Breadcrumb #376

KIM DIETZ

I missed you last night
I’ve missed you every night since

We arranged the flowers on the bedside table
Lit candles that smelled of peonies and poppy
We held the funeral buried in bed
Draped ourselves in the laughing shadows
With bottom shelf whiskey tucked in beside us
Washing it all away with the starless night

I’ve missed you every night since you’ve lost
The voice in the cavern of your throat that lulled us to sleep
Like a trapped ghost in the depths of your belly
Since my sheets were last glazed with tobacco and cinnamon and honey
Tasting the breakfast you’ve made me on your lips
You resound on my palate

Like a last meal
One I was asked to choose
A bed-sheet fit as a tablecloth
A blood-orange leaking--
Sweet with thick blushed skin
Peel shedding like a borrowed mask
And I can’t seem to contain it in one place
It keeps dripping and running and weeping down my wrist
Fighting to be held so close

And I’ve missed you every night since.

• • •

Breadcrumb #352

LEZA CANTORAL

Addie is smiling but I see a raincloud over her head clear as day. She’s mad at me. She’s disappointed.

    It is so sunny out. I hate it. The sun makes it harder for me to see the things I see. I am so tired. I cannot localize the thing that drains me.

    She looks at me one last time before she leaves, like she is hoping I am gonna say something, but I can’t think of anything to say. She kisses me on the cheek & says she will be back later tonight & to not wait up. Her voice has that faraway sound I have grown used to.

    I walk back to our room. I don’t have any classes today so I might as well try to get some writing done.

    Spring is always hard for me. I stare at the blank page & it stares back at me, telling me what I already know but am too scared to admit.

    That I have nothing to say.

    All I think about is her & how at the beginning of this year it was so different between us. The school year is almost over. I probably won’t see her during the summer. All our nebulous plans have fallen through.

    I really think the Queen in Yellow is coming closer, though. She has her eyes on me. I have something she wants. I think it is Addie. She sees how happy she makes me & she wants her gone. She has been trying to destroy my world since I was three-years-old.

    I remember because it was the last day I breastfed. My mother was one of those hippie types so she did not believe in weaning me off, so I had to be the one to quit. Years later I realized it’s just that she was a narcissist. The idea of me not needing her for my sustenance was not something she could handle. Once I stopped it was like I did not exist. I was not her baby anymore. Like an animal in the wild, she moved on, always on the hunt for something new to get obsessed about, something new she could possess & devour & consume.

    My mother’s sad eyes shocked me. Saying, I quit.

    Like breaking up with a dealer.

“Once I stopped it was like I did not exist. I was not her baby anymore.”

    I went outside to the garden. The sun was bright. I found my way to the lemon tree. It was surrounded by a cool patch of clover that I loved to sit in & touch. Always dew kissed & cool even on hot sunny days. I noticed a few bees, but that was normal. Then I noticed a few more & then more. The few became a swarm that did not sting me, but gathered as one big black thing, buzzing at me & I heard her voice. She was calling me. I saw her eyes in the winged mass of velvet bodies, green like poison, glittering wet, so big, penetrating.

    I watched her & she watched me. I got the feeling that even though this was the first time I was seeing her this was not the first time she saw me. That scared me. Her singular focus on me that I could feel like a magnetic pull. An arm emerged from the buzz. A hand, towards me & finally I reacted like any baby would, with sudden wailing cries.

    My mother rushed out & scooped me up. She did not nurse me as she had done before when I was scared. She gave me a spoonful of honey with some lemon instead.

    Now there was hate in her touch.

    The queen returned to me every few years. Never coming as close as she did that first time. Sometimes I would faintly hear her voice calling me, telling me to do things or telling me bad things people were hiding from me. Sometimes it was just a smell. That faint smell of honey. The sweetest honey you ever smelled. Overpowering even in such small doses. The kind of sweetness that could make you hate sweetness forever.

    If she takes Addie from me I will come for her. She took my first cat & she took my baby brother.

    I know she is not done with me.

    Sometimes when I sleep deeply after taking whiteibis, which I am prescribed, but if I take more than the dosage along with my day meds, then I get weird dreams. Sometimes when I am sad I take more just so I can have something interesting to look forward to.

    I have really not been doing it as much since Addie moved into my dorm room. Even before we started becoming more than friends. The night she moved in I slept like a baby. I was able to cut my sleep dosage in half & my night terrors pretty much vanished.

    Lately though, I have noticed her looking at guys, which bothers me more than if she was looking at chicks, because then at least I know we have something they can’t touch. But a guy I cannot compete with. They have the one thing I definitely do not have & if that is the thing she wants then there is really nothing I can do. I have trouble talking about my feelings when I am scared so I have kind of clammed up. I want her to ask me what is wrong. I want her to reassure me that she loves me. I am scared that she is over me so I do not even ask. I just quietly recede, waiting for the bomb to go off like I know it will.

