mecalsiz azap yokuşu da inilemez bir hal aldı. oysa hep gokyuzune bakmaliydim.



the sluggish ascent of torment can not be climbed down anymore. yet, i should have looked at the sky forever.

Meridian
Kapitel 1


Langsam bahnte sich mein Geist seinen Weg durch die Schwärze. Meine Gedanken wurden klarer, aus dem Schwarz wurde Grau und Sterne zeichneten sich auf der Wasseroberfläche ab. Nein, es war kein Wasser. Dafür war es zu dunkel und auch viel zu schwer zu durchdringen. Diese Leichtigkeit musste ich mir erst wieder erarbeiten.
Doch fühlte ich mich hier auf eine merkwürdige Weise wohl. Es war schön… Verwirrend und eigentlich bedrohlich, aber doch so unglaublich schön. Und friedvoll. Dennoch konnte ich nichts dagegen tun, dass mein Bewusstsein immer weiter aufstieg. Es erkämpfte sich seinen Weg nach oben. Und siegte über das Dunkel.
Ich öffnete meine Augen. Obwohl, eigentlich war es eher ein zaghaftes Blinzeln mit meinem linken Augenlid und ein darauffolgendes Zusammenzucken, da mich das gleißende Licht der Sonne blendete. Es war also schon morgen. Oder Mittag. Ich erhob mich langsam, meine Glieder schmerzten. Kein Wunder, schließlich hatte ich die gesamte Nacht auf meinem harten Schlafzimmerboden verbracht – unfreiwillig natürlich. Einer der Männer hatte mich am Abend zuvor wohl k.o. geschlagen. Vorsichtig schlich ich mich in meine kleine Küche – dort befand sich nämlich mein Telefon – doch von den zwielichtigen Typen war nichts mehr zu sehen. Sie hatten wahrscheinlich schon gestern das Weite gesucht. Ich schnappte mir das kabellose Telefon und begab mich ins Wohnzimmer, um meinen Onkel Bobby anzurufen. Natürlich, er war nicht wirklich mein Onkel, aber was sagte Blutsverwandtschaft schon über eine Beziehung aus? Er war meine Familie, seitdem er mich vor 14 Jahren aufgenommen hatte, kurz nachdem meine Eltern verunglückt waren. Er war ein langjähriger Freund der Familie und meine Eltern hatten ihn in ihrem Testament als meinen Vormund festgesetzt, sollte ihnen etwas zustoßen.
Naja, und so war das. Ich hatte mit ihm in seiner kleinen Hütte am Strand von Santa Monica gelebt, bis ich im vergangenen Jahr mein Studium an der USC angefangen und mir eine Wohnung in Campusnähe gesucht hatte.
Und in dieser Wohnung stand ich jetzt. In meinem Wohnzimmer. In dem ein nackter Mann lag. Auf meinem Teppich. Meinem geliebten, champagnerfarbenen Flauschteppich, der so gut zu meinem Ohrensessel passte und mich ein Vermögen gekostet hatte. War der Mann tot? Der Gedanke ließ mich erschaudern. Eine Leiche! In meiner Wohnung! Auf meinem neuen Teppich… Er blutete doch nicht, oder?
„Prioritäten, Rea! Dein Teppich tut jetzt nichts zur Sache.", ermahnte ich mich selbst. Vielleicht war der Typ ein Komplize der Männer von gestern Abend? Er hatte sie übervorteilen wollen und sie hatten ihn abgemurkst. Aber warum trug er dann keine schwarze Einbrecher-Montur wie die beiden anderen?
Ich tapste auf Zehenspitzen zurück in meine Küche, steckte das Telefon in die Seitentasche meines Bademantels und bewaffnete mich mit einer Bratpfanne. Man konnte ja nie wissen.
Zurück in meinem Wohnzimmer näherte ich mich dem Nackedei langsam an. Ich beugte mich über ihn und konnte ihn nun genauer mustern. Hmm… äußere Verletzungen schien er nicht zu haben. Zumindest nicht auf seiner Rückseite, die, wie ich mit einem Blick auf seinen knackigen Hintern feststellen musste, nicht ohne war. Er roch auch gar nicht wie eine Leiche, sondern eigentlich ziemlich gut. Naja, aber ich war zuvor auch noch nie auf eine Leiche gestoßen, also wie konnte ich Thesen über den Geruch eines toten Körpers anstellen? Meine Vorliebe für Freitag-Abend-Krimis machte mich noch lange nicht zu einer Expertin. Ich wurde hier noch wahnsinnig!
Vorsichtig tippte ich seine Seite mit dem Stiel meiner Bratpfanne an. Keine Reaktion. Also stieß ich ihm noch einmal etwas fester in die Seite, was ein Grummeln zur Folge hatte und ihn seinen Arm bewegen ließ, um den Stiel fort zu schubsen. Sofort entfuhr mir ein schriller Schrei und ich glaube ich hatte es geschafft, mich innerhalb einer halben Sekunde bestimmt gute 7 Meter von ihm weg zu bewegen. Meine – zugegeben – heftige Reaktion hatte ihn nun gänzlich zu Bewusstsein kommen lassen. Er war aufgeschreckt und sah sich verwirrt um. Beinahe wirkte es, als hätte ich ihn mehr erschreckt, als er zuvor mich.
Sein Blick traf den meinen. Während ich gerade dabei war, meine Flucht-Optionen zu analysieren, schienen seine Gedanken jetzt klarer zu werden. Er hatte wohl gerade gemerkt, dass er nackt war, errötete und sah sich nach etwas um, dass seine Männlichkeit verdecken würde.
Hatten Killer Schamgefühl? Gerade in diesem Moment wirkte der Typ nämlich wirklich nicht bedrohlich. Er hatte sich ein Kissen von der Couch geangelt, es vor seiner Mitte platziert und machte nun Anstalten, aufzustehen. Ich währenddessen, schob mich weiter an der Wand entlang, Richtung Wohnungstür. Doch der Kerl war nicht blöd. Obwohl ich gedacht hatte, ich hätte einen unaufmerksamen Moment erwischt, ruhten seine Augen auf mir und meinen Bewegungen. Er wusste genau, was ich vorhatte.
„Du musst keine Angst haben. I-Ich werde dir nichts tun." Ja klar. Hätte ich vor, jemandem den Hals umzudrehen, würde ich auch nicht sagen: Schnell lauf weg, gleich ist es soweit.
Mein Schweigen war ihm wohl Antwort genug. „Ich weiß, das muss komisch wirken, plötzlich einen fremden, offenbar nackten, Mann in seiner Wohnung vorzufinden, aber…", er strich sich verlegen durch die halblangen, kupferfarbenen Haare, „Ich werde versuchen, es dir zu erklären, aber dafür musst du ruhig bleiben." Ich entschloss mich, ihm eine Chance zu geben, die Story schien ja interessant zu werden. Und vielleicht konnte er mir auch etwas über die maskierten Unbekannten sagen.
„Ich werde mich jetzt, mitsamt meinem Telefon, vor meiner Eingangstür positionieren. Und dir von dort aus zuhören. Klar?" Ich war ja nicht lebensmüde.
„Sicher, tu das. Ich werde mich auch nicht von der Stelle bewegen, versprochen." Wie sollte er auch? Der Kerl hatte keine Klamotten an! Ich würde mich auch nicht von der Couch mit den schützenden Kissen fortbewegen…
„Aber… könntest du den bitte anziehen? Ich weiß nicht, ob ich einen Exhibitionisten ernstnehmen kann…" Ich zog meinen Bademantel aus und warf ihn ihm zu. Natürlich nicht, ohne vorher das Telefon wieder an mich zu nehmen.

