Flamingo

She stood alone.
Perched upon dangerously high heels with the ease that comes of expertise. The majority of her attractive long legs bare until they slid into her short snug dress. She had turned heads while strutting through the throng of people on the way to her current position on the veranda, where she stood the picture of the lean feminine figure.
There was noise behind her, rumbling with the expected infusion of bass, slippery with the muddy sound of innumerable disconnected conversations. The sound was oddly away, held back by the heavy french doors, and seemingly omnipresent.
What were they celebrating? It was an event of that she was sure- but for what she didn't know. From the waist high wall she could see it was the facade of an occasion, the obligatory white lights and the faux fauna, decorations with personality that rang akin to bells that could only make the sound of echos.
 A space filled with shiny things.
She had returning to staring out at the night. I could fill all the space between me and those doors with the things I don't know. But that wasn't true she realized, not for lack of things she did not know but because nothing, nothing could have filled that gap.
And she had tried.
Perhaps then it was just an excuse to wear her favourite pair of flashy shoes and to parade the expanse of wandering eyes, champagne flute in tow.
'Refill?', she turned at the question, not the least bit concerned by the suddenness of a strangers' voice, content with the false sense of safety in the glitter and the little white lights. A boy, tie undone and disheveled brown hair. Drunk, it was the looseness of the shoulders and the induced courage that prompts one to walk through a party with a bottle in hand, that let her know.
She extended her glass, limp wrist. He poured, unaware of protocol, to the top and leaned into the stone railing.
He was not un-cute. But he had a boyish grin, I've had my fill of boys she thought. She had not wanted to be be alone, one of the reasons she had come with someone else, yet so often such a thing is inevitable and so now she was alone with this other boy outside a party.
'I like your pink dress.', he said. He was looking at her, she was staring out in the dark, a dark that swallowed without complaint or hunger the light and the noise that poured out from the building.
'It's coral.' she responded, the champagne was sweet on her lips.
'Are you sure?', he ran his hands on the railing he had propped himself against,'feels like cement.'
'My dress,' she drank, 'is coral.'
'Oh. Pink, coral, whatever, they're the same thing.', he responded dismissively. Boys are so stupid she thought.Only a boy would think pink was coral. They just don't get it. Oh, they would say that it's trivial but it's not there's a difference. Pink is not coral and pouring into a girl's glass from a room temperature bottle is not buying her a drink and the planned look of indifference in not brushing one's hair isn't confidence and wearing a tie doesn't make a boy a man.
She sighed with more force than she intended but with less disdain than she felt.
'Want to go in and dance?' She considered turning and giving him a look, well honed, that would chill his blood but couldn't rally the care required to do so. So instead she just shook her head. She felt her hair, soft and light, brush against her bared shoulders. She missed noticing the sound of his departing steps while she mused on how wonderful such a trivial thing could feel, the brushing of her hair while standing before the comforting, indifferent black maw of the night.
In a large swallow she finished her drink. After doing so she turned towards the doors and the party, light caught the circular rim and base of her empty glass. She liked champagne flutes, their slenderness, their understated elegance. They were, she thought, classier than their close cousin the sensual and seductive Martini glass. A time and a place for all things she thought and then remember where she was.
She turned again to the dark that prowled out beyond the veranda and without a thought dropped the glass over the ledge, it shattered half a moment later. At first shocked by what she had done she then almost immediately realized that she dropped it just to hear the lovely sound of its breaking.

dinner

the restaurant is in the throes of the saturday night rush.
conversations elbow for room in each booth and lounge underneath heavy shaded lamps in fashionable jeans and print dresses.
eyelashes bat and lips move and laughter strokes the flames of the purely ornamental candles so that everything feels fluid, feels like the whole pulsating, ragged scene is natural.
in this midnight maelstrom, for me there’s only you.
drinks come.
you handle your martini glass, your fingers lithe to match the stem, with a practiced indifference.
eyes are made over the lip of the menu,
i pretend i care about calamari more than the slightest flush to your skin set in ivory.
the waitress comes, flat eyes behind librarian glasses.
i think she dislikes you for the timbre of your voice snakes through the din
and that each curve of your form contrasts to this place’s time honed ordinariness
you’re unsure
i await your leisure
you order then i order and then we’re left to our voices
and my poorly disguised attention
the cardigan comes off and the verdigris dress you’re wearing hangs with a calculated carelessness
the simplest of set ups
i’m entrapped
between the spun golden columns of your curls
breaks the evilest of smiles
fueled mostly by my inquiries you start to ramble on freely
and i wonder if anyone has stopped to ask you questions,
or inquired with hope that you’d open one of the doors of your heart
i turn a phrase, a laugh, a joyous fragile ringing genuine sound, springs forth
in your eyes i see more surprise than i felt

what do you call an escape if you never meant to get away?

