My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

She’s all dark clothes, and dark hair, all goth at a glance from across the bar.

She’s sitting under a palm tree, fake and plastic, ugly against her beautiful, her pale skin, her cool blue eyes.

In all her darkness, she’s the brightest spot in the room, a shooting star in a lifeless place.

We walked down Alameda, sun fading away, a soft orange sky.

Lost in your eyes, lost in you, walking down a cracked sidewalk, not wanting it to end.

Thinking about your kiss, I felt no past. I felt a fleeting now, a futureless future. You’d be gone in the morning

We walked down Alameda, a song in my head and you in my heart.

You’re full of darkness and noise, and a thousand pretty pictures, completely vivid, but so far away .

The darkness, the noise, they’re closer than any lover. They’re constant.

Those thousand pretty pictures, those vivid images you can’t touch, they’re just pain. They’re a longing for slit wrists and bullets in your head, but you’re going nowhere.

You’re sitting in the dark, killing time, and going nowhere.

Alone on a Sunday, in a place you don’t belong, never belonged. Lonely and broken, a cracked mirror reflecting nothing but damage. You’re darkness that’s not understood, that no one thinks to brighten. You’re constant thought with nowhere to go, buried under unsaid words. You want to go home, but you can’t, so you’re alone on a Sunday.

I want to lose myself in blinding sex, or drugs that numb, vodka that burns going down, doors to anywhere but here. Here, my lifeless life, my endless lonely, where I drown in a stream of consciousness. Drowning without death, finding nothing but locked doors.

I looked at you under the stars and thought you were more beautiful than anything above. I’d rather be close to you than any star in the sky.

If I knew there would be no tomorrow, if zombies finally paid us a visit, I’d tell you I love you. Why are such simple words more frightening than the walking dead?

You’re sitting in a bar drinking a vodka tonic. It’s goth Christmas all year-round, little colored Christmas lights with little lit-up skulls hang from the ceiling above your back-corner table. Otherwise, the place is dimly lit, smokey from so many cigarettes, awash in loud music. None of it unpleasant.

Silence from the jukebox, then an acoustic guitar, a wispy melancholy voice. Elliott Smith sings about somebody that he used to know, you think about somebody that you used to know. You wish that the song were true, that the person bouncing around in your head didn’t matter. Of course, they do matter, they always matter, and it kills you by inches every day. The vodka helps you forget, but not enough, never enough. You take a sip, it burns going down, a burn that’s somehow soothing. Pain makes you think of pleasure, makes you think of pulled hair during sex, makes you think of loss.

There’s a ghost in your head killing you by inches, and you wish you would just die.

Your hand is the dead weight dragging you down into nothingness. It’s cold and dark, lonely and empty. It’s lifeless life, you’re a living corpse filled with conscious thought. You sink slowly, quietly, waiting and wanting to hit bottom. You find no peace, no comfort, no end.

Endings used to scare you, but not anymore.

You’re all sex, and liquor, romance and sin. You’re all dark clothes, and dark music, dark words. America, baseball, apple pie, these things you’re not. You fit nowhere, tired of trying, searching, tired of wanting. You’re all lonely and bored, things you hate, and never lack.

You slit your wrists in a crowded bar. You put a bullet through your head at dinner with friends. You casually tumble onto the highway from a moving vehicle. You kill yourself at Starbucks. A dozen imagined suicides everyday. You imagine warm blood running down your arms, you feel the cold gun barrel against your temple. The song in your head goes, “ten good reasons to stay alive, ten good reasons that I can’t find…” A soundtrack to bleeding out.

A dozen imagined suicides everyday, a dozen morbid prayers for peace. Morbid prayers, but prayers just the same.

Soon, you’ll be asleep. Drugs will travel through a tube and into a vein in your neck, and you’ll go down. It’ll feel like forty year-old scotch, like the best sex you ever had, and you’ll go under, totally lost and happy to be so.

Yet, before the drugs take you, before life fades to black, you wonder about things. You wonder if you’ll wake up again, you wonder where you’ll go if you don’t wake up. You wonder if you’re a good person, if you deserve a return trip to consciousness. Mostly, though, you think about her. You think about her gorgeous brown eyes, the little strand of curly brown hair that dangles behind her ear. You think about her voice, how the sound of it makes you happy. You never hear her enough, you never tire of talking with her. She’s ridiculously smart, endlessly interesting. You think about holding her close, her warmth against your chest. You think about holding her, kissing her, soft and slow-like. You wonder what she thinks about you, if you’ll see her again.

The drugs are hitting you now, and soon you’ll be asleep.

