2005-09-04 - 10:04 p.m.
emergency exit * you are here
We were leaning against magazine racks looking at photographs. I wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be a date or not since I really had nothing to compare it to before, or since then. If it counted for anything he kept putting his arm around my back and his hand on top of mine. But that’s not the point. He was wearing a teal shirt that was frequently my favourite and I was wearing my tweed coat. As he was explaining to me the saturation sequence to make a picture grainy I noticed a woman behind me moving towards us. I moved to one side as not to interfere with her shopping but she caught me and said, “Oh don’t worry, you’re part of it.”
//////
You wake up in a planetarium
in the order of chaos
planes dodging stars
a stiff neck
and your eyes bent into all realms of focus.
//////
The room was white, and wasn’t really a room in the least, it was an over hand, an extension, the second level of the ceiling. Below the walls were covered in rejected art hanging in hopes of a business drunk to purchase them. Our vantage point was interrupted slightly by hanging Christmas lights, suspended in strands, retaining the subtle quality of fireflies long enough to focus on. He started singing and the sounds hung from the ceiling and slid down the walls and formed puddles on the floor. I went downstairs to pretend to mingle, splashing through the rivers of music sitting idly on the floor. I kept looking back to remind him I was listening and he kept smiling to remind me he was watching and I felt like right there we had those people beat. He asked me if I wanted to visit the ocean one day. I nodded and he took both my hands in his and held them between us long enough for us to realize that we both knew who the other was missing and why we were just settling.
//////
You wake up in the breeze way.
Clouds of diluted sky
roaring in combat.
Tongue in cheek and
lying through your teeth.
//////
The ladies in the office stood there asking questions, handing out forms, sizing me up, thinking “Are you crazy? You’re too young and pretty to be crazy.” All the forms had questions about drugs and infectious diseases. Why not just assume my drug of choice is heroine and incidentally, I can’t see out my right eye. I could hear her thinking about her questions, her forms. Her questions were all the easy ones about labor and pregnancy. I kept wondering if she knew I’d turn out crazy and if she was disappointed. People came and then went, everyone had the same thoughts written across their foreheads, “Who’s the crazy one?” Someone came to get me, someone who’s name I can’t remember. But then again she didn’t know my face. I was someone looking young and distressed sitting next to me. That was her first mistake. From a fair point I knew enough about karma and believing in it from talking to ---- so I pretty much knew she was fucked when my favourite song came on the radio. She took me captive in a small brown room where I couldn’t breath or hear and all I saw were posters of the bay and stupid Zoloft clock. She asked me if I wanted something to drink, I should have asked for a stiff one but declined the offer without thinking twice about it. She ask me questions that had no answers. I didn’t like the way my voice sounded outside my head or the feeling of having an up-side-down bowl in my gut. I started realizing that she probably practiced her face in the mirror. “I’m not really sure what I should be saying,” I said finally. “Mmhmm, mmhmm, mmhmm. I see,” She said and looked at me her brows coming together and then arching up, looking at me with eyes flaming. You’re a liar. You are lying to me. My arms responded to that folding across my chest. I don’t trust you. You don’t even know me. Her foot swung from it’s leg, right over left. You are a dime a dozen. I’ve seen you before.
//////
You wake up in the comatorium
spoons over your ears
blood vessels and heat surrounding
your field of vision.
//////
After being slightly agitated over a joke about coincidences she proclaimed, “I don’t believe in fate. Or irony for that matter. They are nothing to be accounted for and as far as your coincidences are concerned you have to stop playing these jokes on me.”
“Explain the woman in the book shop”
“Wake me up when the war is over,” she said and buried her head in the sheets. In the time it took from his call in a down town pay phone till he slipped in beside her the walls had crumbled and she was sleeping in destruction.
She was swimming in a pool of stagnant desolation under fortress. This said cocoon was contracting by the minute as more and more came to avoid her concentration.
She had tattooed the time to the inside of her palm rather than wear a watch. On March 20 at 7:33 exactly she sat up in bed, threw her arms up and screamed, “We need to make a change!” He said, “For Christ’s sake stop being so idealistic you know very well that the only constant is change and if we’re constantly changing there is no need to consciously change.” She got out of bed and walked to the window. “Will you tell me if I’m hurting you?” He said, “Jesus. What are you talking about? You’re not hurting anyone.” “Well,” she said, “You’re killing me.”
