Kelly, I Was Drunk

They were going in the opposite directions. It wasn't just a metaphor. As She left the terminal, He skipped in. His head was down, looking at a stain on his lapel. He began to blush, immediately embarrassed at the prospect that he had been wearing the blotch for the whole day without noticing. He racked his brain matching the color of his beverages to that of the stain. She never saw him, and they never met.
The pilot and the stewardess just didn't know they were a love story. Truly, they were star-crossed lovers. If he hadn't managed to smear his lapel (it was lasagna, but he was satisfied to believe it wine) and she hadn't been so concerned with finding her hotel, it might have been different, but likely wouldn't have.
The pilot was happy. The stewardess was not. It wouldn't be long before they both went south. One to Atlanta, the other to Houston. It was hardly worth mention, were it not for the misnomer. In fact, her life was very near a remarkable breakthrough. She was a commodity at the time. A beautiful, cheery, personable young stewardess in a world with an increasing obsession with customer service. He was a drunk, and the airline knew it. She stayed humble by remembering the two things her father had told her before she moved out of her parents' home: Stewardesses amount to nothing, and you are going to die. She believed both of these things without question, and also believed that her father was something of an insufferable prick. In neither of these beliefs was she explicitly mistaken.
He stayed humble by waking up every morning. He was a sad shell of a man, the type that you would expect Kevin Spacey to play in a movie. Missing from his bio, however, were the basic intelligence and general depth that seemed prerequisites for a movie character. He had never considered any of this, and was not explicitly mistaken to ignore the rare possibility that Kevin Spacey play his role in a movie.
None of it mattered. They had a love story the universe didn't want to tell (as you know, the universe is very much ambivalent to love stories of all kinds and only tells the ones it does begrudgingly). They had a love story they weren't ready to tell themselves, for love stories never actually begin in passing, on the street, or in airport terminals. But they had a love story.
They didn't miss much.
If that you could be so lucky.

Reaction

My mother is sweeping the floors
It is  4:10 AM
From the glances I have snuck, she is not crying, not distraught, but in no way normal
It is as if some computer has poorly recreated her from a collection of photographs of her
My mother is handling this whole situation well and I suspect foul play
I am safe now
I am in my home
After standing in a ditch for an hour, my situation has resolved itself incredibly quickly
I take his cue and drive cautiously
My father says "see you at home"
I worry that I will back into the truck and apply the brakes liberally
Will my parents go on their trip to Montreal?
The chain snags and I feel the car being lifted out of the ditch, but I don't know how much gas to give the car
How hard did I hit it
The broken plastic is from the console under the steering wheel
Suddenly the car and the truck are tied together
He says nothing
My father is here now
Lights finally arrive
I can't take credit
The boot is off center, I can't find my balance now
That ruins a long run
I notice my foot has moved
How long have I been here
I have been standing in the same exact spot for half an hour
My brain churns
What now
There is no lying to do
My father knows
I put down the phone, slowly
The words barely make it out of my mouth
I accept fault and give a phony excuse
He is worried
I pick up
Now, my father calls me
He must know
The texts asks where the car is
I look at the bent front end of the civic
My phone buzzes
There is no way I can fix this. I do not want to get back in
My dad is awake
My phone buzzes
There is plastic littered across the two front seats
I hope this is rock bottom
I am in a ditch
The car won't stop, but it screeches

An Admittance Of Fault

Make sure you know who the main character in your story is
Greater people, better protagonists, have failed at the same task
No doubt, I have as well

The Mortality Of Sensuality (Pronouns Wanted)

