new short story, part 1

I dreamed her the second time I died, which is a lot like sleeping after all, especially drowning. I don’t recommend it, though; I’m not here to condone exit strategies. The worst most painful part is failing.

I watched the sunlight on the water forever. I laughed at its sparkling as a child, felt soothed as a boy, I watched it on dates or alone and heartbroken, dangerously mesmerized while driving, and today, for hours, quite calm. I meditate before I sleep, and did so now, breathing more and more slowly, until I was as stone; how useful. I don’t remember finally deciding (or not deciding), the long fall, what must have been the stunning cold. I didn’t feel. And I didn’t care about my loneliness, or that abstract, haunting despair of a life without meaning or worth: no talent, no family, no friends. I’d even quit my job recently, and now could not remember what it was. But solace, I think, was finally the point. No memory, erased from memory, so quietly removed.

Sparkling, flashing water, dancing, laughing, alive. It filled my vision and my world, beckoning, welcoming, filling me with a longing and wistfulness that shocked me with familiarity; there you are, where have you been? Oh, what took you so long?

There were eyes, somewhere in that shining. Dazzled as I was, I could see them easily, soft and darkly bright, blue, amethyst, violet, everything water and nighttime sky. Could I see a face, hair, lips that moved gently, with a rhythm like waves…or was it all illusion, my brain shutting down, synapses exploding in desperate novas, a futile dream: patterns in chaos. Only everything I ever wanted.

I thought of childhood prayers, of angels, watching me sleep.

The next thing was a blistering siren, and a foul mouth on mine: the kiss of life. I choked and began to cough, breath by violence. The flashing lights now were red, like the fire in my lungs. Fire, and cold; I could not feel my limbs. Those seconds stretched like hours then, a long time to realize. A large paramedic stared down at me, water beaded on his stubbled chin. I still could taste his breath.

“Salami,” I whispered, and vomited.

***

I’ve been here eight months now. It didn’t take me long to leave the city, find a new job, a new place…in that order, even. I work in a small office in town (not to be confused with civilization), just a mile or two up the road from this tiny aging church they’ve rescued and made into a house: cold old stone, new high tech windows. Renovations had stalled, so the rent was cheap. I had central heating, broadband, satellite…and water from a well. Welcome to rural Pennsylvania.

I’d forgotten about the incident. Mistake. Wake-up call. Failure. No, I didn’t give it much thought at all, really. What it did remind me of was the fire I survived (or didn’t) when I was seventeen. They brought me out through a window, my back on fire, and resuscitated me out on the lawn while my neighbors stood around in nightgowns and boxers and watched. My parents, I was told, died from smoke inhalation. This was a small mercy, I suspect. Poor orphaned kid and all that. Lucky for me it only lasted a year, when I moved to the East coast. You don’t want my life story, and I hate telling it, but I had aspirations once; I fancied myself creative, talented, and most importantly, hungry. And then…a string of disasters, failures, and missed opportunities? Not really. Only a raging lack of success.

I’m not superstitious. I’m not even that spiritual. But who comes back from the dead…twice? Yeah, start over, do something meaningful. It’s only my goddamn life.

I don’t remember dreaming anything, way back then. Just blacking out, waking up, and skin grafts for my back, which I also don’t recommend. No visions.

It’s not a bad new life.

Sometimes, late at night, just as my meditations took me from deep breathing to deep subconscious, I could feel those eyes watching me again, somewhere in the dreaming dark. Whether they were really there, or some vestigial and sublime remnant of a near death experience, didn’t matter. They were comforting to me, familiar.

Oh, where have you been?

the holy name of god is spider
Her dark design is latticework
soft and luminous it grows, embracing
letting spin or flow, or dancing
each equation high perfection
and peerless mercy, cruel and wise
as we fret on lines of power
surging on, and now colliding
in joy, or joy, and pain again

freely let upon the lattice
chased and wanting, unaware
what wind or wave or season's fury
drives us on, and brooks no tender rest
there is no name for that called seraph
muse or luck, or fate, or death
but She shines with ageless wonder
and sometimes sleeps and dreams us, dreaming
and lives and years will pass like breathing
while never parted souls begin.

Is it trite? Is it novel? Is it wondrous, full of portent...or haunted, triste, as a hungered carnal dream? Something so raw and bright could hardly long remain, something like the first vital breath from a long dread dream. Then, how: thoughts tempestuous as the hammer of god wringing creation and destruction, littled into the space of a heartbeat, or a stunned and singular pause.

