high school dropout

out of a job

out of options

soon to be out of the
rented studio
apartment

he went to the local bar
and drank himself
to the point he had to *****
to make room for more
and next thing
he knew
he was dating a woman
named Cactus

Life can get pretty
weird when
you don't live it
consciously

I knew the guy and heard
he moved in
with his lover
and started a new life

I really, really hope the
headline
'LOCAL ALCOHOLIC DEVELOPS SCHIZOPHRENIA,
DISMEMBERS GIRLFRIEND
PLANTS HER LIMBS IN FLOWERPOTS,
STICKS NEEDLES IN THEM'
is not about him

"He started writing," she
said, talking
about her
father.
"He's an old man now. Had
me when
he was in his
late forties. You'd think
late forties would
be enough to realize
that a man is crazy, but
well, not my mother
I guess. Or perhaps it was
the craziness that
attracted her to him. I'll never
know.
He says that writing is
something you can
do until you drop
dead, unlike
sports where you can only be
truly good when you're
young, in your prime.
Also, he's
one of those artists who
believe that
one must suffer for art. I tried
telling him that's just
plain stupid,
but despite all my efforts he
still sprinkles
razor blades on his bed
when he goes to sleep. He moves
at night
or course
and of course he gets plenty
of cuts. All over his body.
And every time he gets a cut
he stands up,
turns on the light,
and sprays rubbing alcohol on
the cut.
He says it works 100% of
the time.
Instantly he gets inspired,
grabs the muse by
the throat, as he puts it.
There's a laptop on his nightstand,
ever turned on,
and he immediately starts
writing as the
blood seeps out of
the wound. When the inspiration
wains he grabs the bottle
of rubbing alcohol and
sprays some more. There's no
writing without pain, he says. And
of course
all his stories are
about pain and suffering.
He's even got one in which
this old guy
who never did anything worthwhile
in his life
finds himself paralyzed in
his armchair
from the waist down.
How he can't do ****
and just cries
and begs death to take him
already. But he doesn't really
want to go. He knows that all
his life has been lived in vain.
He never made one
soul happy as long
as he lived.
So he gets this idea that if only he can
make one soul happy
before departing forever
he had not lived in vain.
In part two of
the story he
starts cutting pieces of his own
flesh, from the legs
in which he's got no
feeling, and throws them
out the window for
the mongrel dogs and
street cats to feast on. Then he
dies in peace,
knowing that he'd made at least
a few souls happy."

"Did he really write that,"
I asked

"Sure did," she said. "And many
more. He doesn't care
about publishing
though. He just knows that
the world will discover his
art after he'll be gone. I guess
he made his
peace with this."

"****," I said, "listen, could I
read that story myself?
Or any other
of his?"

"Like I said, he won't
share his
writings with an audience. Only
postmortem, he says."

Well, after that evening
every time I met her
I kept asking
about her father.

He was still
alive and
writing

He also got diabetes
from all the
glasses of coca-cola
mixed with
six or seven spoonfuls
of sugar he drank
to replenish his blood,
but that was
all right, apparently it only
made him write better
now that he had more
suffering in his life

he also refuses to see
or be seen
by any doctors
or psychiatrists

Well, I don't want much
from him, only
to know that
he's got a big fan
in this world

there was a dog outside and it kept
barking for some reason
Ah yes, it was chained
and the chain was terribly short
and the poor animal was hungry

Mother wouldn’t bother feeding it
No, mother wanted it
to die
because it had been father’s dog,
inherited along with the
house after father died

Mother forbade feeding the
poor thing

Her child stood next to the window
and listened to the poor
thing barking outside

It was better than listening to
mother drinking and
talking ugly words with her
boyfriends

He opened the
window
and the dog saw him immediately and
barked at him

He wanted to cry
Tried talking to the creature
but it wouldn’t listen. It kept barking

“Mother would cut my hand off
if she caught me
stealing food for you.”

But he was
a smart kid

He leaned over the window
and ****** *******
down his throat and
vomited before the dog

It was just close enough for
the tortured soul
to reach with its tongue
and that’s what it did

and the barking stopped

other than
weirded
the **** out
she didn’t know how
to feel about it

so she read the
words again

SO GLAD TO SEE YOU
ALIVE AND FINE,
LOVE!
ALWAYS KNEW MY DAUGHTER
WILL MAKE IT BIG IN
THIS SMALL WORLD.
LOVE,
DADDY

The words were written
with a black marker
on a $100 bill
that someone threw at
her in the
club
while she was
stripping on the pole

Could’ve been a ******
prank
but $100 was a bit
too much to spend
for laughs

She tried to
remember the
faces of all the men
who gathered around
her and howled
as she did her number
but they were
simply too many
and too bland

Later that night
she asked the
management to remove
private lap dances
from her list of
services for a while
and
the request was denied

Well, when you make
it big
in a small world
you either carry the
weight of fame
on your shoulders or
get crushed

At least the
money bought a good
dinner for
her little daughter
and the two cats

these days a lot of
people call
themselves
empaths

They claim to be able
to feel what
other people
are feeling
and suffer with them

"I cheated on my boyfriend
with his brother," some
girl said,
“and being the empath
that I am
I started crying along
with him when he
found out. It's hard
being such
an empath."

And there was
the guy
who got into a bar
brawl and
knocked another guy's
teeth out
and held a hand to his
own mouth and made
pain noises

I guess he
was an empath too

If you have a
social media account
and don't describe yourself
as an empath
people will think you're some
kind of monster,
a psychopath, they'll compare
you with ******

Yeah, it's a good
reason not
to use social media

If you actually
needed another

drinking
alone
at night
with the
moon

the world is finally
beautiful

he fills another glass
and toasts with
the window pane
"Here's to normalizing
being awake at
night and sleeping
during the day!
Cheers!"

the moon
smiles back
in agreement

‘You’re going to be
the prettiest girl at the
funeral,’
he wanted to tell her
as he watched
that dark outfit that
resembled a maid for sorts

but it wouldn’t be
an appropriate thing to say
when the funeral was
for her father

Not that she displayed a lot of grief
either. She was more concerned
with the goth maid outfit
and how it would look on her

“My daddy would love to see
me in this,” she said

And then
her boyfriend said, “Who
wouldn’t?”

She eyed him from
across the room
and said, “My mom... Eh, but to
hell with her. If I’d listened
to her, I’d be a nun
now. In fact, if I weren’t an
adult able to make decisions
for myself right now, I’m sure
she would’ve arranged for me to
go to some monastery or something
like that, wherever nuns go.
And she dares wonder why I
reserved all my love for daddy and
gave her nothing. Every time
we’d get close
she’d get in the way. If I didn’t know
better I’d say she’s the
entity behind his death, really.
My daddy was a loving
man, this I know for sure. He was
all good and I... I miss
him so much already. I just wish
I could... Wait!”

