One of my first shorts. A bit over the top, but..
Appeared in Epiphany Online
Appeared in Epiphany Online
I hate the sweetness. Hate the soft warmth that expands to my fingertips, wraps around me in false embrace. Burns in my gut. I hate the way my ambitions, my plans for life, for the year, even for the evening, dissipate with that hollow ringing that fills my head, starting behind the eyes and unfolding into my ears. I hate the way it leaves me with nothing but an aftertaste. Sickly sweet.
She never minded the drinking. Never minded at all. Instead she aided and abetted, wild threesomes of an entangled, tragic trio. Her, me, and the whiskey. Inexorably knotted together, staggering onward as one. Staggering nowhere.
There were brief moments of happiness. Sweet highs smothered by the lows.
Saturday mornings spent walking to and from the bakery, her soft hand in mine, our breath white mist before us. Sitting together at the park, her warmth under my arm as she pulled bits of poppy seed muffin with purple painted nails, tossed them to the birds. In the dark recesses of the night, sweet sweat across my brow and her arm across my chest as she breathed slow, deep whispers, “I love you.” Her words, interwoven like our legs, were substantial, solid, something I could stand upon without the fear of falling, failing.
But much like the whisky’s sallow, sweet embrace, those moments only lead to regret, a splitting head and bitter tongue. She always returned to him. The one with money, the one with charm. The one who was all the things that I am not.
She returned to him simply because he demanded it.
It would last a day. A week. Sometimes two. His attentions hard to hold, his affections based on convenience and control, he’d leave her spinning, desperate and disillusioned, grasping for something to fill her void.
Me.
The phone would ring, shatter the hollow depths of night when her loneliness waxed.
“Bradley?”
I should hang up.
“Bradley, I’m sorry. I fucked up. I know!”
Always sorry.
“Please, Brad. I need you. You are my rock. Please. ”
She knew I would crumble. She knew that my reticence was only a show, a façade of self-will and self-worth. She knew I would grab my jeans from the floor, come to her, sometimes shoeless in my hurry.
Always. Perpetuating the cycle.
Until now. This time, I made the stand, stood tall and firm. This time I took the first step, became a man who doesn’t need her softness, doesn’t need her blue eyes that smile even when her mouth does not. A man who doesn’t need anyone to make his life worthwhile. A man. Strong.
Sober.
I ignored her call. Let the phone ring; lay in the dark with a pillow over my head. A pillow that smelled faintly of her shampoo. Her shampoo and stale beer. Lay in the silence until her loud rap at my door. There she stood. On my porch, black hair across her pale forehead, across eyes red with regret. She crossed her bare arms in the chill, no jacket in January. Asked to come in. Pleaded.
Not this time.
My words echo in my head, my voice, sharp and strong. Above us. Between us. Cutting the cold air, protecting me, saving me as I shut the door.
Locked the handle and the deadbolt. Turned out the lights.
Now this dark empty apartment holds nothing but the sounds of traffic and my own breath. Sounds which cannot fill the space between white walls, between memories of better times, of shared secrets under the warmth of my down comforter, of coffee and a blueberry scone on a Sunday morning as we chatted at the table, knee to knee.
I remember our hushed whispers of escape, starting anew. I would quit the convenience store. Become something real, respectable. She would quit waitressing, go back to school. She always loved math. Was good at it. Why not math? An accountant, maybe? We would become real people, with real lives. Healthy lives. A well intentioned future in our idle musings, a ‘forever together’ we built one conversation at a time.
Or at least I built.
The phone rings.
I will not be useless. Resolve tastes like bile. Answering invites only defeat, opens the door to a return to something less than a man. I will not allow that. Cannot allow that.
It rings again, expands to fill the empty apartment and my hollow head. Accelerates my heartbeat. My breath.
No.
It rings.
The bottle by the phone, centered on a scratched oak table. Half empty or half full? Something you want so badly that you can taste it on the tip of your tongue, smell it faintly with each breath, sits before you. But you know that to relinquish control to this desire results in nothing but a burning stomach and sleepless night of reliving false memories, and illusionary could-have-beens.
No more.
Still, it rings.
I’m half empty and a total fool. She wants me. I have no choice, I never did.