You can’t breathe. It’s hardware failure, the machine that pumps air into a hose that connects to a hole in your throat is letting you down. That isn’t exactly right, it’s really the hose that’s letting you down, an unexpected disconnection. Air that’s supposed to be rushing into your lungs is rushing nowhere in particular, steady and quiet-like. You’re quiet too, you can’t yell, you can’t move. You’re also quite alone, alone and not breathing.

Taking a moment, after the initial shock fades, you find that you can manage little gulps of air. The muscles in your chest aren’t entirely useless. So, you breathe small breaths, shallow breaths. You know that these breaths will be gone soon enough, that your chest will tire of its job. All you can do is space your breathing, not waste anything in panic. There’s really no reason to panic. Someone will either find you, or they won’t. You’ll either die, or you won’t. You’re strangely calm on these points.

You think about a woman, the one you used to think about to feel safe in these situations. You think about how she’s gone and far away, disconnected. You miss that connection to her more than you miss the connection that would bring air into your lungs. You know it’s ridiculous, but you also know it’s absolutely true. You wonder if you’ll ever feel that kind of connection again. You wonder if you’ll write about this later. You hear air rushing to nowhere, you wait.

She’s beautiful, so smart, endlessly interesting. You tell her these things, because they’re entirely true, because whenever she’s around you’re entirely happy, but she just smiles and looks away. She doesn’t think she’s particularly amazing, but you know she is, and you want her to know it. Talking with her is the most natural thing in the world, you’re both so ridiculously alike in your odd contemplations. Your wants and worries are so the same.

You’re a restless sort, rarely content, often lonely, no matter who’s around. You always feel that you ought to be somewhere else, but that somewhere is elusive, never within reach. These feelings are usually so palpable, but not when you’re with her. Lying next to her, holding her hand, her head on your shoulder, loneliness doesn’t exist. You don’t want to be some place else, there is no place else. Being close to her is like walking through an opiate fog, but that feeling of peace, of contentment is real, not a drugged out illusion. You want to say these things, her lying so close, but you don’t. Her brown eyes are gorgeous and bright, warm and alluring, they make you forget your way with words.

She comes to me in a dream, so beautiful, so real. She’s lying next to me, holding me close, gorgeous eyes smiling. Her lips are warm and soft, kissing my neck. She tells me she misses me, she’s glad to be with me. I want her so badly, I miss her too, every-day. I’m happy to be with her, but it doesn’t last. I’m not there, she’s not there, it’s an illusion and I know it. I tell her it’s a dream, and she says it’s not. I tell her I have to wake up, and she says I don’t. I want to believe her, but I can’t. Reality is bleeding through, a reality I don’t want.

I wake up, wishing I hadn’t.

I wonder if I’ll ever write my novella, my memoirs, something to be remembered.

I wonder if I’ll find my love, my muse, the death of my lonely.

I wonder if I’ll find my calm, my safe, the end of my nervous.

I wonder if I’ll die the way I think I may, slow and blue and quiet-like.

I wonder, and I wonder, then I wonder a little more.

And so he drowned a basket of kittens in a small lake at the heart of a peaceful wood. He explained to the unfortunate kittens why they had to drown and much to his surprise, the kittens understood.

They were, you see, very practical kittens, highly principled and empathetic toward the principles of others. So, while they weren’t particularly happy to be dying, especially in this particular manner, they understood the reason behind its happening, and solemnly accepted it.

They believed in Kitty Jesus and His Kitty Heaven, and so requested that they be allowed a simple kitty prayer. They were, of course, not denied this request before their end. They prayed:

Oh Kitty Jesus, we ask that You accept us into Kitty Heaven. Being that You’ve decided to fuck us over like this, us being adorable tabby kittens, innocent and free of sin, we figure it’s the least You could do.

Amen.

Thus ended their simple kitty prayer, and shortly thereafter, their kitty lives.

Having drowned the kittens he returned home, humbled and warmed from the experience.

The place is awash in dull-red and sickly-yellow light. A confederate flag is tacked to the ceiling, unimaginative lingerie hangs on a wire above the bar, bras of black and white. It’s loud, music you hate, so loud you can hardly hear the little voice in your head telling you you’d be happier leaving. The woman behind the bar has long hair, dirty-blonde, dressed in faded jeans and a white half-shirt. She’d almost be pretty, if she were really there, if her pale-blue eyes really saw you. You order a drink, a Cape Cod. It’s a classy drink for such a classless place. The woman, in fact, has to ask you what it is before sliding it to you in a cheap plastic cup. It’s mostly ice and cranberry juice, the vodka merely an after-thought.

You sip your shiny red attempted alcohol, hoping to feel something rather than nothing. Johnny Cash begins to sing about one tragedy or another, you’ve heard them all and you don’t care. However, as the man in black tells you his troubles, the woman in white takes to dancing on the scuffed wood bar. You look up, she’s all motion and no life. She’s an illusion of sex, no heat, no kisses that feel like bites, or bites that feel like kisses. She’s a golem, a machine set to task. Her black leather boots slam and skitter, scratch and further scuff the pitiful bar, home to so many weak drinks.

