Category: themed issue

Sun, glorious sun, shine your rays of light upon me. For the light that you share with me is our secret, our sin. Not one shall yet know the joy we share together, in this black emptiness we call home. For you illuminate the way ahead for me, while I, tethered to this wet rock, grow more and more appreciative of your beauty. For not even you will know of my true feelings, of this music-less dance we dance.

My stride cuts through,

The bodies parting like a cream sea,

While heavy footfalls punctuate

A silence thickening the air,

Penetrating twin sets of lungs

And weighing them down

As if filled with marble.

 

The invisible brands

Burned into my skin without consent

Hiss at the bigoted.

Razor-sharp fangs display proudly,

Dripping with barely contained fury.

I am Medusa,

And they, the statues

They turned the water off a week ago and she hasn’t bathed since then. The power went a few days before that. She’s seven and too young to understand that those are things not freely given. Dad doesn’t talk about house stuff. He hasn’t talked at all in three weeks or more. She’s lost track of the days since he’s stopped. She doesn’t think about why he stopped, but he did, and so did the power, and now the water.

And she smells.

Dad never let her take long showers, and she only could every other day. He didn’t say why, and she didn’t mind. She used to like the dirt under her nails. At night she would pick her nails clean and when it was done she slept easily. Her nails are the only clean parts of her now. She’s all dried sweat, greasy hair, and whatever muck she fell in two days ago. Even she doesn’t like this kind of dirty, but the water is gone, and Dad’s no help, and she’s not sure where to go for a bath. At least Dad smells bad, too. Worse, she thinks. She smashed a towel under his door when the smell first started, but it keeps getting worse.

She spends most days outside. It stinks outside, too. Like all the trash and muck she fell in, but at least the wind makes it a little better. She feels cleaner outside. She avoids the trash and muck now like she didn’t before; reckoning that finding the odd broken toy or stained shirt isn’t worth making her any dirtier. She wanders. No one cares enough about her to pay any attention, and anyway it seems like something is happening now that everyone is running to see. She runs with them, because what else does she have to do anymore but explore.

She’s short and skinny and it isn’t hard to shimmy past hips and between legs. Everyone is talking and shouting all at once and she can’t hear what’s going on, but she gets closer to the front and can finally see what it is around all those hips and legs. Three men lie on the ground with guns in their hands. Their eyes are open and they look angry, but they’re not moving, and there’s blood running out of more places than she can find. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened here.

She keeps crawling forward until there’s no one left to shuffle past, and now she knows they’re all dead. A big man standing in the still-forming ring of strangers is the one who killed them. He’s so huge his body blots out the sky, like Dad, and skin like a hard leather shell. He puts his gun away, lights a cigar, and starts walking. Where he goes the strangers shove each other aside to make a path for him.

She follows, because what else does she have to do?

He’s strong and brave and he kills bad men. She knows they’re bad because Dad said there are men like The Big Man who do that for money, and he knew that because he used to be one. Dad said, with all of Earth burnt-up and worthless, the only way to make a dime was to round-up or put down the bad guys. Her dad keeps guns like theirs, on shelves she could never reach, not even with a chair. He promised her he would teach her to shoot them when she could get them down on her own.

She wonders if maybe The Big Man knows Dad, and if he could help her. At some point cops will come to her house and then they’ll find Dad and she’s not sure where they might take her but she is sure she wouldn’t like it. For all that he is strong and brave, The Big Man  is still scary, all scars and old tattoos, and so she follows at a distance, hiding behind steps and walking beside strangers like she knows them. It doesn’t matter, she thinks, he doesn’t see me. She inches closer, and one of his tattoos looks familiar; an “M” with three rings around it, like a planet.

The Big Man stops, turns to look at her.

“Whaddya doin’, kid?” The Big Man says around the cigar in his mouth. She doesn’t know what to say, but she looks him in the eyes anyway because she thinks he might like her if she seems brave like him. He has to like her or he won’t help her. Vieva’s sick of eating things she finds or steals. She wants to be clean again, and warm. She knows she needs someone to look after her. She needs someone to fix her Dad.

