Strain of Consciousness

-My arm fell off today. No special reason, it just did. I was walking across campus and it just fell off. I was feeling like a pillar of salt, looking back at a lost life, almost in tears and it fell off. Maybe that had something to do with it. Fuck! I thought as it bounced off, splotching red on the concrete, and rolling onto the grass. Just what I needed. It was bad enough I was feeling wayward, now I had this thrown into my day as well. Fuck, fuck, fuck!!! I could feel the blood shoot up to […]

-It’s 1:55 and the streets are saturated in the dark stillness. Every so often high beams pass stealthily with a blinding ghost like effect. Without a blink, Mr. C catches the vague impression and wonders how many cars have passed and if any have really crossed his path tonight, or if they are recollections from previous nights sneaking up on him in his half conscious moments. The city streets somehow seem less real at this time of morning. The darkness envelops everything. It all appears, a fragment from some half forgotten dream. As he himself weaves his way through the […]

There are moments of waking, in the still, darkness of night; the question echoes, an almost silent thought; where am I? There’s a displacement when consciousness is first roused. Sometimes there are several of these moments in the seemingly eternal night. Sleep is heavy here. Short, usually. The journey weighs, the phantom weight on his shoulders, even as the backpack sits slumped in a corner and he rests his back on the heated floor. His eyes heavy as this foreign continent disappears and he drifts again to the oblivion of sleep. The journey has begun, this journey; his previous sojourn […]

-She was the one I held onto for so long. Her warmth long gone. She was just a memory. Her smile and the sweetness she revealed. Her laughter. She laughed much, if the memory correlates correctly to the moments shared. That was long ago. She was the one I held onto. The innocence, it just permeated her space and maybe drew me close. It was about the way she made me feel, about the way I made her feel. For so long a ghost. Her voice has yielded long since and there is no sound that would remind me of […]

-Hey you…I’m dead…died Sunday morning…some sort of fall from the graces that keep us alive…I’m not sure what it had to do with…didn’t wake up, that’s what was said…it was more than that…eyelids were still warm…there had been a moment of consciousness, maybe longer…the impression of lights, maybe people…maybe it was everyone I could remember…then there was darkness… …I never saw myself, I don’t think I remembered myself…many other faces…eyes and smiles…some were laughing…it was a pleasant flash of light…and then eyes closed…someone else’s…then my own, though they were never open…and then darkness…and yes now I am gone… …in the […]

-What was it, he wonders. Her, simply her. That’s too simple isn’t it? A smile almost escapes him. Maybe there was more. He drinks his tea. She always had tea. Maybe it was the way she drank her tea, not that it was all that distinct, but it was, her. She would pour honey on the spoon, then squeeze lemon over it, before she sank it into the cup to dissolve. She’d never take the spoon out, even as she drank. She liked to mix the tea, even after the honey and lemon had stopped being honey and lemon. She […]

-She sits trembling, her heart swells. To etch love into paper, she tries. The pen pressed into the 4×5 canvas in front of her. A card. She likes cards. She bought him a card. It made her smile when she bought it, thinking of him. Writing in it, makes her heart ache. Tears fall, as her heart swells and her pen trembles, along with the rest of her. She breathes deeply and heavily. There’s an emotion, now alive inside, she’s never felt before. And as she writes, she writes it down as, Love. She smiles, as the tears fall; it’s […]

– The event lasted twelve years, and it was an event in many ways. A daily event. Waking together in each other’s arms. At first, anyways. Then it slowly became a different kind of event. It brought other events. The first lasting ten years so far, a beautiful little girl. The other, six years so far, a gracious little boy. These too were daily events, beautiful events that made the event so much more, at first. Then, maybe they had a negative effect. Maybe she missed the undivided attention. Maybe it made the event more beautiful than she had ever […]