    When we first met, almost a year ago, it was one of those instant things. We did not even introduce ourselves to each other. We just started talking. There was a language already there, like we were simply picking up where a previous conversation had dropped off. By the second day of knowing each other we met for every meal of the day & when it was time for her to go back to her dorm room after we had been getting high all evening & watching I am Curious Yellow & Blue is the Warmest Color, she did not want to go & complained about how she hated her roommates.

    I hated her roommates too.

    She slept over in my bed. Nothing happened.

    About a week later, my roommate moved out on her own accord & Addie moved in. It was like a party 24/7. We smoked so much weed. That is probably the main thing we did. I found myself actually telling her about myself. And she did not hate me. I felt seen, understood. We talked about all the stupid things we had done in the past & were able to laugh about it. One night, while listening to the new Lana Del Rey album, Lust for Life, we ended up kissing & making out for hours. We started holding hands in public & the whole campus was buzzing with it.

    And now it is falling apart.

    The buzz is loud inside my head & she is fading away.

    I stop typing.

    I hear footsteps. Shit. Is she back?

    I jump in the closet because I hear a guy’s voice & I just don’t know how I would even deal with that right now.

    They burst in acting like they’ve been day drinking. Her hair is already all over the place. I recognize the guy. His name is Taylor & he is a photography student. Code for professional perv. She takes off her top & he takes out his camera, laughing.

    “How about some music?” he says, rubbing his camera lens with the edge of his flannel shirt.

    “Sure!” She is excited, bubbly. She walks over to the computer on the desk by the closet & I freeze. I can see the sweat hovering on her pores, her eyes unfocused, her eyeliner smeared. I don’t understand why she’s even doing this. But I feel like if I come out now, I will ruin whatever is left of what we have. I will look jealous & insane & then she will definitely leave me, probably for this asshole. Why do chicks always go for the assholes? Every time. It’s like the hotter & smarter they are, the more they crave that beast to degrade them & make them feel like some thing to be used. I have seen it so many times.

    Lost so many friends to their asshole boyfriends.

    She puts on The Weeknd.

    “Perrrfect,” he purrs, leaning against the wall, holding his camera like it is a beer bottle he is casually sipping.

    “Where do you want me?” she asks.

    “Why don’t you get on the bed. That way you can get into any position comfortably.”

    She walks over to the bed & flops down gracelessly. She leans back & tries to look seductive but she just looks drunk.

    “Yes, that’s good. Nice,” he says, clicking away from different angles & getting closer. “You are so beautiful, you know that?”

    “Oh stop,” she says. She smiles & obviously definitely does not want him to stop.

    “I’m serious! I’m an artist. I see faces. You have one of those…. classical faces. You know, very symmetrical.”

    She laughs & gets on all fours, like a cat. She leans forward, looking both sleepy & fierce, as her red hair cascades over her shoulders & down her arched back.

    “Very nice,” he says, getting closer. He strokes her back & smacks her ass. She laughs & sits up, startled. She just kind of sits there. He puts the camera down & sits down beside her on the bed.

    “I think I got a good batch right there. We can always do more later, you know, maybe outside or something.”

    She nods.

    They smile at each other. He playfully grabs her chin, shakes it side to side & kisses her on the lips & she sinks into it, like she was thirsty all her life for his kiss. She hops onto his lap, straddling him, grinding into him as he cups her ass cheeks.

    I can’t breathe. I am paralyzed by what I see.

    I had no idea she was even into guys.

    Through my tears & dripping mascara I see him peel off her blue jeans & white cotton briefs, undoing his own pants & getting on top of her. Her moans are like knives to me. His sounds, like a beast. Each thrust stabs me in the gut. I have lost my appetite again. There is a bottle of whiteibis with my name on it. I could really go for a nice, big….long….nap.

    The kind you don’t wake up from.

    And then I remember.

    It’s her birthday.

    Fuck.

• • •

Breadcrumb #294

MERCY TULLIS-BUKHARI

When we shared a medium fries from McD’s
a couple of years into our puberty, we walked
through Crotona Park past the swimming pool,
crack vials, and cracked walkways. Tall trees
created our separated space. You tossed the
empty red McD envelope and held my hand
with playful care. Your hands, so soft that I fell;
you led me to a scratched bench. We sat, smelling
the chlorine and hearing the children from the pool.

You had dreams.
I had fantasies.
You wanted to be a seed carried away;
I told you I was this bench.

We are young, you said. Maybe you thought you
would take this bench since I thought I would
pan fry the bird destined to carry you away. Then
it happened. Your lips tasted like biting into a ripe
Southern Bronx peach. My arms hugged your neck,
your mouth hugged my breath. The strings of our
pubertal energies danced between the branches
above us. How long did we kiss?

