The Creations

As I matured, so did the walls. As I got older, so did the people. I repainted my walls once every year, and each time I repainted, the make-believe stick figures that were once there gradually became people. Real, alive, and thriving individuals that I gave life to. With a simple flick of the wrist, stories would be told from each and every person. At night they would guard me from any impending doom, and in the day they would become companions for me to sit beside as I did school work or read. They would take care of me when I was ill, and they would serve as an audience for when I danced. They were the most interesting people in the world, and would always be until I grew old enough for my imagination to completely fade away.

The Nuance

Play it one more time please, I need to hear it again. I need to make sure that its the only sound in my head. Play it again for me, I want to hear it once more. I want to make sure the only sound is correct. I don't want to hear that stare again. I don't want to see those words. I'll play the part again, I need to play it again. I need to make sure that every note is right. Give me a second to rehearse that part once more, I haven't been playing it right this entire time. I know it might sound right to you, but it doesn't sound right to me. I can't hear those words anymore. I never want to see that stare again. I have to keep playing. I never want to hear that again.

The Times Gone By

Tick tock. All day. Every day is tick tocking by. There is no clock in your office that ticks or tocks, but you can hear the tick tock in your head. Tick. That's another second of your life gone, you think. Tock. That's one more second waiting for the man to tell you what to do. Tick. I'm a thinker, you think. Tock. Time to be a doer. Tick. You walk into your boss' office. Tock. I quit.

The clock stops.

The Nursing of Sins

"Animals don't have any money, do they?" You asked me once, when you were very young.
"No. Not a penny." I replied.
"Why is that?" you wondered "Why have humans turned their misery into coins, that they can actually hold?"

The Time and Time Again

It takes soul-deep restraint to sit here like this. Counting the minutes until I can stop counting minutes. Waiting for the second when I am no longer waiting. How incredibly nice it would be, to float in time without an anchor.

The Art of Finding Flaws

Maybe that's all it means, to grow up; to watch your heroes become human, right before your eyes.

The Silence Goes On For Years

In case of emergency, break glass. Throw plates. Cave to the insecurities you've harbored all along. Scream. Curse. Panic. Accuse her of never loving you, even though you know she did and still does. Tell her you never loved her. Tell yourself. Feel the world crumbling around you. Rip the rest of it down. Ignore her pleas. Her tears. Your regrets. Watch yourself leave, unable to stop your own feet. Slam the door. Keep walking. Realize, too late, that you didn't mean it.

The Things We Miss The Most

The cold autumn sun seemed far too bright for me as I stepped out onto the dusty patch of earth. For the first time in many years, orange had turned to blue and white, a number replaced by a faded logo of some long-forgotten band. Behind me, the steel gate slid shut, locking me out of the only place I had ever really called home for more than six months at a time. "Must feel good to be free," called the guard. But I didn't feel lucky. Just lost.

The Synaesthesia

It's not yet winter. A few of the birds are still here, and their songs send thin green shockwaves through the sky. As I enter the convenience store, the little bell suspended from the door showers me with harmless pink sparks. Mrs. Nguyen is happy to see me. I ask her for the usual: a large light and sweet in a to-go cup. The coffee is drinkable, as always, but it tastes a lot bluer than usual. I let Mrs. Nguyen know that the milk she's using is about to go off. Have you heard, she says, They're tearing down the nice old houses across the street to build condominiums. Her voice is tinged with orange. She continues, Sometimes it seems like this city gets less and less colourful every year. I shake my head, You're right, but we'll get by somehow. People can adapt to anything.

The Night Sky

I have fallen far too deeply in love with the stars to ever fear the night.

The Human Error

Jostling through the crowd I see the epicentre of attention: a young man fallen from the sky, face contorted by death, with a note pinned reading “Another failed attempt to fly.”

The Strings Are Cut

There are words. Oh, God. There are just so many words. So many words coursing through my head. They're in my blood. They're in my heart, and I feel them all throughout me until they are me and I am them and I've become a word, a word of words and I'm consumed by it, the literature becoming my soul and my soul becoming literature and I've become so closeted and so small and defined but so big and so imaginative and so expansive and I envelop everything that I am but I'm still stuck in these words these things that won't ever let go of their one thought their one direction and one desire to be what they are and nothing more and certainly no less, but I can't do that but I can be everything now but only one thing at a time and I can't do it and I can't stay tied down like this.

