…I’m bound by obligation. It’s the same as before, only now more gruesome, though mercifully fleeting. I watch her thick calves. She’s cooking something among the filth, the spilled and dried beans across the counter, the months-old cups and glasses filled with things horribly changed from what they were. Her cat runs over and takes a swipe at my dog. He looks at me with an eyebrow raised. I slam three glasses of wine and open the other bottle. I’m too tired to go anywhere else. I look at her ass wedged into her skirt. In her photos she was much thinner, much thinner. I owe her a fuck, though. I know it, she knows it, and Satan knows it. For the last 18 months we’ve been exchanging naked or near naked phone pictures. She got her taxes back early and sent me money for gas. I drink the wine and notice a pipe packed with weed on the table, next to a dried puddle that could be chocolate milk or beer. I tap it and look at her from my chair. Her broad back turns and she smiles at me, “Of course. I never smoke it, but I get it for some reason.”

I fish a lighter from the wreckage and light the bowl. She turns and keeps cooking. Her giant body is locked into my peripheral view. I think about her photos while I hold the hit. The devil whispers: It’s all in the angles, motherfucker. I nod at the living room and blow a cloud toward it. From the end of the pipe there are busted blinds, hairy carpet stained and uncared for, her belongings scattered across the place. I smell the thick and hot odor of cat shit from the bathroom. I follow it to the door. The litter box is full and spilling over with clumps of saturated grains and piles of feces. I piss, flush, and look at the tub. It’s dirty to the point of disturbing. I lived across the country as a kid, I stayed with junkies and punk rock rejects, I lived in the worst shit holes of New York City, Los Angeles, and the towns and scenes in between, and I have never been so repulsed. A rat crawling across the floor would give the place some dignity. I’ve been here for a total of twenty minutes and I’m already more drunk and high than I’ve been in a year. She sets the plates down. I don’t register what she’s made, but I eat it with her. Under the table, she runs the toe of her pump up my shin, “What are you thinking?”

I think she lives like an animal, but I tell her the food is delicious and I’m really stoned and happy to be out of San Francisco, which is true. I eat, drink, and smoke two more bowls until she’s bargained from her weight.

She’s on her back. Her legs are massive, pale flanks and they’re spread, bent at the knees. I’m looking down through the moonlight, which is fucking bright enough to beat the dark, and I see her naked, morbidly obese body and the reality hits my cock like tomahawks, but I keep going. The moon shines in the window and it makes a rolling neon marquee in purple, and the marquee spells words like fat, failure, rock bottom and suicide, and I let it roll while I keep going. I ask her to get on all fours. She manages the move and I’m moving in and out of the flanks. Her hair’s short and she’s grunting. My hips propel waves of fat over her back. I think about my father digging a trench. I had a job with him in Arizona on the same crew two years after my mother died. He’d been homeless until a fat woman herself took him in and bought him new teeth and health. He was lifting weights in the backyard during that time, and his body had become servile with bulk muscle and bad labor jobs. I’d moved into their place for a short time and we’d gotten the job together. The weed is strong and I’m looking down at her, pounding away while the devil whispers in my ear again: Look at you now, motherfucker, fucking the flanks of your father. He’s dead now, have some goddamn respect. Shame on you, motherfucker, shame... I have to stop and lay on my back, while she puts her weight on me and shuffles herself forward and back above my hips. Her stomach is anchored upon mine, and I hold strong and look at the window. There has to be more than this. The love I’ve lost because of jail, the traps I’ve sprung on myself because of my hatred for the workforce. All the people who read my work and write reviews and send me letters are in their warm living rooms, two cars in the garage and maybe one in the driveway. Shelves full of permanence embedded in photos, in proud souvenirs of commitment, rooms of furniture and success. It’s bad thinking, the city says to me. You’re a fucking writer, you’re a writer who lives your art, streamlines through the lies with beauty and fists. You suffer nothing you’re unaware of, boy. You alone create your living nightmare. Stand up and shake off the filth, the hot liquid shame that has found you at birth. There is something out there, boy, something in the world is moving in on you, something to find and keep you, to bring you home for good.

She’s wailing now, her head is back and she’s wailing at the ceiling, “HOLY FUCK! I’M COMING! YOU SON OF A BITCH I’M COMING!” She presses her fat palms into my chest, quivers then collapses onto me. I exhale quietly and deeply to support her weight. A big leg finds the floor and she presses off me and walks to the bathroom. I unroll the condom and jack off thinking about the girl who poured my coffee in Medford.

It was around the end of October. While people were busy going to cemeteries to avoid the crowd during All Soul's Day, I was busy with my friends inhaling the fresh air from the mountains. It was my happiest birthday. And most memorable.

***

"But you're going out with your friends. You didn't want me to come since it's a 'no boyfriends' trip. What do you want me to do just stay and sulk? Please let me go swim we would be back before the night ends." He said on the other line. "No, I'm not feeling good about it. Just trust me on this one. Don't go out and swim. Stay there, watch or do whatever. Just don't go out. I'm just feeling something's off if you go out with them." I said. It really made me feel guilty that I asked him to stay home while I get to go out. "Fine, but you have to make up for it tomorrow! Go and have fun with your friends. I love you most infinite."