If I could find my car keys, I would go. Are they buried in the heap of yesterday's clothes, cigarettes and empty beer cans? Lumped in the corner under a damp towel and an empty bottle of red wine? I need a maid, or to be made. Made to clean up. But cleanliness is next to Godliness, and I'm better bellying up to the bar beside a more nefarious character. No white clothes and chorus of angels here. More black leather and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Something tells me that the devil likes Lynyrd Skynyrd. Southern Fried Satan.
Headlights split across the giant crack in my windshield. I hate night driving. My eyes cannot adjust to those brief flashes of bright illumination. My ancient jeep wanders on slick roads, unsure, back and forth in a steady weave. Streets slide by without my conscious recognition; white knuckles steer, follow a pattern so often used that consciousness is not necessary. My patterns are too easy to follow, my concrete resolve no more substantial then the snow across the windshield. A few well worn words and that resolve is shed like a woolen blanket in a night suddenly turned warm, drenched arms flinging back what was heavy and oppressive across the chest.
She loves me. One more time of “One last time”!
This time my life of day dreams, built one moment at a time, while on the bus or in the grocery store, or walking home in the biting rain at midnight, this time these visions of perfection will coalesce like dew on a peach on an early fall morning, and like that peach, the sweetness will be worth the wait, the stifling hot months, uncomfortable moments. How much of my own self do I believe?
Does it matter?
Her wooden door needs painted, cold and rough under my rapping knuckle. My feet seem out of place, worn brown boots against pure white snow. Please don't answer the door!
Soft light and warmth break into the beautiful harshness of the frigid night, welcome me with open arms. She swallows me, pulls me close. Her heat, her scent, her being, overwhelm, my arms want nothing more then to hold her. Feel her. Inhale the sweetness.
She opens her mouth and I fall into the abyss. Rose colored lips frame the blackness, the void. No light escapes as her delicate fingers flutter across my back, and a great sadness, a helplessness, becomes me. I need more, I need less. I need all the things I dream about at night, buried under my worn blanket.
Trembling fingers brush across the smooth perfection of her naked skin. My lips graze her neck, her breast, the soft skin of her belly. Amazing what shape and texture can do to the human mind and spirit, how it fuels the longing, the desire. This hunger owns me, narrows into a razor sharp point, becomes the frenzy, the flesh, the slick sweat and sharp fingernails. Oblivion never felt so good.
But the euphoria fades, leaves me with nothing but that faint sweet taste on the tip of my tongue.
She lies, motionless. Although her body radiates heat, and my chest is slick with our intermingled sweat, my hand trembles, barely contained energy and emotion. And dread. She notices nothing, not now, not ever. The green ceiling fills the space before my eyes as she talks at me.
Conversation is not necessarily communication. Her words provide no comfort, no hint of the answers which could relieve the pressure of regret that stretches taut across my skin, builds behind my temples, ready to burst. Answers needed in a desperation that escapes my eyes, derails her train of thought, her post coital chatter, just for a moment.
Allows me an opening.
“We need to talk, ok? I … I just can’t take this back and forth. You know that. I need to know. Are you finished with him? … Seriously ... Finished ... 100% …. Are we now together? ..100%. .. Forever? … Promise! “ Each phrase separated by an emphatic pause, as if this solemn spoken slowness will finally make her see, make her understand the finality of the situation.
She sighs, the only sound outside of the heartbeat in my ears. “Promise? I don’t know. I … don’t know.“ Blue eye look away, refuse to meet mine, stare at her fingers twirling the unraveling thread of her comforter. “I’m not promising anything. It’s not that I don’t love you, I do. You know that. It’s just that I’m not sure what I’m doing. I’m just…, well, it’s just … I’m so confused.” She inhales, killing me in the space between her breaths. Sighs. “I just wanted to see you again, that’s all. I can’t promise anything right now.” Her options left open, leaving me none.
“I understand.” Barely above a whisper, more an exhalation over dry lips than intentional words. She lays her head on my chest, her breath warm across my skin. I am prone, but not relaxed, instead restless and uneasy.
“I miss this. I really do.” She says, takes a drink from the bottle. Holds it out. For me.
The phone rings.
Amazing how the briefest facial expression, tiny changes of the lines around her eyes, communicates what the years hadn't. It’s not that I have again gone from loved to discounted and discarded. It’s that I have never been anything else but, despite her words and my beliefs to the contrary. I have never counted. Have never mattered.
