"Do you…" Veronica touched my shoulder, brushed her fingers away. Still, we were asking the wrong questions. "Do you have anyone?"
One of us was nervous. I might have been projecting myself, playing a game of masks through a mirror.
Maybe. Maybe I had someone. She would be the first to know.
"I was just wondering," she said, "if you did, that is. Just because. I wondered."
"No," I said, "I don’t think… there was another girl, last year, but it wasn’t about us, really. So no, I don’t think I do."
"Oh," she said. "Oh."
I took her hand. It was longer than mine, slender and cool. She had many skills. She was an artisan of the flesh, a fountain. Our fingers came together. No, this wasn’t a time for innuendo. I wasn’t a teenage boy telling jokes in smoky places. That, for, was life, was. Could I feel, did I? Thinking back, and feeling, thinking. All I’m good at is playing games with words. The world escapes me.
"I wrote a poem for you," I said. "Has anyone… has anyone ever written a poem for you before?" She said no. She was lying, but I didn’t mind. She lied for me, if she was. I knew. I always know. "You want to hear it?" I asked. I hoped she did. I whispered
the poem in her ear, gently,
as she curled
to me, gently.
Unfortunately,
it wasn’t as though I could just feel her dreams, but I felt her, and we felt
together, something
powerful, something
potent
that might have been love, if we felt
like calling it names, meditating on connection, purely to amuse ourselves. We were children together, the way we made each other laugh, gently.
As if we were
children, and someday we would be young again, renewed, gently,
and we could float in clouds, swim in rainbows, if we did it together, metaphorically, together. It wasn’t a good poem, but I sometimes
I wonder
if I’ve ever
done a good poem, possibly
it’s just I’ve been thinking in volumes, made, past, plated, lines and lines and
voices.
I repeated
myself a bit too often, and I got bound
a bit
by the constraints
of the medium, but did she notice, I hope she didn’t notice, because
if she noticed
I think I might have started
to cry, though she didn’t,
and neither
did I.
::::::::::::::::::::
That’s not quite true.
I need to work on my improvisation.
Technically, I’ve been getting a bit sloppy, and there’s nothing poetic about that.
::::::::::::::::::::
"Did you like it?" I asked.
She said she did. I knew she cared because she was willing to lie.
"Come away with me," I said. "We could run away to the desert.
Did you understand?
She was willing
to lie.
::::::::::::::::::::
"You were right," Jacob said.
Of course. (he didn't add)
Jacob teetered back. He had dirt between his fingers, a foul stench in him. He fell.
I thought of catching him, but he fell.
"So what happened?" I asked.
"She didn’t like the ring."
"Did you show it to her?"
"No. But she didn’t like it. And," (he made strange sounds, like breaking sobs,
from somewhere in his bowels, or glutei) "I think she was getting tired of me. Either that or I got tired of her. I don’t know. Bitch. I hate her. Bitch." Biting his tongue once, not cringing. "I hate her."
"Did you take my advice?"
"Yeah," he said. "I found a corner. Maybe someday you could visit me there." "Maybe."
::::::::::::::::::::
The bridge sprung over sea like a great concrete mouth, linking land and land, a spurning tongue of rock, bearing (well oiled) metal, its stoniness, its silt and foundation. Bits of dust occasionally fell to the drink below, swishing, undrinkable. Sparrows, pigeons, gulls, seagulls, whatever they were, shat, so the bridge was covered gloriously in shit. I climbed underneath. There was a platform there. Restrooms. The walls were a cage of brass tubing and titanium wires. Outside, wave lapped wave, spuming oceanward.
This was a forbidden place. I thought of robbing a vending machine. Someone else had gotten to it already. The restrooms (already mentioned) were sumptuously, unbelievably dirty. Cracks wound in the tiles. Layers of grease on the walls. Turning on the sink, no water came. Quite expectedly, this place was not conductive to the flow.
"I would expect," said a stranger, "that you aren’t looking to meet strangers here."
"No," I said. "Not really."
"If you met me somewhere else," said the stranger, "would you still not want to meet me?" He had white stains in his hair, and he wore a yellow jumpsuit (ragged), and tall latex boots (seamless). Tinted glasses kept the sun away, but there was no sun here. He carried an acoustic guitar, strung, in one hand, without a case. Big hair gave him balance, a poofy element of the bereaved. At any moment it seemed he might break into song. I wondered if he could dance.
"I don’t know," I said. "You don’t look like you belong anywhere, so I guess you couldn’t belong anywhere but here." Above, pale yellow flickered twice in sequence. This place wasn’t clean enough for me. Most probably my standards were too high. I’d lived too long in a better world.
"What if I was wearing a suit?"
"You’d still have your hair," I said. "It takes up lots of space."
"Absolutely!" he exclaimed. "It does! It takes up lots of space!"
"And you look like you’ve never brushed your teeth before," I said. "Ever."
"Right again!" (again). "I’ve never brushed my teeth either!"
"Does that make you abnormal?"
"Incorrect," he said. "It makes me an individual." He clapped his hands once, dirtily. "I just have to give you the details."
And he gave me the details.
"Fascinating," I said.
Even his speech was unique.
"Think you could sing a song?" I asked. "And dance? You look like you sing songs, and dance."
"Yes I do!" he exclaimed (proudly). "I do sing, and I do dance!" So he sang, and he danced, twisting one foot, playing guitar upside down. He sang horribly, and danced horribly, but I think that was what he went for, a novelty among novelties. In all things he was painfully, irrevocably unique.
::::::::::::::::::::
Markus
and I stared together at the sea, night-buoys aloft, the coastal patrol patrolling. Waves lapped the land like hungry tongues, to go along for all time, in defiance of the times, according to the times, a wearisome singing. Beneath, sand sifted in coolness. For being dirt, for being dusty spume, it felt surprisingly clean.