Excerpt (of something new)

He always said his grandfather told him stories about reflection and about how all these people used to spend hours every morning in front of mirrors, making sure they looked better than everyone else. He said his mom would scoff and make fun of his grandfather, saying those ideas just came from dreams he had. He said he would tell his grandfather that he thought it was funny that people used to need reflections like that, like it was as if one version of the world wasn’t enough for them, that they needed a reversed version too, that maybe it was to remind them to think outside of the box, that the first person to invent the mirror did so as an artistic gesture. He said he would say that maybe it was like having a pre-painted canvas: all the work was already done for the artist, and yet he or she would still be able to make such a statement about the world, commenting on how backwards everything was. He was a liar, though and now I’m not sure if I believe any of what he said.

All those times he was playing with his hair, I thought it was just a quark of his when he looked into my eyes—maybe because my eyes were that astounding to him in this world of refusals. All those times just ended up being him readjusting that mop top to look pretty for the world, though. I bet he would even spit on the ground, get down on his belly and roll through the dirt just to see his face in that bubbly glob of reflection. He used to make fun of the people who his grandfather told him about when it was just us two by ourselves. He talked like he was better than them. I see it all now, though.

Waking for Work

            The morning enters as a bullet through your left eyelid, pulling back sleep. You lie on this Egyptian, spiked torture table, waiting for the light to rupture, so you will not have to keep dissolving the cyanide pill in your right cheek.

            Even with a night filled with friendly faces, you still find a reason to fear the coming light. You know you have hours before the darkness resolves itself to be as accompanying as all of us, but you still fear that brightness. You know the sun will yell at you through the shades you bought to keep such a light out. You know the alarm will go off before the light even beats you as a fist across the face. You know the punch clock on the wall at work, which you have dreams of, will shriek and berate you before your lids peel, but you will fight it. You will understand, unlike your father—who has worked every day of his goddamn life since he was sixteen—that a night spent on something worthwhile is worth much more than a paycheck.

            No matter how many dollar signs stack in my bank account, I will call in sick to work today, you think dreamily to yourself. But then the thoughts of all the places you could travel with such money earned from a hard day’s work invade your mind and you decide to rip your body from your bed sheets. When you sit up, you smirk at the clock, understanding that it does not have the power over you that it had over its previous owners. You see yourself wandering the streets your heroes walked, smelling that aged cobblestone and you finally, honestly wake and pull and shove at your hair in a dismantled manner, realizing that today will not be as bad as it seems now.

Times Spent in a Car

 

            Now that I am, in a way, past that love you and I once had, I can logically think about it. It’s funny to talk about it now with anyone, mainly because I don’t usually and sub-levelly because I don’t believe in it anymore. When I think about you, I feel like a Bible-belt family shacked up in a hotel because their house was destroyed by a tornado just a few days ago. They cannot yet recognize it as such, but they know there was an ominous power in what occurred. It happened so suddenly, but it marks the rest of their existence like someone they love died, though everyone made it out unscathed. Ironically, milestones are never carved by monotonous days.

            I know in the basements of our minds, we both have daydreams—when we’re bored enough at work or when you’re high and alone in your bedroom—about some time in that indeterminate future where we will be sitting on some couch of undisclosed color, under a blanket, watching a movie on our list, like a normal couple. However, we paradoxically understand that they are just daydreams. We understand that regardless of our futile hope and well-wishing, we will continue talking like we don’t have these thoughts, like we are happy with the lives we are living, because that’s what we tell everyone who asks.

We will continue and perhaps one day meet up with thousands of stories to release, like dump trucks with so much refuse to pour onto one another. You’ll tell me where you’ve travelled to and all the crazy people you met. I’ll tell you I wish there was an angel assigned to each of us whose job is to document every thought and ironic instance in each worthwhile human’s brain. That when we die, I’ll hear the stories you forgot about, the ones I’ll love the most.

I’ll lie to make you feel better about your time spent in the world. We’ll be old and I know I won’t have to lie, but I will, because I’ll still want you to feel appreciated when you’re around me, like you always said you did when our skin was still tight and our nerves still felt everything in the world like it was the cautious fingers of a lover slowly moving down our necks. I see you dancing on your toes, knowing there is so much pain in that, but that is what you live for.