Go to sleep, my little time bomb (1)

Michael's insides jumped high, and the adrenaline rushed all the way to his fingertips as his head shot up. He felt the drool before he saw it. A string attached to a wet spot that would turn yellow with time on the green cased pillow. It was time for something, but he didn't know what. Something last maybe, final. But the surge of adrenaline was gone as quickly as it came, and when he felt the platinum blonde tufts of curiously stiff hair under his fingers and remembered the night before, he couldn't really be bothered to get up. It would be easier if he closed his eyes until this one left. If he never saw her in the daylight. It would be better for everyone that way. Their faces would continue to get blurrier in each other's memories until the exact contours disappeared altogether. They might even fuck again, someday, accidentally. It was a small town. The thought made him tired, and he closed his eyes again.



Michael wasn't in any particular hurry to have sex. He was perfectly comfortable watching the video in his sock drawer that he stole from Andrew's closet. Honestly, it scared the shit out of him. He didn't much like the sophomore girls at school. They whispered and traveled in packs. Michael was always sure they were talking about him, the way his brown hair stuck up a little bit in the back, or how he lost the jump and fell down at last Friday's JV game. And how did you get a real girl to act like the girls in the video anyway? Michael was pretty sure they would laugh in his face if he took off his pants like that. Visiting Andrew seemed like a bad idea now. He'd thought they would play cards and drink like they did at home when Mom went out. But apparently they were going to a party. And Michael had to get laid.

"You're tall enough no one will notice", Andrew said. "And alcohol does wonders."

When Andrew got an idea in his head, there was no talking him out of it. Like when he strapped 2 by 4's to Michael's feet and pushed him off the roof of the shed onto a snowdrift. He'd told Dad he had to teach Michael how to ski.

"So when you put it on...Fucktart? You listening? Ok, you use two."

"They told us in Sex Ed you use one", Michael said.

"And how many bitches do you think Mr. Richt has banged? You use two. Here. Put 'em in your wallet."

Michael rolled his eyes and pulled out his wallet. It's not like he would use them anyway. He was 15, for fuck's sake. No college girl was going to have sex with him.

"What's with the Ninja Turtle wallet?" Sam asked. Michael hadn't noticed him turn away from his computer. He didn't like Andrew's roommate. All Sam did was talk about all the girls he'd fucked, and give Michael shit for his inexperience.

"He got it from our Dad, dude" Andrew said. Something in his tone silenced the conversation, and Michael wondered if Andrew had told Sam about Dad.

The walk to the party was long and cold, and Michael was getting tired of walking. Sam was already drunk, and Andrew had picked up a couple girls already while they were waiting for the light to change. Girls loved Andrew. Mom said he had a "shit eating grin", whatever that meant.

"Heeeey, do you go here?" the shorter one asked.

"No, I'm visiting my brother." Michael thought he'd be as truthful as possible. He knew how lies could multiply until you couldn't touch the ground anymore.

"You're cuter than your brother" she said. Michael looked down at her, surprised, and suddenly interested.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Emily"


When they got to the house, Michael was surprised that no one looked twice at him. He felt like a spy, infiltrating a world he didn't belong to, but a bunch of guys were playing NBA Jam in the living room, so maybe this wouldn't be so bad. The familiar smell of beer permeated the air, and when he opened the one Andrew handed him, it was salty and then smooth down his throat. He could do this. Easy.

"On Fiiiiiiiiiiiire!" Michael shouted. He wasn't sure how many beers he'd had, but he felt buzzed. All of a sudden, he wondered where the short girl they walked over with had gone. He scanned the room for her red hair, and saw her sitting on some guy's lap in the kitchen. It was Sam. That douche. Oh well. He'd just go find Andrew. But Andrew was nowhere to be seen. It was hot and the house kept getting more crowded. Michael had never been so thirsty in his life. He grabbed an open beer on the banister and stumbled out the front door to sit on the steps.

"Where's the fire, Lurch?" Michael plopped down hard next to the source. A girl.

"Can I have one of those?" he asked. She passed him a Parliament, and held up the light for him. Michael inhaled deeply, but when he exhaled, it came out too quickly in uncontrollable gusts. He coughed. She laughed.