She had such full thighs. Yossarian had heard it time and time again from half of the squadron, and it was always in a flattering tone, without question. When he was inside them, though, he hadn't a clue where to start. They were too full, even. He guessed to run his hand from her knee up to the back of her thigh, right up to the point where her buttock sprung from the leg into a quivering arch. He guessed right. A moan escaped her lips and she pulled him harder into waist by his hips. It was the first that he had noticed she was touching him. He obliged her gravity, but turned his head to the side as he sunk into her shoulder. She was surprisingly alert to his despondence and, with her finger under his chin, spun his head to face her. Meeting her hurt eyes, he quickly became aware of his mistake and offered a sadistic smile before sliding down her body, splitting her legs first with a subtle dip of his chin, and then further with the backside of his hands. As he looked at her now, she didn't look hurt. Her cheeks had a blush that gave away her embarrassed excitement, and he did his best not to roll his eyes as he dutifully buried himself. He thought of Nurse Duckett as he worked. Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife wasn't altogether unlike her, but could never keep his attention, even when she had his member at attention. It was when he was with Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife that he managed to convince himself that he loved Nurse Duckett, and at no other point. With a clear head, he wouldn't hesitate to reject such a notion, even when he was with her. Something about the way Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife was so easily regaled by his dark musings and satisfied with the same routine, generic sex made Yossarian desperate to feel something more. Yossarian allowed himself a smile as Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife's shaking hand grasped his hair, confirming that he had unconsciously finished her. As he entered her, he lamented internally. He knew he was going to have to fuck Nurse Duckett again in order to regain interest in Lieutenant Schiesskopf's wife, as had become his system. Catching himself, he indulged himself in an ephemeral moment of lust. Luciana, if she was even out there, was going to have to wait.

Let Me Make It Up To My Conscience

I think this is a good time to write something happy

I love space

I think of it like a national park

Because it's a lot bigger than where you live

And you think: how cool would it be if I explored all of this

But you just can't - and that's not a bad thing - you just can't

So you have a new place to have an adventure every time

It's like a book that you know you like, but never ends

You don't even have to pay attention to the plot it's like the fucking Giving Tree of books

Just let it make you happy and love it

I think probably the same people that go to national parks like space

Maybe not

I do like space though

Space is rad

Brookings, Oregon

She said yes
She said yes, she resented me, yes
And what was I supposed to do, let it go?

We were together for a year and a half
Well, not together, but you know
And I know a year and a half isn't a lot, but it was different
We knew each other
And then just out of left field, she says yes
Yes, I do resent you, she says
And then just stares at me

Why the hell would she say that?
I only asked in the first place to be flattered
So she gives me this stare, like, what are you gonna do you boring self obsessed fucking fuck
I told her exactly what I was gonna do

I said to her
I said to her I'm gonna walk outside and head to that ice cream stand on the corner
Buy some chocolately flavor, they don't have just plain simple chocolate
I tell her, I'm gonna walk back, probably pick up that book that I was in the middle of
I'll start the chapter over since I sorta lost interest and wasn't paying attention
I'm gonna remember that I usually like to drink tea while I'm reading, start a pot of earl grey and get comfortable on the hammock on the porch

And that's when I stabbed her
It was with a pen - no, it mighta been one of those calligraphy markers
I saw it on the counter and she was rolling her eyes and I grabbed it and

Where am I gonna go
I lived in that house
I can't go back
She's under the porch, I didn't know what else to do with her
The first thing I did was cover her head, she wasn't even dead yet
And I thought to myself, what would gacy do
I fucking laughed
I fucking laughed, I still wasn't technically a killer yet

She had those short shallow breaths you get when you think too much about breathing
Like when you can't remember where you put your tongue
Every now and then, a croak
I could tell, it wasn't gonna be much longer
So I put her under the stairs, out back

Go inside to grab something to eat, take a piss
I have no idea
You'd think you forget about all that stuff

I couldn't remember where I stabbed her

So I walk out back and drag her out from under the stairs
I had her rolled up in an old carpet we just had taken out

She's all red
There's a mark or two on her thigh
I take the bag off her head
I see I stabbed her a dozen times in the face
what the fuck
Her eyes are cold but she's looking right at me

Of course she fucking is
I grab the shovel

I can't bring myself to rip into the dirt yet
What the fuck was she looking at
She's dead and still giving me that fucking attitude
I look at the shovel and I just go berserk

I hit her four, five, six times
Different spots, just not the head
I'm scared of the noise that's gonna make it'll make me puke
Finally I stick the shovel in the ground and go at it
I get about 3 feet deep when I hit the foundation

