someone somewhere loves ugly and wants to pay for it. Spending their days in cinder blocks and smoke, thinking about their families in an attempt to stay sane, motivated, useful. Weeks will go by, months, the sign remains, and I won't weep for humanity like I used to.

Spots

On the inside of the heel of every left shoe in my closet there is a dry spot of blood. Some spots are larger than others but it is always there. The only logical conclusion I can reach is that my left foot is slightly larger than my right. How else could you explain it? That with every footwear purchase I know there will come a time when my skin rubs up and down against the fabric, the cotton or leather or suede, and peel away, and cause me to walk irregularly in hopes that I might minimize the pain. How else could you explain that my right foot is fine, always? That those shoes are free from matching blood stains. And if my left foot is slightly larger than my right, where does it end? My fingers, nostrils, ears. The lines of my jaw don't seem as symmetrical as they once did, my tongue feels uneven in my mouth. And then I think perhaps that it isn't my left foot that's larger, but my right foot that's smaller. Stunted, a runt, and it almost makes me grateful. Because I have a lot of shoes, and I have rubbed off a lot of skin, and I have lost a lot of blood.

I Can't Keep Going

I can't keep going if you keep hurting me. It seems the only time it feels OK is when I've stopped, and even then it's not real. Like a body that's gotten used to a blade inside, everything is fine until the blade is moved. And so I try to keep going. But when I do you're there to remind me, to bleed me, to slow me down.

Honestly with these new shoes, am I right?!?

This message was brought to you by most terrible solo performances.

Silver Lake

I tell her I'm visiting and I don't hear anything back. I want to start in a foundation of honesty, I tell her. I never come across that well unspoken, my words are meant to be heard. Maybe I'm like Shakespeare in that way.

And he never heard from her again, I write after a half hour or so. She sends me a picture, some evil blonde queen giving a grin that is either sexy or, well, evil. Maybe both. What does that mean, I ask. What does what mean, she says. I have time for this game but that doesn't mean I want to play.

Four hours later and I'm asleep and my phone vibrates. Hmm what, my friend says, it wakes him up. Nothing, I say. I check and it's her and it's the same picture. Just some girl I was talking to.

Go, he says.

But—

Go now. So I put on my jeans and a clean T-shirt and I walk out to the curb.

Where are you, I ask. Five, ten, twenty minute go by. I start walking. I'm in Silver Lake and it says you're a mile away, that true? Five, ten, twenty. I want to stop for a drink but no place is open. People have jobs and schedules and lives, they don't have time to walk around waiting for a stranger to talk to them. I do. Doesn't mean I want to, but I do it all the same.

Big Sweater, Little Button

She wore large sweaters because they reminded her of her grandpa. In wrapping herself in the stale wool of a cardigan she felt his arms closing around her. Bringing her in, bringing her close, saying that she was his little button. It didn't matter how hot it was, she'd wear one and sweat and feel closer to him, she heard his voice again. And one day maybe someone would do something like that and think if her. That was nice.

8 AM

One of the long days, the ones where the sun rises twice. You know it's separate days, the second 8 AM, but it's still just one day, an extension, a marathon. You pace yourself with injections of coffee, a regular hophead, you've told yourself you'll cut back but you can never seem to find the time. It's just coffee, you say, and it's just sleep.

It's a day where the edges of your eyelids start to make themselves known, a sourness and a sting. You feel the presence of each eyelash, whatever minuscule follicle burrows its way into you. Things that are soft are softer and things that are hard hurt. But it's a day where, really, to sit anywhere, on anything, is to feel a comfort you've forgotten.

Where even the night is day. And you realize it's just a matter of one man's dictionary. And on the other side of you is someone saying hello to what you've just told goodbye. One man's dictionary is another man's thesaurus. The only reason words have meanings is because we say they do. Same with the day, the night, the coffee, and all the little things in between. Seems foolish to give anything up.

Connect the Dots

She asked, What's on your mind?

Mine's really not a mind on which I rest things. It's a sieve, it's an inlet, things fall through or they get swept up in the current. I stand at the edge and reach for thoughts, I grasp.

Wait, I think, that's what I can say. That's exactly what she wants to know.

It's a sieve, I say, an inlet. Things fall through, they get swept up in the current, they don't rest long enough to be in any one place for very long. I connect the dots too quickly. It's A and then it's Z before I know it.

We locked eyes and we stopped breathing. How often do you think that, she said. How often do you think about your thoughts.

That rested. She curled up next to me. Probably too much.

Stall

I wake up and hear you in the hall and hold my bladder. I'm listening to your routine, I can picture you there by the chair, and I know if I go to the bathroom everything will start up again. Comforter on the floor, sheet half-covering my half-naked body. Stale water, filled with bubbles, waiting to be thrown out. I can't look at the water, it's getting too hard to hold in, I hear you go to the bathroom and it's even worse. You come out and pace; footsteps, pause, footsteps, pause. You're stalling. You're hoping I come out, that we do start up again, that we finish it, that we don't go through another day rotting in our self-imposed righteousness. But we're both too stubborn for our own good, and I'd rather wet the bed than say you're right right now. If I take enough deep breaths maybe my body will forget what it wants to do. If I take enough deep breaths maybe I'll fall back asleep and dream about a better version of us. One of those dreams that you could swear was real. And by the time you get home it won't have mattered who said what.

Tunnels and Trails

She was smart but she was stubborn and I've never known a woman who was anything else. I wanted her to go away with me and she said no. That was her exercising both parts of herself. I'm not a fool and I'm not a joke, I'm not aggressive or abusive. I'm what previous generations of entitled men would call a "good guy." But it doesn't matter how good you think you are, you're wrong. Hold your breath and shut your mouth. You, my friend, are wrong. And it's OK to be wrong. As long as you try to be better.

I told her to pick any place in the world, any country, any city and we'll go there. It was crazy cause she said, she wouldn't do it. We'll pack light, we'll book one way tickets and wear hats and drink wine and befriend locals and make our way through tunnels and trails and maybe we'll even stay there forever. Wherever there is. Because wherever there is, I'm thinking it's got a lot going for it. More than here anyway.

But that's her stubbornness. She knew there was a lot going for it. Maybe a little too much. Maybe too much to go there and realize she might not ever want to come back. That maybe she was wasting her time with fools and jokes. And maybe it was a little too much to realize right now. The seas would always be there, they would grow if anything. The land on either side, though shrinking, would be there for a very long time. She could go there later. She didn't need me. And I guess I didn't need her. But as a good guy it doesn't really matter.