Saturday, May 2

May Day. No more trips to the store, or anywhere. The entire country is now effectively under house arrest. I was able to load up on dried foods, spices, and plenty of garlic. Looking forward to making some new dishes. Thank God for the Internet. It’s a lifeline.

Wednesday, May 20

It’s hard to get exercise without walking. I miss the fresh air and the park. We got word that my sister and her family were sent to a quarantine camp. No news yet, but we remain hopeful. Next door, the Crowders were lounging on the deck Herb built last year, enjoying the fine spring weather. Becky was wearing a bikini and Molly made a joke about me putting my eyes back into my skull, laughing and swatting my fanny. It was good to see the old smiling Molly again.

Tuesday, May 26

Further restrictions have been announced. The days of unlimited internet are over. It’s been too slow to stream anything for some days now, so perhaps it’s better to have it gone altogether. Plenty of books. The food is holding out nicely, and the National Guard has started twice-weekly deliveries of ration boxes.

Wednesday, June 10

There was a notice on today’s ration box that we’ll now be getting one a week instead of two. The contents have changed, too. We were getting brand name canned goods like Chef Boy-Ar-Dee and Progresso, but now it’s white government cans and military MREs. The quality is poor, but I guess I shouldn’t complain. Our tax dollars at work.

Monday, June 15

Molly has been awfully quiet. I have to coax her into eating, even when I use the best remainders of our pantry such as the jar of pesto she bought in Naples or the organic bone broth from Whole Foods. She spends long hours staring out the window, hands in her lap. We hardly talk at lately, my pale attempts at conversation lapsing into stolid silence.

Sunday, June 21

Molly says she hasn’t seen the Crowders on their deck in a long time. We had a few days of rain last week, so I just figured they were staying indoors. The sun came back out Tuesday and I guess I forgot about them. I wish we had some way of reaching out. It’s impossible to keep track of people since the cellphones went down, even our next-door neighbors. We dare not go outside with the Guard watching. They’ve been announcing zero tolerance through the loudspeakers. I’ve even heard gunshots, though far away.

Monday, June 22

I woke this morning to the sound of Molly sobbing downstairs. She told me she’d gotten up before dawn and gone next door, using the key Becky gave her when we watched their cat last Christmas. She said the Crowders lying on their kitchen floor. Apparently they’d been dead for several days. I risked the Guard and walked over to their house to hang out the red flag they gave us for emergencies, crossing the yard with my hands in the air like a newly freed hostage. Even though my mission was grim, it was so nice to be outside again.

Thursday, June 25

The guard finally came for the Crowders this morning. Molly stayed in our bedroom. She’s inconsolable. After the bodies were removed, a hazmat team came and boarded all the windows and doors. I saw a vapor escaping from the roof vents, so I guess they fogged it. The stories about that are true.

Sunday, June 28th

Molly is hot to the touch. She smiled and told me she feels like a loaf of fresh-baked bread. Her breath rattles like a boy running a stick along a picket fence.

Saturday, July 4th

The quietest Fourth I can remember. Molly seems better. Coughing less, and she took a little soup for supper. I went out on the front porch and lit a sparkler in celebration, but a National Guard Humvee drove by and slowed down when they saw me, so I quickly put it out and went back inside.

Thursday, July 11

We used to love walking the dogs together. Now Molly just sits in her rocker, pale blue eyes staring out at nothing. Her fever has returned and her cough is worse.

Monday, July 20

I heard a surveillance drone hovering over the house last night. I once heard they had infra-red cameras that can see through walls, but I’m pretty sure that’s just paranoia. I know for a fact that they are equipped with super-sensitive microphones, so I hope they haven’t heard Molly coughing. It’s so loud now I can even hear her when I’m in the basement. All day long I kept peeking through the curtains to peer up the empty street, jumping at every noise real or imagined.