The Imperfections

Kieran Murphy, during the moonlight hours, could not be found in the pub, or at the dance hall, or boasting with the wagon men. He had in his mind a vision, something perfect and still and beautiful, something he could never get right. The nights he spent at his workbench consumed the best of him, kinship and merriment whittled away into a scrap pile behind the garden. When Kelly Mason went round to bring him milk and muffins, she always saw the most beautiful carvings. Ash, oak, sometimes cherry, all carved with the same vision of an angel, wings outstetchd above her head, her hands nailed to the cross. The angel was in agony, there was no denying it. But it was the sorrow in her eyes that brought Kelly near to tears. Kieran’s lip seemed to curl, looking at his dozens of carvings. Next week, Kelly would find none in the sitting room, and the scrap pile behind the garden would be even larger.

The Millennia Later

Desolation has its own stark beauty. It’s in the limbs of dead trees twisting up, pleading at the grey sky. It’s in the air, cold with a faint hint of smoke and the barest breeze that stirs up the dust at your feet. The white-grey ash falls like snowflakes, dusting your hair, your coat, your mask. You catch one of the flakes and it crumbles between your gloved fingers. The ground is packed as hard as concrete under your boots as you turn your back on this cold, still world. You look up; the moon is barely visible. You will carry that memory with you as you go back underground. Mankind no longer has use for the stars.

The Things I Could Never Say

I am searching for words, such words that would be the ark of my self. I wish to plant within consonants and syllables that which is the object of my desire, so as to bloom outwards, so that words become the soil for my emotion. My words will be pollen, drifting along by the current of my restlessness. They must be more than figures; homes to what I yearn to say with windows large enough for you to peek inside. They will be blood vessels, each a letter flowing in my veins so if I were to bleed out would spill a pool of words, and floating on the surface, like prophetic alphabet soup, they will spell out my love for you.

The True Value

"We're here for money." The tall, gaunt alien said in perfect English.
The president looked at his cabinet members, lost for words. Were they asking for ransom? Did they have unimaginable weapons pointed at earth? The most powerful man on the planet was at a loss. Cold beads of sweat formed on his forehead.
"Like this." He took a device out of his bag, opened it, and a hologram projection appeared out of thin air. An old book. More specifically, a Gutenberg bible. It drifted out of the center of the projection to be replaced by a roll of the Torah. Then the Koran. Sun Tzu's the Art of War. A copy of the US Constitution. Emerson, Poe, Twain. All looked like depictions of early editions of the works. "We are prepared to offer our money in return. Big money." He reached for a shiny metal rectangular box by his side. It had looked solid until he did something to it and reached inside, pulling several ancient looking spherical objects and one newer looking one. He twisted the newer sphere and it expanded, unfolding like an alien origami, exposing several surfaces with tiny scribbles on them. "This is a key. It will allow you to translate the others into Earth languages. We believe that's a fair trade, as you will see. And it will be just the beginning. We look forward to dealing with you."

The president asked "Why do you call this money?" The alien smiled, exposing blue-tinted teeth.

"Yes, you are a young species... From our research into your culture, what you call money is the ultimate symbol of power, is it not? You will learn from our money. Then this, and much more, will become clear to you."

The Little Things

It was the third time that the pilot light had gone out in a row. Maybe if it had held, if it had just complied and remained alight long enough for the heater to warm up, I wouldn't have lost it. Yell at no one in particular and scream my throat hoarse. Then again, it had been a bad day, and if it wasn't the pilot light it was going to be the empty tube of tooth paste in my bathroom cupboard or the dead remote batteries (I already knew they were on their last legs). Still, sometimes it feels so good to be angry at everything. Even if its nothing.

The Ending of Lives

Just then, a suspiciously bullet-sized hole tore apart several billion rather crucial neurons in his brain, causing this line of thought, and indeed the entirety of his flesh, to halt abruptly and not continue for the rest of time.

The Loveless Smudges

You never spoke about it, but I know you knew your father wasn't dead because each week you would receive a check with his signature. He can write, at least. When you were younger, I always watched you, waiting by the letter box or, if you forgot to wait, you careering across the yard at first sight of the postal carrier. You would study the envelopes for the old man's blocky handwriting. If it appeared, you would tear that bastard open. You pored over the checks, especially the John Hancock. You became a student of each loop and whorl; a professor of every dot or cross. If a curve became unexpectedly thick or severe or even, god forbid, broken, you would ruminate for days. What did these imperfections in his automatic mean? Did they indicate longing? A moment's hesitation? Was he angry? Upset? I imagine most children learn to read their fathers' moods from fatherly faces, paternal smiles, scowls, curious grins; you had the strange way ink dries on paper.

The Art of Leaving

You limped off into the woods, down the path we walked together for years. This time, you didn't invite me along.

