ghost stories for october, pt. 5

He died in an elevator because he could never find the right floor. None of the buttons made any sense. It's like he entered an elevator that didn't really exist, and couldn't find the way back to the real world. People would come on and off, but they all seemed like ghosts, all weird and insubstantial and kind of fuzzy around the edges. The elevator never reached the ground floor.

He tried leaving once, actually, but he descended several hundred flights of stairs before giving up and trying to take the elevator. He ended up on the same one. From there he just kept trying different buttons, sure that one of them would take him to the exit. Within the confines of the elevator he lost all track of time, if time even still existed. It must have been several days, but eventually he died of thirst.

He doesn't know what happened to his body, but once he died he found his way back to the real elevators and found that even in death he couldn't get beyond them. The people seemed real now, but they didn't notice him. Sometimes they might get a strange chill or notice him reflected in the metal, or hear a strange noise or feel an ominous shudder. One day he expects to find the floor he was looking for. He just won't tell me what it is.

ghost stories for october, pt. 4

The problem with other ghosts, she told me, is they're all terribly provincial. There is no reason, apparently, for a ghost to limit their hauntings to the place where they died, or even a place that has some emotional resonance for them. "Mostly they just do that because they like to, I think." She has been a ghost for five years and she says she is not done seeing the world.

I met her in Brooklyn, a few years ago, at a pizza place that I liked mostly because it seemed so very Brooklyn. She caught me staring and we got to talking. This was her first time in New York, and she wanted to see all of the boroughs before she went on somewhere else. She seemed in a hurry to move on, like she just had this travel checklist she was working her way through.

I convinced her to hang out with me for a while, mostly because her only company for the past five years have been other ghosts. I'd been to New York before so I took her to the places I remembered--all the places a good friend had shown me before he became a ghost as well. Little dive bars and hot dog stands and abandoned subway tunnels.

And all the while she told me about the trips she had planned. Her next stop was Paris, apparently. She was going to haunt a plane out of JFK and see the Eiffel tower, the Champs Elysees, then move on to some vinyards in France. There was so much out there to see, she said. She didn't want to be one of those ghosts who got hung up on a place, who never left it. I asked her if she didn't like exploring every secret a place has to offer, and she didn't seem to understand.

She offered to try to send me a postcard, but coming from a ghost, that's kind of an empty promise. I wished her well and let her haunt some tourists who were heading to the airport.

ghost stories for october, pt. 3

As for myself, I don't think I've ever written about my affinity with ghosts, not really. I've written about ghosts, of course, and probably even about the ones I've seen, but there's always a piece missing. I see ghosts all the time. It's not an occasional thing. I can't turn it off.

It's not as bad as it sounds, but I know I can't talk about it without sounding weird. People think I'm staring into the middle distance or laughing or smiling for no reason. They always ask what's going on in my head, because my thoughts are clearly elsewhere, and I don't know what to tell them. There's just these ghosts here, and sometimes they're fascinating or hilarious or sad. Mostly they're happy to know that someone can see them. I've never been a ghost but it seems like a lonely existence. So when they can really see someone, they like to share their stories. That's what this is all about, right?

That's what this is all about, then. Telling the ghosts' stories. I don't know if they can tell when their story is being told but it feels right. I think they'd appreciate it. I tried asking them, but they never seem to answer. I'm not sure if they're even able to. There's a lot of things I don't think they can say or do. It's like dreaming, I think. Sometimes in dreams there's just something you can't even think, because if you did you'd stop dreaming. I don't know what happens when a ghost wakes up from his dream--maybe that's how you stop haunting, how you finally move on. I don't know.

I don't know why I can see them. I've always been able to and I've only recently come to terms with it. I guess I try to help where I can, but sometimes I wonder if there isn't something more to it, if I'm getting the whole picture, if I'm part of something bigger. But even if they could answer that, I don't think they would, so in the meanwhile I'll be here, telling stories, giving the ghosts a place to really live, at least for a little while.

ghost stories for october, pt. 2

When he died, he received a list of every person he had ever wronged, and he was left to assume that in order to continue to the afterlife, he would have to visit each of them and atone. The problem was this: he did not know what he had done to most of them. It was just a list of people. Some of them he didn't even know.

