Looking at your window at 7am on Sunday morning, I saw you there. You came to the window in that white threadbare t-shirt you always wore to bed, up early. You waved and smiled at me. When I blinked back I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I’ll never believe them again.
It was only a white curtain, set against the nondescript color of the windows of a darkened room, the color of blood in a vein, of the inside of closed eyes. The curtain laughed joylessly. It held you captive, asleep, your hair strewn across your pillow as if you were in a vertical windstorm because you remember that I liked it that way.
I feel like I cut my hand deep with a knife with a nine-inch blade. It throbs unashamedly and stares back at me maliciously. I know the skin is going to heal, but I don’t know about the tendons, the bone, the table beneath all three.
I picked a flower for you and it cried when I did it. It wilted before I could place it outside your locked door, on the windshield of your car. The pain was too much, it said.
I can still taste the flavor of your moans, your hands clenching the bedsheets.
It occurs to me that cigars make me sick, but I smoke them anyway, sometimes. Sitting here in the street searching your window seems like that.
Why do some plants and romance die in the spring, when living things always grow towards the light? Dying things don’t care about the light; their greenness is chased downwards and underground by the evil brown. Things that dwell underground are afraid of what’s above, just like masks made of wax melt in both the inward and the outer sun. Underground is the only place to escape, but it doesn’t work for long. Our love lives there now. It’s quiet like the inside of a casket.
Acid rain like rust colored pain began to fall in my liver. The liver’s job is to remove impurities, but it put up an umbrella. My liver ain’t touchin’ that shit; it puddled near the lake underneath it, making me queasy.
I figure that mowed grass is the second-most unhappiest creature on the planet, and that clouds stay as long as you are unwilling to ask them to leave with your Other Voice. They don’t understand human words. Speak to them softly with rain or they will just smile back to remind you to be white and fluffy before you ask again. My Other Voice is terminally mute. The ends of my mouth strangle it.
Some trees are simply meant to be split by lightning, so my hair is singed.
I remember you laughing when I told you that cupcake batter on your lips should be its own food group.
Blackberry bushes grow both thorns and fruit. The thorns agree to not stick people in the heart, and the berries agree to allow strawberries to taste better. They balance one another in this way. They agreed to this arrangement but both grumble about it, stuck forever in the pale soil of mediocrity.
It occurs to me that sometimes killer whales push seals back on the beach instead of eating them. Your windows all have teeth.
The last thing the halls of my body heard were your footsteps leaving. It’s darker now. Is there a door anymore?
Sometimes when I eat fish I feel a bone in the back of my throat and I am afraid to swallow again.
You’ll be asleep in there forever, won’t you?
Eric Marley
May 2013
