I laughed, molasses giggles accompanied by a stuttering hiccup.

I burped and apologized, wincing at the after taste of the vodka.

The kitchen tiles were sticky from spilled soda,

A single light illuminating footprints on the floor,

I clasped my friend's fingers to mine, erupting into laughter once more.

She handed me her cup and I drank,

Soda fizzling like TV static,

Burning alcohol scorching my throat.

He walked in smiling and I reached my hand out to hold his,

And we swung,

Two drunken pendulum attempting to dance.

He dipped me and planted a peck on my lips,

Giddy with whiskey,

"I love you."

"What?"

The pendulums stopped, rocked,

Stumbling for footing on the ground,

And he walked away, back to the room he had just left.

My friend was the only constant, sipping her drink from across the counter.

"You want another shot?"

The day was warm, sun shining unbearably hot on my dark shirt. I was covered in a thin layer of sweat when I reached the bus stop, sitting down in the shade of the street lamp in a feeble attempt to cool down. I set my backpack at my feet, rifling through my collection of items. Two shirts, one extra pair of pants. Socks and bandaids. A wallet full of change and crumpled dollar bills. A lighter and a pack of smokes. I counted the remaining cigarettes in the pack: 15. I had smoked five on my first day out, not thinking of how long I needed them to last.

The bus squealed to a stop and I dusted off the dirt from my jeans and boarded.

I chose a random man on the bus. I imagined he would have looked beautiful in another lifetime, but instead he just looked tired, knuckles cracked from working in the sun, dirt smudged in the corners of his sharp jawline. His eyes were green, rimmed with full lashes, and they brightened when I moved from my corner to his.

“Where you headed?” he asked.

“Oh, just out of town, I needed a break from the city.”

He smiled.

His name was Joel. He worked in a cattle ranch just outside the city limits but had gone downtown to visit his mother. I could see by the pain in his smile as he spoke that she was sick. Very sick. He wrung his hands when he spoke about her, eyes aimed at the grating on the bus floor.

“Just glad I had a break from work.”

“I’m sure she enjoyed the visit.”

I tell him my name is Sarah. It’s the first fake name that I choose for myself and it sounds right. Rolls off the tongue just right. Both ordinary and pretty. I tucked a tendril of dark hair behind my ear and stuck my tongue behind my teeth, smiling coyly.

“Where’s your stop?” he asked, scooting closer.

We travel for a few hours before I decide I am far enough away to rest for the night. I know we are still a few stops from Joel’s ranch but he follows me anyway. Struck by curiosity or simply bored, I don’t care. He won’t make that mistake again.

The room looks as tired as I feel, a slouched sofa leaning into the pale pink walls, bed resting in a corner. The motel bed is small, the smell of bleach rising from the sterilized sheets. The mirror in the bathroom was cracked in one corner. I drop my bag and step closer to Joel. Up close I could see the flecks of gold in his green eyes, the stubble growing at the edges of his jaw.

“Don’t be a stranger now,” I whispered.

We kissed with fire, hands entangled in hair, sliding and grasping at hips and thighs. Like we were starved and hungry for this. Just this.

As he sleeps, I see it slip from parted lips, floating effervescent in the dim of the bathroom light. I pluck it out of the air and hold it close, staring. It glimmered and I could feel the heat of the sun at midday, the smell of manure and grass permeating the room. I heard the grumbling inhale and exhale of a ventilator and I felt, tired. Not truly sad, but relentlessly exhausted and empty. The sadness was water dripping into the brim of an empty well, striking dry ground, never filling.

I clutch it in my hand and hold it close to my chest, feeling the steady thump Joel’s heartbeat from across the room. He is still asleep, breath heavy and calm. I take my piece of him and tuck it into my box of cigarettes. I leave before the sun rises and smoke at the bus stop a mile away.

The next day, I was Avery to a boy named Will. Baseball cap and unripped jeans, his smile gleamed. He was wealthy and playing pretend, taking the bus to the town over.

We stayed in his studio apartment on the upper floor. The bed was soft and made for two, looking out to the balcony where the sun set in blazing colors. I could taste his guilt when his hands tugged at my shirt and held my lower back, running fingers down my spine. His soul was imprinted with the smell of honey perfume and felt like running, running with no good reason, marked with lipstick kisses. I smoked two cigarettes to get his taste out of my mouth.

I was Emma and Ava and Scarlet. I began to lose track of my names and theirs. They weren’t reaching for me but for an escape, a distraction from the mundane. I could taste their tears and anger and pain, smell the sweat of their work or the perfumes of their many lovers, and I took it for myself. I kissed each one like I had never wanted someone more, which was the most beautiful lie.

The last man I remember is Sebastian.

“What’s your name?”

“It’s Bella.”

“Bella? A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”

He invited me home and we sat in his kitchen, taking swigs of vodka and orange juice from plastic glasses. The vodka burned and bubbled at the back of my throat, but I kept it down laughing each time he spoke. We twirled and danced by the light of his living room lamp, stumbling, utterly intoxicated, and for a moment I forgot I was running. His kisses were sweet caramel, deep brown eyes meeting mine. That night we shared a cigarette and as we slept I could taste his tears, burning like the vodka on my tongue.

It was the only fair exchange.

I left a smoke on his nightstand as I left at sunrise. I smoked the rest of my pack that day.

I coughed out dust as another car rumbled past me, the yellow headlights the only reflection on the road ahead. Above me, the desert sky blossomed, stars glittering through the thick swathes of clouds. The breeze lifted up and rustled through the dry trees, kicking up dust and sending shivers down my bare arms. When I coughed I could taste blood and the remnants of tobacco. I had smoked my last cigarette two days ago, but I still clutched onto the empty pack like the box would provide me the nicotine I needed, bloody and scratched knuckles grasped around the the colorblocked packaging.

