dad left
for his second tour of duty
on my third birthday

mom kept
a jar full of jelly beans
on the living room coffee table

every night
she gave me one to eat, saying
"when these jelly beans
are all eaten up,
dad will come back home"

sometimes
i would sneak another,
to help dad come home sooner

one night
the phone rang
and i watched mom
wipe away a tear
as she filled
the jar
back
up

Dear reader,


It won't be long before they electrocute the trees with candy colored Christmas lights. Soon everything will be gone: memories, glances, the year. Every thing will dissolve into nostalgia and our lives will become more patchwork and less hopeful. Soul-crushingly sweet our smiles will be, as we watch that disguised meteorite crash into our existence.

Her name was Reno. Her dad joked he named her so because she was the result of a gamble gone wrong.

I could see the stitching around her eyes start to falter, as tears slipped out like a young nineteen year-old girl, running out of the back of a double-wide. Away. Away from it all. Leaving her father, the mechanic who could only fix things with his hands. Running through a field as shimmering as her nails, touching the tall grass with her short fingers.

"I'm not trailer trash," she said, "I've just had it rough."

Reno could see things others couldn't see. Frequently she painted wrecked cars, and I asked why, to which she explained, "Some accidents are allowed to be beautiful."

I fell for her the way her jaw drops after one of my inappropriate jokes: quickly and with such joy.

She had the same answer to when I asked if she liked movies and if she missed her mom.

"Of course I do, Josh," she looked at me and smiled, "Hey buck, have you ever seen True Romance?"

A woman after my own heart.

We watched Christian Slater shoot Drexl, and, like a bullet to the chest, she placed her hand over my heart.

"My, oh my, are you sure that rib cage is big enough for that thing, Mr. Haines?"

She looked a little like Patricia Arquette, but identical to Michelle Williams.

"Are you aware that you look like Michelle Williams?"

Reno ran her hands up my legs, across my torso, and held her hands at my jaw,"Are you aware of how good of a person you are, John Mayer?"

"Ah, yeah. I've gotten that since high school."

She smiled, looked down and up at me,"No, the part about you being a good person? ...You're the drawing on my wall."

I didn't know what that meant.

"I had this drawing-so terrible-it was of the sunset on our hill in Welling Valley," she looked into me and down, while smiling,"Anyway, the sun would kiss the grass every evening, and one day I thought I'd draw it and keep it in my room. When every thing got ugly with my daddy's drinking, and when he beat me something awful, I wanted something to remind me that the light sometimes goes away but will always be back another day. You're my light, Josh. You're the next day after nineteen years of cussing and drinking."

We made love on my bed, as, through the window, the sun bathed our bodies. Her body was a sculpture and her voice was as soft as her lips. I was terrified.

Pulling her hair back, she stood at the foot of my bed, naked,"Are you scared of little ole' me? You look as white as a ghost."

"No, I've never felt so alive... You're so ******* beautiful."

Reno and I lain in bed while Parks and Rec played on the television. Her index and ******* walked across my chest and stopped as she asked, "Josh, have you ever been in love?"

I touched my fingers on hers, studying them with my eyes, and then I looked at her, "Yes, once."

"What was it like?"

I thought I'd feel pain but instead I smiled, "Fantastic, fleeting, and always a little out of reach."

She cooed, "I can't wait until I think I love you like nobody else."

"Me too."



Sincerely,


Joshua Haines

It's morning in my mind
Even though outside the sun is hiding
Like I have been for so long

It's time to start shining
Wake up, you sun-spot
Wake up, you little ember

It's early, so early
"5 more minutes... 10 more years..."
No, get up and start burning

Burn until there's nothing left
Until your fire consumes
All the false hope and self abuse

All the pity, all the hate, all the lies and all the pain
Did it make you feel better?
"No...." Then strike a match

Drop all the lines you saved
Crawl out of your comfortable grave

You're not dead yet
I see a tiny light in there
Feed it, feel it heating you up
From a sun-spot into a solar flare

Because when a fire starts to burn
It spreads and takes in all it can
So burn baby Burn
                                 Burn
                                          Burn

She smells like marmalade
and Christmas trees.
She cuts her heart
where she places her knees.
She smokes in the park,
under the skating skies.
She makes me upset
and sometimes I make her cry.

Over in the dark,
she plays in the snow.
And if she feels cold,
I touch her chest
but I don't know.

Bask in the bark:
our names on a tree.
Carved with the knife
that she swung at me.

She says she's drowning in my ocean,
but I feel no emotion.

Her words suggest our bond
is as strong as a noose.
But she only loved me
when I was something to lose.

..
~

hundreds of thousands of words,
we told through our whole life

tens of thousands of sentences,
you wrote in your novel

thousands of dreams,
we dreamed through our passing dark nights

millions of images,
we left in our moving past times

but my friend
at the end,
I carry

only a few images of withered petals
except all those nightmares
yet I can feel a few dreams of yours, repeatedly

even I can recall a few words of yours
that grew the motion of life
maybe you can feel a few words of mine

As  the words that can make a wonderful  lyric
"I love you, that holds an eternal truth"
yet that shining as a crystal of diamond
..
~
@Musfiq us shaleheen