"Ear candy" he thought. Andrew talked about eye candy. She was ear candy. Her laugh was velvet and long, like she was singing. He wanted to wrap himself in her voice and go to sleep.

"Compliment her", Andrew had said. "First something above the neck. If you say something about her tits or her ass, you're fucked."

"You have nice teeth" Michael said.

She laughed again. "Yeah? I grew them myself."

Teeth? What the hell? He should have said smile.

"I'm Michael. What's your name?"

"Michael, like Mike? Can I call you Mike?"

Michael could hear Mom scolding Dad, "If I wanted sons named Andy and Mike, I would have named them Andy and Mike."
And then Dad's voice came, unbidden. "Mike, pass me the pipe wrench. You know which one that is?"

"No, Michael. Just Michael" he answered her.

"Nice to meet you Just Michael" she said, and stood up.

 "Wait, where are you going?"

"Where have you been, where do you want to go?" she answered in singsong, like she was finishing some nursery rhyme he'd never heard of.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Ruby Tuesday" she said.

"No, seriously, what's your name? You don't look like you're in college."

"Neither do you."

"I never said I was" Michael answered, annoyed.

"Neither did I"

Michael had never really met anyone like this. Someone so frustrating and simultaneously enticing. She wore red leggings, and her legs seemed to go on for miles when she was standing up. All he could see was red legs and brown curls.

"Come on", she said, like she had been waiting for him for ages, like they had some pressing appointment and he was holding them up. So he followed.

Spiderwebs (1)

Allison
"That's quite alright that I'm not your someone", Allison thought indulgently as she packed Matt's piece. "I'm someone else's someone."

These kinds of thoughts were the ones that kept Allison smiling while she watched, frozen, as her loves disappeared one by one. Not her true loves, of course. Not like the princes from the fairy tales that drugged her. She just loved little parts of every single one of them, these temporary loves, and at some point she'd watched them all walk away and into the arms of their respective someones.

There was John of course, with his fresh, woodsy smell. Allison had mostly liked the way he traced letters into her hand, messages she had to decipher in the midst of a smoky bar (KISS ME. HELLO AGAIN.). It seemed so romantic, somehow, but the romance never migrated to the rest of their brief little relationship. Most everything else about him annoyed her to the point of utter madness. He kissed with a vengeance, like Allison's mouth had committed unspeakable acts of war against his, and he was raping and pillaging it with his tongue before claiming it for the country of his own mouth. Which is quite nasty when you put it that way, and not romantic at all. Clearly the man of Allison's dreams should not kiss like a battle ravaged Napoleon Bonaparte.

Sometimes, well, when she was in her "try everything once" phase, she dated people who could never be "the man of her dreams" in any way shape or form. There had been Michael, who'd taken her to see Twilight, gag, and proceeded to fall asleep and snore throughout the entire thing, which she resented only because it made her unable to sleep throughout the entire thing.

She had thought once, a long time ago, that Sam was the man of her dreams, that her life really couldn't go in any other direction. Allison's Nana had said a lot of things about love that Allison quoted in her own head like a mantra, and one of the most overturned quote pennies in her mind currency was, "You won't love someone perfect. You're not perfect. Love is seeing beauty in imperfection". And Allison had loved Sam's imperfections, loved them like children, and in fact nurtured them like children, until they grew stronger, uglier, and more destructive.

Tonight it was different. She wasn't even in love this time, not really. She'd just wanted Matt to love her, hadn't she? Or that was the story she'd tell herself as she sat here and smoked while he walked up the creaky stairs with that bleachy blonde girl. "It's only hurt pride, darling. You don't want him, really. You just want to be wanted."

They were so confusing, these love/sex charades. Allison would have thought she'd be better at it all by now. It wasn't exactly her first rodeo. If Nana were alive, she might refer to Allison as a "loose woman". Her problem with love, of course, was that she needed to learn how to put it back together with sex. She'd made a habit of separating the two, and then feeling guilty about it afterward. But with Matt, she was trying to put it together where it had already separated, wasn't she? She'd slept with him when she didn't love him, and now that she thought she might love parts of him, it was much too late. And that wouldn't work. She began to see things on a spectrum, with animal sex at the bottom, sex in love at the top, and everything in between was some gray mixture between the two. She decided she needed to get the fuck out of the gray, because that was where things got so irrevocably screwed up.

