She undresses
in a sure but shy way.
It pleases me to watch
while she twists about
in her modesty.
“Creep,” she says,
through a smile
thrown over her shoulder.
She shrouds her skin,
but her eyes stay naked.
I run into Caroline outside Wicks office and she won’t shut up about some band she saw on the weekend. I’m told they’re named after a dinosaur and have almost a dozen members. The coolest part, she’s telling me, is how the lineup keeps changing but the band stays together, brought to life by the music.
Caroline talks the way a house fire burns.
I suppress a yawn as the oxygen around me dies. I can’t concentrate. A group of high school girls walk past. It’s hard to tell where one starts and another stops, they’re indistinguishable but for the colour of their clothes, like watching a slutty rainbow slink across the sky.
I’m thinking about killing myself.
There’s a jab in my ribs and Caroline asks me if I’m listening. I look at her and try absently to focus. I tell her, of course, that I was just trying to imagine how cool that must be, all those people.
‘Oh, you have no idea,’ she says.
I point at the pack of smokes she’s holding and raise my eyebrow. She draws two out and slips me one without missing a beat. ‘I mean they play this really cool mix of old school surf rock and instrumetal, but it has this really heavy indie twist to it. It’s like, if Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Beach Boys had a baby, and then Muse fed the baby to Sigur Ros. I mean, it’s just incredible you know. I can’t believe you weren’t there.’
I want to get out of this conversation, but she doesn’t leave me any spaces. I nod slowly and light our cigarettes.
‘The lead singer, Tony, we kind of know each other from around, you know. Well, he was completely making eyes at me the whole time. I’m pretty sure he has a girlfriend, but it can’t be that serious if he’s making eyes at me right? Anyway, I saw her out one time and she wasn’t even that cute. I’m way cuter right?’
In my head I’m imagining a bottle of red wine, something vintage, and a bottle of valium. The note I leave next to my bed reads: This isn’t a good enough reason to stay.
Caroline flicks her cigarette into the planter behind us. ‘I have to go,’ she says. ‘I have to meet Jessie over at Caxton and then we’re going to some cider bar he heard about. I’m sure he thinks it’s cool, but I don’t even drink cider and he knows that. If he wasn’t so good in bed I swear I wouldn’t bother. You know what I mean?’
I have no idea. The words seem to make sense, but I can’t decipher them. I nod and tell her I’m meeting Dylan in the valley. She throws her arms around me and brushes her lips lightly against my cheek.
After she’s gone, I stand there and count my breaths.
I have memories of you we haven’t made yet.
They’re shaped like dreams
but feel too real.
The colors are different,
they’re intents
that change the way they look.
Layered like sand,
stacked like mountains
draining through my hand,
while I grasp endlessly
at a world that fades
before it’s even made.
I have a dream that I can remember
everything that’s different and better.
Mornings are the hardest.
I have no anchor in reality,
sailing as I’ve been,
upon the seas strange dream.
My mind has wandered
and it takes a while
to corral my errant memory.
I check myself
and make a minute inventory.
It would be easier I think,
some days,
to cut the cords
of consciousness
and drift
I can taste her skin on my lips.
It shines like a light
through a canopy of trees and leaves
breathless whispers on my lips.
I can feel her still,
etched like memories
on my fingertips,
poured into their padded whorls.
My prints, her hips.
That smile, those lips,
that part and pout
and mock my mouth.
Without a word
they whisper,
“Kiss her.”
Underneath all his hair, Dr. Wicks looks like some kind of rat, twitchy, nervous and cunning. He’s okay, I guess, but he’s a total hippiecrit. He keeps shoving all these affirmations at me, telling me about the power of belief. I can, if I believe I can, sort of thing. He still charges me by the hour.
I’m reading the spines on Wicks’ bookshelf. Most of the titles sound vaguely pornographic and I’m thinking about masturbating, only half listening to what he’s saying. I grunt inquisitively and look up. He’s got this, We’re both on the same team, look on his face that really grinds me for some reason.
‘Why don’t you know how the story ends?’ He says.
‘I haven’t made my mind up yet if they die or not. It’s the same either way really. I mean, in my mind, both have already happened. It doesn’t matter if they live or die, because both are true. So nothing happens.’
I can tell he doesn’t get it.
Wicks looks out at me from the underbrush of his eyebrows and twitches his nose. ‘Let’s talk about something else for a bit, hey?’
I don’t want to talk about something else. I don’t want to talk about anything really. I feel so tired.
‘I feel so tired.’ I say.
‘How are you tired Jonah?’
I sigh and don’t tell him. Questions like that really fuck me off. They’re meaningless little probes designed to open me up, but all they do is get under my skin. Wicks just sits there companionably, twitching his nose and darting his eyes at the notebook on his lap. The silence in the room itches at my skin.
She scatters affection
like currency to the homeless.
A feast for urchins.
Babe,
she says,
through wan, worn teeth.
Babe,
I love this.
Her love is dry.
There’s nothing there,
a locust skin painted pink
and flung against a crowd.
Babe,
she says,
and something crawls,
akin to skin but not so near me,
crawling still and eerie.
Silvered skin, gleaming red under fluorescent,
spilling still into porcelain stains, pooling in coagulate.
Sickly, slick, sticking substance, splayed,
corner
to
corner.
Saline mingling rivulets, descending, descry intention,
weep without retention, trailing mucky streams.
Rose complexion uninhabited, departs. A blended mask,
red, ivory, deformed. Persephone blooms.
Peripheral darkness, looming, encroaching empty orbs,
thrashed to throes. Fibrous spittle fleck adorned reflection
captures silent cadences, now emptied momentarily.
She says hold me
with her eyes
and whispers promises
with her hands.
