12.30

Surely, in a slew of fitful starts, he has come to the precipice. We all knew he would arrive eventually. We all knew he would come to this point. But he has taken his own way about it, cropped his pocketwatch to a silver sliver, and slain the beast Impatience. I have grown old waiting for him. But when he comes to me, his Edge, his precarious drop, he knows me as the most beautiful girl in the world. And that is what I am.

12.29

I can hear him running through the warranty on his diaphragm. It says it's good to 10,000 coughs, but in the last hour I swear he's filled up half that number. By morning I fear he'll have to run to the store for a new one.

12.28

The wind tore her jacket's hood back and I could see her face for a snapping second. Her cheeks were bright with a flush of vitae and her eyes were dull with tears. The changeable wind slammed back and the hood guillotined my gaze.
I moved as if to follow her, but I couldn't bring myself to fall forward into the first awkward step. She crunched through the snow ever farther away from me until all I could see was a cherry point of coat in the woods. I brought her back to my imagination because I couldn't stand to be apart, and followed my ghostly companion down our double path from where her single led off to better careers and richer soils.

1.25

I can't see any further into your eyes than anybody else. Your last man said he could see galaxies in them. They're pretty, but I can't see no stars. Maybe that's why I'm right for you: I won't lie to you just to see what's in your soul.

12.24

Somewhere, my wife's other shoe drops, but I'm too busy with your tongue in my mouth to hear.

(He tried to hang the chalkboard, but, being a bit dim, forgot brackets. For the rest of my life, the saddest sight I've ever seen will be nails on a blackboard.)

The wind blew her socks off the bed when the door flew open.

12.19b

Today, I said "But you're not," and the words sounded suspiciously like "It seems like you're doing a very poor job of that." I'm not sure how they sprang, fully formed, past my intent, but they did.
I wonder if other phrases put themselves on autopilot quite like that. When I mean to say "My, you're looking lovely today," do I say "I'd hit that," instead? It would explain a lot.

12.19

She breathes oddly: like she needs to get the breath in but it doesn't matter that it's there once it's there. Get the air in, but whether it stays or goes is no business of hers.
Sometimes I'm afraid she'll treat me the same way. Draw me, reel me, lure me, bait me, catch me. But who cares what happens once she has me? Then the feeling of panic subsides and I feel safe again.
The best part of being me is that I'll be afraid again within a week.

12.18

Hey Cory,
Heey, how You doin'? How was your week so far? what's your schedule like? You're cool, from what I can tell!
-Shelby-

12.17

Sure thing, Sasquatch. I can't say I agree with you, but I'll take your word for it. Maybe outside IS as good as you say.

12.14

Ope wide the maw, scrape in the heart. Chew. Savor. Swallow.
You've spit my mortal flesh and turned it by thy machinations, so vigorous thy art that the straps that once did heave my breast lie sepulchral. I wish to die--yet I lie.

How sweet is it on thy tongue--does it sweeten the more it tastes? Or does it turn to bile, ash, crust, earth? Does it sustain thy hate, or does its savor erase your memory?

Please you; say neither. I would not be hated and I would not be killed. The memory of me being self, I cannot conscience murder or wroth.

12.13b

His days of weal run round the sun; his nights of woe are less so. I think you'll find that he, in kind, runs in the circle he can find.
And when his weal is run round again and I am left alone with him, we spin, revolve, return replies, until we're all fed up with lies, for truth, you see, returns us where we need to be: the center.

12.13

Just as the sun wrapped tenuous coiling tendrils around the tips of the trees, I saw a young man in the half light. He approached a fence with easy gait, slung his bag over and then himself. He climbed with easy apprehension of his task; I believed he had climbed the same fence a hundred times.
I watched his decent into the leaves through the open gate thirty feet away.

[true story, y'all]

12.10

People say that migraines are prefigured. Your body can't process the pain and creates phantoms until it figures out the right response. It claws at you: some people thow up. Some people lose hearing. Some people can't see. And then, only after you're afraid that your body has begun shutdown for the final time, the pain breaks on you, the wash of it pulling you back towards the sea of throe and wetting your conscious with pain.

Can you imagine feeling the first time? Can you picture a person for whom there is nothing to which they may liken the experience? Can you write the thoughts of a child who can't see or hear and then, of a sudden, with a crashing, sickening [descriptive noun--like a swirl, but a beautiful word like an umbra] it tears out the middle of your brain?