He started with the easy ones, the ones he knew. Most of them could not see him, but there was an emotional connection there. They could all sense a presence. Some of them called on paranormal experts to try to communicate, to understand what this spirit--his spirit--was doing here. Some of them seemed to feel comforted by his presence, as if they understood what it represented even if they didn't really know or couldn't articulate it. Others were frightened, moved out, avoided the rooms he liked to haunt. That hurt. Only one could actually see and really interact with him, but that story is personal. He made things right, and for that, he decided, an eternity of haunting this mortal coil was worth it.

From there he moved on to the ones he knew but didn't remember what he had done. Only a rare few even suspected the presence of a ghost, and they were the ones who found that sort of thing exciting. The rest had no idea, so he focused on the ones who cared. He gave them little hints and left them with ghost stories to tell their friends, and he felt like he had accomplished something even if no actual atonement happened.

Then he found himself drawn to the names that he did not recognize. Sometimes when he visited them he would recognize their faces, in a distant sort of way: didn't I once see you at a concert? Weren't you standing and smoking at a bus stop forever ago, looking ? But he knew nothing about them, and none of them seemed to notice his presence at all. He learned about each of them as much as he could. Their hopes and dreams and darkest secrets, all the little things they'd do in the confidence that nobody would notice. He watched each time they accumulated another name they'd have to visit when they died, and smiled to himself (because there was no one he could smile to) as they continued on unaware.

The last name on the list was his own. He was no longer frightened to face himself, for he had learned many stories and many secrets since he had died. He knew the truth behind the stories, the stories we don't tell, which are in some ways the most important stories there are. And at last he knew that he could face himself as judge and not be found wanting.

ghost stories for october, pt. 1

She is haunted by the ghosts of her old friends and lovers--all the ones she didn't really like very much, but put up with because she didn't know better. They come every night at midnight, and they sit down in her living room, or around her dining room table, and they drink ghostly red wine and they talk about art and literature, with a capital A and a capital L.

They follow her to bed--one of the old lovers, usually, who has had too much ghost wine. He talks about his disdain for popular literature while she undresses, reads passages disdainfully from the latest Twilight novel while she brushes her teeth, crawls into bed with her and whispers in her ear about things he doesn't feel qualify as art. And the party downstairs continues, so loud that she can't sleep.

They don't listen when she talks back. Sometimes the ghosts will listen politely and then respond as if she has said something entirely different. Other times they will interrupt her and talk over her. On the rare occasion they do actually respond to something she says, it is never in the spirit she intended it: she is singularly incapable of convincing them that she finds all of this insufferable, tedious, pretentious, or repulsive.

She finds it slightly easier to ignore the ghost of her old lover joining her in bed, but even then the whispering, the ghostly presence, makes her uneasy. So one night she tries to tell him a story, and to her surprise she finds that he listens. It's a story about catching the train, about little coincidences, about nothing at all--certainly not the high art he is telling her about as he joins her in the shower. Then, as she finishes the story, he offers a contented sigh and disappears.

The following night he is not present, so she joins the ghostly literature club in the living room and drinks real red wine and begins telling stories. At first she tries the stories that are the closest to their vaunted literature, but these don't seem to work. So she tells stories about the trivial and the inconsequential, about stupid conversations and awkward dinner-dates, stories about the shirt she's wearing and about the first time she tried this bottle of red wine, how she'd gotten so drunk she forgot what it was called and spent the next week trying to ask fellow party guests what wine that was, and how she was never, ever sure if she actually got the right one but the label looked right so she decided it was good enough.

And each time she tells these pointless, inconsequential stories another ghost heaves relief and fades into the ether, until at last all the merrymakers are gone and she is a little drunk and in good spirits (if you'll pardon the pun). She decides to write a story that is stupid and inconsequential and dedicates it to her ghosts. And for the moment, this feels like the most important thing she has done in years.

signal and information

You've heard this before.

I was never very good to her. She was convinced that what we had was some rare and beautiful thing, when really it was something more like the fact that I was there. I don't think I was her first, but she didn't like talking about that much. I do know that she loved me, and she hadn't loved anyone else before. I guess familiarity brings contempt.

She always said she liked me because I was honest, which mostly meant that I'd tell her when she'd fucked up. And I was steady--she liked saying that I was solid, and that she felt intangible. So I guess I gave her some tangibility. The point to take away from this is that neither of these things make for the good basis of a relationship. I often felt like she was intentionally doing this shit to annoy me, because she seemed to derive pleasure from the times I told her that she was being insane. This led to something of a vicious cycle: me being annoyed, her acting even worse.

