A Song Sung In Fever Dreams

He heard her song through fever dreams
such cryptic cries, such haunting lulls
He could feel his mind splitting far and wide
Under a voice schooled in shattering skulls.

He twisted and ached
His body in sweat.
He tried to scream
He begged to forget.

Yet while his form laid in the physical
His mind traversed a realm unknown
Where upon there sat a pale queen,

Marble white upon a scarlet throne.

With his conscious held intact
With all his senses caught in awe
He tried to make sense of that dream,
But quickly panicked to all he saw.

Such sight and sounds
With this demon queen
Sitting high above

Beginning to sing.

He knew this song heard once before.
It calmed his panic, she caught his ear.
Where some see beauty, a bard sees naught
It’s song and verse that he holds dear.

She sang that song with voice unequaled.
He knew right then what she sought of him.
From within his cloak he drew a flute
And played along that seraphim.

Notes no man
Could ever know.
He played them true,
Quiet and slow.

She sang with grace, he played with pride

They played for all the ghosts and dead
And when he lowered his ebony flute

“You will be mine”, was all she said.

Confidence

I saw the break from mind to voice
I watched as "I" formed into "he".
We looked upon our mirrored face
He stood as I yet with subtle grace.

I watched him speak without a fault
No stalling "umms" or stumbling pause
No misused words or faltered point
His charm laid in the soliloquy

He spoke of pride and valor too.
He spoke of all such valiant views.
Yet when he stands tall on that stage
I will return broke, lost, and dazed.

[Practicing with iambic tetrameter!]

The Lady Along The Mississippi

Sun-rises over antique facades
Streams of gold strain through      
      300 year old streets.
Cobble stoned to newly paved they
      Run afoul tinted yellow-green
With a stench stinking through  
     senses of sight and smell
It creeps carefully behind  
      the guise of sweet ruby colored  
      alcohol.

Through the shallow waist high rails    
      of Parisian balconies
This odor permeates
      with sabotaging subterfuge
Attacking in vain to stop the beat  
      of a city
whose pulse can be felt through
      fingertip.

She rests along the streaming river,
Scantly clad and wickedly tempered.
Waiting not in silence but in drunken
      Song.
Oh! you stole my soul long
     ago you need not shout,
My Lady Fleur De Lis


-- A poem I wrote for an English class this semester. It will eventually be workshopped and ripped apart so I wanted to post it here to be able to look back on it.
Having recently been to New Orleans I still have all the feelings and sensations quite vivid in my mind that I felt I needed to flesh them out in some capacity. This poem, by consequence of the class I'm taking, has given me that medium.

-- r.M

The House I Am Buried In

There has to be a correlation between celebrations, the only time I ever see my family, and the reason to why I hate both so very much. It isn’t even particular celebrations, holidays or family members that I find myself developing an aversion to. It’s all of them, family and celebratory shit-festivals alike. I think that if I had to make a list of all the things I couldn’t stand, I would instead make a list of everything I liked with a footnote at the bottom that stated, “Everything that isn’t the above three is everything I hate.” Because fuck the hypothetical rules that I set for myself too.

    I can’t stand complaining this much and so I try to put things into perspective. Like, if depression had a bright side similar to how a swamp is able to support life in the form of insects, it would be that depression helps put the things you do like into perspective. Those things seem to shine so much brighter than they had ever before, but relative to everything else it’s still like looking at a flickering candle from a mile away. A positive is a positive though. The point isn’t to add logic to a condition that seems to defy it.

    When I think about it, depression isn’t about being “sad”, although that is the easiest emotion to pinpoint, as they are trick complicated. What a regular person experience as “sad” I feel in a number of ineffable emotional constructs that therapists have been trying to add names to for years. It really just doesn’t work the way people think it does. Simply doing things doesn’t really fix the problem. Like taking aspirin for a headache, it only dulls the pain. There is an actual chemical imbalance that just sodomizes your life into a submissive state of atrophy. I try my best to curb the issue. I exercise daily, I apply to numerous jobs, I keep a journal and, on rare occasions, go on dates when I find the energy to actually be around illogical women whom I find difficult to tolerate. Sometimes I think being gay would be so much easier. Why can’t it be a choice? I once watched gay porn thinking I may like it, as if homosexuality could be induced by the opposite of whatever psycho-aversion-therapy would be. It didn’t work.