I have the desire to write it but I can't think of the words. Maybe when the pain goes away, I'll be able to find them.

12.8

You know that feeling when your intestines roil in you and your hope for humanity dies? That's the feeling of despair that settles on all of us late at night. No one knows the cause, but many have posited moonbeams as the ultimate cause.
I personally believe that it's all the spiders "they" say I've been eating.

12.7

Slap a label on my back and market me to the younger generation. I'll sell like hotcakes; they love seeing an old man make a fool of himself.

I'm too old for this.

12.5b

I can't remember the last time we've had some time like this. Just the two of us, free to say what's on our minds, to share and grow together, to search each other's souls. That all being true, let me begin by saying that I hate you and wish you the worst kinds of pain.

12.5

His jovial manner covered an intensity and a peculiar belief in the origin of thoughts that would have startled those he knew. In fact, it did startle Miss Starling when she chanced to find out. It happened at lunch one day in the small café just down the street--you know the one--where they both took their midday repast and riposte. He turned to her and asked, quite pointedly, whether or not it was her constant wearing of high-heeled shoes which led to her rampant sexuality, or in fact the other way around. She, having never considered the causal link, took pause. He covered the silence with a long slurp of coffee. When there was no reply forthcoming, he began to explicate her thoughts, beliefs, and actions all based on and rounded up with her simple clothing choices. Just when he was beginning to sway her with his eloquence and passion, she remembered a vital snagging point. With some triumph and flourish of words, like a magician producing the spoon you thought long ago embedded skull-wise, she proffered her point: what of her leisure hours? Why, when wearing different clothes, would she act still as herself? For this he had a quick and easy laugh, and he cracked his knuckles, leaned in conspiratorially, and described with some explicit detail her leisurewear, never having seen it himself. He leaned back, satisfied at the look of horror on her face. Of course he extrapolated backwards from what he knew of her, but the deadly accuracy with which he managed to describe the flippant mistreatment of her shoes, the secret life of her lacy slips, and the reckless disregard for nudity that she had so long kept secret from even her closest friends, all so easily flensed and cured before her on the fire and spit of his intelligence, managed to make her tremble and clutch at her throat. She felt the cool reassurance of her jewelry against her skin. Still, she, of course, could only repeat the interrogative "How?" often and vehemently. He turned back to his coffee, confident that she would remember this moment for years.
"You never take off your mother's ring. Take it off, and you'll find your leisure time will be a sight less liberated. In fact, take it off now and you'll not have the courage to talk to me."
She glanced at the banded metal and felt the strength of her memory wash over her. She knew he had to have extrapolated from what he knew of her. To have known so much from a single bauble, no matter its importance, was unthinkable. Yet she had to know. She found herself doubting. With cold sweat, she worked the ring from its perpetual perch and dropped it in her sudden fear of being changed, somehow, from when she had it on. It rolled toward the door, and she chased it to where it lay. When she stood up, she reevaluated. She didn't feel any different, certainly. Still the same old Miss Starling. Still willing to be herself at home. Perhaps she would draw the curtains, but that's only natural if a man knows, and he knew. She palmed the ring and turned to the cashier. No, she wouldn't talk to him anymore; not with his bogus theories and odd opinions. She paid and walked out to find a new café in which to lunch.

He watched her go and waited for her to enter the new Italian bistro just down the block, her red scarf whipping in the wind. He found himself regretting having told her, so he put on a hat to forget and pulled out his wristwatch to smile and cheerily headed back to work.

12.2

I'm going to go on Facebook and unfriend all of the people I vaguely dislike so that when they look at my profile again after twelve years and a mountain of therapy, they will be struck anew by the fear and guilt of not having truly befriended me in life: their current antipathy will then look to them like the decision of a madman, and the "friend" button will appear to be their only solace. Yet: should they friend me, or would the action be too much? Surely the shame of sending a second, more sedate and sorrowful friending will make up in my heart for the years we spent in shadowed and roiling dislike and yet the truth is that knowing I, Robby, hold the power of redemption over them, that they will needs be shamed into reaching out so visibly, that I will then KNOW that they know that I know that the "friend" bond has been broken will be too much to bear and they will embark on a quest to expunge my memory from their life and expurgate the searing regret from their heart.
In due time, all my enemies will realize that I play for keeps.