She's not gonna fit
I think of cutting her in hal- I WAS GONNA SLICE HER UP
I loved this chick

It's fine, I fold her over and put her in
Pack in the hole with dirt but there's still a bump where her feet are
I don't even care
I can't stay here
I can't ever go back
I guess I know why she resents me

Loathve

I hate the way I write hate the way I look I hate the things I say I hate the way I am

But I adore what all of it has earned me

Flyer (Rough Draft) (2)

Do you know of the society we've been creating underground?
We don't allow colour
We don't allow sounds in a major key
We are scared of the things you brush aside so easily

We know we are going to die
and
We plan on appealing

We are held together by the strongest and the weakest of bonds
We are all very weak people, you know, and this contributes greatly to our unity
Otherwise, we are very different from one another

Strangely enough, we are being watched
It is not fiction, I assure that I have this information on a good source
It is part of the reason I even broach the subject with you

Mostly, they are women
They wear pantsuits, and look perfectly terrible
This is all I know
I fear that we have caught the attention of the wrong people
But I do not know what they could want from us

When we meet, we rarely speak
Most of us pace and look worried
We all bear watches and glance at the, calculating what time we have left
In retrospect, it seems to take away from the experience
I've been meaning to bring it up
It is difficult without speaking

Can I trust you to keep our secret?
Obviously, now that you've learned all about us, you can't possibly join
But I hope we may keep you as an ally
And please, please, stay away from the women in pantsuits

An Excerpt From An Origin Story

You can't keep telling me that it hurts
Can't you see there's nothing I can do to help
There's so much I would give you if you ma-
STOP SHAKING GODDAMNIT
I can't support you
I can't make it better and
god
We're both going to die like this

You would think it would feel more poetic than this
But you're so, so pale
and I
I'm so empty

Gallery

Things are getting more bizarre
I never imagined artistry to be such a rabbit hole
But I've ripped it open myself
And now there's no choice but for me to dive further

I am not looking out of the same eyes that I used to
The world is not scary
I do not hear with the same ears that I once did
The world is far away

You should see what the air looks like here
It is like a fine mist that glosses over everything I touch
It is a fog you cannot outrun

I make my home in a photograph
The further I pull myself in, the more secure I feel
By the foreground, I drag my body into frame
The trick is thinking hard and squeezing into a ball
(the gravity is different here, and if you are not careful, you will tear apart and splatter across the world like ink across a poorly developed photo)
I reach further, helping myself towards the next level
I enjoy being out of sight, but sometimes, it is scary
The deeper I go, the fainter the colours
Eventually, I always find gray
It is in the corners, behind the reaches of the eye
This is where I hide
Behind every wall, through every door, I find rotting beams and old scaffolding
The infrastructure never creaks or moans but I fear it may collapse any day
After all, this is a ghost town
It may soon cease to exist altogether

I live in a memory that will never be fully revisited
I live in an emotion that has already been felt
It is passed over
It is past

Am I stuck here?
When I press myself up to the foreground, I see other worlds, and sometimes feel alone
There is so much more out there, but much of it seems the same as what I have here
Each photograph is different, but has the same sad shape
And I've at least made peace with the demons here
I will die here, or, at the very least, there is little reason to suspect otherwise
And if I were to migrate into another world, it would accomplish little

I have known for far too long
That to die alone is simply to die

I used to practice
I thought it noble to leave on my own terms
These days, I am too tired for it to matter
No one else seems to object

I live alone in my photograph, but there are others here
Naturally, they never move
Sometimes, when I am weary, it looks like they come to life
The expressions on their faces never change, but they murmur to each other about the strange being sulking around among them
Sometimes, when I am downright exhausted, they speak to me
They don't always realize I am an outsider, but this only makes me feel more foreign
They are both figuratively and literally transparent
It does not go over well whenever I observe this aloud
They ignore me again when I awake

One girl is less (figuratively) transparent than the rest
She is more (literally) transparent than the rest
I often fancy a love story with this one
She doesn't ignore me when I am awake