This makes me think that there are two kinds of people with depression: those that do everything they can to try and get rid of it like an adrenaline junkie, and those that can’t find the strength to do a damn thing like a heroine junkie. Both are awful; so really do not think the former is the better of the two. It’s kind of like having a family that has these super high expectations of you, everyone making you out to be some sort of prodigious little shit yet everything you do just falls short. You can’t make anyone happy, you can’t prove yourself to a single person, and you are always just this milquetoast person who only succeeds at failing. I drown myself in a salt-water ocean of activities and experiences, taking in vampiric gulps of that toxin water.

    Speaking of family, I forget that it’s with them where I presently find myself. What are we celebrating today anyways? Aunt Lupe’s 3rd marriage or 15th kid? Maybe my mother’s rampant alcoholism that’s so obvious if I was to draw her from memory she would most certainly have a glass of some cheap red wine in hand? It’s hard seeing through my own escapist gaze.

    Noticing my sudden relapse back into this conscious reality, my older brother leans over to remind me that I’m here because our sister just graduated in some bullshit field that will have no affect on her actual career since she seems to only soar to success on her looks alone. Being a girl must be easy. Well an attractive girl at least.

    I wonder where I fucked up and I would have continued on this train of thought for the rest of the night if I was not interrupted by the sight of my aunt Lupe, the walking trimester, with her tacky dyed red hair pulled up high into a bun and her dress looking a little tight around the midsection.

“Esteban how are you? I feel like it’s been so long. Just look at you!” she says as she pokes at my stomach and squeezes my bicep. This form of familial flattery is feels awkward and does nothing but add to my discomfort.

“Well he might as well have looks if nothing else.” My mother interjects from out of nowhere. I swear that women must exist in the 4th dimension, slipping between time and space, finding holes in the fabric of this universe where her children are at their most vulnerable so she could strike with assassin like precision. I theorize that the wine is her real power. It amplifies her Hispanic wit and sharpens that tongue to an edge that could slice through steel.

“Linda, leave the boy alone! It takes some time for us to find our place in this world. I remember when my hijo Hector was still in col-“

“Hector? Which one is that one again? I don’t mean to be rude but I’m finding it hard to keep track these days.” She stops only to let out the most innocent of chuckles, “I imagine you keep their faces on the fridge with their names underneath just to remind yourself each morning.” My mother sharply cuts off Lupe while holding that pose where the hand that holds the wine is elevated near the face with the wrist bent back, glass resting between index and middle finger, and the other hand remains poised underneath the elbow as if propping it up. I like to think that pose is the staple of a professional alcoholic bitch anywhere.

    My aunt Lupe squints her eyes into a glare before huffing, walking off, and uttering a “puta” just loud enough for us to hear.

“You didn’t need to say that…” I trail off at the end, losing the conviction I was hoping would be delivered. People make me uncomfortable, but my family downright makes me feel insignificant. My brother had somehow disappeared before this exchange. I prayed for him to come back as he was the only one who ever really supported me, but even against my mother his will to fight diminishes. He must have inherited that dimensional travelling ability from her because he knows exactly where she is at all times just so he can avoid being there. The frightened son version of the Pauli exclusion principle.

    She starts to speak back to me, her tone rising but the volume staying low, if not lower. Her eyes look dead as the fog of five dollar Rex Goliath takes control of her head. I try to focus on what she is saying but my anxiety has been acting up as the days approached this family reunion of sorts. By now the feeling of a rumbling in my head and shaking of my arms has become too much. I push her aside, spilling some wine in equal parts on the ground and on her. I haven’t been to this home yet. My parents had moved recently and I hated that if only for the fact that all I wanted was to be surrounded by bathroom tile but had no idea where to locate any of it.

