but in my best behavior...

Natalia went into the store, and they looked at her. She bought a pack of Marb lights and they stared at her and her wide blue eyes and the curve of her mouth. And people stared because they wondered -

the sky yes, the sky curving in infinite black swoops, she saw, the massive blackness of the clouds and the paralysis of her limbs - the utter exhaustion. like the dream - Christ was a small man, and not arrogant, dark like unground coffee beans, cradling her head in his lap - "don't cry, you know it? there's no use. the point of fear - what is it?"

quoting Paul's letter to the Corinthians - "now we shall see things, as in a mirror dimly; until we meet - face to face - "

the hail was coming down. it was knives, it was sharp and cold and miserable. she could see the brick buildings from the corner of her eye. and where was Christina? the atheistic, persistently morose, pessimistic and miserable - afraid and of course not admitting to the fear. and Christina - was she already gone?

Natalia could see the hugeness of the sky, the black hole that ripped in ragged edges, and nothing behind it but a void.

She slid her ID across the counter and fished a ten from her pocket, ragged and soft. the woman behind the counter was heavily pregnant. She looked miserable; defeated. The pockets below her eyes were sagging and Natalia wanted to say "I'm sorry - "

cigarettes in pocket she slipped the lighter with the edge of her thumb until it was sore. She imagined Christina slowly in the the bathroom, towling her long hair dry, the soft rolling cello arc of her porcelain collarbone. Little tiny pear like beads of water on her neck. She got in the car and switched the ignition. It was snowing in soft heaps. The was a balloon of swelling panic in the back of her throat. She put the cigarette in her mouth and lit it and breathed. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. The sky was ambient and white.

vast water

there was red nail polish smeared on the vodka bottle. and it was empty, tipped over and sad in the dirt. the label was crumbling softly away from several nights spent out in the rain. the moss curling up in steaming pale green tendrils; that moss taking the vodka bottle away.

out in the distance it was miserable and blue. a dark cold violet where the mountains stretched, pale and white coming down, touching the stream, recoiling. the stream rolling. through rocks, touching them with its unsteady tongue, breaking clear in some places then going on brassy green dark forest gray with the movement of sediment.
noises of screaming (from the mouth of) the sky

that brilliant white sky so thick with fog,
colder than the water or the mountains or the earth colder than -

energy slowed to sludge matter, slowed enough to collapse the horizon.

the pressure was coming, and why? the mountains still strained furious and purple against the sky. the water crashed faster and faster outrunning yet never advancing, the same three waves breaking over the same boulder over and over again. the pressure should have cracked the trees. still? they stood tall as steel blades and unwavering stared disdainfully apathetic; not screaming.

the vodka bottle splintered to pieces beneath the pressure
and some little red flakes remained beside it.
there was possibly a woman's t shirt and pair of blue lace panties
near a little clearing in the grass where it happened.

but found never neither blood nor bone and investigations all proved inconclusive.

i was much too far out all my life, and not waving but drowning

Ms. Smith huddled beside me at night;
huddled beneath a mauvely soft afghan and
stroked my cheek with her thumb; my
very soft cheek the hair downy pale the hair:

baby soft the touches, she leaned beside me
she was moaning and (all the way out)
moaning softly hands drawn palms down,
over both my eyes the pressure sweet.
the pressure made a warm red glow streaked with violet
across my vision.

I lay in bed with her throat against my neck and:
she button clinking mumbled
'don't let them leave you so far out;
don't let the water the icepricking cold the ice
the water - '

UN JOUR JE MOURRAI, ET TOUT CA NE SERA RIEN IMPORTANTE.

in the bellies of tiny animals, i will live joyously. i will - to not be. gender is subjective, subjunctive, is subterranean and hidden in alcoves of human sickness, raving privately the hunger for conditionless love. and love is the deep cider smell of autumn, heavy in splintered wooden barrels. imperfectly grammar weaves little threads onto spools, burgundy threads running out between teeth, cotton churning over a loom where a woman bends a birdlike neck in the dusty heat, the speckled air in the shine from the windowlight.

back then woman was woman and man was man. breasts perfectly perched hips rolling and rising with the tide, arms legs thighs plump dress swinging down to the ankles, eyelet and serene. men in tall tall black tophats.

[kyle was an anomaly]. anomie, strain theory. he didn't have to bind his chest because what little breasts nature had given were so easily hidden. compressed beneath the generous mouth of an ace bandage. not eating was an easy option because he smoked somany cigarettes and lived with exorbitantly skinny roommates in a dingy apartment. the wretched, gin soaked, riveted, wretched. his immediate roommate played bass. his name was arthur, old fashioned, big shouldered.

fags & dyyyyykes, faggots faggots faggots. someone snorted coke in the living room everything green, the walls sheathed with that mucus colored licked over animalistic childish light from naked bulbs, promiscuous bulbs flashing the scene over the glass coffee table. Kyle would take nothing harder than ecstasy. he needed to know that his heart would continue beating. his hipbones jutted and knees became knobbled, wrists furious, ankles bleeding from the constant strain of his shoes.

beneath black boxers a pussy. how horrid. weaker sex. barefoot && pregnant. gitback in the ketchen. cast iron skillets flying the stove ablaze. bitches and hoooooos. kyle bit the inside of his wrists and bit and bit until a coworker asked what the fuck was wrong. he worked for a living - someone had to. pay the rent, the hot water, the electric bill. they ate vegan and took acid and stared at the yellowed old walls. the chips in the paint opened up and tv pundits howled, screamed, mumbled in tongues.