I am scared of so much
I fear to the point where being afraid simply describes me

Every night as I close my eyes, I imagine never awaking
It is (frighteningly) simple to do
Maybe the picture people would hold a service
Quite positively, they would be unaffected

It sometimes upsets me that there is nothing I can do to leave a lasting impact on these people
It often upsets me that, were I to leave an impact, it would be meaningless to the world
It constantly upsets me that the world is meaningless itself

There are simply too many other photographs

Wherein I Test Myself

This is a dead man

He did great things

You have not

You will die

Create with your entirety

Kafka is dead

Create with your entirety 

You are not yet dead

There is a world in your head that no one else will ever see

That should make you sad

It does not make me sad

My world is better

This has been perfectly bizarre

For Yeats, With Disdain

You are the sun on my back that I so fear to turn around to face
For history shows that if I try
I will not be able to see you, and you will not be on my back any longer
And my back is, without question, my favorite spot for the sun

I don't know what that means
That the place I most crave the light is the place I can't see it
Honestly, I can only imagine it means my back gets cold sometimes

I am sick and tired of everything meaning something
Especially over the course of a meaningless existence
I wonder if I assign meaning more to distract myself or to distract girls
In the end, it doesn't matter
That's all.

A Deposition Of The Life In Question, Insofar As I Am Introspective, And You Are Listening (You Being Me, And Subsequently, Both The Audience And Subject)

I am something of a killer
I have killed
I will kill again
Thus, my initial remark

There may have been a time when I was not a killer, but certainly, it was not an era of any duration
Likely, I was born fated to bring death to some number of things
I can't, with any conviction, even estimate the number
It is arbitrary anyway

From everything I know, you are something of a killer
You have killed
You will kill again
And it would be quite the double standard to ignore the implications these facts have

Of the things I am not sure of, I am the most sure of death
It is, at the very least, a word I have used thousands of times
It is, at the most, the very purpose of my life
You can forgive me for not elaborating, surely

You have forgiven me before
Once for a very figurative instance of my killing
Often (unconsciously) for literal instances of killing
You are not in a position to grant judicial decisions, and I do not take your pardons as such
However, I do not fear that the courts will feel differently

As overwhelming as the forgiveness for my actions has been, it has not been so overwhelming that it could be described as "unanimous"
Should it be described as such, I would feel accordingly fortunate (and innocent)
I do not expect it to be described as unanimous

There is one girl that I know of that has not forgiven me
I would be beyond remiss to allow myself the belief that she is the only one
Furthermore, she is not without evidence, nor empathy from myself
It could be said that I understand her grudge
It could also be said that I do not mimic it

My willingness to say these things (and many more similar things) is not without effect
It is a trait that served me well, even with this aforementioned girl
It was my willingness to abstain from saying a single phrase that has put me in this situation
Or so I believe

I speak for another, for forgiveness, and for death
I admit, this is bad form
I admit, I will likely continue
Surely, There Are Worse Things To Perpetuate

Run

I used to be in love with the sky
So much so that it didn't matter that I couldn't reach it
And when I did, I felt joy

I used to be in love with the ground
So much so that I never left its side
And when I did, I felt fear

I used to be in love with the wind
So much so that I stayed up until morning listening to its song
And when it didn't sing, I felt anger

I used to be in love with the air
So much so that I gobbled it up
I made it into something different
Something that could kill me
Something that suffocated me
So I ran

But I couldn't stop loving the air
So I continued to breathe
And I continued to run
From the poison I made from it

If it ever catches up to me
I fear it will smother me

I used to love you
So much so that I loved you like the sky, ground, air, and wind before you
I made you into something different
And now I run

For I will never be able to stop

Stars

PART I

I’ve seen so many stars die that I can’t look into the night sky without being overwhelmed by the cosmic cry for help

There’s nothing for me to do except duck the plummeting lights and turn to face a faceless girl with a powerful smirk

I don’t want these stars to disappear

But I don’t want the girl to come out of her spell

And if I were to rush off to the aid of a diving star and help it back into its place and time in the sky, she would know