It's hard to write this without sounding a little contemptuous. I think we both fucked up. Later, we both got over it. But I'm not trying to say that I was innocent. I was fucking awful to her. And at some point I think she was just trying to get me to do something, anything, remotely sympathetic. Instead I told her that I found her incredibly tiresome, that I was sick of her bullshit, that she was needy and--well, you get the idea. I think I assumed that this wouldn't be the thing that would make her snap. Because as horrible as it was I still liked having her around.

I guess I was wrong. She took a story I'd given her in private--"I've never shared this with anyone"--and published it. I didn't really care about the story, but I knew she was trying to hurt me, and that itself was enough to make me feel bad--but then I realized I'd fucked up. I tried to make things right. And at first I thought maybe she was receptive. Maybe this would be good. Then she fucking vanished.

I saw her again, some years later. It was an incredibly weird experience and I can't pretend I hadn't thought of her often in the years between. But she left just as suddenly as she came, as suddenly as she disappeared before. I try not to worry about it too much, but I wish I'd done things right. I wish she understood that I'm really trying now.

costume parties

This is different.

Sometimes, her sarcasm worries her, but not often. It surrounds her like armor, and with it she has grown bold enough to challenge the world--though she wonders, if everything is a quip and nothing is serious, if any of the friendships she makes are genuine. So sometimes she drinks too much at parties, and her barbs get sharper, and she kisses a boy who is not interested in her just to see what he'll do, and by the time she gets home she hates herself for it, then laughs when she realizes there is no one she can tell.

He is not interested because his boyfriend is also at the party, and his boyfriend is already making fun of his "new drunk girlfriend." He laughs alongside, of course, but somehow he feels the jokes are mean-spirited, because even if she was drunk and abrasive she wasn't a bad person. No one deserves to be laughed at. Eventually, later in the evening, when his boyfriend asks "Are you going to call her tomorrow?" he says, in a voice much more curt than he intended, "Maybe I will," and then spends the rest of the night wondering why he did that.

The party's hostess is very good at throwing parties, but, she has realized tonight, she is starting to hate it. No, she isn't starting--she has always hated it. She does it out of a sense of obligation, which she hates, and to please her friends, whom she doesn't particularly like. But even as she is thinking this she finds herself putting on a smile, engaging in these pointless conversations, and wishing she had an excuse to kick these people out.

She doesn't consider her roommate a host for these parties, but everyone loves him anyway. He tells interesting stories, laughs at everyone's jokes, and doesn't have an unkind word for anyone. But he is afraid of real, intimate connections, so he keeps everyone at a distance, because from a distance everyone thinks he's great. And so long as everyone is happy, what does it matter? But then sometimes someone else's facade cracks, just a little, and he worries that maybe he's lying to himself, too.

devil's advocate

Always aiming to please.

Yeah, we used to fight every single fucking day. This was back when I was still running the magazine, and it was never to his satisfaction--and mind you, it wasn't his magazine. He read it because it was something that I did, and I think he delighted in telling me that what I did was insufficient. Sometimes there weren't enough stories, or maybe there were too many. They were all too similar. There was no coherent theme in this issue. I wrote too much in the way of editorial comment. I needed a stronger editorial voice. One time he said to me something like "I feel like this isn't a magazine anymore so much as it's just a few of your friends writing for you. Don't you ever publish new talent?" For the very next issue I published some new authors (I told myself not because he told me to, but I'm not fooling anyone with that bullshit) and he complained that those stories were terrible.

And for some reason I still talked to him about the magazine. I'd tell him what I was planning to do. I remember telling him about an idea for a theme issue--I wanted spring stories for spring--and he asked me why I thought this was interesting enough to bother with. That was always his complaint: what I was doing wasn't new, or interesting. In his eyes I was completely failing to distinguish myself. He was constantly degrading the thing that I poured all of my energy and being into. And every night I had to defend it.

Nothing worked, though: I pointed out that we were doing well and he said some bullshit about how many popular things fail to distinguish themselves. I described what I felt was unique about our stories and our publication and he merely denied that these qualities were in any way interesting. I realized I'd hit a new low when I actually staged a little experiment where I picked stories from some other lit mags, and the stories I was planning to print in the next issue, and had some friends blindly guess which ones were mine. I came to him proudly bearing the results, that my friends could reliably guess which stories were mine, and he just told me that it was probably a sampling bias.

