When its emerald eye glimmers in the shadow of the dusty shelf above
I pause,
I sense a presense.

It is not unlike me to attribute human characteristics to inanimate objects.
Give them names and nicknames and quirky character traits based on how their forms bend.

In the flickering lights of a broke wicken sanctuary though, I do not do it out of habit.

I feel it and stare it back down and see my own reflection in the cracked gems that once were a soul.

A gaudy skull.

The kind you see in home video Indiana Jones tributes,
with hats stolen from someone’s parents,
and jackets stolen from someone else’s elder siblings,
and ketchup for blood.

The kind your quirky local manic pixie dream girl uses to hold incense.

The kind I’m about to waste my money on because I’m an adult now and I can use my millennial minimum wage however I want.

I do not become aware of the possessed nature of my new buddy until I take it back home and hear it snicker in the middle of the night.

I know it is the skull, for my roommate is not one to snicker.

(He chuckles when he’s hiding an opinion and has a villainous laugh when it’s coming from a place of sincerity, but that’s beside the point)

I know it’s laughing at me.
I know this for a fact.

It takes me three more nights to call it out on it because I’ve never been confronted with the issue of standing up to a haunted antique I took home from a secondhand shop, possibly owned by satan’s offspring.
But I’m twenty-one years old and still experiencing some firsts, I suppose.

The gaudy skull is exceptionally snarky.
In a way none of my named plants ever were.
Not even Gerard.

He comes for me for the garbage on the floor and the dust on the windowsill on which he’s propped up, and then later for my poor taste in chore-doing music.

I never ask for its name because I know for a fact he’ll make a game out of it
and I am not in the mood for entertaining ghosts.

I come to realise it all on my own a couple of weeks later.
Once the snark starts to wear off,
and domesticity settles in,
and shared quiet becomes comforting,
despite the circumstances.

It is Judas.

I know this for a fact.

You do not understand the extent to which I am certain that it is Judas.
I have never been so aware of someone’s origins in my entire life.
I bought this creepy item and it is now in my room and I’m developing a weird attachment to it and maybe occasionally use it as a paper-weight and it is Judas.

I feel it in my heart and know it inside of my skull that might be standing on someone else’s touchscreen windowsill
two thousand years in the future,
jade stones for eyes even though I specifically requested amber,
but you get ****** over by bureaucracy even after death.

How do I know it is Judas?

Because I feel him stare at me like he wants to kiss me late at night and sense him plotting my betrayal early morning.

I know it is that, for a fact, because I’ve felt this exact sensation before.

My **** edgy room decor is Judas.

I try to get him to admit it himself by talking of past lovers and reading aloud the surprising number of Jesus metaphor poems I have in my room.
I hate Jesus metaphors, but I do it for that sweet sensation of seeing someone trying to dodge the inevitable once it’s coming at them like a mule through Rome piloted by the son of god.

I know he’ll cave eventually and tell me
and I know it’ll be the same caliber of glorious news as Jesus coming out of his own cave of burial,
resurrected and preaching winning.
I know I’ll win.

And I think to myself that maybe I am in the mood to entertain and just haven’t found the right outlet yet.
Maybe history’s most infamous apostle is It.
The original sinner and the original rebel.

(I’m aware it’s technically Cain, the jealousy-ridden son of Adam and Eve, but I only ever count the gays)

Judas and I have bonded.

And I can tell he’s on the verge of telling me his dark and twisted backstory. Again, I have felt this sensation before.

And when it happens, we can talk
about what it’s like being demonised by the one you love
and being the odd one out in your devotee friend group, even though you eat bread and drink wine and worship metaphor just like them.
And how patriarchal institutions distort history to pedal the same tired spiel of everything having a place and everything being there for a reason.

But we both know that isn’t true
because neither of us feel like part of god’s plan or created in anyone’s image.

And we can listen to sad music about wanting to kiss the wrong people together.

And that’s all I ever wanted from a friendship.