and then someday he'd find this and that and be happy with himself. hormone therapy. Leah, Adrianna, home and hope and the heat of minivans and 2 1/2 children white picketed suburban, the huge sun bawling, the endless pavement. life is endless. one day death with will be whole and his thighs will be perfect. and this - and this - and I I I I

happy parisians

parishioners in tweed

soft jacket leathers, head bowed, happening
to be a happy well-dressed wealthy bunch,
driving secure cars secretly, bending the lines
the wires the rules, careless thrown glances
carelessly dispensed kisses and quarters in bills,
leaving the scent of goldmoney elsewhere.

happily paris swelled under their feet:
the cathedrals; the river.
young lovers both gay and otherwise rolled
the cobblestones, rolled "mais je l'aime"
about their mouths and danced happy beats long streaming
hair made to drink, to be drunk, to own
their pale faces and sweat-soaked t-shirts
was all they could own and as content as two people
would ever know to be.

made of prayer and false confidence,
feigned humility. humble sweet lips and
ivory teeth, fragile monsters behind the shower curtain,
again picking crackers and wine for dinner
remembering mom's
word mom's warning from behind coral lipstick,
her head tilted hair falling
cigarette fingers moaning: "hate him until he loves
you back enough,
loves you to pay the gas bill."

you looked at your girl and laughed. the eiffel tower loomed
cold and unflinching behind you.

erratic symptoms

word cluster:

[mucus, coalesce, felt-tip, grainy, desperate, lethargic, violent, violet, ambivalent]

if loving cannot be helped? subconsciously she had an affinity for men whose names began with J - especially Jared, Jason, Jacob, James. they would of course have to have hazel eyes; they would of course have to have hairlines perfectly intact.

Emmaline made tiny gashes in the leg with the side of a pushpin out of desperate boredom. halfway down the shin, directly into the ankle, in the mockery of a shell's curve. each a contrived, jagged reminder of the smell of winter wind coming east to a lonely person. winters under the trees neatly glazed with ice, the cheery blinding sun peeking up over the library. the heady crunch of salt under thick boot heels.

she was ill in December: she spat mucus into the porcelain bowl of the sink for seven days. lethargic and bleary, she went around wiping her nose on her sleeve, curling into deep library cushions to read endless tragic love narratives.

In January, just after the holiday, she met Jacob. He had a very solemn peach colored mouth and a stern way of holding his back straight. he wrote her a note on a yellow slip of legal paper with a blue, felt-tip pen. she watched him write it - his remarkably defined wrist, hairless and tanned. of course his hazel eyes. he appeared grainy though the snow like a poorly developed photograph, moving slowly, and from so far away.

(loving of course being not so easily helped). he bought her a bunch of violets. she sneered, he became petulant - then violent. smashing a vase against his own kitchen sink. she tried to feign a mask of neutrality but her eyes sparked, ribs tensed, ambivalence curled inside her.

in March, the snow began melting, and Emmaline was happy, looking at the hazy rise of the sun over the library at dawn. Jacob called her, kissed her back, touched the tender spot on her shin where she'd bruised from so many cuts with the clear tiny pushpin. somewhere on a path in the woods, they touched elbows, and coalesced.

subconsciously and loving, Emmaline helped herself. she leant back into his arms and started into the blank, misty sky. behind her his chest was breathing: moving: in and out and in

akathisia

the enamel of her teeth ache in the far corners of the universe. she has been trying to explain the dream for exactly seventeen minutes (watching the clock).

Christina says, "you're being a little childish right now," and turns on the ball of her foot, shifting her back away from the light. Natalia is on the couch, tapping her closed lips. the pain is radiant. little beams of it mutter and crack and shiver beneath her tongue.

"I think maybe it's time you went to see a doctor."

Natalia looks up and Christina is standing by the window again, her arms folded across her chest. her eyes are dark and narrow. she has a neat flooding of freckles on either side of her nose, below her eyes. it is difficult for Natalia to move the muscles of her throat, to unclench, to allow any sort of noise. any explanation would be better than this.

"I feel cold," Natalia tells her, but it is more than that. there is a rumble behind her sternum which sends periodic tremors out to her fingers and toes. she is the static in the air before a storm. her pulse is the kinetic rolling of an earthquake. last night, Christina spread her hand over Natalia's pelvis, above the pubic bone, and put an ear to her chest. "your heart is pounding," she mumbled. "your heart is going to explode."

they have been sitting in the living room for twenty three minutes. the nightmares started six days ago, two days after she stopped taking the medication. selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (synonym for headfog, lethargy, emotional dead space). when she told her mother on the phone, she cried. her mother cried back and screamed and hung up without saying "i love you."

Christina said "I love you" when they first moved in together, but she does not say it much any more. She was used to Natalia the clumsy artist, the mediocre oil painter, the defiant Christian, emotionally turbulent. who, then, was this numbfingered cheery-eyed high-laughing woman? her lit up eyes, the way she organized the coffee and tea on the counter by the gradations of the color of their packaging? who was this woman who shook hands with everyone, shrugged her shoulders when she saw anti-gay protests on the television, who smiled uncomfortably through rape jokes, because it was the polite things to do?

Natalia grinds her teeth together and winces. there is movement, like a feather on the wall, and Christina is sitting next to her, pulling Natalia's head into her lap. her and me and her and him himher - Natalia confuses pronouns in her head.

"why don't you tell me about the dream?" Christina asks.

when Natalia says, "I can't," she means 'I won't.'

she means, 'your arm was lying three feet away from your body on the pavement. there was no blood and the sky was exorbitantly dark. the whole sky was shaking. it started to hail and I was crying and my four year old cousin was picking weeds from the ditch in her yellow dress, and her skin was tearing off. you were already dead and I realized I couldn't love you because you were already dead.

and Christ came to me and whispered "it's time to go now" but I couldn't because I knew I would have to leave without you.'

Christina kisses her temple. Natalia pinches the skin of her wrist and breathes.