the morning came in, thick as honey, studded with beestingers of shadows; the unlight from the trees' stagnant fingertips. last night i stood under the branch sky, and picked off twigs, still green inside. they tasted of fading things, like the peeling photographs of summer-skin on your wall. and you put two fingers and two thumbs together and found me in the middle and said you wish you had your camera. you called me picturesque. and i laughed and said, if that is what i'm like, why don't you tell me what i am.
they come quiet and leave with such a racket, boisterous and petulant, with loud pouting lips unapologetically kissing my feet as i run ahead of you. the leaves, they dance underneath me all across the ground as they were once in the sky. the trunks sway their heavy limbs to a symphony of winter.
you point to your naked wrist, twice, shake it like it's broken and point to it again, hold it up to your ear and snarl. it's not too late, i say, you have to wait for the flowers to bloom. so you tuck your warmth in around the edges of your skin and say you can wait forever. yes, i said. but maybe forever's not going to wait around for you, ever think about that, tough guy?

remember the year we skipped your birthday?

you watched the hands and legs on the face of the clock and tried to make sense of the clown's noses, prong teeth and drooling drips of time, layered on the rims of your auburn hair and spilling down onto the contours of your whipped and beaten eyes like chocolate milk. we dyed your hair that day, purple, spilled wine and mauve egg yolk, and we told you that you didn't have to age if you didn't want to, we told you that the ten-second rule applied to things like beauty and innocence, and we told you that you could be a child until peter pan came for you and you didn't have to watch the clock anymore, just the sleeve of night sky, riddled with stars.

but when we told you these things we were constructing mental memorials, maybe somewhere on the mantle where strangers could come in and leave gentle commentary about how beautiful you were when your hair was long and how big your grassy eyes were, like they were leaving presents under a tree that had already wilted, trying to detract from the obvious browns and grays of the thing. in our heads, we had images of sitting on the toilet seat with the lights and vent on, sobbing into palms that couldn't bear our face, hands like twisted versions of the roots of trees, like we could blossom something, and it was beautiful and artistic and painful. in our minds, we were already building you towers, houses, naming small fluffy children of nature after you, watching clouds that were shaped like your ears, pointing out donuts that were the same color as your complexion -- because in our heads, you were already gone.

