bluemoon3191

She was eight years old amidst the thick of an unrelenting, heat-wave afternoon. Dead bugs lined the bedroom window behind her, liberated through mischievous holes in the wire screen. A caramel apple coating of a backdrop to the second story view of the yard. It was two in the afternoon and the mail had come in. Envelopes, flyers, Li's Panda Express menus jamming the peeling white box like rush hour on the boulevard. The old silver boombox was always battery-ready when the mail came in. Her nails always turned to nubs when the mail came in. The fights, always broke out when the mail came in. She learned to sing quite well in those early aft

with a rapping, a stray drop every now and then (I saw flower bud colors burst into bloom, little balloons exploding by dart and glass and paper-frames) The cloud sails on nitrous sheets. Sun beams streaming down its piping (flares of you illuminate the skin above my stomach) to windowsills (I ebb, in green-pond eyes of puddles) To shoe soles pancaking through the atmosphere

"Yup, he's a filthy drunk alright." The woman stood at the counter, her elbows leaning against its cold surface and hips jutting towards the doorway. "Eighteen years of that red-faced idiot and you'd think a woman would've left." A thin veil of hair brushed against the curve of her lower back. Faded denim clung to her small waist, a child to a mother's skirt. "Need smokes today?" "Yeah, throw in a pack." The store clerk reached over to the cigarette case and tossed a box of Winston's towards the register. It hit the corner of the counter, shot upward, then dropped to the floor. Sighing, the clerk leaned down, a thick left hand digging into

flares of lamppost spilled traces— imprints, in the mud, struck pearls vapor. casting symbols and fishing line, a bathing pulse Tapers of sky wire

and if I could, I'd pop out the balls of my eyes. I'd empty my sockets, I would believe you. I squint. I dilate, blink I press clear film to their concavity. I prop the hinges, screw and unscrew. I suspend the lids, but still. and if I could I would do, differently.

     She hung there, a waning crescent of a moon, a sweater on the hook of a closet. A bead of rain on the tips of things, the smell of close-quartered smoke in a sweater. She was latched in sheaths of air, draped above shadow. Her whitewashed figure hunched over; her spine traced thoughts of willows. She hung there, seeing but not seeing, not seeing and not being seen. She was suspended above the bed in which she wilted, dull socks in danger of catching fire on the melted tea-candle beside her.      An outdated television rested on a splintered, walnut side-table that centered the room. It

       She stood at her mother's dark mahogany vanity. A plethora of heavy perfume bottles crowded around her, mostly empty and blanketed in dust. Her head barely made it above the drawers-- their familiar mess of makeup, old birthday cards, and jewelry, memorized like the face that clocked her movements. She clutched two red elastics tightly in a small hand, struggling to braid one half of her hair with the other and a thumb. The door of the bedroom was splayed open, as well as the hallway door that faced the bar cabinet and the building's blue-carpeted staircase.       With the left side of her hair in a lumpy haphazard braid, she moved

a static twitch in the window colors worn to dulls in the dryer. spiders spinning, dancing to records Canada geese stain the sky a dressed dinner dressed dinner guest. the pull and eject of a chlorine bath a skin.cooks and burns in acid. drugged by tunnels and blinking. prescripion, one (1) brain. skuttles in the cupboard skuttles in my ear canal up the feedback, reverse distortion woodwinds makepleasant the ride. the pianist, is he alive? we sit in armchairs. dead star ambience silouttes swinging slightly in the backyard; the children erase their mistakes, erase their mistakes, erasetheirmsitakse

there was a song in my head reeling and unreeling hissing with the static in my brain stuck like a needle through my nerves to my temples my ears were ringing and I heard silence, if silence could be heard

Seated going sixty, the blue nights cast shadow against heavy shades of unspoken ambiguity. White lines along the grain are eaten by blinding, red-orange assembly lines flickering like the lit end of a match. Whispers cloud the ambiance. Speaking to none but themselves, they tangle with the late air. The bridge carries on. Goosebumps form along their skin. Experience squeezes through instance, like a beat-up vehicle weaving through traffic and--! It is all too futile. It is all too beautiful. Pain splashing color like paint, wrinkles wearing into dry life and the rest of us sinks into warm laundry or some safe place. Heels dig into cold soil