My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

She leans over and kisses you, and it’s like lightning. You close your eyes and fall into her, or she falls into you, or maybe you’re falling into each other. You close your eyes, her lips touching yours, and the world doesn’t go black, you’re not wrapped in darkness. You’re wrapped in light, white blinding light, complete, and radiant, and so right now. You’re enveloped in this radiance, totally fucking lost in it. Her lips wrap around yours, yours wrap around hers, and with every touch the light gets hotter, even more total. Your lips brush her cheek, her neck, she grabs at your hair, pulls harder with every kiss.

Electricity flies through her and into you, burning away all the fear and loneliness that’s been enfolded around your heart for so very long. Every nerve in your body is alive and screaming. The current from her touch runs down your spine to the tips of your toes, and for this series of perfect moments you know what it’s like to feel truly happy, truly in love.

You’ll fall asleep holding her close, dazed from feeling what it’s like to be struck by lightning

So, in about ten minutes I’m going to die. I woke up late, my alarm didn’t go off. My alarm didn’t go off because the power went out. The power went out because, well, and this is so fucking stupid, apparently some giant fucking monster sauntered out of the Pacific Ocean and decided to crush San Diego. Who knows what woke the thing? Maybe it was off-shore oil drilling. Maybe I played my music too loud. Maybe this whole Goddamn thing is my fault because the fucker doesn’t like listening to Heart-Shaped Box at 4 AM. I don’t know, nobody seems to know. Just before the radio went out they were talking about casualties, people abandoning their cars on gridlocked roadways trying to get away on foot, trampling each other to death and getting nowhere. There’s nowhere to go, between the fucking Cloverfield Godzilla Sea Monster and the military trying to kill it, it’s nothing but chaos outside.

I’d rather just sit here with my Goddamn breakfast, my last meal of Fruit Loops and a bottle of vodka, than die out there in that sea of inhumanity. I’m just talking into this tape recorder because it seemed like the thing to do, to save a piece of me. I’m going to get smashed or burned to death, but maybe this tape and my voice will stay without me. I don’t know. Maybe Cloverfield Godzilla whatever the fuck it is will be the end of everything and my stupid voice on this stupid tape won’t mean a Goddamn fuckin’ thing. I don’t know. I really don’t know much of anything after twenty-nine years. I wish I could laugh about this because it’s so absurd, but I can’t. I hear sirens and gunfire, smell smoke and a million dead fish. I’m going to die and I’m scared. I’m thinking about someone who isn’t here, someone I love so much. If you’re alive and you get to hear my voice on this tape, I love you and I wish we’d had more time. I know it’s pointless to say that, but it’s all I can think about just now.

I think I have time to polish off this vodka. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me after I close my eyes for the last time. I wish to God this would just stop, but You’re not going to do anything, are You, you fucker? Maybe You’re not even there and I’m just sitting here talking to no one. If You are there, and You are listening, I’m sorry. I don’t know, I really don’t know anything.

I don’t know what else to say, except, well, goodbye.

She’s all curly brown hair, soft brown eyes, eyes so beautiful you’re afraid to look into them for more than a breath, or a heartbeat. You’re afraid of getting lost in those eyes, afraid of not being able to find a way out again. You’re afraid that they’ll look into you so deeply, afraid they’ll see everything inside you and look away. You’re afraid how those eyes love you, but one day might not.

She’s an angel. She’s your warm and safe, and everything good. Her eyes are your connection to Divinity in the here and now, in this world of blue skies that fade to black and fill with stars. She’s your paradise found.

The worst torture in Hell is said to be the absence of God, the loss of connection from one’s soul to Divinity. You look into those soft brown eyes, the eyes of your angel, and you don’t look away. You know you’re already damned.

She’s dark eyes, warm skin, hair that shines red in the sun. She’s laughter, shy giggles, a smile that turns all the surrounding grey to so much color. She’s so many little things, and beautiful things, but it’s those dark eyes, those impossibly dark eyes, they’re what draw you to her. They pull you in, hold you close. You like the close.

She looks at you with those night-sky eyes and you wonder what goes on behind all that darkness. She’ll tell you it’s all nothing, or it’s all nonsense, but it’s not, you know it’s not. It’s music, and art, and a thousand thoughts not put to words. A thousand thoughts you want to know. You wonder what those dark eyes see when they see into you, when they look into you and all your blue.

So, Monday night my friends, Jimmy and Danielle, voiced four of my pieces at Sacred Grounds‘ open mic night…

Telling a story, The world outside is burning, One passing dusk, and He came with her.

He’s sitting there on the kitchen floor, shitty, white linoleum. He’s sitting there, back against a cold steel fridge, a half a bottle of Percocet crushed and dissolved in a tumbler of vodka nestled in his right hand, a carving knife in his left. He’s set to tell a story, beginning, to middle, to end. He could be in the bathroom right now, lying in a warm bubble bath, clutching a bottle of red wine mixed with Xanax in one hand, and a straight-razor in the other, but that wouldn’t be the right setting for telling this particular story. It’d be too soft, too expected, it wouldn’t speak in the right tone. No, the kitchen with a tumbler of vodcacet, and a carving knife, that, well, that will really grab readers, really pull them close. He wants someone close.

