The darkness is complete. No chink of light under the door, no golden glow emanating from the key-hole. Just an absence of light, of colour, of objects. The air is heavy with carbon dioxide and thick with the sour smell of sweat. The ship bucks and rolls on the short, violent waves of the North Sea, lurching in one direction and then another, but never still.

In the aft, the engine growls rhythmically, spreading it's vibrations and the smell of diesel like spiderwebs - all the way to the bow.

Two bodies lie in the cabin - entombed by the darkness, buried in the bowls of the ship, below the waterline. One is snoring, her raspy breaths barely audible above the snarl of the engine. The other shifts uncomfortably on the lumpy foam mattress, her brow beaded in sweat, trying not to drown in the waves of nausea. She squeezes her bloodshot eyes shut and tries to succumb to the rough lullaby, sung by the sea, the wind, the engine...

On deck, the gaffe sails are pulled taut by the wind - and the masts groan under the constant tug and release of pressure. The crew are huddled around the helm as the icy fingers of the gale tug at their jackets and scarves. Some gulp hot, black coffee, enjoying the acrid burn as it slides down their throats and warms their bellies.

To the west - the sky is inky black and pocked with shining stars. At water level, artificial lights bob up and down on the waves, attached to their respective ships and gas rigs. To the east, the sun is shyly making an appearance on the horizon - a pink and golden glow creeping ever upwards and outwards.

The first mate peers into the dusky distance, searching for the next channel marker - red or green. Waiting for her eyes to focus, she spots the blinking marker and adjusts the helm slightly to port to keep on course.

It's foul weather to be out in - and even with the engine cranked to full, the ship is barely making way in the headwind. She's been moving at a little over a knot for the past few hours. The first mate looks at the shadowy faces of the crew - pinched from the cold, dispirited by the hostility of the North Sea.

She hopes that dawn will bring longer waves and fairer winds, but she knows better than most that they will be at the mercy of whatever weather the new day brings.

Dripping, a slow heat that suffocated as it lifted you into summer. I was twenty-four and had nothing to prove. I walked through the Yale University art museum while my best friend sat in front of a likeness to Michelangelo, tracing the every curve of people from history. What we didn't know was: we were creating our very own.

There was a white hydrangea plant outside of a church on the Yale campus. It created words inside my brain that hung like the branches themselves: sentences turned to paragraphs while my twenty-four year old self beamed and touched each flower. It was the happiest time of my life.

I was free. I went to bars and ordered margaritas with the abandon of the bees that sucked on the hydrangea's blossoms. I remember that plant, not only because I took copious pictures of it (although that, too), but because it was there only to be loved.

It was ninety degrees and the humidity lurked, turning into ghosts that I can only reminisce about in the present day. The heat seemed to evaporate as soon as it appeared. The hydrangea remained strong, tethered to the earth. It didn't seem bothered by anything, only happy to further illuminate the already piercingly bright day.

"How did we get here?"

He asks the question rhetorically, and she watches his face carefully. She's grown accustomed to his monologues, but she's never sure if he's seriously asking until she looks at him.

Her eyes dart from him to her fingernails. They've been freshly painted, but she looks for chips and waits for him to continue.

"It seems like only yesterday." He looks down at her and she catches his eye. She grins convincingly, and he leans down to place a hand on her head.

She ignores that it feels so very like when she used to scratch her dog.

"Do you need anything from the store, love?" His voice is soft, but she knows the kindness is only temporary. She is one missed que, one wrong word away from wrath.

Sometimes wrath pays a visit anyway.

"Could you bring me some peanut M & Ms?" She lays on a little charm, but not too thick. Puppy-dogs her eyes but doesn't bat her lashes. Lips set in just the right amount of pout.

"You've never asked for candy before! Certainly. Anything for my best girl."

She's reminded of that dog again, but she pretends to laugh good naturedly. "Thank you," she purrs.