None of this could deter me, but I felt drained. Or, more precisely, I felt attacked. I was losing my will to fight. So I stopped. Winter had finally come and the seasonal melancholy set in and he was telling me some bullshit or other--something about how directionless the magazine seemed--and I finally said: "You know what? You're right. It's a useless fucking lit mag that nobody reads. It's got no direction because nobody cares about it. You win. I'm done."

He seemed taken aback by this. "Jesus, what's gotten into you?"

"Every fucking day you have another complaint. I'm done fighting. If it will shut you up I'll stop publishing the damn thing."

"I never asked you to shut up. I think it's great what you're doing."

"That is bullshit and you know it. You are constantly belittling me and the magazine."

"Look, I just want you to strive to improve. I think that's important for everyone. I thought you understood that. And I love seeing how passionate you get about it. It's beautiful. Don't ever lose that passion."

I wish I could say I'd said something witty, or slapped him, or even stormed off theatrically. But I just felt defeated--it should have been something momentous. Instead all I learned is that nothing is as easy as you hope it will be.

a conversation provided with no context at all

"So, you're opposed to torture under any circumstances?"

"Uh, yes."

"So, let's say you've captured a terrorist--"

"The fuck am I doing capturing a terrorist?"

"--and he's the only one who knows how to stop a bomb plot that will kill five thousand people. Do you torture him?"

"I'd rather ask politely."

"But the only way to get information out of him is to torture him."

"What if he lies?"

"He won't lie. You can torture him and he'll tell the truth one hundred percent of the time."

"Do I know this?"

"Yes."

"And I know that he's the only way to stop the bomb plot?"

"Yes."

"And, presumably, that he will only talk if tortured?"

"Yes."

"How did I find all this out?"

"What?"

"Well, I mean. You clearly want me to say yes, right? You've got all these hypotheticals set up so that that's the only clear moral choice, but, I mean, there's so many assumptions there. I can maybe believe all the 'he's the only one' crap but then I have to assume that somehow I've found this out. How did I do that without just figuring out how to stop the bomb?"

"Just answer the question."

"Fine. I let all five thousand of the fuckers die."

"That's kind of a dick move."

"It's my hypothetical revenge for living in a hypothetical world of implausible nested hypothetical situations."

"Fine. Let's try this one. Would you ever kill a man?"

"Sure."

"What the fuck, man? You wouldn't torture someone, but you'd kill them?"

"I said I believed that torture was always wrong. I didn't say I'd never do it."

"I hate you."

static and noise

This never happened.

I don't think I've ever told this to anyone. I guess that will be pretty obvious soon enough. Even now, trying to write about it, I want to get it over with as quickly as possible, rushing over the backstory, providing a bare bones outline of events.

It's about the time I very deliberately betrayed a friend's trust. She'd told me a story--I won't repeat it here, but it's probably still out there somewhere if you know where to look--in confidence, but I want you to understand, this wasn't a "let me tell you a secret" type of thing. We were the sort of friends where she would never have even considered that I might betray her on this one. It was a very intimate and personal story about death, and it's not like it made her look bad, but--and here I am making excuses again. The point is she told me this story in private, and she expected it to remain between us. A story she'd never told anyone else.

I don't know why that story is the one I chose, and I'm not sure I matters which one. We'd had something of a falling out--she called me out on some of my bullshit and I was in the wrong mood for it. There were some other things, I guess--little things, cracks in our friendship that had been growing for a while, but it took me years to admit that it was anything but this stupid argument. I don't even remember the actual thing she said that set me off. What I do remember, with perfect clarity, is shouting at her empty house long after she had left in her car. I remember shaking with rage, crying hot tears. I remember wanting revenge.

So, I wrote her story. No exaggerations or attempts to make her look bad--this wasn't about people thinking she was a bad person. I wanted to destroy her privacy. I wanted people to see this story and write her and call her and ask her about it--I wanted them to know those private moments, where she watched someone die. I wanted her to know that took something sacred and I left it naked and exposed. I wrote it and I saw to it that it was published in her name.

I published it in the lit mag of which my sister was the editor--another betrayal that I had to deal with. It was never widely read, but it attracted notice within our social circles. So she received a trickle of interest. At first she assumed it was a mistake, that someone with a similar name had written something. Then she began to doubt. By the time she had a copy of her own, it was too late, damage done.

