Spring Break
Your hand trembles, and the flickering candle you hold casts dancing shadows on the torn and yellowed wallpaper. Slowly, you make your way across the dusty floor toward the dark staircase. On its own, your gaze is drawn up the stairs, to where the candle’s meager flame fades into black.
Growing up, you and your little sister always said you wanted to explore the old house. Emily had foolishly gone inside last month—and she never came back out. You returned home to try and find out what happened to her.
The beating of your heart grows louder in your own ears, and your room at the college dorm seems very far away; almost as far as the look in your father’s eyes when you mention your sister’s name.
As you step onto the third riser, your candle suddenly puffs out in the now dead air, and a gravelly voice in the blackness above you quietly says, “Welcome Home.”
in which ‘you’ is me, but maybe also you
Life glows, if you squint at it.
So you do. You spend most of your life learning which way to tilt your head, how far to lean back, rocking on your heels.
You spend so much time with your eyes half-closed, staring at the hazy orange-gold-red of the sky beneath the slope of your eyelids.
You spend your life with your eyes half-closed because you're afraid of what it will look like when you open them.
Until one day, without really meaning to, you wake up with your eyes wide open, and the room is lit by sunlight that filters through the branches of the old tree outside the window.
The room is glowing. Life is glowing.
Had it always looked like this? you wonder, and, if not, you wonder when it changed.
You wonder about all the time you spent trying to make things beautiful when they already were. You wonder about the version of yourself that had to try so hard to see it.
You mourn for them, for the things they will never see.
You cry silent tears that are only for yourself, and you do not know where the sadness comes from, but you feel that it is mixed with joy, and that is what you cry for. You cry for what you can feel, and for the times that you could not feel it.
You cry in triumph, and the whole damn room is glowing.
#poetry
Pee Pee Dance
We all know the feeling. The wince at every movement that places pressure in the wrong spot and your bladder cries out;
“No! How could you be so foolish!? Empty me!”
However, you’re waiting in line at the bank. It’s after work and your fourth coffee just pushed you to your limit.
You need to go.
Now.
So you look around, not too obviously at the line in front of you. It stretches at least twenty more people in front you. You look back, the line that way is even longer. It’s either go, lose your spot in the line and be late home for dinner again, or stay and push your pain tolerance to the point where you’re cramping up. Neither option was pleasant, but you’d rather face spontaneous combustion than risk another night on the couch.
There are many styles of the dance. You have the ‘cross everything you can approach’ where you turn your legs in, weave one knee under the other and hope that this outer entanglement will cause some knot inside you to form, a kink in the hose if you will. Then there’s the ‘Charlie Chaplain’ approach, where you casually stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, turning your feet outward slightly, hoping that the lack of movement down there will strengthen your endurance to suffer through the trial by urine. We also have the ‘jitterbug’ where you whistle to yourself or hum under your breath and do a little jig, hoping in some miricle of medical science you can reverse the process of your kidneys doing thier job.
Of course, you take the high road. ‘The Catwalk’ approach. You sublty shift your weight as you bring one leg forward and cross it in front of the other, placing one hand on your hip- so as to not make it obvious- and glancing around casually.
Curse it, there are so many people in this line!
As you move forward, you alternate which leg is in front, looking like Karlie Kloss as you make your way further towards the teller.
6 people left.
It’s getting desperate now.
You look around the room again to try and distract yourself, but you catch sight of the men’s bathroom. A man in a suit walks out, fidling with his tie, smiling to himself, looking quite smug. You narrow your gaze and follow his with your eyes as he leaves.
5 people left.
The ‘Catwalk’ approach isn’t cutting it anymore. You’ve moved up to a DEFCON 3 so you start to ‘jitterbug,’ the other people in the line looking at you in annoyance and distaste for your pitchy, whistled, rendition of the ‘Titanic’ theme.
2 people left.
You’re now at a DEFCON 2, you knew if you had to wait more than another minute, the bank would have it’s own DEFCON 1 situation all over the floor.
Finally!
You step up the the fenced window and quickly pass over the needed paper work, now hopping from one foot to the other. The teller must be at least three-hundred and sixty, her hands quake and she moves like stamping your paperwork was brain-surgery.
When you relinquish your papers, you give a shout of relief as you hightail it- at a brisk walk, of course- toward the blue bathroom door. It’s practically calling your name.
Two metres.
One metre.
A man moves to stand between you and the door, slapping a Blu-Tac’ed sign up of the door.
