Grow

The young couple lay on their backs, panting, in the park. It was Saturday morning, and so they had just finished their daily jog with an extra hill.

"Do you smell piss?" The woman asked the man, once she caught her breath.

"Hold on." He inhaled. "Yes."

"I think it is because so many dogs pee in this park." She sat up and looked around at all of the dog owners and their dogs, many of whom were peeing.

"That is disgusting."

"We are in the middle of a drought. Dogs have been peeing here but no rain has washed it away. We could by lying in months of accumulated dog piss." She stood up.

"I don't know. I think it absorbs... also, the city waters the grass, or else it would just be brown hay. Grass doesn't grow in California." He stretched his arms over his head. In doing so, his t-shirt raised exposing his fuzzy belly to the fog and his lower back to the grass.

"Grass is a nice, though." She mused.

"I love the way it feels on my legs and arms." He moved his limbs so they brushed against the grass.

"Even piss-grass?" She looked slightly disgusted.

"Let's go home." He stood up.

"You can take the first shower." She didn't touch him as they walked home.

They went home, showered, sat around for a bit and then went out to the market.

"I think we should get a dog." She told him.

"Oh." He looked confused.

"We could take it running, and it would be practice for having a baby." She spoke quickly.

"Oh. I don't think we're ready for that." He turned into the grocery store without checking for her response, and started palming fruit for firmness.

Wake Up

Dreams don't have to make sense. They are the result of the mind imposing a narrative on the brain's stew of electrical impulses consolidating images, phrases and sensations into new and existing neural networks. The story, or dream, spun could be revealing of how one's mind typically interprets the images, phrases and sensations experienced when conscious.

In this dream she was sitting up in bed and leaning against a headboard. She didn't know what material it was, but it was cold and had nubs that pushed painfully into her back. Her boyfriend was having sex with her. The dream told her that this was the case, though she could only see his face. She was squinting under the light of an enormous chandelier oozing crystals. His face centimeters from hers and he was screaming.

"Blah blah blah." He didn't stop to breath,"Blah blah blah." Spittle hit her face. She tried to dodge it. and saw that a group of their mutual friends were standing around the bed, trying to tell her something very important. They were wearing elegant clothes and holding glasses of champagne. She couldn't them over his relentless shouting. She struggled to get up to be with them, but couldn't throw his weight.

"Wake up. You're having a nightmare." Startled, she opened her eyes. He put his arm around her stomach protectively, and his body encircled hers. "Was it about me?" She nodded.

He kissed her cheek and stroked her hair. "I'll get you a glass of water." She watched him leave and then pulled his blankets up over her mouth.

When he returned with the glass, she appeared to have fallen back asleep.

Happy

The drunk lovers sat on the concrete entrance to BART at 16th and Mission. It was a warm May night and the couple were making use of every moment before their respective trains arrived to take them safely to their apartments. The last trains would be arriving soon. They looked a little out of place amongst the homeless people and crack addicts who typically frequented the brightly painted corner. He, in his business jacket, and she in what was described by the sales girl as a "cute and flirty summer dress." The man suggested the woman return with him to his room, but she declined. His arm was wrapped under her cotton cardigan, and she lent against him, kissing his chin and sideburns. They said sweet, but unremarkable, things to each other.

An homeless crone approached them to beg for money. The woman, in love with the world, reached into her purse and pulled out a handful of change. She gave it to the woman and wished her the best of luck. She turned back to the man and nibbled his ear. They kissed. Their lust disguised the dirty corner as a love nest. As he teased her neck with gentle kisses, the homeless woman conferred with a friend, a wizened gentleman of indeterminate age.

He approached the couple, also asking for change. The woman again reached into her purse and discovered another handful of change. She happily gave it to the man, acknowledging him with politeness, and again turned back to her friend.

They were approached by another beggar. And another.

"You've got to stop giving them money, you know. They are starting to bother me. Its rude!" He protested. The woman was surprised.

"Oh!" She started laughing and couldn't suppress her giggles until she was alone and on her train ride home.

With You

Even though we dated in the early 00's, I associate you with the 80's pop music we used to sing in dark karaoke booths. I hadn't heard Toto's Africa, or Bowie's China Girl before hearing your thin, but earnest, voice singing them through a microphone with the reverb so high that we could have used it as a blanket. Even now, years later, when I hear "the rains down in africa," I see your profile back lit by a television monitor with lyrics superimposed over the imagine of a slender teenage girl walking around what appears to be Prague at sunset.

