Friday, October 22, 2010

Synecdoche



"a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (as fifty sail for fifty ships), the whole for a part (as society for high society), the species for the genus (as cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species (as a creature for a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (as boards for stage)"

...

Pink turned grey outside. I felt the polyester against my skin. It wasn’t comfortable but I couldn’t picture ever moving.

“Do you think if something was true once, it stays true forever? Like, it never goes away?”

“That’s how you know something’s true. You see it everywhere.”

“Like reflected in everything?”

“Yeah. You can see everything through it.”

Then, later.

“Time doesn’t exist, not how we’re told it does.”

“Yeah, even this, with us. It didn’t start years ago and end -”

“Tomorrow, whenever.”

“Right. It all happened at once. Its all happening, still. And that’s why that movie was so brilliant. That is exactly what time is like, you feel years ago as if it was yesterday.”

“I know, it feels that visceral. The one part that stuck with me was -”

“The end is in the beginning?”

“No, but...actually, yes.”

You realize that no one’s watching and that no one ever was.

"Do you want these potatoes?"

Later, still.

I could hear wind but from the wrong side of the room, where the wall was paved.

“Do you hear the wind? From over there?”

“Not from the window?”

“Yeah.”

“No. But I have before.”

The world tilted sideways. An arm grew out of my chest and reached across the mattress.

“Did you think you’d be like this at your age?”

“I really never thought this far ahead.”

Sunday, October 17, 2010

I am constantly stuck feeling relieved, but it’s the weird relief, the kind you get after narrowly avoiding sleeping with someone you really didn’t want to, or when you get back from a trip with someone you wish you’d never seen on the road. Its the melancholy feeling of being disappointed by the wackiness of the world.

I am always convinced I don’t contribute to it, which is as lonely as it is comforting.

Mama - Short Story Excerpt Two


“Why can’t you forgive her?” asks Ben.

It’s springtime, the year they got together. They’re happy. As happy as they know how to be.

Cheryl has just started talking to Mama about him, and he’s the first person ever she’s wanted to be honest with about it. She thinks she loves him, how she knows to love, anyway. She’s younger, far less aged than she is now. Her heart is inexperienced, not yet worn in like a baseball glove. Not misshapen and sagged. She’s tender with him.

More tender than she ever should have been, not knowing that her heart would soon only count seconds and pump blood.

“I just…can’t.”

“Do you miss her?”

“I don’t miss her, no. I miss what I never had. I’ve spent my whole life missing something I’ve never had.”

“Do you ever want to forgive her?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because she’s never going to change.”

He nods.

Then after awhile, he speaks again, only softer and slower this time.

“I just think that you only have one Mom, and one day she’s going to be gone…and you’re going to wish things were different.”

She nods.

Maybe, she thinks.

“No. I won’t.”

Maybe, she thinks again.

Maybe.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Nightfall


I dreamt once that we were twins. You looked like me and I looked like you, but everything was opposite, mirror images.

I walked down streets in a tiny town. You weren’t there but I felt you near me, dreaming too. I saw old faces and they recognized me. I couldn’t remember their names.

"Mavis," a man said and I felt stupid.

There was quiet where usually there’s noise. Cars moved silent down roads, like clumsy ghosts. My footsteps were noiseless, too. I was floating. But air moved past my ears like jet planes and I thought about what we hear and what we can’t.

I had a dream within the dream, and that's where I found you. You were taking a bath in my blood.

“Why are you doing that?” I asked.

“To get to know you.”

The red was pretty and silly on your skin. You looked kind. I didn’t need it anyway, so I sat down next to you. I stretched my bones out of my skin.

“Thanks,” they whispered.

I woke up next to you still.

When we're walking later, without dreams, I looked down at my feet. I heard them, like tap shoes, but the air hid. I saw my shadow. She waved at us.

You missed it.

Monday, October 11, 2010

When'd you leave Heaven? Why'd they let you go? How was everything up in Heaven?

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Like Father


He spends his days quiet, reading mystery novels, without company. He often acts differently in front of people than he is, to shock them or seem like a real nut, as if they'd need help drawing that conclusion. He doesn't wear underwear or socks. He doesn't drive and won't learn. He rides his electric bike, very slowly, all over the neighborhood.

He knows everyone but there is not one person I would consider his friend. He keeps parts of his past secret. I have wondered if he behaves the way he does to keep people at bay. He doesn't need people, not really.

I'm scared. I'm becoming more that way.

I sit with him on Thanksgiving morning, talking about my brother.

"Mike needs more confidence," I say, like I've always said, now a parrot in sweat pants talking to no one, just the walls.

He laughs.

"Nobody's confident. No one you know is confident. Are you? No. There is not one guy in the world who is confident. Any type of confidence is just bullshitting. People'll say, 'Oh, that guy, he's really confident.' No, he's not, he's just a better at the bullshitting game. It's all game. And the lower you are, the better you got to be at that game. Confidence is a bullshit modern day myth."

I laugh, too, but the person inside me wants to jump off the couch and touch him.

I can't make the leap.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Thicker Than Water



His heart was undone.

More, she had undone it, with her smiling eyes and auburn hair. He’d undone himself, too, but that was a longer process, one that had taken years.

“I live my life like a book. I try to find the most interesting characters.”

Over eggs and coffee, I remember all the things we’ve done over eggs and coffee; laughed, cried, co-existed how siblings do. Looking at him, his crumpled clothes and young face, I think I'll never love anyone as much as I love my little brother.

“Sometimes I feel like the whole world is moving and I’m standing still,” he says.

“Maybe it’s that you’re moving and the whole world is standing still.”

“Maybe.”

“Why’d you two break up?”

“I think the same reason you and Glenn did.”

“What’d you love about her?”

He thought. I liked watching him think, the fireworks exploding in his blackened eyes.

“Her potential. I always fall in love with potential.”

“I’m a victim of my own optimism,” I nodded.

“That’s a sad thing to say.”

“With men. I am with men. I love what they could be, not what they are. And I don’t even realize I’m doing it until it’s too late, until the fiction looks like fact, until the character looks real.”

“We both live our lives like novels, then.”