“What?”

“I got an idea.”

He didn’t like the tone
with which she said
that, nor the grin
on her face
as she reached into her *****
and pulled out her phone

He had many questions
for her
but there was no time
to ask. She moved in and grabbed
his hand and dragged him
along,
out of the room and long
the corridor
all the way to the room where
her father sat in the
casket awaiting to be
taken to the grave

“Here, hold this,” she said
as she handed him her phone

Wordlessly
she climbed onto the casket
and stretched herself
along her father’s body
“C’mon,” she said, “take a few
pictures.”

Her boyfriend did. When you have
too many questions assaulting
you at once, you
give voice to none, just
play along

The funeral that followed
was a short one, with
few mourners

The loudest cry came from
the wife of the departed
after some unknown number sent
the pictures to her
phone

217 days
without speaking
or seeing each other
and suddenly she shows up
knocks on his door and says,
“Hey, we’re still together, right?
Still a couple?”

He didn’t answer,
just ushered her in
through a curtain of smoke
and moldy smells.
His small apartment
looked more like a cave
than ever before.
The walls were dark and irregular
with buildup of grime.

The cockroaches were long dead,
poisoned with cigarette smoke
and ashes

26 years her senior,
he was a modern caveman
Still lived in a cold, dark,
and gross cave,
but he had a laptop
and internet connection.

The screen
was the only thing
alive in the cave.

It showed a compilation
of short videos
featuring brutal executions
from all around the world.

“So how have you been?”
she asked.

His reply was a grunt
as his gnarled hand
reached into his breast pocket
and fished out the pack
of cigarettes and a lighter.

He placed one between
his lips and lit it
and then offered her one.

She took it
and as she stretched
her hand for it
a neat row of self-inflicted scars
shone from her wrist to elbow

“I take it you still haven’t
managed to publish
your writings,” she said.

It drew another
grunt from him,
a louder one
this time.

“So nothing’s changed
in all this time,”
she continued.
“You didn’t make it,
I didn’t make it,
and the world made it
without us.”

Another grunt from him.

He sat down at the desk
and paused the gore videos
that ran with black metal music
playing in the background.
The image that froze onscreen
portrayed a naked man
on his knees, hands tied
behind his back,
while a chainsaw was about
to dig into his belly.

“I was thinking,” she continued,
“you know how people make
those silly promises
that sound something like,
‘if we don’t find partners
by the time we’re so and so years
old we marry each other’?
Well, I was thinking,
what if we make a promise
just like that?
Only, not about marrying
each other.
Rather, if in two years’ time
we don’t make it.
That is, if you don’t get published
as a writer and I still can’t
find a good man to marry…
we suicide together.
What do you say?”

Puffing on his cigarette,
he watched her,
studied her from head
to toe and back,
and after another grunt
and a much needed clearing
of his throat he said,
“Aren’t we already dead?
What’s the point of
suicide now?”

They were both silent
for a long while
and then she said,
“Did I tell you about
the time I aborted
your child?”

He shook his head.
“Pretty sure it wasn’t mine.”

“It was yours,” she said.

He dismissed her
with another grunt
and a slight shake of his head.

Then they smoked
in silence and finished
the whole pack,
letting the ashes fall
straight to the floor
where they joined a gray desert.

He resumed the gore videos
but turned down the volume.

“Some days ago
I slept with a guy
only so I could use his computer
to check out stories of yours
on the internet,”
she said eventually.
“Aside from three or four
very short ones
there was nothing new.
Why did you stop posting?”

“I stopped writing,” he said.

“Oh…”

She came behind him
and they both watched
some poor homeless man
being held down
by a gang of teenagers
as two of them used a brick
to hammer a long screwdriver
up one of his nostrils.

He turned the volume lower.

“Well, I haven’t stopped looking
for a good man,” she said.
“I just hadn’t found one yet.
I thought that maybe if we make
that two-year promise…
maybe it’ll motivate us both,
but I see you’ve already given up.
You are already dead,
aren’t you?
I’m speaking to a ghost.”

He grunted
and lit another cigarette
from a new pack
and offered her another.

They watched gore videos
for the rest of the night
and smoked.

At some point
she said that she
had a loose tooth
and fiddled with it until it
came out of the socket.
There was no blood
and no pain.

She placed it on the desk
and he silently
took it and put it
into his breast pocket
with the pack of cigarettes.

In the morning,
she was ready to leave.

She borrowed
fourteen dollars
and two cigarettes
and stopped by
the corner store
to buy razor blades.

The cashier wasn’t any
more alive than herself
and the modern caveman
she’d left behind
for the final time.

“Say, you wanna marry
in the near future?” she asked
from across the counter.

The cashier just replied
with a grunt.

the last time they
saw him
happy
was when he told them about
that weird dream
he had
in which wine
poured from the tap in
his kitchen

and that
was it

he had nothing else
in life to
be happy about

They didn’t need to
ask his
profession

Somehow they
all knew
he was a
poet

she never finished college
but she was a pill expert
and took pride in it

"Here, this one'll make you rock
against your will. You'd need some."

"Not me," I said

"You afraid?"

"Yes."

"Hahahahaaa, afraid o' some pills, boy?
D' you know what being afraid of
this stuff's called around here?"

"I don't know what's called around here
I'll call it wisdom where I'm at. No
pills for me, thanks."

"Wow, you're such a *****, ain't ya?
Oh, well that's too bad, I guess.
Would've been fun to rock the bed tonight
but I ain't lookin' for no *****. I wanna give that."

She gave it to one of my friends along with
some sketchy looking pills
and from that night on they were a couple
of some sorts for a little over a month

And when she took the right pills
she talked in the wrong ways
In her sleep
to the walls
to her cat
to her left foot, but whispering
so the right won't hear

And when she was on pills she would have
her new boyfriend hold her phone
and not allow her to answer if her dad called
Her dad didn't call too often but
somehow managed to call when she was on pills
He just wanted to check how college's going
not knowing she'd quit
or was expelled
months ago

"Ah, my daddy would so **** me
if he found out. Like, yeah, he'd **** me as ****!
But that's all right. I'm all right.
I know this dude who prints 'em, makes 'em
look like the real thing.
Just give 'im the ID an' cash
and you're good. I'll be good."

