Giving Back to God

– As he brings the rock down on the rabbit’s head, he thinks about the story of Isaac and Abraham. His father had told him the story. It had to do with giving back to God the gifts he gave us, in sacrifice. In the story, God doesn’t take it back, instead he provides the sacrifice and is pleased with the heart of Abraham. He holds the bloodied stone above the fractured skull, and watches the body spasm as the muscles suffocate. He wonders what kind of heart he would have to have to please God. He wonders if his […]

A House

– She walks. Away from her house, she places each step. It is her steps which become most real. She focuses on each step. The imprint on the earth each leaves and the way once left behind, the breeze erodes the perfect outline. She has moved on by the time her footprints are no longer what she left, however. Her attention is on the next step. There is no count. There is no distance. There is nothing real, except each new step. She walks. Through a dozen lifetimes, she takes steps. She never leaves the moment. Each new step. She […]

Breadth

– I stand at the edge of the world. One hundred thirty-five stories up. At the precipice. My feet at the edge; my body on the ledge. Everything shrinks below and every wind sweeps up. The top of my head is pressed by a thousand worries. Here, there is no looking back. I step forward and allow my weight to lead. There is no in between. I fall through the remnants of purgatory, that city never finished below the clouds. Through that thin layer of the atmosphere, where pixie dust and magic dust become most potent. Through the watery reservoirs […]

Conquest

– You came over. It had been years. How could I remember the features of you which recede into the recesses of me. The way you burrow your eye brows when trying to understand what has just been said to you? The way you press your palms together when you’re not certain about the next step in a recipe, an instructional guide on how to put together a kitchen table for two, or how to build a friendship after years have devastated memory, and the idols we build to the beautiful moments of our experience have shattered and become nothing […]

Orchid

– I continue shivering. The darkness persists. The moon is swallowed by dusk. The trees stretch toward the dim light thousands of miles away. The few remaining leaves tremble in this exertion. A couple lose hope and fall in the darkness toward the grave. I sit there, on the balcony. No glasses, no throw, no sweat pants, with a book. With the book, but without light. It is the first time I think about it. I wonder how she read on dark winter evenings. It was winter when she lost her enchantment. I miss that. That first year. Her enchantment. […]

A Path Home

– I feel the fuzz of the carpeting against my cheek, along with a kind of numbness which somehow makes the individual threads of the material more present. The light from the upstairs floods down toward me, the way water runs down shingles in a storm. The first blur I make out, upon gaining consciousness, is completely subdued by the kind of shapeless cognizance the light’s flood brings. Everything is shapeless, yet colorful. As I rise to my feet, I feel a different form of lightness. Not the kind of lightness that leaves you without breath and panicking for explanation, […]

Shadow Origami

– I shiver. There’s a breeze in the structure. An eave out of place, one of the rafters being defeated by the winter’s campaigns. I sit upstairs, waiting amidst mostly empty rows of metal folding chairs. The whisper of winter travels down the rows and around chairs. Its resolve wanes and ignites and sometimes slams against the frozen back of chairs. I sit, shivering. I wait. I am early still. Not early in the way that fowl sometimes wakes and anticipates the sun, but I am early, in a less rigid sense of the word. I shiver and I wait […]

Leaves in their Graves

– There’s a crunching, like the solitary sound of a gazelle making its way through a meadow at midnight, as I cross the lawn. The dead leaves of fall fill the empty dirt spaces, a battlefield of winter. I am the giant. I am like god. I look under foot and see the fractured bits of leaves in their different colors. I shiver as I reach the driveway. There are no leaves on the car or under it, as if this were a sacred space. I open the door and leave behind the battlefield, the leaves’ and my own. I […]

She Whispers

– “You’re too much in your head,” I hear her whisper in my ear. I can feel the warmth of her breath, as she says this. It vibrates and tickles the folicles of my ear. I smile and turn. She’s quick. The room is empty by the time I turn. Her scent lingers. The mixture of her own unique chemistry and Burberry, a scent sweeter than any ever hosted at department store beauty counters. I close my eyes then and breath it in, deeply. I can hear her giggle, distantly, like she’s in the next room. She could be anywhere. […]

Things Lost in the Fire

-The breeze blowing against the trees, the overgrown bushes and the buildings. A frenetic waving of green. A ripple of colorful blotches, as life attempts to hold back the elements. The balcony swept by the breath of the earth in its rotation. The falling ash disintegrating before collapsing onto the concrete fixture of the balcony. Light pierces through the clouds, one solitary ray, having had the strength enough to unveil a patch of clouds. Things lost in the fire: two spiral notebooks filled with the confessions of a mind spiraling out of sense, three fine point pens-the ones responsible for […]