Dinner

It didn't feel like half a bottle but what do I know about wine? Needs more salt, she said, so I got it for her. I got a look when I set down a big boue container and not an elegant shaker. It shakes all the same doesn't it? I shake. She's right, it's better with more salt. But that's what she's for. I don't make dinner, I make mistakes.

Day's Worth

She flags the bus. Chai tea and a big scarf, baseball cap, a day for errands. She rests on a seat, a crumpled daily rag, reads of crosswords and obscene amounts of money. People giving advice, trying too hard to be funny and failing.

She'll take the bus to the store, the other store, to get groceries and more hangers. An unwashed yesterday resting underneath her cap. She'll get asked for money and she'll tell the truth. She has somewhere to be.

Home, later, wine and a bath. Was that an entire day that went by? Was that a day's worth? Careful not to get too pruney she gets out in an hour. Curls up with a book and glass and enjoys getting clean at the end.

Lifeblood

I walk down the stairs. It feels like the hall between the lockers and the pool. I say get me a drink and I go to the bathroom. On the dirty floor there is a small pool of blood and I slip on it. Even though it's never happened I don't think anything of it.

A man in a fleece vest stares at me. There are a lot of men here in fleece vests. He has short hair, they have short hair, they have plaid shirts and undershirts and 401ks. Light beers are their lifeblood.

I'm at my table, there's a bowl of popcorn. "I need a donut and two Gatorades" another girl says. It's 10:30.

The night is like any other. He gets a cab home, gets out with me, says something about walking me to the door and walking home when I question him. I don't know where he lives. I never will.

Strange Feelings

Can I brush my teeth, she asks, and I say, of course, everything's where it usually is. I hand her a towel to wash her face and she smiles because she doesn't have to ask. I hear the faucet and get a glass of water.

She climbs in, feet cold, she rests them on me and I shiver. She laughs. Everyone will be warm in bed soon enough. I rest one arm under my head, another over her. I know I'll wake in pain, various numb muscles and strange feelings. This feeling, though, it's the strangest yet.

Benevolent Dictate Her

You wanted to wear those sweatpants last night, but I said no. So tonight, in my benevolence, I grant you permission to wear them. Congratulations, you are so sweet! Now, may I please stay the night?

Least

I waited behind the curtain, a knock on the pane and still as death. She would scream, I knew, she would be so frightened. But I would be there to hug, and to laugh, and to say it was all okay. It's the least I could do.

Grace

It's all fine up until the actual eating. I sit down before the spread, the hours of planning and preparation, the chopping and the coupon cutting. I pour the water, I pour the wine. I say grace because that's what I was raised to do.

But we're not thankful for the blessings we've received. I am thankful for the blessing I've received. And it's a small bit sad distinction I didn't see until then. And the meal looks good, but not great, and the table looks so small. I wipe my tears with my paper napkin, and I leave the water and drink the wine.

Fragment

So I wake back up, attached to my desk with drool, and continue cooking. The steps from the office to the kitchen are few and terrible, and every light in the house is on. Usually this artificial keeps me up, but a bottle of wine can turn your many tables.

There are carrots and onions and celeries, fragments of wholes, chopped decently and with care. Bread lays out, drying. Salt and pepper, broth and an empty bottle. It almost looks as though I know what I'm doing. If you can read, you can cook, my grandmother told me. So maybe my culinary literacy is somewhere around the fourth grade.

I take up the knife, bad idea and I've got plenty. Things are still out of focus, I'm still packing this drool. The handle is slippery, a slight coating of butter, and what's to keep it from going across my wrist? What's to keep this sink from being my dying pool? Why did it take me so long to see the dark side of a holiday?

Things can't really wait 'til morning but I let them. Hunger will have to wait, like it usually does. I go back to my drooled desk and bring one more light into my eyes. I don't use this time for sleep. I'll spool slowly out activities that should take seconds, fill my hours with them, wait and regret and pick up the knife. But I'll eat, eventually. I always do.

French

He asked me to remember him, but to forget him if it was too much trouble. That alone's enough to stick someone in my mind. So there he sat, taking up not too much space, replaying over and over how it was just fine to forget him. It wasn't a task. It was all too easy.

Nite

French fries and champagne, pool cues and caviar. We got high and we got low before the crowd dispersed. Dancing and drugs and back room antics, we get together and we feel young. Morning comes and painfully we remember. Years don't just go by, they get added on. Thrown on top of your shoulders, one by one, until you're carrying your entire life with you wherever you go.

Prayer for Sleep

A sudden light hits me, she's putting on lotion and waking me up. Talks about her new makeup irritating her, and she knows a little about irritation. I was supposed to be awake anyway, grunting through the story of her day. She smells like flowers now, whatever lotion smells like, like a woman. I'm just glad I don't have to smell me, and I feel a little bad that she does. I could take better care of myself.

I ask her something and she holds up a finger. I wait. She was praying, sending good and beautiful thoughts out into the world. For peace, for love. I haven't prayed since I was a kid and it was never for any kind of world peace. I know too much now to do anything like that. But she falls right to sleep, and me, I'm awake.

