10.31

I've been bird-dogging you for years. I've been in love with you for longer than that, I suppose. I know you've noticed, but I know you've overlooked it, perhaps unwilling to engage with the plain evidence. I'm afraid neither one of us is prepared to change, so I'm prepared to

I put down my grandfather's letter, unfinished by his hand and my mind both. I couldn't believe what I was reading, but just like the girl he didn't marry, I was unwilling to engage with the plain evidence.

10.29

I've filled my car with books. The suspension is sagging, the doors are trapped, the windows strained. Every time I brake, I can hear the edges of some page or other grating on a thousand more. I may not get there quickly, but where I'm going, I'll have what I need, and it won't be you. Get out of my life, YouTube. Stay home, Twitter. Burn in a fire, Facebook. Hasta la Vista.

10.27

"I've said too much, too often. It's difficult. People let me talk, most times, when I should be listening. I can see it, the reasoning there. Folks are nervous and clam up. I'm nervous and I spit words like I'm terrified. I'm nervous now, you see, and I can't shut up, so I just keep rattling on. I'm sure it's understandable, I mean, the nervousness. It's commonplace, I'm sure, but I just can't--"

"Shut up!"

"Yes, exactly. I'm really quite--"

"I didn't want the speech, I just wanted your money. Holy Moses."

"No problem. I'm sure it's here somewhere, obviously. There's no use denying that, of course. That would be tedious. I'm sure it happens all the time, folks misplacing their money accidentally, but really just trying to hide where they've put it, but I must reassure I have mine, and I've got it here someplace, and I will find it just as soon as I am able. It's not in that pocket, however. I'll keep looking. It's bound to turn up--"

"You get two more words, or I shoot you. Your two words are yes and no. Do you understand?"

""

"Well?"

""

"Oh, chrissakes."

10.26

One week ago today, I felt my hair twitching across my chest and toward my arm. It felt like a crawling. I swear it was a crawling. I slapped it, trying to stop it, trying to kill. It came back. And again. I stripped my shirt off and a long, thin-legged black violation of my body fell to the ground. I threw it outside and shuddered and thought I was done.

Every time a hair moves on my body, it's an insect.

For a week, I've been living in hell.

10.24

I wonder how many words I've written over my lifetime. I wonder how many unique sentences I've constructed from spit and furor and bile. I wonder if, when you put them all in alphabetical order, they mean anything? I wonder what my Zipf count is for the word "I." What about "me," or "self." What about "her?" Because I figure, if you rolled everything up that I've ever talked about and put a neat bow on it and gave it to your uncle as a present, he would thank you kindly and put the whole organized disaster on a shelf somewhere and donate it to the library in a month. I figure the whole mess is worth less than I think it is. And that's not much.

10.23

I've been wondering if there's a casual way to bring up a dream to someone. Not the whole dream, complete with non-sequiturs and dead-end idiocies, but just the most beautiful moment in it, the bit that really ripped me up, you know? I've been wondering how to tell you that you betrayed me last night, tried to kill me, stole my ribs and ran. I was able to round on you, though, and I towered above you in that moment, so angry. It was an anger that only a dream could contain. My body shook with it, and my fist came down on your face again and again, but every reverberation through my arm was less sweet than I wanted, and the revenge was disquieting, and the revelry of the people watching was fallow. I woke up with a sour taste in my mouth and dry on my tongue. Every thought this morning has turned to ash. I was just wondering, then, if I told you, would it somehow be okay again?

10.21

I touched that bat and I've been feeling mega bad ever since. I've been headachy and tired and I just can't get to sleep except for I took a nap during the day today. I've been so sensitive that I had to wear sunglasses even though it was overcast. And what's worse is that my mouth has been so dry I can hear my tongue. I don't want to blame the bat for this, but I think, honestly, I've been changing? Like, the nurse at the ER thought it was really weird when I asked if I could see where they keep the blood bags, but I was just being curious and very very bored. I was there for five hours, honestly.
Well, gotta go. Mom made spaghetti and garlic bread and I'm getting super nauseated just thinking about eating. I'm gonna just go find a tree where I can hang upside down and see if the blood pooling in my head can do anything about this ripping headache.