I never asked her how she felt about the sudden exposure, of course, but she made it clear that she got the message. I'd never seen her so furious. It was far less satisfying than I had imagined it. Even then I was already having trouble remembering what I had hoped to accomplish--mostly, I think I just wanted her to hurt. But it seemed empty now.

In an ideal world this would end with an apology and forgiveness, but this is not an ideal world. I felt like apologizing was disingenuous--not because I wasn't sorry, but because apologies were not sufficient. I had very deliberately crossed a line. The idea of being forgiven, of being trusted again, was unbearable. So, in what could have been the ultimate act of revenge were she not being so damn sincere about it, she went and forgave me.

Even as I tried to stay, to make it work, because this was someone I couldn't afford to lose--especially not now--I could see the end approaching. One night I deleted her from all my contact lists. I stopped responding to her phone calls and instant messages. I excised her entirely from my life.

The worst part of it was how right it felt, how easily I could just switch off a human relationship. The very next day I found some pictures of us together and I felt nothing at all. Instead of any sense of loss, I felt like I'd discovered something important. I guess it's always been in my nature to run.

grids and patterns

This happened.

This was when I lived in Maine, I think. Alex was visiting for the summer (this is before things fell apart), and it was one of those perfect nights in July or August when the sky was clear and the stars were burning so terrifyingly bright and--anyway, we spent the night outside just watching the stars come in, and eventually I found my eyes drifting closed.

I couldn't sleep, though. At this point I noticed a little red and black grid pattern when I closed my eyes. Which was weird, but I could have ignored it. Then there were these vivid images floating through my imagination.

It's hard to explain how weird that is to most people, but my visual imagination has never worked--certainly not with the intensity at which it now burned. Suddenly my mind was working in a way it never had before, and I hadn't had so much as a drink to explain it.

I panicked. What else could I do? I was no longer who I always thought I'd been. And every time I tell this story I say that Alex helped me calm down, reminded me who I was, but that's a lie. I was too paralyzed to move. By the time I could even will my eyes open and look over at her, she had fallen asleep. I was alone under the canopy of stars, which had changed since I'd closed my eyes. How long had I been frozen there under the grip of panic?

I took her hand in mine and finally found sleep, with that reminder that someone was there. We slept until the storm rolled in the next day. It came with flooding and thunder, and we ran inside, thoroughly drenched, and as we sat there laughing I told her about my attack. It's easier when you're already laughing. That way you can pretend you can laugh about that.

I've never seen the black-and-red grid pattern again, nor the strange vivid images that accompanied it. But that night I was certain I would wake and find that I was a completely different person, and sometimes, when it's late and I'm tired and the evening feels just so, I worry that I did, and I wonder who I used to be, if there's anything left of that former self, maybe in a clearing in Maine, forever trapped in the perfect stars.

gimme shelter

A lot of things happened in not very much time. I was crashing at my bandmate's new place when my roommate called and told me that our house had been destroyed by a meteor. I thought I was being strong and calm and collected when I took her out to eat. We talked about trivialities and skirted around the subject. Then she asked me if I had a place to stay and I just--"I think I need to get some air." I remember walking outside. I remember my hands shaking, fumbling with my phone, walking. Then I remember sitting, trembling, on the front steps of the house of a friend I hadn't seen in years.

Her name was Alex. She was my only real friend for the longest time, by the strange standards I kept at the time. When I moved out east she stayed here, and when the roof started leaking in my place out there and I didn't think to move my roommates' books to safety, Alex was the only person to say "yeah, that's fucked up, I'd be pretty pissed at myself, too." Everyone else tried to tell me it was okay.

Later on I betrayed her trust and I couldn't take it when she forgave me, so I just stopped seeing her, except now I was on her front porch, waiting. I didn't really remember coming here. I could have fled. I probably should have. Instead I waited for her to come up the walk. She said my name, hesitantly, guardedly, and I said something like "It's been a while."

"Yeah." We embraced tentatively. Then she said, holding me at arm's length, "What are you doing here?"

The suspicion in her voice stung, mostly because I knew I'd earned it. "I think I need a place to crash for a few days," I said, trying to sound as unobtrusive as possible. "You won't even know I'm here."