and that year we didn't ask you what friends you wanted at your party, because we knew you didn't have any, because you knew you would smile like a good kid and make up a name, "well maybe jeannie and sheryl and christopher," but then you'd turn and look out the car window and bite your lips with all the other names you could've come up with, in your head is spinning the faces of classmates whose backs you watch, trying to form jigsaw puzzles out of their flesh. you dream of romances, of subtle kisses shared between closed mouths and sewn-fabric hearts that beat outside your nerves, and in all of these situations, compliments and thumbnails, there is a gentle prelude of casualness, there is a beautiful feeling of solitude, even as you watch your pseudo-lover snuggle in closer, near the figment that is the crook of your arm. no, we didn't want to acknowledge just how alone you are, kid.

because in our heads, we playing dirges, in our heads we were dreaming of the silver days when we stick apples in your mouth and watch the casket go under and silently curse ourselves for all the added romanticisms we didn't add into your speeches, all the memories we didn't cover, all of the buried touches and mournful gazes we may have exchanged that we couldn't have documented with mere words. instead we crotched situations in which we were forced to cry for fear that the plants might leech up and grab us by the ankles if we didn't break.

these aren't lies, kid, these aren't. when peter pan comes for you, we will never stop thinking about you, we will build you towers suitable of princesses and memorials to hide your young flaws, your forgivable immaturity, your undisguised filth.

we said you didn't have to have your birthday, kid, so we colored your hair and went home and pretended we were crazy and spontaneous, pretended we spoke in color and pretended that we dreamed in a color other than gray, pretended that being young forever was a place that you could be physically.

but your birthday still happened, kid, and you aged. and when the funeral did come, we stopped and wondered where we went wrong, if we dyed it the wrong color or if peter pan is by your window now, cursing himself for being twenty years too late.

our mantle place is bare.

it's just one of those days, where everything is black and white. trees, sky, the earth itself seems to be various shades of grey. it is eerily quiet as well, the only thing it could use is some jazz music, maybe a solo saxophone, or piano. it would seem to fit the days events. everything in slow sluggish moments, yet it's all poor quality. i suppose it was a film noir thing that happened.

i made a pot of black tea, but it never whistled. well at least i never heard it. it was misting outside, and the fog was rolling in, bringing the cold with it. i stood and stared out the kitchen window wearing my grey corduroy cargos with my black hoodie. there was a sound, much like drums coming from the front door. i spun around and ran towards the thump thump thump.

a large round figure stood in the doorway, hat covering the face well. looks like the rain was really coming down now. the near featureless face simply mouthed, you gonna make me stand here in the rain? let me in you jack ass! so i obeyed. i open the door letting this wet trench coat come inside. coat down to her knees, and the only thing in color i have seen all day are her red shoes. those infernal crimson patent-leather wedge heel style peekaboo toe high heels. what have i done? she removes her hat. the look of horror on my face makes her throw her head back in laughter. my pulse is so loud it drowns the mania out.

it's her. her lack of stature, her girth, and those shoes. it couldn't be anyone else. she starts with the emphatic gestures. so i've heard you've made some friends, bailey. and that you tell them just how bad i am, and how you are just warning them. they cant be better than me, can they?

i reply, better than you? better than my mom? of course. they listen, and they love. two things you never could do.

her gestures get more violent in nature. she reaches for her purse. no one is better than me she says. everything you told your supposed friends are lies. if i can't have you to care about no one will. she pulls out a knife. you deserve to die you slut! i run to the kitchen for the pot of tea. it must have boiled away. i throw the empty silver tea kettle at the mad woman, although in the fray it smashes against the wall. another laugh emanates from her double-chinned throat. you see, you can't even hurt me! you are just that weak. how do you think you made me feel with all those blatant lies you told about me? it didn't hurt me, it's only going to hurt you...

it's like i am moving in slow motion, and she is moving in real time. i'm running through water, i'm smaller and younger than she, why is this happening? she grabs what little hair i have, and spins me around, freeze frame. now she is going slow. she mouths, ...i...never...loved...you... i see the knife, close up, it's point arching from the ceiling to straight at me. freeze frame, close up on the face. her hat has come off, and all you can see is those black eyes, no feeling in them, as she is caught chin up head back in another chuckle.

frame by frame this plays out so eloquently slow, her face, my face, the knife. my sweatshirt has come off, all i have now is the white shirt underneath. close up, slow speed on my shirt. the knife plunges into my chest. i sink to the ground. angle shot of the body. i'm even bleeding black blood. close up on her feet as she walks away. you are a bug bailey, just an insect. the last thing i'll ever see were those damn red shoes. please don't hurt me anymore for bleeding on them. queue saxophone.

What if I told you I was Jesus?

Look Him up on Google Images. Right now. I'll wait.
       
Let me just tell you — you'll find pictures of Him, fisted beard and soft eyes, holding lambs, small children, His hands strung up on crosses like a marionette doll, dipping His feet into broken waters, along with the odd picture of an African-American Jesus or a manipulated photo to show Him smoking, drinking, having gay intercourse. And you'll smile, and bite your lip a little, maybe play with some knick-knack, some tinsel and bouncy toy on your desk.
       
