Hey, Coffee Eyes!

I am surrounded by people. Some of them I know and some of them I don’t. They stand

around my bed and speak to me. Even though they all talk at once I hear them in turns. Some of

them I understand and some of them I don’t. They fade in and out of focus. They have the wrong

voices, all of them. Now they’re gone. The alarm must have scared them away.

I drag myself up, gripping my own arms tightly and push myself towards the bathroom.

The walls bow around me as I stumble down the hall. The people in the pictures wave to me as I

walk past them. I finally reach the bathroom and brace myself against the door and rest my tired

body. The alarm sounds again and I am, at once, back in my bed.

I swipe blindly at the alarm clock and silence it. I get up slowly and go to the bathroom

and wash myself. I feel as though the room is tilted sideways and the weight of my eyelids is

dragging me down towards the shower. It feels good, the water, it feels warm. I hear the people

talking to me again. They are silhouettes standing behind the curtain. They bend and reel. They

fuse together. I pull the curtain to the side to see the monster I expect to be behind it. Instead, I

find the sound of the alarm ringing standing before me and I am in my bed.

I do not get up. It is too cold so I stay in bed. I pull as many blankets as I can find over

my head and close my eyes. The warmth is wonderful. I feel totally at peace. I am in my room,

only I am in my parent’s house. My brother is awake and bustling, it’s too early. I ask him to get

me water since he is up. He goes to the kitchen and the alarm returns with a glass of water. I am

in my house now. I’m thirsty, now.

/

I Saw You Last Night; You Were Walking With the Painters

I swear that I saw you last night. I wasn’t sure from the angle I was at. Your hat hung just

so and your jacket obscured your figure just right so as to make it impossible to tell for sure, but

I’m positive it was you. It had to be. I know that I’ve been wrong before, but not this time. When

you stepped flowers sprung up as they do when you walk. The greys around you bloomed into

vibrant yellows and oranges. The painters were with you, the must have been.

I followed you for hours. Although you’ve never been to those parts of town I know it

was you. I had seen your hand slip out of your glove when you dialed your phone, I know those

hands, it was you. You pressed the buttons just so and slid your glove back on. I’d seen you do it

so many times before there was no mistaking, you were you.

When you walked through the cemetery, shaking so violently from the cold, the corpses

rose from their coffins. Their youth was painted back onto their faces and they held heaters to

warm your bones. Following just out of site, I crept after you. They turned from me, and froze

me with their cold shoulders. I knew it was you so I pressed on, through the ice.

The dark street lit up as you strode down its lane. Photons danced all around you because

they knew, as I knew, that you were you. Streamers fell from the sky, and people burst from their

homes and acknowledged you presence with tears for they knew, as I knew, that you were you. I

was sure. There was no doubt, this time it was you.

You stopped at a house I had never seen before. You unlocked the door and simply

drifted inside. The door shut, the lights flashed on, then off. The street was dead again, the dead

were dead again, I was dead again. I slunk home, alone. I saw you last night.

/

At Your House The Smell Of Our Still Living Human Bodies

He was a cheap suit and she was a wild flower. They married young; the music at their

wedding was the dismay of their parents. They moved into a box made of ticky tacky in

neighborhood of other boxes. It was textbook.

They’re home wore, just as they did, a thin veil of off-beat perfection under which was a

poorly constructed foundation; the product of shoddy workmanship. Oh, how late he stayed out

some nights, she worried violently. When he got home all of the furniture was nailed to the

ceiling and the only thing that came out when she opened her mouth was a flood of garish colors

that would drown him. He did it still, anyway. She fled to the neighbors and they chirped like

birds together. It didn’t heal any of the sting, truly, but it covered the cuts with bandages.

They had a child whom they spoiled like milk left out for too long. Over time its skin

turned to steel and it arms and legs became shackles that latched tightly to their bodies. There

was no escaping.

Once during dinner he went to the bathroom but accidently went to his car. Before he

knew it he was driving. His car fought tooth and nail against the pull of the shackles that clung so

tightly to him. The further he drove the harder it got to push onward. Soon enough his parents

turned over in their graves and began twisting his arm. He returned from the bathroom, flowers

in hand, and repented.

Such was their relationship until the shackles released them and where their limbs had

been bound was raw from the tugging. The house was immediately cut down the middle and the

two halves pushed miles apart by shouts of tremendous force. His suit was thread-bare and her

flower long dead.

/

Good luck, for your sake I hope heaven and hell are really there, But I wouldn't hold my breath.