He sighs. "It seems like yesterday when you hid in my little corner shop."

She nods. It was seven hundred and thirty two days ago, you fuck, she thinks, but can never say. "I love you," is a lie that slips past her lips so often that it leaves her mouth feeling oily.

"Be back soon." He leaves, and she sighs when the padlock clicks against the steel door. While not gilded, the cage is comfortable enough.

Buried twenty feet below the man's Brooklyn bodega, she remembers the night she dodged the cops and became a fly stuck in a far worse web. He let her into the store room, gave her a slushy, and she woke up a literal kept woman.

Her escape is imminent, though. For years, she'd studied him. Learned what made him angry, what made him happy. She feigned hope and good cheer, even though both had withered on the vine and rotted away long ago.

What he didn't know was that she nearly died in the sixth grade when she was at a slumber party. The host never considered severe allergies when she served peanut-butter chocolate chip cookies to the kid who didn't pay attention before taking a bite.

She'd never asked him for candy before, and she felt lucky to know she would never need to ask again.

I've been here before.

Sitting on a swing at sunset,

thinking about a boy,

the salty ocean breeze blowing past,

stinging my skin with the memories of you.

It's not just any boy I'm thinking of;

it's always the same one.

He has brown hair,

pale blue eyes I get lost in.

He has always had such beautiful eyes.

In them, I see

pain and longing,

but also care and love.

He used to look at me with those loving eyes,

but now all I get is a blank look when I reach out.

And his hands-

the hands that used to hold me.

He used to tell me he was holding the world in his hands when we were together.

He used to protect me,

used to fight every battle- no matter how small or dumb-

just so I would never have to fight by myself.

He made me feel less alone.

He's the boy of my dreams.

Even when he's not around,

I get to see him there.

It's not as good as being held by him,

feeling like the whoole world is just him and I,

but it's something.

So I cling to those dreams as if it's the last I'll ever have.

You never know when the last time will be,

if this boy has taught me anything.

Because I never imagined that'd be the last time I could get lost in his eyes without it being wrong and unfair.

I never imagined having to go a day without his gorgeous eyes.

And now that he's moving on,

finding love in someone else,

I'm trying so desperately to remember every word we ever said to each other,

every embrace I forgot to cherish in the moment,

back when I thought I'd have forever.

I write, and I write,

I write it all down as if I have dementia,

and every memory is fleeting faster than I can enjoy it.

They say that after the human body dies,

the brain lives for seven minutes.

When that happens to me, I want him to be my seven minutes,

but I don't want it to feel like this,

I want to think of him as mine.

I want to be able to think that I'm going to miss my husband,

the husband that I've loved so dearly for 30, 40, 50 years.

However long I can have with him,

I want it.

I want all of it.

I want to love him selfishly,

desperately,

unconditionally,

all like I already do.

But I want to love him publicly.

I don't want to hide it.

I want him to be mine.

And when the sun has set on another beautiful beach day

that I had to spend without him,

I'll go to my bed,

and dream of him.

And I'll wake up and do the same again tomorrow,

because this boy-

he is my life.

One might say that my Dad was a conspiracy theorist. I saw him as more of a mystic detective, a philosopher with a vivid imagination, a Christian looking for clues and a patriot searching for the truth. He was a dreamer and it was one of my favorite things about him.

From as early in life as I can remember, Pops and I could talk for hours about all the crazy possibilities in the universe and beyond. We’d dig deep into such topics as HAARP, chem-trails, 911, Taoism, Christianity, UFOs, Time, esoteric symbolism in pop culture, Chi, super powers, talking rocks, the theater of politics, the Illuminati, Planet X, the end of the world, etc. During these types of discussions, we didn’t always agree and not every topic was to be taken too seriously; yet ultimately, I learned to see past a veil, in bigger pictures. Pops showed me that anything is possible and that things are not always what they appear to be. He taught me to keep my eyes open and to be prepared.