Now look at me. Don't be shy. I'm not offended.
       
Get in so close to my face that you can only catch snips of me, fragments of hair and weaves of skin, until you have to step back and wait for your eyes to focus back on me. Stare at me until you can feel your eyes dull with the sensitivity of watching, stare at me until you forget where you are, stare at me until your ankles tingle.
       
Hello.

I'm Jesus.
       
                                                                       -
       
A man comes to your door. He has plaster jeans, a skinny shirt, baby fat, and tired eyes. He opens his mouth — slack-jawed — and raises his cupped hands, something desperate in his stance. He leans on your doorframe, edging just barely onto your neutral-colored floor, wishing terribly to be under your covers, inside your protected walls, wants to hide out in your closet and smell your clothes until he can lose himself in your life, wants to skim your bookshelf like he could discover who you were through the words from other mouths. He looks like you, you with less, you with darker shadows and you with a more prominent nose.
       
You close the door on him. You hold the doorknob and listen for the sounds of his scuttled tennis shoes going down the walk, you lean against the door when you're sure he's gone, trying to breathe, this stranger who wanted in, this stranger who looked less-than-average.
       
A new man comes to your door. He has brown hair like straightened tumbleweeds, has hands like he's about to throw dice, smiles big and full. He's wearing white clothing that looks unsanitary and clean, something you can't describe. His teeth show and your entire house lights up. He opens his eyes and waterfalls pause to listen to the sound of his soot-eyelashes. The world holds onto space for a moment, before letting go and giving into gravity all over again. He looks like no one you've ever seen, like the kindly uncle or the fishbone cousin you wished you had, beautiful and pretensed.
       
You let him in. You let him browse your closet, you lend him your books, you let him stare at the walls of your pale house as long as he likes, because he's like nothing you've ever seen before.
       
I know. Don't worry, I know. I forgive you for closing the door on me, for slamming the entry on your Savior.
       
                                                                       -
       
I live in an apartment. It's colored like bricks and toilet paper. I own two cats, one of them has a pricked ear, and I live on the fourth floor. My kitchen has seven knives in it. My refrigerator has broken down fifteen times in the past three years. My upstairs bed barely holds me, Scruffy and Mittens, grouped up like serving dishes on a sheeted table. I drink lusterless water. There are a few pictures on my walls, of dilapidated family members, of people I wish were closer. I have Post-It notes everywhere, reminders and lists, written by a pen with a smiley-face on it.
       
I walk down streets that would rather I had no shoes, that require a barefooted sort of aesthetic, something I possess in my fingertips. I work at the Circuit City half-an-hour away — you can find me in my Christmas-red vest, browsing the camera and cell-phone aisles half-heartedly. I eat lunch at the same nameless fast-food restaurant every day. I order the nachos supreme, with extra guacamole and no salsa. I know the waitress by name (Tina), but she doesn't know who I am.
       
That I'm Jesus.
       
I've had four girlfriends over the past twenty-three years. I dropped out of community college. My father won't speak to me and my mother sends me birthday cards with smiling kitties on them, asking for updates on my life, and sometimes I'm nice and tell her that I'm learning to be an astronaut, that she should visit me sometime in my Tudor, take a ride in my Rolls-Royce. Anything to keep mother happy. I graduated with strength in chemistry and English. I could tell you where to find symbolism and all the details of Einsteinium's electrons, but I couldn't tell you the square root of sixty-four without a calculator (is there one?). I've had two best friends over the course of my life; one doesn't know where I live, and the other never learned my last name. The biggest crush I've ever had was on my Physics teacher, who wore scientific glasses, laughed loudly and had California hair.
       
I like Guinness beer. My middle name is James. My favorite color is turquoise. I never want children.
       
Congratulations. You know Jesus.
       
Because, if nothing else, these are what make me Him the most.
       
                                                                       -
       
Now, maybe you've heard stories about me. You know, turning water into wine, coming back to life after my death, saving children from precarious situations and managing disciples, and no hint of a sin is wedged in there.
       
I want you to forget all of those. I want you to treat them like you would treat the tales of Aesop, or the Grimm, or Dr. Seuss, or your Uncle Flouder's war tales — fabricated, fake, and magical, with some truth glittering like a faint star between the pages.
       
Do that for me.
       
I don't do any of that. The closet I've ever come to saving someone's life was that time when I was five, performing elementary CPR on a snail, my lips trying to form around the cracker shell and cracking it open. I killed that snail, a shard propped out of its head, near the antennae; I said "the closest time," not "the time," okay?
       
You have to lower your standards. The next man who comes through with puce alcohol spilling out of his hands, who can spread new and innovative teaching with a flicker of his eyelids, who turns things to gold with his gaze, carries lambs slung over his elbow like pulsing throw-pillows, who is Caucasian and doe-eyed and tan-eared, who hears messages from an obnoxious and lovely God, who never thinks about sex and never takes one guilty peek at a porno, who says he loves you before he knows your name —
       
If that man comes around, you're allowed to kneel in the street until your knees are bloody, praise the sky like maybe someone up there can hear you. That's reasonable.
       