And oh, here it was, the floating feeling. She'd known it was coming with that spectrum business. She always began to see things on a spectrum when the floating feeling was on its way. She'd even been known to make little diagrams of her spectrums in her sketchbook, and remembering this made her giggle. How could anyone hate this feeling? Or dislike it in any way? Allison's best friend Marianne never smoked anymore. She said that when she smoked, she felt like everyone was looking at her, judging her, talking about her, and that it wasn't a pleasant feeling at all. Allison had decided it intensified your frame of mind, and that Marianne would get paranoid because she was already painfully conscious of everyone around her.

Nana had always described Marianne as a serious little person, and Allison could certainly see where she'd gotten that impression. Much of the time, Marianne wore a worried expression, as if she were waiting for something dreadful to happen, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She was fiercely loyal, and wise beyond her years, in Allison's estimation. They'd bonded in 6th grade, over their mutual love for Sammie, the one hit wonder singer of "I Like It", and their shared obsession with Cream Savers, a delicious candy that Allison hadn't had in years. The consumption of a Cream Saver sounded absolutely crucial to her existence now that she thought about them, and she decided to ask Matt's friend Austin if he wouldn't mind getting some.

"The fuck's a cream saver?" Austin mumbled over the increasingly louder tones of Radiohead's "Creep".
"Candy," Allison explained not all that thoroughly.
"Or burritos, dude. Get burritos" came from across the room.

As Thom Yorke crooned through "I don't belong here", Allison felt those words resonate deeply into her until she felt them in her toes and fingertips. What was she doing here? She had to move, as in stand up, put one foot in front of the other, and walk outside the door into she didn't know where.

It was colder than Allison thought it would be, so she belted her long green jacket and nestled into it. Matt would think she'd left because she was upset, wouldn't he? That hadn't been what she'd wanted at all. Above all, she strove to make it appear as though she didn't care, but she did care of course, and there was no use pretending like she didn't now that she was alone.

She crossed through the park in the middle of town and felt an overwhelming comfort. She'd swing. Swinging always made her feel better when she was little. Nana would walk her to the park in the afternoons, and she'd try not to step on the sidewalk cracks. "You'll break your Nana's back!"

The swingset was smaller than she remembered, creakier, and sort of sad, as though no one had been here to visit it in ages. She'd been here heaps of times, of course, her and Marianne, or her and Sam. It was quiet moments like these, when Sam memories would descend like angry wasps. Like Allison had stumbled over their nest, and now the memories would sting her, suffocate her, choke her if she didn't get away. No, she wouldn't think about Sam now.

She would think about Matt. How his soft brown hair would fall into his eyes when he looked down at her. That's what had gotten her into bed, really, that little moment. It sounds silly, but Allison could pinpoint moments when she decided she would sleep with someone. The only one whose moment she couldn't pinpoint was Sam's. She was so young, wasn't she? And there had been so many moments. Fuck, there she went again. It was the being high, she decided, that made her think of Sam. Wonder how he was doing in Oregon. Wonder if he ever thought about her. She would wish she could apologize. Thread together the delicate balance of words on a string until they sounded absolutely perfect, and then come to the conclusion that it wouldn't make any difference whatsoever. People feel the way they feel, and for as long as he lived, Sam would hate Allison. She was sure of it. Eventually her mind would somersault to the inevitable conclusion of continued silence. She would let time pile on top of them like an avalanche, and cut whatever weathered cable still tied them together.

Allison's long red hair fell into her face as she slowed her swing, dragged her feet through the sand, and started the walk to Marianne's. Just a few blocks. Marianne would be cross at her, for walking by herself so late. But it would be worth it when Marianne made her some chamomile tea and listened quietly while Allison whined about Matt. Marianne would probably even brush Allison's hair before she went to bed, and sing her "Desperado" as she drifted to sleep. Just a few more blocks and she would be home. She'd decided a long time ago that home was wherever Marianne was.

