(no subject)
People and Places. Volume Seventeen.
mikl paul
She woke from dead sleep and realized he had found another. Paducah was warm enough to allow the thought to fester and spread; she lay still in rage and silence until her eyes took on the shade of a poisoned voyeur. She pulled herself from bed like a fruit torn from the limb too soon, and threw her favorite memory of him against the hallway door where it shattered and inhaled with surprise.
He woke from a living sleep in Albuquerque and grasped his stomach in pain as he rolled from their bed to the hardwood floor. She woke more calmly, she learned to accept long before him that dreams would be the jet lag of their story. She sat beside him on the floor and began to stroke his hair. He begins to spit up blood and glass.
“She is breaking things of me.”
With the steady hand of a fascist she storms through her hidden places and cleanses everything that still sings like him. Who is the greater liar? The one who says they will love and wait forever, and then moves on. Or the one who says they have moved on, goodbye, when truly all they want is time. She understands that even the brightest heart will begin to eat itself in valleys of confusion, but it isn’t her own heart she has the desire to taste tonight. She finds another memory, not one that mattered so much to her, but one she knew was a Camelot to him, and she tore out its loyalty and spread it on the floor.
It was getting worse. She watched him sweat and almost shout, blood staining his lips and hands. She had seen someone under the enchantment of a broken heart but never assaulted by it. She began to get nervous, she began to wonder what he will write if he dies.
“Please. The shoebox beneath the bed, the blue one. Get it please.”
If you were to watch through an open window or from a star, she would appear perfectly still. Cross-legged on the floor, hair a mess from sleep and hair.
“So much of me belongs to him that when I touch myself it is his own adultery.” She begins to turn him into a whore.
She opened the blue box and let it spill out near to where he had been spilt. He scattered and searched the items: turkey feathers, shells, small wooden carvings, subway passes, cloths and photographs. He pulled a thin green handkerchief from the collection and began to eat it.
She was almost done. The earth of her nostalgia was forever scorched, after one more pass the work would be complete. She set her eyes on the children they had wanted to have, on those conversations spent whispering, as though they could arrive at any moment, she found that place and began to move in.
But the door opened. A door opened at the same time. He stood there, nude and all a gloss from the run and the sweat and the night. She looked up and was ashamed of her hands, but not for what they were touching.
His eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”
They lay beside the bed, calm now, pieces of some shipwrecked sonnet that was told to wait here until someone finds them by a wind with too much granite in its eyes to be disobeyed. He coughed, it sounded like cloth and glass, all the signs of a burglary.
“I know what to do,” he says. “But I never know why. Tell me?”
She continues to pet his temple with the knuckle that he loves. “These are growing pains my king. The new mythology is being formed here. But in the past, the myths were of the past, just a ghost pointing an empty sleeve. But now, the myths are created beside us, within us, and they have no history, only context. You knew to eat the cloth because it was a gift given in love when the eyes were clear, and even though they now darken, it can be used. It doesn’t counter the attack, but it does forgive it.”
She looked up at him and somehow felt more bare than he was. “He hurt me. I thought he loved me enough to let me be selfish while I needed to. But he did not.”
“In time there will be enough time for other times. Don’t be so jealous of what isn’t…”
They breath. Suddenly, they are not aware that he caught her mid heartcraft, or that she betrayed him years ago with the same man she now destroys in the night. They forgot. But they remembered other things, and then they remind each other, with the soft touch of wide eyes and open hands, humbly approaching with, this, have you seen this yet.
mikl paul
She woke from dead sleep and realized he had found another. Paducah was warm enough to allow the thought to fester and spread; she lay still in rage and silence until her eyes took on the shade of a poisoned voyeur. She pulled herself from bed like a fruit torn from the limb too soon, and threw her favorite memory of him against the hallway door where it shattered and inhaled with surprise.
He woke from a living sleep in Albuquerque and grasped his stomach in pain as he rolled from their bed to the hardwood floor. She woke more calmly, she learned to accept long before him that dreams would be the jet lag of their story. She sat beside him on the floor and began to stroke his hair. He begins to spit up blood and glass.
“She is breaking things of me.”
With the steady hand of a fascist she storms through her hidden places and cleanses everything that still sings like him. Who is the greater liar? The one who says they will love and wait forever, and then moves on. Or the one who says they have moved on, goodbye, when truly all they want is time. She understands that even the brightest heart will begin to eat itself in valleys of confusion, but it isn’t her own heart she has the desire to taste tonight. She finds another memory, not one that mattered so much to her, but one she knew was a Camelot to him, and she tore out its loyalty and spread it on the floor.
It was getting worse. She watched him sweat and almost shout, blood staining his lips and hands. She had seen someone under the enchantment of a broken heart but never assaulted by it. She began to get nervous, she began to wonder what he will write if he dies.
“Please. The shoebox beneath the bed, the blue one. Get it please.”
If you were to watch through an open window or from a star, she would appear perfectly still. Cross-legged on the floor, hair a mess from sleep and hair.
“So much of me belongs to him that when I touch myself it is his own adultery.” She begins to turn him into a whore.
She opened the blue box and let it spill out near to where he had been spilt. He scattered and searched the items: turkey feathers, shells, small wooden carvings, subway passes, cloths and photographs. He pulled a thin green handkerchief from the collection and began to eat it.
She was almost done. The earth of her nostalgia was forever scorched, after one more pass the work would be complete. She set her eyes on the children they had wanted to have, on those conversations spent whispering, as though they could arrive at any moment, she found that place and began to move in.
But the door opened. A door opened at the same time. He stood there, nude and all a gloss from the run and the sweat and the night. She looked up and was ashamed of her hands, but not for what they were touching.
His eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”
They lay beside the bed, calm now, pieces of some shipwrecked sonnet that was told to wait here until someone finds them by a wind with too much granite in its eyes to be disobeyed. He coughed, it sounded like cloth and glass, all the signs of a burglary.
“I know what to do,” he says. “But I never know why. Tell me?”
She continues to pet his temple with the knuckle that he loves. “These are growing pains my king. The new mythology is being formed here. But in the past, the myths were of the past, just a ghost pointing an empty sleeve. But now, the myths are created beside us, within us, and they have no history, only context. You knew to eat the cloth because it was a gift given in love when the eyes were clear, and even though they now darken, it can be used. It doesn’t counter the attack, but it does forgive it.”
She looked up at him and somehow felt more bare than he was. “He hurt me. I thought he loved me enough to let me be selfish while I needed to. But he did not.”
“In time there will be enough time for other times. Don’t be so jealous of what isn’t…”
They breath. Suddenly, they are not aware that he caught her mid heartcraft, or that she betrayed him years ago with the same man she now destroys in the night. They forgot. But they remembered other things, and then they remind each other, with the soft touch of wide eyes and open hands, humbly approaching with, this, have you seen this yet.