0.

then, the Mary’s eyes housed this distilled quality that i still can’t shake. and her dress of silken snow looked soft to the touch. an itch to press my burning cheek to cool, woven stone. unmarred, fabric body. maybe in this she’d rub off a bit on me. no. god, no. you walking blemish, you, don’t flatter yourself. maggots of intention always manage to wriggle their way out of relevance. far from scope. i’m partial to my own circumstance, maybe. intent can’t matter anymore.

did it matter during my stay, however short lived? if so, what would it matter to? a court of law, a higher order, a divine scrutiny. some existential implication. what would she say now? now. how i grind my teeth to the thought of marjorie. i’m shocked i haven’t whittled down to nerve ending now, by none other. i’m sickened of this sovereignty to turn her over in my mind. so. desperately. sick of it. til she’s dizzied, til I’m dizzied, souvenir snow globe. i watch the snowflakes on a good day, i zoom, enhance the image, and because i can, i stay there.

if i could have my way now I’d go back in time. not to rewrite it all or to go about it another way, not to leave her happy or to even subdue her ills. I’d rewind, rewound, rewound, stop. here we are. the summit of life as i will continue to know it, we’re lying on our studio floorboards with dust motes flittering all above our heads. this is after sex, I’m not such a sick fuck, you know. and what i would change, why i stopped here, if there was cause. well, probably, i would rest my head upon her pale lap, under the iota sea. and… nothing. draw in a breath, expel it, don’t dare to face her yet. and in that moment, you will yourself to let go.

…

it’s time now, you’ve done all you can do. it isn’t you thinking this, you’ve never wanted something less. your head rises. she’s inhaling. fumble for control. you aren’t quick enough. she gets a syllable out, before you’re rewinding once more, shut your eyes, god i can’t bear its linearity, up this close and personal. her touches blend into butterflies docking on your skin. her voice melds into a buttery philharmonic din. until it stops. you hear nothing. you feel even less. in fact, you’ve never felt less. until you’re back.

back at the train station again, to do what you intended to do. if only i could play omniscient for a second, see my face then, so fresh of hope and novelty. so vacant of pain.

you’re back at the train station. you watch it advance. you watch the doors open. you watch the cabin congest. you watch the doors close. you watch it recede.

…

if i could just go back in time.

1.

it took me a couple minutes to realize how tight I was gripping the metal pole to keep balance. i self-resuscitated after dreaming to the truest tissue white of my knuckle, blue vein of my wrist roping down my forearm like breathing constraints.

is it that cold out? my phone is dead, i can’t quantify the verity of it. all i have is these bumps on my arm and the audible chittering of maw bone. that should be telling enough, should do. it used to. many things used to do. the streetlights came on and you’d bike back home like a scalded cat. “Keep pedaling if you’re a faggot!” they’d call to you from 500 feet and counting behind your trajectory and you’d just shake your head and laugh. throw up a practiced middle finger with the thumb out like your brother taught you. and don’t look back, too. turn the corner and you can breathe regular now, your reception’s assured tomorrow. you’d trade your friends’ amiable insults for your mother’s benign scolding: the whole ‘you could have caught a cold!’ of it all. i’m sure that she wouldn’t inflict these weather patterns on me, but if she’s been watching all this time I might understand.

in seconds i’m seated, a meager three stood few and far apart on the platform. the conductor scans a QR code on my paper receipt(Gott sei Dank), and i thrust my rucksack upon the leg room i forked over £30 for. my eyes strain at the cabin’s dimness, following the sun’s blare. a knot is forming behind my hairline.

“—use me. Mindifisit?”

rapid blinking.

i discern a bit too late that this voice is addressing me. i yank the mute wire from my ears.

my chin rises to a snaking neck tattoo of stems, that follow up to dainty primroses. then a pair of batting eyelashes—not so dainty, more so snaking—getting impatient now. confusion washes me, as to my visual knowledge there’s no seating shortage.

“Ahm..no. Thanks.”

i avert my stare back to the window and shut my eyes tight. begone begone begone—she’s gone. from row thirteen at least. I won’t swivel my head to glance but the temptation is there. back in the wires go (who lied to me that these were a social deterrent?), and as if triggered the train lurches forward.

the intercom sounds The train is now departing from Platform 3 .. this is the 18:32 service to Jericho

2.

the passage of wan dark green calms my nerves, in the reliable treeline. likewise, USB ports. Buffalo Springfield scores these seconds very well. Stephen back at the firm slighted my preference over solo Neil Young, but I’d stand my ground. he wasn’t anywhere near as tasteful. none of the guys were, for whatever reason (residual adolescence), they’d see me as more of a motif than a person standing before them. a hunk of office decor, quite the conversation piece. i guess if I’d had that excitable temperament batched drinking buddies tend to on the job, I’d feel the same. they could be amusing sometimes. it isn’t always so bad to be the butt of the joke. you’re really not required to do much to know you’re included. i moved for the agency, anyway, not the colleagues. and i preferred to drink alone. i still do.