• • •

Breadcrumb #130

DEVIN KELLY

Even trees kneel, bent branches
descending beneath the light. & I know
the song of a bird in a tree is a kind

of invisibility, the way I would trade
my limbs for night, the skin of my body
for the kind & colored paraphernalia

sun gives when it is setting. Once, you
ashed your body toward mine in the cold,
left pine needles trailing the sidewalk.

Once, I read a story about a hunter
who thought, before the bullet he shot
carved a passage through brain, he gave

the deer a heart attack, its life gone before
it fell. I don’t know what happened next.
He might have left it there, too scared

to touch a thing he killed with only his mere
presence, the deer not even pooling blood
by its eyes. I want to say something here.

I want to say my mother once wrote
a book for children called If Trees Could Talk.
I want to say my mother never finished &

I want to say I never read a word of it.
Where you have been with your body,
where you have entered & then left & then

gone back to return. Who you take with you
when you go & who you leave behind.
Something will come of this. I watched you

never look back at the leaves you left
to color the grain of city & I watched my mother
dry my wet baby body with her hair

just minutes after I was born. There is something
of tenderness in nature that we are
only just discovering. It aches like a tree

cracking under its weight in winter. It burns
& spits like firewood. A deer can die
the same way you or I can & you can leave me

without my permission. Mother, wherever
you are, finish the book. Teach me all the words
you left inside your mouth those nights we spent

reading late into dark. & lover, wherever
you are & wherever you have been before
I meet you, please know love is closer to tree

than flesh. We can climb it to see the world
from a high place. We can a string a rope around
its branches & swing, as bodies do in life 

or death. So yes, even a tree knows something
about leaving. In winter, I write this & there is
nothing on the ground to mark what has departed

a branch. The next time you touch me, think
of this. I want to be marked before
the fall. I want to be autumn.

• • •

Breadcrumb #19

TRAVIS SAMUEL

It's like holidays and heroes. Done well, you celebrate all year. When it is done wrong, you only get a month. 

     He tried remembering the first time they met. They allude to it sometimes, but the details remain unclear. There was the “hello,” the smile, the drive, the police, the restaurant... Maybe the restaurant.  He was not sure. 

     He remembers that night. Rolling around on the empty apartment floor. There was lots of space then. There was no need for what they called “adult” furniture. A futon and a small table in a well-lit apartment was all that necessity mandated. 

     The cat enjoyed being the same height as the two of them. He jumped, batted, and clawed as the figures wrestled, secretly testing the other for strength while stealing subtle exchanges of warmth. 

     When their bodies could no longer take the impact of childhood merriment, they slid through the side door for air. They leaned on the perfectly polished railing of the balcony that was home to the plants that decided not to finish growing. The untroubled darkness provided enough light to see the outline of the family of spruce grouped together hiding the local road. They were alone, and life was beautiful.

“They were alone, and life was beautiful.”

     The turtle was there in his Rubbermaid container that seemingly held the essentials of a hospitable habitat. He had just begun digging a suitable space to avoid the coming winter and refused to acknowledge the shadows hovering above him. 

     He found the turtle while hiking the Appalachians and hastily named him Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson was the only animate creature he found on that climb, though he would cautiously stop at the sound of dry leaves crunching under him hoping to catch a glimpse of a white-tailed drawn from a daybed. 

     Upon reentering the apartment, the drinks, physical activity, and calm of night rendered them exhausted. The pressing yet unspoken expectation of respect and virtue interrupted their initial slumber as they anxiously tossed and awoke nervously before allowing sleep to dominate the remainder of the evening.

     The sun shined on a new day with optimism and hope. They survived the first test. They said their good-byes with all of the faith dreamers were allowed to possess.  

     A cloud of fury and anger holds them captive now. The slightest incident is cause for a breakdown, which leads to yelling, screaming, and, most disheartening, the need for space and time. Most times, neither knows why they are arguing. What goes unsaid is usually what needs to be said to bring the appropriate resolution. But neither wants to risk being the one to end it.

     This is why they are as they are. No one wants to be the bad person. There are no shoulders to cry on when you are the bad person. People shun you, poke fun, or speak freely. 

     People don't understand love. They can't comprehend the push-pull factors that leave you in a perpetual state of suspended movement. They can't see past your smile or “good riddance."  You don't have the right words to transfer the hurt or pain to inspire empathy. 

     So, you put on your brave face, operate with calculated precision, clutch the last of your sanity, closely carry your pride, silently petition for a redo, grasp for a new world, and demand understanding all while refraining from noticing that you did holidays and heroes the wrong way.

• • •