I won't ask who is calling. I already know. She rolls away, wrapping the blankets about her as she sprints to the phone, abandoning me to the chill of the night.
Perhaps he has changed his mind.
Love is not blind, it chooses to ignore, tucks the reality away in the recess of subconscious where it can never be seen in full view, just taunting glimpses that can never quite be grasped or focused on, but whose shadows remain. I hate myself for coming, for perpetuating this mistake, this misery, for reinforcing the disappointment and disillusionment, this poor opinion of me that we both share.
Anger can be calm. A tense, calculated calm, like the slow deliberate rise from the bed, wordless void crushing the air out of my lungs. Love is not calm, but Love is forever.
And Rage is now.
The long buried impulse, always lurking, always threatening, now manifested in one frantic moment, rips the phone from her hands, from the wall, through the window, shattering glass in giant shards, some which remain unmoved in the battered, wooden window frame, hanging, reaching inward, the giant teeth of an angry maw. As the cold invades through jagged edges, our wild, scared eyes meet in a question. She finally sees me. And knows what I need. My answer, my solution, my closure and completeness.
Her eyes widen, see my hand, a fist, clenched, trembling.
The frozen hills surround me. The broken muffler bellows like a chainsaw cutting virgin timber, violates the snow silence of the empty valley, a belligerent scream. “I am here! I am alive, my stench and very presence cuts the peacefulness and fouls the air.” The ancient suspension moans and the engine wails like the soon to be following sirens. Snow blows across the windshield in crystalline splashes, and my slick hands slip around the wheel, the road lost in white haze and alcohol. A rapidly approaching tree reaches out and tosses my Cruiser to the side, a crumpled toy, spilling me across the snow.
A stick can be broken like a neck. A crack, a snap. The stain from the bark which takes forever to wash off in this accusingly cold stream. Air may be cold, but water sucks the heat out of you in an instant. One moment you’re warm by the fire, the next you’re an empty naked soul on a lifeless stream bank at midnight, arms spread wide as all the warmth drains from your body to violate the white snow in scarlet rivulets which stain and freeze.
I hate myself. I have always hated myself. Maybe that's why I sought the solace of a beautiful girl. To validate myself. Make the me worthwhile. To shout to the world,
"See, I must be worth something for such an exquisite creature to deem me worthy! See!"
And I hate myself for punching nothing but a wall, for breaking nothing but myself.
For still loving her.
She never minded the drinking. Never minded at all. Instead she aided and abetted, wild threesomes of an entangled, tragic trio. Her, me, and the whiskey. Inexorably knotted together, staggering onward as one. Staggering nowhere.
There were brief moments of happiness. Sweet highs smothered by the lows.
Saturday mornings spent walking to and from the bakery, her soft hand in mine, our breath white mist before us. Sitting together at the park, her warmth under my arm as she pulled bits of poppy seed muffin with purple painted nails, tossed them to the birds. In the dark recesses of the night, sweet sweat across my brow and her arm across my chest as she breathed slow, deep whispers, “I love you.” Her words, interwoven like our legs, were substantial, solid, something I could stand upon without the fear of falling, failing.
But much like the whisky’s sallow, sweet embrace, those moments only lead to regret, a splitting head and bitter tongue. She always returned to him. The one with money, the one with charm. The one who was all the things that I am not.
She returned to him simply because he demanded it.
It would last a day. A week. Sometimes two. His attentions hard to hold, his affections based on convenience and control, he’d leave her spinning, desperate and disillusioned, grasping for something to fill her void.
Me.
The phone would ring, shatter the hollow depths of night when her loneliness waxed.
“Bradley?”
I should hang up.
“Bradley, I’m sorry. I fucked up. I know!”
Always sorry.
“Please, Brad. I need you. You are my rock. Please. ”
She knew I would crumble. She knew that my reticence was only a show, a façade of self-will and self-worth. She knew I would grab my jeans from the floor, come to her, sometimes shoeless in my hurry.
Always. Perpetuating the cycle.
Until now. This time, I made the stand, stood tall and firm. This time I took the first step, became a man who doesn’t need her softness, doesn’t need her blue eyes that smile even when her mouth does not. A man who doesn’t need anyone to make his life worthwhile. A man. Strong.
Sober.