Tuesday, July 21

The Guard came to the house. Molly was upstairs, coughing and coughing. I told her to keep quiet, cover her face with a pillow, but she was only semi-conscious and didn’t understand. It didn’t matter anyway. I went downstairs and met them at the door, thinking I would try to bluff them. They weren’t fooled and forced their way past me, their boots thundering up the stairs. I stood in the bedroom doorway while two of them held her down and swabbed her nose and throat. She struggled wildly, then went so still I wondered if they had killed her. I moved to stop them, but one of the guards pushed me against the wall with his baton. I stared into my own face reflected in the silver of his mask and wondered if they intentionally designed the respirators to look evil. After they left I sat and held Molly’s hand. She was sobbing and coughing but eventually fell asleep. I sat a long time thinking. The incident had reminded me of something. Finally, I remembered. When I was sixteen I spent a summer on a Montana ranch. One frigid morning, the rancher told me they were going to geld the male calves to make them into steers. The terrified animals were herded into a corral where a bunch of local boys stood waiting. One would throw a rope around a calf and throw it, then another two jumped on it to pin it down. The rancher came over, squatted down and expertly slit its crotch with a curved blade. He yanked out the stringy testicles and dropped them steaming into a bucket, then cauterized the wound with the electric prod dangling from his belt. Throughout the ordeal, the animals invariably were stunned to silence.

Saturday, September 26

The first of the leaves falling. It’s more than a month since they took Molly away. The guard has been by twice a week to draw my blood and make sure I’m not infected. I must be in the clear since they haven’t been back in at least ten days. I found my journal under a pile of old clothes and read back through the entries. I was almost done by the time I realized I was weeping. I know now that my wife is dead. Somehow I am still alive. Why?

Sunday, September 27

I’ve always thought of a journal as a series of letters to a future version of myself. By continuing to write entries, I therefore assert my belief that such an individual will exist, that I will survive all this. That it will mean something. Right now, I don’t know if any of that is true. The day outside looks the same as any other, save for the lack of people and cars. There are more birds and the occasional feral cat passing by my window. But there are also the armored Humvees that deliver the weekly ration boxes, men in camouflage suits with the wicked mirrored respirators and weapons at the ready. Once or twice I’ve heard the distant exchange of gunfire. I am alone in every way, and I don’t know if I want to live in such a world as this. I lack the conviction for either suicide or survival. It is a true dilemma.

Tuesday, October 6

This morning I saw myself in the mirror while changing clothes, so thin I resembled one of those photos of Holocaust survivors. It shamed me. Those people endured. I can too. I have decided to keep living, so I resume writing to my future self. Tell me, how does this turn out?

Wednesday, October 7

The power went off this morning. I wondered if it was permanent until an N.G.Humvee drove by. They don’t leave notes anymore, instead playing recorded messages through loudspeakers mounted on the roof. Usually it’s something about how the infection is almost over, how the president has done this or that. Today I was informed that to conserve resources we will now be allotted two hours of electricity per day. Our time is from ten AM to noon. Nothing about the other utilities.

Friday, October 8

Spent the day cleaning. I waited until 10 to vacuum, then spent the full two hours of power trying to fix the damned belt. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Sunday, October 10

Gave up on the vacuum and swept instead. Interesting thing. We’ve not had a dog since I gave Jounce away back in February, but there’s still an amazing amount of dog hair. everywhere, great balls of the stuff. I didn’t think of the dog at all while I swept it up, detached as if I was cleaning the house of a stranger. I also found Molly’s favorite Tiffany earring which she lost two years ago after a New Year’s party. Like the dog hair, it elicited no nostalgia in me at all, no feelings of any kind. I put the earring and the sweepings in a garbage bag and set it on the pile out back. I guess my heart is now officially sealed over.

Wednesday, October 15

The cleaning project is over. I wound up taking everything upstairs except the books and couch. It made quite a pile, filling the bedrooms and hall completely. No need to go up there ever again. I have blankets enough to stay warm, and a dresser full of durable clothes. I’m so glad I put in a gas water heater because hot showers are my one enduring luxury, though I imagine my consumption will eventually be noticed by the utility companies.

Sunday, October 18

A big storm blew through last night, the wind shrieking across the rooftops and ripping the bright autumn leaves from the trees. I woke to bare branches and streets covered with debris. One of the plywood sheets on the Crowder’s came off, leaving the black window behind. It looks like the house is winking at me. I was never a churchgoer, so Sundays aren’t special to me. I wonder how religious people are coping with this. Maybe they believe God is everywhere. I can’t see how they can now.

Monday, October 26

Kendra’s birthday. I came close to getting out her senior picture this morning, but decided against it. Best let sleeping dogs lie. When she was killed that horrible summer so long ago I never expected that I would look at the accident as a blessing. It is only because she and Molly are both gone that I can resign myself to this, whatever this is.