Some 20 odd years ago, when I was a wee lass, Dad and I had our first chat about the Mayan Calendar, the possible significance of 2012 and what that could mean. In the years to follow it would come up again from time to time. Then as we got closer to 2012, his views became more extreme regarding the timing of things. He wasn’t as focused on the calendar but rather a laundry list of other reasons to suspect that we may be living in the, "End Times". He expressed to me on numerous occasions that he believed a world changing event could occur between the close of 2012 and early 2013.

At times, in the last year or so, Dad seemed uneasy. We’d be hanging out and he’d say something like, “There’s a disturbance in the Force. Can you feel it? The world can’t keep going on like this.” Or I’d drop by and ask what he’s up to and he’d say, while strumming his ukulele or shooting his bow, “Just hanging out, waiting for the end of the world.”

He got his wish just not quite how he had imagined it. On Feb 16th, 2013, Daddy went to bed and never woke up. It wasn’t the end of the whole world, just his time in the world. For anyone who loved him, it was the end of the world as we’d known it.

Part of me hopes that Pops was right and he just had his timing off. As beautiful as life can be, in this crude dimension, it is also a huge mess and I sometimes think this would be a good time to push reset on the whole enchilada. In the meantime, I will shine my light in the darkness and do what I can to make the world a better place, with the tools he gave me. As my father’s daughter, I will also polish the swords he left behind while keeping one eye on the sky…just in case.

Jamie

wuzzy

small cheap stuffed shoe-button bear

gifted by an aunt to celebrate my birth

my first awareness

a soft brown being

as I grew larger

he grew smaller

I'd hold him tight to me at night

he always fit in my arms just right

wuzzy never blamed me when my parents fist swung fighting

my dad stomping out slamming screaming cursing yelling shit

wuzzy never smacked me when breakfast spilt on school shirts

making mommy make me pay beat me silly slap into clean ones

so long ago yet the sound still tense my stomach fist clenching

reaching out to wuzzy who took it all in with his stupid smile

wuzzy absorbed it all

soaked up tons of quiet quivering tears

his coat became chunky knobby nubby

mommy tossed him into the laundromat

he didn't make it

my first constant beloved comforter pal

a useless clump of felted mass wad waste

I looked in the big drum

we never found his eyes

{Audio and commentary linked below the story.}

A lot of ex-cons and drunks lived in the building. My room was the corner spot on the 3rd floor. The old man in the room next to me was deaf. The girl in the room across from me was a diagnosed schizophrenic. She almost never wore clothes. She was maybe 25. The government gave her 500 dollars a month. She kept her door open. Big black men walked in there and shut the door. It was a shitty place to live. The bathroom was never occupied when I had to use it. I was the only one in the building who showered regularly. But the toilet was well used. Every time I walked in there I came face to face with a bowl full of dead shit and sometimes a syringe on the floor. The bathrooms on the other floors were worse. I had a sink in my room. I pissed in the sink late at night. I was the youngest tenant, and the only one with a job. I had to walk past the landlord’s office to get up to my room. I’d walk in and deal with him.

“How was workin’ tonight, young man?”

“It was work.”

“Anybody asks you anything about this building you tell them you don’t know.” “Right.”

“Don’t tell them my name, neither.”

“I’d rather die.”

“And don’t bring no girls up there, neither.”

“Alright, Dave.”

“Fact, don’t bring nobody up there.”

“Got it.”

It was almost the same scene every night. I’d get in my room and shut the door. Then he’d knock. “It’s Dave.”

He’d sit on my bed. Dave was tall and slim and black. Dave smoked menthols. He was fifty. He had the job and nothing else. I never saw him laugh. The world was out to get him. He sat down and lit up. I leaned on the desk. “Feels like I just saw you, Dave.” He nodded to my typewriter. “You writin’ stories ‘bout me an’ this hotel?”

“No.”

“See to it you don’t.”

“Let me have a menthol, Dave.”

