Still I summon
that single moment
when you stood before me
and spoke a dialect
of silence
that had no such word
as never,
when you stared me
straight on
as the morning burst
around us,
and I swore
I heard the sound
of light.
From the moment he awoke, his mind was erratic. His walk to the subway had become riddled with potholes since the winter ended, but he only ever noticed when they tripped him up momentarily. His body in determined forward motion, his eyes darted aggressively from moving cabs to clacking high heels, through glass pane store fronts and under restaurant awnings, to the tops of children’s shoulders. He rarely ever looked down because that didn’t coincide with the movements his mind was making.
This time last year, he would have been walking to the office, but he no longer had his old job, or any job for that matter. His former boss had tried to keep him on for as long as possible after receiving the news, but he gradually became “unmanageable.” Co-workers complained about finding him in the copier room, organizing the supplies while he muttered to himself about reupholstering the living room chairs, or how to cook a better chicken piccata.
His paperwork piled up, on and around his desk in fragile towers. He would open a folder and start reading, then immediately lose focus. Open a different folder, then another, quickly gloss over terms like “revenue, and “frozen assets.” Words would prompt him to run internet searches for things like the best winter coat, then the best ski resort (he didn’t ski), then images of pine trees. He went on for hours down a misguided mental rabbit hole. Then he got up and walked back to the copier room.
There wasn’t anything that could singularly hold his focus or concern. He moved distracted from task to task with no cognizance of what he was doing, only a dim understanding that he was doing something. By the end of his time there, having accomplished essentially nothing for months, his boss was no longer sympathetic. It didn’t matter what had happened to him. He simply wasn’t working, and it was time for him to go.
The winter after he lost his job, he nearly got himself killed. Unemployed, he spent his time walking about the city. While his physical body treaded the earth, his muddled thoughts instead visualized when he had last seen the Big Dipper, and which books he had lent out but hadn’t gotten back. His eyes were open but they only saw his thoughts, not the red ‘do not walk’ sign, or the green traffic light, or the car that barreled toward him. Much like a drunk driver, his limp, distracted body hit the front of the sedan and rolled up the windshield.
“The ordeal of preparing for the day took close to hours because he couldn’t just do one fucking thing. He couldn’t just brush his teeth, he had to alphabetize the bookshelf, or water the plants.”
Had he been paying any more attention, his body would have seized up, and the tightened muscles around his bones would have broken them upon impact. Had the car been going any faster, it would have completely run him over; he sometimes wished it had. But he rolled off, the car drove away, and he was “fine.” And his incessant internal dialogue immediately resumed. Limping toward the apartment, he wondered what was in the fridge, where his childhood pencil case was, and if the Mariana trench was really all that deep.
Nowadays, he ran late. Always late, but to nowhere in particular except to the next thing, because he was only ever moving toward not not-moving. The ordeal of preparing for the day took close to hours because he couldn’t just do one fucking thing. He couldn’t just brush his teeth, he had to alphabetize the bookshelf, or water the plants. He would dribble toothpaste spit across the house while he futilely multitasked, always eventually forgetting what he was initially doing, and abandoning the wet toothbrush on the radio or the couch. He left the house with a mouthful of white minty foam and precarious stacks of books on the floor.
By the time he arrived at the coffee shop on the corner, it was early afternoon. That was the one semblance of routine he did have, more out of habit than any actual desire to get a morning beverage. When it was his turn at the counter, he audibly fumbled over sizes and flavors, his daily decision making interjected with his running train of thought.
The barista stood with her hand on her hip, her head cocked to the side in annoyance. The customers behind him toe-tapped and huffed. He didn’t notice. He took his drink, and hit the streets. Days came and went, spent frantically pacing around the boroughs. His sense of urgency was uncalled for for someone with nowhere to be.
When he returned home it was always after midnight. The hours spent walking to tire his mind lasted longer and longer. His attempts at exhausting himself began to have no effect on his alertness or stamina. He entered the apartment dejected; but that feeling, like all his thoughts and feelings, was but a brief moment. He saw his messes from the morning and tried cleaning them up; stack the books back on the shelf, clean the spittle off the stereo. Having picked up the toothbrush, he stood upright to head down the hallway to the bathroom, but turned back and went into the kitchen. Instead, he placed the brush on the counter, and started running water to do the dishes.
The croton plant you give me
comes with tiny dinosaurs —
a t-rex. A stegosaurus.