I ignored her call. Let the phone ring; lay in the dark with a pillow over my head. A pillow that smelled faintly of her shampoo. Her shampoo and stale beer. Lay in the silence until her loud rap at my door. There she stood. On my porch, black hair across her pale forehead, across eyes red with regret. She crossed her bare arms in the chill, no jacket in January. Asked to come in. Pleaded.
Not this time.
My words echo in my head, my voice, sharp and strong. Above us. Between us. Cutting the cold air, protecting me, saving me as I shut the door.
Locked the handle and the deadbolt. Turned out the lights.
Now this dark empty apartment holds nothing but the sounds of traffic and my own breath. Sounds which cannot fill the space between white walls, between memories of better times, of shared secrets under the warmth of my down comforter, of coffee and a blueberry scone on a Sunday morning as we chatted at the table, knee to knee.
I remember our hushed whispers of escape, starting anew. I would quit the convenience store. Become something real, respectable. She would quit waitressing, go back to school. She always loved math. Was good at it. Why not math? An accountant, maybe? We would become real people, with real lives. Healthy lives. A well intentioned future in our idle musings, a ‘forever together’ we built one conversation at a time.
Or at least I built.
The phone rings.
I will not be useless. Resolve tastes like bile. Answering invites only defeat, opens the door to a return to something less than a man. I will not allow that. Cannot allow that.
It rings again, expands to fill the empty apartment and my hollow head. Accelerates my heartbeat. My breath.
No.
It rings.
The bottle by the phone, centered on a scratched oak table. Half empty or half full? Something you want so badly that you can taste it on the tip of your tongue, smell it faintly with each breath, sits before you. But you know that to relinquish control to this desire results in nothing but a burning stomach and sleepless night of reliving false memories, and illusionary could-have-beens.
No more.
Still, it rings.
I’m half empty and a total fool. She wants me. I have no choice, I never did.
If I could find my car keys, I would go. Are they buried in the heap of yesterday's clothes, cigarettes and empty beer cans? Lumped in the corner under a damp towel and an empty bottle of red wine? I need a maid, or to be made. Made to clean up. But cleanliness is next to Godliness, and I'm better bellying up to the bar beside a more nefarious character. No white clothes and chorus of angels here. More black leather and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Something tells me that the devil likes Lynyrd Skynyrd. Southern Fried Satan.
Headlights split across the giant crack in my windshield. I hate night driving. My eyes cannot adjust to those brief flashes of bright illumination. My ancient jeep wanders on slick roads, unsure, back and forth in a steady weave. Streets slide by without my conscious recognition; white knuckles steer, follow a pattern so often used that consciousness is not necessary. My patterns are too easy to follow, my concrete resolve no more substantial then the snow across the windshield. A few well worn words and that resolve is shed like a woolen blanket in a night suddenly turned warm, drenched arms flinging back what was heavy and oppressive across the chest.
She loves me. One more time of “One last time”!
This time my life of day dreams, built one moment at a time, while on the bus or in the grocery store, or walking home in the biting rain at midnight, this time these visions of perfection will coalesce like dew on a peach on an early fall morning, and like that peach, the sweetness will be worth the wait, the stifling hot months, uncomfortable moments. How much of my own self do I believe?
Does it matter?
Her wooden door needs painted, cold and rough under my rapping knuckle. My feet seem out of place, worn brown boots against pure white snow. Please don't answer the door!
Soft light and warmth break into the beautiful harshness of the frigid night, welcome me with open arms. She swallows me, pulls me close. Her heat, her scent, her being, overwhelm, my arms want nothing more then to hold her. Feel her. Inhale the sweetness.
She opens her mouth and I fall into the abyss. Rose colored lips frame the blackness, the void. No light escapes as her delicate fingers flutter across my back, and a great sadness, a helplessness, becomes me. I need more, I need less. I need all the things I dream about at night, buried under my worn blanket.
Trembling fingers brush across the smooth perfection of her naked skin. My lips graze her neck, her breast, the soft skin of her belly. Amazing what shape and texture can do to the human mind and spirit, how it fuels the longing, the desire. This hunger owns me, narrows into a razor sharp point, becomes the frenzy, the flesh, the slick sweat and sharp fingernails. Oblivion never felt so good.
But the euphoria fades, leaves me with nothing but that faint sweet taste on the tip of my tongue.
