feeling

Dorothy

It’s a well known fact that if you drop a piece of buttered toast, it will land with the butter side down. Dorothy stared at her toast, lying there on her new, pristine white carpet and felt her world collapse around her. It had been one of those days, and her clumsiness at dropping the toast had been the last straw. If she could have seen her face in that moment, she would have been shocked, and maybe even annoyed. Her face had fallen, gone into a look of deep grief, and suddenly looked twenty years older.

She had to remind herself, every morning, that there were days like this. Days where everything went wrong and it felt as if every single mistake, misstep or blunder were the equivalent of accidentally setting off an atomic bomb.

Dorothy crumpled to the floor, and sat sobbing over her piece of toast. She knew she’d wake up fine the next morning. And she knew that her day, like every day, would end like this. Crying.

Lost

Sometimes, I get lost.

Lost in a sea of emotions. But they’re confusing. They come from everywhere and nowhere. They come from the sky’s particular tinge of blue that reminds me of a childhood, a true childhood, that’s been gone for longer than it should be. They come from some mysterious place within the tightness in my chest, grounding themselves with no explanation as to why they’re there.

Sometimes, I get lost.

Lost in an ocean of thoughts. My mind is like some sort of quantum machine, managing to be in all different lines of thought at the same time. Only when I choose to look at a particular theme does it become stark black ink against the backdrop of grey matter swirling in my mind. But when that happens, the thoughts become slow, strange, so sharply focused that it hurts to look at them. So I let them go back into the maelstrom, and I stop concentrating.

Sometimes, I get lost.

Lost in a wave of delirious physicality. Walking, dancing, making contact – they all take on such an incredible appeal, pump such strong streams of endorphin into my brain that I become more acutely aware of my heart pumping, my muscles working, my sweat dripping. When I’m inside the movement, I feel close to some sort of essence of the body. After a while, I get the feeling that I’m no longer in control. I have to keep walking, I must keep dancing, I really can’t bear to end the hug.

Sometimes, I get lost.

Lost in words.

Going Soft and True

Leroy glanced down at his watch for what felt like the hundredth time. They were late. Very late. And he was out on a limb here, risking his ass for Mr. Tony Boss-man. As if the Boss-man ever did a day’s work in his life, sitting there on his throne of black leather on wheels, computer screen hiding half his face, playing at being all modern. Sure, he was modern. If modern was looking at dirty videos all day.

Patting his pockets, Leroy searched for his lighter. Realizing it was already in his hand, he drew his pack of Marlboro cigarettes from his jeans, shook one out, and lit it. He glanced at his watch again, breathing in the smoke as if it was much needed oxygen. They were so late, he thought again. He could feel the prickles on the nape of his neck; he was sweating so badly that his hair seemed to be leaking. There was no reason for them to be late. Not unless… But he wouldn’t go there. Not yet, not consciously.

Glancing at his watch yet again, he realized that this was the first time in a long damn while that he’d been up in the small hours of the night. He remembered the last time vividly now, as if it had been yesterday instead of eight years ago. He could almost smell the smoke from the barrel of the gun – but no, that’s the cig, he reminded himself – and could almost see the hole in that man’s chest. That was a long time ago now, and Leroy tried to forget it more often than not. Only right now, with them being late and all, it was getting hard to separate his quickened heartbeats from that other night when he’d felt them so strongly too.

He realized he was muttering under his breath and shut up quickly. It was a habit he’d picked up at the pen. Some banker who’d offed his business partner had told him that muttering made people stay away from you. Leroy’d started doing it one evening when one of the thugs seemed willing to come beat on him for some sport, and he’d found that the thug turned away pretty quick when Leroy didn’t respond to his taunting but just kept on muttering. The thug had made his dumb friends laugh by making fun of the crazy dude talking to himself, and that had been it. The habit of muttering had stuck. The Boss-man told him to cut it out, that it was freak-show quality stuff that would scare away his clients. Didn’t need the muttering, though, to scare them away. Since they were so late that Leroy just assumed that they weren’t coming.

Just as he took his last puff and was flicking the butt into the road, he caught sight of headlights coming towards him. That moment seemed to stretch into forever. Leroy saw the headlights, saw the flare of his cigarette hitting the ground, saw the man’s chest torn open eight years ago, saw the bars of his solitary confinement when he’d raged at first, saw the eight wasted years. He saw it all in that one instant, and instinctively turned and jumped over the railing of the highway into the adjacent field. He ran through it, the dew making the ground slippery and the plants moist. He slipped, fell, hands covered with mud where he caught himself in the wet earth. He stayed down, heart beating, and listened.