The silence that followed seemed like it lasted for hours. Then, "I'll think about it. You can come in and have a beer, at least."

She led me inside, and we drank, and I was never sure, right up until she went to bed, whether she was going to let me stay. It wasn't very late when she finally got up and made her way into her bedroom. "Just leave the light on out there," she told me, and I thought, so this is how it's going to be? You'll let me stay on your couch but you won't even let me turn the light off?

As I lay down on the couch and put a pillow over my head I noticed her still standing in the doorway. "Well? Are you coming to bed?"

"Ah. I thought--nevermind. Be right there."

I turned the light off on my way in, because old habits die hard.

any questions?

More stuff from that thing.

There's this thing that's been bothering me recently. Whenever someone asks me if I have any questions, the answer is invariably "no." Opening a new bank account, orientation at a new job, moving in to a new apartment. It's always the same thing: "so, these are the basic facts," with the strong implication that the specific facts are available if only I ask the right questions. So then they smile at me and say "any questions?" and suddenly I'm on the spot.

I don't know what I'm supposed to ask. Everything they said makes sense, and if anything does come up that I don't know the answer to, I can just ask then. I don't really trust explanations, anyway. I don't trust words that aren't in stories. Stories are how you learn; explanations are there to obfuscate. It's just, somehow I don't think "do you have any stories about this place?" is the question they want to hear.

There was a time this girl emailed me after I tried to fill the room that had just opened up at her house, when I was back east. I got a tour of the place and spent hours with these people, who felt like old friends. We told stories. Then I got an email saying that I didn't seem interested in the community, whatever the fuck that means, so they'd gone with someone else. And I remember, after I'd been given the tour, the tour guide--my emailer, I think--said "so, do you have any questions?" and of course I pretended to think about it for a minute before saying "no, I'll just figure it out as I go."

And then, what reminded me of all this, I was opening a new bank account today, and after the lady went through all the details with me, she asked me if I had any questions. And I thought about it, and said, "no, it seems pretty straightforward!" and I swear her smile was almost pitying. Like she wanted to say, "you shouldn't be doing this, you don't have any idea what you're doing, you need to research your decisions before making them," but of course she wasn't allowed to. I tried to smile in a way that said: "I know that I'm making poorly considered decisions but I've chosen to trust my future to you, even though we've never met and will probably never meet again."

 Probably I'm imagining it. Probably she wasn't thinking anything at all, and that point in the conversation is just when her smile starts getting strained. Maybe it was even relief that I hadn't gone off the script. But I remember weirdly hostile emails from future roommates that never happened, and I wonder.

discord

This is from something I'm working on, sort of.

 I helped my bandmate move his old couch into his new apartment this afternoon--the couch that used to occupy the attic we used to hang out in all the time back in high school. That couch was old. That couch had stories to tell.

Once we'd finished he offered some beer and we sat on the new couch--the spoils of victory--and my friend put on some Radiohead.

"Man, this takes me back," he said. "I remember the first time you came here and introduced me to Radiohead. I was hooked from that weird wind at the start of Planet Telex."

"Except, I didn't bring that album. I brought OK Computer."

"Are you sure?"

"Does it matter?"

He shrugged and said, "I guess not."

Of course, it did matter. That had been the day my friend got it in his head that we should be in a band, and talked me into talking my parents into getting me guitar lessons. The actual band didn't materialize until I'd come back from college, of course, but it was a big day, and one of us didn't actually remember it, which meant that in all probability neither of us did. How many times had we told that story? How much had it warped in the telling, until our memories were just of the stories we'd been telling?

The vision came to me then: the two of us in high school, working on some homework or other. I dig around in my bag for my math book and find the CD I picked up earlier and say something like "You want to put on some music?" and we do, and we probably even enjoy it. But there is no big moment. The album is incidental to the question he asks me later: "Wouldn't it be cool if we were, like, a rock band?"

We shared stories for the rest of the evening, but I found myself doubting all of them, his and mine both, and no amount of alcohol would shake this nagging doubt.

street lamps

There's a street light outside your house I keep mistaking for the moon. It's the right color and shape, and it's in the right place in the sky. Every time I leave at night I see it hanging there and for a brief moment I'm ready to smile, to feel as if the moon is guiding me home. I always identify it soon enough, of course, and it could never guide me any further than the street.