10.20

I've got a pencil gripped between my teeth and a pile of papers in my arms. You can see me from the car, but we're waiting. You haven't even unlocked the door. The smell of ground-oil is omnipresent; the saturation of scent is driving us back to the first time we met. I'm looking at you through the downpour, thinking about how the rain will soon rob the air of that fresh-wet smell, and you're looking at me through the obscurity of the windscreen, thinking about holding my hand for the first time as the almost-hot August died around us, rain falling, fingers slick and feverish and cramped from their tight grip on another hand.
You're starting to cry, now, but I can't see it. I'm waiting for the clouds to close back up before I make the dash, pell-mell to the car, hoping against hope that my papers don't wrinkle and die. You've decided long ago that you want to get married, but I still haven't asked the question. At this point, you're afraid to bring it up. Maybe there's something wrong, some misgiving, some broken deal that constrains me. Maybe I'm not in love with you anymore. It's a garbage hypothesis, I'm sure you know, but you've thought it twice now since that first day, in the rain. This time, the thought is foreign, alien, like you've forgotten what it feels like to lack that security, but the thunderous sound of the water on the thin, membranous roof is taking you back to the tin shed where we stood to wait out the first, most terrified rain of our infant love. You can feel the pulse in your hands as you grip the steering wheel, staring at the indefinite me across the plaza. You could feel the pulse in my hands, count the beats with your palms, register the shattering shock of it up your arm like an insistent metronome cracking out an amorous allegro. You're now picturing it, and it has taken on shades of blue and green only, even the blackest shadows of the storm washed with ocean hues. You're smelling it, now, the strongest memory-tied scent you've ever believed in, and that only because you live it each time it rains and it shocks you back to that moment when I took your hand.
You reach over and turn off the air in the car. The tears have washed through the tissues of your face, and your nose couldn't register the smell anymore, anyway. The rain is abating, and you can see me shift, restlessly. You lean over, just out of my view, and I crane my neck to see what's happening, and I can't quite make out you opening up the glove compartment and stirring around for a napkin. In the rear-view mirror, you carefully collect the tears and fold the napkin around them. You still look put together. The rain lapses, and you catch movement as I sprint across the pavement to the car. You've reached over and opened the door before I even find the curb, and I'm in the seat by the time the door bounces lightly on its hinges.
I'm breathless. I turn to you, a laugh caught, still-born, on my face. It slides away just like the thin wash of water down the windscreen.
I see you.
"Did you smell it?"
You, of course, don't answer.
"I smelled it."
You look away, through the other window, but every muscle in your arms and legs look electrified, uncomfortable, motionless and limp and entirely on edge.
"I smelled our Alabama August." I shift, and it's the only sound in the car because the rain has stepped back and is watching, holding its breath. I've only just put my hand next to yours, and, as if by instinct, as if by feeling the heat radiating from my skin, you've felt my presence. Simultaneously, we reach for each other's hands, and I can feel my bones stretch with how tightly you hold to me. The papers are still in my lap, and the center console is digging into my hip, and the seatbelt is holding you back, but we're close. As close as humans can be. There's no physicality to this, but only truth. I can't see your face, but I know it. You feel the awful regularity of the thunderous heartbeat once more, and the wash of it travels up your arm and you reverberate.

10.18

Tonight, I fell asleep while a former JPL scientist talked about the Cassini mission in the planetarium at the high school where I work. I didn't want to fall asleep, but I've been staying up these past few nights much longer than I should. There's just always so much information to absorb every day. I scrape through twitter for the interesting articles posted by the people I follow. I try to cultivate a healthy spread of topics in a link aggregator Google put together. I read statistical articles and think pieces and pithy jokes about politics. I watch youtube videos about science and sociology. I read books about anything in particular. I stay up too late. I run myself ragged trying to intake as much as I can, and more and more I feel like a foreigner in my own country, an immigrant from the fact-soaked nighttime, now out in the simplistic day. I rub shoulders with ignorance and shake hands with contentment, and return each night to find my mistress waiting for me, her arms warm and soft and glowing blue, an endless drip-feed of fascination.

Philip, Katy: go to sleep.

10.17

She used to talk about how good a glass of liquor looked, and I couldn't understand, but honestly, I think I did. I must have been lying to myself because I look with envy on the rapture on the faces of carnivores sometimes. I desperately want to know what ribs taste like, or saucy wings, or caviar, foie gras, and kobe beef. Why do I deny myself when she relented? Why do I feel like that makes me a worse person, somehow?