You leave your still-born Cape Cod, barely touched, but it barely touched you, which seems fitting. The surrounding emptiness is too much, the golem too sad to watch. Lifeless life, stopping when the music stops. You leave your cash on the bar, probably too much, but enough to get you somewhere else. You don’t know where you belong these days, but you know it’s not here. You leave and don’t look back.

The night air is cold on your face, cold like you, through and through.

I died awhile ago, I think. I drowned in brandy, or scotch, or some sort of exotic fruit juice. I really can’t say anything with certainty, my mind is all dim, my vision fuzzy, like my eyes are covered in a thin veil of gauze.

Maybe I’m just asleep, a bizarre world created in my head. Nothing feels the same, looks the same, everything slightly askew from what I remember. Something obviously happened, must have happened. I just can’t remember, so many gaps. So many Goddamn fucking gaps. Can’t think. Can’t breathe. If I am asleep, I can’t wake up.

Or worse, maybe I’m still alive, alive and broken. A shattered mirror that can’t be fixed. Always covered in spidery cracks, reflecting nothing.

I think I died, though. Drowned, or something. I think, but I don’t know.

I’m a suicide party with no refreshments. I’ve no chocolates with razor-blade centers, no arsenic covered hors devours. I’ve no thalidomide wine to wash it all down. No waiters serving whole-grain crackers topped with a quick shotgun blast to the face. There are no nooses for one to hang one’s coat, or oneself. I’m a horribly under-staffed and under-stocked, poorly decorated wake not to be. I’ve but one lonely guest, and all I have to offer is time, time that they don’t want.

So I take a different path, different than I planned, different than I wanted. Neither path particularly easy, but the one from which I lost my way felt warmer, with pleasant scenery and the occasional comfortable place to rest. I miss that path, took it for granted.

Travel is never easy for we who travel, but it’s all we really know. It’s not in us to stop, we seek something unique to ourselves and cannot be at peace until we find it. Some of us wander forever, never to find that path that leads home, to that thing we need.

The paths, you see, are tricky, clever and ever-changing. They revel under the footfalls of lost travelers. Without the traveler, a path has no purpose, they know it and they fear it. So they shift and change, distract us with shiny things when they sense we’re weak. They know us, and they hate us. They hate us, because they need us. We know this, but we need them.

I lost my way in an opiate fog, all turned around and glad to be so. I drank from a river of apple brandy, all my thoughts burned in liquor. It happened so quickly, what felt like an instant.

I wander now, nothing familiar, under a cold and indifferent night sky. Tired and weary, lost and lonely. The path is happy to hear my sorrows, a sadistic lover who keeps me and despises me.

He’s been on the road for so long, tired and weary. He travels, what seems to him, endlessly. It all looks the same after awhile, the road, the dreary sky, no matter where he is, everything gray. The people especially, gray, dull, empty. He stops from time to time, tries to fit into places, with people, but the world’s a puzzle and he’s a mismatched piece.

He remembers home, and he wants to go back. He misses home, but he can’t go back. The road is cold and lonely, as is he. He travels to forget, but he probably can’t. He might be dead, the road his Purgatory, but he really doesn’t know. He may never know, as is the nature of such travel. So he goes, his home far away, but never gone.

Water so hot, your entire body screams. Every inch of your skin burns white hot, then falls silent, numb. You can hear your own heart beating, loud and strong between your ears. Your chest rises and falls surrounded by steam. The feeling returns to your skin, conscious again from the initial shock. You lie back and close your eyes, heart pounding, thinking of her.

You remember her skin against yours, the heat and sweat. You remember the pain, the pleasure, the pleasurable pain. Bites and kisses, nails dug in and gentle caresses, sinking into scalding water. The line between ecstasy and agony is gone, burned away, there’s no difference between the two. You’re both dominant and submissive in turn, both knowing exactly how to play one another.

You don’t speak, and neither does she, not with words. You know each other on a visceral level, her breath on your face says I love you, I want you, take me, fuck me. Your eyes speak the same to her. She knows that you can’t stand much more, neither can she. She wants to see the look of release wash over your face. She takes you how she wants you, you can’t stop her. She won’t stop and you know it. You have no choices. She touches you beneath the hot water, slowly, then ever faster. You know what’s about to happen, your lack of choice doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, save for her touch and the look in her eyes. Beautiful, sinful, perfect.

You open your eyes and she’s gone. Your skin feels warm and alive with lingering pain. You remember her. You feel alive in the heat.