variations on hero by Regina Spektor

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
__in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

...

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.


____from XVII (i do not love you...) by Pablo Neruda









untitled, by casimms


she goes outside to have another cigarette, and the boys don't hold back their disapproval.
____in the morning, when i wake up, there's an empty champagne bottle on the counter. green beer bottles, chocolate box containers, wine glasses on the counter. empty icecream container. throw pillows i put my foot into.
sssh, babydear, no one's got it all) (no one)

and without their noticing i sit at my piano , doing nothing. lid closed. and hear them laugh in the living room.


*___*___*

___- i wouldn't do that to you.
___- i just don't like it that... _that , you __- you get that way.
___- [i stare at her]
___- what does that mean, i wouldn't do that to you?, hmm?
___- [i open my mouth to speak, but then, quietly, out of some impregnable, felicitous, memory bank, i hear the lyrics of a song. __and smile most ironically instead]
___- what?
___- [still staring]
___- what?
___- i'm the hero of this story i don need to be saved.
___- then why are you smiling?

___- [because__ we all do. ]


*___*___*

is this your sunday i'm sitting in? something vacant you abandoned and walked away from. (when i was a child, in the gully there were two car-wrecks we'd sit in).
______silence, aloneness, midmorning - soo variable. light and airy. heavy as ink i wash my hands twelve times a day the skin's peeling off my fingers i still can't get the feeling of it off me. just depends.

____in the morning, from the shower she scolds him for leaving her toothpaste by the sink. already naked, wordlessly, he stands. walks to the sink and gets her toothpaste. he looks a moment into the shower, at her and her wet hair. half her torso invisible behind large patches of soapsuds. he opens the glass door and steps in, she still wondering. he throws it on the ground. her eyes don't follow it. they kiss.

____i pick at my omelet. her hair is still wet. this one looks nice flipping through a real-estate catalogue i point to a mansion. mmm she nods. nudges her shoulder into me and forks a little bit off the cake between us. should have gotten the muffin she mumbles (then points to a beachfront villa with a nod). __silence. light and airy.


*___*___*

it's 9pm. how?. time's made of cat. step anywhere near and it's gone. only thing gets through the fence. (he never saw it coming at all)


*___*___*

he snores. four empty beer bottles on the floor besides the couch. she giggles as she watches the screen. chewing gum on account of the cigarette. cookie crumbs and icecream on the coffeetable in front of her. he sits on the floor and shakes his head in amusement, that's hilarious he says, in a flat voice. i smile. i've taken soo many pills i can't really do much else.
____sssh. it's alright i think to myself. it's alright it's alright it's alright. Q, it's all right. __no one's got it all.


*___*___*

the heroes of our stories. autobiographies and sports almanacs and dated journals and coffee-shop napkins with names and phone numbers written. on every page, signed:

i'm the hero of this story don need to be saved.


(except after she eats his cake, she says: then why are you smiling?
and he thinks something to himself, and takes her hand and kisses the back of it.