    I hear my brother say something as I pass by. I feel the eyes of my family just staring at me, and I know my mother is standing there not even uttering a sound as the wine soaks into the fabric of her calico dress. She must be so proud of herself that her every prediction about me has always been true. If in a parallel universe there exists another me with another mother, I would bet all she thinks about comes true as well. Except in there I am not the writhing shell of an unemployed drop out making an ass of himself in front of his entire family.

    I finally find the restroom after opening up just about every room in this bourgeois middle class wannabe mansion that exists an hour away from any civilization. I slam the door hard as I press my back against it. My eyes clench tightly together and my breathing becomes erratic. Calm down. Calm down. I repeat to myself my prophylactic mantra hoping to regain stability over my thoughts. I feel as if I am trapped in one of those tubes that blow air around you, scattering money or coupons in the air. I try and try to grab a hold of anything worthwhile. A happy moment, my first kiss, the time I had sex with Erika in her dad’s Porsche. I swing wildly reaching for a time in my life where I had stability, but it all feels as if it is just slipping away. I can’t even remember what my mother said.

    I feel my fingers clench at the sides of my head but have no recollection of committing to the action. There is pain, but I don’t feel it, I just know it is there, my brain consciously making me aware of what I’m doing but not giving me the pleasure of properly processing any of it. I feel something warm touch the edge of my cheek that brings me nostalgic comfort. I remember this feeling, this wet sticky warmth. My parents had a dog growing up. They named her Shakira, but I always called her Poopy. She always knew when I was sad and would come over just to lick me across the face. I loved that about dogs. They are so empathetic and loving to think that scuttling over and licking you serves as some magical cure-all.

I just have to open my eyes and I know she will be there looking at me with that big dopey face and those eyes that are somewhat off center that gave everyone an unsettling feeling if they were to look her dead on in the face.  

    It takes me a minute but when I finally do manage to pry myself out of my daze, I don’t see Poopy staring at me with canine ignorant concern. Just nothing. I suppose it makes sense. The dog was already in full maturity by the time I was eight.

    I reach for the side of my face where I felt warmth to find blood having trickled from where I had dug my nails. It hurts when you realize that the things that made you happy are things that are no longer around. My therapist said I should find happiness in memories but it always seems to be counterproductive when the moments that are so full of delight end up eclipsing themselves.

I arch myself forward, pulling my knees up into my chest and digging my face into them. The panic attack is gone, only the previous feelings remain. I weep helplessly, letting the tears permeate through the denim of my jeans and soak the leg underneath. I miss that dog.

I wasn’t sure how long I sat in fetal on that bathroom floor. Time tends to blur under those circumstances. You don’t know how long you spend crying, shaking, mentally trailing off, or muttering strings of incoherent words together. It must not have been very long considering the sun seemed high in the sky judging by the light that shone in through the bathroom window. It was casting odd shadows along the walls putting my mind under strenuous Rorschach tests. I tilted my head up feeling as if the prophesized knock of a concerned family member was soon to come. I couldn’t handle anything anticipatory without feeling some form of anxiety.

“Yo…” My brother calls from the other side of the door, his knuckles gently rapping against the wooden door making a soft tap sound. “Let me in. I can’t hold it in anymore.”

I responded with silence.

“I’m kidding… Seriously, E. Let me in, man.”
    “I’m fine. Go away. I’ll be fine.”
    “No you won’t. You know you won’t. Let me in. Talk to me.”

The sound of his voice was comforting through the dulling of the bathroom door. It didn’t hold the same “I know better than you” intensity that it normally holds when he speaks to you in person. Not that he ever talks down to anyone, really. His voice is more on the tonal level of assurance wherein he speaks almost factually and never through presumption or condescending knowhow. I knew he wouldn’t give up either.

    I pushed myself away from the door, dragging myself along the floor and up against the opposite side of the bathroom returning to that upright fetal position, knees hugged against chest and face dug low enough that only my eyes showed. I stared at the door as I waited for my brother to walk in. Its edges seemed to expand and contract as if breathing.