Wednesday, November 4

Frost came early this year. The Guard has been late with their ration boxes again. I’m sure sick of beans.

Wednesday, November 11

I’m not sure why I keep this journal up. When all this started I had ideas of how it would be, but none of it seems to matter. Every day is the same, so why even bother? But today I thought I’d write an entry because it’s Armistice Day. I’ve always called it that since I read Kurt Vonnegut as a kid. He thought it was more sacred than Veterans’ Day because when he was young most people believed that World War One really had ended all wars. I wish I could tell old Kurt that now finally managed to really do that, but not the way he hoped.

Thursday, December 17

Bulldozers have been through the neighborhood knocking down all the Red Flag houses and putting the wreckage into dump trucks and carting it away. The crews aren’t National Guard, but civilian workers in bright green suits with full respirators attached to their hard hats. It looks like my house is one of three left on the block. Interesting that they’re leaving the trees, as though someday they’ll build again.

Sunday, December 20

It’s been so long since I heard anything other than the loudspeaker announcements. I keep thinking I’ll drag out the record player, but I just don’t have the energy. I don’t even talk to myself.

Friday, December 25th

My grandmother told me that when she was little they draped all the mirrors in the house in black fabric whenever somebody died. I’d planned on doing that with the holidays, shrouding them and walking past without looking, but was astonished when I opened the front door to find not the usual Guard ration box but a Dean & Deluca holiday basket containing a tin of smoked turkey, several boxes of crackers, chocolate, hard candy, cans of Danish Cheese, and even a canned Virginia Ham. Best of all was an unopened fifth of Johnny Walker Red. I never was much of a drinker, but I went right away to get a glass from the kitchen and poured myself a generous knock and took it right down, feeling the delicious warmth spread through me like the fountain of youth. I had some crackers and cheese and a bit of the ham. It’s salted and should last a few days. The kitchen is almost as cold as a refrigerator anyway. I have no idea who left this treasure for me, but God bless you.

Friday, January 1

I should mention that there were no elections last year. That should be obvious to the reader, assuming history is still being written. From my window I can see the enormous billboard of his face superimposed against an American flag that towers over what’s left of this neighborhood. The loudspeakers now broadcast in the president’s voice.

Monday, January 18

Fever these past two weeks. It broke last night. My chest feels like a horse is standing on it, but I can somewhat breathe now.

Tuesday, January 19

Perhaps I am going live after all.

You said you like it when I’m nervous. You said I’m cute with my hands covering my laugh and my fingers twirling my hair. You said you feel less awkward when I glance awkwardly into my own lap. You loved that aching squirm that helped you cover your own insecurities. You hated when you’d inhale a line and I’d sit calm and patient. Indifferent to your flaws. You liked to offer me drinks in front of everyone, knowing full well I’d say no. Knowing full well that everyone would keep offering all night. You liked to make me walk in front of you, stumbling over my steps the way I stumble over the words that fall from me into you. You didn’t want to lead the way, afraid you might be the one to trip. You’d leave me at parties to see how long I’d wait. And lay claim to me in front of large groups so you could tell me later how you didn’t mean it. And the worst would come when my discomfort would leave you vulnerable. I’d spend all night vomiting up delicate caterpillars. And you would take fists and boots to snuff out their prickly lives. And through power hungry fits, you’d confess your secrets late into the night. And as I devoured them, feeding myself into butterflies, your thoughts would become poisoned bile at the realization. And you would beg for me to hand over my safe-haven cocoons. Terrified that I may be more comfortable than you. Terrified that I may be growing while you sat in front of me with your guts on display. So you spin your spider web across my body, wrapped in carefully-crafted blankets of silk. And when I emerged, you burst forth from eggs and laid waste to my thriving. Because you like it when I’m nervous.

I wanted to title this—Because if I knew that your mom was sleeping with everyone or that your girlfriend had cheated or had faked a pregnancy or that your addiction was spiraling out of control and you were scared of losing your kid, then who really had the power?

But that seemed a bit wordy and didn’t even begin to cover it.

somewhere deep within this mass of skin & bones

perhaps in some unconscious part of my brain,

[beyond gray matter & synapses & neurons & all thought]

part of me is begging you:

touch your hands to the [dead] skin cells on my face,

press your mouth to mine

[against all scientific reason, I believe that this alone

will teach my lungs to take in air]

What if I don't know?