The Collection

I sat there staring at the vase for the better part of half an hour. The layers were distinct, seeming to sway with the room. The bottom layer was mostly cheaper and synthetic corks, the sort of thing that fueled fervent and youthful works, the sort of writing that came together halfway through a bottle, a third of a way through a pack of cigarettes. The next layer had a bunch of champagne corks from New Years Eve and the ones from a case of cabernet my agent bought me after The New Yorker accepted a short story. After that the caps from several bottles of Scotch, a different one every week. They helped write the novel that eventually got me a deal with Vintage. The Scotch caps faded into more cab corks. No white corks though, I don't like white wine. The top layer was the one where there was no longer a correlation between bottles and certain chapters. Then the was the cork at the top that I had marked with a red Sharpie.
It was there to remind me: "This is the one that caused you to miss a deadline".

The One About Repeating Yourself

It's always 4am somewhere in the world and you find yourself sitting, waiting for the 4am line to move overhead before starting to think about life, where you are in it and where it's taking you, and why it's not what you thought you wanted and not even what you needed, but you rationalize that it is a dream come true. Albeit someone else's dream. And all you want to do is wake up. And you do wake up - screaming. And it's always a Tuesday. And you're always waking up too late. Anyway. He called himself Frank, but his father named him Frankly. Just so that he would be able to end each letter with Yours, Frankly and be able to save one extra word. His father was an engineer, I'm sure you can tell.

The Sunlit Child

You used to eat frozen cherries and I'd admire the way the juice stained your lips and fingertips. My house is too loud, the floors crack under the weight of too many feet coming and going, their voices seeping through the carpet, cigarette smoke and fake smiles.
I'd give anything to watch you eat those cherries again, mainly because then I could be back in that eternal summer of youth.

The Place Under The Trees

You always brought me to the same spot when you wanted to talk. The conversation would mostly consist of minute statements followed by gruelling silence. The cold air would be tense around our ears and lips, as if we knew some killer statement would strike and we would change these words to mean something bad? good? Who knew at this point? You puffed away at your cigarette in the snowy spot we picked as the silence remained. We never did talk that day.

The Social Protocol

Did you think I was cool when you met me? I worried about that. I worried that you would think I was too much when you met me. Because I was listening to Patti Smith while we watched Tim Burton movies, because I was too high to think straight and fell asleep all the time and wore those fake topsiders and hated everybody in my classes. I worried that you would think I was trying to be cool, and think that I was failing because all of those things were pretty not cool.
But I didn’t care a lot and you said “So you’re pretty eccentric huh?” when you met me and I said, “I don’t think so, no?” And I was confused. So we just danced at Sundance and drank filthy Stella Artois and kissed like hands trying to hold each other.

The Anchor

You know that point in your life when you realize that the house you grew up in isn't your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have a place where you keep all your stuff, that idea of home is gone. You'll see it when you move out one day and it just sort of happens and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you're homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like a rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have that feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, and your family and your kids or whatever, and it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it.
Maybe that's all a family really is; a group of people who feel homesick for the same imaginary place.

The Nostalgia

What is it the Greeks said about looking back? Or was it the Germans? Or the Aztecs? Something about how nostalgia is an insurance plan for a crappy future. Maybe they said it better. Regardless of who said it and how, I can't help but get sucked into all those memories, I want to kiss every single person in every single picture and tell them that it's good to see them again, let's sit and catch up, I think this will be ten times worse when mt friends begin to die.

The Infant

There is a wail of inarticulate need, that is a child's first grasping after language, for sounds that mean 'wet' or 'food' or 'pin'. There's a shriek of terror - that there is no one here and that there may never be anyone here ever again. There's that latitudinous wah-wah not unlike the call the call to mosque in the middle-east; this is creative crying, fun crying, from babies who while not especially unhappy have failed to register that we like to constrain weeping to conditions of distress.

And perhaps saddest of all is the muted, habitual mewl of a baby who may be perfectly miserable but who, whether through neglect or prescience, no longer anticipates reprieve - who, in infancy, has already become reconciled to the idea that to live is to suffer.

The Crooked

The way you tilted your head when you were listening, when you were smiling, when you were happy, when you were sad, when you were tired, when you were crying. The way your head was never on quite straight.

The Things Worth Noting Down

These are the things I will remember about you:
1) You disliked Hemmingway.
2) You thought our Justice system far too Kantian.
3) You gave me a cool, marble egg for my birthday. One that fit in the palm of my hand.
4) The way dappled light shone down through the trees made your hair look like gleaming redwood.
5) The formation of freckles on your right shoulder.
6) You laughed like a child, and smiled like an old man.
7) You would cry over the sorrows of people you never knew.
I say this all only as a disclaimer to the last thing I will remember:
8) I could have loved you. Maybe I already did.