He heard the idling car. He heard voices, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. The blood was pumping so loudly in his ears that he felt that they must have turned into beacons of sound, broadcasting to all the crooks he’d ever known, telling them all that Leroy’d turned soft. That jail had reformed him. That Leroy wanted to clean up his act and never think of how another deal gone bad could turn into a gaping hole in a man’s chest.

He stayed down for a long time, long after the car had gone with the dealers in it. He lay in the damp earth until the sun rose, until the plants and ground around him seemed to start steaming. When the sun warmed the back of his still sweating neck, the warmth gave him goosebumps and shivered. The involuntary movement jarred him, and he finally managed to make his stiff limbs listen to his brain. He sat up, and stared around him. The field he was in looked nice, tended, except for the long path he’d made from the highway where all the plants were trampled, bent and broken. Like him, like Leroy the ex-crook, the ex-brave, the ex-badass.

There was a house a few hundreds yards away, at the end of the field. Leroy got to his feet, shaking, and took a good long look at it. He’d go there, ask about making amends for the ruined crops. Ask if he could work to pay for some food. Maybe if he’d prove he was strong and just as able as any man to work a long day in the sun, they’d let him stay for a while. Rent a room for his labor. That is, if there was anyone in there. With his luck, it’d be some old bag who hired illegals to work her fields, or some senile man with fifteen sons who did everything that needed to be done. But then again, maybe it’d be a husband and wife and a little boy who needed some extra hands to help get the harvest in proper. Leroy started towards the house, thinking that soon enough he’d find out.

Freakout

Tears swell up.

Bile churns.

Head aches.

Heart burns.

*

Muscles tense.

Thoughts amass.

Hands shake.

Words turn crass.

*

Flying away.

Later today.

Not to stay.

But that’s okay.

*

Freakout.

Walkabout.

Lipsapout.

I’llsortitout.

Night Birds

Our apartment has huge windows in the adjoining kitchen and living room. It’s almost a balcony. Only it’s not. We have blinds that we lower and raise, depending on the hour, on how brightly the sun is shining, on how much privacy we want.

Big windows can be horrible if all you’ve got to look at is the inside of someone else’s house. If that’s the view you get, you have a sort of forced intimacy with whoever lives across – you know they see you, and you know that they know that you can see them. It can become very awkward, trying to time things right so as not to spy on each other. Maybe then you both become recluses and never catch a ray of sunlight.

We don’t have those kind of big windows. Ours overlook a relatively large oval-shaped park, surrounded by trees and lined by paths going around and through it. There are benches there where the Filipinos hang out and talk while their elderly charges sit, awkwardly, either unable or unwilling to talk with their peers. There are mothers and fathers walking strollers along the paths, trying to lull to sleep screaming babies, or maybe just sitting by empty strollers while their toddlers delight in the sandbox and the wooden pirate ship that dominates it. There are elementary-school kids and high-school teenagers walking to and from school every day, backpacks weighing them down, some in groups and some alone and some even more alone than the others. These are the things we see during the day.

At night, it’s harder to see. The lamps in the park are yellow and dim and sometimes blown out or simply not turned on. So we use our ears instead of our eyes. On some nights, we can hear teenagers sitting on the benches, whistling and yelling, the glowing red of their cigarettes the only light in the park. On other nights, it’s so silent out there that we long for a storm to come along, to thunder in the sky, to pour down rain so we can hear the tip-tap-drip on our windows.

The best nights, though, are when the night birds sing. We’ve never yet seen them, only heard them. Their cry is shrill, like a whistle, but it’s melodic as well. They seem to be yearning for something, missing something or someone so deeply that it hurts them. Their sound makes our hearts melt a little bit, and even as we smile and pause to listen to their lonely, beautiful cries, our hearts seem to tug at us, feeling a little sore and swollen all of a sudden. Our night birds let us share their desperate want for something unnameable, they nurture our longings, even if we don’t realize it’s happening.

I sometimes wonder if our night birds are like emotions – unseen, only heard somewhere deep, sometimes shrilly enough that it’s impossible to ignore them.

Time

The keyboard clacks and clicks,

The clock now tocks and ticks,

As time goes by,

The words do fly,

Little shapes like sticks.

**

The music beats and swells,

Containing sounds of bells,

The speakers thrum,

The voice does hum,

Like echos in a well.

