* * *
This room where I sit now, this very spot, the very end of the very sofa where you invited my crooked fingers inside, when your wet tongue slipped momentarily free of your phantom marriage. Down the hall where I tasted deeper and when I came back to your face, your fingers went around me and you whispered, “We should stop now.”
Within sight of Giza, a boy rises now from the concrete and glass and powder under the buckled framework of his apartment building. Demolished in submission to God’s will, but then the merciful God relented and caused him to live. His sister preserved, alive but numb and bloody, eyes closed, legs spread in unconscious pornographic display. In the moment of ringing explosions and fear, the smell of his neighbors’ shredded meat already lifting in his nostrils, his rounded eyes pass over the grated flesh weeping red around his sister’s cheek and eyes and neck, then submit shamelessly to the desire blooming in the soft space between her thighs.
The Lord plagued Pharaoh with great plagues because he had taken Sarai, Abram’s wife; and Pharaoh called Abram. “Why have you done this to me? Why did you tell me that she was your sister?” “O great one I knew that you are a god, and that Sarai is a woman of beautiful countenance, so I implored Sarai to say that she was my sister that I may live.”
In the city where you must be making your peace now, gentling the lamb, taking pity, taking penance for everything that happens here. You can’t fail to see the open sore of doubt, and you can’t bear the broken trust, and your heart weeps love, mercy, regret; fingers stroke; doubt curls into sleep like a tumor.
Just outside where the sun rose this very morning to find me draped across the armrest of the open door, face hung out over the blacktop, swallowing, choking, puking up the rotten intestines of desire and dread. “We should stop now.”
This room where another evening we slipped into the silk garment of Pinot and Miles Davis, spinning a vision of a bright unearned future, life and love miraculous into a fine old age. As if paired Egyptian idols of royal siblings could breathe alive after the millennia of stillness, stone lips soften, stone fingers twine, and famished incestuous flesh find satisfaction.
— Theo Greene
* * *
It was never about the money. Sure, Maryanne and I have built quite a little empire in thirty years, but the cars, the homes and the jewelry are just decorations. The “living” took place long before the money, in an open field just beyond Maryanne’s parents’ house. It was a warm, mid-spring day, the wildflowers danced in a soft breeze. The air filled with scents of lavender, chamomile and honeysuckle. Maryanne was young then. She was built like Titian’s Venus and was just as bold. It was an afternoon of life’s perfect contrasts, soft touches and the occasional scratch from a stray sprig. It is that field, that memory, which has always brought me a sense of peace, and as I listen to voices, muffled by the whirr of the machines that are now keeping me alive, it is that field I go back to, again. Maryanne and I, side by side, watching a sunflower drift by: petal by petal, pistil then stalk. I feel the soft touch of a nurse’s hand and the prick of another needle. Maryanne blows a dandelion, the white rays of seed landing like a first snow on my chest. The sun dips behind a tall weeping willow. She whispers, “It’s time to go.” I don’t want to go. “It won’t be long now.” The machines have stopped and I can hear the voices clearly. I shake my head and reach for Maryanne, but she is at the edge of the field, lost amongst the wildflowers. She can’t see me. She can’t hear me cry her name. I know she’s near: the scent of Chanel and the light scrape of a manicured nail as she brushes her hand against my cheek. I lie in the field alone and let the night envelop me as Maryanne whispers in my ear, “Sorry, but it was always about the money.”
— Kelly Stone Gamble
* * *
On days like today I sleep in, I wake up, I think of those I love who are not just in the next room but rather far and farther and farthest away; my brain zooms out too fast, starting from my plush floral chair in this little, nice house and then up and out to the solid, wide shape of this country, and I see glowing dots in the cities where those loved people are, and the connecting courses between us, from their hearts to mine, some vivid and strong and three thousand miles long, and some a little weaker or shorter. And I know that those sharings are real.
When a person is a place, and you are near to a particular one for a while, by existing together in some segments of spacetime—but also by exploring around one another, and finding all that you have in common and what you don’t—that person becomes part of who you are. Being near to one another builds something new out of each of you. And when that person suddenly wants to hack away at the invisible glowing vine between your hearts and chooses to live apart from you, nothing could be more tragic, for all the New and the Shared that you had fashioned together is destroyed. Beware, for if your connections with other people are not very strong, or if you have placed too much hope in what you had with this one particular person, you may be destroyed, too.
And I’m back in my chair where the picture window has been pulling my gaze into itself for an hour—whatever could be so entertaining about how the very top of that skinny, struggling boxwood quivers in the breeze? I consider that observation is a sweetness of life, but it is not truly great until it is transposed into words or diagrams; then again, that is only the beginning. Observations must be shared, dribbled out along those streams of connection, proximate or distant, that make life worthwhile.
— Melody Gerke
* * *
I told you my secret: you are the great surprise of my life. It was a long drive home and I had time to think. It was an ambush.
Want, the not-knowing. Pulled forward, east, by the veins in your arms. What do you smell and taste like?