So, he’s sitting there, it’s 3:00 AM, dull moonlight pours in through a large skylight. He likes this room because of that skylight, sipping hot coffee in the morning sun, sitting here right now, under a clear night sky. He likes feeling outside, yet not.  He looks toward his vodkacet, knows he’s about to feel so good, so warm. It’ll feel cold in his mouth, burn as he swallows. He’ll be wrapped in a cozy blanket of false contentment. That feeling will be the off-brand version of a lover’s touch, or kiss, or the decadent oblivion found inside the right woman, lying on tousled silk sheets. The off-brand version of how it feels to wake in the morning and see her face. He sighs and takes a sip, decides not to stop until the glass is empty. It feels just like he imagined it would, maybe better. Just now, Goddamn fuckin’ zombies could shamble into the room to keep his company piece by piece, he wouldn’t care. He’s floating around, and hanging out on clouds.

With that warm feeling washing over him, floating on clouds, he takes the carving knife, runs it down both wrists, left and right, slow and vertical. It doesn’t hurt, the vodkacet makes a whisper of all the pain he’s ever felt. His arms feel warm and wet, life pooling all around him, telling a story. He’s bleeding letters, letters forming words, forming sentences, forming paragraphs. It’s a story of loneliness, and tedium, frustration, and loss, and failure. A story spreading out all over that shitty linoleum floor, for anyone to read. A story that goes and then, and then, and then, falling toward resolution.

He closes his eyes, begins to feel sleepy. He thinks about this story that’s spilling out around him, slow and quiet-like, wonders how exactly it will end. He’s writing a stream of consciousness, and he doesn’t know where it might stop.

He climbs onto her back, all slow-like and deliberate. Sabrina feels his shell against hers, pinning her against the cold earth. She feels heat inside her, washing away all the befores until all she can feel is the blinding heat of right now. She arches her shell against his, taking him in deeper, closes her eyes, shutting out the world while keeping him in, a feeling almost too decadent to stand. She wants it to last, but it won’t. She wants it to last, but she knows it can’t. He invited her to follow, to go to this place of white-hot ecstasy, he invited her, and with a sigh, Sabrina came.

They wake to the sounds of alarms, sirens, tires screeching on pavement. The world outside is burning. Trees, houses, it’s all on fire. People screaming, their sorrow floating in through open windows. She’s holding him in bed, lying on ruffled purple sheets under a dark-blue blanket. It was cold out, freezing, until everything turned to flames. They fell asleep happy, all safe and together.

She’s crying now, hot tears running down her face, onto his. He says her name, this name he loves so much, a name attached to soft brown eyes, long curly brown hair against soft pale skin, but she doesn’t answer. Again and again he says it, but she’s no words, just tears. He’d give anything to hear her voice, something beautiful amidst the screaming, and the sirens, and the dying, but her voice isn’t there. There’s a flash bright as day, the room gets very hot, the air very thin, she turns to flame and ash, right fuckin’ there, right in his arms. Their bed, covered in tears, and sweat, and ash, and she’s gone. She’s so totally fucking gone. His skin, burned where he held her.

He tells himself it’s all a bad dream, that he just has to wake up and she’ll be lying next to him. He’ll kiss her softly, run the tips of his long fingers down her cheek. It’ll be cold outside, exactly like it was when he fell asleep with her in his arms. She’ll feel so good, so warm, she’ll feel like a shot of heroin. He’ll hold her close, tell her how much he loves her. He’ll take off her clothes, sink into her until all the fear that covers him falls away.

He hears a song in his head, soft and melancholy. One day she’ll go, I told you so…

He can’t wake up, and the world outside just keeps burning.

So, last night I went to open mic at a cafe in Tampa, Sacred Grounds. I met someone there on Saturday, Danielle, and we’ve been talking since. She really likes my writing for some reason, and asked if she could be my reader at open mic. So, we went and she read three of my flash pieces, Waking up someone who isn’t me, Driving in the dark, and Asleep soon.

Sometimes all he sees is her, all warm brown eyes, curly brown hair.

She’s behind his eyes when he closes them to fall asleep at night, she’s in his head when he wakes in the morning.

He sees her in little things, beautiful things. She’s sun shining through bright green tree leaves, she’s a pretty teal butterfly fluttering nowhere in particular.

He sees her when the sky shifts from pure blue to black infinity. She’s so right there, in the silvery full moon, in the brightest stars.

This woman, so dear to him, he sees her in raindrops bouncing off a city sidewalk. Drops splitting into drops, splitting into drops, tiny spheres of water with rainbows inside. She’s with him, even when she’s not.

Sometimes all he sees is her.