Marking

Mandy marked it for the rest of us, went through the motions so we knew what was what. You could tell her heart wasn't really in it, and that's just fine, it doesn't matter when you're marking. So we watched and got a pretty good idea, and then we tried it ourselves. We didn't do it that good, I guess I wasn't so surprised. We only had one example to go on, wasn't even anything all that real. We had to make up most of it, the bones were there, the skin and flesh and sinew, that was us. People looked at us and laughed, but we, we weren't that skilled enough to laugh out at ourselves.

Cavorters

Started at the bottom now we're here, still at the bottom, looking up people dancing around and singing and eating and drinking and cavorting, the cavorters. No one brought us up, no one helped and no one asked. We thought that if we worked together that would be enough, hard work and sweat and elbow grease and determination. But you can work and work and never get a word in edgewise, speak your mind and never get ahead. And up there, over there beyond the darkness, you can see that it exists. But you're here, you were, and are, and will be.

Bitch About It

"You're kinda awesome, you know that right?"

"I do!" I said. "Thank you!"

"Oh..." He didn't like that.

"What?"

"I mean, you don't have to be a bitch about it."

Women are so beautiful until they agree with you.

Skin of Teeth

We'd get Belgian frites and extra dipping sauces, paper cones bleeding through with oil. A late night addition to a fine establishment, plenty of characters and drunken fools, plenty of fingers to be licked.  A good spot to soak up a good night's badness.

We'd get the potatoes and walk around forgetting who we were, cold nights and hot opinions. Laughing, laughing, chomping lightly, watching breath escape from us. Money well spent for once, though at that hour and under those conditions there was little that seemed like unimportant purchases.

We'd always said we'd be this way. Make enough to just get by, skin of teeth and the like. Sleeping on mattresses and dirty laundry, late notices and late mornings. Crisp and hot and creamy inside, a snack on the way back to our abode, humble as ever. Yes, we were artists and kings and queens and all of those things. Most of all though, we were hungry.

Iron

The iron sits at the top of my closet, waiting to flatten my toe. I can see it there, dripping and still hot, cord dangling from its loose placement on the handle. In the grabbing of a sweater or a pair of pants I will knock it just enough to send it tumbling down. My reflexes, good though once they were, will not be enough to save my skin and nail. I will be crushed and burned beneath the iron, as warm and creased as a Sunday shirt.

Chance Encounter

Chance is many things, but above all he is the kind of man who wears sunglasses on the back of his neck and that's all you really have to know about him. The glasses come with the emblem of a fine Italian sports automobile. Desire invites you to look at the sun until you bleed. Prego!

His faded rose-colored shorts and his boat shoes and his boats, Chance is a guy who's had the same haircut since middle school. He remembers the first time he ever pushed a kid into a locker and called him faggot like it was yesterday. Chance yearns for simpler times and if he stays simple he just might get them.

Are you going to call the Uber? Because Chance called the Uber last time and he always fucking calls the Uber. If he's going to call it again you're gonna get shots, and he gets first dibs at the bar. Yeah, that's what he fucking thought.

Chance doesn't get what the big deal is with the Redskins' name anyway.

He likes to chill and work out, take off his shirt and take some selfies with his shirt off. He works hard! He drinks beers! He calls you a fucking pussy! But it's all in good fun until somebody sticks their hand down their pants and adjusts their crotch right in front of your face while you're sitting on the couch. Can you not see someone sitting here, Chance?

Chance cheats on his girlfriend but is trying to stop, he's been really good about it lately. He would never dream of letting her go. She's super hot and does yoga which means she wears a lot of yoga pants and I mean come on. Plus she puts out a lot even when she's really tired because he loves her that much.

He also loves backwards caps.

If you see a car that looks nicer than your dad's, it's probably Chance's. If you hear music you used to hate in high school, it's probably Chance's. If you die a little inside every time someone holds up a fish or a dead animal or shoots a beer bottle, those dead feelings fly through the air and land on Chance's soft dumb dick. Your hatred only makes him stronger. Your insults only curl his grin. Your logic and your reason and your rights only get blown to smithereens in a body-sprayed minefield of water bottles filled with chaw spit.

Jeremiah

It was a nightmare, whatever it was, and I woke up to screeching. "What was that?" she said, I said go back to sleep.

A frantic scrambling somewhere outside my door. Glue traps are vile, evil things, but sometimes you just don't care. The rat would move, and pause, and try to move again. If I could only get back in that hole, I'm sure he was thinking, I'd never come back here again. At least he wasn't shrieking.

Shuffle shuffle shuffle. Silence. Shuffle shuffle for dear life. I've seen those things, they're sticky buggers, they don't let go, you're there for good. How desperate would you have to be to gnaw off your own limb?

One last effort and then it gave up or died or chewed its way to freedom. Back in the bedroom she was scared and I said what for. "Do you think Jeremiah will be okay?" Get a glue trap, get a name. I'd call that an even trade for vermin.