“Can’t do it. I have one every hour. I have the pack timed.”

“Bullshit. You’re on your second smoke since I walked in.”

“Still can’t do it.”

I lit one of my own, “Dave, and don’t take this personally, you need to get out of the building once in a while. This place is getting to you.”

“Can’t leave. One a you might try somethin’ on me.”

“Like what?”

“Sneak somebody in, move out without notice. I run a tight ship here.”

“The place is fucking destroyed, man.”

“You have any stories about me here?” “Seriously, Dave. Take a walk down 23rd or something. Ease your mind.”

The front buzzer sounded. Somebody had walked in downstairs. He jumped up and ran out of the room. I locked the door, closed the blinds and laid in bed. I listened to the street and the wind, the hours taken by the jobs and the rain, the repeating day and night varied only by a new tenant getting the boot or a new story that I would start and maybe finish. The winter and the cancer air of the hotel had become a morbid process, and my job was another tumor that had grown from it. I closed my eyes and thought about hot sand.

My manager was worse than my landlord. Her name was Shelly. Shelly was 6 feet tall. Once I called her Michelle. She told me she wasn’t a Michelle. I’d see her in Chinatown once in a while with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend worked in the kitchen. They lived together. She had to have a spotlight shining on her. She’d walk back into the kitchen with her long bird legs and long black straw hair.

“I wish these guys would leave me alone! I keep telling them: I HAVE A BOYFRIEND!”

Which she never did. She never told them. Her boyfriend was short and muscular. I didn’t like him. His brain was propelled by jealousy. He threatened me every other day. “Hey, man, when you talk to Shelly you keep it professional.”

“Give it a fucking break, Manny.”

“You just keep it professional.”

There was nothing professional about the job. I was either sick from the food or I was dodging the old gay men who lived in the smoking section. One time a professional basketball player stayed at the hotel. Shelly was on fire. She was going to his room and bothering him. She came into the kitchen. I had just turned in an order. Manny took the ticket.

“What the fuck’s this word?”

The word was Benedict.

“The word is Benedict. Eggs Benedict.”

“You sure?”

“Poached eggs over English muffins with hollandaise sauce.”

“Don’t tell me how to do MY job, motherfucker.”

Shelly came in around the corner. Her face was weak and crazy. A film of sweat formed tiny beads on her make-up. She was playing with her hair.

“Manny, can you handle things down here for a minute?”

Manny’s eyes lit up. He looked around and pressed his tongue against his cheek, “Yeah, I can handle it, baby.”

“Good. I’m taking Jamal Dupree a fruit basket. His team lost the game. I want to make sure he stays here next year.”

Manny was horrified. “Why the hell you doin’ that? He’s just a big dumb ape. He’ll get over it.”

She tossed her hair behind her shoulder. “Manny, I don’t appreciate your tone right now. We are working. I am the manager. I am trying to secure this account. You have nothing to worry about.”

She took off. Manny went to work. Half an hour later Shelly hadn’t returned. I walked into the kitchen and folded napkins. Manny was on the other side of the wheel. He talked to me through a skillet. It hung there between us.

“Don’t you say a fuckin’ word, prick. You so much as give me one of those smartass looks of yours and I’ll break your fuckin’ nose.”

I’d been putting up with him for two months. I never said anything to him because I didn’t want to lose my job. But the job wasn’t worth it anymore.

“Tell you what, you sorry sack of shit, after your girl gets done screwing that big black cock I might even take a shot at her.”

“Your fuckin’ order’s up, dead man.”

But after work he had a fight with Shelly. I was waiting for him by the back door. He walked by in a huff. “Your lucky day, motherfucker.”

I never got to fight Manny because he had narced me off to Shelly about what I’d said to him. Shelly kept me after work. I sat across from her in her little office downstairs. “We need to talk about what you said to Manny.”

I lied through my teeth, “Shelly, I only said that to get to him. I don’t think you would fool around like that. Manny’s just worried that I’m going to try something with you. I would never do something like that.”