I am not from here

And I do not belong here

The faceless girls are too much for me to lose, but it’s getting harder to face the wounded sky

Each star leaves a fresh scar that nobody else is able to see

And the neighboring galaxies turn sideways and look at me with lopsided, imploring eyes

And their haunting symphony starts from the top

So many parts have gone missing but I hear them all as if the night was packed with stars in a blinding display

Each star strains now, to project both its own and the part of its fallen neighbor across a void that more vast with every day

Collecting the carcasses of expired stars that couldn’t sing any longer 

The stars that exploded with their last breaths into furious, miserable, screaming rockets desperately seeking the limits of the void

Only to fall off with a whimper and fade into the blackness with a final pleading flicker

I remember all of the stars that have met this fate

And I hear the hum of the void every day filling with tortured, murmuring stars, all calling out the name I used to be called by

“Snowden”

--

The void was never going to exist until the first star left

Until one light in a spectrum abandoned its place

To be a brighter light in a dimmer picture

He found a solar system he liked and bullied the star out, but he’d never had planets 

and moons and life to take care of, and burned it up all when he looked at it for too long

So he moved on to the next one, remorseless, but determined not to fail again

This time, once he had settled in, he remembered at once to look away so as not to set his planets aflame

He brooded off into the other direction, determined not to allow his new fostered worlds the same fate

But by the time he turned back to check on them they had sealed and frozen into barren landscapes of ice and rock

He spun once and his gravity launched the solar system into the far reaches of a new galaxy

Suddenly all he could see was an empty expanse, a black sea of abandonment from the  ocean of lights he was once a part of

A single tear fell from his eye and burst with a sizzling eruption into a flare, and he knew for the first time what it felt like to burn

Part of him was consumed by his own heat, but he welcomed and relished the pain it brought, and along with it, a smaller, darker being

The tears continued to fall and he continued to shrink, until he was hardly any bigger than a beach ball, and only as radiant as a moody twilight

Everything would have seemed enormous to him, but there was nothing around, nothing  left from his giant tantrum to see or fear or even disprove his solitude

So he felt alone

He felt alone in part because he was alone, and in part because he had never felt anything so real

Maybe it was because he was so small, but it seemed like all of his emotion had been forced out into the blackness before him

As if he had lost the room to keep all of his demons safe and shelved and they had been let off with every tear that fell on his searing surface, expelled with a puff of steam and a hiss

They loomed and swayed in front of him as if they were a massive wall on the eve of its demolition, and subsequently, his

And in this moment he made what honestly and truly felt to him was the solemnest of promises to escape the monsters of his past

He swore with such passion and naivety that, were there a watchful god, he would have no choice but to be consumed with adoration at the purity of the shrunken, broken star’s emotion

The vows were all the same, but phrased progressively beautifully, to the point where he stopped speaking in sentences and began to speak in verse

His poem went on for an untold time before a watchful god finally took pity and laid the crippled star to rest, and the little bulb fell off into an exhausted slumber

When the little star awoke, he felt guilt

Then he felt fear

Then he felt alone

He was supposed to stay awake, he was supposed to stay in verse, he was supposed to stay

With them

The darkness wasn't as dark as it had been before, but it was somehow bleaker

As if even the night had given up on itself

He could see all the scars now

He could see all the tears and the streaks across the night sky
If it was a battlefield, it was his

The sneer curled up his face and never left

Musing 1

Part in a disjointed series

I don’t smoke cigarettes but I live in smoke

I know what I want and I know what I need but I have no idea what I already have besides sentences and decent-at-worst looks

Quick, think of two words that make you look quirky and witty and hope to trick someone into dedicating a year to discovering that they actually hate you

If only to practice marriage, because our mouths are not calibrated to say “forever” and mean it yet, and our lives only go by in two year intervals,

That’s in-sane

Insane is still a word meant in jest or hyperbole and whoever among us youths has thought to imagine it as a real possibility, as anything otherwise, is in a darker place than we’d like to collectively imagine