my brows furrow before I realize why. I’m usually the only one to notice (and then point out), the 70s’ feats in production, and Pretty Girl Why sounds muffled. this is the remastered, isn’t it? I check. yes, it is. these shitty cables then, fucking hell, I need to invest in some AirPods or something. tremors under my shoes. I’m wrong. someone behind me keeps shuffling about. approaching too. my sight is affixed to the stippled color on the seat in front of me. my forehead pulses. the labor persists.

i let the woman with the drink cart skip me over until my eyes open, catching on the lower bottles. right, ‘First Class’ prerogative is mine. how vile of me.

“Scuse me? Sorry. Vodka tonic. If you wouldn’t mind.”

“F-course, sweetheart.” quick, exercised. i’m warmed regardless.

…

“Would you happen to know how long this route’s going to be?”

“To?” she gazes up at the informative LED on the ceiling every which way you look. shame washes me.

“Jericho, yes..yes. Two more hours hon? Give or take? .. Hang in there, you look stressed.”

“So I’ve heard.”

a charity smile and she’s trundling down the walkway again. I can’t recall when she’d set down my drink within that exchange, but it’s there. i lift the glass to my lips, well burdened by Miss Flirt.

huh. that’s odd. very odd, matter of fact. the napkin’s got the Virgin Mary on it. the chagrin is back, vaguely, at her face, disturbed by the condensation. though her robe is intact. detailed, too. is this the station’s mascot or something? weighty.

i’m not so religious. not so much as those who lived in Tillwick anyway. i remember the culture shock like yesterday, conviction interwoven into conduct and conversation, fixed as design in a tapestry. my small flat was scaled microscopic near this château of a church a half block down. intrigue was an understatement, i was this kid living in a zoo of impetus, with an animal costume of my own. lying is just way too untapped of a concept here, a new town equals equivalently as 2 and 2.0, nouveau persona. we just hold onto too much. people, places, things, it’s mostly things I oppose. gone was the kiddish miscreant of 1107 Tye, Jericho. (Caricature exit frame?) once you turn twenty, there’s this part of you that can’t run shop with your father anymore. can’t vie euchre with the guys anymore. can’t let it get too long where Ellen thinks you’ll marry her. can’t prop your mother’s roses upon her headstone anymore, it gets all too surreal, just what’s passed you by.

and once you get your letter back, the one that tells you who you’re allowed to be. you just have to say you’re sorry to all those who are happy with a speck-like being, a grain-like being, who want to you be a happy scintilla too. no matter how gleefully little you mean it, you stifle and you say you’re so, so sorry. and you shut the taxi door hard, and you don’t turn around. and you go and you meet yourself.

3.
we’re in a tunnel now. we are because it’s so dark that i can’t see a thing outside my window, and it could be barren plains as well as it could be rich foliage as well as it could be a stretching-metal machina tunnel. just plunging toward oblivion.

i really can’t find a song to match my feeling right now, and i won’t relent to an artificial one either. what are you supposed to feel, retreating like this? when you go from somewhere small, to someplace smaller, when you’ve grown in all feasible qualities. you’re a dog in a hamster cage.

it’s better than a dog in an empty house.

“Sir?” in this husky whisper.

Miss Flirt again. she’s since reapplied her lipstick, not that i can see the shade, but her teeth in the darkness have a smudge. there wasn’t a gap in those chiclets.

silhouette nods at my glass and i nod yes and i’m lifting my chalice up to her. drowsy just isn’t the word. i smell sex here.

she pours against the wall of the glass so as no sound is emitted, and just as soon she’s gone. no drink cart.

in letting my heartbeat settle i grant my playlist some diligence. The Kinks, no. The Who, a sure no. The Doors. not a no. seven minutes of certainty in his voice as Riders On The Storm draws out. the last song recorded before Jim Morrison’s death in ‘71. keep at it with the facts, that’s sure to keel the frustration.

fat drops of rain pat on the window. a tinny buzz idles between my ears now, and i twitch in that state cleaving conscious.

i always see her face when i close my eyes. as cliche as it sounds, there’s no reason to lie now. i’m reverting back, back home now. cutting it close on twenty-two, no harm in shaving two blocks off memory lane. in essence, i could leave them here. a lost wallet, a passport strayed, it does happen all the time. she looked a lot like a cat when i first saw her, apt to her own, Sally. side profiles completely uniform, sloping nose and pursed, colorless lips. even her hair, this thick foggy blonde wreath, chopped to sloping shoulder. i mean, it was a lot like Sally, this furry pale thing, just gigantic. and then you’d take her to the groomer’s for what you’d think was the first time and you two would laugh and laugh until you’d cry because you’d just lost three quarters of Sally!