**

The night is damp and dark,

Loud voices in the park,

Dreams are rare,

When sleep is spare,

But wish they could embark.

**

The days are long and slow,

But weeks, they seem to flow,

Confusion reigns,

The body strains,

And missing is the glow.

Good

What does it mean to be good? Does it mean being kind? If so, is the kindness restricted to actions, or must it extend to your thoughts as well?

What does it mean to be good? Is it something inbred, a trait that you’re born with? Is it something you learn? Is it something that seeps into you from your environment? Is it something that you can seek out and acquire?

What does it mean to be good? Does it mean being what others expect goodness to be, or striving for your own sense of it? Is it being good for goodness’ sake, or being good for a cause?

What does it mean to be good? Do some of us just have it while others lack it completely? Are there degrees to it? Can someone be a little bit good or almost no good at all or full of goodness that shines out of them like a beacon?

What does it mean to be good?

Maybe, more importantly, are the reasons for being good. The reasons for wanting to be good. As to those, I guess they’re just as individual as goodness itself is.

Face Down, In A Drawer

You may not comprehend my emotions. I admit it, I tend to be overly dramatic at times. That trait of mine is part of my charm, however. Or so it used to be. Now, it seems I’ve become so over-the-top that I just don’t fit anymore. For someone like me, there’s nothing worse.

I started out fine. Well, that’s not strictly true. I started out gleaming, perfect, utterly spotless. I was completely black-and-white then, no doubt whatsoever between the two. Then the change began. I was worn ragged, day after day. I saw the uglier side of the world, was trodden down upon, completely used up. But see, that’s what made me cool. That’s what made me fit in to the scene I’d always wanted to be part of. I was tattooed, grungy, dirty and scruffy. But I looked good. No one could dismiss the fact that I looked damn good.

Until the day it got to be too much. Until I started not being able to function properly. I’d been so worn down, that I wasn’t a comfort anymore. I started being ignored. Week by week, I was left alone more often than not, until one day I was simply finished. Capute. Finito. Face-down in a drawer in the closet, and a new clone occupying my place.

It’s a hard life, I tell ya, being a Converse high-top.

Yearning

Sometimes I feel a yearning for something, but I don’t know what. I can’t recognize what it is that I’m looking for, what it is that I’m craving.
It’s an odd feeling, wanting something, needing something so badly but not being able to reach what it is. There’s a nostalgic element to it, as well
as a melancholy one. It’s as if, all at once, I’m waiting for something that is to be while mourning it’s eventual loss as well and missing what
once was. How do you reconcile such confusing emotions?
There isn’t a real reason for my writing about this tonight. I simply feel, once in a while, that I need to write what I’m thinking and feeling.
Sometimes it even helps, makes the next day or the nest few hours a little easier, just a little freer from worries and strange emotions.
Tonight as I write, the weather has finally turned cold and outside lightning flashes and thunder rumbles occasionally. I’m not scared of the lights and
noises anymore, not like when I was young, but I still feel an uneasiness climbing into bed with a storm raging outside. The mere fact that the sky
can release such vast quantities of water upon us seems to make all my worried insignificant and petty. Perhaps they are – probably so, in fact.
Nevertheless, there’s something comforting about looking at them on the screen, written out and confessed. There’s a release to it.

Mirror

Look in the mirror.

Who do you see?

Do you see yourself?

Do you see your parents?

Your brother or sister?

Do you see your friends, standing around you?

Or do you just see yourself?

I used to see myself.

I used to look in the mirror,

and see the truth.

Not good or bad,

just true.

I saw, plain as day,

the length of my hair falling over my shoulders

and the green of my eyes, lost sometimes in the gray.

I saw my mouth and my nose and my chin,

and my face as a whole.

Not good or bad,

just true.

I saw the length of my neck

and the breadth of my shoulders,

the collarbone always pronounced.

I saw the swell of my breasts

and my wide ribs that moved when I breathed

and my stomach rounding down

with the bellybutton right in the middle.

I saw the curve of hips and my thighs,

the length of my legs

with the knees looking funny

as they always do,

and feet with nice toes that weren’t too big.

Not good or bad,

just true.

Today,

I don’t see myself in the mirror anymore.

I see everything that isn’t there,

or the things that are there but too much.

I don’t notice my hair or my eyes,

except when I’m in a really good mood.

I don’t remember the good things behind the facade,

I obsess over details.

Not good,

Bad,

and true.

Only not really true.

But it’s hard to disbelieve an irrational truth.

I try not to look at mirrors much, anymore.