memory

It hasn't been so long, but already I forget the timbre of your voice. I forget the smell of your apartment, like exotic cooking snd Ivory soap...or was it more like cinnamon and laundry detergent? The distinction isn't much, but in my nose, those smells are distinct: one is you and one is just a way I wish things were, when I think of you. Were your eyes blue? Or were they grey, shifting in the sunlight? Your fingers were gentle, I recall that for sure, but was the skin rough or smooth, neglected for the sake of manliness, or cared for as meticulously as you had cared for me? It has been so long that I cannot recall the way your lips would twitch when you were proud of yourself, and I can't remember the kinds of things that used to make you particularly proud.

They say that in time, I won't remember all the things you whispered with your mouth pressed against my ear, the things we dreamed together under our blanket, those long summer nights. That I'll wash a load of blankets and not remember which one was "ours." In time, I won't remember where you came from or why you left.

When I think that I might forget any of this, I hold on tight, wrapping my fingers around you like holding onto a beachful of sand.

merry

As the world passes by in a blur of colors and waving parents who are too oblivious to realize that their children are going through life in circles, I realize that I don't just want to grab the brass ring. I want to grab the whole damned merry-go-round and let it spin in the palm of my hand. I want to hold all the colors and parents and nauseated children, and I want them to know that I am what makes the world spin, that my whim commands dizzying power. I want them to bow to me, to know my benevolence, and to praise it. That brass ring is just a proxy for all the power that could be, I think, as I see a kindergarten-age boy nearly fall off his up-and-down gelding to take hold of it. "I got it!" he shouts, his face lit up with glee. He can see his reflection in it, and the feedback loop of shining face and ormolu ring is almost too bright to watch. How easy this is going to be, I think, when they are so disoriented and so easy to appease.

sleeping giant

The white noise hums away as he sleeps, his even breaths belying the hailstorm of pain behind his closed eyes. This is his refuge, this dreamless slumber, and I intrude upon it, my feet heavy on the old wooden planks although I am doing my best to swan through his house like an uninvited ballerina. I will have broth ready for him when he awakes, I have decided, but I do not know where to find the pots in his kitchen, and I despair of ever unearthing a fresh vegetable or the remains of a chicken in the neglected cavern where he occasionally stores his leftover takeout meals.