It reads;
‘CLOSED FOR CLEANING’
You Are My First Kiss
You approached me with your smile. You were not expecting me to smile back. Your coerced ways invited me to stay the night with you. You made the stars laugh and shine just a little more. You made the night so special with your songs of lust. Your warm breathe dusting the skin of my neck. You making promise with a Kiss. You made the world spine In colors. You knew what you were doing when you made this girL into a woman. You looking into the eyes of a captured souL. Your eyes sparkled like emerald gold. You also knew that this would be the begining and the end of our night together. You set the stage and played with a young girls heart.
You know it's her from the moment you see her. Standing at the side of the road in the dark, car stopped with a flat tire, all alone. Pale blonde hair - she nearly glows in the moonlight. She's the one. She's perfect. You pull up alongside her; she looks nervous, because she's all alone at night and you're approaching her, but you wish she would be happy to see you, even if you're strangers. You wish she would smile.
"Need a ride?" You make your tone light, your face friendly.
She hesitates. "Uh, yeah, sure. Just to the gas station, if that's okay." Her hair is parted just off to the left, long and stick straight, just perfect. Her eyes are hazel. Her voice sends a shiver down your spine. She must have been made just for you, wished into existence at the side of the road like this. Yes, she must be yours.
The gas station is lit up with neon signs, purple and red. You glance over at your passenger seat - she has her hands folded on her lap, clutching her brown leather purse. She's wearing a long-sleeved grey dress. Carefully, you flip a switch on your door panel, locking the truck doors.
"This is me," she announces as you get closer to the gas station. A hand moves to her seatbelt, ready to unbuckle it. She still doesn't trust you. You frown. "Hey, uh, you missed the gas station." There's an edge to her voice.
"Don't worry," you say. "We're almost there." Another chill on your spine, talking about 'we'. Yes, she's perfect. You're perfect. She'll know that, now.
There's a wallet-sized photo clipped to your sun visor, which you haven't bothered to put back up since daytime. It's a picture of her. It hurts you and excites you to look at, and sometimes it even distracts you from keeping your eyes on the road. Not now, though. She never gave you a chance before, said you were creepy, said she had other plans. She wouldn't smile at you, not even when you tried to make her. You pull up at last to your destination - your date, if you will. It's an abandoned warehouse. A movie-worthy setting. You can practically feel how tense she is. She shouldn't be tense. She should be smiling. "Gas is cheaper here," you say, stopping the vehicle.
Getting out of the truck, you walk around to the trunk. Getting what you need is easy despite the dark: a fake-leather makeup case, you could find it with your eyes closed. Muscle memory is a funny thing. You chuckle quietly to yourself. She's still sitting in the passenger seat. You open the door for her with a flourish and she steps gingerly onto the ground. You do wish she wasn't so nervous.
You open the door for her again on the way inside. The building is empty, of course - you don't like to trick her, but she wouldn't have come. Just like her. You flip the lightswitch. She stops short as you lock the door behind you. "Hey, there's nothing in here." She turns around, tries to push past you, but you're stronger than she is. "Let me out!"
"The door's locked," you inform her, even though she's already trying frantically to twist the doorknob. You unzip the makeup case, take out a roll of duct tape. Tape her wrists behind her. Muscle memory. She screams. Another chill, that first scream. Every time. You tape her to a concrete pillar so she won't move so much. You tape her legs together. That was the thing about her. You didn't want sex, not really, even if that was what she thought you wanted. What you wanted - what you needed - was to make her smile. To make her smile.
You set the case down on the ground in front of her, tuning out her screams just for a moment to focus. She'll stop screaming eventually, and you don't want to miss it while it lasts. That was the mistake you made with her. You line up your tools with precision. There are three knives, all different sizes, next to a little digital camera. And then - one, two, three, four tubes of lipstick, each a different shade of red. You arrange them in a triangle, your favourite at the top. It's the closest to hers.
You take out the littlest knife first, tilting it back and forth in the fluorescent light. She stops screaming for just a second, breathing heavily. You're sure, though you aren't looking yet, that she's watching the blade, wondering what you're going to do with her. You step up close to her face, looking into her perfect eyes. Really, you think to yourself, sighing contentedly, the only problem with her face is her expression. You want her to smile. You need her to smile. "Smile, sweetheart." Your tone is gentle, you know it is. You've practiced in the mirror. But she doesn't listen. She doesn't give you a chance. So you take her chin in your hand, holding her head still, and you slide your knife into the side of her mouth. You push the blade up, gently, gently. A thin line of blood trickles down her chin. She whimpers. That makes you angry, whimpering and bleeding like that when you're going to so much trouble for her.
You need her to smile.
You need her to smile.
So you make her smile.