Memories That Survive

Written many years ago. I've often tried to not explain this piece being that it's fairly obvious.

A fateful day would be too dramatic. 

It was more or less an ordinary day, as they always are it seems. It rained in the morning, I remember that well. I got splotches of mud against my crisp, white pants. I think I smiled or maybe I didn't that day. My brain forced my heart to forget certain things, but just because you can't see clearly through a window it doesn't mean you're blind. 

But sometimes, I wish I was. 

Hours later, there I was. Naked for you. I can't remember why, but there had to be a good reason, there's just no other way it would happen. I wondered what would happen if the priest next door would have seen through your blinds to the living room.  

Again, not blind. 

Your touch was like a barrel of a gun; cold, menacing . . . deadly. To say I was shot through the heart by your bullet of molested trust is an understatement. I was utterly decimated when your hand left my chest. It travelled down my stomach like a hungry spider as it crept lower and lower until— 

The tears came.  

Like the window previously mentioned, my rebellious eyes tried to fight away the image, the touch . . . the smell. It stank of shame mixed with absolute guilt. I know my soul was condemned to Hell the day I stepped into your car. The brown muddy specks on my pants told me that. 

But it didn't end there. 

"It's our secret," you whispered as I peered at the priest's house. I wanted faith to save me but does faith work like that? One can't ever be truly sure. My eyes were still blinded by the tears in my heart as I nodded my head. That wasn't the only movement. A soft bobbing ebbed from your arm and I knew what you were doing. I felt so exposed to you and you smiled . . . you smiled at a child. 

But was I? I was old enough to know better. 

Or so I thought, but nevertheless, I scampered to my room and cried against the door. I've never cried tears that silently before. It was as if a cougar had torn out my throat and lecherously watched me as I cleaned up the blood it made. Speechless horror, really. But still, that's dramatic. 

This isn't supposed to happen to boys—to anyone. I remember later, I crept out of the house and stared at the street of roaring cars. I contemplated throwing myself in front of any speeding vehicle just to make the damn tears stop. I'd rather be a oily blob of flesh against the asphalt than a broken human. Only, thoughts like that made the tears come faster. It was like my eyes ruptured and they wouldn't fix themselves. 

But they did fix themselves. 

As did I. Time went on and I remember hearing about your illness. I remember seeing you before you died. In a bed with no idea as to where you really were. Time had made your sanity plead guilty to all sorts of suspect mental disorders. 

Now, you're dead and I'm still alive. To me, you are a buried memory and someday you will leave my mind. But your stench will never leave my body. Your fingers traced numbers across my thighs and I still carry the ghostly scars across my skin. I still can't be in a relationship without crying over the mere mention of touch.  I remember the way you made me feel. 

Memories that wither and die only to become one with the void of lost space are nothing compared to the memories that survive.

Somewhere

The pounding of Skechers against crumbling pavement mirrored the ache in my head. One breathe in, two out or something like that. I lost count when the beats of Kelly Clarkson guided my troubled mind from byzantine concepts like counting. Just as the elongated weeds and sprawls of goat heads monopolized the road, I too, snaked my way around corner after corner.

Somewhere along the path I freed myself of something.

I became whole again. With the air, the planet . . . all of creation. My lungs struggled to keep up with thoughts of freedom and I pressed myself harder. Fingers were clenched in a tight ball as I streaked across a hill. I felt it now, felt it all over.

Acceptance. That fear itself was leaking from myself.

Sweat beaded against my forehead and I fought a burning sensation in my eyes. I blamed it on sweat, but totally knew better. I looked back, partially to check for traffic but to see if my past would catch up. Of course, it wouldn't. How strange the anthropomorphism our hearts construct in a desire to find a darkness.

I knew I could continue on.

The shadows grew in strength as did I. From within, I found the energy to put on a burst of speed. As I did, the shadows released me and sunlight blasted my face. For the first time in a very long time, I felt powerful. Not in an egotistical way, mind you, in a way that only perseverance and sheer force of will can conjure. I felt like me.

I rather like that feeling.

One last look behind my shoulders and I eyed the hill. We'd meet again and for all the high I feel today, at this moment, it will come back another day. Another time. I don't mean from the run. This is coming from within. It's all allegorical anyway. That hill could be anywhere. That burning sensation can stem from anything. Those sweaty tears can be caused by so many things. I just hope the next time I feel such unity with all of eternity that I can savor it again.

Somewhere along the way, we have paths to navigate, shadows to cross and sun to feel.

And Then

Slivers of moonlight skate across my face. A coyote howls in the distance, its echo carried by the lazy breeze of midnight's presence. I counted two lights in the distance, now only one remains. My fingers brush up my arms: goosebumps. May giving birth to June leaves cool nights in the place of warmer days.

The subdued hue of night always brought a smile to your face. We'd streak across the field and camp at the pond. Starlight reflecting off our eyes. Our feet wet from dew and irrigation water. Mosquitos would swarm us but we didn't care. We heard more animals then; more signs of life.

Your arms were hot from being on a tractor all day. Your skin, sticky from sweat mixed with dirt. It's never the big important things one remembers. Weddings, parties . . . none of that. It's the making you a ham sandwich with tomatoes and having my cheek kissed in gratitude. It's watching the field change from green to yellow bales of hay.

It's the ache of a coyote's howl.

The things lost in a lifetime are immeasurable. The memories forged innumerable. Each day happens with such tremendous velocity its down to autonomous programming to simply keep our bodies alive and hearts beating. I remember putting my hand on your chest. Thump. Thump. Thump.    It reminded me of the thump of a hay baler. You'd turn and listen ever so carefully for that one knock that didn't sound just right. Only you'd know. That one erroneous thump.