I burned it that night in a pile of tumbleweed and dry tree branches, the warmth of the flame chasing away the chill of the night. As it burned, the pieces of them scattered with ash, blowing into the empty desert. I breathed in and the smoke smelled of cologne.

#prose #shortstory

If your love were the great sea,

I'd dive to the bottom and

Drown in all the wonder.

Riptides can't stop me

From pushing, pulling,

Breathing, in

You.

My love for you was a slow burn,

Long-wicked candle,

Matchstick fingers coaxing warm yellow flame,

Flickering in the hollow of my collarbone,

Glinting off your blue eyes.

You were interlocked fingers.

Sunlight blinding through back car windows,

You too champagne bubbly,

Me too cork pop to pause.

You became late night phone calls.

Chest breathing, arms heavy, lips to neck,

Touch soaking embers that grew the fire in my throat

Wax candle dripping onto butterflies in my gut,

Flit-fluttering around my insides with razor-blade wings.

You were midnight rendezvous,

Smiles and kisses through rolled down windows,

Yellow sunflowers on the counter,

Rumpled sheets on the bed.

And I became dying star.

Slowly.

Giving in to finally match supernova hearts,

And I love and hate you for it.

We were not made to be gods,

Galaxies of our minds intertwining in slow moving harmony,

The intricacy of your body fitting perfectly into mine.

We were not meant to control the world,

For colors to be brighter whenever I am around you,

For the words of your lips to hang frozen in a precipice of noise,

Floating midair like suspended smoke.

Sunlight will always gleam but not dance around us,

Rain will continue to fall on eyelashes and bare shoulders,

Our attraction will not be magnetic.

If we were gods, the wind would push me towards you,

Your embrace would be ambrosia, melting my fears,

I could drink nectar from the hollows of your collarbones,

Or steal it directly from your lips.

Our fates would be sealed in an hourglass,

Our time running smoothly in the sand,

Every moment calculated, every move preemptively predicted.

But I don't believe in fate or miracles.

Your presence doesn't stop time or give me life,

Instead it breathes fresh air into my constricted lungs.

If we were meant to be gods, we would never breathe, or bleed, or scar,

And our love is too mortal to be star-crossed.

I thought that I would live my life in relative peace, that at the end of it all, when I stared death in the eyes, I wouldn't regret too much. 

I lost my daughter today. Our city was one of the first cities to get hit. I lost her today, and she was so scared. She died calling out for me, died with her hand grasping her teddy bear instead of me. I watched her crumple to the ground like a rag doll, just to come back up again, her eyes hungry, insatiable. 

The neighbor did it. She was the one who always picked my baby up when I was running late for work. My daughter always trusted her. And today she died because of that trust.

I could have saved her. Should have saved her. It should have been me. It should have been me screaming for her to run, run far away and to not look back.

But instead, I ran.

And I've never regretted anything more.

I'm hidden in the cellar of a house three blocks away from the park that my daughter loved. The swings were her favorite.

I can hear them coming, knocking on every door, groaning.

But let them come to me. 

My screams will be the eulogy my daughter never got.

I was never the greatest artist.

My hand shook too much, my strokes too hard to erase, leaving gashes of lead on the paper despite fruitless time spent erasing. But I knew what good looked like.

And you, you were art.

Your hands feather-light, quick strokes of stiff lead, buffed out into soft edges,

Your eyes, so alive, oil paint swirls of earth-toned colors,

Your mouth, a swab of dark pink watercolor, brushed to fit just perfectly into a crooked smirk,

You took my breath away.

You were a painting, a drawing, a piece of sheet music,

Your laugh a soft chorale.

The artist that made you spent careful time in arranging every color, every note, to fit harmoniously and I made sure to be careful when I held your wrist, lest I smudge the charcoal.

I was too clumsy, hands and lips leaving marks in the canvas, trailing wet paint into the corners,

But I would never be able to unwrite you, uncreate you,

For your symphony is so much greater than anything I could ever muster.

If you were a masterpiece, I was a sketch on loose-leaf binder paper

And your inked shadows covered up my light.

My love for you is A-Z,

Arranged neatly in rows,

Quietly taking place in a lined portion of my kindergarten notebook on the dusty back shelf.

Waiting.

I always thought that we were just friends.

But boy was I wrong.

I caught feelings for you the way I catch a baseball...poorly.

I was dazed, dumb-struck,

Demanding my brain to stop before it was too late,

But I know that the brain never ever listens, especially when it comes to you.

First, I walked home with you,

Faint steps on empty neighborhood streets,

Garages shut against the grueling heat,

And you held the inside of your pocket the way I wanted you to hold my hand.

You can't imagine how incapacitated I was by you.

Just craving the key to unlocking the mystery of your head.

I longed for your laugh which rolled out of your lips like caramel.

My mind couldn't handle you.

Nothing seemed normal about the way I acted around you.

Of course, there was no option to switch off the butterflies that tore up my insides.

I probably would have preferred them gone without a second thought.

Quietly, you would smile at my remark, or quickly glance at me when you thought I wasn't looking, 

And really, I remember every detail.

Your smile's small quirk at the edges,

The way the rain trailed off the tip of your nose,

The bags under your eyes,

The volume of your voice when we "argued".

What were my feelings thinking?

With the xanthic nature of your gaze,

You were too yellow, too happy, too perfect,

For my zealously beating heart.