She's a cold one

The kind of cold
that drives deeply

Frigid and
lingeringly painful
Invisible but tangible scars

She's a cold one who
never knows just what she does
but does it anyway
unknowingly cruel

With teeth that seek
and find the flesh,
wounds with depth
that never completely heal
that have a memory

Some wounds know where and
how to hurt you
again again again
never excruciating in
the same way
but unavoidably agonizing

She's a cold one who persists
who hopes the coat protects
who doesn't see the frostbite
who is an unwitting succubus
who poisons the soul with frost
who makes warmth
fade, dwindle, disappear

Crush it
she said
handing me her heart

Like this?
I asked
showing her mine

I asked her what to write about.
“Me,” she said.
“You? What should I write about you? What could I write about you?”
“Tell me how much you love me.”
“I can't.”
“Why not?”
“Nothing I can think of seems like enough.”
At that she smiled and looked up at me. She's shorter than me, but most are. I like it. I can rest my head on top of hers when I take her into my arms.
“Tell me about the snow.”
“It sparkles like the tears of a betrayed lover.”
“That's so sad.”
“I don't like the snow. I was sledding once when I was 6 and I broke my leg. I don't like the snow.”
She made that face that means she's so sorry, and I know she means it. She's honest like that.
“Tell me about the city.”
“Which one?”
“Any.”
“It's too bright for me.”
“That's it?”
“That's all I could think of. Give me time, I can find more.”
“You've got till sun-up.”
It was 2 a.m. and we were lying in bed.  It was summer, and I had time to write.  During the school year I never did.  Too much grading, too much reading.
“Tell me about me,” I said.
“Sometimes I think about the future, and sometimes I think about the past, and every time I think about them and you aren't there I feel sad.”
“That's so cliche.”
“I'm no writer.”
“That's obvious.”
“Oh stop.”
She sat up on the bed and slapped me on the back. She hit hard, or as hard as she could, but she couldn't get much force behind it. I pushed her down, and fell beside her. The ceiling texture sent shadows in the valleys, and the peaks seemed higher. The only light was from my desk lamp. It reflected off the arms of the typewriter and on to the sparse decorations of the room.
“Tell me what you're afraid of,” she said.
“Myself.”
“Why?”
“I don't know. I create what I am afraid of, mostly. The snow didn't break my leg, but I make myself hate the snow. Fear the snow? It's all a creation.”
“You're good at creating.”
“Too good, I guess.”
“Tell me a story.”
“What kind?”
“Any kind.”
“I knew a man once, years ago, who told me a good story about love and life. He said that when he was about our age, he knew a girl that he fell in love with. She was a smiling sad one, he called her. The kind of girl that showed everyone a smile, and only a few her tears. She showed him her tears, and that's when he fell in love. And he held her tight and dried her tears, and she fell in love too. I wish I could say they lived happily ever after together, but that isn't true. She went her way and he went his, and they talked on the phone every now and then for a few years then stopped. When they were older and graying, a friend of theirs died. They saw each other again at the funeral, and she was crying again this time too the world, and he held her tight again and dried her tears again and told her 'this is how I fell in love with you the first time.' She laughed and asked 'why?' He thought for a minute, and said 'because when you cried for me I saw you at your worst, and I didn't run away. I stayed strong for you, like I am now. I became a man that day.' And she laughed again. 'Why are you laughing?' He asked. 'Because I fell in love with you that day too. Because you saw me at my worst and I didn't try to hide it. Because I knew you would dry the tears away and make me smile again.' She stopped crying then, and looked him in the eyes, and smiled. He smiled back, and said 'that's the one.' And they left, remembering.”
“Write that story.”
“I can't.”
“Why not?”
“It's not my story to write.”
She moved closer to me and I held her. We stayed silent in the bed until I spoke again.
“The lights replace the stars they block out, and sparkle in the sky with their own beauty.”
“What?”
“That's what I have to say about the city.”

She, consisting of
he and s as in **** and shine.  

She is love and hate and frustration,
she is aggravation
she is admiration.  Is
she the complete, meaning
he is waiting to be completed, or does
she need
he to be fully
she?  It must be both, because
he does not feel whole without
she, and
she is not all
she without
he.  

She is just s waiting for he.  
He is just there waiting for
she to take a part of and be a part of.  
She and he could go on, but shall we just see
she alone?  
She is a quiet one with the hush built in.  
She makes a pucker or a sucker, and a grimace or a grin.  
She is kind to the mouth and good on the ear, soft and warm and smooth.  

She is good whiskey.  
She can get he drunk like good whiskey.  Drunk on
she,
he will stumble around running into things,
he will fall down, and
he will need help up.  
She will always be there unlike the whiskey to pick
he up to carry
he home.  
He is nothing without
she.  
He is just he waiting to be within
she.  Of course.  

He is short and childish, blunt and stubby.  
She is long and elegant, sensual and curvy.  
She rolls out of the mouth with grace,
he is shoved out with a huff and a puff.  

She is the word that makes
he be.