Our song was With or Without You, by the band U2, and I always insisted on singing it. Sometimes you joined me, but more often than not you took the opportunity to take a break and refuel with cheap syrupy fruit-flavored liquor. I had never paid attention to U2 before dating you, but they were your favorite band and so I had become familiar with their music. Once you explained to me that With or Without You was really, as you believed all U2 songs to be, an allegory for the human relationship with God. I thought this was a plausible interpretation, but didn't fully understand why Bono would sing "She got me with...," if really he was speaking about Jesus. You found religious belief fascinating in the abstract, but irrelevant to your personal pursuits. We shared the unspoken agreement that religion was something people like us didn't need.

The lyrics didn't map perfectly onto our relationship, but there is a certain sadness and despair to the song that I related to and a sense of unavoidable and necessary suffering that our relationship shared. The lyrics are ambiguous, with three characters: the singer, "you" and "she." I identified with the body bruised and the one who gives themselves away, who in your interpretation is perhaps Jesus, and I thought of you as "she." This was a hazy interpretation though; the lyrics weren't as important to me as the guitar at the beginning of the song. The guitar line is eerily simple and rhythmic. I felt as if this guitar line caressed me, as if it danced up and my body, sliding down my spine and tickling the back of my knees. The song no longer has such an effect on me. When I hear it now, in airports or streaming from anonymous cars as they pass by, I am reminded only of you.

I never liked the song's conclusion, when Bono screams hysterical descending "Oh's." I imagined a crowd of fans, mouths opened wide, joining along with this release, undulating before Bono posing onstage with outstretched, upturned hands, as an enormous monitor on the back of the stage projected this image back down on all of them. I didn't want any part of this communal catharsis. I found it revolting. I clung to the pain of our relationship as if it was something unique to me. It wasn't anything I thought anyone should ever be able to sing along with. It seemed crass and ruined the song.

One drunk karaoke night, when we sang our song as a duet, I dropped out for this final wail-along, and listened as you lifted your voice in the cry. As you sang, I heard a truth I didn't understand. You saw I had tears in my eyes and, misunderstanding my sentiment, sang along with even more sincerity.

Night

I see a full moon.
It reminds me how you broke my heart.

I see a half moon.
It reminds me of the full moon,
Which reminds me how you broke my heart.

I see a cresent moon.
It reminds me of the full moon,
Which reminds me how you broke my heart.

San Francisco

It was a warm evening and people were sitting outside the cafe. Shadows were long and the descending sun made everything rosy. Four dogs of different breeds sat pointedly, tied to nearby parking meters, focusing intently on the cafe, waiting for their owners to appear after dinner. As I approached, I saw two young women sitting under the radiant bougainvillea that decorated the southward wall. They were dressed in the season's fashions for young professionals: the colors were warm and mute, the fabrics gauzy and the cut professionally suggestive. Inside the cafe, someone sneezed. On the table between the women lay a wicker basket now holding only bread crumbs, ceramic blue plates glistening with the residue of salad and two large mugs of half finished lattes. When I passed the duo, one spoke shrilly, in crisis.

"This isn't how I want to live. I don't know what to do. This is all wrong."

The other, affectionately, "Shut the fuck up."

Diminishing Returns

I will animate a simple black line drawing of a man walking in profile onto a white screen from the left. He will stop about one third into the frame, the full length of his body showing. Vertically, he takes up most of the screen, his feet at the bottom and his head near the top. The man is drawn with angular lines. He has no facial features, a crew cut, and his shoulders and arms are large to indicate that he is strong.

A woman enters from the right. The woman is as tall as the man's shoulders. She is in profile. Her hair is curly and her figure drawn with black, round lines. She has eyes but no mouth. She also stops about one third of the way into the frame.

The couple stand facing each other. She tilts her head up to look at him. Her body softens. Then, with one arm she opens her chest and pulls out her heart. It is an anatomical heart, red and beating eagerly. It is not attached to the woman's body with veins and arteries and so it comes out easily and without mess.

The woman holds the fluttering heart before the man and he looks at it. She gently tosses it to him, but he makes no effort to catch it and it falls to the ground. The heart flattens a bit and the beating becomes momentarily interrupted on impact, but soon resumes. She quickly retrieves it and pulls it up to her chest.

This time, she gestures she is going to throw the heart before the toss. The man nods, but after she throws it, he does not move. Her heart bounces of his chest and lands at his feet. The heart flattens again. The beat stops, and then assumes a slower tempo.

The woman retrieves it. This time when she picks it up, the heart is damaged. Blood drips a little. She falters a little as she stands back up.

