The First Time

The room was filled with old home videos, of childhood trips to the beach and family reunions
None of them were his, he didn't have any proof of his childhood
He watched them all
It was something about the frame rate and graininess and yellowed colors
Once he had been a cinema student, and he remembered, and grew embarrassed
He left

The hallway was filled with potted plants
They formed a strange forest, rearranged by a mischievous child
It wasn't altogether unpleasant, he thought
Hopefully the child's parents would feel the same way
Once he had weaved through the forest, he was in the foyer

The foyer was filled with crying relatives, and mints
Those that weren't crying were the distant relatives, and they huddled in a corner, each sucking on a mint
There was nobody in the center of the room, something about the tile cross on the floor seemed too holy to touch
He walked straight to it and waited for someone to approach him, but nobody did
A thought of laying down crossed his mind, and he allowed himself a laugh as he moved past the room
The distant relatives shared a burst of laughter themselves, but were immediately guilty about it, and quickly dispersed, forming a maze for him to push through on his way to the cafeteria

The cafeteria was filled with cutlery
Far too much for the meager feast that sat on the sad, stained tablecloths, he thought
He poured himself a glass of ice water and went to the stairwell

The stairwell was filled with the stench of cigarettes
When he was younger, he loved the smell
It didn't take long for him to pick up the habit once he was independent of his parents
A girl he dated once told him she wouldn't kiss him until he quit
It didn't take long for him to quit
They never kissed, anyway
He didn't find the smell in the stairwell quite as favorable, and quickened his pace to the roof

The roof was filled with a low humming noise that made his stomach wobble
There was a time when he believed such a sound was an omen
Littered across the roof were dead flowers, mostly roses
They had likely been left behind by other grievers
He wondered if the people that had left the flowers were still grieving

The ground was filled with rocks and asphalt and other hard things
It split him open like a tomato

Sepia

There's a tree somewhere that looks like the one you keep imagining

It's out there
You'll never find it

Part 1

He wasn't the type of child to kill birds with a hammer
No, he was terrified of death before he met her
She tried to teach him not to be afraid
He ran anyway

Once he realized his mistake he was miles, and more importantly, years away
So he set out to find her

But even death herself is not immortal
And by the time he tracked her down through the roads and the towns and the faces, they were both taught of her ephemeral nature the hard way
And she was gone

He killed to win her back
At first it was animals
They were all from the pound, he could bear to suffocate them if he knew it was their fate
But the things he met in their frozen, defeated eyes were but her relatives
It enraged him to be reminded of her
By the time he began to feel comfortable killing, he was suddenly mutilating the sacrificed pets
It became a ritual for him to dissect and tear through the guts of his victims, with gloveless hands
The animal shelter stopped letting him adopt their dogs once he had gone through a dozen

He killed to win her back only most of the time now
Part of it was the testosterone rush; he was in the best shape of his life
It was an adventure to find his victims now, most often he would take dogs from neighbor's backyards
and then put them back in a hundred different places
The police became involved

A Thought From Another Mind

It was the dress that gave it away
The red dress

I used to tell her: "you're never not going to die" and then smirk
She would tell me that she believed me, and that I could stop saying that
Then she would smirk and we fell over each other like newlyweds

I think she was smart; I know she was beautiful
Certainly, she was all I could see

I know she was beautiful because I could see the eyes follow her whenever we went out
I know she was because she was the worst dressed girl I had ever met, and I still fell in love with her
I know she was because I would find myself seeking her reflection in the TV when we watched movies
I know she was because we never once watched them

It was still a secret to her; every time I told her how stunning she was, it was the first time
And I believed her, I wouldn't believe any other girl
She was a summer morning

I think she was smart because I never felt safe around her
I think she was because she was careful not to smile too much
I think she was because she was such a gorgeous creature it would have pained me not to
I think she was because she never did tell me if she loved me

She was the first to hit me
She was the first to show me what was underneath my own skin
She was perfect

The dress was draped over the railing with care
It belied every other detail of the scene

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.