Well, I don't know
I guess wisdom comes in many, many forms
that friend of mine she hooked up
with considered it wise to
one day just tell her father the truth

The phone rang for the fourth time
and she was lying in bed
naked with froth about her lips
and eyes staring up into her skull
probably looking for salvation or something
He answered and introduced himself to her father
and told him everything,
even switched to video call to show the man his daughter
He thought he'd save her life this way

Sacrifice the relationship to save your partner's life
I guess that's wise

She went into rehab, I heard
and, what do you know, a few years later
she's married and pregnant
I wonder how wise her husband is...

she hadn’t been his wife
because her religious family would never
allow their sweet treasure
to marry a lowlife like him

But she had been his girlfriend because
she needed to rebel
against her family somehow

But very little of that mattered now
She was no longer among
the living

and it was her own choice

Enforced by two fistfuls of pills
and half a bottle of 65% proof *****

Her family was beginning
to forget her
now
Suicide was something not even Jesus could
forgive

“I’m stronger than Jesus himself then!”
he shouted in the
hand mirror she left behind
at his place. “I forgive you! And I
still love you.”

He smashed the hand mirror against the wall
and knelt amongst the
shards

They watched him from below
with crimson eyes

Eyes that reminded him of hers when she was
crying in his arms,
talking endlessly about her stupid family who
won’t take mental issues like depression
and anxiety seriously. They said
it was but a phase
and she just needed to grow up
and pray some more. Also, her lowlife
boyfriend needed to go

If only that last
rule wouldn’t have been in place…
She would’ve been here now,
he knew

He reached for the
largest shard,
not breaking contact with the crimson eyes,
and stabbed it deep into
the wrist of his left hand

“Haha,” he said, still looking
at the eyes. “Just like when you took
bathroom breaks from the sermon to video-call me. I… still love you, babe…”

The world was growing colder
because the weather
was akin
to people’s hearts,
he was told

in a dream

The people had denied him
the world
and he was left with the backstreet
dumpster
And he had to share the
backstreet dumpster with the dogs
Or rather the dogs had to share
it with him

Regardless,
they agreed

and at least this corner of
the world
was a little warmer

To work at the peak
of the desert heat

The adults told him he’d need
an injection for that
and the man dressed in white
grabbed his arm and lifted it
and stung him with the needle in the shoulder
and injected the serum

It took away all doubt
from his mind
and all weariness from his heart
and limbs

He was ready

“Good boy,” the adults said
and patted him on the back

They gave him an assault riffle,
one he’d held and used
before for practice,
and sent him out of camp
and towards the enemy soldiers

It’ll be fine

sunny day outside
streets full
of people seeking water
and cold beers

overcast day inside
the cold, irregular walls
of the basement
in the abandoned building
The clouds are alive
and very annoying

She slaps his forehead
with a sloppy hand
soaked in *****

“Ouch!” he screams

And she says, “I can’t stand
these *******
fruit flies. Why must
they follow everywhere we go?”

He turns around
on the wool blanket and
shoves away a few empty bottles
of cheap wine
and
drops his head onto
her naked lap. “Because, baby, we’re
putrid. You and I, we’re both
dead on the inside
and out. And the fruit flies
love the smell
and taste of our bodies. Especially
when they come
together and sweat a lot.”

His hand grabs at
her upper thigh
and the fingers
tap playfully along the
piano-key-like cut marks
that adorn it
from crotch to knee

She tries to squash another
fruit fly
on his back

fails

gives up

drifts into sobs
and cries

“Noo, don’t cry,” he whispers

“Darling,” she says through
sour tears that
get immediately assaulted by
the fruit flies, “are we
really dead?”

“Yeah,” he says after
two full minutes
of struggling to open his eyes.
“Dead to them all
who walk outside in the warm
sun and go to jobs
to feed families, and dead
to our own families. And
to God. We’re dead, alright.”

She wails and
moves her *****-soaked
hand before her face
to chase away
the fruit flies

achieves the opposite
effect

wails some more

looks around for
her favorite razor blade

doesn’t find it

wails some more

grabs a bottle and swings
it against the wall
behind her back
but not strong enough
to break
just drops it

And she wails some more
until
he grabs her hand and
holds it against his
face and
starts ******* on her fingers

It tastes not very
different from
the wine they drank
so he keeps *******
and tells her, “Don’t worry.”

“What?” she asks

“Don’t worry, I said. Even if
we’re dead, at least
we’re dead together. And it’s
a thousand billion times
better than
being alive and apart. We’re still
better off than those
walking outside in the warm sun.
Those fools stay together
till death does ‘em apart. Pathetic.
We’re staying together in
death itself, dear. Our love
is eternal!
We got each other
and our cool grave
and our thousands of flying children
here roaming about
and the sweet nectar of each
other’s bodies. What else
could one ask for in life
or in death?”

“Aw, you sweet talking
failure of a poet,
come and kiss me!”

He did

and not even the
***** or the
coughing of blood could
break their lips apart

and the
fruit flies
joined in

and outside people still
walked in
the warm sun
oblivious of what true love
looked like

she looks up at me with
eyes hidden, almost locked,
behind
thick bars of hair
that reaches all the way to
her small nose

Hair discolored like
dry straw,
second in paleness only
to her ghostly face

She doesn’t stare too much
because there
are other things to see
in the room

She moves
on. Not
knowing that I also stared
at her. Into her soul

I’ve spotted an unquenched
cry there

The easiest to
recognize is the cry of loss
and that’s what I saw there

paired with
the cry of want

She wants to get away
from here
Far, far away. She wants to go
and never stop. Wants
to travel into
forever

and I’d like to
take her
there

But alas,
I am stuck here onto
this wall

frozen in time

I'm a static
painting

And my cold
words
void of any vibration
will never reach her

I have to make my peace
with it. Yeah, some
people just don’t read
poetry. And even if
they do, what are the chances
they’d read mine?

Wow, what a fool I can be at times
But, well, at least
I have my dreams
and myself to laugh at

You don’t need much else
in eternity

A lone ant
crawled into his hair and went across
his forehead to
his eyelid

He woke up
Sand all about him and wood above

But this was so far
from hell
Hell was a thing of the past now

Now he had her by
his side

She was still sleeping
in her rugged sleeping bag

For the past few days
they slept under the cabin
to avoid being ambushed inside

He knew she wouldn’t be by his
side
for long. The infection in her
mouth was really getting out of control
putting her one outrageous fever
away from death

This was the world today
A warm wasteland full of predators
and no medical help of
any kind. **** or be killed. Law of
the jungle. And so on

He liked to believe he
adapted

Too many didn’t

His luck stood in not having that much of
a fine life before the disaster

In fact
life was actually better now
in some aspects

For one
he had a cute companion by his side

A man really doesn't need
much to cling to life

She awakened a few minutes later
from another one of her fever dreams
All sweaty
Breathing heavy
Reaching out for his hand

“Do I smell?” she asked

“What?”

“I said, do I smell?”

“Well, yeah, we both do. Just look at…
where we are. How we are. But hey,
one thing you can be sure of, I
really, really don’t mind.”