The heart is tossed. The man remains immobile. The heart ricochets and falls. Blood spatters on the legs of the man. The beats are faint. The woman stoops low and gently scoops up her damaged heart with both hands.

The man turns and walks back off towards the left.

The woman opens her chest and places the tender mess back inside. She waits for some time, and then walks, slowly and with effort, after him.

Oceans Apart

When I called you, three months after we had last spoken, I couldn't blame you for being outraged.

"You left me for a guy who treats you like that?" You were unsympathetic, and rightfully so. When I think back on the various ways I have told the story of our breakup, I don't really know the truth. My story has changed multiple times. The convenience of deceit is simpler than understanding the mechanism by which love failed.

My moving to a different country was a big change in our relationship. I hadn't understood the effect that such a move would make. We had lived on different coasts during the two years we dated and so I couldn't see why having an ocean between us would make much difference.

Perhaps, it wasn't just that we couldn't communicate as easily, it was also that suddenly I needed you more. I was lonely, isolated and wanted, like Max, "to be where someone loved me the best of all." So, I relied on you more. It was an additional burden on our distance strained relationship. You disappeared, leaving a cryptic message on my machine, "I won't be able to talk for a month." A job opportunity, the first in years had appeared and you had taken it. I was happy for you, but my grief for myself overruled.

That was the end. I was lonely. I needed a family, and so I fell in with first guy who seemed to need me like I needed you. After the month had passed, when we finally spoke it was so that I could tell you I had found someone else.

I don't know where you were when we had that conversation. It was second of January and I was wandering the deserted city while most people were warm inside their houses. When we spoke, I was blocked from the steely wind by a luminous shopping center that resembled the hull of a sea freighter impossibly balanced between skyscrapers and convenience stores. It was late, and everything was closed, but the storefronts were illuminated and shop assistants, like tiny people from a parallel universe, rearranged clothes and posed mannequins through the windows. I had just spent my first Christmas away from my family. The stores were busy with new year sales. They, too, were getting rid of the old to make space for the new. I climbed up and down a concrete staircase in a plaza holding onto the metal railing in one gloved hand, and the phone in the other. Patches of dirty snow were encrusted along the sides of the building and an eddy of freshly fallen dry snow swirled in front of the closed doors.

Despite my remembering the place, I forget what we said to each other. I told some lies. You were mostly silent. I gave the final push and you closed to me.

I never saw you again. I tried to see you a few years later, but you explained that your new girlfriend would not permit such a meeting. It didn't sound like a very convincing story. Now, I don't know that I would want to see you. It would satisfy a curiosity, but there is really no reason for us to ever meet.

sweetheart

i was sitting on the table, you were sitting on the floor. we chatted with each other. we never felt bored.

the feelings dessicated. disappointment settled down. your words became nets. pauses our protests.

did we try to make things better? we didn't have the time. the world was out before us. we didn't have a child.

i helped you find another. we never said goodbye. if you have children, i know they'll be fine.

aftermath

first there were small giggles, followed by the occasional chuckle, which soon crescendoed into loud guffaws. she lay on her kitchen floor and convulsed with laughter. her sides ached. she couldn't get up. her friend was by the counter cubing tomatoes for a salad.

"and then he said..." was the most she was able to say. "he said...." but laugher kept overtaking her. the friend ignored her. she focused on preparing their food. this wasn't the first time her friend had been paralyzed by silliness.

finally, the food was ready. the laughing fit subsided and they sat down to eat their tomato and chive salad. they ate it with crusty bread slathered with cream cheese (low fat).

"so, what did he say?"

"well... i guess it isn't really so funny."

you came home late

you forgot to buy the cat food again, but you were too tired to make a trip to buy it after a hard day at work. i didn't mind picking it up. i had been from home and was happy to have an excuse to leave the house. we weren't very happy together anymore, and so leaving you alone to pass out on the bed, without having time to make an obligatory pass at me, was a nice escape.

we were in the middle of an indian summer, and the air was still warm and heavy though it was almost midnight. the only supermarket open was a brisk twenty minute walk away, but the heat invited a slow stroll. i took the route under the ginkgo trees. their pungent leaves hadn't fallen yet; they were along a busy boulevard, and in the summer i had pointed out to you how their green fan-shaped leaves had collected a thin film of city grime. "that is what we are breathing!"