    I was shocked at how tactless he was as he walked in, pushing the door open as if it was standing in his way. He stood there just staring at me for a few seconds with a blank look on his face before sitting, cross legged, on the floor in front of me. He had this way of just staring at someone as if they were something to be examined and learned from. Maybe that’s where he got his confidence from. He just watches people sometimes, never speaking unless it was something worth saying, and hardly ever making a mistake that would be common for another person to make. I envied that about my older brother, how he took to time to assess every situation, every emotion he felt, and every possible outcome like some war time strategist. I just wish he didn’t do it so much with me.

    “What are you doing here?” his question through me off. I wanted to feel offended but I knew he never meant offense in his words, they just cut straight to a point that he forgot to let everyone else know about.

    “You mean like here as in this washroom? This stupid fucking party? Or here existentially?” Words are comfort when you hide behind sarcasm and empty humor.  

    “Adorable. Why do you come here? You don’t want to be here, you hate this family and I don’t particularly blame you, so why do you keep showing up? I love that I get to see you but you aren’t a kid anymore. We can actually just go out and have a drink, so don’t use me as an excuse for showing up.”
    “I don’t know.” I really didn’t. I tried to think of a clever answer but my shield of sarcasm was swatted away before it fully served the purpose of giving me a moment to collect myself. I sat there with dried tears on my cheeks and a running nose that was becoming obnoxious just trying to think of why I even bothered coming to these events. I wanted to chalk it up to obligations to my family, or to see relatives I haven’t seen in a long time, but I really didn’t care about any of that. So much emphasis is put on family, but seeing these people after so many years is the same as seeing someone from high school. I just don’t really care but I lie to myself under that pretense.

    “I’m not going to sit here and tell you to get help or stop being such a child because that isn’t going to make a difference. What I will tell you though is that you’re a damn masochist.” Whenever he spoke to me I had to let a silence fall before I spoke back. He valued thought in your words over feigned wit.

    “I don’t want to be here anymore.” Was all I could bring myself to say.

    “Do you mean in this bathroom? This party? Or are you talking existentially. Because it better not be the last one.”

    We kept talking for the next thirty minutes or so. We avoided the topic of my panic attack and of my depression. We reminisced on our childhood, the different girls we dated, the times mother was a mother. It felt good to have this talk with him. Time causes too many rifts between people and sometimes it becomes too much of an effort to keep those ties intact.

    At the end of the conversation I decided what I meant when I said I didn’t want to be here anymore. It was a much more physical revelation than it was mentally. I needed away from this place and these people that I constantly surrounded myself with. They did nothing but make me feel bad and, like a battered wife, I continued to come back to them. I made the decision at the end of that conversation that it was time for me to leave. I could see on my brother’s face that, while this is the epiphany he wanted me to have, he didn’t want to see me go. This rift wasn’t just experienced by me alone and yet now that he was finally mending a wound he felt he held responsibility for, I was ready to up and go.

    I didn’t need to waste much thought on what I would do, because it didn’t really matter. I knew this was the source of my problems and I needed time to sort through my own thoughts alone. Maybe I would go back to school, take up a student visa in another country, or maybe live in a totally different state.

    “What do you plan to do?” he asks under a heart-torn gaze.

    “Don’t know. Don’t care. I have quite a bit of money saved up from my disability checks and my lease has been up for the past six months. I might as well leave now. It doesn’t matter where to.”

    He lets out a sigh followed by a “hmm” as he gets to his feet and stretches his back out, stealing a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the mirror.

    “Well” he begins only to pause rather oddly. “Just remember you can’t run from your troubles. Your mind is the ghost of your problem and your body is the house it was murdered in.”

    He walks out before letting me speak back, purposely letting what he said hang in the air as if this were a soap opera. I realize I probably won’t see him again for a long time. It’s sad how the things that bring you so much joy are the same things that bring you the most pain or maybe I should just be speaking for myself. 

[This is a short story I wrote for my creative writing class. It has yet to go through the workshop phase but I wanted to put it up anyways as I kind of like it how it is now before being critiqued. As a side note: remember that as a reader you are never to connect the narrator of a story to the author. They are not one in the same and although my writing may seem moody or dark, that's just what I have an affinity for. The characters people create can sometimes be representations of themselves and other times can be complete fabrications of ideas they found interesting.]

