IDYLLIC ROMANCE

There's a place in the corner of the bottom of the glass where the smell of my last drink lingers. I stick my face into the rim, the cool glass indenting a perfect circle around my mouth and nose, and inhale the fumes. No visible remnants exist and the world looks upside down. I breathe in again, the tangy odor bringing back memories of moments before. Pulling the glass away, I look into the bottom once more, searching absentmindedly through my teeth for a hint of the taste that had made me cringe with a frozen promise of happiness.

Sighing, I set it down and, again, pour another. I drop some ice cubes in afterward, skill-lessly spilling drink onto the counter. Another deep breath and I take a long drink.

A thing that happens

There is a thing that happens in my head and heart when I see a particular kind of photograph, by a certain kind of person, of a certain kind of person, with a specific affect I can't describe.

Sometimes there is breeze in her hair, sometimes it is a field or a forest or a mountaintop or a European street or the back of a southern pick-up truck or a sweaty third-world backdrop. Sometimes a smile half-formed, sometimes a good dress, sometimes a casual sleeve. Sometimes his face is slack, like the photograph is beside the point and he doesn't even see the camera. Sometimes a twinge of self-awareness, sometimes a breathtaking candour. Sometimes a banal moment, an ankle, a wrist, an elbow, a spoon, crumbs on the table and on the plate and the corner of a crumpled something, maybe a napkin, or a newspaper, towel, shirt, or scrap paper. Scrap paper. Let's just call it scrap paper. It may as well be in all the photographs, standing in for creativity and recklessness or whatever else was making the air thick wherever that shutter clicked.

There are doodles behind these photos. Doodles, notes, post-its, plans, blueprints, rough drafts, I know, and I'd like to read them because all of it is worthwhile. There is a before and an after and the debris and preparation for either or both. But there is only ever one frame, one point on a line or a curve or a spine when something lands or hurts or makes you feel THERE. That. This.

I am the problem, or, A bad case of the Hamlets

Something great has happened; I feel terrible. And this makes so little sense to me, I cannot focus on anything else.

*

I am no longer able to tell how wrong I am or how right. Anything could be the case. Disorientation must be the price you pay for possibility.

*

In the middle of the night, worn threadbare, I reach into the refrigerator, and wrapping my palm around a big, smooth mango, I fold down on the floor, shaking with relief.

I NEED SOME TIME TO THINK

Indigestion in the belly of the beast.

INDEPENDENCE DAY NIGHT

From the back of a taxi, the moon a vanilla bean disc behind transparent clouds, music pouring forth from the speakers like a 360° audio simulation of an electronic Niagra—speech and symphony beating like falling waves—I lean my head against the window and pray for a better next destination.

Fallow

All seasons are past. Four names, three languages, two places, one date. Mientras, standing in a windtunnel in new courtyard in an old building in a baked city on a drizzle-cooled evening trying to seem interested in free booze and high culture and good-looking well-dressed people, frowning and swearing and handing out cards like some sort of pretend adult, choosing to go home, softly, in a small silent silver car.

What use is youth without ease?

I found a leaflet in the park. On the front, it said: How to Survive. On the back: Inhale. Don't breathe.

SORRY TO WAKE YOU

Something about 4am gives me the curiosity to say "I don't love you" and see if we can't proceed from there.