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“Don’t you get lost in there, don’t you sleep.” He tapped her nose; the crystal in the window caught the late afternoon sun. Rainbows danced across the corners of the small room. A memory crouched in each shadow.

“I need this, there’s nothing like you and I.” She curled tight, into a ball, he shook his head, and chlorine wavered in the air between them. Her hair made a stain on the pillow, amongst the strawberry gray roses and their thin stems. The crystal twits, her eyes shut.

He set her on fire to run the hills of last summer, a human fireball walking down Masten Street, on its scolding path past the house on the corner, the cooling house. Rain on Sunday night; they posted in the middle of the asphalt driveway, umbrella blocking rain.
“You’re on the brink, and the day you move I think I’ll explode.”

“You’re wet.” She laughed into the dryness of his jacket, his heart beat slow, and sped with the movement of her hand lower on his hip. She knew he was.

Laying flat on the tar, stuck by the force of gravity and skin.

“You know, I think always is longer than forever.” said the girl with spice for blood and ember for eyes. She smiled, knowing the steaming body below her knew the difference. Had known. Would know.

She bloomed in early June with the humidity that rose off the lucid asphalt.

“Who’s fault,” She asked. “Who’s at fault?”

She knew the science of stringing Christmas lights; one broken bringing an end to a whole line of illumination. Where was her rogue bulb, she hadn’t seemed to shine in months. Until he came along. He put dish detergent in the fountain at the center of the park. They watched it bubble and waited for its overflow, filling the street near where her car was parked.

At the nearest stoplight, he got out and ran into the intersection. She played “The Perishers” and waited for the empty passenger seat to fill itself again. He smelled of sweat, and black lab. She smelled of pumpkin spice and winter. They foiled each other.

“I don’t need anything. Govern my life. I’ll let you.” He sipped her coffee; she watched it stain his teeth. Spaced and crooked.

He stopped drinking that day. Stopped the inhale of tainted smoke, moving onto a more natural substance. Her body leaked like sieve. He bottled it in shot glasses, and within his palms. The books lay open on the table in front of his television, the pages dog-eared where he had paused to look at her, head on his lap.

“Inertia.” He thought. “An object in motion tends to stay in motion unless stopped by another force.” He had stopped her, he knew.

When she dove in, under his absence, under water it sounded best. The persistent beat of the snare drum, double bass. The sticks in hand became her fingers of bone. Stark white, the neon blue water showed her flaws. As well as his, within reason. Twenty four days of silence. He’d gone north, she’d gone under. He’d paused. She’d begun again.

“Hide and Seek.” She giggled on a rooftop. Four in the morning, the glow of the moon reflected on the puddles. Her jeans soaked through. Reminded her of a day where the rainstorm was so thick she couldn’t find where she had parked and where the yellow line blurred into white in front of faded headlights. They jumped in with their clothes on, see-through and naked. Their skin complimented the pastels of spring. It had been her birthday night. She’d left him out, disregarding because her matches were in the glove compartment and her cigarettes had been stolen. He’d have given her a lung. But that was then. Now they barely spoke, he held her hand under the man in the sky, he’d grabbed first, and she had given in.

“So I was the one worth leaving, child of demise?” She accused.

“We’d become one person, a jumbled ball of heat and motion, no longer two forces, a singular energy, thermal but cooling. I’ll ruin you, I can’t give you what you want,” His lips let go of the syllables.

Her hand entwined his fingers harsh and calloused. They climbed a ladder, to a higher level. She would take what he could give. A fist full of force, sunburned skin. If only she could peel between taking breaths, sharing her oxygen with her form of carbon monoxide.

Late August they were locked in a closet. Their friends barred the door with weight. One innocent and drunk, the other sober and stubborn. He’d gone back to the party water; she’d been ignorant for the last time.

“Why?” She stared at the child before her. The child who had earlier in the summer held her while she shook off her winter skin, revealing leather tight temperance.

“Just listen.” He pushed out the barricade and set her in the tub, setting down a towel so her skirt wouldn’t get wet. He turned on the showerhead and sat within the inside rain. Stinging her face, they kissed. His hands clutching her cheeks, faces a melting wax like structure. When one become another, their lives stop. Net energy becomes nonexistent. Inertia called for more. He was sober enough to be sincere, but altered enough to spit the truth. He made her feel a little better about the state of her heart. Just a boy in bathtub.

