Italicized Love

Just let me twist your arms, your legs, and dissect the ensemble in you. Let me rummage through your bones, and unscrew all your joints, and tickle your mouth, and finally feel your heart. But don't push your heart into my hand. Let me inspect it first, let me play with your keys, let me joke with your peeves. I can unceremoniously discard you from the spaces between my fingers, but I won't. Let me bend your knees and your elbows, let me see through your contact lenses, let me breathe through you. Leave me in your library. Leave me in your lexicon. Leave me in the depth of your consonants and vowels. I'll drum my fingers on your freckles and tickle your spine without you knowing it. You're funny.

But, darling, as I backspace through my nonsensical jargon, don't let go of me. You'll be my beacon for some time. You'll be my safeword through the coughs and headaches. Be my anchor—make sure I don't always lose myself in these crosswords. Magnify my movements, italicize my locomotion, lazily drawl your analysis of me as we daydream in camouflaged pillow forts, but don't treat me like a pet. Play me whimsical music in the silence. Don't let me dangle alone from my noose. Join me in my frescades, but not always. Look through my telescope when I ask you to, and I definitely will. Be my poet and be my daily news. Give me permission to tattoo litanies and fairytales on your milky ribcage, and under your wrist, and somewhere on your ear. Be my duet partner, and come rushing with me through the forest. Pen me with undivided attention and undiluted love. Don't argue that I'm impassioned about this—don't take it away from me, and don't abuse your freedom. But—and there is always a but—feel free to clamor with me. Opine about my lifestyle, my wardrobe, or the way I laugh. Frustrate me, frustrate yourself. Be human. I won't hold you back if you be you.

photo disclaimers—credits: x x

You and Your Six-Shooter

So he's been absent for a while.

His movements are cool, but his shoulders are set high and his eyes—those unreadable hazel eyes—are unusually bloodshot. He casually scans the room, then hunches down to forge something from his beat-up backpack. Sitting on his head are dark curls vamoosing away from his plastic headphones. Right now, it is lunch. I am four tables away from his lonely one.

I don't think he sees me looking.

But I may not be looking so closely, really. Because when he pushes his chair back and it creaks harshly—and nobody still takes note of him—he apprehends everyone. Everybody in the cafeteria doesn't observe back, and in that second he begins to carry himself up with his arm still deep in his bag he looks in my direction. This is the first time I look at him in the eye, and when I do his eyes are brimming with tears, and something clicks. He tears the moment away; I am bewildered. He stands up, drops whatever he was holding back into the abyss of his backpack, zips it close, and walks to the exit as he turns his head away.

Something churns uneasily in my stomach as he strides out of my vision and out into the hallway. I heft crumbs of my lunch into my mouth and stand to throw plastic into the nearest bin. As I deposit my tray, I can't help but think of what he was reaching down for. Probably just a book, or money. But he seemed so hesitant... and angry.

So I march to the restroom to make myself more presentable for the next class—thoughts still running through me like a sickness—when there's a scream.

A scream.

It reverberates through the room—a majority of us either sits or stands still, and one scream multiplies into half a dozen. Then I think everyone can hear them now. The bloody screams flood our ears like urgent knocks against expensive wood. They rain down and through the air in a staccato beat. I am trembling in fear before I know it.

Then the first shot rings in our ears so vividly, disrupting the ice among our stances. In a syrupy second my heart thumps dangerously in my ears. I see people panic.

Another bullet cuts the air, cuts through somebody's body. Somebody's life.

I run. Jesus Christ, I run.

I dash to the door with everyone. It leads to the trellis. The guard isn't by the gate but an alarm is on. People hurry into the laboratories, the library—anywhere—while I fumble for my phone somewhere in my satchel. Just then my phone vibrates in my hand, kind of matching my distress. I take the call in the art room, falling under the teacher's table on impulse where I hear nothing but my serrated breath and the door sliding shut, just like my eyes.

"Hello?" I answer the call.

"Mel? Mel? Where are you?!" It's my friend, Krista, whose voice screams fear. I understand.