But until that happens, you need to calm down. I make great macaroni. I have bright eyes, like photosensitive seizures. I have a savings account. I'm a nice guy — I'm a nice guy, I swear, I'm a nice guy. I don't change the chemical set of water, not even the color, I've never raised myself from out of the dirt like a large erect elephant trunk, I've never seen the world or beheld a new life being born, I've never had disciples.
       
But I cry for that snail. Every day. I think about it in the shower, when the water runs down my back, over the ridge of my thighs, collapses on my feet. I think about it when I'm driving home, breezing through green lights, an open package of blurred gummy bears, my brain running through images of a stencil-snail with a sword of his own shell stuck out of his back.
       
I love that snail. And that should be enough.
       
                                                                       -
       
The thing I regret the most, as the saint that I am, is the day that the cereal ran out.
       
I was thirteen. There was a block party going on outside, one of those suburban treats, where the eleven-year-old girls get on their bikinis that haven't grown into them yet, where all the teenager boys try to duck out to smoke, where all the little kids run around yelling "tag!" and apologizing as quickly as they can force the words out when they bump into some adult's thigh, beer-belly dads sitting around drinking beer like it sustains their lives and soccer moms exchanging schedules and giggles.
       
A cliché, rumbling outside, and I'm pouring my cereal, trying to keep a straight face, near tears for an unidentifiable reason, wanting to run outside and yell until I can't feel my lungs, yell at every mother who wears their child like jewelry, at every father who watches football on Sundays, at every kid who never wants to grow up. I want to scream as I put the milk down, as I handle the box of Cheerios, and I squeak when all of the little circular wheat-colored os fall to the floor.
       
I watch the crumbs tumble out, wilt and die, step on them, until they become shattered and discolored rose petals, and then I rattle the box and discover that there are no Cheerios left, that I've smashed every last one. The world is an empty cardboard box where things spill and you destroy them, you don't gather them into their homes.
       
And I looked over and discovered a gathering of Cheerios that had fallen and my furious feet had missed, had avoided, as if on purpose. I collected them in my dove hands and threw them down into the plastic package, threw every last one down there, and stuck them in the back of my closet, where no one would touch them. The box is under my bed, currently, moldy and shriveled os stuck inside, beautiful and breathing.

But I still regret that there are only a few messy ones left, that I could've had a whole box full.
       
That was the moment I knew I was Jesus, by the way.

                                                                       -
       
Would you change your religion for me? Would you rewrite bits of the Bible to foretell my coming? Would you discuss my empty house, would you detail my lazy afternoons? Would you remark about the Jesus who hardly ever went to Church, about the Jesus who could care less about homosexuals, about the Jesus who donates to charities monthly, about the Jesus who keeps dead Cheerios underneath His bed?
       
Would you pray to me? Would you bend down, onto a rug or over dinner, clasp hands with your children and your spouses, your siblings and your grandparents, and speak my name aloud? Would you put me in the same sentence with God, my name next to His, like I was His son and His student and His lover and His cherished one? Would you praise this man, this Jesus, this me, who was born to a mother who certainly isn't a virgin?

Would you feel proud to know me? Would you smile upon the rest of my family, guilty by association? Would you grin at my dimples, at my indent feet, at my panda hands? Would you post those pictures of me onto Google? Would you teach children about me, would you take my word as law, as moral?
       
Would you live for Jesus? Would you live like yourselves, for me?
       
                                                                       -
       
No. No.
       
Close your Web browser with the Jesus images open. Go downstairs and spoon yourself some cereal. Don't pray to me tonight. Don't pray to me ever. Don't string my name after God's.
       
I lied. I'm just a guy with baby fat and plaster jeans who wants to be protected under your walls. I was good at English, you know, and chemistry. And I hide cereal under my bed, like a dirty secret.
       
I'm not Jesus. Sorry.