The age of letting time take its
own, slow course is gone, perhaps
For every hour is rush hour,
Every meal is a quick-bite,
That cup of coffee always instant,
Honking even before the signal goes
from yellow to green, the rule

The age of savouring the moment
to its delicious limit is gone, perhaps
For every flaw is now a breaking point,
Every argument cause for a split-up
Every mismatch provocateur of second thoughts

In the age of waiting being obsolete,
Patience becoming a virtue redundant,
The plain, small joys of life becoming insignificant,
The material replacing the abstract,
The direction of the swipe on a touchscreen
Becoming the decider of the fate of love stories,
I'll never find you, perhaps,
If this world continues to function
Like a real-life dating app

Sweetly stomach-sick
again.
Plummeting back into
my puzzle-piece niche
among more notes in the same key.
We’re a messy chord,
played by masterful,
but drunken hands
on a piano
wavering on the brink
of broken intonation.
Just close enough to make
you want to sing
along
and hold the right notes in your throat
bring the decibels up
to a thrum,
vibrating in my chest that
calms down the sick
in my belly.

It feels good-
in the most nerve-wracking way
to look at you looking at me
like that again.

Somebody put Kylie Minogue on
from the wall mounted touchscreen one-pound-a-go jukebox-
Coldplay would've been better, but I should be so lucky-
and the rising water in the Titanic's engine room of noise
rose to a First Class stateroom chatter and Kate Winslet
and the queue to the bar grew a little longer

and then
you
walked
in
like
a
Sunday
morning
walk,

one long stroll by a river edge or lake side,
through a Westfield, Bluewater Meadowhall
in one long rehearsed map move entrance
dodging standing drinkers and their plus ones in Zara trench coats and Boden shawls,
and you left a wake of wet forest and crumbling beachhead afternoons behind you as you
walked
on
through
the
crowd
to the pool table at the back where you watched
*** after ***
after pint
after ***
after we need more one pound coins to play more pool,
and you went out for **** though you don't smoke yourself
and you looked up into the mist because you're the kind that would find New York Stuart Little big:
mostly building, building, building, window, balcony, bridge, statue and Central Park trees,
and you walked back in with river eyes, your lids moving from cold back to behind-the-fridge, pub-room warm
and they watered a little, Pacific blue sliding over eternal black;
I think she's the kind that needs a lion tamer not an orchestra leader,
but I've only got Petit Filous muscles and I had four raw eggs this morning and I'm still not as strong as I’d like to be,
(put the baton down, Tim)
a River Phoenix younger Harrison Ford stasis, one train wreck ride to remember,
nowhere near the lion tamer you need.

Kylie sings for the fifteenth time in a row,
and the bar is past last orders though cash is pushed under for pints
and you disappeared under bar light
and then into the moonlight
and now I'm sat grieving
the Golden Retriever of The Nutshell
in Bury St Edmunds this evening.

I will not plug in, you fools -
you may dazzle, tempt and cajole
with high tech-cessories,
interactive goggles, voice activated,
touchscreen detachment-inducers

But I will smugly refuse.

Because the information you impart,
while instantly comprehensive,
is flawed.
I will hear-see-smell my way
through this beautiful life,
truly connected
and weaving through the cloud-heads
with impunity.

Until -

composing a poem
to explain my superiority
I stumble
and break my ankle
on a jaggy branch
which moments before
a rabbit
unfettered by language
noted
and bounced effortlessly over
before merging
with the quick green undergrowth.

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258 days,

June

First week of June?
Amazing. I'd experienced your body...for real this time. Did more with you than I'd ever done with anyone. That party...

Sister, brother leaving...

Couch...
Us...

Not like it matters, now.
Reminds me. I should probably be put in a straight jacket if you ever get close to me again someday. Like, if you ever decide you can be okay with what I did to you. What I did to you was not okay, though.

June 13th
Hickey #2 ("#3) found
Whoops. We got too caught up in this whole ****** business...
Gauntlet thrown down
My aunt was over with her two children
8:27pm: "Please call us ***-***-XXXX"
Replied 8:35pm: "I can't right now. My aunt and her kids are over...
Lizzie told me she was in trouble during her break. I'm assuming I'm in trouble too? I'm not going to make any excuses this time and I apologize. Its my fault. I can call when my aunt leaves."