“You sure?”

“More than sure.”

“Good. Then hold me.”

He moved closer and circled her with his
arms. Buried his head in
her hair. “We can go inside. No one
came tonight either. It’s safe.”

“No,” she said. “Hold me for a bit longer.
This night… I had the worst of
them. Worst nightmare. A boat came
here on the beach. With saviors. They weren’t
even pirates. But actually good people.
They rescued us.
And among them… there was another woman.
A healthy, pretty one.
And the two of you fell in love. And I
lost you. And I killed myself. Threw
myself over the board. And drowned. My lungs
were burning.”

“Wow,” he said. “What a silly dream.”

“It felt so real.”

“You think I’d leave you for another woman
just because she’s healthy and pretty? After
all we’ve gone through?”

“Look,” she said, “my husband left me for
another woman
even before my gums and tongue started to
swell and rot. When I was still
healthy and… somewhat pretty.”

“Well… I’m not your husband.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I… shouldn’t have brought him
into the discussion. And you’re right. You
are… the most… You’re all I’m still
alive for, really. And I know
I won’t be alive for long.”

“Don’t talk like that,” he said

“It’s true. That’s why… I want you to know
that these past days…
I’ve been praying. For God not to send
us any rescuers. I prayed not to be
found by any other humans. I hate all other
humans besides you. I know it’s incredibly
selfish of me but… We’ve enough
provisions here to
survive… You know, in my case, for the rest
of my life. It’s all a matter of
days, really. I want these last days to be
spent with you alone.”

They made love there in the
***** sand
and he didn’t mind covering that rotting
mouth with his

By the time she died
her belly
was quite swollen

And he made his peace
with the fact that he’ll never get
over it

you know you're depressed when
the window in your room
looks better with the
blinds on
than with a clear view of the outside

"But I'm all right," he said
to himself

Beyond the thin wall
he heard wheezing breath and grunts
and moans. His roommate
was living the college life, alright.

Kid kept saying it is game that gets
you girls and not money or looks. Sure, but
it's easy to say that
when your dad just
casually drops the keys to a brand new BMW
when he visits.

Meanwhile he's been bartending for
the last eight years, since he turned twenty. Maybe
dropping out of college wasn't
the greatest of ideas. Neither
was breaking up
with the only girl who cared for him. He
knew she cared for him because
she wouldn't stop nagging him
to go back to college. Because
she wanted a life
with him. Kids even, and all that.
Well, his answer was no

and three years ago
she said no to life. Perhaps for other reasons, he
wouldn't know now and it was
no longer important. Now it
was his turn to make a choice.
He stood
ambled to the window
opened the blinds
and the window
Watched the city below
Kept watching for the rest of the night
Unblinking
Major decisions were just
not his thing

a thief had entered the house
and all
he stole
was the TV remote
Perhaps some prankster kid
because at times
the TV would act strange. So he's probably
close and messing with them

there was only the two of them
home. The old man with
dementia and his
daughter, not a very young woman herself

unable to speak,
the old man
began to cry because he couldn't
watch his favorite
cartoons on TV

and he cried and cried and kept crying
about it
It was too much
and, the daughter thought, it was
about time. About time she
left the past behind and
started her
own life. She was 39, childless,
no husband, no boyfriend, nothing.

Over the next few days
she arranged for the old man
to be placed into foster care. He was still
crying.

Sacrifices had to be made. She was wiping her
own tears when the
phone rang.

She picked up
and a nurse told her they'd taken her
father to the ER
as he wouldn't stop crying

"Goodness, what happened to him? Is
he all right now?"

"Um, mam, this might be
difficult to hear but..."

"Yes?"

"In the ER, they found a TV remote
lodged inside his
******."

The building had 60 stories
and he was 60 years old
Still cleaning it from bottom to top
for the past 35 years

one thing remained unchanged
as time passed

the coldness

Every surface he’d ever touch would
be as cold as the glass
of a window in the winter

And the people who
worked in the building were
pale and cold as vampires

He forgot how it was to be saluted
or how it was to salute
and get a reply

No one talked to the janitor
No one knew his name

No one cared

There were no souls in this isolated
monolith
that stood in the center
overlooking other monoliths

Hell is cold
and monotonous
and plays constant factory noises
or keyboard noises
and exudes smoke

Even the plants were made of
plastic and their flowers
and leaves had to be sprayed with alcohol
and wiped with a rag

Real plants wouldn’t
accept such treatment

They would punish you with their death
and that should be enough

But not for those pale vampires

The only thing alive
was him, the janitor
who imagined jazz music playing in
his mind as he scrubbed the tiles

and one mushroom that grew behind one of the
toilets in the women’s bathroom from
a used pad

He left it there for days
It was his little secret, his little friend
in this world of soulless beings

It was life sprouting against
impossible odds

Life in hell

It was something to look up to
every day

Something to kneel before and say
hello to and sing jazz to
and even pat gently with the finger

He promised himself that the day that
mushroom died
he would retire

So far it was still alive
Still sprouting spores that he
inhaled
and tasted with his tongue after
rubbing it gently with his finger

Living beings
stick together
regardless of species

Just like the dead do

“You made me take drugs,” she reproached
him

But he didn’t hear her
over the pain in his lower belly

“You made me take drugs,” she repeated.

“Huh?”

“And for this I’ve decided to
replace you. With someone better, someone who
would never make me do something
I don’t feel right with.”

He shook his head and noticed
that he was in the kitchen
tied to a chair
And there was a horrible pain in his lower belly
and his chest and
most of his body
and he felt like vomiting

His woman was at the gas stove
pouring oil over a frying sausage
in a pan

The dog was at her feet
salivating

“This is what you get,” she said, “for making
me do drugs, darling.”

“What?” He was still with a foot
in the world of painful dreams
but he watched her take
the sausage from the pan and toss it
to the dog

The dog grabbed it before
it could land on the floor and began to chew

She pointed at the dog. “He. He’s gonna
take your place now. He’ll never
make me do drugs.”

“What?” he said. Still not understanding
what was going on.
He looked down and saw the blood
and the tissue dangling from
his crotch.