Tonight I found myself wondering if you were to blame, as if you had set this up to punish me for my wanderings. Perhaps if I didn't slip away once you were asleep, this false moon wouldn't be here to mock me. Or maybe you set it up to keep me here. Did you hope I would circle it like a moth, captivated by its soft cold light? Does it worry you that I have never woken up next to you, that I leave you alone in the dark to find my way home?

But tonight the false moon was not false. The street light hung in the air above me even after I had walked past it, as if you had planted a real moon there--and it must have been you, right? Who else could have, and who else would have? I was so startled I considered running back and waking you up, asking whether you were trying to send me away or guide me home. But as I stood and stared at this strange new moon, I realized the distinction was largely semantic. Either way my path was laid out before me, and my steps would take me back home.

bleach

I spilled bleach cleaning the house the other day, and it seemed to drain the color from the little patch of floor where I spilled it. I tried mopping it up with a sponge but it seemed to just spread, until a whole corner of the kitchen was paler than it used to be. I put the garbage can over it and hoped nobody would notice. I had a reputation to maintain. Not that I entertained anymore.

I slept easily, woke up, and got ready for work the next morning, only to find that the metal stopper in the sink was curiously pale. And I thought that was odd, but what could I do? Maybe metal just turned pale sometimes. It wasn't as if it looked bad. Then I noticed that the shower curtain had faded as well, and then I started to worry.

As I made my way to the bus stop I noticed that everything was losing its color. The grass, the trees, the houses and buildings, all had this horrible fade about them. Like I'd spilled bleach on them, too, trying to clean up after you. By the time the bus faded I couldn't tell what color it used to be. What color is a city bus meant to be? Are the seats really that sickly pale green color?

At work I spent about thirty minutes working before it was too much. I told my boss I was feeling ill and spent the day hiding in the clean white sterility of the bathroom. Eventually the automatic lights turned off, and I curled up in the dark and slept uneasily, dreaming alien dreams of color.

casting shadows

There was a trash can on fire outside of your apartment this afternoon. I'd been walking through the streets in a haze, staring at the sky, wondering if it was always so empty, if the clouds of winter were doing us a favor by hiding that vast expanse of shapeless blue. There was no one to be seen anywhere in this city. If the sun wasn't at my back casting my shadow, I wouldn't even have believed that I was out there.

I stood there and watched it burn, red flames licking out of the black metal, warping the air above it, spitting a little cloud of black smoke. The flames focused my mind--it felt like weeks since I've had any sort of mental clarity--on the message I knew you must be sending. What else could it mean? No one else walked under this empty sky. But the signal was anything but clear. I hoped you wanted to leave this world in flames with me, but when I finally walked in you gave no sign.

The thought of this message gave me purpose under this empty sky. I searched for patterns in your speech when you greeted me, in how you would look at me or not look at me, how you touched me and kissed me and undressed me, but there was nothing. That night, as I watched you sleep, listening for patterns in your breathing that might betray your message, your intentions, I was struck with the certainty that there was no message. You had intended nothing for me. And so my purpose faded, my mind adrift once more.

I went outside to smoke a cigarette, and the sudden impulse struck me to throw the burning cigarette into the same trash can. It didn't catch, and I was alone in the dark. The streets, the sky were still empty as they'd ever been, and there was nothing to focus my mind anymore--just the dull buzz of the streetlights, casting my shadow across the sidewalk. I stepped behind a tree, shielded from its light, and closed my eyes and let the dark empty streets swallow me.

an eternity till april

Is it spring where you are? I waited all winter.

The first day of spring always makes me think of you--the day you stop wearing jackets and scarves and start wearing summer clothes, and remind me how beautiful you are in a whole different way. Even now, even since you're long gone. The chaos of the changing seasons is on us now, and yesterday the sky was clear and the temperature was perfect for jackets and scarves, and I found myself in the park with the sun on my face and I said, "I'd be happy if spring never comes, if it just stays like this forever." It was a prayer to the sky, and the sky said nothing in return.

But that night I slept and I dreamt that my words had stilled the change of the seasons, that I had forever solidified the weather of that day. Every day will be perfect for jackets and scarves, the streets bright with cherry blossoms and the promise of leaves that will never come. There will be no spring, no burning summer sun, no dying autumn leaves, no bitter winter winds. Just today, that perfect day before spring. And you will be banished from my thoughts like a ghost.

