He asked why hadn’t she gotten any ice cream. Didn’t she like it? She began her answer but stopped– watching as her spoken words hung in the air, then tumbled to the floor — exploding into poofs — he had walked away to mingle… His boisterous laugh could be heard above the crowd– she remembered him guzzling her, filling her with urges she hadn’t let herself feel in a while, like a month. I mean come on—he was a busy man, wasn’t he? And he did bring home the bread—and he never forgot their anniversary… Charlie fingered her engagement band—it had grown tight in the swollen summer heat, and her finger was beginning to grow numb. She studied the lattice printed onto her ice-cream cone, completely oblivious to the sticky dripping over her hand. Where was she? who was she She was completely overcome by the feeling that somehow the answer to all these questions lay within this lattice. He returned triumphantly with a double chocolate waffle cone, but Charlie was already gone. He playfully dove into his ice cream, being sure to accidently leave a dab on his nose. She didn’t notice. Her mind had ejected. He extrapolated. Hard. Rivers of vanilla cream flowed through her fingers and down her arm. Chocolate sprinkles flowed along her graceful forearm, and were flung to the ground by the vicious curve of her elbow. The cone cracked and splintered, her face continued its inscrutable stare, now becoming vaguely glaring. Fuckerface had forgotten about his ice cream, he had forgotten about the spot on his nose, he watched his fiancé, completely perplexed. He didn’t know, “What the…” He stammered, but could find no words.
Absolutely Extraordinary Ordinary
Who could she be? Hal could see her clearly as he played with the earring’s dangling silver shards, he saw her walking into his cafe with a look of conscious poise that only barely betrayed her distress. She was scattered– she wore only one earring. He cursed as the double soy latte he was preparing overflowed. He wanted nothing more in the world at this moment than to find this mystery woman– the one who had left her earring. Hal knew the man at the counter didn’t understand; to this man, the fine silver earring that dangled from Hal’s left ear was either a forced attempt at cultural rebellion, or just plain strange. Hal was sure the man would never know the longing that he felt for his mystery woman.
She had looked everywhere. The office, the car, the lobby. She asked her secretary, she asked her officemates. Her favorite silver earring was nowhere to be found. She felt the odd looks when she surged into the cafe filled with the desperate hope that this place was The place; it didn’t help that she wore only one earring, its silver petals sprinkling the morning rays across her neck. Suddenly she saw the man behind the counter was staring. He had dark eyes and a dark complexion; he had the eyes of more than a barista. Then she saw it. Her earring dangling from his left ear. Her heart jumped, and for the first time since high school she had no idea what to do next. She was completely vulnerable, exposed, completely at the mercy of the cafe, its customers, the barista. Her heart stopped beating. Those eyes, she felt them pierce her armor, peering into the depths of her soul– into the places she had left buried so long she had forgotten they even existed. “Hey, you okay?” He called.
Stranger Studies
3/11
She has a nose-ring impossible nose. Her hair is dirty blonde, fading to brown at the roots and secured by a grey-blue tie at the base of her formidable skull.
Her hand wobbles a spoon back and forth, she leans slightly forward in her seat and takes a bite of cereal, then gets up to obtain a cup of joe, no wait– she opts for tea, first pouring the honey, then walking over to the hot water machine and waiting in line there. She is wearing a low cut white tank-top, covered by a grey hooded sweatshirt. She stirs her tea using a spoon held lightly in two fingers. She sips the tea, blowing first, but still burns her mouth, and silently curses the pain and recoils. Her nose is straight and well defined, sloping down to her raised upper lip– giving her a slight perpetual scowl
Wretched Radiant Burning 3/20
Wretched. It’s all wretched. She is wretched, “So he sits in the back of the class.” It sounds like a parent-teacher conference. Maybe a “So, Again I think he’s just a little bit allover the place.” So she says she will give him directions. but there is a pause, her mouth hangs, and her hand extends into the air, a question mark. And a stream of rights and lefts and lights. The trample of a child’s footsteps.
Untitled
disorder: lack of order, my mind is disordered — or I like to think it has its own unique order. I tend to have trouble remember– names, faces, places, times — sometimes. My girlfriend jokes that she can be my memory for me — which is nice, but still not quite the same.
My life feels disordered–fragmented– an amalgam of tangents spliced together– pointing in all directions. It seems to be the way my brain works — at times you could say thrives… My room is often a reflection of this state (the disorder, not hte thriving) and I can see it acting as both a symptom of, and the contributor to my continued disorder, both resulting from and furthering this chaos
Distractions, distractable, distracted — in some settings clearly an unproductive behavior, but in others quite the opposite. But does this (???) flow (???) happen in an unenthused state? Or does it allow for an almost self-selection —- If something isn’t interesting or engaging enough, the brain says “nope, sorry — not gonna happen” and goes somewhere else. But I suppose the process is not quite so discerning — it distracts even from the quality times — and we want it not to
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A rotting twine’s torsion, that one impossible organ deep within my chest where the feelings lie. lay. lye. lae. lae man lay-man serviceman. its spiny tendrils slowly killing cells, one at a time — mechanically tightening with each breath. In come the happy pills — Boom. everything goes