There are things that I can remember that hide away in the dark of me until I pass that grocery shop on the corner. You know that organic one? And they’re selling blackberries on special for a dollar.
Or it could be someone I have never met falling away from my gaze and bringing his laughter like a resonant chord plucked from the depths of my falling away from gasps. I shudder. Close contact with my chest is my heart beating through my ribs pleading to be ripped out.
You can see. I know. You can see, but you never say a word. Is it pleasant? Being that, oh look there, again here, oh where are you? Can I tell?
Echoes through these tunnels that are so familiar, I could scream out the similarities of this terrace and the five hundred million shoes outside the front door and that man in the heat standing outside and yelling at his four hundred and ninety-nine million children, in another tongue I can name but can only say hello in.
Do you know what my name means? It would even make you laugh, I tell you. Here is where the memory filters into a reality, and there is where tomorrow was last week. Can you tell me what I’ll be wearing; can you tell me what they would be saying to me when I told them about you?
I swear it is another continent where I can breathe easier. The air will smell different, perhaps it would not be as red apple crisp as white chocolate mountains in South America, but it would feel thick, and syrupy and hazing me into a stupor. I would drink it in, this land of scents other than. And not
Fall inside the crevice of different oxygen, different accents, different platitudes
Will you swoon? If ever I glazed my crinkle lids in your direction, smiled bird-like at the corners of my eyes to show I mean more than just skin ripples
I’m not too sure what that would mean, to the birds if they were singing, and it was another day that I can remember where there was a running stream, and the noise in the air was like a carnival and the trees were like a cardboard fairy tale and my fingers were not hot because of the summer
Surely it is as easy as waking up. Dipping your toes in iced water, sucking out the sweet from the crystalline mother-liquid, hoping it will only ever cost a dollar for the rest of your life.
I saw this movie once, where I did not see the movie at all. And I can tell you the contours of every nose in the flickering sideways outline showing up on my own little screen. I could remind you of all the times I was unsure of where to point the fire extinguisher. Trees burn indoors faster than they do in the light, outside. Where there could very well be helicopters.
Slow down, just before you need to speed up so that you can fool them all. Go on. Do it.
I am weary of the way you pause to take a breath. I linger on the Hansel and Gretel crumbs that fall away from your words, but I know. There is no home. And there are no condolences for catch-phrases that descend into disrepair. And blurred meanings.
This is what I was meaning. I was meaning hello, joystick further than a replay of what I told you I could remember of that year, it is everything I never said in those moments before you caught your breath. It is the book I let burn, it is the book I let burn, it is the book I let fall on to the cement, it is the book I gave away.

I gave away more than an afternoon in June. I gave away more than straight legged red deities for thighs. And I am sure that I had medals for all the early mornings I would ever have to cloud-breath whisper in the tunnels that I was more afraid of not finding my future painted on the left side, than I was of finding a switchblade on the right.
Let me keep the day before I met you, let me keep the day before I ever came to my favourite place, let me keep the day before I shied away from every inquisition, let me keep the day before I remembered how to crease my lips in a real way, again.
Of course, you are there on the corner. The way I remember, or not. It doesn’t matter. Details, they just don’t exist more than sound is in my taste buds pulsing through my love for discord. You’re holding yourself they way you always held yourself. Because people don’t take notice, because people always take notice, because people matter in that strange way where they don’t, much, at all.
There you are. And I am mistaken. Because you are not there, picking up that punnet, picking up another, shuffling your weight from each sole, or is that me? It isn’t you. You are not there, reaching into your pocket, for your wallet, picking out a coin, picking out a smile for her. It is not you wishing everything you ever loved could cost a dollar, when it doesn’t exist anymore.

I cannot define happiness without simply referencing a myriad of other yellow-sounding adjectives: joyous, pleasant, euphoric, loving, warm, merry, blissful, festive, idyllic, overjoyed, elated, pleased – things that don't even really mean happiness, just equate it in my head.

And that makes me nervous.

How do you define happiness? Real, emotive, unguarded and unbridled happiness? How do you describe the dizziness in your toes, the warmth at the top of your head, the numbness on the front of your teeth? The woodlike quality that comes with it, the sort of anesthetized, delirious, passionate happiness?

Without the clichés, maybe?

My logic was flawed. I thought that maybe, if I – say, if I ruled out all the hair colors that someone wasn't, like red and blond and black, and their hair wasn't dyed – then I would figure that they were a brunette, since that was all that was left.

A litote: I will describe happiness but what it isn't.

So what was unhappiness, then?

Unhappiness was nursing an imaginary tail between my legs. Unhappiness was my cheeks turning pink, scarlet and a rather painful puce in shame, on a square blue couch that held square blue tears. Unhappiness was fumbling with a bathroom stall's squalid lock, shaking from the brushing of shoulders with dark-eyelined girls. Unhappiness was being told I was too young to participate. Unhappiness was walking around a dank Sears at two o'clock in the afternoon, terrified I'd see someone who recognized me. Unhappiness was that doctor and her big silver teeth leaning over me, showering me with ice-water words. Unhappiness was rocking back and forth on my mother's sprawly blankets, crying my eyes out and nursing a stitched baseball of an ankle. Unhappiness was dragging the soles of muddied and weary feet up to the white line and waiting for the whistle. Unhappiness was strands of black and blond hair mixing in my face, telling me to write it. Unhappiness was a dark car on a dark street with shadows everywhere but my mother's face, asking me if that was my reality.

Unhappiness was my dead cat with her dark-day-in-California fur, sprayed out like a thin veneer in the corner of the kitchen, breathing no longer, and unhappiness was the small orange tabby with a ripped-off tail. Unhappiness was staring at the dimple on my geography teacher's chin as his bruised face told me I was never going anywhere. Unhappiness was the eclipse of my mother's face from behind a shadow of brown hair, telling me these weren't good enough. Unhappiness is the tone my father takes when he's angry and taking it out on me. Unhappiness is the welling in my gut when it's a sunny morning. Unhappiness was taking the disc out of the drive and closing my eyes. Unhappiness was poking at yellow-and-blue bruises around the knobs of my arm. Unhappiness was stealing drinks and cookies at four a.m. Unhappiness was dreaming of a drowning building, running up and down stairwells and running into people's curved bodies, with the fervor of a eager shotgun, begging God not to let the water touch me.