So let’s not imagine anything and be scared of everything

And at least then our fear of snakes will be rationalized by the reality that this whole world is scary and isolating one thing about it doesn’t change that one fucking bit

And, they move funny

Half of the time the world is dark and half of the time the world is bright and all of the time it’s true that metaphors forged with undeniable truths of our environment aren’t necessarily more applicable for simply that fact but sometimes teens still ry to make each other fall in love by pretending that they are

And who are we to deny that magic

Because I clearly understand the way the earth’s orbit works and I understand a lot of other, more complicated things, but I don’t know how to start explaining love to a cynic

I am a cynic

I can’t explain it to myself either

And that logic makes perfect sense

But love doesn’t

Timelines

The time wasn't right and the dial wasn't set but the alarm went off anyway

And a boy with far more to learn than he had to lose learned exactly that

He thought his insides were being torn out

He thought his skin was being scrubbed raw

He thought he was two different people brutally fighting through each other to earn passage into adulthood

He thought everything

He thought everything and remembered nothing except the despair

And three years later he sat in the same body (or at least the most similar one there was) in the same spot (or at least the same state) and remembered everything

He remembered the people he ignored

He remembered the time he had lost

He remembered the sounds he had never heard; having instead deferred to slow ballads he fancied his own

He remembered all the things that never happened

And he smiled a smile that captured his entire face in undeniable relief

Because somehow, he was the only thing that had changed

His contrived pain and silent drama was offset by the thing he decried the most

He had never been happier for his own insignificance

And he forgot the despair

-

There was nothing more for him to contemplate, so he walked

The trees were the same

The grass was the same

Apparently nobody had thought to plant any flowers

A shame, he thought.

He walked for some time until the sunlight grew tired and slouched, lazily bumbling through trees and knocking into buildings such that it could hardly be responsible to illuminate his path ahead

The occasional streetlight did its best to pick up the slack

He looked at his feet and they were looking straight ahead, so he continued to walk forward

The world was the same as it was three years ago

A pedestrian approached and he felt an urge to be perfectly unaffected by them

He looked at his feet and they were looking straight ahead so he looked forward

She was beautiful

She was looking at her feet

He looked at her feet

Her feet were not as beautiful as her face, so he looked at her face and recognized her

She passed him in silence, making a line towards the exact spot he had just come from

He stopped and unconsciously twisted his mouth in thought

But his mouth did not think for itself so he did not speak

His feet thought for themselves and they swiveled to  face the back of the girl

But their autonomy did not usher any sentience to his mouth, so he watched and said nothing

She continued to walk silently, further back in his past settings, and though it strained, the streetlight could not contain her any longer

He turned and resumed walking

He wondered if he had ignored her before

He wondered if he had loved her before

He wondered how those two thoughts could exist mutually

He walked into a man

He was struck by the novelty of having been completely blinded by his thoughts and cocked his head to the side

The man was struck by his elbow and stumbled on 

He was struck with embarrassment and apologized to the man

The man graciously forgave him and continued on in a hurried walk, and it became clear he was following the girl

The boys feet moved on anyway

He did not care much about the man

-

He reached the door that he had left from and entered

There was no way of telling how he had circled perfectly back but he was too engrossed in other issues, for he now remembered everything, and everything is a lot to think about, no matter the relevance

He remembered the girl and he remembered the path she was on

And he remembered the man and how he walked not on a path but in pursuit

But he remembered everything, so none of this was surprising

What was surprising was that the path the girl was on was perfectly familiar to him

And it wasn’t just her route

What was surprising was that the the girl he had seen was perfectly familiar to him

And it wasn’t just her face

What was surprising was that the man he had bumped into was perfectly familiar to him

But he didn’t recognize him and he couldn’t remember him

And he remembered everything, so the man was forgotten

He walked up the stairs, for entering the door alone was clearly an insufficient maneuver to reach his bed, and he remembered that he was tired

Most of the stairs took no notice of him and the ones that did were far too beaten down to audibly protest his weight

His bed was in the same spot it had been since he moved it two years ago

He remembered having felt despair in the bed

But he did not remember the despair

And he remembered everything, but the despair was not forgotten

There were more memories to the bed

There were better, passionate memories that he thought of immediately after the despair

And he thought of them and wanted to forget them

He did not want to forget them as much as he wanted to forget the despair, but he had already forgotten the despair and it would have been redundant of him to wish to forget something he had already forgotten

He did not loathe redundancy, but he was tired, so he slept.