It was strange when you died. You continued to walk with me to school and to play

baseball with me, but it was different. When you lead the way across the streets the cars would

hit you and you would lay broken until I helped you up and your bat would miss the ball and I

would end up out by association. Some mornings I would try to get up and you would sit on my

chest and make it hard to breath. You would cover my meals with your hands and no matter how

I tried I couldn’t move them. Silent, like a shadow, you would creep up to me in class and blow

dust in my eyes and I would excuse myself while I cleaned it out. Every now and I again I would

find myself secluded in with you in a distant corner quietly listening to you explain it to me.

I remember when you sat in your coffin and we all cried and you signed autographs

wearing your light smile and Sunday’s best. Or when we lowered you into the ground and you

bayed us all good byes. We all missed you very much that day, but like Houdini you escaped and

came to see us when we missed you most.

Today I cleaned out my top drawer and found all the things you gave me the other day.

Though you gave things to others, you gave me the most special things. Baseball cards, your

favorite pocket knife, and your share of the sunken treasure we’d found when we were younger. I

placed them all in a box and hid it in a garbage can outside; don’t tell anybody because it’s a

secret and I can’t bear to have them know.

/

Any Gyroscope Can’t Spin Forever

Chartreuse buttons dodged and weaved their way through the walls of fabric, fastening

the grey sweater shut. It’s cold outside and very important to stay warm. Mina marched forward

like an automaton to the bus stop and wait patiently for the bus. Clouds of breath froze in front of

her face and fell to the ground where they shattered. The bus pulled up and came to a dead stop

in front of her. After paying her faire she took a seat next to one of the faceless people that lived

on the bus. It glided away into the horizon.

After a thousand years of uncomfortable small-talk the bus reached the place where the

sky met the ground a Mina stepped off. She walked forward, up the steps into the sky and took

her place behind the blue screen that was assigned to her. Numbers crowded the screen and she

sluggishly worked her way through them. The bus had been absurdly late, as it always was, so

Mina’s mug sat empty, as it always did, until she finished the first batch of work.

Finally having finished her work she peeled her eyes off of the screen and walked, arms

outstretched and asking for brains, towards the break room. After filling her mug nearly a half

dozen times she was back at her desk. Gently she pressed her eyes against the screen, careful to

put them back to the exact spot they were in before, and continued the daily grind.

Lunch time came and went. Too busy with her work, Mina did not eat. She sat starving

and tired tap-tap-tappedy-tapping away.

At the modest hour of 57:11, all work finished, soul crushed, she left to go home. Buses

did not run at that hour so she descended the stairs back to the ground and then home. New York

was scary at night, but such is life.

The next morning she did not get out of bed. She did not wait for the bus or climb the

stairs. She did not work through lunch or miss the final bus of the day. She had lost all

momentum, she had toppled over. The daily grind had become too much and Mina had been

ground down to nub by it. Her phone nagged her to no end that she should get up and go to work

but she simply couldn’t.

In Which Minimum Required Length Is Achieved

Oh, for so long have I dreamt of riding the roller coaster at the amusement park. My

brothers all ride it without me and it breaks my heart to see them do so. I have tried so many

times to sneak on, hiding within the throngs of people, to no avail. Six-foot-naught is what I must

be. This number is arbitrary! Surely I can ride safely at the towering height of Five-foot-naught!

I must devise a plan, a process through which I can augment my height to that required

length. Perhaps I will simply lie and tell the attendant that the measurement sign is wrong or

maybe that I am a diplomat, flown in from a foreign land, and must be allowed to ride. A ha! An

idea forms! I have a plan that cannot fail.

Watch, in total wonder, as I fasten my feet firmly to the ground. Now see as I jump. Do

you see it? You must, surely, see what is happening at my feet? As I jump the gap between my

ankles and feet grows greater for my body is able to go up but my feet, unable to go any lower,

are unable to go down. So long as I keep my feet firmly planted I shall be able to ride!

Quickly! Grab my lead sneakers so that I cannot accidentally lift my feet and ruin this

brilliant plan. Yes! Do you see? I stand well over six feet tall and will be able to revel in the joy

of riding the roller coaster.

After a rather tiring shuffle to the ticket taker, the moment is upon me. He says that I

must remove my lead shoes for they are too heavy and will slow the coaster to dangerous speeds.

I am far too cleaver to be fooled by such a simple trick, instead I remove my feet! I push them

secretively behind one of the bushes and assume my place in the riding car.

This climb, to such incredible heights, is an indescribable euphoria! I can see my house,

the empire state building, even the Great Wall of China. I can touch the clouds and steal small

pieces of their fluff (a glorious keepsake). Here at the peak I can even sample the fine cheeses on

the moon. But, oh no, an unforeseen problem!

As the coaster descends I am unable to descend with it for my feet are still firmly planted

on the ground. Woe is me! I shout for help, for some thoughtful soul to remove my feet from the

shoes. Nobody can hear me; I am stuck here among the stars. I will spend the rest of eternity; a

man on the moon.