Approach under the streetlight unwanted like salvation pouring from a pulpit beyond the individual illuminated unwavering curtains of light the dark seemed infinite only sound cut through respirations of life rising and falling voices two blocks off i see her at the balcony hair in hallow gold curls lips in a smirk exposed skin at the shoulders and long legs i see and she sees and her smirk breaks into a smile and my insides twist and everyone can see a pitcher of lynchburg lemonade bleeds through the iron wrought tables the girls smash spent cigarettes into ashtrays the tabled cluttered with the over turned shot glasses upon which we had counted coup in the brief moment between what was and what will be we have budded and bloomed and we stave off the inevitable withering with each choral wave of laughter skin drawn taunt over spine my fingers trace innocent shapes everyone talks we kiss order drinks engage disengage fingers at the back of my neck our companions shoot us amused looks we are apathetic i am enthralled she is aware all along circling conversations like vultures await the death knell of the night the last lovely note of the ignored guitarist each shift of her hips on my lap intentional look back over bare shoulder a knowing barb a carefully executed ploy and affection brushing of lips at the neck i quickly bite her exposed ear discretion feigned shock her cruel smile that feeling in my stomach she grabs my jaw eyes lock a brief unnoted moment we have crossed a line the issue is not behavior the last note the emptiness of air we turn to tabs everyone pays in cash there is a shuffle of chairs there are lights in the trees that never shed leaves in absence of music the garden collapses.

after midnight one's own heart is the only thing more treacherous than a girl's smile

they drift away, without saying goodbye, fade away like ghosts. the crowd never thins, or never seems to, he would just look up from time to time to realise that he knew less and less of the people in pulsating mob of drunken bodies. he couldn't blame them, sneaking off to perform their midnight vespers of the flesh and teeth. he knew that was how she would leave, she had done it so many times before, slipping out between the reverb, leaving only the slightly bruised semi circular indentions of her teeth, from when she had bitten him a handful of moments before, on his left pectoral. he saw it happen. had a moment, a few poundings of the 808 to decide, swallowed most of his drink on the way to the door behind her. she had cut across the near empty street, he imagined she had crossed quickly pacing the strides of her long lovely legs. ten steps back from her he called her name not much louder than a whisper. she turned, her face one of poorly feigned surprise. it was all a game, he knew that: arrive, taunt, tease, flee, be chased, be caught, flee again. any of the disdain that should have been present at such an obvious confirmation of all his previous assumptions was gone though as soon as she leaned into his chest.

the pier

the pier, jutted out into the sea, rising up above the besieging waves, on cement legs. Along its length men held long rods, finger width spires trailing nylon whispers into the grey waters.
the wind railed against him, and her- he shivered and her laugh sprang up, was caught in, and was quickly dispersed. out on the shimmering blue horizon the sun, an obtuse orange disk plunging to the sea. he was trying to put it into words, she was feeding greedy sea gulls kettle chips from her purse.
there was no point in thinking too hard about it he thought. the sun was going to down, the wind was not going to stop, she was going to get on that plane tomorrow. he thought he heard music coming out through the glass less windows of the bar they had walked passed.
it was all dissolving so quickly, the light to his right, each delightful explosions of her laughter, the bourbon induced warmth at his lips and nose. she caught him looking at her, tucked a rebellious dark length behind her ear, smiled, responded in turn to the chorus of cries from the birds with an explanation that the chips were gone.
there was no reasoning with the birds, or the retreating sun, or the pounding waves.
a weathered black man near the edge called out. from his rod dangled a shark, maybe a foot in length. reeled in and thrown down onto the gritty cement pier, it's black shiny eyes, confused, spasmed as a crowded circled to stare. he looked over a shoulder for a second.
voices from the crowd commented on its bared dangerous prepubescent teeth. braver onlookers knelt near the head for pictures.
the white underside appeared appeared so soft and innocent.
she had wandered down the pier. in each direction water pulled back again and again the veil of the beach. the gulls had disappeared. he wanted another drink, there was so much sound. he noticed lights coming on in the houses that ran like a wall the length of the beach.
he was losing track of time, the colours were all changing, the individual noises blurring together.
she called out and waved him to her. his eyes met hers. this too was ending, met yesterday, gone tomorrow. he smiled at distance to her, the wind whipped through her hair and her silk turquoise scarf. he started to walk towards her.
but stopped. everything was suddenly silent, still. he turned around.
the crowd, a circle of vacant faced statues.
the shark had stopped jerking. the beautiful thing had fled. the sun set too, he noted, had ended without him seeing it. he was cold.
he began to walk down the pier, he couldn’t see her.
he forewent going to the bar. went to the beach, kicked off his sandals. the water raked his feet and clawed heavily into the bottoms of his jeans.
the wind again, charged off the water.
someone hoisted the grey limp form of the shark over the side and dumped it into the water. he supposed that they had meant to revive it by returning it to the sea. but he thought that was not the way life worked, for sharks or sunsets.
or for men.
perhaps most of all for men.
there was comforting about the brutal indifference of it all. it was all the same. pulled away by the waves, or lost in the wind, or fading on the horizon, or ceasing on the pier.
or so he told himself.
and then, he felt a hand take his hand.