--[R](M) 

Tea With a Stranger

Adam sat in anonymity at his favorite corner table at his favorite little diner. It was 10 am in London and not a very eventful day. He sipped his tea of prematurely picked leaves and noted the clientele. A new couple full of giggles and hopeful glee sat at the farthest end. Laughing at each and every joke the other had to tell. A relationship built on give and take until one would give no more. You could say it was naivete but that was his fault to bear. His cynicism came from a once warm heart; a heart now turned gray and black by the longings for a lost love. He hides his smile with the brim of his cup wishing them the best.  

His eyes now gaze over to the young waitress with such a practiced walk. One foot in front of the other. Pop the hip! He came here partly because of her. Not for her in that physical and rather human sense of wanting someone, but rather "her" for what she meant to him: the inkling of a feeling. He had almost forgotten what it meant to feel for someone again, well anyone outside of her. To look upon the waitress, to watch as the folds of her skirt slip in and around her legs by the forceful and perverted nature of air sent feelings of unknown positivity all over his pale skin. To be able to smile at the way she would blow the loose strand of hair away from her face as she took an order, both hands far too busy with pen and pad to push it aside manually. 

Oh what an idea she represented and how often she crept into his dreams to keep him company. To tell him jokes and smile in his direction. In his dreams is where he wanted to keep her intact. A place where he would always know that the smile that graced her face, only making her more beautiful, was a smile brought by him. 

"In your thoughts is where she'll stay you deduce is for the best.

Her visage so perfect and pure, it'd be ruined with every following rest."

Adam's delicate day dream is harshly ripped away by a man standing 6ft tall over his favorite table. The man's shadow loomed over him, which was strange considering that the cast of every other shadow bent the other way. Even more troubling was the manner is speech. Speaking in limerick or rhyme is an odd way to make an introduction. Before Adam even had a chance to speak the man raised a palm-faced hand to gesture silence. 

"Please. No need to speak

I do have much to say. 

Such little time

It’s such a crime 

That I offer all in one day. 

May I have a seat? 

Again don't speak, 

You’ll have your turn I swear. 

If it wise, and though contrived,

To offer you my name,

Would it be a weight to bear? 

Or would you even care?"

The man wasn't answered nor did he need to be. He did not wait for his inquiries to be given rebuttal before seating himself across Adam. Cold air funneled around Adam in the most peculiar way. He felt intense, his back straightened out, and all his hairs stood on end. The man played with his manicured nails as if fully aware of the sensations overcoming Adam and chose to be the gentleman by waiting for them to subside. 

His hair was long and beautifully black, as if no light could ever bounce off. It was a black that was so deep it'd be lost even in the brightest areas of space. His skin was pale but without fault that you would think it was made of marble. Adam felt as if all his senses were failing him from vision to touch. Panic, anxiety, tension, he could not pinpoint what this was but there was one thing that stood out quite clearly in almost a dejavu fashion, and that was fear. 

"It is quite queer, this feeling here, that causes you to leer.

Emotions rampant, your thoughts so dampened by my presence inducing fear.

So ask away, if you may, these questions plaguing you this day.

Just take note, you little bloke, that lies will ne'er be spoken.

You have my word, a paradox I'm sure, that I hope is more than token."

A chill ran through Adam starting at the highest point of his neck, down his spine, and ending at his fingers that held his tea cup with the force of a toddler. He tried to ignore the chill by gripping his tea cup but found strength had left him completely. A numbness was setting in like a limb having fallen asleep. His vision turned blurry, the onset of a panic attack or an adrenaline rush. He couldn't tell the difference but with the thought of a thought of speaking, the feeling subsided. He breathed heavy and tried to place blame on anxiety over this poet's appearance. Humor him, a thought provoked. 

"Fine." Adam said with reluctance in his voice he did not bother to mask. "I'll bite."

He takes a deep breath, hesitating only slightly before humoring the individual seated across from him. His eyes never breaking from Adam's and his hands folded with the propriety only seen in nobility. 

Before he can say a word the waitress approaches, opting out of the use of pen and pad, use to the habitual nature of Adam and his lack of ever ordering anything other than tea.