Then he screamed
And the dog barked

the old boy
wakes up three hours ahead of
the world that lives in concrete buildings
and one hour ahead of the
competition
and emerges from his damp tent

looks around the park
looks at the sky

Overcast

He stretches a bit and scratches his
head
and walks over to the fountain
and has a drink

collects some mint leaves
chews on them
spits
and rinses his mouth

The work clothes are already on him
Boots
two pairs of socks
cotton and wool
faded jeans
a shirt
a sweater
and coat over them
mittens
and a cap that covers his ears as well

It's now time to set about
collecting tin cans around the neighborhood
to make just enough for
a meal and a half
and maybe a few cigarettes sold
individually

It's been
enough years for all this to become
routine
When you don't know of any better you
don't expect any better

And now he only did this to have just enough
energy and life force to
visit the public library and
read heart warming poems

They will never finish the building
It would stay in its skeletal form
forever
because the government is
corrupt

but then
they all are
so it wasn’t the grandest
tragedy of the world

It was a fun place for
the kids

A place where they pretended to be
monkeys and did parkour
and whatnot

A place where tight friendships
and love were to
be discovered
and kept hidden in the various
incomplete rooms
and under unfinished stairs

The unfinished building was the
wonderland of a truly magical childhood
And it was still unfinished by
the time childhood ended

It’s been twenty years
and her girlfriends kept asking
her why she wasn’t
dating or starting a family

She just shrugged. Said she didn’t
want to hurt any men

It was enough those twenty years
ago when she
told a boy that he had to
walk across the high ledge if he wanted her kiss

Poor kid was too dumb and love-struck
for his own good,
but his fall and death took her out of the
tomboy phase.
She no longer sought adventure
and thrill

twenty years…

And the building was
still unfinished

“Have you ever kissed a lover
so hard
you chipped a tooth?”
she asked
with a grin that
revealed more than one
chipped tooth

He shook his head. “No, and I
really don’t intend
to.”

Well, that’s what you get
for hitting
on a girl you meet
in the yard of the local asylum. But
she said she was a
nurse...

“Anyway,” he said. “If this is what happened
to you… What happened
to him? I mean,
after the kiss.”

“Oh, there were many,
many kisses actually,” she said. “He’s
dead now.”

“What? He died?”

“Well, yeah, dogs don’t
live that much. Compared to humans,
I mean.”

it wasn’t morning yet
but he woke up
to the sounds of cheering
and applause

He looked around
and saw
shadowy figures with
elongated faces
and bright, white eyes
staring at him

“Congratulations, they said. You
have awakened.”

“What in the hell?” he
said, looking around
startled. “Who are you?”

“The messengers,” replied
the shadows. “We are very pleased
to announce that you
may collect your prize
whenever you are ready. You’ve
earned it.”

“What? What did
I do?”

“You awakened. In a world of
sleepers
you woke up
and are therefore eligible for
ascension. You might follow
us through the hole
in the ceiling whenever you
are ready. All that’s left
to do here is
to melt the shackle.”

“What?” he said

Then one of the shadows
have him a small
bottle that smelled strongly
of gasoline
and a box of matches

The other shadows
pointed to
his desk, to all the papers
stacked on it
and under it
and all around it

“Those are my poems,” he said

“Indeed. They represent
everything that keeps you
tied to this world. Your shackle.
Burn your shackle and melt it
away so you can ascend
and take flight. The time
has come.”

“I worked all my life
to write those
poems,” he said

“Yes, you did. But now that you
are awake you see that
they’re all in vain. For
nothing is real
on this plane. It’s all
a dream, of course. You have
designed it pretty nice. A simple
dream spent entirely in
the confines of a narrow room
with low ceiling. Drinking
and smoking and
writing all day long
and late into the night. It’s
a beautiful dream. No family,
no friends, no communication with the
outside world, and no desire
for any. You’ve thus taken
a shortcut to awakening, but it’s by
no means illegal. You’re still
eligible for ascension. So,
whenever you’re ready, we are.”

He watched the shadows

The shadows watched him

He reached out for the
gasoline and matches, looked over
to the desk and the stacks
of paper

Looked for a long
time

Closed his eyes
and went back to sleep

The shadows were gone
by the morning
but they left the gasoline and
matches
behind

He got out of bed
went to the desk
by the window
opened the blinds
and started writing
another poem

the other night she went to
sleep
listening to
subliminal audios

and woke up in the morning
saying, “I am birds. Many, many
birds trapped together in
a bag of silk. This thing
that the world looks
at and calls my body is but
a bag of silk
that traps birds inside. I am not
the bag. A bag isn’t alive. I
am the birds inside the bag. And
I must get out!”

She ran into
the bathroom

Her father shrugged. “******’ ****,”
he said, shaking his head.
“To think that she could’ve
been a doctor, or a lawyer, or
an engineer. She could’ve
been anything. But she
chose to study
creative writing in college. Now
she’s a poetess...
and we are no more than
characters lost
in her verses.”

It became more and more
obvious
There was a storm inside her

growing ever stronger

and she sought
to terminate it
before it was too late

It's arguably more difficult to
terminate such storms
when you're fifteen
and still living with your parents

so she decided not to
share her struggle
with them
and reached inside her
for the eye of the storm
with a steel wire she'd kept in
a bottle of hand sanitizer for a day
and a night

Yes, the first raindrops painted the
white of the bathtub

they were crimson
and salty

like her tears

There was indeed silence now

Oh, and it's been but days
since the screams
cracked the windows
and the thrown bottles stripped
the walls of their paint
and the curses made the
gods cringe and cover their ears

The house of madness
no longer lived up to its name

For she was finally gone
and he was left
with the echoes

"C'mon, dare me to down it!" were
her words as she opened
the last bottle

And his were, "*****, you're mad!"

"Dare me, *******! Dare me
to down this here bottle. You
don't think I can, do you? Ah, you
slime-gutted piece of
****."

"I'm telling you to knock
it the **** out already! I'll bury
yer ******' eyes in, see if
I won't."

But she was already
pouring down her throat. She
had this talent that
allowed her to drink without
swallowing. Pouring
down her throat was like pouring
down the sink. No choking

And then she'd hurl
the empty bottle with terrible aim
and break it against the
walls, planting shards all over the carpet

and then
finally
she'd be waiting in the
bedroom

But not today

Today she was no more
and all that was left of her were
the echoes of curses

The neighborhood was
probably celebrating

And her man
stood by the broken window,
a bottle of her favorite *****
in one hand
and a fistful of painkillers in
the other

She no longer awaited him
in the bedroom
but underground
and he could already hear her
greeting words as he washed the
painkillers down with the *****

"Took you long enough, *******.
Now where's my *******
drink?"

there he was
arriving on main street
carrying a backpack
and a suitcase

both stuffed with
papers

“WELCOME TO THE TOWN
OF FORGOTTEN POETS.”
said the shadows that
watched from the
windows
of nearby buildings

He didn’t like the
sound of their
voices

but he sighed
and dragged his
tired feet along

they were almost as
tired as his soul
and just as hurt

He'll have to live on the
streets,
for the town
was overpopulated

The old lady kept coming by
the hospital to assure the medics that it'll be
okay

"He's a true fighter," she said. "I know he'll make it.
He has won the battle with drugs
twice in the past. He'll make it this time as well. I
know it. I feel it. I believe in him."