Dirt

As I stand here looking down, I remember when I dropped that first fist of dirt. I thought it would make a louder sound, I thought I would at least hear it in my soul. But it only sounded like light and simple earth. It really is dust to dust, and every weight is one you add yourself.

Almost There

Waiting at the bar, bar of blazers, bar of bros, bar of bothers and light fingers pushing on my lower back. Excuse me, excuse me, move move move. Don't you see I'm moving in my own small way? Don't you know I'd never move for you?

I dodge a pool cue. Sorry, he's sorry, I guess I'm sorry, too. What am I doing here? Seems I wait a lot in places like this, wait for people who never show and sometimes don't even when they do. I feel my voice leaving before I speak, I feel the sweat of sitting. And somehow, dammit, I am always with a bag.

Are you coming, are you coming, I am almost there. And how much time, I wonder, how much time have I spent in places such as this while everyone is somewhere else.

The Truth

"What should I say?" I asked. "What do I tell him?"

"Tell him..." But she was at a loss, too. "Tell him that everything will be all right."

I walked over and tucked my son into bed. He looked up, the end of tears. And after a moment I said, "Good night." Kissed his forehead. Turned off the light.

I turned to her and she understood. I don't know if it will be all right, but there will be a tomorrow. I cannot bear to tell him anything other than truth. Not now.

Plunge

It isn't the deep breath before the plunge, but the deep breath after. When you finally decide you can stand it. But whether your head's above water or you're still far beneath it, that's for you to decide. Breathing only goes so far, if you don't fight to stay alive.

Hate

If anything, hate is just as powerful as love. It's quite possibly more powerful. But it will always be second to fear. Fear, the child of ignorance; ignorance, the lover of apathy; apathy, the easiest thing since sliced bread. It feels good, it tastes good. Until you chip a tooth, and your skeleton crumbles like dominos.

King of the Mountain

Dragged to the top of a mountain of dung, flies swarming, comical cartoon stink lines pulsating like mutated sunbeams. The horrid thock thock of bare white socks in slop, the buzzing of the insects, the white noise of a lie, the cacophony of failure. Covered in muck and mired in misery, but damn does it feel good to be the king.

Oil Lamp

I have an oil lamp that sits atop my bookshelf. It was my mother's, her mother's before her, I think. I found it in a closet next to wicker baskets and old jackets and decided I'd take it. Mother said to get a special kind of oil so I could burn it in the house. I asked the hardware man and he said, You really planning on using that thing?

When it gets dark and I'm here on my own, I light the oil lamp on my bookshelf. The oil slicks my fingers and the smoke has stained my walls. This was how people got light inside, light the wick and twist the knob and let it grow, let it fill the room. It smells like work and history, and I'm only slightly worried my house will burn down.

Do I use it? I light it. That's use, I think, to me. Does it light my way? Up the stairs or late at night? Not really. But it sits there and adds a story, adds to mine, and I bet in fifty years it could still be working, sitting on shelves and lighting up rooms.

Heal

They told me to remember and I always did. They told me never forget, I worked hard not to, I took vitamins. They told me to forgive. I said that's where I draw the line. They said it was the most important part, for all involved, we all would feel much better. I don't care about feeling better, I said. Time heals. I do not.

Behavior

When there was enough for me I didn't take it. I didn't say a word, didn't speak up, made no moves and made no ripples. I was a good boy, I was well-behaved. I was, as Mother often said, as good as I was handsome. And even though she was my mother she was honest, sometimes far too much.

There was enough for me and I didn't take it. I could have had my fill, we all could have. But I was nice, and good, and looked too much in the mirror. And when everything was gone I said, "But what about me?"

History Is

History is a broken bottles, thousands of them, confiscation and hidden champagne. Smoke after smoke after marijuana smoke. History is high fives, the ones with strangers, the ones that hurt. People on rooftops and perched on slow cars. History is traffic but nobody cares, horns blaring, music blaring, everything is set to blaring. A rambunctious choir of joyful drunks. History is a team, one that everybody's on, people you'll never meet and meet once and never meet again. Smiles and salutes and cheers and songs. History is years of waiting, years of crying, years of living with your heart in your throat and a rock in your gut. And then the moment comes when everything goes away, you open up, everything is let go and everything comes back. History is a relief.

Sweatshirt

She stood in an oversized sweatshirt, hanging slightly off her shoulders, sucking lightly on her finger, hair strands curled on her face. It was a wonder, to him, that anyone would ever want to wear his sweatshirt. He had seen women do it in the movies, he bought sweats in pure hope. It doesn't come in a tuxedo or a sports car, it isn't adorned with makeup or perfume, it isn't the money spent or the countries traveled. Because while those all may help a bit, nothing holds the power of a sweatshirt.

Transition

Orange turned to red, cobwebs to snow, black cats and witches to Santas and Christ Childs. Never had I seen such a difference in days, a transition into midnight. I wanted to be scared, I was still in that spooky mood, I wasn't ready to let go of the terror. And yet all around me: cheer, wonder, hope, joy. It's only so long you can sneer at a world like that before you think, What have I got to be so gloomy about?