Her skin speaks to me
in dulcet tones
and my heart sings
at the sight of her.
She says nothing
and it means the world
to share her silence.
The skies are dark and my eyes are heavy.
I think of her on days like this.
Better in bed than driven indoors.
I watch her eyes and stroke her hair
as she speaks of the future.
‘It’s supposed to rain,’ she says.
Storm clouds roil over us.
Sky borne somnambulists,
stalking the air, boding.
I whisper nothings
into the nape of her neck
and ask her,
‘Do you like the way that sounds?’
She just sighs amid the silence and lies.
Dylan’s hand is heavy upon my leg. It sits there like a passionless paperweight, placed on my thigh to keep me from moving. I have nowhere to go though, so I stay, moored under his paw, draining every glass that lands in front of me and watching for my cues.
Sarah-Jean, is braying incomprehensible things at me between mouthfuls of salmon. I nod my head to fill in the gaps like some half chewed ellipsis. My neck hurts. Her vapid patois keeps sticking to my palate. I chase it down with lick after lick of scotch, but it always returns.
Connor’s tirade continues across the table from me. I can hear his rhetoric in the rhythmic clutching of my husbands hand, keeping time on the inside of my thigh. I count the seconds. It’s a four, four beat. Of course Connor is a complete ass, but among this idiot council I’m sure he must seem like a reasonable man. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king, they say.
Some raw vestige of etiquette must live on in me. I’ve been able to feign interest in these people so far, but it’s becoming increasingly hard as they drone into the night. I imagine I’m attending the reading of some third rate play. I’m trying to enjoy myself, but I have no passion for it. The players are callow things with more real drama in the pages of their scripts than the words on their lips.
I feel harassed.
I excuse myself to the kitchen. More wine, I say, Sarah-Jean looks frankly parched, the poor thing. I laugh lightly to show how nonchalant I am, that their company is the last thing I’d wish to be away from.
I take two bottles of Shiraz down from the pantry. My eyes flicker to the bottom shelf and over the rat poison there. I think briefly about seasoning their wine with it and proposing a toast to better times. I wonder how hard it is to dig a grave and if we own a shovel. I will tell my husband I am woozy from excess and can not stomach another drink, though I know how he thinks. Nonsense, he will say, and I will be compelled to drink to my death along with the rest.
Better off dead maybe. That or answering a slew of uncomfortable questions to the police. A couple of somber detectives with rugged jaws. Five o’clock shadows in long coats with understanding expressions draped over their steely gazes. Tough men, with maybe a soft spot for a fresh young widow. Perhaps one who is understanding and bold enough as to offer his shoulder in a consoling way. Perhaps Prison. I’m not so sure prison would be any worse than here, I doubt that it could be. At any rate, I am sure I’m not tuned for it. I think I would miss sleeping in on weekends and not being stabbed while I do so. I quite enjoy my freedoms.
I slink back to the table with the wine as quietly as I can. I sit down and compose myself. Even with a mouthful of meringue, Sarah-Jean will not shut up and Conner must have hit his stride because I can feel the tempo in my thigh growing more upbeat when Dylan casts his meaty anchor back over my leg. I fill their glasses and raise mine. To better times, I say.
I think after dinner I will play the piano.
We’ve been stuck in here for days, a week maybe. I’ve lost track. Just the three of us, the rain and the rising tide. Build a house on stilts and expect to need it I guess. The power went out last night, now all we have to occupy us is the sound of the rain; A relentless rooftop tattoo and a constant reminder of our captivity. I tell Christie, this is how cabin fever starts, just to stir her up, but she only shrugs and looks at me with sad wide eyes.
The water is lapping tenderly at the back deck, urged up and down by the whims of the river’s tide. If I lay on my stomach with my arm hanging down, I can press the flat of my palm against its skin. I stay like this for hours. I imagine I can hear it wanting. It needs us.
I can hear Dale and Christie arguing in the kitchen. Its the same argument they always have, only amplified. They call my name for mediation, but its more than that, I know they want a side to be taken. I stay at my post, listening to the impartial lapping of the water. Christie comes out, wielding my name like a blunt instrument, and kicks me sharply in the heel of my foot. We’re running out of food, she says. I tell her not to worry, that at least we have plenty of water. She gives me another kick and storms back into the house. The rain sounds like a thousand whispers and I strain to hear its secrets. I press my palm to the water and listen, but the noise from inside is drowning it’s voice. If only they’d be quiet.
Dale looks relieved to see me back inside at first. I watch his relief turn to shock while I slide the knife into his stomach. Christie starts screaming as Dale hits the ground. I swing around to silence her, but my foot slips in Dale’s mess and I fall forward. My head connects viciously with the kitchen bench and the world turns white for a moment. I can hear Christie running through the house while I pull myself up. I shake my head lightly and listen to her footfalls, there’s nowhere for her to go, the house has become an island. My island. I can hear the rain again, beating restlessly against the roof; marching orders.
I find Christie in the bedroom, she hasn’t even locked the door. She’s crouched in the corner next to the bed, hands over her face, sobbing quietly. I stand over her and she looks up at me with those sad wide eyes, her face wet and her mouth moving. I know there’s meaning there, but the rain is so loud now I can’t hear what she’s saying. Its not important. She scrambles to her feet and tries to push past me. I knock her to the ground and kick the fight out of her. She doesn’t struggle while I tie her up.
The water’s so high now that Dale and Christie are almost submerged before I roll them off the deck. There’s hardly even a splash. I lay back on the deck with my arms out wide and my head lolling off the edge. I can feel the water tousling my hair gently. I think I’m crying, but I cant be sure. I stay like this for hours. The rain feels so warm on my face.
A Few Short Words 