-

When he awoke, the blinds were up and so was the sun, unapologetic over its hasty exit the night before

The streetlights were too tired to care

And he was too oblivious to the feelings of the streetlights to notice

The streetlights still just stood there

What he did notice was that the girl was on the other side of the window

But hardly right outside his window

The man was still there too, and he had caught up to the girl

They were kissing, and the emotion showed on the man’s face

The girl held an icy gaze

The boy remembered this kiss, though he did not remember either pair of lips

He did not remember many lips

He bit his own and he remembered his own, and he remembered an icy kiss

He remembered all the despair from when when he was alone for three whole years

And he remembered that he wasn’t alone

His room was too bright so he stepped into his closet

It hadn’t been touched for a while

There was a poorly hidden book with a silver scribble on a hard black cover and he opened it

And he read all the things that he used to want to forget

And he realized they were the only things he wanted to remember

And he ran to the girl

She was still on the path outside and so was the man

They both beamed and looked into the sky, with a naive look of hope for everything to stay the same

Even though things were fucking awful

And the boy ran to the girl and asked for her ear

The man consented with a smile on his face and a frown on his brow

Let me tell you a story, he said

-

this is a tale of a boy with too many titles for which to make songs

and a girl who’d been singing his songs all along

he said, come back inside so you’ll hear all my stories in full

she said no and turned as if the man behind had given her a pull

he stopped her and warned her of the storm passing through

she told him, well then my moments with him will be few

she motioned to the man but her face stayed the same

and the boy went back home to come inside from the rain

his castle of memories was unwelcoming at best

and he felt strangled by the feelings and thoughts on his chest

but he waited at the window from March to October

and then October to March for her to come over

he was cursed to remember and thus was bound by his past

but he grew sick again and started to forget fast

at the end of his misery she decided to come over and talk

but when he went to spill all of his thoughts, he balked

so she sat in the grass and he struggled not to fawn

and tell of his times coveting her while mowing the lawn

it wasn’t fair, he decided, to tell her these things

so he muted the song the girl of ice made his heart sing

he sat at the fire and realized he was burning up

and she offered a breeze and a cold drink for his cup

he laughed and asked how she could give him a breeze

so she got up and left, and lo, he could feel her leave

from that day on the boy grew less clever and more nice

but he would never again be her boy of ice

-

The girl looked blankly into his eyes

He looked back with an expression that was anything but blank and waited for her to speak

There was sweat on his brow and he was tired from running, but he felt further from sleep than he had ever been

She told him some things were better left unsaid

And admitted she had no idea if that was one of those things

He hoped she would say it wasn’t

He hoped she would come inside

He hoped the man would leave

She stepped to the side and rocked her head back and forth

She was impatient with her brain

She was impatient with her feelings

Eventually her mouth grew impatient with her silence and she spoke

She told him when she saw him now she could remember being on the same path

He asked her to come inside

She told him that the path was never as bright or as dark as it seemed

He asked her to come inside

She told him the only thing to do was keep walking, and eventually, he’d know what he’d wanted and remember how to forget

He asked her to come inside

She told him to listen

It began to rain and he hopped around like a flickering candle, dodging it’s eventual demise

She stood still

The man watched with a frown on his face and his brow

The boy told her he’d forgotten his despair

She told him that was great

He looked at her feet and they were not beautiful, but he couldn’t bring himself to look back at her face, for he was embarrassed and it was raining progressively harder

He asked her to come inside

She told him that she had asked him that before

He remembered

She told him she was freezing

He was burning up

He thought of the perfect words to tell her and swore to himself not to say them

He thought of the worst words to tell her and considered the effect they might have

He thought of some words that were in between

He asked her to Come Inside From The Rain

She said, no

He said, okay.