I woke up at 3 and felt rested. Then went back to sleep until 6 came along and wanted to cut all ties with the world. Just forget about what existed beyond that door and drift away into nothing. The prospect was so enticing that if a shadow had appeared offering me a deal, it would have been interesting to see what I would say.
“How they pull us back in. How they pull us towards the same.”
And I told Sara this and she smiled and gave me a lopsided look. Her hair brushing her shoulders down her back. She planted her hands on the ground.
“You live the most leisurely life I have ever seen. You’re spoiled. That’s the problem.”
She kissed me on the cheek and then looked hard into my eyes. “But I rather like you. All like that.”
I sighed. Then I lied down on the bed and in the changing sky. The day was coming slowly over this part of the world. And the sun was patches of warmth drifting along the lanes that were open and free. The yellow was stretching and we were stretching.
“I thought about that. And I don’t know. I think I’m tired.”
“Maybe you don’t do enough.”
She tickled me and then got up. Swinging her slender legs over the bed and touching her toes on the wood floor. Her unpainted nails were clear and they scratched her scalp. She flashed me a smile and in her underwear and a white t-shirt bounded out of the room.
All I did was lay there thinking about her. She was watching an old movie on the tv and I could hear the sounds. Almost like a record playing. The old dim glow coming through the bottom of my door and the light coming through the blinds of the window. I managed to harangue myself. My mind recoiled as if a parent were in the room lecturing me. But I was a wholly different matter. One that presented the problem of am I right? Am I lying to myself? I didn’t really know and wished dearly to look at those reports teachers made of students long ago.
John is a tiresome boy. He rarely speaks and when involved with another student often finds himself cuffing the boy on the neck or ear. Then the class erupts and the child slinks back into the corner watching his work with the side of his eye. And Shelly makes the boys cringe as she spits and curses. But she would be so beautiful if only proper and realized a woman’s place.
Those old notes scribbled on yellow sheets of paper and thrown together in a manila folder. I wondered now what they said about me. When they did say things about me? Now locked away in a file cabinet sitting in a storage room, marked the year when the student was there and the year that the student left. It made me wonder slightly how I was as a child. But that part of my life. Those years eluded me and I grew content lying there and taking out a cigarette.
I found a stray matchbook and lit the paper. Observing from the corners of my eyes the light slowly playing with the shadow. And the dark of the day with the morning. I puffed clouds of smoke and wrinkled my noise. Then rubbed my toes on the cold wood floor and managed to scratch the back of my ears and head. I could hear Sara laughing out in the other room and then a click. She strode back in and looked at me suspiciously.
“You’ve been cheating on me haven’t you?”
My eyes widened and I inhaled the smoke and let it sit while I took on my thoughtful face. This was a game Sara played with me. To make sure that her trust in me was never at fault. Which, wasn’t, because I could say I loved Sara and found her the most attractive and enticing woman I ever knew. Her features, edging on simple and exotic. Like a town in
“Because I could break your neck right now. And then who would pay for the burial. Not me.”
I grinned.
“There was a woman here just now. But she heard your light footsteps and left. She left and managed to sneak out of that window.”
I pointed to my window and the opening where the breeze squeezed on through.
“Didn’t you hear her over that ruckus from out there?”
Sara took the cigarette. She loved to smoke. She finished it off and blew the smoke away from my face and kissed me. She moved her hand through my boxers and I could feel an erection starting to form.
“Hmm. Was she pretty?”
I kept my eyes on hers and managed to grin while she moved her hand. She pushed me back on the bed.
“I’ve got to get up at some point.”
“But didn’t you say that it was all their fault? They want you to get up. I want you to stay just like you are. Right there. I'm not one of them.”
She smiled and laughed and I watched her green eyes dance in front of me. She stubbed the cigarette out on the ashtray near my guitar case and we had sex in the early morning with the light entering the panes. The slow fire dimming the dark and the day not dying. There was no sound. And silence drifted along the eaves of my house. With the ivy clinging tightly and the motions of our bodies caught the rhythm of everything outside.
The breeze drifted through. The cold of the morning wracked our bodies and fought with our personal warmth. I fell asleep after and Sara nudged her head and read a book from my bookshelf—Camus’s The Plague—while I fell far away and was dying already, with the breaking of morning and the forming of the day.
in a small ghost town, there's a little arcade
where the poltergeists play their video games
No comments:
Post a Comment