Sunday

"And it's all so much bullshit, Thomas, I really believe that," Warren said, smiling.
Thomas stared, unblinking, out the window and across the parking lot through steam rising hot off the tarmac at two girls entering the Rite-Aid. Both wore black hooded sweatshirts despite the heat and humidity that had settled over the town earlier that week. He could feel his forehead slicked with sweat. As he reached up his arm to wipe the sweat away, he could feel his skin sticking to the cheap vinyl upholstery of Warren's sedan.
"Jesus Warren, can't you turn the A/C on? It's 90 fucking degrees, man."
Warren tilted his head out the window and spit with a cautious, methodical movement of his lips that Thomas could not help but interpret as condescension before replying slowly, "Shit Tom, it's a beautiful fucking day."
And as he looked down the length of the bench seat at Thomas, his eyes earnest and honest, the sky darkened suddenly and rain began to fall, gradually at first and then with increasing intensity. Warren smiled as he pulled out a cigarette from his breast pocket and stuck it ceremoniously in his mouth.
Thomas rolled his eyes, sighed, and looked back out the window to see the two girls standing in the middle of the lot, their hooded figures partially obscured by rainfall, with arms outstretched and faces pointed skyward; praying for rain.

White Noise

Down along the open expanse of soft skin across which lay hair unwashed he traced a single finger. The skin pulled and shrank then expanded once more, a pinkish wake cut by a cuticled prow. These idle moments of inaction brought them close. In silence they sit, cold televised glow tinting skin blue; the walls iridescent.

"'id you say somethin'?"

"Nothing."

And their eyes close together. And they are in love.

Straw

Early that morning they sat cross-legged on the cracked floor looking upwards at the window and the world outside. 

Somewhere beyond the window a bird called out as the city sank a little farther down into the soft ground on which it stood.

The Collossus

Last night I lay asleep and dreaming. I dreamt of a cliff overlooking the ocean on a clear day; a brilliant blue sky with white clouds scattered sparsely to the horizon. Green grass grew right to the edge of the cliff. A few paces from the edge stood a few white walls. A small crowd had taken shelter behind these walls and I stood with them. I remember people in the crowd being familiar and friendly to me. But we cowered behind the walls. I did not understand their fear until I looked around the corner. I saw a giant striding through the ocean, hundreds of feet tall. He was naked. He had the features of a young, attractive man. He seemed drunk. We were all terrified and tried not to be seen.

As the giant drew near to us, a young woman broke from our ranks and strode out to the cliff's edge, disrobing as she went. When she reached the cliff, she stood with her arms outsretched and the wind blew her hair gently. The giant took notice of her and reached down. We held our collective breath in terror. 

He grasped her in his hands and, bringing her up to the middle of his chest, tore her effortlessly limb from limb. The pieces of her body fell down to the ocean below. 

My heart sank with them. The giant turned and strode off, his hands stained red with blood.

This Hurts

"What do you do about a sadness as deep and relentless as this?" she asked, voice wavering; a tremolo. 

And you calmly told her that things weren't so bad after all and that life is worth living and that she hurt today but she might not hurt tomorrow and that she really had it pretty good after all if only she could stop for a second and just realize it and if only she could see herself like you saw her she'd understand how great she really was and she'd be happy to be herself after all.

And the words kept coming for nearly two hours and you thought you had made quite an impression and that maybe she felt just a little better about herself.

And she gave you a little smile before rolling over and closing her eyes when you finally ended by looking at her plaintively and asked, "I mean... you know?"

But the next day, sitting in the heat alone and sweating you realized that she was probably just as sad as she had been before you opened your mouth. What do you do?

Memories

I have forgotten already so much of my life; memories like wax figures in the sun begin to lose their shape and coherence before disappearing completely. I grasp at them, sometimes desperately; details drift away into the aether. Despite this, I am perpetually nostalgic. The details, I have discovered, are secondary in importance to the feelings those memories can call back up from the depths of my chest, though they are not necessarily happy ones. I remember the first date that I went on with my girlfriend of four years. I remember the last words I said to my grandmother as she lay on her deathbed, slowly starving. I remember the feeling of the sun on my face. I remember birthday cakes decorated with toy trucks. I remember the texture of thick carpet between my toes. I remember the smell of the halls in my elementary school. I remember a darkened basement and pedaling in circles and children laughing.

