“Give me something to believe in.” Her eyes touched my lips and I felt her breath become shallow. I was a coffin filled with regret, buried underneath her floorboards.
“She came out of nowhere, really.” That’s what I told my parents at Thanksgiving. They saw my cracked lips and my puffy eyes from not sleeping, but avoided eye contact.
“She will come next year or maybe when it gets a little warmer. Bee has the bones of a bird,” I tell them. Nervous smiles and a changed subject. Wind howls outside. A gun goes off in the distance and everyone starts talking politics. Pretending to care. Eating faster so they can go home and masturbate in the comfort of their own homes.
Can’t imagine any of these strangers being happy with who they are, or who they hold at night.
I could taste the scotch on my toothbrush from last night and my undershirt still smelled of cigarettes. I wondered who bled on my shoe.
“When will you be back?” Bee’s voice was almost inaudible, her eyes the color of snow that had been sitting by the side of the road for too many days, black and filled with rocks and footprints.
Well, I waited around here long enough - what I need now is a way out.
So tell me, stranger, which way are you headed?
Anywhere’s fine, can’t say there’s anywhere I want to go. I never wanted to be where I’ve been.
(Never wanted to be here without him.)
Just lend me a hand, and give me one last look around. Lend me a cig and a match and I’ll burn this city down, while I blacken my lungs. I swear I won’t look back.
Everyone is an old soul with a new heart. Nothing, says loneliness like desperation or asphyxiation. And this city’s buildings, have been watching for too long. Too many wasted, afternoons with empty windows at my back and cracked lines along my shoelaces.
And the smoke from your lungs can’t hang long enough, to cloud my eyes, the way I really want.
If it all disappeared tomorrow, tears would not stain my cheeks or find my body between the sheets.
We would be gone. Waiting somewhere for other strangers.
We sat outside and watched the river go by. It was cold and the sun was going down, giving the buildings a tangerine and silky smooth look. Clouds held shape as two men were yelling at each other, ready for a fight. The man with the ponytail sounded violent and I wanted to go inside. Somewhere warm, so the icicles would drip from our noses and the tips of our fingers.
It could have been her eyes or the way a smile was always creasing her lips, but I had trouble listening to her words. Zee smoked, and wouldn’t look me in the eyes for very long, always casting them to the riverbank.
She was stunning. More so than I could remember. When it was just pictures instead of afternoons sipping coffee, discussing politics or Warsaw and the riots.
Zee was talking about her classes and things I couldn’t understand. Medicine is for special people, with special hearts. I can only learn what I am shown, visually, and from a distance. Always from a distance.
“Did you hear me?” It was her eyes and the small glimpses of her collarbones. “No. I’m sorry. What did you say?” “Are you going to be around before I go back?” “Yea. I should be. I’m usually around.”
We became silent and the river gurgled against the rocks and all of a sudden, I missed the sounds of summer. Children running along patches of dirt and grass, kites dipping and fluttering on a ice blue sky. Men in lazy boats, casting out, taking a sip of beer, reeling in. Over and over as they would go by. Sometimes they waved. Sometimes they just drank, hats lowering closer to block out a midday sun.
“I’m cold. I should go home.” “Yea. It is cold out here.” I didn’t want to tell her that I had no place to be and no one else to share conversation with. I didn’t want to tell her how beautiful she was or how much I enjoyed the sound of her voice. Or how captivating her fingers were, when she spooned the foam from the top of her cappuccinos, and how her eyes shimmered when I was able to make her laugh.
“So… I’m going to see you before I leave, right?” Zee and her smile. “Definitely.”
We shared a hug and I watched her get into her car.
The leather seats in my car were cold and stiff. I looked in the review mirror and told myself I was a fuck up, and a coward, always getting the words I should be saying, stuck between my teeth.
Maybe next time. When it isn’t too cold or too quiet, and I can slip those words in between the moments we share, letting them get lost inside the foam of cappuccinos or the water against the riverbank.
We sat down, under a willow tree and planted our roots between, turning pages and flickering eyes. Breathing life, into words being spoken through a voice, never heard by our ears.
Falling asleep, to Spring’s faint culling song. Broken and battered by a lazy afternoon: We believe, that our dreams will take us far, far away to places only seen by fortunate eyes.
We read our books and the willow tree hooks under our arms, sheltering us from the outside world. Showing us, that the sacrifice from his brothers and sisters, will educate us on imagination.
Are we the reader or the writer, of this wonderful place? Do we save face by accepting the spaces in our minds, ready and ripe for time, to grow and wonder and salivate? If we relinquish these pages, for the stages of mediocre influence and hollywood issuance, will we falter and sink, into the mires of petulant fires?
We sat under that tree, before our bodies grew and our minds knew, what was important to the world. Forgetting, what made us real. And that willow tree took back the gifts we were given: Wrapping us up tight until our eyes, grew dark and the circle of life began, all over again.
My “Male Perspective” project has finally wrapped and I can’t believe what a great success it has been! For the past few weeks I’ve been featuring stories written by some of my favorite Tumblr men, hoping to express the male voice in a “sticky” style. I mean, for two years you’ve all read my very opinionated, very female opinions on just about everything to do with love, sex, dating, etc. It was time to shake things up a bit.
I challenged these men to write honestly, and most importantly, to write their way. I was blown away by the result. If you have the time, please check out these eight very different, yet very intelligent, driven, and good looking men.
Touching casually, at first. Fingertips on thighs and hips, starting on blushing lips and your eyes reflect the night.
We say whatever we want: The stars and moon, lending their ears to our angst. The dew settling close, against our clothes… We find them heavy and then, we find them, strewn across patios and furniture.
Plastic chairs and glass tables trying to be like us, animated and yearning, to be touched like they are loved too. Not neglected and left out to rot in the rain and daytime sun.
So we hold each other close. We are tall like buildings, and our skin coruscates. Like desert sand, that plastic chair and glass table clasp us tight, because we are frail.
Frail as the dandelion stems.
When the sun begins to rise, we fade to bedrooms. We fade to closets, soft as clouds, or spring time.
Your eyes held that sunrise too, but now, under those blankets I can only see myself.