***

It was about eleven o'clock in the evening when he called me again. And unlike all our usual silly nonsense conversations, he was being serious this time. "Hon, I'm really sorry, but I lied. I went to go swimming with them. Nothing bad happened and we're about to go home now. I'm just calling to say how much I love you and be the last one to say Happy Birthday!" I was pissed beyond words. But I'm known for being passive and forgave him right away. Maybe because I was feeling guilty too that I didn't spend my birthday with him. "Okay!I love you more. Call me the minute you get home. Late or not. Call me." I replied. "Did I tell you how amazing you are and how lucky I am to have you? I will make up for it tomorrow. I promise. We're about to go now. Call you later, bye! I love you very very much!"

*****

That was the last conversation we had. Because the next thing I knew, I got a call from his bestfriend saying he's dead. He was drowned from a knee-deep river. No bumps on the head. Nothing. Just drowned.

Oh! Did I mention he was a swimmer?

The coffee grounds brown of the floor glistens with an old polish, worn from the feet of weary commuters and early birds. The pungent perfume of fresh arabica beans soak the air, as they are boiled, mashed, steeped, and tossed about.

In the early hours, especially in the wintry weather, the transit of seemingly floating orbs of lights stream by quietly and uniformly, each after the other. As soon as the neon begins to glow, the world is strutting along the avenue, already deep in its quotidian.

Friday night! The little shop is teeming with occupants, each with a softly steaming cup, decorated with cream and sweets, decadently adorned with extra flair. The hushed tones turn to excited and exuberant chatter as the events of the evening are recounted. A happening music venue, a run in with the band, and preferential treatment all abound as the lucky listeners reiterate again and again, to any and all eager ears in shot.

The door is light in my hand, a glass pane with a thin wood frame, yet still more than enough to enclose the shop comfortably. My quiet steps towards the counter are a welcome sound to the staff. Smiles abound, and niceties traded. Ordered and paid for, my coffee comes in a sturdy recycled and plain paper cup, and escorted with utmost care into my possession. A warm welcome to indulge a sweet caffeine tooth.

I remember this one distant time

when I was a fluttering butterfly;

avoiding those angry bees

and hiding among the trees.

Within these trees I flapped and flew

remembering once, I had also been a canoe;

and even the old man found inside paddling

and will forget it all as a baby in swaddling.

That thought carried me into the wind

and suddenly I was human who was running;

bare feet barely touching dead leaves

as if the Laws of Physics weren’t governing.

The air caressed me as flora moved aside

and scent of the Earth was thick in my breath;

I was not alone, as others ran among me

and the hairs stood up on the nape of my neck.

I, unlike them, flowed through the forest

and saw the path before me, even as I took it;

though running from those who would cage me

I felt no fear, only the central urgency to book it.

I was needed somewhere and more than fast

and I was like a liquid running through the trees;

something inside me shifted with the thought

and the forest sighed through it’s leaves.

The wind smiled through the canopy

in a song that I could hear but not see;

Sea. I was suddenly reminded of the ocean

while I ran, in my mind it was the sand and me.

A shore I was familiar with

and the sea’s kiss upon my toes;

Liquid. Sunet. Time.

How long will this take, no one knows!

As I looked up in wonder of the sky

I was then free of my physical bonds;

carried by thought and simply airborne-

Air Born. Star Dust. Particles in energy ponds.

Whether transformed by thought

or thought transformed by form;

I was a cloud above the trees

and just quietly drifting along.

Seeing in 360 degrees

and everything was suddenly bigger;

in my gasp I collapsed

and became a raindrop of matter.

Plummeting to the forest below

with a liquid lens of distorted sense;

still, I had no real fear of my falling

and not bracing for any defense.

As the wind whistled by

in a symphony of angels screaming;

I realized that I wasn’t alone

and I wasn’t the only raindrop falling.

Perhaps it was a raindrop’s perceptive

or maybe my own awareness condensing;

but I could of swore I was falling faster

and the impending impact became distressing.

In the moment before collision

I remembered my former lives;

and when I hit the ground

I splattered forth with the will to survive.

So strong and so big was my will

that I found myself in the forest as fog;

among the runners who breathed me in

and suddenly noticed they exhaled a bog.

The fog that I was would not accept it

tainted by those who used parts of me;

those parts were no longer the same

changed in the time it took to breathe.

Even changed, I knew why I was going

drifting through the trees and existing in air;

but why were these people still running?

then I noticed I asked ‘why’ not ‘where?…’

I was once a coconut, right,

growing with the tides gone by;

whilst swaying in the breeze

from the top of my little tree.

It doesn’t have to make sense

when you take it in the correct tense;

we are all alive and living

but why do we keep on breathing?

-M.E.