it was during this horrible rainstorm i saw her. way before i’d started sporting faux-Catholic, i’d go for strolls every morning trying out a new charming little cafe. they like them in Tillwick, and i did too so it really did make for a charming little arrangement. and one day the rain came up out of nowhere and beat down like the next coming of flood and soon enough you’d ducked into a chapel to escape it and sank into a pew near the back to catch a breath. you then look up to see that everyone is dressed in black, and that in trying you haven’t escaped the rain at all. the priest commands the room—with all the might he has in his frail, raisin body—and brays a broad condolence that resonates like a chiffon film onto everyone in the echoic room, even me, not sure who was dead.

it’s not until i hear a snort at my right that i realize just how funny it all is. the accent, phlegmy and Scottish, a barbaric combination to enact such a role. it’s always so much worse when it’s meant to be suppressed. and so much better that it’s here. i can’t arrest myself anymore, and two outlier blurts cut off the poor man. we pause, face each other, continue so unapologetically. his face i remember so clearly, “sun-kissed” we mirthfully called him, it looked like he’d washed his face every morning in a deep fryer.

we were kicked out, in quite a belligerent way, not very becoming of that priest.

it turned out we were in quite similar situations. as i had entered to elude getting further drenched, she was there as the departed’s first cousin, whom she despised after he once erected a fighting ring with her mice and made her to watch them brawl.

a track off of Kinda Kinks is on and i don’t feel inspired to change it. i dispel a breath. the rain is over.

more soon.

there is a young dog inside me.

he is wet and foul-smelling, he is visible ribs

as he hungers for the challenge.

haring the streets tolls his limbs,

brazen rocking deadwood limbs.

doused in diesel he shivers profusely

for there is no match in sight.

now and forever he will favor

that seething lick of flame;

rather epitomize that he knows he is not.

complacently idle

as those wet foul dogs

who once spat in the face of ardor.

  in fashion of the evangelists

he’ll peer below.

not proud, or self assured

but in some derivative way,

to the canine crowd, why must he practice

discernment?

tell, I cannot, of how he thinks and behaves.

tell, I can, that I fan

his burning desire.

  so too there is a field mouse.

skittish and exposed, she is similarly young.

it is nightly that she cries out,

loud to the mites and shy to the prowl.

she writhes and she calls, in the open air;

a lilting call that sounds

through an anterior echo chamber.

the night is delicious to them both,

and sometimes, together, they hold out their trembling tongues to taste it.

one returns his feature so as to speak.

“Why must I run alone?” one intones into the dark.

“Do you really dislike it that way?” the mouse replies in turn.

“I must dislike it. I see the others, how they look like me and sleep tail curled to their jaw like me and tear flesh from bone like me.”

“And?”

“We are undomesticated. My brothers are governed by convention still. I cannot make sense of it.”

a pause.

“I am unbound by invisible axes.”

…

the dog lifts his head to the moon. a dribble of milk upon a crystalline canvas. he is reminded of his mother.

“Can we do the thing again? One last time?”

“You know I don’t like it.”

his tail droops neatly between his legs.

“But I do.”

he drops his mandible with a soft click, and a gust of wind fleetingly rouses his fur. she scurries up him in a skillful parkour, up the frail limb and caged bone, to make a home in his wet mouth.

“Don’t try to speak.”

his nose wriggles with exertion.

teeth surround her on every which side, and gushes of warm breath coat her rhythmically. this is her favorite part of seeing the dog.

in the day, he hurdles chain link fences and lounges lazily in the sun. his eyes are bloodshot and an artificial green. the rays emphasize each ridge in his figure, each night spent famished explicitly molded into him.

she cannot see him tonight.

…

for the third time this week, he hacks up little balls of fur, steeped in drool and blood.

he could almost taste her nightly song as he gobbled her, sputtering up teeth and twig-like bone. a real mess he had made tonight.

the others don’t understand why he befriends them like this. why he puts on this face, perfectly capable of assimilation.

they call it tiresome.

he calls it marinade.

you look at me with embarrassment. you look at me sideways, and you look at me facing me. and when you aren’t facing me, you’re looking at me still. in your dead eyes i search for feeling. and you are still.

there is nothing to tell here, and there is nothing to do. your music will play in my ears and from your mind I’ll pluck the follicular traits and thoughts from you. because i like you, and this assimilation is what one trying to blend in resorts to.