"What can I get ya, Hun? Another tea?" She says, ignoring the other man entirely seemingly unaffected by his eerie aura.

"N..No. I'm fine. But he-"

She had begun the motion of her nod, in punctuation to Adam's "no", before he was able utter the rest out and had already begun to walk away. 

He sighed as he stared back at the man whose gaze remained unbroken. Has he even blinked? I can't bring myself to stare long enough to find out…

"So... Did you want anything?"

Adam's question lacked any real feeling. An empty gesture expressing a nicety he didn't know should be extended or disregarded with all other formalities that one would associate with a stranger tossing out pre-rehearsed rhymes. His question floated in the air. The tension so apparent it seemed like a gas thick enough that his words could be seen through the difference in air as they sluggishly passed through and crashed against the hellish mountain that was this stranger-bard.

The man paid Adam in kind with a gesture of heads spreads apart and a head tipped to the side accompanied by a smirk that could simply be read as "really? That's it?"

"So. No then. Okay. Well then who are you? To be honest I could care less but I feel it should preface the more important question of what the fuck do you want?" Adam's fear, as if a creature all its own, was responding the only way it knew how, with anger. 

Adam is not a strong man by many means, nor is he weak. He is just a man who knows what he likes, what he doesn't, has his habits and has his insecurities. And what he liked was to sit at his favorite corner table with his favorite green or white tea (all dependent on mood) and admire his favorite waitress in silence. All this, now rudely disturbed by the man. 

The man's face seemed unchanging in the way he smiled. No creases at the edges of lips, no heightened cheekbones, no wrinkles of any kind. It seemed as if all his features were painted on in real time as they changed atop a porcelain face. Even his eyes seemed like marbles containing universes slotted into two hollow holes. This made Adam even more anxious as he watched the man fix his cuffs, which frilled out under his suit jacket, a style rather reminiscent of Victorian era dress. Now that Adam stopped to look at the man in his entirety, he realized he couldn't quite peg any feature of the man to any iconic era. His suit jacket was of a modern cut: less emphasis on broad shoulders fitted towards the midsection for a V look, lapels small and not overly accented. His shirt however was something out of an Anne Rice vampire novel, very 14th century European, perhaps Gothic baroque or something akin to it. The collar gave way to a frilly mess of a red lace-like cloth over the black backdrop of the shirt, accented with subtle white pinstripes. Adam couldn't understand the aim this main was going for, but he supposed that his fashion sense was the least thing to be unsettled about. Then again, what the hell do I know about fashion?

"I go by many names from all across time

From the start of the universe with the Big Bang,

To the end of the last tree where you leaves will no longer hang.

Where there was nothing, there I stood

The angel whose face was covered with hood

My brothers watched as I fell from grace

My presence fading from existence without a trace.

But this story has been told through countless galaxies

Its words twisted and torn by telltale fallacies...

I have always been by your side, dear Adam

My poor child with pain no other can fathom

In your sleep I guarded you

That grey turning to a darker hue

You thought yourself so alone and broken

Through crystal tears your cheeks soaked in

I cannot grasp how you never felt me near

I was always at your shoulder to keep away the fear”

“You speak through puzzles and paradoxes instead of giving a straight answer. I don’t have time to waste with your shit that borders on cancer.” Adam retorts, his patience thinning. He can’t figure out what he means to imply through talks of pain and suffering. Adam never took himself to be someone that hurt more than anyone else. Yes he may have felt lonely at times, but who doesn’t? He may have cried over a lost love, but who hasn’t felt the pain of heartbreak? It is hardly something to make something out of! How does he even know any of this?

“Oh my child, don’t be so distant.

She came more than willingly

Yet you push so violently

You should of seen how excited she was, oh a shame you missed it.”

Adam’s anger was becoming more than something that could be held by mental leash. He had forced a distant memory far from the surface of his mind. He had buried it deeper than the oldest corpse. He covered that hole not with dirt but with longing tears and blood from attempted suicides. There were loves before her, but none after her. Her memory had become a flower poisoned and barbed with more thorns than leaves, yet its beauty never wilted. Now this man was bringing it all back, a necromancer of the forcefully forgotten, a black magician pulling the dead out of a forgotten hat that sat upon an ancient skull.