Her face changed entirely. It was pathetic. “Why not?”

“Well, for one, you’re with Manny. For two, you’re my boss. And for three, let’s face it, you’re way out of my league.”

Her eyes lit up like Manny’s. They both had dull and dumb eyes.

“I was going to fire you. I called you in here to let you go.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. I sat back and lit a smoke. It wasn’t worth it. Her and her long bird legs and long black straw hair. But it was mostly her face, the way she needed attention. She would dry up and blow away without it. But sitting there facing the end of my job it occurred to me that I didn’t want to look for another one. It also occurred to me that I would have sex with her, if I had met her in a bar and I was leaving town the next day, some circumstance like that. For a second I thought of walking in Manny’s shoes. I’d rather eat a bullet.

She crossed her bird legs and smiled at me.

“I never knew you felt that way.”

“I’m just saying.”

We heard the back door open. A pair of shoes came running down the hallway. There was a slip, a grunt, and then walking. I shook my head at the desk. Manny peeked his head around the corner. She stared at him. “Sit down, Manny.”

He sat down next to me. She cocked her head at him, “I don’t want any more trouble between you two. Shake hands.”

I smiled at Manny and put my hand out. “I ain’t shakin’ his fuckin’ hand, Shelly.” “Manny, shake his hand.” He did it. It killed him. She told him to wait in the car. She had to tell him a few times. He left. I asked her, “How’s Dupree?”

“Oh, he’s fine. We had a good talk...”

I put out my smoke. “I guess I’ll be leaving.”

She uncrossed her bird legs and sat forward.

“I should go, too. Listen, you were wrong about my being out of your league. I want you to know that.”

“Thanks, Shelly. See you on Monday.”

She watched me leave. I walked down Burnside and bought a coffee. I walked the river and sat next to a sleeping bum. There was another bench empty, but it was covered in bird shit. A boat hauling a barge floated by. The bum shifted and made a loud honking sound. I got up and walked into downtown. I bought a drink and watched the people on the sidewalk. It had been a short summer. There was a week of frozen streets. It was getting ready snow again. I walked into Chinatown and ate a cheap lunch. Down on the street two cops were walking up on an old man with a string of shopping carts. He had the carts tied together. One of the cops nodded to him.

“This your train?”

The old man lit a rolled cigarette and smoked through his long beard.

“It ain’t no fuckin’ train. But, yeah, it’s mine.”

I heard them going back and forth behind me. Portland was soft but it was hard. I didn’t know anybody anymore. I had been there six years. There was sometimes a flurry of people, then it would die off, then there was a girl here and there, and she would die off. I hadn’t had a girl in almost a year. I mostly stayed in my room.

I opened the drapes and wrote about the job, the building, Dave and the schizophrenic. For some reason, I laid down and jacked off thinking about fucking Shelly. I had her on her desk and her bird legs were wrapped around my waist, her thirsty hair soaked with sweat. It was a good one. I shot over my shoulder.

The phone rang. It was her. “Hello, Kurt.”

“Hello.”

“It’s Shelly.”

“I know.”

“This is awkward. Listen, Manny just put his fist through our living room window and walked out. Apparently he was lingering by the door after he left and heard everything I said to you. Pretty low, if you ask me.”

“Oh, he’s a fucker.”

I wiped off with my sheet and pulled my shirt back down.

She sighed. “You really threw me for a loop in my office, what you said to me.”

“It’s alright, Shelly. No need for me to go back there.”

“Thank you, Kurt. I really appreciate that. Listen, why don’t I stop by for a little while?”

I hung up. It rang back and I unplugged it. I heard Dave knocking on the door across from me, yelling about someone being in her room after ten pm. It had cost me next to nothing to live there, but next to nothing is what it was. I sat up and found my sweater and pulled my duffel bag from under the bed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkaxy2-7Jqc