Around 8:45pm, my cell phone rings. My aunt and her kids are still over.
I am shaking so badly that I have trouble sliding my finger on the touchscreen to pick up the call.
Some of the call is a blur to me.
I cried so hard.
I shook so hard.
I cramped in places I'd never cramped before.
I was gagging on the phone and it just made them more mad at me.
Around 9:55 the phone call ends.
They told me they were going to take all your clothes off.
They pushed me to admit I'd had *** with you.
I wouldn't admit it.
I wouldn't admit anything except the hickey.
God knows we did more.
But I just hoped that God understood that I never wanted to lose you.
I never wanted to lose you.
They asked for my 18th birthday, so they could mark their calendar as the "day they could touch me"
(Because assault on a minor = felony, assault on adult goes much more easily)
I never wanted to lose you.
That threat alone almost made me **** myself. They threatened to hurt me. Physically. On my birthday.
I never wanted to lose you.
They told me they had expectations for me.
They told me I had to hold a certain GPA, and wouldn't tell me what it was.
They told me I needed to have a certain job, by a certain date, and they wouldn't tell me what the date was.
They told me to "let them take care of that ****", the dates they wouldn't tell me.
They told me I should graduate in 3 years, I forgot about this one...
Claimed "I was smart enough to do it" and that "maybe it would prove I was worth their daughter seeing"
They compared me to Zack W. and how they made him break up with you.
They told me they wouldn't force me to do that but that I'd be sorry for what I did.
...by the end of the phone call though, she had softened up.
After all, I was crying so hysterically...she either pretended, or temporarily understood that I was sorry.
She told Ray I was really sorry.
Ray though, was in the background screaming
"That ****** isn't sorry. He ain't ******' sorry."
...
When you got home that night,
They took it easy on you.
They didn't actually strip your clothes off.
They told you they were "kinda harsh" on me and that I "took most of it for you"...
...
...
...
The week before, my friend Nick drank himself to death. He essentially committed suicide.
...
Two weeks later, your mom refused to talk at all about this phone call.
It was sick what she did to me.
I was sick inside. I hated myself. Not to mention Nick invited me over the night he died.
He would be alive had I been there that night.
...
If I had been there with Nick, he wouldn't have died.
...
...
I ended June full of so much guilt. So much confusion. So much pain. I lost a friend. I lost myself.
...
June.

In over my head as if I'm the little kid doing a nosedive in the deep end, because I'm invincible.
Why do we do it?
Why are we constantly putting ourselves in situations that ultimately end up hurting us?
It's only human nature to crave love. To need love.
In the end, no matter how badly we get burned, we still have our memories to hold onto,
carefully choosing the ones that make us the happiest, the ones worth remembering.
Late night texts that we read and re-read, smiling at messages from a boy through a touchscreen.
Elation, giddiness, emotions creating such a high that we cling to every moment of it.
To experience the feeling that someone out there, even for a second, cares about you...
Nothing beats that, because invincibility cannot be beat.

I wanna be your gizmo baby
Handheld all purpose device
Fool with me all you want to baby
Touch me!  That's so nice!

Touch my buttons  Plug me in
Charge my battery
Touchscreen touch me soft and easy
Let me know that you are nice

I wanna be your gizmo baby
Handheld [all] purpose device
Let me help you  All I can do
Baby, you're so nice

Fool with me all you want to baby
Touch me!  That's so nice!

Loss of all my love texts,
Loss of all my pictures,
Loss of a touchscreen,
Loss of the memories.

Makeshift machines
Making me
Out of touch
With a touchscreen reality
In my palm’s clutch

If you stare into the abyss,
A touchscreen stares back at you.

Through my writing
is how I reveal

much of who I am
but that said

I am still an enigma
and better yet

a contradiction
as you might think

I'm pensive
a man of thoughts

shall we say
but simple observation

will show that I have
nervous fingers wrapped

tightly around a pen
or furiously pecking

like a hen at a keyboard
or a touchscreen

Whit Howland © 2020