What Eyes Are For

I said I hadn't been sleeping well and she said neither had she. I could see her looking at me even though I wasn't looking at her. And I turned to her and she looked away. But I could still feel her looking, us looking at each other. I knew we were there together. I knew that we were saying all the little things we could never say, I know what eyes are for. But when we spoke we chalked it up to heat and stress at work, we said our diets were to blame, we called it too much sugar. Put the screens and chips away and everything will be better, she said. I looked at her and there she was. Yeah, I said, we'll be fine.

Even More Special

People get married. People make meals. The Olympics happen ever couple of years. Dogs exist. Haircuts occur. People have bodies and they either take care of them or they don't. Life is hard and people work hard in it. Getting by can be a chore. Thriving can seem impassible. It isn't.

"Work was difficult today. Please send positive vibes and puppy pictures!" Go jump off a bridge.

Traveler

I keep a note in my wallet. It tells me not to do certain things, bad things, a helpful hint from my past to future self. Even though in truth it is my future self sent to my future self, because my past had been my future once and he knew that future would be repeated. A time traveler, able to go back and forth within my own disappointing ways. Stunned to hear the news and never eager to heed it, as if I didn't k know what I was talking about. As if it wasn't a doomed history lesson. I have the answer key, I know exactly how this goes and exactly what I must do to pass with flying colors. But I can't, I won't, and damn that man for even trying, whoever he is, or was.

White Light

It's enough when we're on our own. It's a lie, and I'll never know. But never is enough for me. I shouldn't care, because it shouldn't be, though I tried to be enough. And out of line, out of sight and mind, it's so light I cannot see.

The Midnight Note

I rolled over and jotted something down, I snickered at my cleverness. When I got up I checked the note to see what brilliance my mid-sleep work had fortuned me. Your name, and all around it little hearts with arrows shot through. And then the phrase "but not," followed by the most knowing and telling of phrases: "hahahahahahaha..."

Addict

My desk was crowded and mounted with papers. I looked up paper addiction and found it was real. Every day I added to it and pushed parts here and pieces there. I carved out places for my forearms, I built upwards.

A push too many one day and a landslide of pages. Newspapers and cab receipts, grocery lists and doodles, bills for this and that and the other, magazines I didn't and will never read. And as I stopped to pick them up I saw your name, etched faintly and finely into this fake wood. Every addiction starts as something we teach ourselves.

Advise

"You will have bad days," she told me. "You will have bad months. You will have bad years. You will have a bad life."

"Hey, wait a second!" I said as she walked away. "Get back here!"