Unhappiness was watching my cousin throw his head back in a flurry of tears. Unhappiness was watching Graci swivel, drunk, and repeat the same story into my ear, something tragic on the heels of her voice. Unhappiness was turning off the TV every time a Victoria's Secret commercial rolled around, with all of the feathers and bright lights on pallid skin. Unhappiness was staring at the same page until my contacts dried, willing myself to understand what I was reading. Unhappiness was raising my hand halfway, just enough for my desperate, aching mind to be satisfied, but not enough to be called on. Unhappiness is waking up in the morning and not being able to feel past the anxiety. Unhappiness was watching a stoic, sarcastic boy make racist jokes until I could've tore his eyes open, and only laughing guiltily instead. Unhappiness was watching a beautiful, blond-fisted girl walk onto the dots with a heart engraved on her shoulder, and unhappiness was wishing I could pray for her.

Unhappiness was standing, awkwardly, at the back of my father's favorite restaurant, watching the needle lay peacefully in the grass. Unhappiness was taking my first shaky steps after three stony months. Unhappiness was standing up for a gay family member and watching someone's hand come into rough contact with my shoulder. Unhappiness was the serpentine, sinuous silence that followed my plea, at a table that was one part oak, four parts abyss. Unhappiness was a stocky green car drifting away from my life for several years, carrying within it a black-eyed and -haired Asian girl, with torn lips and crackly eyes; and unhappiness was gaping at her four years later, a short-chinned new girl at her side. Unhappiness was a prying text message, an desperate phone call and an angry conversation, with three girls I will never understand. Unhappiness was apologizing for being alive to a group of brown-eared boys I'd always admired. Unhappiness was a silent, irritable girl with porcelain features, who beat me at everything, and unhappiness was saying goodbye to her without the use of my mouth.

Unhappiness was a girl who couldn't remember my eye color but knew every hair on my face. Unhappiness was a root beer sloshed full of tears. Unhappiness was a friendly waiter with unfortunate hair taking our picture on his camera phone. Unhappiness was opening my mouth and no words tumbling out, reaching for something that might convey this - this frantic, hungry hatred. Unhappiness was waking up at five a.m. and forgetting where I was, where the walls were supposed to be, what my name was. Unhappiness was the thirteenth I-can't-make-it-to-your-birthday call from a sun-eyed girl who hadn't spoken to me properly since kindergarten. Unhappiness was leaving my dignity on a cackling bed, and sleeping with it for two hours, awake into the small hours of the night. Unhappiness was being intimidated by inanimate objects, unhappiness was being afraid of things that don't exist, unhappiness was missing people I've never known, unhappiness was choosing my words softly and carefully, unhappiness was the cigarettes woven in my parents' hands, unhappiness was being too shivery to close the door properly, unhappiness was melting through walls and falling onto the floor and crying like I had seen Jesus, unhappiness was four IVs hooked up onto flabby and sore arms as I went into a tube, unhappiness was throwing myself out of that room and tripping down the stairs, unhappiness was my dad's hand goading my back, unhappiness was being told to down two tall and fat cups of a shredded-paste-tasting liquid, unhappiness was staying quiet that first night when I was nine, unhappiness was coated in chocolate and prejudice and a bad stomach cramp, unhappiness was a tired and upset group of children with hands tied behind their backs and a big scowl aimed at me.

                              Quietly, now:       Happiness, then?

Happiness was walking up the steps to that small, tidy building, and leaving my soul in the hands of a man with a plaid shirt on, yelling pleased compliments into his brown stubble. Happiness was looking up over a bland piece of tissue-white paper and getting that ovation. Happiness was looking around a small group of skinny, pajama-clad girls and realizing that it was very possible I was among friends. Happiness was closing the frustrated white door and opening the adjoining room's. Happiness was falling back into my bed and closing my eyes to airport clamor. Happiness was turning curvature patterns on the blacktop in my wheel-chair, the first piece of joy I'd had in months. Happiness was my first blue-day in faded blue jeans, and even the small, disgusting hugs I'd gotten for it. Happiness was my name being announced over a flowered, trembling voice. Happiness was my 106% on the test he said I would fail, with that glinting stark-raving-mad look in his eye, and watching it fade.

Happiness was the first hug to and from my mother that I'd had in five years. Happiness was standing silently at the bottom of the stairs, tumbling down and letting the warmth of the fire embrace me. Happiness was making cookies and cake with a grandmother that still smiles like she's twenty-five, the age she was cheated of. Happiness was finally tucking my crutches away in the back of the closet. Happiness was hanging up from the phone call that would change my life. Happiness was waking up to a coated gray sky in the pleasant hours of the morning. Happiness was the approving look thrown over by two gentle-handed great-grandparents. Happiness was his shy voice telling me I looked okay. Happiness was walking into the room without a migraine. Happiness was finding that the words came easily, like they never had verbally before. Happiness was being told by a lady in black and tightened yellow that I need only take it one year.

