short-story

untitled, .littlegirlblue

[note: this is a variation on i had a dream about you by Richard Siken. it was just such a wonderful construct, i had to try my hand at the form]

because there was is nothing to it you said and i said no. and so we didn't. but instead we lay back on the sand and it was freezing cold and the waves looked like smiles and it was soo dark just white teeth of convex smiles curving towards me over and over and over and over
and you said here is the sun if not the sun then at least a birthday present the sun once gave an eskimo little girl and i said maybe so, and i shrugged and we walked from somewhere to nowhere and back again and it was dark when we got there.

i thought about taking up smoking and your eyes turned into blue butterflies when you looked at me because that's what it looks like. the whole sky fluttered.

and i reclined on the white plastic beachchair thing by the swimming pool in the sun and my skin was gross like an old jaundiced too-skinny dog and listened to Mozart while the French girl lay there topless and brown and smoked cigarettes and i thought to you we should take that up and you thought back that maybe it was for later. and later came and later went and we rented videos and watched them on tiny laptop screens and sat up soo late at night thinking about nothing but that we were up soo late at night thinking about nothing but that we were up soo late at night thinking about (and you lay a hand on my shoulder and stopped me). (and i was thankful)

but the bustop is no place to be this time of night. that's true but we sat there anyway. the hoodlum boys smoked and the young girl with them laughed and out her mouth a real life scorn came into the world and the grass was a little bit darker. and you were soo beautiful you ran your eyes along the shadows for me and suddenly they all turned into massive petals of two-dimensional soo-sad flowers. it was a language i understood and could speak and so i huddled up against a wall (in my room with no windows) and i spoke to them and we laughed and laughed about the Future (and my forehead bruised from all the banging) and everyone thought that i was a madman but you said that i was yours and so i was happy enough with it.

finally, after i had caught the cloud that stole the line from off your palm, i chased the little bastard down and inhaled it all into my chest and coughed the line back up and you said it was y = mx + c which meant nothing to me, and then i took you around the waist and we danced andantino con moto while god played Debussy arabesques for us out of rain and thought we were silly and your dress was half the-known-world and the other half was your white back and i held all of nature in my arms for 3 minutes and 45 seconds and then

if you look at me like that i'll kiss you i said and you said oh really but gave me that look again and being a man of words (if not my word then at least others') and so i leaned in and put my hand behind your head and was lost in your lips and your hair and the yellow couch that probably never existed swallowed us whole line and sinker into the bottom of some other ocean where there was no gravity and it was ok for me to kiss your white breasts in the moonlight and your skin was coloured chalk and bone like making love to a ghost with too black hair and your eyes turned into moths the colour of fire and autumn and red-bricks when i woke up i was lost and hadn't eaten for six weeks and couldn't remember what my name sounded like when people said it i shook my head and said no that can't be it.

but these are the dreams we should have had. and the bus would roll on forever and we would sit and laugh and i would hold my book(s) in my hand unread because you were a better book to read and we would have for breakfast slurpies and french fries and a lunch of each other's tongues and get to third-base in dark room cinemas and when you got sad we would find fields of rainbows to run through so that our clothes were stained indigo and pick our favorite colours like candy-snakes and candy-rasberries and no one likes the dark licorice ones and when my grandfather died you would have saved me from the funeral and when the clocked tick you would have whispered to me to save me from the sound and at 4am when i couldn't sleep and wanted to vomit my 3am cereal back up you would have told me jokes about Chuck Norris and we would have found oceans to be our pets and daisies to be our destinies.

and then you said nothing. and you cried.
and the phone was hot in my hand.
and at the airport you gave me a book of Francis Bacon and it was too heavy but i took it with me anyway and looked at it a million times and saw your heavy hair and perfect breasts on every page and your toes which you'd never let me kiss.

and we walked around the desert and looked for sandstone heiroglyphics and the cats had one-eye. one-eyed pirate cats that rasped and fornicated in the night. and the streets smelled of magic and murder and mystery and sewage and dreams were covered in dust all hamseen season.

and our shoes are dirty with sand and the pockets of all every of my pants are full of sand and my bedsheets too and the saliva in my mouth is thick. and my hands are cold and i am medicated and feel a little lonely without even my brain to keep me company and at 4am i look at the shadows and they are not massive flower-petals or Egyptian papyrus fans.

and you cried unhappily.

and you smelled like heaven after your shower and you clasped your bra and i looked from the doorway and you called me a pervert and the light was milk and you said put this lotion on my legs and i rubbed your feet and kissed your toes. sadly.

and my hands are colder and colder and when i shake hellos i want to apologize and my god you are a dead man she says to me and i nod because it is a little truer.

she has freckles and blue eyes. then she laughs. c'mon, it's ok, and she pats my shoulder and her lips are the sort of thing wars are faught over. and i put my arm around her and say i may marry you in 2-4 years and she laughs.

what was dream what was life i cannot tell. and what was nightmare and what was dream i cannot tell. and i cannot spot loneliness from the other stuff and the other stuff from geraniums and all the colours are mixed up and when i last looked up i was 4 years old and my dad was showing me a huge spider and i was sitting on his lap and we watched thunderstorms and now i am cold handed and drug infected and i have no brain and my heart is kept on a leash and when i see pictures i fall into spaces that were not meant to be occupied where is the god if the madness is in everything and you said

ssshhh, sleep baby. sleep.

and i did.
falling out of heaven hurt a lot.