“They make its leaves seem so much
bigger” you say, as if the whole love
in buying it was prehistoric —
this world you want to give me
that had only shown itself in quiet
trips to bone lost-and-founds.
This control you found in
a world where none of the
creatures had deadly teeth.
We watered the plant. Admired it.
Safe for a year before the leaves
dried back into the ground.
It’s become a tradition
for all our new plants. Each time
we control paradise:
We let the dinosaurs
outlive the earth again.
“You kill a killer then the number of killers remains the same.”
That was Batman, I think. It reminds me of the irony of hating someone so much that I became the very person I hated.
It began on a humid and rainy Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn. Washing my clothes that day in the newly renovated Laundromat on my block turned into somewhat of a ceremony. As the machine cleansed my pillows of all the tears I’d cried over my ex, it felt like I’d started a new chapter. The washer clicked to the spin cycle. I silently vowed never to shed tears for him again, to never again soil my linens over that asswipe.
My small ritual was a simple gesture, but a powerful one. In that moment, something snapped. That night, on a whim, I hit up this nice guy who had been trying to get at me for the past few months, even though he knew I was in a relationship at the time. Our little fling launched what quickly spiraled into a three-month-long rampage of hookups and one-night stands.
Meaningless sex ignited an all-consuming flame. The more I had the more I craved. Toned bodies, thick bodies, big bodies, small bodies. Like a young vampire on the hunt for fresh blood, I couldn’t get enough. It got to the point where I was hooking up with up to three different guys a week, sometimes in three different boroughs. The best part about it was that there were no strings attached. No commitments, no arguments, and most of all, no expectations, except good sex. Switching guys as often as I discarded condoms, once I was done with one I was on to the next.
“Meaningless sex ignited an all-consuming flame. The more I had the more I craved. Toned bodies, thick bodies, big bodies, small bodies.”
I was surprised at how efficient I’d become. The process of cutting guys off afterwards was almost mechanical. My emotions lodged deep beneath my skin, far out of reach of any lovesick individual. I was no heartbreaker; at least I didn’t deign to be. I warned every guy that I wasn’t looking for a relationship. Proceed with caution.
The delightful carnage hit a speed bump when I met Victor. Every now and then, despite the warning label engraved across my chest, some men caught feelings for me. Eventually, it would get so bad that I had to abruptly stop responding to their declarations of love, delivered in novel-length text messages.
Victor was one of those guys.
He was handsome, I must admit. I fucking loved running my hand through his curly fro, especially during sex. He was a solid 5’ 10’’ and you could tell he was a runner. I frequently hit him up for more, breaking my sacred one and done rule. One night, after we’d had sex, I was hungry so, without giving it much thought, I suggested we go grab tacos at the Mexican hole-in-the-wall a few blocks down from his place. Big mistake.
“So, where do you see this going?” he asked coyly after we ordered our food.
I gawked at him for a moment. Was this guy for real? Did he not read my disclaimer?
But the glint in his eyes, that twinkle you see in random Netflix rom-coms, confirmed he was indeed for real. I sighed, mentally running through the list of excuses of why we couldn’t be together. I didn’t feel like giving him the talk. When I looked at him, though, I felt something, as if someone were playing my heartstrings with the bow of a violin. Years of what could be flashed before my eyes. I saw us bickering over stupid shit like one of us watching our favorite show without the other, growing suspicious of infidelity and, most terrifying, nights crying alone on my pillow.
“I can’t,” I said, rising from the barstool. “I’ve got to go. You can have my burrito.”
“Wait,” he protested, following me out the door. “Can we at least talk about this?” Without looking back, I jogged down the street and into the subway station. On the ride home, I deleted our text history as well as his number.
While lying in bed, I thought about my ex. Over the course of the two-year relationship, I had nagged him incessantly, pointing out that he was too detached, utterly non-committal and emotionally unavailable. I kind of wanted to call him then just to say, “I get it.” I couldn’t help but laugh as I glanced at my reflection in the bedroom mirror. If this were a paranormal thriller, the ending would reveal that I had been possessed by the ghost of my evil ex all along. At least then I’d have a valid excuse for my cruelty towards Victor.
“You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
I remember that one from The Dark Knight. The film, not the graphic novel. Truth be told, I rather like being the villain. Playing one meant no more sleepless nights or tear-soaked pillows. That night, I slept like a baby.