when ginkgo leaves fall, they drop at a rapid rate. a friend once told me that they all fall in a period of 24 hours. i believed her for a long time, but later learned that they usually fall within 15 days. she also told me that they smelled awful, and that in Philadelphia there was one ginkgo lined street that she avoided every fall due to the smell. i wanted to see the leaves falling. even though i knew it was a tall tale, i longed to see a shower of yellow leaves dropping at once. when i got to the trees, all the leaves were still attached. i plucked one leaf and scraped the grime from the leaf making one clean path down the stem. the dirt stuck under my fingernail. i dropped the leaf and watched it leisurely twirl to the ground. i grabbed a handful of leaves and stuffed them in my pocket.

i returned home with the cat food. the cat was asleep on your chest facing you. when you breathed in she rose at a slant as if she was about to fall into your open mouth. as you exhaled she resumed a horizontal pattern. i put food in the cat bowl and she opened her eyes lazily. but stayed on your chest. she was your cat from before. when i had first moved in she was jealous of me, and wouldn't come anywhere near me. over the three years we developed a pattern. when you weren't around, i would suffice. if you were there, she wished i would leave.

i climbed up on the bed and stood looking down on you. you didn't wake up. i pulled the leaves from my pockets, raised them high over your head and opened my hands so they pirouetted down onto you. one landed on your chin, under your open mouth. you still didn't wake up. so i lay down on my side of the bed and pretended to sleep.

tomorrow

we will wake up and paint our toenails and walk down the street sipping ice tea from glasses we'll bring from home. we'll stop to stroke every dog. we'll buy crusty bread, soft cheese and red wine and find a sunny spot on the grass. we'll sit and laugh and then we'll say goodbye.

i'll pull out my book and lie on my belly reading it in the sun. i'll fall asleep on an open page. i'll drool and wrinkle the middle of the page. when i sell the book, a 15 year old girl will buy it the following week. when she gets to the page with the wrinkled interior she'll wonder what i spillled.

i'll climb the trees and race along the rooftops chasing the last sunny patches before the sun sets in the west. i'll sprint over the blue roof of your house, but i'll have forgotten you by then. i won't jump extra hard and try to make your house crumble. i won't fly down the chimney. i won't ring your doorbell to tell you that since you left i have been lonely.

you always say that

running late...
do you ever give the right directions?
it was on sale.
do you mind just doing this for me?
i forgot to tell you.
did you want me to do that?
i didn't get around to it.
i just had a really stressful day.
can 't you wait until i finish speaking?
i'm so tired.
you know, the pretty girl.
next week, ok?

is this right?

i don't know if you remember the first time we met. to be honest, i am not sure if i remember all of the details, but some parts remain clear. we met in a public place and when i looked at you the rest of the world was out of focus. when you spoke it was as if i couldn't even hear myself. when i touched your hand your flesh was like the future.

that isn't true, is it? we both know precisely how we met. we were standing in line at the grocery store at midnight. you were buying twenty packages of ivory soap and a banana. you had lined up the soap on the conveyor belt quite neatly, and had carefully placed the banana on top. i was with my boyfriend. we were 18. i wanted him to buy condoms, but he was afraid, and so i was buying them. i held the condoms in my hand, and positioned my body so you couldn't see. even though you were clearly a freak, because of the soap, i still felt too embarrassed to let you see what i was buying.

or were you someone different? were you perhaps the waiter in the greek diner with the pencil mustache from whom i ordered waffles and strawberries for dinner in the middle of winter? you were disapproving, but i ordered what i wanted. my friend asked for soup and a baked potato with bacon on top. you gave me a reproachful look, as if to say "see, you should listen to your sensible friend." i left you a big tip because you gave my waffles the delicious flavor of protest.

no! remember how we sat on a children's climbing structure behind my college dorm eating oranges and drinking coffee. i wanted to share the incredible flavors, courtesy of wallace stevens, with you. it was autumn and the air was cold in my mouth. i wanted to show you how i could do the monkey bars. but you wanted to go to a party. so we sat around for a bit. and then you couldn't do the monkey bars. and so we left the fresh outside. and i never forgave you.

perhaps, when i killed the dragon, it was you who sat afraid in his cave. i loved you so much. it is funny to think i could have l felt so deeply only to have forgotten you. you sat amidst the stolen gold, and it made your face look yellow. were you crying? did you care for the dragon or fear for me. i had to kill him. i tried bargining, rationalizing, and pleading, but the dragon swore you were his most valuable prize. and so i won you, but later i discarded you. what was i to do with your sorrow?

we rode to the moon once. we chased our dreams there. they had gotten carried away. but we were cold on the moon and so we floated back down to earth. we lost those dreams and then we lost each other. i'm glad to have you back.

i saw a red tailed hawk! powerful wings beat over my head. i wish you could have seen it. where were you? was that when you were working? you have missed so much.