She lies, motionless. Although her body radiates heat, and my chest is slick with our intermingled sweat, my hand trembles, barely contained energy and emotion. And dread. She notices nothing, not now, not ever. The green ceiling fills the space before my eyes as she talks at me.
Conversation is not necessarily communication. Her words provide no comfort, no hint of the answers which could relieve the pressure of regret that stretches taut across my skin, builds behind my temples, ready to burst. Answers needed in a desperation that escapes my eyes, derails her train of thought, her post coital chatter, just for a moment.
Allows me an opening.
“We need to talk, ok? I … I just can’t take this back and forth. You know that. I need to know. Are you finished with him? … Seriously ... Finished ... 100% …. Are we now together? ..100%. .. Forever? … Promise! “ Each phrase separated by an emphatic pause, as if this solemn spoken slowness will finally make her see, make her understand the finality of the situation.
She sighs, the only sound outside of the heartbeat in my ears. “Promise? I don’t know. I … don’t know.“ Blue eye look away, refuse to meet mine, stare at her fingers twirling the unraveling thread of her comforter. “I’m not promising anything. It’s not that I don’t love you, I do. You know that. It’s just that I’m not sure what I’m doing. I’m just…, well, it’s just … I’m so confused.” She inhales, killing me in the space between her breaths. Sighs. “I just wanted to see you again, that’s all. I can’t promise anything right now.” Her options left open, leaving me none.
“I understand.” Barely above a whisper, more an exhalation over dry lips than intentional words. She lays her head on my chest, her breath warm across my skin. I am prone, but not relaxed, instead restless and uneasy.
“I miss this. I really do.” She says, takes a drink from the bottle. Holds it out. For me.
The phone rings.
Amazing how the briefest facial expression, tiny changes of the lines around her eyes, communicates what the years hadn't. It’s not that I have again gone from loved to discounted and discarded. It’s that I have never been anything else but, despite her words and my beliefs to the contrary. I have never counted. Have never mattered.
I won't ask who is calling. I already know. She rolls away, wrapping the blankets about her as she sprints to the phone, abandoning me to the chill of the night.
Perhaps he has changed his mind.
Love is not blind, it chooses to ignore, tucks the reality away in the recess of subconscious where it can never be seen in full view, just taunting glimpses that can never quite be grasped or focused on, but whose shadows remain. I hate myself for coming, for perpetuating this mistake, this misery, for reinforcing the disappointment and disillusionment, this poor opinion of me that we both share.
Anger can be calm. A tense, calculated calm, like the slow deliberate rise from the bed, wordless void crushing the air out of my lungs. Love is not calm, but Love is forever.
And Rage is now.
The long buried impulse, always lurking, always threatening, now manifested in one frantic moment, rips the phone from her hands, from the wall, through the window, shattering glass in giant shards, some which remain unmoved in the battered, wooden window frame, hanging, reaching inward, the giant teeth of an angry maw. As the cold invades through jagged edges, our wild, scared eyes meet in a question. She finally sees me. And knows what I need. My answer, my solution, my closure and completeness.
Her eyes widen, see my hand, a fist, clenched, trembling.
The frozen hills surround me. The broken muffler bellows like a chainsaw cutting virgin timber, violates the snow silence of the empty valley, a belligerent scream. “I am here! I am alive, my stench and very presence cuts the peacefulness and fouls the air.” The ancient suspension moans and the engine wails like the soon to be following sirens. Snow blows across the windshield in crystalline splashes, and my slick hands slip around the wheel, the road lost in white haze and alcohol. A rapidly approaching tree reaches out and tosses my Cruiser to the side, a crumpled toy, spilling me across the snow.
A stick can be broken like a neck. A crack, a snap. The stain from the bark which takes forever to wash off in this accusingly cold stream. Air may be cold, but water sucks the heat out of you in an instant. One moment you’re warm by the fire, the next you’re an empty naked soul on a lifeless stream bank at midnight, arms spread wide as all the warmth drains from your body to violate the white snow in scarlet rivulets which stain and freeze.
I hate myself. I have always hated myself. Maybe that's why I sought the solace of a beautiful girl. To validate myself. Make the me worthwhile. To shout to the world,
"See, I must be worth something for such an exquisite creature to deem me worthy! See!"
And I hate myself for punching nothing but a wall, for breaking nothing but myself.
For still loving her.