“My Dad needs help.” she says finally, “He got sick.” He takes the cigar out of his mouth and taps the ash off the end. It feels like forever before he answers.

“Come on.” he shoves the cigar back in his mouth.

He’s following her now. Down one street and left at another; on and on in all different directions. It’s the only route she knows, and he seems annoyed that it isn’t more direct. After a few minutes of silence he asks for her name.

“Genevieve,” she mumbles and makes a face.

He nods, and she thinks he might be smiling a little, but that stupid cigar looks as big as her arm and maybe it makes him pull funny faces. He’s not smiling when she opens the door. He looks scared. Or maybe that’s surprise. He knows the smell. Vieva wants to run. He could tell everyone her secret. The Big Man makes her close the door and stay put, and he disappears down the hall where her Dad is. Vieva hears him swear after he opens the door. The smell she’d tried so hard to hide is everywhere, and too strong, and she throws up before she can try and make herself stop.

“You gotta mom somewhere, Genevieve?”

She’s wiping her mouth when he comes back and she’s not sure she can talk without throwing up again, so she shakes her head no and rubs her fists against her eyes to hide the tears there. He asks for more family, and she shakes her head for every answer. Only Dad. The Big Man chews on the end of his cigar and paces for a minute or two while Vieva shakes with fear.

“You can come with me ’til I figure out what the hell to do with you,” he says with a shrug. He’s headed for the front door without waiting for an answer from her.

“Wait!” He looks at her over his shoulder, his hand poised above the handle of the front door. “What about Dad?”

“Nothing we can do now, kid. Better that someone else finds him.”

Vieva nods. There’s an awful feeling in her stomach, like she wants to be sick again, but there’s nothing left. “I want to get something.” She darts off down the hall to his room, determined not to breathe in the smell. Inside, Mike used the towel she’d stuffed under the door to cover his face. It’s good, she thinks. She doesn’t want to see him. She won’t leave if she sees him, she’s sure of it. Vieva grabs the jacket from his closet, the one with the M on it, and the pretty pearl-handled knife he kept on his end table. It has his name on it.

“You done yet –” Vieva’s standing in front of him before he finishes, mouth pressed into a hard, determined line. He nods and opens the door. “I’m Mike.”

“Call me Vieva,” she follows, hugging the jacket close. “I like Vieva better.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The

anxieties of

my day build:

an empty stomach and

caffeine overdose guarantee I won’t

easily focus in Greek today. On

Academic Row, I’m convinced every laugh overheard

is at my expense – it follows me to

my dorm room. When I work, focus eludes me,

making one verb conjugation take an hour. What is relaxation?

All I know is the tightness in my chest, shallow breaths,

and innumerable bodily aches. Neurosis sleeps at the foot of my bed;

She wakes me by gripping my heart, a loyal companion at the very least.

Some days I wish She would at least take a day off, but then

She’s been with me for so long, I’m not sure how I’d fill Her space.

 

 

“I do not know how to explain it, really. Once when I was younger, my family was having a barbeque in our backyard. My dad was cooking and my mom brought all the plates and condiments and whatnot outside. There was a little table thing next to the grill where my mom left out tongs and an oven mitt for my dad to use. After she went inside to get more of the stuff we needed for the meal, my father just looked at what my mom left him on the table and pushed it onto the patio table, annoyed. I was a kid and did not get why he was annoyed, so I asked. He just said, “Your mother is always doing goofy shit.” I did not think it was goofy shit. I thought she was nice for going out of her way to help him even when she has her own tasks to take care of before we could eat dinner together.”

I knew that this might make my father seem like an asshole, so I just concluded with, “I don’t know. I think about that sometimes, even today.”

“Okay, so why do you think it impacted you so much to the extent that you still think about it?” My therapist always annoyed me when she asked questions like this. Her name is Bonnie and she is old as shit and knows nothing about what I am talking about, but I promised I would go to at least five of these God-forsaken sessions.