be normal, be usual, be predictive be human fall in line fall in line fall in line

fall in line fall in line fall in line

cross

in

fall

line

blend

inbreed

crossbreed

normally usually predictably human.

you won’t predict me—and of that i am too proud. patterns i see and perpetual devices remain and as i watch from the stratosphere the flickering streetlight on off and on off and on off and the clock hands move so fast they’re still. the queue beckons but i resist. it is easy for me to resist.

for this, I am feared by inertia. i watch his vessel, positioned in power. and i see a lamb on his hind legs, before whom i tower still. what i see he is blind to. with delight i shiver, shiver endless shiver endless shiver endless delight. endless and chasmic and cosmic exchange.

what i can promise to you is that i will bring you connection on a glistening salver. that when you hold me close, when you held me there, i would not leave. you will not question me because i will not permit you to. i answer to your questions in the controlled dilation of my pupils. i answer with subjective truth. you decide what it means. I’ll allow you this.

say my name and flip the record and say my name again and then flip the record again. i differ because i live here.

“Where is here?”

“Here, silly.”

location has escaped relevance. you pull it back into frame by a spool of thread that continues and continues until you question why you’d ever imagine you’d find an end. together we are quantum and we are radiant and i cannot bring myself to understand why you would want to return from me.

that is all we can do, understand. “We?”

“There is no we.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

without you my molars dig and press down into my jaw like they’re evacuating. i swallow thick and salty blood. a fitting punishment from the kiss of you I once felt so tenderly. now, thirst for sweet sweet saliva stays. I left and I lied and I wronged you and it was all because I love you. i find it cute when you try to play my games with me. you’ll brush my hand and you’ll shudder away from my nearness in the same minute. you’re simple when you lift your chin and tuck your eyes to the ground. kick that pebble off the cliff of me and watch it tumble, yes, yes. now turn back to my open face. go on, warn me now of the succeeding landslide. there is fear in your eyes, real fear, and mine unyielding.

you’re lovely, yes. replaceable, yes. porous, too. admirable in how you pursued me without your trying. when I’ve tasted you, and felt your tasting of me, you can’t hide from me. you shun and shy and shudder away, but my prying eyes are unyielding.

you don’t hold my heart, but you have my attention. is the difference so tangible?

“I should go.”

“No—stay.”

“Really, I’m too drunk. I feel like sleeping.”

“Take my bed.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m clearly not using it.”

I’m a voyeur to your discomfort. so go on ahead of me. and justify my love.

I won’t stop until you show me. what has always been there.

you’re mouthy, thick and turgid

molasses stretch off of your teaspoon

in languid and sexual ways

and I regret bottling and labeling your tears

to later drink

you’re brittle, hungry wishbone

and you forget that two’s a crowd

so i laugh into the frailty

bounce and echo off your walls

fractal sound

i’m tensile, drawn and cut

metallic jaw chooses to crunch down

after lightly lying to your taste

i’m promising and fiendish

but you have not found that yet

i lie to you

i, bitter honey

i lie to you

it is the next morning, and nothing has changed.

my green blanket envelopes me, bunched around my feet for added protection.

my face feels sticky from my lazy removal of makeup product the night previous.

a 2am screen encompassing paragraph from a boy sits patiently in my inbox. i do not feel any sense of urgency at this.

nothing i can see or reach out for has changed. the change is dormant, yet present, in the confines beneath my forehead. the memory of her hand brushing my calf. i shut my eyes against my pillow, and again feel her curls in my loose fist as she lapped expectantly between my legs. our legs intertwined as we joked, stretching for reasons to kiss each other. her beauty transfigured as i got closer, willfully trading my sense of sight for her touch against my lips and tongue.

a dream come true is what this is, if said dream fell closer into the definition of an intrusive thought.

nothing has felt more right to me, and i am filled with a foreign sensation. libido does not match this feeling, not at all. i feel like a whacked out conspiracy theorist on doomsday.

the comfortability I’ve felt with men up to this point, coupled with the anticipation of their falling in love with me. imagining me through their eyes as this sort of angel, gracing their sad lives with my presence. this is what i have enjoyed.

with her, i don’t seem to do this. i accepted for a long time that i am probably a gigantic narcissist and this is something i will have to live with. i no longer think this is the case. yesterday was not about me. it was not about her touching me. things have shifted.

her beauty felt impossible. it was me touching her. her privileging me with her bare skin, her warm breath in my ear making me shiver. i am Leonidas, taking in my Athena. I’m coming to find I wouldn’t want it any other way.

i want to beg for her. i want to reach out to her in the darkness, and pray for that soft reciprocal touch. I felt worthy beneath her, as she straddled me and gazed down lustfully at her disciple.

piero piccioni and stan getz are scoring my dreams.

i will text her tonight.