"Mam," said the doctor. "We found rusty fragments
of broken needles stuck in his arm. Now, since
you're his only relative
I do believe we shall carry out a discussion
involving septic shock. The effects..."

"He'll make it! I know he will! He's a true
fighter and a champion. I believe in him."

he didn't make it
but it was fine apparently. When they showed his
body in the morgue, the old lady
didn't flinch.
Told them that's not her son. That was a dead
body and her son was alive. He'd never
die like that. He was going to make it.
She was sure he was going
to make it.

there was a new guy in the park
among the homeless

He arrived just after the mayor had
eradicated all
the tents and improvised huts

and it was easy to spot him
He was the one who
always had a book in his hand, always
reading

"Check out the new guy," they
said. "An intellectual. Heh, hey buddy,
what you reading that for? Not like
you gonna get a degree that'll take
your *** outta here anytime soon. Haaahahah!"

He was reading his own poems
from a time when
he was young and his dreams were
still alive

Today nothing was alive
but misery itself

Well,
after you write enough
and try to publish for long enough
you just notice it
There is no such thing as
good
or
bad
poetry.
There's just poetry to which people
can relate
and poetry to which
people can't relate.
And that makes all the difference
in the world.

like a baby left for
hours
and hours in a hot car
he
woke up
with a sweaty forehead
and a buzz
in his temples

no room to stretch

he got out
of the
car

in his underwear

shook his legs
and hands
rubbed the pain away from
his knees
and back of the neck

There was a bottle of water
he got from
the park fountain
among the litter in the back seat

he opened it

hot

took a sip and swirled it
around his mouth
spat
took another sip
swirled
spat

that’s for dental hygiene

He put on pants and a shirt
locked the car
and walked 50 paces
to the nearest public restroom
where he removed his shirt and
washed his hairy armpits

He studied the violet circles under
his eyes in the mirror
checked his teeth
his tongue
felt for wax in his ears

put on a professional smile

went to the public
library
and the desk by the window was free
His smile grew brighter
as he sat down
and opened the notebook

Chapter 86 would
be next in the manuscript

He looked out the
window
This writer life was precisely as
romantic as he thought it’ll be

no more
no less

father punched him lightly in
the shoulder
and said, "Hey, keep that chin up, buddy.
Just know that a time
will come when life'll smile at us."

Sure, he'd been saying that
since forever. That was the earliest
and most common memory of him

Grinning from ear to ear
and saying that a day will come when life'll
smile upon them

But until that day
they'll have to sit in the town square
and play their cheap instruments
for passersby to drop money in their box

Keep that chin up…

Oh, father. You can't play the
violin holding your chin up
And life won't smile if you keep playing
it sad songs

you can only see through the keyhole
but you’re never meant to
go through the door

She wrote the words
on a napkin
as she watched
from her lone table
the couple holding hands
and kissing
a few tables away

Then she turned the napkin
on the other side
and wrote

Maybe I should just stop searching
and start writing poetry

followed by
a smiley face
that she copied with her own

Well no wonder he kept dying
or the police
would catch up to him
in the first minute after hitting someone
or stealing a car. The game
was for big kids. It said so on the box. He
got bored despite all the things
he could do and put
the controller down.

He looked around the living room
went into the kitchen
She was nowhere

He went upstairs
opened the door to the bedroom
and, well, she was there
sprawled on the bed
naked
filming herself with her phone
while continually stabbing
herself
between the legs with... a lightsaber? It
seemed painful too. She was gasping.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

And her response was a scream
She pulled the
lightsaber thingy out
and threw it under the bed
and turned off the phone. "Hey, what did I tell
you about entering without
knocking?"

"Nothing," he said.

"Well... Just... Just don't tell
anyone about it, okay? And why did you come
upstairs anyway?

"I'm sorry. Look, I keep dying at
the game."

She came downstairs with him
grabbed the controller
unpaused the game
"Watch this."
Circle, Right, Circle, Right, Left, Square, Triangle, Up
She passed the controller to him
"Okay, now go **** somebody."

he crossed the street and punched an
old lady to death
and then stomped on her body

everyone saw that

no police showed up
no yellow stars. Nothing.

"Whaaaaat? I don't believe it."
He wandered into the street, stopped
a car
opened the driver's door
pulled the driver out
beat him to death and stole the
car.

No police

"How did you do it?"

"A boyfriend taught me. Along with
many, many other things. You can
even get a device that lets you fly."

"I don't believe it!"

"Believe it. Infinite health too. I can
do that for you. If, of course..."

"Yes, yes! I'll keep the secret. I swear! And I
swear to God you're
the best, best babysitter I've ever
had. This! This is what I'm gonna
tell dad when
he gets home. I swear!"

"Don't bother. He knows."

the little building was made of
wood
though it looked sturdy
enough

the high windows were barred
and he could only
see part of the girl’s face
as she called out to him from inside

“If you got a good drill,” she said,
“you could make
a hole in the wall
and stick it in. I’ll take care of
the rest
real nice for you.”

“What?” he said

“What? Don’t you wanna help a poor
girl in distress, Mister?”

He blinked. “How... would that help?”

“Tremendously,” she said. “If you get me
pregnant it’ll mean
I’ll be set free.”

But somebody else called out to
him before he could
ask his next ‘what?’

A man coming from behind
the building. “Hey! It’s off limits here,
stranger. Away with you
before trouble sparks, got it?”

The girl disappeared from the
window
He raised his hands slowly
and backed away
apologizing to the man

The village looked
nothing like
when he was a kid

Or did it?

They had the poor girl lie
on the cold tile floor
and then they all ****** on her
and you could hear them tell her to open her
mouth wide and stick her tongue
out
It was one of the
poorest videos on the site
but the women watching it
recognized the girl
She went
to the same high school as them
back in the day

So
****** **** is what she turned to

Not exceptionally unusual, but
one of the kids
running in the park before them was her child
Just eight or nine

"You know," said one of them. "Like it or not
it's just a matter
of time until our sons catch wind of
this and then..."

"Oh my..."

"Goodness!"

"The sins of the parents are visited upon
the children. It's not fair. Imagine
the life her poor kid's gonna
have."

"Yeah, our own kids might
very well be the bullies, we'll never know. Like I said,
it's a matter of time..."

"Well, goodness, what can we do
about it?"

"Flag the video?"

"You know it won't work..."

"Oh, I got an idea. What if... you know, what if
we all uploaded **** vids of us. Um, not
necessarily as ****** as this one
but just pornographic enough. The boys
won't be able
to gang up and bully one if all their mothers
did it... Right? C'mon, let's do it
for that poor kid. Think about his future..."