"Krista, I'm under a table. Art room. Where are you? And what the hell is happening?!" But I think I already know. And I think I already know who.

But why?

"Frigging boys restroom." A delirious laugh. A breathy pause. Stay calm, Krista. Keep it. "I'm with Reese and his friends. I think Jill is here, too. There's a psycho on the loose, Mel, and we're presuming this psycho's a friggin' student." My breath hitches. No. I begin to say something but she cuts me. "Now listen, Mel, I—"

And she's gone. Too fast.

I don't want to listen to her screams. Or Reese's. Or Jill's. So I turn my cell phone off although I could just dismiss the call, and I imagine how she must have looked like in the restroom along with her boyfriend—who I know must have been holding her tight—and Jill, who just wanted to get out of high school like most of us do. Then the image fades. I rub my palms on my jeans and dig for my inhaler.

Then I realize I should have locked the door, and now I'm in the middle of muffling a colossal cry. The art room is seriously stuffy. It's located by the garden, and there aren't much trees to obscure the view from the window. I remember how the garden looks like as I shut my eyelids close. Its beauty sits there peacefully as the student population dwindles in a massacre. The world for now is a terrible furnace, an oven, and the witch is looking for some kids to eat. To destroy. I try to recite a silent prayer, but I stumble clumsily on my own words. I've heard some pastor once say that your vocabulary doesn't matter while or when praying, but my tongue is dry, and my beliefs are in a heap of ash. I may be dizzy, and I freeze once again.

People scream by.

People come in.

Hide, hide, hide, I think. Jesus, people, hide. 

We all hide. We are all one breath.

Our predator still arrives, of course. It's inevitable by now. And all I can think before I die is, Why, Robert?

Why?

Your Science

So I'm going to be violent.

I dip your framework into white paint, and I dangle by your side, my nose almost dipping with you. The walls tremble, and the can of paint sways with my profanities as I stammer to call, "STOP!" You're almost there, because I hear you singing. I stand back and watch you shoot through and spin around, downing all the paint like you said you would, and soon you will be ivory. We are ivory, now. I clamber up the blotches of black, and I actually feel your reaction in me. My pulse tickles my ears, and your eyes trek through mine, and I feel like dynamite, and I feel pretty. Your tongue is a lexicon as you whisper the world to me. You plead me to come to life, and I do — I've wailed through the process, and now you're my bones and my flesh and my blood, zipping and zapping through everything in my system, in my systems. You drive my mitochondria, my cells, you are my neuron, and I bury my words underneath butterfly kisses. I am light and happy, true and quixotic, fond of your science. I trample down the stairs and find my hastily discarded words. I dance myself through and in them. You strip me of them, and I am still whole afterwards.

So here's a short description. Of you. Your eyes are illuminated with warmth, and I can't hear ANYTHING — it must be twelve, where is my clock? You are my alarm. Your lips are rushing with blood and keeping down words, but don't shorten your dictionary! I am in awe of how your lower lip is cherry, and how it can keep all... those... words... Your words are foolish and young, but I am trapped on my own consent. Your palms... your hands are gauche. You know how thin-skinned I am, regardless of what that means to you. Your hands are my phantoms. They ghost over me, and I am almost overpowered by your presence, but your palms are gentle when they land. They land to soothe me, to erase the tears, to accompany my hands which, no, you do not ignore. I like holding hands. I like holding your hands.

inspired by this

from

Prayer

It was the bothering humidity that had tried to push her eyelids down, but she couldn't feel them lock into place as the day shot down into night, and the moon was alive and the humidity, yes, still was too. She laid her heels down next to her pale feet, and her hair dangled sadly around her face and down her shoulders. The wind blew through the windows and the entrance, the tree giving her music as its leaves rustled in her ears. Her makeup was a mess, she knew, with all the tears and rain. But she will never know how she had always triumphed an ugliness people anticipated to see, because when she dashed away and sobbed and felt utterly and devastatingly alone she was still pretty. No, not pretty, but beautiful. Never... plain. Her gown bled raindrops, and as she gasped for air she tore off a part, and another part, of her infamous gown.