Then, it was all about moving out . . . reaching for the heavens and sky above. Staying alive and keeping with the rhythm of humanity. I had started a new job and you were still in the field. We were the forces of unity in our home. I still made sandwiches.

I stare in the distance. Stars began to swirl in the sky as the egotistical moonlight waned. Colorful mountains became dark and imposing as trees crested the ridges like jagged teeth ready to devour the universe. I swirled the pond's water that night we camped, our reflections distorting outward. The drift apart then was comical and expected.

I feel so small here. No lights to guide me. Even the stars are cruel and emotionless. I heard another howl and looked out one last time. No more lights. I grew quiet, stilled my breath and recalled one final moment before this night owl found its perch. A night not dissimilar to the pond. A night where feet were wet and my hands were all over you but not because they wanted to be. Your skin was rubbery and I ached for starlight in your eyes.

I remember putting my hand on your chest.

Momentum

Seconds melt into minutes

minutes echo into days

Held breath, heavy heart

Greeting the future is impossible

The past even more fleeting

Lacrymal rupture, unspoken pain

Experience distilled is memory

Absence thereof being not at all

A blink, a movement

The things we dream-nay-desire

when hope's suffocating from fire

Suffer not, regret none

Safe stillness verboten

Life craves crushing momentum

Simple Crush

I really enjoy this piece. The idea that a relationship is a structure with two people holding it up is intriguing. Once it falls though . . .

It wasn't simple.

Your hands shook and I did nothing to control them. The world around us was crumbling like the crust on a dry piece of bread and we tried to stop the eventual suffocation. We struggled to maintain the walls as frigid night peeked through the cracks in the rooms until light relinquished hope and vanished.

The structure wouldn't last.

I knew that. You knew it as well. We should've taken what was ours and left with integrity intact. Instead, we fought the cavernous reckoning. Sweat rolled off my face as my cheeks pressed against the increasingly heavy wall. Your arms were shoved against two picture frames. Only through the voids in noise did I notice your strangled breathing.

And then we had our backs to each other.

I didn't leave and neither did you. Our fates were known as the world finally crushed us with a voracious crunch. We thought dividing to conquer would work. It didn't. It wasn't that simple. If only we would've held the walls together, instead of trying to save our selfish flesh. Then, we wouldn't be under the weight of smashed love, slowly dying without even knowing where it went wrong.

The answer was that simple.

Color Of Defiance

Someone once mentioned I should flesh this out into a novella. I don't know. Perhaps?

"Hide it! Cover it now!" Shouted a man in drab gray clothes. Behind him, a woman marched with her gaze on her hands. Hidden in her hands was a small square of color; a photograph. Around them, a world of gray walls merged with the colorless sky. In her ears, she heard her husband scream at her, but the plodding of her footsteps hypnotized her as she played back the year in her mind.

A soft rumble, however, broke through her thoughts like that of a bullet through a heart. Like a bullet through her son's heart. Her fingers pressed against the photograph as her fingernails flashed white—a stark contrast from her pale complexion.

She knew the Council would sentence her to death.

"Hide it!" The husband screamed again, his voice concerned yet oddly robotic.

"His name is Alex," the wife stated clearly.

"He has no name."

Her eyes glanced at her number-tag on her left breast pocket. A brief sequence of numbers peered at the world from their gray confines. Her vision returned to the photograph; her world of color.

"I can't hide him anymore," her mind flashed to the room she kept her son locked in. The windowless room that held in the color of her son's life. She remembered tucking him in at night as he smiled with lips of bright red. She also remembered not locking the door one evening.

Continuing her march toward the Council's Court, she glanced up and hated the door that led to the circular chasm of misery and torture.

The Council.

"You know the penalty for color! Death!" The husband reminded as the wife pressed the photograph deeper into her chest. Her fingertips began to crease the picture as she held onto the remaining vestige of her son.

"Why can't you feel anything?"

"It's against the law, do you wish to die?"

"I'd get to see him again," the wife whispered as her finger ran across the top of the picture. Feeling a sharp pain, she swiftly brought her finger to her face. In a thin line of treacherous color, a smile of deep red crept through the cut in her finger. She gasped as she dropped the photograph to the chilly lifeless floor.

The husband turned and watched his wife bleed. His eyes grew wide as he faltered backward. "You have the color!"

In a trance, the wife watched her finger bleed upon the floor as droplets of crimson globes swam across it. Instantly, she fell to her knees and let her bloody hand touch the picture of her son.

She remembered the color of his blood after the Agents were done with him. She remembered screaming at them to let him live. She remembered everything and she would never forget.

At that dangerous moment, the slender doors to the Council's Court cracked open as a cloud of noise surged through the room like poisonous gas. Bright lights blinded her as strong hands pressed into her arms, waist and neck. As she was pulled up, she stretched for the photograph of Alex as an Agent bashed her in the head with his fist. Her vision blacked out but then came back as she felt her body being dragged like a carcass across the floor, her finger leaving a trail of rebellious blood against the monochrome world.

Suddenly, a smile bubbled across her face as she glanced at the Agents in dark clothes of inoffensive color. "I will see him again." Her eyelids begin to shut as she felt something burst inside her. From the depths of her heart, her color exploded into her body; her defiance. In the center of her sclera, her iris melted from lonely gray into a brilliant blue.

"He showed me color," she whispered as her eyelids closed one last time.

Qualia Within

I don't even know from where this came. Or is it whence? Who knows such matters.

Love's verboten

Hate is needed

Sunlight's loathed

Darkness is heeded

Anger's in vogue

Happiness superseded

Sorrow's wanted

Smiles are deleted

Apathy's desired

Activism's retreated

Humanity's awry

This program's defeated

The qualia within

Is hope deleted