You are miles away yet I am completely content. I know you are also always here and I am all for no other.
— Anonymous
* * *
Somebody posts a picture from fifteen years ago. The subject is at a birthday party. At 15, she is sweet-looking and innocent with big, round glasses. She is giving a shy smile below her unruly, dark-blonde bangs. Her mom always told her she was pretty, which she half believed. She had been brushing her hair straight-ish from the time she was small. She failed to sport the boot-cut jeans and layered hair that her classmates donned. She had her first kiss with her first
boyfriend during the summer the photo was taken. She was tired of her friends, who didn’t understand her. Did she understand herself? Dimly aware of the world at large, she was a vegetarian.
I’ve since lost parts of her. I’ve stifled some of her oblivion to the world around her. I’ve hacked at her teenage self absorption, wrestled with the knot in her tongue. I’ve dashed away some of her arrogance. Her dual traits of insecurity and smugness, unique to those who do well in school but not in friendship, have diminished into something more respectable, I am hoping. She is still in plain sight, resting maybe a millimeter below the surface of my curly hair, fidgety limbs and year-round rhinitis.
I am leagues from where I stood in the photo. I can see with both eyes all the troublesome complexities of a situation and deal more compassionately with those I formerly would have judged harshly. I have committed acts I am not proud of, pulling me down from my high school horse, opening me to compassion for others that I need to feel. She follows me closely, placing a “no thanks” in my mouth before I’ve come up with a more congenial response to “why don’t you come out with us after work?” She is seated next to me in the car like a friend who understands without having to speak, steering me back home towards quiet, tea, episodes of Dollhouse, and me-ness. I have come so far, and yet I never left.
— S. Green
* * *
If we believe our eyes did meet—
perfectly dotted while t’s
crossed, our grammar loose,
verbiage flying from our fingers,
some new rite of flesh made text—
In a crowded chat room,
across expanses bridged
by some miracle of science
neither of us really understand,
entangled on a subatomic level,
Then how near is near—
the chorus effect of your words
in my head,
until space becomes just another myth,
a story we tell ourselves to get to sleep?
And how far is far—
what can we mean by distance,
the lacuna between a breath, a sigh
as we watch each other fight for air
On the blue side of the moon?
— N. Dewitt
* * *
“Anarchy is an idea in the mind of an adolescent.” —Jenny Holzer
Punk rock. Do-it-yourself inclinations. They came from inside, like being Irish or Italian. The concept of popularity disgusted you. You didn’t care if you lived. You bonded with people solely on their musical tastes. You were anti big business. Now you’re dating a venture capitalist and buy work out gear from LuLulemon.
Back when the word ‘punk’ was a compass, you followed Mohawks and bad bleach jobs to thrashing abandon, solace, and people who tolerated you.
When you were punk rock, magic things happened all the time. Bikes flew around. Puppies appeared in the dark. Homeless fairies bought sixteen year olds beer. You convened in secret fortresses in the woods. You attended naked parties. And all your friends were incredibly smart and sardonic and witty. Abandoned factories became teenage jungle gyms. You felt like you’d never grow up. You spent an entire winter drinking 40s in an alley and sledding down ice patches on overturned trash tops and laughed more than when you went skiing.
Your parents couldn’t stand you, so coming home was a half a bottle of Jim Beam at your first live show, in the basement of a hair salon at one in the morning, with your arm slung over a stranger who was screaming the song that you wrote. Punk was jumping the turnstile and getting away. Punk was the taste of free food, the feeling of treasure.
But even before it was legal for you to drink, you got nervous about what you had done with your time. You looked around and there were no famous authors, brilliant musicians or revolutionaries. They were lost, addicted, and some had just gone crazy. You became uneasy, you wanted to be something more than just an idea.
So you moved away and started working weekends, and kept doing that until you met a man who thought about things before he said them. And he loved quality labels on fine clothing, he believed in science and organization, and he generally avoided anything unintelligent. You couldn’t believe how madly you were in love with him.
What’s punk rock about attending parties where people name-drop and don’t do their own laundry? Nothing. But you’d still use a string to keep your pants up if it’s handy. You don’t jump the turnstile, but you still ride a bike in a dress, and if it’s hot, through a sprinkler.
— Sheila Finn
* * *
Some days you are right in front of my eyes. You are all I can see and it ruins everything and sticks me stuck to a moment and then, of course, of course, today and tomorrow pass me by. You clog my heart and it hurts. The pain is like more-than-remembering, it feels heavy and real in my body and, unlike you, I can always find it.
Some days you are so far away that I can’t believe that you existed it all. Very little evidence remains on the surface and a glance would reveal no exact relationship, no strings, no branches. I can’t feel you and if I think about it, I get lost looking for the good parts, the parts that I want wrapped around me always.
Of course, of course, I am searching inside of myself—an apparently vast landscape where near and far push and pull each other and stretch me nonstop. Some days I think I will break and end up nowhere at all.
— Carrie Jones
***
Rumpus original art by Rob Kimmel.