I love the way you look in the moonlight that filters in through the window
(I love the simple fact that you are here with me in the moonlight)

Your hair smells amazing
(I inhale you every chance I get in every state you are in and hold it in my lungs because I want it to intoxicate me)

Your hair looks fantastic
(it floats downward from the top of your brilliant mind and cascades like your thoughts, pours like your words in our half-drunk midnight conversations)

Your smile is so pretty
(when you smile at me it lights me up and makes me feel, if even for an instant in this time of my life that is so shambled and broken, whole)

Can I have a hug?
(hold me, embrace me, envelope me, if only to let me know you are real)

Let’s go to bed
(where I can confuse physical love with emotional, take refuge in confirming our relationship with *** because it’s easier than risking my whole trust, easier than leaving myself bare before you with the certainty that one day, eventually, you will tear my heart out and crush it)

No, that’s ridiculous. Why would you say that?
(I’m terrified that you know me so well)

I don’t think I can make it tonight
(I’m terrified that you know me so well)

Can’t we talk?
(I get it, you backed away because I did but I’m going to blame you because I can’t blame myself, don’t you see? Can’t you see how utterly self-absorbed I am but also woefully lacking self-confidence? I refuse to share any of this with you, I can’t let you know it but if you saw it I’d acknowledge it, at least I think I will, and you know me so well so why can’t you see it)

I don’t think we should see each other anymore
(please, please, please make me realize how utterly foolish I am. Please slap me and scream at me)

Say something
(your total lack of reaction destroys me more than anything)

You look really pretty
(so beautiful, majestic, magnificent and I love you. I love the tears I have made you cry so silently and I hate myself so much for this moment because of that. I love you and only now as you walk away do I realize it)

Fine. Go.
(the ease with which you leave is painful and will linger for years)

…
(Please stop walking, please. I was wrong. Please.)

What happens after we tumble down?
The fast falls are easy fixes.
We remember clearly where we were at the start,
we can just climb back on the other side of the crevasse.

But when the decline is gradual,
we have no clue we’ve finished falling until we look around,
confused at the immense walls towering up,
penning us in and obscuring the stars.

We don’t remember what it’s like above,
where we started.
We don’t remember starting
nor how we got down here,
into this dry valley,
so dark and disorienting.

We only know,
with sudden urgency,
that this is not where we want or ought to be.

Panicked, we scramble to find a way out immediately,
needing only the rescue of now.
With each passing minute,
each now becoming then,
the panic intensifies.
If we let it consume us,
we get lost more deeply and wholly;
we struggle more and more to find the right way,
we ignore options in search of the one path we think is
right.

But there is never just one path.

Even after finding a way out,
the challenge has just begun.
We must realize when we are back up to where we started.
But we don’t remember where that is,
we don’t recall the feeling of that height or the look of the stars.
Stop too early and the world will never be as
bright and airy
as it was before.
Push to far,
and the path never ends.

That final point,
that place that’s just right
just where we started,

That is what we call home.

I plan on sleeping into oblivion into Armageddon into the end of the world.  
The earth shakes all around me as the sky falls in brimstone and rains sulfur and right now I think I see the angel of death in the distance.
I am not sure what it would look like though this vision is chilling me to the core.  
The molten core of this rock of life now death is rising up and overtaking the trees yet somehow I remain alive somehow I am not engulfed in the holy and divine flame of this apocalypse but I am sweating like a pig.  

I think I smell bacon.  

The sizzling of the flesh of those around me reminds me of bacon.
I think that’s why Hashem is ******.  
I know the smell of bacon.
I am not religious but the death and chaos around me and the angel of death above me and the burning sky and charred trees and buildings and bodies around me have given me a slight change of heart.  

Help me holy one!

I renounce my sins and blasphemy and beg forgiveness at Your all-powerful feet staring at Your omnipotent toenails and noticing a little fungus and thinking that we all have our flaws, even the Alpha and the Omega, the Almighty God that is prayed to day and night.  

If I could hear all the prayers in the world right now as we crumble into oblivion what
would they say?
I’m sorry Lord for what I have done Forgive me Lord for my indiscretions I was good, God, why have you done this to me what is Your plan Almighty tell me ******, why must I, your humble servant die at your hand because of the evils of others!  and I hear the reversal of fortunes.
The pious screaming at You for answers and the blasphemous like myself whimpering for forgiveness and the strong become weak and the weak become weaker and the terrible whine of hot steel bending and the crackling of flesh that reminds me of bacon and I remember now that I shouldn’t know that smell but forget among the cries of flesh and steel and concrete wood plastic explosions cacophony chaos bliss finality the end of days is on a
Tuesday

and I love it because I have always loathed
Tuesdays.  

Tuesdays
have always had a putrid green sky and a certain unpleasant odor lingering in the thick juicy air an odor not unlike fertilizer that has somehow gone bad and I wonder how **** goes bad because fertilizer is just that, ****, right?  
And that smell begins to flood my nose again as I hear the sizzle of flesh burning again this time
closer and louder and real and I begin to feel the heat all around me and my time for epiphany is now over.  
That fertilizer smell, that rancid **** demonic hellish smell is none other than my own burning flesh, none other than a warning sign that the end would come on a
Tuesday,
that most loathsome and evil of days, the worst of the week.
Tuesday.  
Insufferable intolerable
Tuesday
with your rancid **** burning flesh hell spawn demon smell, a smell only found in the bowels of the underworld and gym locker rooms, your rancid green brown sky, a color to match your smell in the thick sticky juicy air that never leaves.

Tuesday,
you evil being you devil you lost soul you destructor I hate you now more than ever as the sizzle crawls up my body and engulfs my nose and for that I am thankful because I can no longer smell that evil putrid narcotic smell of death but it stops before my eyes so I can bear witness to the end of days to the last whimper of the earth as it is consumed by fire and hear with what is left of my ears the eternal silence of this beautiful Apocalypse and begin only slightly as the bacon sizzle crawls up my forehead
in silent reverie
to love

Tuesday.