Marianne
Marianne took a sip from her teacup, put down her book, and wondered, briefly, what it would feel like to fall. Lately she’d been having that falling dream, you know, the one where your stomach jumps for no reason, and you jolt awake with an electric current only to find out that you had been there, tucked safely in your bed the whole time? She’d had the dream so much that she’d even begun to daydream about the falling: from a building, or an airplane, or something unreachable, somewhere too high to be heaven, and falling infinitely, hurtling uncontrollably, forever. Down, down, down, without any sort of sickening slam.

She looked down at her phone, watched it light up with the time as she pressed the button. 2:47 AM. There wasn’t a text or anything. She hadn’t expected one, really. She hadn’t heard the phone beep. But sometimes she was aware that she shut things like noise, words, voices out to a startling degree. Allison never really noticed, which was surprising considering the fact that Marianne spent most of her time listening to Allison ramble about her various rollercoasters: loves, hates, regrets, aspirations, stories of a world Marianne was both outrageously jealous of and unwilling to become a part of at the same time.

In high school it had been different. She had tried to play along, put on a frozen smile and follow Allison blindly down her twisting alleyways, but all too often she’d end up stranded on a green threadbare couch that smelled like Marlboros and bad weed, passive aggressively avoiding the pawing hands of some unattractively inebriated asshole who was incapable of having a coherent conversation.

She didn’t understand how it was fun. It was entertaining, but not in the funny way that Allison thought. “Tim hooked up with Jenna! God, he must have been wasted. Too funny!” Marianne found it captivating, and excruciatingly sad, like Romeo and Juliet, the Baz Luhrmann version they’d watched freshman year. Because when Tim hooked up with Jenna, Marianne was the only one who seemed to remember Michaela, Tim’s former girlfriend, who quite obviously was still in love with him. Marianne seemed to be the only one who caught the faraway, practiced, glassed over look in Michaela’s eyes as she tried not to pay attention, tried to get a grip on her feelings, before failing miserably and leaving the party. It seemed to her that people got increasingly more selfish as they got drunker, higher. Oh they loved social interaction, sexual interaction, even violent interaction, but only when it served their own very selfish, very introverted purposes, without regard to anyone around them. When you put that many indisposed, selfish creatures together, it’s an absolute destruction. Someone always gets destroyed. And Marianne felt it. She felt all of their pain.

“Mariiiiaaaaaaaaannne!!!”
She heard the whine before she heard the door. And it couldn’t really be described as anything other than a whine.

A line allows progress. A circle does not.

Ponytail gray and "Let's stay together"
she shuts the door
and the proximity of his blood surrounds
he hangs in the wood panels
and the grainy green strands of her daughter's eyes

Judgment was the last thing you were looking for when you poured the intensity of your days into the ears of someone you used to love when you were young. Sun yellow surrounds her face in your memory. The day you were canning peaches in the kitchen. "You'll be extraordinary, won't you?" she asks. You swallowed it into you. A burning beam of hope and pride. It's only now you think maybe she was pleading. Now that the sun yellow is stripped away and you see her bristle with disappointment. The hairs of her arms jutting up like crooked gravestones. This way and that way. You were just trying to be honest. If you tell the truth, everything will be ok, right? If you tell the truth you're clarified. Justified. Identified. But she can't even place you, let alone identify you. Something in her eyes switched off, and now you know she's looking at a stranger. So are you.


No one understands what you have to do now. Not even her. You're convinced that you're the only one who's ever felt the debilitating gaping. Aching. Needing. But you're not. That's something else you have to recognize someday. That you aren't the only one. If you could use the words to make them understand, you would. You know that words have moved nations. United, alienated, saved, killed, seduced, defamed, executed. You live your life by the power of words.

But this precise relationship, that you're sure has repeated itself innumerable times throughout history (Petrarch/Laura, and fuck, you're Petrarch aren't you?), is about the irrelevance of words. People feel the way they feel. And no matter what you write, or say, or to whom you address it, words are drops of rain splattering against the window. They're heard, acknowledged, and promptly forgotten. You should put away your meter. The way you've manipulated language to fit the mold of your specific gaping ache.

You smile as she watches you spiraling downward into an abyss of the unconventional. It's a sad smile, of course, since her eyes are empty, judging, disappointed. But you don't think you're falling, do you? This is intentional. You won't make make a gradual descent into a life you never meant. You've chosen your path. So, it's never ending. Circular. But that's your business. You've never really been able to resist circular motion.