***

One must travel. One must die, and wake elsewhere, and lose all domestic notion; smell the foreign air, taste the foreign plates, couple under foreign skies on some dimmed palatial pallet, so that every tremor and caress is as if newly discovered. Walk to exhaustion, talk until sleep, idly speak volumes with unwavering eyes on some jaunty, bustling train.

***

Which do you suppose ages more gracefully: a passport, or a band of gold?

like coming home

There's a blue light, mad with adoration, it bathes and embraces you, cool and electric. You're steps away, two, one. What a storm of magic in your eyes, ageless arcanum, fey and bestial, furious lightning hotter than the sun, or perhaps just the warmth of your lips, oh god. Blue clouds, blue flesh, blue eyes...the elemental dance of heavenly bodies, see, like this. And this. And this.

I dreamt I feasted on a bird of prey. Everywhere was wind and I was in a high place, the earth stretching away and below, impossibly infinite. I could taste his prey in turn, the sum of blood, ichor to ichor, and I felt his power truly.

Waking. Time is a curious mythology. You're watching me. Such fitting permanency, it never began, it shall never end. I could not long meet your eyes in youth, but today, mighty wonders, all looking, all knowing, all soul's night, and into the morning, you're here. You're here.

What years I waited, or hoped, or slept, to this: I fold you into my arms and feast again, and feed you in turn, a dark reverse alchemy, so that you might rise, and learn to fly.

fire baby

The fever brought me choking awake. The nightmare had me on my back, stiffened, humbled by its vicious urgency, fear moving in me like an old god. I struggled up, fumbling at the blankets, wet with proof. I stared at my hands glistening in the firelight, how they shook, or didn't, and I became aware of a great and terrible thirst, as if it were my sole affliction.

The fire snapped profanely, destructively, and I looked up just as it poured out and onto the hearth. I smelled the dark scorching heat immediately, and panic gave me a merciful strength; I moved forward, I held out my hands. A woman will step away from a blade or a flame, while a man will try and catch it, but will stare, stupidly, at blood, as if it were a dream. A woman cares nothing for blood, only the letting.

The flame licked at me sharply, like a venomous thing, and I fell back. It coiled and heaved, and began to shape. Something ruby and evil began to color its light, and then it whispered to me.

"Beautiful," it said. And it began to move.

The polished wood of the floor cracked and wept tears as it glided, breathed, ate its way towards me, delicately, awed perhaps.

"Are you old?" it said. A sickening smell now, blankets smoldering, resisting the flame. Now it seemed to dance, slowly, brightly. In the reflection of the dark wood I saw demons, or only one, or perhaps it was the lingering nightmare, vengeful, unfinished.

"A kiss," it said, and surged forward up over my legs, into my lap, and instead of an agony I felt a dread cold, the low despair of frozen skin, before it becomes black and dead. The room seemed alight, I could perceive most clearly. The fire thing waited, lingered, touched my hands and chest in turn, killing. There was an urge to sleep. I told it so.

"What is sleep," it said, and pressed forward, to my lips, embracing my face, caressing my hair, pushing me softly down. There was a small darkness, a moment of hope, before my eyelids burned away.

What is the half life of happiness? What's the expiration date on your joie de vivre? When did memories decide they'd replicate like beautiful, snarky, coffee drinking hydras, instead of fading away to grainy, tastefully out of focus black and white, as they ought?

Damn you fucking excellent mix cd, damn you straight to hell.

"All my faults perchance thou knowest,
All my madness none can know;
All my hopes, where'er thou goest,
Wither, yet with thee they go."

Happy Birthday, LB.

I remember your wedding day. You were nervous for months; on edge, excited, full of dread and doubt and all the crystalline hues of joy. What did I think of you as you floated by, the white of the dress blistering as you moved through rays of benediction, even the shadows a loving raiment? Your eyes were kind and hopeful, your hair dark and dark and never more beautiful. Perfection is a word, I thought, silently wringing my hands.

I watched the vows taken, dubious, anxious, disbelieving, of course I thought him unworthy, I would all men, fanatically unforgiving as any mourning father. But you trembled and looked happy, and so I said nothing.

***

I was ashamed at your gratitude, of course I would attend, where else could I be? Equally lost at home or traveling, music of your selection ever embracing, dissecting, elevating me, as I went to and fro in senseless pattern, looking for those mythical words I might have spoken, to stay the ring from your hand.

Did you kiss me on the cheek? I do not remember. But I remember this day, moreso than before, last night again, and today, and I am humbled by your skill or luck or complacency, fate or destiny or curse, I do not remember the touch of your lips, just the divine soft curve of them, promising all.

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