What if they don't want me?

What if he says no?

What if they don't believe me?

What if I run away?

What if I disappear?

What if I'm not okay?

What if you aren't here?

What if I am alone?

What if no one cares?

What if my chance was never blown?

What if my heart fills with despair?

What if I say the wrong word?

What if I lose you forever?

What if you tell me that's absurd?

What if again, I'll see you never?

I used to have a flame.

It was dim and constantly flickered,

But it still existed.

At that time, you were enough.

But Time partnered up with Death

And together, they stole my oxygen.

The flame burned out, love.

What was left of me?

Smoke.

And on that day, you weren't enough anymore.

Your embrace no longer warmed my cold skin.

Your smile couldn't jump-start my heart.

Your eyes became mirrors,

And I didn't like my reflection.

You tried to be generous, didn't you?

Maybe you secretly knew I couldn't breathe anymore,

So when you pressed your lips against mine, you made sure to exhale.

It worked...for a time.

But it still wasn't enough.

Because every night after you had fallen asleep, the flame would extinguish again.

As the cold crept in, my rotting mind reminded me that no one could save me.

And as time kept passing and approached this day, your oxygen wasn't enough anymore.

That's when I knew.

When my love for you had went,

I knew I had to go.

So now I'm gone.

  What's the difference between me and the stars ? The stars are not tired,the stars do not cry,the stars are not so sad that they no longer no what to do. It is 2:38 a.m and I dig through my old journals and it hits me.I no longer recognize my own writing. I am failing to be heard. The only thing I thought was mine is gone.Well,except for him. But I don't want to talk about that because he is not the reason I am killing myself. I am killing myself because life is bringing me down and nothing is feels right anymore. He did not break me.But,God,I hope he cries when I am gone.I hope he thinks of me for days and weeks and years.That he spends so much time outside,alone,that he becomes like nature.The stars and I,the only supervision to the way a person breaks,

       Yours Truly,

                         Flora Hayes,Period 9

some days we leak --

weep through our souls.

seeps from the bone

and stains our

good clothes.

i'm awful tired of

mirrors and smoke.

don't help me see

clearer.

just obscures the road.

There is an Ancient Babylonian Priestess (or, more exactly, the de-fleshed spirit of an Ancient Babylonian Priestess) in my head. I don’t know how she got in there, but she wont stop chanting or sloshing my brain-jelly against the rim of my skull. She must have slipped in along with Steven King, DFW, public radio, loud rap music, Anne Sexton, John Dunne, and shouting family members. Words and syntax orbiting my head like branch-bowing fruit. So sweet. So wormy.

But it’s only ABP that makes me put out like this. Poetry, prose, shouting on the street: “Heavy bearded like I’m Jesus, circumcised like I’m Jesus, unhappy like I’m Jesus!” Why do you do it to me? Why do I feel anxious if I haven’t written in a few days? Tapping out a note or two on my phone helps but not a whole lot – steam from a kettle’s whistle. I write in a furry, alternately grinning and scowling, running my coffee-yellow tongue over my smoke-yellow teeth. What do you do to me, ABP? What do I do to you?

I use her so the reader sees exactly what I see. We layer images and characters like geological strata, burying dinosaur bones way down deep as irrefutable evidence of my existence, both holy and secular. Crushing coal into diamond and diamond into dust.

ABP: This sentence doesn’t quite work.

ME: Well, I’ll put some pressure on it.

That’s all I ever say to her, while she offers me fatty grains until my liver swells and I am diced all to bits for foie gras. She feeds me the courtroom sketches of Puerto Rican bomb makers, Icelandic demi-gods caught in a world that doesn’t want them, and Freudian epistles to dead friends – and I digest them any way I can, with an eye towards clarity, dynamic verbs, endings where circumstances make the hero eat shit, and uncompromising control. If you do not see what I see, I will run up on you in a balaclava and hooded sweatshirt, armed with similes and neologisms, and slug it out until you surrender all aesthetic prejudices.