10.16

I like when the sky is a smooth gradient from top to ragged edge. The whole of it has a much more accessible feel, to my eye, a grand vastness that bends down to touch and be touched. When will the wonders of this vast, unblinking dome give out their last trance?

10.15

My shoulder is sore from throwing rocks in the lake with you. Sometimes, the pleasant rhythm of the soft plonk is broken by a bird call overhead, but we don't mind the interruption. Sometime soon, we'll have a measurable effect. Sometime soon, we'll fill this lake and turn our backs to find the water has moved behind us, to the hole we've excavated.

10.14

Toad turned to Newt, eyes first and body following, to hiss softly at the soft, wet salamander. "Hey, Newt." Newt's eyelids slowly glossed past his shining iris, and then back. Toad could see the swift vibrations of Newt's heart, rattling the thin skin of the chest. "Hey," Toad hissed again. "Hey." Newt did not respond. Even this was fairly rude by Toad's standards, but it was nothing in the grand scheme of things. Toad was not a sensitive soul. Tougher stuff, as went the saying. Tougher stuff. One more try, perhaps. Toad shuffled just that tiny step closer, a dry sound of legs and lips as the once-more hiss pissed out over a long second--"Heeeeeeey."
"What!?" Newt exploded back.
"Just checking."

10.12

I put a bird back in its cage for no reason other than vindictive justice. You may call me rude or cruel, but you can't change my actions now. The pitiful squeaking call is flying through the house, but I've put the bird back in the cage. Flying is out of the question.

10.11

Fortunately, nothing even remotely exciting happened after that. As it was, the standard-issue hubbub was far more than enough, and Rodney found himself hyperventilating into his puffed cheeks. One of these days, he was sure, the stress and unholy fear he felt about reaching out would fade. He was sure that with enough practice, he could finally just say the words "Sasha, I like you. We should go out—how about this weekend? Coffee?" Anyway, he'd keep practicing in the mirror and praying for Mason and Frank to move away just in case they liked her too. And one of these days, something exciting would happen, and perhaps his heart would just fail utterly and he could finally sleep without dreaming of her.

10.10

There is a place for people like me, a place we go when we're all used up like a tube of toothpaste. I wish I could say I've been squeezed from the middle and there was a lot left of me, but that would be misrepresenting the truth. In terms of actual fact, I've been rolling myself up as I go along, and nowadays I don't hold much more than a day or two. I'm the last bit of carpet from that construction job you meant to finish, I'm the remnant cloth that you saved for patches later, I'm the coil of wire collecting dust behind the vcr that won't get used again. But that's me, and I'm coming to terms with it. How are you? Still a person, I see. Well, one of these days you'll be a metaphor, too. I guarantee it.

10.9

It's a discovery I'm making every day, this eyesight thing. I'm getting used to it. Before, when the browns and blacks dominated, when the unremitting smear of life dulled my keenest sense, I grew so adept at pulling meaning from the murk that I could navigate in a silt storm. But now—in color—there's so much surefit of information that I have been laughing, laughing every day at the decrepit fools who look around and complain that they're restricted, excluded. Well, I say: if you can't see with this, what other clarity could you possibly want?
And then, of course, I return to my reverie and repeat my daily discovery.

10.8

I went on a bicycle ride, today. I saw a box cutter on the side of the road. I stopped, turned around, waddled my bicycle back to the knife. Opening the cutter, I found the extra blade inside and tucked the first in with it. I closed the knife back up and carelessly tossed it back to the road. The dangerous edge was now concealed, and I flipped my machine around and pedaled away. In a small way, the world was safer, kinder, and more lovely. In a very small way. The very smallest way. Insignificant.

I have avoided all the most important things I could do to improve my world, but I'm willing to fix a blade on the roadside.

10.7

Fierce and unlikeable, she stood at the edge of the cliff and watched the children daring each other to jump. The water wasn't that far below, but they took their time, all the same. Her mouth was curled into a disapproving grimace. Children. One by one, they splashed into the water and kicked great gouts and yelled at each other in tiny voices. Ludicrous. What infantile, purile--but at this, her boyfriend, who had snuck up behind her, grabbed her in both arms and tackled her clean out into the open air.
When she hit the water, she was screaming. When she came up, she was still in the same protracted scream. He, however, was doubled over laughing, struggling to stay at the surface, gasping for air. She kicked off him to get back to the shore, where she dragged herself out and stood, shivering.
"Up yours, Maybrey."
"Love you, Poll."
She turned to find a towel, and lost composure for a fraction of a second. A smile leaked out before she could snap it back where it belonged.