Her lower lip quivered as a breakdown hummed around. Her breaths were commas, and they were ragged ones. Trying to collect herself, the leaves rustled on some more, and she relinquished almost half of her meticulously prepared attire for comfort. Her canvas has been brushed with violent colors, and she couldn't shield it. She couldn't improvise a cover. So she ran. To his—their?—tree house. She had spun around streets and found it in the midst of an unpleasant drizzle accumulating to rain—a whimper accumulating to a wail—and nimbly but carefully rose up the familiar ladder after shooting her worn out heels through the entrance and into the blank half-time abode of a dearly missed face. She had breathed the strong panels of wood around her, hoping the joy of a hundred memories would come tend to her, and yet—she almost expected this—all she felt was nostalgia as the boastful rain tumbled down from the clouds. And she wished all the melancholy she knew would vanish down all the gutters throughout the street. 

The rain came on some more for quite some time. She tucked her knees under her chin, and although the heat felt almost lost and unusual beside the rain's gloom, it felt golden. The world felt golden, and she wiggled her toes as it tickled the wooden floor. This was the dance floor she knew. And hey, it had no disco ball, no Top Forty either, but it was home—it was the sight of droopy trees and the soundtrack of her thoughts. She had abandoned it. He had then later abandoned it, too. But she had sped back to each and every moment spent in the funny, sticky heat and humidity of this treehouse. She wasn't weak, but she was troubled, and she missed out on everything too damn soon. She missed this, missed him, and just sitting down inside felt like a dream and a wish. Wiping her face with clean cloth, she scooted closer to a window and drank the tears of the evening sky, praying—oh, so, praying—for freedom. And a chance. A chance for what? For the space around her to stay there, and strength—dear God, strength—to know better. And she felt like she did... But then she wanted all the acid off her tongue. Please.

A mutter. A whisper. A half-broken cry. Then a silhouette crushing down into a fetus, and breathing, then sleeping. But not forever, not yet.

"Amen."

Amen.

Soup

When I look out at the sea, though, with its majestic foyer of blue-green waves that runs throughout the panorama, I almost fall off from the crust that locks my toes down and my breath breaks into ice before I need to cough it up. It’s like blood gushes everywhere and my seams fall apart till each crevice of my body falls into the sea. I can feel the soles of my feet tingle with the salt, and my eyes burn as I bask in the midnight moonlight. My watery stutters are closing in on me and summoning me further into the sixty seconds before it is actually a minute after twelve. My lonely lips sting with delight as I get to sip the debris of mermaid songs, and my chest heaves with my limbs and my limbs crawl through the dark blue sweaters knitted together around the swollen statue of me. I am a phone call at 1.38 in the morning in between an interlude of cookie bites and coffee, coffee warmth. My tongue tangles in the salt, my gums bleed in effort. My teeth dance in harmony. The juxtaposition of my skin and of the ivory light of the goddess that floats on the bellies of my friendly clouds rises in comparison. My lungs are a choo-choo train. My eyes are struggling men looking for their train to France. I clamber on wave after wave, I reap my goddess’ light. A warmth not too far from those early morning coffees steels my hands and my feet, crumbles the ice down to my core from there. I am a sudden conundrum within very little time; I think I trouble all those people watching in the sidelines! I am coming back there, my dearest – that is what I say. I talk to this girl in a sunny dress, her hair a surprising combo of lovely dawn and mesmerizing sunset. I gulp with difficulty before the walls till I find my footing on hangers and hangers of winter clothing. Winter? It isn’t here yet, ma’am, I say. I am caught off guard when a merman rises from the sea and steals my feet. I have lost balance, I am slipping from my dear consciousness, I am soaring away from the cookie bites and coffee till I am not a 1.38 phone call. I am a house, this is my house. I am in a world of sea, finally. I can breathe without irritating my neighbors with a cough of ice and nothing but contemptible ice. I am rusting into water, huffing and puffing into salty sea. My eyes are the sea and my feet are the sand, and the corals, and the land. I am going to France, and I will bring you there… maybe? Maybe.