So, I humored her, “Well, my mom does stuff like that. She goes out of the way to do nice things. Tries to get thoughtful gifts, randomly helps out and stuff. Dad never did that and apparently didn’t even appreciate it when she did.” I felt weird about telling her this and feel like she is going to judge my family. She doesn’t even know my family.

“Okay, now we are getting somewhere. Let’s explore this a little more. Did that incident change your outlook on love?” She scrawled in that stupid little, red notebook some fake-important notes about my unimportant, and quite frankly, irrelevant story. She was just doing her job and I know this, but I still have to resist the urge to tell her to fuck off.

Seriously though, my outlook on love? What is she even talking about? This is totally unrelated. But, again, this is my last session and there was about forty-five minutes left, so I relaxed and simply said, “It didn’t.”

But, I don’t know. Maybe it did.

No. No, it didn’t. This is how they get you to pay so much for these stupid things. They convince you that you’re so fucked up that you just have to keep coming back before you end up killing yourself.

Bonnie didn’t like my answer, as I suspected she wouldn’t, so she frowned ever-so-slightly and tried again, “Okay, so how has it impacted you?”

She sucks, man. I paid her to tell me this stuff. I sighed and decided to just start talking, thinking that hopefully I could babble on dramatically enough to waste enough time so that I could get out of there before she had the chance to ask anymore of her questions and could just diagnose me with something.

Doctors, well psychiatrists in this case, are never happy unless they give you some meds that you don’t need that will have so many side-effects that you were better off in your previous state. The system was mind-numbingly easy for me to comprehend, but hard to rebel against.

I look around her office a little and see smiling pictures of Bonnie’s family and friends who are probably just as messed up as I am in their own way and decide to focus on a picture of a vase of flowers, because at least flowers can’t smile, and started, “I don’t get it, is all. My mother showed her love in such obvious ways. She made it so that I could never question if she loved me. I knew without a doubt. My old man was gruff. He worked his ass off at a shitty job for his entire life for the family. I appreciated that, but that was all he gave us. How hard is it to say good job to someone? Or say that you are proud of someone?”

I stopped looking at the flowers and looked back to Bonnie. Suddenly I wasn’t even mad at her anymore.

“Matt, I am not sure if you noticed, but this story was not about your parents. It was about the way your dad treated you.” Bonnie looked excited about her little break-though. I wasn’t so impressed. I know that I hate my dad, but this lady isn’t allowed to. Okay, I guess I don’t really hate him. He just kind of sucks, but he is family and the cliché ‘only I can talk bad about my family’ is all too real. I was right back to being annoyed with Bonnie. Surprise, Surprise.

So, I tried to do some damage control.  “My dad is a good man.” I said this knowing that I believed it, kind of, but I resented him a lot too. My thoughts were always jumbled during these sessions and I just wanted to go home.

“You tell me he is a good man all the time, Matt. Other times you contradict yourself. That’s okay, honestly. I think we are getting somewhere because I am starting to get you thinking about ways to deal with your past, but we are almost out of time for today, so I have an exercise I would like you to try when you get home, okay?”

Dear God. I thought this lady was adorable for thinking I was ever going to think back to this experience, let alone do any homework. I am thirty-eight years old, for Christ’s sake. But, I knew she would try to keep me for more sessions and I didn’t want to deal with the struggle, so I just said, “Okay, I will.”

She smiled a genuine smile and wrote something on her red notebook. I looked at the clock. It was exactly three minutes until I never had to see, hear, think of, or talk to Doctor Bonnie L. Schwanski again. I kept my eyes on the clock until she finished writing and handed me the paper.

I took it and read, “Call your dad.”

I haven’t seen my old man in years. Damn it, Bonnie.

I looked up after reading it and again said, “Okay.”

I felt like I had turned into a child who needed to listen to his parents. I noticed her glancing at the clock and as our eyes met she started to dismiss me from her office in order to mentally prepare for the next asshole that walked in here with some sob-story about how hard it is to live and be happy in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Blah, blah, blah. I guess sometimes people just can’t be happy even when they have every reason to be. I knew this because that person is me.