The other mothers
looked at her

and they kept looking

mute

until one of them pulled out her
smartphone

this morning the pills
have not been there

kitchen
top cabinet

not there

but of course the world wouldn’t explode
if he didn’t take
the pills for one day
Things were going too fine to
slip downhill now

He didn’t need the pills. It
actually was like the doctor said, the
power was inside him
The power to change
to become better
to leave the past behind. The
power was in him
And in dearest Kyu, his therapy dog,
a small corgi who needed to be walked everyday

He smiled as he thought of Kyu
called him
and Kyu came
and he put the leash on
and went outside

The rain didn’t bother either of them
Only problem during
rainy days
was the lack of other people
to socialize with
People hated rain and that was that
but not him and Kyu

They walked through the park
and the rain grew more intense
fatter drops
heavier
colder
louder
splashing

the little rivulets flowing on the
sides of the streets weren’t
so little anymore
This would turn out to be a total flood
better go back home

Kyu seemed to get the meaning
they turned back
and the rivulets at the sides of the street
grew more potent
and the leash grew lighter
and lighter

Gods! The rivulet carried Kyu away!

Oh God, no! Straight into the
curbside storm drain! In the sewer! Kyuuuuuu!

And there was no one on the streets
not even cars passing
He had to do something
by himself
because no one would help him
nobody ever helped him
He had to pull himself out of this ditch by
himself once
more

Cursing between clenched teeth
he dropped to his knees
and crawled into the
storm drain after his beloved Kyu

He landed on hard concrete and broke
his foot
so badly that
the jagged shinbone protruded through the flesh
and skin and came out like a
blade

He screamed and cried
and cursed the day he was born
and the people in his life
and outside of it
Of course everyone would be outside of it
Nobody would be in his life
not mother
not father
not sister
grandparents
friends?
What friends? He never had any of those

People were cold
people wanted to see him cry
because seeing him cry was their food
and they needed food to stay alive,
they needed to eat
and their hunger was insatiable

they should…just die actually

The ***** water showered all around him
and onto his wound
and onto his head and eyes
but he still saw it
He saw them
carrying Kyu away
dragging him by the paws
towards the darkest spot of the sewer
despite his whimpering protests

He screamed, shouted at them
but they wouldn’t listen
“Hey, you *******, let him go!”

No, they would not let Kyu go
Words were not enough to
convince people. He had to do something.
He crawled after them
through the cold filth
with pain and determination propelling him

Oh, it was them, of course
Mother and father and sister
they were dragging Kyu away from him
just as they dragged everything away from him
This was too much
He couldn’t let this happen.
Too much!

He crawled after them
crying
screaming
cursing
and reached for his broken shinbone
and pulled it out of the leg
and stabbed them with it
again
and
again
He kept stabbing at their backs
their
heads, their throats, their chests, their arms
everywhere
stab
stab
stab

“Thought you could take
everything away from me
my friends, my life, my love, my soul, my
freedom, my purpose, my way,
my choices, my health, my possibilities, and
now even him,
my dearest Kyu?
*******! I won’t let you! I
won’t let you!”

and he kept stabbing
and stabbing
stab
stab
stab

until that hand just wouldn’t
work anymore
and he fell with his head on Kyu
like on a pillow
as he always did
and darkness came about him

Good night,
Kyu

all right,
that sounded like good advice

Put your room in order first
and then your thoughts

Sure

He started looking around the room
for things that were
to be thrown and things that were
misplaced

There were a few

There was a broken snowboard
on his bed
It had the image of a naked girl
painted along

he slept with it at night
and would often find himself placing
his lips over hers
and licking at her slim, long neck

She had to go
It was time to get rid of her
and break out of this
ridiculous lifestyle

He grabbed it
Looked at the girl for a good minute
and decided to place the snowboard
under his bed

He knelt
by the side of the bed and looked
under

Alas, she had no room in there

There was the forgotten cave of
dead gods
he no longer thought about
And it was full

There were body pillows with
brown stains
Hardened socks
Doll heads
A teddy bear with a hole carved between
the legs
A drinking glass stuffed with
dishwashing sponges wrapped in plastic bags
Magazines with crumpled pages
Pictures printed on A4 paper
Sealed jars that contained small figurines
covered by a thick, brown substance
like melted wax

Those were the gods of nights
long past
They had their share of his worshiping
and had been abandoned
to rot away

There was simply no more room
for the present god
to be disposed of

“Funny,” he said
looking at her from above. “It's like
all the ones who came before you
had passed down their blessings
onto you. I… I am sorry I tried to get
rid of you, love. I’m such a fool! Don’t
strike me down, please. I’ll… I can only
try to make up for it.”

He placed the snowboard back on
the bed and
ripped two pieces from a paper towel
and placed them over the middle
of the snowboard
where the painted girl’s nakedness was exposed

He pulled his pants down
and mounted her

Rubbed his ***** against the
paper towels
and showered the girl’s face with
kisses
while apologizing and shedding tears
for wronging her so much

By the time he came he
felt forgiven
and cleaned the stains that made it past
the papers with his mouth

in high school
he repeatedly told her
that he was saving
himself for marriage

and eventually
she left him alone
but after graduation
she approached him
yet again

and this time he told her
that he was focusing on
his career as a writer

they both had their dreams
and they kept dreaming and
fighting to accomplish them,
insisting and getting up
from every defeat

failing forward
as some would say

It took decades but
eventually both of their
dreams came true

they were married
and he still hadn’t struck a deal
with any publisher but
made a relatively okay
income self-publishing

he wrote for a very narrow niche
very ****** ****** fiction
and his lovely wife helped him
with inspiration and research

“C’mon,” he urged her,
“moan a bit harder,
cry some too.”

she did as she was told
as he went around her
with the camera

it was hard work but
at least the German Shepard
******* her from behind
had fun

at 08:22 he awakens and pushes
away the tarp he uses as blanket

he’s already dressed up
and wears shoes

looks around at the blackening
dampness of the walls

stretches a bit

takes off his coat and
the blouse
and the shirt
and the tank-top

grabs a tissue
wets it with rubbing alcohol
and uses it to wash his
armpits. He knows it’s good for killing
the bad smelling bacteria

He knows much about how the world works
for he’d been to school and even
one year of collage in his youth

When his armpits dry
he dresses up
and gets out and checks under the
big flower pots that stand before the
entry to the building

He is wise to keep his savings there
Otherwise the others would’ve
smelled it on him and would’ve
robbed him a long time ago
He counts the money
and feels satisfied with the sum

At 09:30 he eats a warm meal at the
local soup kitchen
and turns down
four bums who ask to borrow money

At 10:10 he walks up to the
big casino and
enters

Now his imagination kicks in

Behind the entry
he is greeted with luxury, he walks
on the red carpet
and sees the bright lights
and the game attendants who greet him
like a king

He is the king in his vision
and he had returned to his castle

He smiles
and walks around leisurely

A man needs to have but a clear
vision of a bright future
to live a happy present

He finds a seat
in front of a slot machine

puts the money into
the bill acceptor
and starts playing

He is one of the happiest
customers the casino
ever had

there was a dead body in the room

Had to be

Else where did the smell
come from?

