Monthly Archives: March 2014

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I took myself out to lunch today before work as I usually do, and as I walked into the restaurant, I overheard a group of people snickering about “crazy, smelly old bum” who was sitting at one of the corner tables outside talking to himself. I placed my order with a young girl at the register who clearly wanted him kicked off the premises.

Maybe through a mixture of boredom and curiosity,  I chose my seat 2 tables down from the old tramp and I discovered that he wasn’t mumbling to himself at all. Rather, he was reading from a book that was slightly hidden in his filthy old backpack on the table in front of him. He was reading very well and in a strangely pleasant voice about an old man suffering alone on the bank of the Mississippi River – reminiscent of Siddhartha laying next to the river before Govinda stumbles upon him.

It was all actually quite warming and equally melancholy. I sat and ate quietly and tried to ignore the fact that hidden in the chapters he softly spoke was likely a very personalized cry for help. And even now I felt as if every laugh and joke and dirty look issued from the front of the restaurant was like another surge of water causing this old bums own river to overflow. Even I, being too late for work for any kind of discourse, paid for my meal and walked away in silence. But looking back over my shoulder, I could picture the river overwhelm him and drag his body away.

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I guess its like reading the lyrics of a song without ever hearing it. It usually creates a jarring, unkempt mess unsuitable for any ear or tongue.

But once you hear it, once you lay down in a dark room with it and focus on its nuances and all the tedium that went into creating what is laying there next to you, telling you about the scar on thier stomach or that time up in the Georgia mountains a few summers ago, its often hard to distinguish anything else from it ever again. And even if you do ever run into that jarring mess of words, sounds and actions again, maybe at a party or a bar downtown, its quite difficult to read what they are saying now without hearing that same melody and those alluring nuances. Even after a few years worth of other unsuitable, bland melodies.

And I guess that’s what I’d consider love.  Not that im anyone to even utter a word on the subject,  but there is quite a few brilliant, complex symphonies that play out in my head when I see her occasionally and one day, I’d like for someone to hear something unmistakable like that when I speak.

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“I miss you, too”

Only those words hardly reached me. They fell from her mouth and smashed on the ground like dinner plates from unsteady shelves and, similarly, all I felt was the residual regret of knowing that I now had quite a mess to clean up because she misunderstood me.

The words were,  “I misused you”
And what’s worse is that I intend on doing it again.

But this is where things begin to blur a little bit because her leg was wrapped around my waist like soft, porcelain hook I couldn’t seem to escape and I found that very disorientating. My left palm was on the small of her back pushing her into my abdomen and the other hand was hiding in the coils of her dark hair. Her hair was so impossibly long. I imagined her floating lifeless on top of the ocean with that hair dangling miles beneath her, beneath the waves and swaying so slowly in the water  like poison ribbons from a man-o-war. And I was swimming straight towards it.

I had a fistful of these dark, poison ribbons now in my right hand and I used it to direct her head inches from my face. I looked into her light blue eyes and all I could think is that they are not deep enough to drown in. Hardly enough to even splash around in temporarily- like a child. I craved the murky bottomless dark of brown eyes. Thats what I needed, a quiet place to drown. I brushed my thumb against her soft bottom lip like a fish hook and I turned and let her teeth sink into the back of my neck creating a vast wound. The type of wound that is not so easily compressed and soon, great rivers of dark red fluid began to fill up the entire club and all I could distinguish was arms,  so many arms moving in so many directions. Frantically snatching drinks from the bar and dragging them back to thier mouths like chameleon tongues.  Arms flailing about and tangled with other arms. Wrapped around bottles, wrapped around bodies,  wrapped around purses, pushed against bathroom stalls and shoved down throats. All I could see was hundreds of arms splashing around above the blood red tide issuing from me and great, bloody waves crashing over their heads, submerging them entirely and the coils of her poisonous hair covering the place, tangling and collecting bodies. Every-bodies body, but not mine. I could swim right through unharmed. And I remember that feeling brought me so much dread,  as all I wanted was to die silently in those ribbons but for some forsaken reason I was unaffected and I used it all to my advantage like a clownfish living momentarily in anemone.

I used every piece of her body. Every strand of her hair and every drop of her blood and I swam away and left her floating lifeless on top of the ocean.

Collecting bodies.

Every-bodies body but mine.

I need to find a quiet place to drown.

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