Happiness was identifying silently with a mercilessly-teased boy, quietly guilty that he took fault and I didn't. Happiness was mastering the feel of a French phrase on my tongue. Happiness was a short, beautiful friend with her arms reaching out to me, with her pointy knowing eyes and her piercing fingers. Happiness was a small dream that waned and loved the back of my eyelids with subtle lavenders. Happiness was a smoothly run conversation laced around the tips of my fingers. Happiness was the first good-hair-day in years. Happiness was walking by the mirror and stopping for an unaccidental, purposeful and unclenching view. Happiness was walking around with wet and slouching toes, on a landscape made of purples and crystal blues. Happiness was the cold and unyielding wind during a cold and unyielding winter with a warm and surrendering sweater draped around my arms and torso. Happiness was the focus on the camera turned way up.

Happiness was our tennis shoes reflected on pearly escalators, our fingernails painted lacquer and dreamy red. Happiness was waking up on an old gray floor, with blue sparkles all around my hair and a game controller lurking near my face, discarded stuffed animals and a Fergie poster on her wall. Happiness was holding my breath as we took up hands and paraded around the blacktop. Happiness was shaking the green-for-official man's hand and walking down those steps in my black flats, plain Bible-belt skirt, holding onto an edge of that wreath. Happiness was watching my dad down a bowl of ice cream for the first time in ages, dripping down his beard and all. Happiness was kneeling over his small downy face and feeling the very rims of my shaking, quivering hands. Happiness was a greenish-gray couch on a Paris street, a warm and sweaty Mexico siesta, and a rainy California dream. Happiness was the silver dripping down my fingers.

Happiness was marching around the mall linked arm-in-arm, forgetting the anxiety of human contact. Happiness was my adopted aunt and uncle reluctantly carrying out my favorite board game. Happiness was a silent afternoon with a girl in red and blue, without all the black and brown and white and unlit summertime hair. Happiness was his precious little face climbing towards me, hopping off of couches, climbing down the stairs, falling asleep in my lap to Dr. Seuss and my croaky voice. Happiness was turning those newborn steps into a full-out jog, sweat pouring down onto my knuckles, drowning in my pores. Happiness was a hoarse summertime and a cloudy winter. Happiness was a lilting December where I found my unlaced shoes. Happiness was seeing his gray-and-blue face after months of worry. Happiness was the moment when the phone call came through and we realized our family was perfect, cracked and skulled and perfect. Happiness was laying on the floor with the smell of a worn-out, deranged house, happiness was singing our lungs out to songs we've never quite understood, happiness was forming and lolling on my tongue after a weepy Thanksgiving, happiness was tending to the fire during my first Christmas with snow and family, happiness was sitting comfortably in the corner of a cafeteria full of kids who will never know my face, happiness was my dad's casual conversation on a bountiful future, happiness was holding up my stack of dead and unmourned fish next to the boy that I had been trying to impress, happiness was the first sprint in a year, happiness was my growling stomach dulled by the sound of pencils being sharpened, happiness was a scalding and warm shower after the scariest day of my life, happiness was the amazing way a three-year-old's toes curl. Happiness was, was, was,

was -


Happiness is.

You moved softly, like end of summer leaves falling into autumn, turning the pages of the air with your fingers, as a silent maestro begging the orchestra to play. I never met so many instruments willing, waiting, dying to be resonant.
Stepping into the street, watching you, sounds lose meaning – they don’t disappear – but they elongate into the stretching moment and Figaro in and out of my ears as a rushing hissing straining noise. Like whistling kettles I haven’t heard, in real-time, for years.
Silk rippling slowly through the air from you; your arms are fluid and wistful. You seem so sad as you run your fingerprints across your skull, parting the trees of your scalp and shaking your hair forest into earthquakes as you landslide your eyebrows into an upheaval of tectonic plates.
I never knew a frown could be so beautiful. And I never knew that painted pain could swallow my breath like lights blinking out in the night. …I lie, I have always known, but you bring out an intensity that diminishes everything. What has once been and gone loses sense and this is comparable to nothing. Immutable in forgotten. And new paradigms are sewn into my need for you to smile.
It started softy, and you learn not to question the instinct for things that seem to only be want. You learn to say goodbye to the rhythms of the day. You learn to forget the way you were taught to breathe.
Your thoughts entered me like a rush and I couldn’t stop myself from breaking apart and falling into you as a bird burning bright through your ashes. But aligning myself to your question I knew that time was only a means to station yourself upright before you have to let go. So endings can be more dramatic when you fall, as from the start. Repeat.
Pizzicato my heart strings, and place them above my head; we move, as one, unison, anticipating syncopation, learning to count in, count down, dappling my feet along the stave lines, getting tangled in the tre(m)ble clef.
In synchronisation; your/my breath beats and my/your heart hums, lost in the cacophony of morning, and warm toes, I could sing.

The sun fell down on me like soft petals gracing the ground at your feet. Like that day I picked that flower from your garden, daring your eyes as I plucked our forever.


He loves me not.