I woke feeling refreshed and alive and hopeful, but the wind today felt dead, and the rustling of the wind seemed to have the taint of the grave about it. The sun shone wanly in a sky of a dull and listless blue. I sat in the park and watched the clouds, and I swear I saw your silhouette, just for a moment, before the wind picked up and blew all the clouds into fingers pointing south.

Did you end up going south when you left? Will you bring the springtime if I come and find you? Because I recant. I will not invoke the sky again. I want to see you smiling in the perfect endless light of the summer sun, to see you play in a pile of freshly raked autumn leaves or make sculptures from snowdrifts blown by the winter winds. And I will wait for April, if I must, if you return the spring to me.

a conversation, provided with minimal context

With apologies to A____, who deserved and hopefully received better.

I got the feeling she was presenting me to him, which is odd because he wasn't her boyfriend--that was someone else. He'd introduced us. "He's walking me home," she announced. She told him we were both drunk off our asses. I grabbed my coat and left my bag behind.

We both knew that this was not about walking home. This was about the cool March air, and all the various places we could think of to put our lips. But we danced around the subject as we walked aimlessly. She accused me of being a cynic. "It wouldn't kill you to actually like something for once," she said, taunting me. She sat down on a tree stump.

"Are you saying I don't like anything? I like some things." I pretended to be affronted. It took some doing, because all I could think of was kissing her--but we'd been dancing around the subject for so long, taking the direct approach seemed unthinkable. Not that we were being subtle at this point. I could read everything in her eyes, her expression, her tone. I have no doubt I was just as much of an open book.

"Prove it." This was not a challenge, but a request, a plea: stop this dance.

"How am I supposed to prove that?" A flimsy pretense.

"You know how."

I did. Most of what followed didn't count as much of a conversation, but pretenses were dropped now. She told me she had a boyfriend, and I said I knew. "But you don't give a fuck," she told me, and I suppose I must have shaken my head. I had other things on my mind.

She invited me back to her place. We were against the hood of someone's car--God knows whose--and I hesitated. I made up some excuse about needing to get my bag, or maybe I just said we probably shouldn't. I finished walking her home, then hoped I could apologize without words. Then she was gone and I walked back to the party alone and waited in the wings like a ghost.

small town charm

I think the first thing you ever told me is that my hometown was ugly. We hadn't met yet, and it was the way you said it--that tone of genuine surprise, that bright smile--that made me think you were just fascinating. I drank too much and you stayed up with me, telling me stories about a life that seemed so much richer than life in this ugly little town. We walked through the empty streets that night and I said something like "it's beautiful here at night," offhand. I don't remember much else that happened that night, but I remember that clearly.

When I finally moved to the city we kept running into each other. We talked about small towns, and about how glad we were to be rid of them forever. You had changed and so had I, but your smile was still the same, and I still found myself fascinated by your words. It was probably a year before we actually started dating. We just sort of happened. You liked saying that. Like the universe, we were a series of impossible events that became something amazing.

Then it was several years on and we were older and no longer as enamored with the city as we were before. It was full of fleeting contacts and superficial connections, and nothing makes you feel isolated like being in a crowd of people and realizing none of them care in the slightest that you exist. So you used words like 'jaded' and 'ennui' and complained about that isolation. Some days I felt like our joie de vivre would never return. Some days I tried to recover it. And you smiled at my efforts, and that almost made it all worthwhile.

One of us--or maybe both of us--came up with the idea to take a trip across the country, stopping in all the small towns along the way, eating in their diners, drinking their coffee. And I thought of the day we met and you told me the small town I lived in was ugly, and here we were romanticizing these little towns, these places that people like you and me try so hard to get away from.

The towns we visited were quiet, peaceful, free of our city affectations, with so many more stars in the sky. And so long as we kept moving we left our troubles behind us, gathering stories as we went. Everyone we met was polite, curious, friendly, and we never stayed long enough to learn any other side to them. And you told me you thought it was refreshing, meeting so many friendly people from so many places, how connected this trip made you feel with the world. And I told you that I'd never felt more alone, but that sometimes a little loneliness is all you need to put things in perspective.

After the trip, we fell apart much like we fell together. I left the city, found a quiet place in a quiet town and lived there, and maybe I was even happy. I made no meaningful connections here, but I made a lot less meaningless ones. I'm hiding, I know, but I don't see what choice I have. Please don't come and find me.