10.6

I remember him milking the cow who's teat had a tear. She was healing, but she still let her milk down every morning because she didn't know any better. She didn't make any noise as he pulled milk into the bucket between his knees, not using the milker, not letting her milk go with the other cows'. On every alternate stroke, a thin stream of blood commingled with the milk and glazed the surface of the bucket a sickening twist, non-homogenized, violence in a place of innocence, injury in a baby's food.
It turned my stomach, and it still does, but I drink milk.

10.5

I just had a dream. I was trying desperately to go be with this extremely cool girl, and on my way to our date, I catch sight of her sister's face. We're talking and together, we figure out she's been having an auditory hallucination. She's so freaked out, and all I want to do is go on this date, but I invite her. I try to save her from being alone. I put her on my shoulders and we all three walk together. We end up by a lakeshore on a flooded road. The amount of amphibian and reptile life in the water is astonishing. Utterly unbelievable. Tadpoles take up all the available space between the eels and lizards and aquatic snakes and frogs. I've gotten my feet wet and we're all laughing or heads off when the girl on my shoulders sort of kicks and gasps. The whole mass of animals has turned as one and all their dark green bodies are moving towards me on the water. The lizard at the front is making a disgusting hissing, smeking noise. They want to taste me. I'm as terrified as the girl was of her hallucinating. I wake up.

The girl I was going on a date with was not Delight.
She was secular but had joined I Cantori. Sure liked dry, intelligent jokes. She was seemingly always in a good mood. She did not blame me for things outside my control. We didn't get a chance to kiss because her sister was hallucinating.
The girl I was going on a date with was not Delight.

10.4

October 3
I was forcibly separated from my soul, today. Someone took a spiritual vacuum hose and held it against my forehead. It made a loud squeaking noise, and then a violent pop. I felt the old boy leave, but honestly, at that point, what could I do? I just sat in a small silence for a moment. The woman with the vacuum must have seen my face because she said "We'll bring it back round at five. Don't worry; we only need it for the day."
I've got him back, now, and he's telling me strange stories about yesterday, and the day before. I'm not sure I believe him, honestly. He says I forget when I sleep, but I think I would remember something like that.

October 4
Some strange woman came in with a vacuum of sorts, today, and pulled my soul right out of my body.

10.3

I glanced at the open-face sandwich between us. She had put it down with the lettuce, the tomato, onion, pickle, cheese, all face-down on the plate with the bread covering, protecting it. She wiped her fingers so carefully and said something that should make me laugh, but I was too stressed out. She picked the sandwich up again and held it with the lettuce cradling the fragile construction above. And then—as she pulled her mouth away—the lettuce ripped clean away and the sandwich tumbled piece-wise to the plate below.
"Oh!" she said. Using the fork, she scraped her sandwich together on the plate and abandoned the bread, now eating an open-faced salad with mustard for dressing.
I stood up.
"The restroom—" she paused, swallowed, and pointed. "Have Gavin show you where it is."
I did not need a restroom. I needed an escape.

10.2

I need to vilify you, or I run the risk of becoming a villain myself. There's a villain in every story, isn't there? And in a story with two actors only, one only can be the hero for there must be a villain, mustn't there? And if you're the villain, I don't have to be the villain, do I?
Unless the main work of villains is to vilify their exes.

10.1

When, exactly, does a person fall, or rather, when can you say he has fallen? Is it the jump, or the landing? Is it the whistle of air in his ears? Or is it the too-bright sun that streamed in the bedside window, sun that he blinked at, rolled over, and grumbled his way out into the kitchen to find a pot of cold coffee waiting to kick him out the door and into the car where he struggled his way into town just to find that he had, in fact, lost his job yesterday and just forgot, a tragedy stifled only by a concerted effort and a resolution to try something new today and a chance to spend the last paycheck he would receive for some time on a frivolous plane flight and a parachute lesson from a woman he'd been seeing for some time but not professionally, mostly because he was concerned that he might be falling for her. Or is it somewhere in between?