The Girl From New Hampshire

The was film on everything, he felt. His eyes, joints of his bones, his soul. Residue of a misspent night. The shower hadn't been able to wear away the subtle smell of the hot tub. Dry hands, sore finger tips.
The ballroom was a garden of people varying from the most tightly trimmed trees to unseemingly, unkept shrubs. Moving in pace to the ringing of hundreds of glasses, the sound of the disjointed gentle collisions of various pieces of silver.
He saw her approaching immediately, a stormcloud in a sundress.
The dark lengths of her hair fell amongst her bared shoulders in a heavy down pour.
At arms length she stopped, defensive posturing, her eyes were lovely and hard to read.
He felt the room shimmer, or shift just a bit, to the right, or perhaps it was just his imagination, the feeling of a shifting, a slipping away.
She had a face that could clear the air.
- I'm never going to see you again am I?- she asked. He smiled at the sweetness of the question.
- It's unlikely- he didn't lie, it seemed it unfaithful to lie to the sad music of her voice.
- Then why did you kiss me last night?- No tremble of contained anger, just a faint confusion.
- Because I wanted to know- He looked down into her eyes, and she kept his gaze.
- Know what?-
- What can only be known by kissing someone-

a crow

The casualties had grown, smothered ends, a pile of brown filters.


She kept them to the side, away from him, she sat on the ground, as did he. Her legs crossed, back against the peeling paint walls of the porch. He sprawled out, laying on side, propped up on an elbow.

He made some comment, she laughed without really hearing what he said. He was in one of those rare moods, pleasant, entertaining. It was unusual, unexpected. The sun was in decline. it feels like two falls ago. or was it spring? how could i forget? the light is so different between fall and spring. the days feel nothing alike. but i’ve lived this feeling before, i remember this. was it fall or spring? when am I remembering?

Clumsy fingers into the box. A survivor heard but evasive. He rolled onto his back. She found the cigarette. They looked out into the parking lot, she turned to him. He was staring at something, she couldn’t figure out what. A few besieged trees, a handful of silent browbeaten cars was all the lot held. there’s more grey in his hair. a lot now. and some in that silly beard of his, as if anything could hide that still boyish smile.

inhale.

-You should move down. You could move in here. It’d be fun.- Him

exhale.

-Yeah it would-

-We could get giant black and white posters- Him

-An Elvis one? When he was young. And a Michael Caine one?-

-Was Michael Caine ever young?-Him

She laughed. Or did she? Or had she been laughing the whole time? when was this moment i am in again? A crow landed in an empty parking spot. His voice again in the background. She was never going to move in with him she knew, and so did he.

It was okay, they carried on.

She stared at the bird. i don’t think i’ve ever seen a crow so black, its feathers dark, depthless but somehow they’re still distinct. the sort of dark you could never see through, only stare into, like the black of space, like the black of time. when was that time? that feeling? She could smell bourbon. He had gone quiet, as had she. The bird cocked its head to look at her.

And she realized she was wrong.

The bird was not black, it was an inexplicable dark blue.

And she realized she was wrong.

She hadn’t been remembering a time, she had been remembering the sound of her own laughter.

Because I used to love you

The Tree rose, in youth, out of the square of exposed earth in the concrete courtyard. Steady, straight. Stone structures loomed above It, boxed It in. The tree grew, peeled at Its trunk, spread at Its joints, stretched at Its tips. It shared in season Its passing leaves with the unappreciative patterned cement surrounding ground.  Then in time It stopped, potential growth contained by the small space into which it had been born. Repetition then deadened any sense of the passing of time. Rain came and went. The sun moved in repetitious cycles, pathing across the sky. The many shades of the sky became monotonous. Eventually the tree became indifferent to the indifference of Its surroundings and then inevitably forgot that it was even a tree at all.