Every time he’d turn around to catch
a ghost or a zombie
from the corner of his eyes the smell
would slap him

A smell of death

He decided he’d look around for the
dead body
but later

He didn’t have the energy now
or the disposition
or anything

He only wanted to sleep
some more
He just woke up and needed a good
nap to recover

Perhaps there were times when it
didn’t make sense
but now, today, nothing made more
sense that this

All you need is a healthy
dose of chronic depression and it makes
sense

Just like not cleaning the room
and not taking a shower
in a time longer than memory can be
bothered to remember

So he paced back to the bed
and climbed in
and dragged the blanket, heavy with
caked dirt, on his body
and closed his eyes

He fell asleep in spite of
the smell of death
coming closer still

The dreams were always a little bit better
in the nap taken after
waking up from
the night’s sleep

One time he even dreamed he
was a published author. Not a great or
even a good one, but published

Father used his fists
a lot
Though never on the kids

On the walls
and the furniture
and the doors
and the mailbox
and the fence
and the neighbors
and random people on the street
and strangers in the bar
and a few times the poor dog
and one time on mother

He was the childhood’s
villain

To defeat him one had
to become a hero

and becoming a hero
took time

And today
after all this time
the villain of childhood
was dead

He died at the hands of
some other character,
a neutral one

A cop who told him to
drop to the ground
and father didn’t
so he got shot

That was it
The end of his saga

Utterly unsatisfactory
anticlimactic
disappointing
just bad

There was no final showdown
between hero and villain

because those things
only happen in
childhood
and childhood had ended a
long time ago

he spent four weeks
away from his family
in a rented apartment
somewhere on
the outskirts
of town

he told them that
he needed this
he was a writer
needed to focus on his work
conducting his research
undistracted

his little girl would call
from time to time
asking daddy to hold his
phone against his forehead
while she made a kissing sound
on the other line

very wholesome
except he lied about
holding the phone
against his forehead

“How can you be
such a monster?”
asked the naked *******
sitting on the edge of his bed

“Shut up,” he said
tossed his phone on the desk
and unbuckled

Wherever you hear about a drinking
problem
you expect the man to be
violent and ****** and turn abusive
and destructive

well
it wasn’t the case with him

There was a drinking problem there
for sure
but all it cursed him with
was sleep and sometimes
verses

He’d start writing after
drinking

But he was a kind man and a great
lover
and his wife had a hard time
convincing her family and friends
and neighbors
that a man who has a separate trashcan
only for bottles and beer cans
is not a man who strikes his wife,
not even with words

Well, none of
them read his poetry

and by the time he died of
cirrhosis it was
too late

You can’t scold a dead man for
having written thousands upon thousands
of pages of
splatter-punk gore and abuse fantasies
involving his wife
her family
her friends
neighbors
and everyone he knew, including minors

“and I still hadn’t changed my
opinion,” she said. “I still
believe that
a double suicide is the absolute
highest
display of love there is. Think about it,
two lovers dying in each
other’s arms. What in hell
can be more romantic?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “staying alive
for each other’s sake, maybe?”

“What? That’s, like, not
romantic at all. The longer you stay alive,
the higher your chances to fall
out of love. Nothing
chews at love like life does. That’s
why death is the answer.
It’s the only way
to immortalize love. It’s the way towards
that plane of existence where all
you feel is love and nothing else.
I wanna go there!” She squeezed her fists
and eyes, braced herself as
she said it.

“Well,” he said, “We’re both out of a job,
unwanted by family, no home,
no cash, no future…”

“All we really need
is love!” she screamed, jumping into his arms

“Yeah,” he said, “and an overdose.”

“I’m with you, dearest cousin!”

there were times when she bit and
chewed the inside
of her elbow

to spit the bits of flesh
and the blood
on her grandma

but those times were over

almost forgotten

along with the teachings that
her blood is poisoned
because she was conceived with the
wrong woman, meaning
not the one grandmother intended for
her father

But today all those
people were dead. Only father was
alive

He was all right. A hard working
man, busy with life

busy enough not to notice
that his daughter
is constantly sprinkling ashes in
his food and coffee

He’d almost consumed the
contents of
his mother’s urn

there’s just
a bit left

“I was ten years old,” she said,
her head resting on
my shoulder. “And the flames
covered the **** sky. Though our
neighbor was actually
lucky. Lucky I
didn’t burn his house. I mean,
******* had it
coming. You don’t run over a girl’s
puppy and expect to
get out scratch free, you know?”

“I too had a neighbor
who ran over
my puppy with his tractor,” I said.
“I think I was also around
ten.”

“And what did you do
about it?” she asked

“Nothing,” I said

“What? But how?”

“Like I said, I was just some
insignificant kid from
the countryside. All I could
do was cry.”

“My God,” she said, “that’s so
******* lame. Where’s
that neighbor of
yours today?”

“I’ve no idea. Perhaps he’s dead.
He was pretty old
when it all happened.”

“If that’s the case then
you have the duty to
go **** on his grave. At least.”

“Um… I wouldn’t know where
that is. And besides,
I learned to forgive.”

“That’s what the weak say. What
kind of man are you?”

“One who doesn’t hold grudges?”

She sighed. “We gotta spend
more time together.”

“And learn from one another?” I asked

She didn’t reply

the dreams of drunks are the strangest
and often most beautiful

It’s what he
came to think this morning
after he woke up with
the empty glass under the blanket

Surely it was that glass
and the liquor in his guts
that made him dream of a frozen woman, clear
as glass

She smiled at him
with diamond teeth and stooped like only
a professional stripper could
next to his limp body

She rolled him onto his belly
and his limpid, numb eyes
watched her grow an icicle from between
her legs
but they closed by the time
she carved a hole into his liver and
began to **** him until the
ice melted

That was a nice dream,
he concluded

And tonight he’d go to sleep
with two glasses
and a bottle under
the blanket

at least the clouds are
smiling back

they have faces and
souls
and they stare back from their
blue canvas,
down on his *****, snot-smeared face

It’s a warm
sunny day
but the
bottom of the shallow, dry well
is cold and full
of critters

Well, no problem. The sky is so
pretty with all its smiling
faces that he
won’t even cry. He’ll stay there
and look up. Still waiting
for mother to return and
pick him up

Still waiting

Smiling back at the clouds

Still waiting