I got up to leave Bonnie. She started to wish me well and gave one last attempt to get me to keep coming back for more sessions, but I had to make sure I stopped her before she had the chance to finish. Sorry Bonnie, I can’t stay in this creepy little hospital room anymore.

I cut her off, “Thank you for everything. I will give my dad a call.”

I closed the door as soon as I got the words out and practically ran to my car. It is a seventeen year old car, barely runs, and needs to have the bumper fixed from an accident last year, but it has never looked so pretty to me. As I got in and started to drive the twenty-nine minute drive to get back to my crappy apartment, I thought about what Bonnie said, even though I tried hard to just drive and clear my mind.

I lit a cigarette and let the smoke roll out of the windows. Cigarettes help and I hate that. The wind in the car picked up as I accelerated and blew Bonnie’s little assignment around on the seat just a tad. It irritated me that I considered this to be a cosmic message from the universe, but only for a split second and then I came back to earth.

“Okay, relax.” I reminded myself out loud as I grabbed the note, stuffed it in the cup holder and put an old coffee thermos on top of it. I swear that I’m addicted to coffee. I get twitchy without the damn stuff. The cup reminded me that I am due for about my forth cup today, so I decided to treat myself and stop off at one of the little Indie places that I never go to. I liked the mainstream stuff, it was simple to order because it never changed, but I did not want to go out of my way and Starbucks was in the opposite direction. Besides, I needed a change and the place looked pretty empty. The last thing I wanted to deal with was people, especially those who were in need of coffee.

I noticed that the place was pretty nice as I entered. I walked up to the young, teenage girl at the counter. She was cute and happy, exactly what I was hoping to avoid. God, when did I become such a cynic and a pessimist?

I looked at the menu above her happy little head, even though I knew exactly what I wanted.

“How can I help you?” Heather, as her name tag indicated, asked me and cocked her head to the side.

What are you so happy about? You are at work and work sucks. Of course, I did not really say this. All I said in reply was, “Tall Espresso.”

I paid her and decided that I would sit down and actually drink my coffee in the shop for once. I never did this, but again, I justified this action with the hell I just put myself through for the last hour. Honestly, we barely scraped the surface of what I needed to talk about, so it’s good that I cut Bonnie off at five sessions. I would be broke soon if I kept it up. I also really needed to cut down on how much money I spend on coffee each week. It was pretty substantial. I was happy to find myself considering smaller problems that really could be solved with a little dose of self-control and allowed myself to get lost in this small victory. I had a sane moment and sipped my coffee and felt almost…happy.

I looked at the clock. It was five-thirty and I noticed that the 9-5ers were starting to come in and get their coffee on their way home. I felt their pain. Work really sucks, man. These people needed to stop and get some caffeine just to make it home semi-alert so they could be awake enough to eat dinner and then crash in front of the television at nine-thirty. The next morning they wake up and do the same damn thing over and over again. This had always been sad to me. We literally worked hard to accomplish our dreams only to find that we were worn out after a few years. The goals we worked so hard to achieve seem so mundane and meaningless that we eventually turned into zombies. I decided I needed to get out of the coffee shop now, before all the people rushed in to prove my cynicism true.

As I turned around to leave, I saw how the line had already grown and the perky cashier did not look as happy anymore. I am satisfied with my choice to leave and with her snap back to reality from whatever the fuck la-la land she was in when she took my order just a little while earlier.

I reach the door and nearly run over some short, stocky, balding man. I went to mumble a quick, “Sorry,” but I stopped in my tracks.

At the threshold of the coffee shop was my old man. He was older and uglier, but still just as familiar as ever.

I stared blankly for a moment and he was the first to speak.

“Hi, son.”

Pause.

“Hi, dad.”

For a moment I was not sure where to go from there, but I ended up saying, “Do you want to get some coffee?” before I had the chance to stop myself.

He smiled an actual smile.

“Okay.”

I turned around and we walked in together.

Under my breath I sighed and mumbled, “Fuck you, Bonnie.”