“Fuck you, you lowly shit. You’re the one she ran away with as if I was so unfit!

Unfit to love her, unfit to satisfy even though I did everything I could to try and rectify a relationship that was bullshit from the start. No, you have to come back and wretch it up from my pathetic heart!” Tears were welling in his eyes, bringing color to his pale skin. Hints of pink and red sprinkled across his cheeks and forehead.

The man only smiled that painted on, wrinkleless smile. His posture bent forward, elbows resting on the table, fingers entwined in each other with wrists bent. He gently rested his head on the top of his oddly white hands and just stared as if he was soaking in the frustration emanating from Adam. His rage as miasmatic as it was fulfilling.

“Well? Answer me!?” Adam yelled in protest. His voice a violent tone, but the volume hushed. “It was you she left with, right? All over some stupid fight!. . . I told her I loved her. I told her everyday thinking by some miracle she would always stay…”

Adam’s anger was diminished, being replaced by a sorrow he struggled to fight off every single day. The man sitting across from him only stared, the same way a child stares at ants underneath the intensity of a magnifying glass on a bright day.

“I had a hand in her leaving, but with me she never went

I only acted as a provider for the blade that was lent.

No, she left with one much older than I

But my hands played their part as did yours I must reply.

Don’t you remember my sweet blind child?

I said I was always with you even through the thick and the mild.”

Annoyed and beyond words Adam had to allow a silence to fall between the two in an attempt to collect himself. This seemed to affect the man very little as if he could stay in that singular position until he became the marble that he resembled.

As Adam’s thoughts became to sort themselves he slowly became aware of images that were never there before, or rather images left so deep in the void of his subconscious he never thought they would resurface again. Scenes of colors and distorted images, reds and blacks mixed in a macabre tie-die of self-loathing depravity. Adam grasped at his head as if physical touch would lessen the pain of realization.

As if responding to a stage cue, the man straightens himself in his chair and fingers through his inside coat pocket. Adam watches hunched over, his head in his hands and a face that expresses more pain than any man should have to bear. He waits what feels like an eternity before the man pulls out a clipped newspaper article and slides it over to Adam. The article was frayed at the edges and dried stains littered the image of a girl that took up most of the tiny square space. Adam recognized it immediately.

“How quick you are to forget a life that you claim you held so dear

You pushed her to a point out of malice and fear.

‘Infidelity’, ‘whore’, and ‘selfish’ were the themes of that night

She never hurt more than that moment when her lover changed to such a sight.”

Adam’s eyes became clouded by an onslaught of tears as he looked at the clipping. It had the picture of a beautiful young girl with long brown hair that fell to the sides and the headline that said “Local Girl Commits Suicide on the Near North Side.” He remembered the day he took that photo of her. They had just left a pet adoption center and were contemplating what they intended to get. Adam wanted a large male shepherd by the name of “Duke”, while she wanted the most adorable all black French bulldog named “Sally”. She was so good at pointing out why her points of view were always better than Adam’s.
“We have a small one bedroom with no yard. Where are you going to keep it, Adam! You are always so quick to go for the prettiest damn thing and never even think it through!”
Adam laughed at that, thinking of how appropriate of a reference it was to herself. He didn’t know it at the time he took the picture, but that day would be the last good day they would have, and in taking the picture he had immortalized that last moment. Now here she was, staring back at him after so many dark and troubled years.

“I know who you are…” Adam said, his eyes not breaking away from the clipping. “You were there when that fight went too far. She clasped that knife and never broke your stare. Blood dripping from her wrist like an open faucet, and yet she didn’t care. She stared at you with pain and malice, but why did I freeze in the moment? I never thought I’d be so callous. How could any of this really be true?”

 “From the apple to the knife you continue to confuse, forever ignoring that it has always been you.”

[So this is my first blog post and really my first short story. I love reading and writing and felt I'd do my best to take a go at it. I feel like the world is there waiting for you to make your move, you just have to be willing to actually get up and DO something about it, ya know. So this is my first attempt at "doing". -RM]