My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

Dear Diary,

Today I was so happy. I got to pet an adorable puppy and I adopted a basket of six tabby kittens from the nice lady walking the cute little puppy. Then, the ice-cream man gave me a free ice-cream sammich just because I’m SO nice and Jesus loves nice people, he said. I believe him because mamma tells me Jesus loves me all the time.

Nothing makes me sad, nope. Not ever.

I wonder if I’ll ever write my novella, my memoirs, something to be remembered.

I wonder if I’ll find my love, my muse, the death of my lonely.

I wonder if I’ll find my calm, my safe, the end of my nervous.

I wonder if I’ll die the way I think I may, slow and blue and quiet-like.

I wonder, and I wonder, then I wonder a little more.

She’d have left George Bailey so fast his Goddamn fucking head would have spun off. That’s how little she’s willing to take the shakes in her fellow.

And so he drowned a basket of kittens in a small lake at the heart of a peaceful wood. He explained to the unfortunate kittens why they had to drown and much to his surprise, the kittens understood.

They were, you see, very practical kittens, highly principled and empathetic toward the principles of others. So, while they weren’t particularly happy to be dying, especially in this particular manner, they understood the reason behind its happening, and solemnly accepted it.

They believed in Kitty Jesus and His Kitty Heaven, and so requested that they be allowed a simple kitty prayer. They were, of course, not denied this request before their end. They prayed:

Oh Kitty Jesus, we ask that You accept us into Kitty Heaven. Being that You’ve decided to fuck us over like this, us being adorable tabby kittens, innocent and free of sin, we figure it’s the least You could do.

Amen.

Thus ended their simple kitty prayer, and shortly thereafter, their kitty lives.

Having drowned the kittens he returned home, humbled and warmed from the experience.

The place is awash in dull-red and sickly-yellow light. A confederate flag is tacked to the ceiling, unimaginative lingerie hangs on a wire above the bar, bras of black and white. It’s loud, music you hate, so loud you can hardly hear the little voice in your head telling you you’d be happier leaving. The woman behind the bar has long hair, dirty-blonde, dressed in faded jeans and a white half-shirt. She’d almost be pretty, if she were really there, if her pale-blue eyes really saw you. You order a drink, a Cape Cod. It’s a classy drink for such a classless place. The woman, in fact, has to ask you what it is before sliding it to you in a cheap plastic cup. It’s mostly ice and cranberry juice, the vodka merely an after-thought. 

You sip your shiny red attempted alcohol, hoping to feel something rather than nothing. Johnny Cash begins to sing about one tragedy or another, you’ve heard them all and you don’t care. However, as the man in black tells you his troubles, the woman in white takes to dancing on the scuffed wood bar. You look up, she’s all motion and no life. She’s an illusion of sex, no heat, no kisses that feel like bites, or bites that feel like kisses. She’s a golem, a machine set to task. Her black leather boots slam and skitter, scratch and further scuff the pitiful bar, home to so many weak drinks.

You leave your still-born Cape Cod, barely touched, but it barely touched you, which seems fitting. The surrounding emptiness is too much, the golem too sad to watch. Lifeless life, stopping when the music stops. You leave your cash on the bar, probably too much, but enough to get you somewhere else. You don’t know where you belong these days, but you know it’s not here. You leave and don’t look back.

The night air is cold on your face, cold like you, through and through.

I died awhile ago, I think. I drowned in brandy, or scotch, or some sort of exotic fruit juice. I really can’t say anything with certainty, my mind is all dim, my vision fuzzy, like my eyes are covered in a thin veil of gauze.

Maybe I’m just asleep, a bizarre world created in my head. Nothing feels the same, looks the same, slightly askew from what I remember. Something obviously happened, must have happened. I just can’t remember, so many gaps. So many Goddamn fucking gaps. Can’t think. Can’t breathe. If I am asleep, I can’t wake up.

Or worse, maybe I’m still alive, alive and broken. A shattered mirror that can’t be fixed. Always covered in spidery cracks, reflecting nothing.

I think I died, though. Drowned, or something. I think, but I don’t know.

I’m a suicide party with no refreshments. I’ve no chocolates with razor-blade centers, no arsenic covered hors devours. I’ve no thalidomide wine to wash it all down. No waiters serving whole-grain crackers topped with a quick shotgun blast to the face. There are no crucifixes for one to hang one’s coat, or oneself. I’m a horribly under-staffed and under-stocked, poorly decorated wake not to be. I’ve but one lonely guest, and all I have to offer is time, time that they don’t want.

So I take a different path, different than I planned, different than I wanted. Neither path particularly easy, but the one from which I lost my way felt warmer, with pleasant scenery and the occasional comfortable place to rest. I miss that path, took it for granted.

Travel is never easy for we who travel, but it’s all we really know. It’s not in us to stop, we seek something unique to ourselves and cannot be at peace until we find it. Some of us wander forever, never to find that path that leads home, to that thing we need.

The paths, you see, are tricky, clever and ever-changing. They revel under the footfalls of a lost travelers. Without the traveler, a path has no purpose, they know it and they fear it. So they shift and change, distract us with shiny things when they sense we’re weak. They know us, and they hate us. They hate us, because they need us. We know this, but we need them.

I lost my way in an opiate fog, all turned around and glad to be so. I drank from a river of apple brandy, all my thoughts burned in liquor. It happened so quickly, what felt like an instant.

I wander now, nothing familiar, under a cold and indifferent night sky. Tired and weary, lost and lonely. The path is happy to hear my sorrows, a sadistic lover who keeps me and despises me.

He’s been on the road for so long, tired and weary. He travels, what seems to him, endlessly. It all looks the same after awhile, the road, the dreary sky, no matter where he is, everything gray. The people especially, gray, dull, empty. He stops from time to time, tries to fit into places, with people, but the world’s a puzzle and he’s a mismatched piece.

He remembers home, and he wants to go back. He misses home, but he can’t go back. The road is cold and lonely, as is he. He travels to forget, but he probably can’t. He might be dead, the road his Purgatory, but he really doesn’t know. He may never know, as is the nature of such travel. So he goes, his home far away, but never gone.

Water so hot, your entire body screams. Every inch of your skin burns white hot, then falls silent, numb. You can hear your own heart beating, loud and strong between your ears. Your chest rises and falls surrounded by steam. The feeling returns to your skin, conscious again from the initial shock. You lie back and close your eyes, heart pounding, thinking of her.

You remember her skin against yours, the heat and sweat. You remember the pain, the pleasure, the pleasurable pain. Bites and kisses, nails dug in and gentle caresses, sinking into scalding water. The line between ecstasy and agony is gone, burned away, there’s no difference between the two. You’re both dominant and submissive in turn, both knowing exactly how to play one another.

You don’t speak, and neither does she, not with words. You know other each on a visceral level, her breath on your face says I love you, I want you, take me, fuck me. Your eyes speak the same to her. She knows that you can’t stand much more, neither can she. She wants to see the look of release wash over your face. She takes you how she wants you, you can’t stop her. She won’t stop and you know it. You have no choices. She touches you beneath the hot water, slowly, then ever faster. You know what’s about to happen, your lack of choice doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, save for her touch and the look in her eyes. Beautiful, sinful, perfect.

You open your eyes and she’s gone. Your skin feels warm and alive with lingering pain. You remember her. You feel alive in the heat.