– It was a kiss that saved her life. She would have never imagined such a thing was possible. There are few who would admit to believing in such a thing occurring. But it did. It did save her life. And it was a kiss, in some way. This light we have to see by is always shifting, as is the slippery nature of names. Such that when she was given this kiss, she would not have identified it as such. But he did. When he placed it in her palm and gently bent her fingers over it. He looked […]
– She was pregnant, at least, that’s what she said in the message she left you. Your immediate response, logically, was to add up the weeks since you last saw her, or more accurately, since you last copulated. She was the one who would always use euphemisms. She always hoped you would ‘make love,’ ‘dance in the sheets,’ ‘dance in the nude,’ or ‘join your bodies as one.’ To you, it was always just sex. Sometimes you wanted her more, sometimes you wanted her less. Sex, you always wanted about the same. You’d humor her. When she’d call it making […]
– She was bored, or tired of so much company. It had been several months and she wanted what she had started with. She liked waking in the middle of the night to silence, rather than his deep breathing and his warmth burrowing into her, as his cheek rested on her bare shoulder. She had enjoyed all those nights of sleeping in the nude, and just resting, as free as the day of her birth. It wasn’t that he couldn’t help it or that he wouldn’t. But even for her, there was something about that type of proximity which made […]
-She’s wearing the same grey shirt she left your apartment with. You smile. It looks good on her, your grey shirt. More than a bit on the large side, but you want it to look good on her. You want to imagine that there’s a reason it looks good on her, that it’s more than the simple fact that to you, in that moment, and for quite a while now, everything looks good on her. It’s her. Not what she wears, but in that moment, as she walks in wearing your grey shirt, you want to believe that the universe […]
– He heard the story from a friend. His friend had taken it from a girl he slept with once, though it had not been a one night stand. It had taken his friend months to get this girl to open up to him. And then she did and shortly after swore she never would again. They stopped calling and texting each other. But he kept the story. He placed it on a shelf and forgot about it for a good long while. It collected dust. Spiders used it as a foundation for their intricately spun designs. It wasn’t until […]
-We are complex creatures. Shadows envelop us, so that the space the light touches is empty. We are dark outlines. She sits on the edge of the bed. Her thigh tenses causing the mattress to quiver. The smoke swirls around us. The only thing that joins us. There is a silence now. The buzz of the electric current feeding the lamp is a muffled hum. The bed has felt every movement and echoed it along its springs. It is still now. We are silent. But not a word has passed between us since we entered the room. Only the clinking […]
-1. There are moments which play in your mind again and again at different intervals and in different seasons. As you age, they remain the same and continue to loop through your awareness. As age accumulates, the story and its possibility still beckon. The breeze picks up. He’s been taking steps across the sand. Having forgotten his flip flops or any change of clothing, his pant legs are rolled up and his feet bare, as the sun sinks into the grains. The breeze picks the sand into the air, the way in those moments free of worry, forced focus, and […]
– “I love you,” she mouths the words, but he can’t return them. He wants to pack them up and take them with him in case he needs a reminder that if nothing else, she said them and likely was sincere. She’s proven such sincerity, but at the heart of him he still doubts it. He doubts it in the way, when as a child he would make his way to the ice cream shop and they were out of his prefered praline, he would doubt that any of the remaining were ice cream at all. But he wants to […]
– He stands still on the stone outlying into the sea. The wind blows and crashes against the jagged edges. The water clashes against itself, as waves rebound and droplets are dispersed and spread out but never escape the space of the breath of salted humidity. The droplets soar in the somersault of exasperation, but are further muted by the force of gravity and collapse as they reenter the oceanic body. Seagulls cry out their presence, becoming moving shades to the sun. Ancillary, shelter from the light, never permanent. He stands there, still, still on the great rocks which overlook […]
-He winces at the blood dripping. He can feel the pain tracing its way through his nerve passages, outlining his frame the way the tip of a knife would work to cut him out of this life. His muscles contract the way instinct commands in its attempt to assure survival. There is no assurance. There is blood. There is no certainty.There are bruises. There are scabs. Bits of the upper layer of his skin remain on the gravel. Little bits resembling red soaked clay shavings; the remains of a serpent’s skin after it has begun to shed and the shedding […]