I remember the humility and astonishment I felt while standing at the very edge of oblivion; beneath a night sky so vast and containing so many points of light that I was unable to blink, unable to move for fear of disappearing into it completely. I am born of Ohio but was, for the most part, raised in the countryside of New Jersey. Even amongst the rural landscapes of my childhood, the light of nearby New York City drenched the horizon in a perpetual orange glow that washed out all but the most stubborn stars. The window of the room in which I live today stands opposite a street lamp whose incandescent light buzzes persistently through the cracks of cheap venetian blinds left always down. And yet, I can still remember lying on a blue tarp stretched across desert sand; surrounded on all sides by the bodies of my sleeping companions. We had rolled into the campground (or was it a ghost town? Or a theme park?) in the middle of the night. We were unshowered and immensely tired. We had spent hours in cramped vans traversing the great wasteland of the American Southwest. There were twenty of us, united for a month of outdoor adventuring. We decided, out of an eagerness to get to sleep as quickly as possible and because the night air was so warm, to forgo tents and sleep on our mats alone, without shelter. This memory has a feeling attached to it; a feeling of contentedness and wonderment and sleep falling over me. I slept under nothing but a blanket of stars that night, the desert air still and silent. In my mind, my eyes never close, and I lie beneath as much universe as I have ever seen for a night that lasts forever.

I remember another night. I remember driving aimlessly around in the rain in Jacob's Mustang, my face misted with rain blown through the window cracked by Dane, smoking. I remember Jacob at the wheel and Dane shotgun. But who was beside me in the back? The details are, again, elusive. But the smell of the car mingling with that of cigarettes, teenage boys, and rain-soaked countryside is unmistakable. The car was a 1968 Ford Mustang with a 286 cubic inch V8 engine. It rumbled and shook at idle. It smelled of unburned gasoline, lead additives, and leather decades old. The rain came down in sheets against the windshield and we rumbled on. I remember discussing sex and love and death; those important things that are really deserving of conversation. And I remember not discussing anything at all; bathed in the pale green light from the dashboard lost in our own thoughts, our own memories. In the years since, we have all gone on to other places, other nights, and other cars. I doubt that the Mustang even runs anymore. But, in my mind, the ride never ends, the rain never stops, and we never go home again.  

I remember another ride, too. This one taken years before. My family and I headed south on I-71 one night on our way home, the radio off, not a word spoken between any of us. We had been in Mansfield for another Christmas Eve with the grandparents and the cousins. My father, as was his custom when around his family, had consumed a good deal of scotch and had gotten very drunk. Gifts had been exchanged and it had been a happy occasion, at least for me and my brothers. I remember my father flexing his bad leg against the windshield of the Suburban and the creak of the strained glass. I remember my mother commanding him to get his foot off of it for fear that it would break. I remember him explaining the pain he was in. I remember shouting. I remember the cracks spreading across the windshield slowly, until it gave way in a spectacular crash. I learned that automotive glass does not shatter; it retains its shape even under enormous strain. I remember my mother screaming, my father yelling, my brothers crying. Blows were exchanged between mother and father; a domestic dispute at 75 miles per hour. I remember sitting in the back of the truck, my head pressed deep into the upholstery of the rear seat, wishing that I were somewhere else. In the years since, we have all gone off to other places. We all got away; New Jersey for some of us, sobriety for others. But I think we are all still in that car on Christmas Eve. The glass is still breaking. And I wish more than anything that I were somewhere else.

All Wet

He paced back and forth across the length of the house, passing through each room, stopping at each window, looking at nothing in particular outside. There was no wind and the rain fell exactly perpendicular to the ground. A chair stood in the middle of the backyard. When he came to the window that faced it, he stood staring at the chair for a moment. 

He had put it there the day before. He regretted that. It had been raining for hours and the upholstery was soaked through. The chair had been set in one of the contours of the yard, a low point apparently, and water had been steadily collecting there, rising up the elegantly carved legs at a surprising rate.

He pressed his forehead against the glass and exhaled, his breath blooming across the pane instantly. The chair was gone, lost behind a cloud of condensation on glass and rain beyond.