We want you to feel what we feel, which is often “caustic glee.” A little boy from Massachusetts, who liked to torture black ants, grew up into a young man who likes to make his audiences uncomfortable. I hope my sentences make you cough and my chapters give you emphysema. My goal is to put a phrase or an image in your head like that pimple you are acutely aware of right now. Make it last for months, red and infected, until the blemish becomes just another aspect of your beautiful face. You’ll miss it when it heals.

Maybe I’m painting ABP too forcefully as a Dismal Diana, a lone trick phony. We can be upbeat. Some days, manic. ABP snuggles up sometimes, whispers to me, and licks the ridges of my ear. Those days I write about friends, dogs panting on the beach, and simultaneous orgasms. We find that all our writing is equal parts joy and sadness.

I write because ABP doesn’t have another outlet and my ego needs constant attention. I write because business majors make me want to vomit into their Blackhawk snapbacks. I write because writers have better drugs that make me vomit into their black stocking caps. I write because I read the sentence below on a plane from Barcelona to Ireland and giggled to myself for the whole trip, wiggling my body side to side like a toddler gumming cotton candy:

“He clawed at his shirt and ripped it open. It was fastened with snaps and it opened easily and with no sound. As if perhaps the snaps were worn and loose from just such demonstrations in the past. He sat holding his shirt wide open as if to invite again the trinity of rifleballs whose imprint lay upon his smooth and hairless chest just over his heart in so perfect an isoscelian stigmata” (The Crossing: Border Trilogy, Cormac McCarthy).

I mean, come on; fuck me, right? It’s passages like that that make me want to trek to the homes of my favorite writers and conduct a couple blood sacrifices, which all conclude with yours truly eating the raw heart of a fresh-slaughtered goat as a symbolic stand-in for the elder writers’ talents. Writers love symbolism. ABP loves raw flesh.

I was uncomfortable with the idea of being lost before ABP gave my cloud of words an animal shape. Solitary kid lying on a grassy green hillside. She teaches me about me, exposing values and ideas I didn’t even know I had. She tells me stories that I steal from her. Then I steal intimate personal life-details from drunk and chatty college kids and offer those to ABP. I am very easy to talk to. The trick is eye contact and to actually listen rather than waiting for an opportunity to speak; people are uncomfortable with silence, it’s amazing what they’ll tell you to avoid it. My eyes say, “I want to know, please tell me;” the spirit behind my eyes says, “I want to know, please tell me.”

Hooray for the ABP because I don’t care about much else; hooray because now I feel comfortable in places I’ve never been before, surrounded by people I’ve never seen; hooray for exposing myself and her thoughts to random people (e.g. fiction seminars); hooray for that flock of moths tickling in my guts before readings or workshops; hooray for people who unabashedly point out my weaknesses.

This is a serious thing we do. I don’t make jokes – I don’t have enough white space for jokes. People tell me they think my work is occasionally funny, and in our #postmodern world that’s fine, but every word they’re laughing at I laid like a judge at sentencing. I don’t make jokes. This is a serious thing. We (you, I, me, and ABP) might be laughing sometimes but laughter is one weighty pigeon in the shooting gallery of narrative.

“Write in joy; edit in sorrow.” I wrote that down half a year ago. I don’t know if it’s useful. I tend to go overboard in terms of language on first drafts and indulge myself. If being brought up in the social-media-soaked world has given me one pearl of insight – besides, I fucking despise social media – it is to always write it down. That’s my bulbous marble (if I’m flattering myself) in its natural amorphousness. Then I chip away, shave, and superglue as needed during the editing process. Final product: Micky Angelo’s “Davidian Cyclops.”

But, that’s why I write: possession.

This homework assignment took a left field-type tone. I’m not sure how to end this. Goodbye? Until next Thursday? Do you, ABP, want to blow smoky O’s and pop X pills until one of us gets tic tac toe? Do you love me? Do you think you could ever love me?

Eyes peeping

through the keyhole,

I can’t see the future.

Worried with fear of

approaching battle,

whispers of prayers

escape my steeple.

Loved one struggling,

holding on to dust,

splendid suns

setting on another shore.

Breezes promise to lift up

to peaceful skies.

Let me cry for a while

a part of the plan.

Worry not of future

and enjoy the now,

love will gently take

tired breath away.

Beams of gilded light

beckon with

deathly brilliance,

memories murmur

within my solitude.

Ocean waves glide in

and flow back out

Worry is brushed

with angel wings.