Heavy Boots

It was colder now.  She kept his flannel but gave the hat back. 

She didn't look good in it anyway. 

The music that kept her sane was hollow and tired and faded now. Or maybe it's just that she was. 

She still wore her hair in a knot on the top of her head and she stopped looking at herself in the mirror because her eyes had changed their color and her collar bones bruised easily. The black cursive words on her ribcage meant nothing to him now and the freckle next to her belly button became slightly darker like a negative being developed in some vacant darkroom.  Her hip bones got sharper and her knees grew softer and the bottoms of her feet still had the calluses from walking beneath the overpass at sunset on his birthday.  

Those words on that icy, rough, grainy cement wall still meant everything to her though. 

Or maybe it's just that he still did. 

Image.

Music.

Text.

But not in that order.

Barthes had it wrong. So did she, now that he finally asked. Conceptual bullshit doesn't make anything tangible, she knew now.  And her boots were molded exactly to the shape of her feet but it didn't make it any easier to walk and it definitely didn't make them any lighter and the black coffee she preferred over Earl Grey now (your taste buds change every seven years, he told her) grew colder than that cement wall but she never poured it into the already-crowded sink.  

She never poured him down there either.  After all the strangers, the brunettes from New York or Miami or out west or wherever, got washed down that sink or perhaps placed with the neglected dishes because there aren't enough spots on her body to etch all those tattoos and that's why she had to get rid of them. 

It was probably the end. 

You should probably just say it. 

Saying it makes it real.

Because then you can stop convincing yourself of the delusional validity of all the conceptual bullshit and realize that you kissed them and not him and there isn't an excuse you didn't use and the writing is still there and you don't like Earl Grey tea anymore and you still walk by every year on his birthday with heavier boots than the year before. 

http://feelingcopasetic.blogspot.com/

how to be less

He realized then that he never really asked.  

Maybe he didn't want to know.

Maybe he know it so well to be true that he'd rather pretend that it wasn't.

Maybe he knew she'd never tell him the truth.

After all, she probably wouldn't. 

She wore too many rings and she hated her tattoo. Her boots were ripping at the soles and her hair was quite literally never done. She said Dali confused her but that's why she liked him. She said hats looked bad on her and there was always the smell of Marlboro Reds on her fingers. And she apologized daily because she knew he hated the smell and the taste and the habit. She did apologize, but she never did quite quit. 

He realized then that he never asked. Because he knew this answer already: without her, he'd be less.  

Less a person, less in love, less a warm body to roll over to in the morning. There is no accurate way to end something like that because the blood will be everywhere and you'll be less a friend to help clean it up. 

They always walked because she hated the way he drove. 

"Go faster," she said. 

He obliged. But not enough.

He didn't want to know because it would mean the end of something like that and the blood would be everywhere and he would be less a friend to help clean it up. 

The salty air was bitter on his tongue and he wished he could taste her Marlboro Red again.  The beauty of togetherness had turned uglier than the sloppy words sprayed complacently on the wall. His "something bigger than himself" had gone on to hell, and he was left homeless under that overpass. 

 http://iboughtmyeyes.blogspot.com/

I prefer Earl Grey.

"I don't want a home anymore," she breathed. Exasperated was, most definitely, an understatement.  

The wheels of her bike turned faster and she pushed harder to reach the top, the paved blocks smoothing out and getting left behind her. She kept telling me how she didn't like herself anymore. I told her I liked her even more. 

There was a point where, maybe because of the cold or maybe because of the cigarettes, that I couldn't tell whether the sun was rising or setting.  The light hit the edges of the buildings lining the river and I walked at the same speed as the water. Every boat was rusted and fearsome; the people that I imagined on them were even more so, like the ones who fought through the depths of the Amazon with a machete and a cigar and a novel in tow, with hearts of darkness and boots of steel. Not her cup of tea. Not really mine either.  I prefer Earl Grey. 

Summer was a thing of the past. It was children's books with coffee stains and falling asleep halfway through a movie marathon.  It was castles that were home to no one and laughter recorded on a loop as to preserve it's space and sound in time but by the time you go back and listen to it, it's already as stale as Sunday's black coffee still marinating on the nightstand on Thursday.  You couldn't taste its warmth, not that you might want to. 

I don't really like black coffee anyway.  Even after a chilled bike ride in a too-thin coat at sunset. 

I prefer Earl Grey. 

http://foreignertypes.blogspot.com/