The Drowning of Sorrows

You say you're okay, but you're sitting there drinking wearing that suit like armour.

The Wish You Were Here

It's four twenty eight in the morning, and I sit in the cold train station on a ribbed steel bench, my head back against the concrete and my feet tucked under me, knees drawn up to my chest. My reporter's notebook pressed against my legs. I write with my left hand, and it bothers the woman next to me, although my elbow hasn't hit her. Her lips are pressed together in a thin line; she sits upright and stiff, with hawk eyes and hawk hands and a hawk nose. If she were writing to someone like you, she wouldn't look so hollow.

The Stubbornly Static Belief

"You think men was meaner then than they are now?" the deputy asked.
The old man looked out at the town. "No," he said. "I think people are the same from the day God first made one."

The Bargaining

All I ask is that you let me spend an eternity feeling this way, before you leave.

The Worst You've Ever Felt

I'd kiss you, even though you're sick. Even though you'd make me sick.

The Fallen Masses

Two or three really great writers have discussed the idea of how much trust you must put in the world in order to even get out of bed in the morning.
I didn't really believe them until I woke up one day and fell through the floor.

The Choices

It was never my intention to get my thoughts stuck on anybody. If it were up to me, I would listen to sad music, drink, and stare out of my window at the mountains. I'd be fine reading William Carlos Williams alone without care or affection. I'd be irresponsible and happy with that. I don't mess anybody up that way.
This wasn't supposed to happen. I'm not supposed to grow up yet. I'm drinking to the bottom of bottles, trying to get away from any sort of possibilities. Possibilities are debilitating. Sadness is comforting. My four walls, those white blinds, the light setting on the hospital. These are my reality now. Not your maybes and almosts.

The Them and The You

They told me you were nobody, nothing important.
Well then, I thought to myself, you must be special indeed - because in all my years, everything I've seen, I've never met somebody who wasn't important.

The Layers

You're just a person in a family in a home in a town in a city in a country in a continent on Earth in a solar system in a galaxy in a universe.
You are so tiny.
And so well protected.

The Open Faces

That's the problem with you - with all people who always say what they mean and mean what they say - you assume everyone else does, too.

The Softly Trod Line

They would hurt you less.
I will love you more.

The Echo

I don't hear voices.
I hear your voice.

The Motives

We do what we do because it's all we can live with. Because it's the only decent thing to do.

The Soldier's Twitch

You walk with your weight carried on the outsides of your feet. It's characteristic of someone who walks long distances over rough ground, but not quickly. You out your right hand in your jacket pocket, but not your left, as if the posture of right hand higher and left hand lower feels natural to you; the posture of someone carrying a rifle at half-ready. You scan visually from side to side on the street; you notice rubbish bins, parked cars, and on-coming pedestrians, but someone overtaking from behind doesn't bother you. You're used to working with people you trust in an otherwise hostile environment.
You need to calm down. You're not fighting a war.

It's okay to give peace a chance.

The Night Sky

No matter how long I took to explain combustion and fission and hydrogen and helium, you still insisted that stars were people who were loved so well that they were traced into the constellations, to live forever.

The Widely Believed Lies

The world will tell you that how you say things is more important than what you say.
The world is wrong.

(I'm back. Thank you for still being here. I missed you.)

The Goodbye (for now)

I'm afraid on Tuesday I'll be going away, to an area of France where I'll have little to no Internet access. This happens once a year, every year. So it's thank you, and goodbye for a little while.
I'll leave you with words paraphrased from Stephen King:
"Demons are real. They live inside of us and, sometimes, they win."
You can make the world a better place by owning up to your demons.

I'll see you in three weeks.

The Last Hurrah

Fuck it. We've got the next two months and that might be the last time we're ever truly free again. So throw a dart at a map and we'll take out all our savings and get on your bike (crash helmets all 'round) and drive there. We can sit in sunlight and buy tacky gifts for people we don't really like and laugh and play and read and live and love.

Please say you'll come.

The Fire Grows

The truth always starts as a minority.

The First Sign

For the longest time, I had to pretend to go mad to tell you the things I needed to. We called it art. Because art is the word we assign to our feelings made public. And art doesn't worry anyone.

The Choices

I would like to say that in that moment I wasn't thinking, that I was insane. But I think perhaps it is in these moments, when a mother will jump in front of a train to push her child out of the way, when a person steps between a bullet and their lover, when I agreed to sever all ties to be with you, that we are at our most lucid. It is in these moments that we decide what we will live for. And what we can live without.