“You’ll never know, do you have a home? Was I once it?” Mumbled by the feminine through mouthfuls of water. “You’ll grow up someday.”
That night she left, drunk his head laid on the thin legs of a poster child for British creativity. In her room she’d taken down the collage of memories, nursed her sore thighs and prayed to regain her velocity. Peebles aggravated the soles of her feet on the walk to another state of being.

“Let me be impersonal.” The girl of spice held her head above that same, now dingy water. “My home is littered. My bed is made. My blood lacks hemoglobin and his interference has smothered me.”

That night, wearing a different shade of gray, she dreamt.

The storm rattled her bones. She walked the streets of downtown; garbage caught her stepping and tripped her into the sunlight. The scenery changed. Now on top of a parking garage she saw herself, her summer, his lifestyle. She balanced on the edge, he supported her bending knees. She’d never seen the city through lights strung on trees. She has smiled then, after her recent splitting disease she had shattered. He’d spread the glue to normalcy. Through a dream state she understood. With his while, although short, he’d played his force.

The morning after, it rained, with the sun shining. The devil beat his wife and all superstitions were heeded.


New Years in cold January brought his curly head back into view, with a night spent on the bank of a lake. He had threatened to push her in, she’d pushed his hands further up her legs, and she’d confronted his façade in the middle of a drinking game. She was now in the midst of her own crutch, hypocrisy noted; she’d turned her feet back in his general direction. The fight for his attention was the worst; she’d spilt all her chlorine-tainted insides onto the sand and waited.

“You’re waking in a place you don’t know, this is nowhere near unfamiliar.” Rolling her dice and gambling on even more silence, she’d made her call.

“I’m sorry for killing you.” He’d thought he’d meant so much. Perhaps he had. He touched the scar on his left elbow. “These are the stories aimed out car windows; these are the touches of those who were once so intimate.”

“We are the skids of tires, the speeding of engines, fuming and hot, but I am tired of these wrecks.” She sat on the edge of the pier; his silhouette shadowed the dark water. She’d wished then he had thrown her in. They were getting no where.

“You were my carbon copy, what hurts one, kills the other and I’m tired of breaking my nails just to scratch out all these lines.” He kicked a rock, its splash sounded hollow. She sympathized.

“Why must you constantly steal my breath, are you a killer? Did you die when all the trees fell under your hands?” She kept her head low.

“Your inability to move along was the fire. I was only susceptible to the fuel.” Shrugging, his impotence was intoxicating.

“Did I say I cared? You’ve never said anything with actual meaning once the door was opened.” She bit her tongue at the verbal animosity. What had they become? Who’s fault. They had worked in precise singularity, one line of illumination.

“And you’ve never kept your clothes on once it was shut.” Her bulb broke.

“I feel like we are the cuts of paper, the sting of early morning sun…” Her current burnt on, naked.

“At least we are shining.” He had helped her up; he didn’t notice the white of her knuckles, her fists clenched.

“What good is shining if it’s over my head?” Her reply.

He held her harshly, and she fought. The night led to a revival. He had defied science and shone on.

Now the friend of spice watches from another room, knowing the sinners are across the hall. Their smiles more profound which warms her, but also makes her worry. The love for the lost, who is only found wrapped in the arms of the Inertia. Always had always been longer than forever. The drowning force had held the head of her burden.

“There’s nothing like you two visible for me.” Spice whispered as the girl walked her own way. “I know you words are futile, you lie to convince yourself you doubt, but I know you believe.”

“He is just a boy who showed me.” Her brick left her way.

He had taken her into a broken down bathroom in the decrepit part of town. She held her composure and waited, knowing he’d surprise her. He broke open a purple glow stick and shaken its contents across the parameter of the little hole. He then proceeded to turn off the light. In front of her gaze she looked at the neon purple starscape. Little drops christening her hair and his eyelids. He smiled at her smile, and then left her alone in the room to take it all in.

“Impossible.” She had thought. “You’re binding my wing bones. I’m moving along.”

He woke her sleepy eyes. She sat quietly in the shower; he stretched out his legs and grew wings from his shoulder blades. May again, summer peeking around the blooming trees. The process of one year. An accidental reunion led to many more and now they were a pattern of flesh and dislocation. She steeped out into the colder room. Air condition created goose bumps along her cheekbones and fingertips. His acquisition of her contentment brought her color back. He held onto the feeling of being inside her, if only within his words. He brushed the wet hair from her forehead, no chlorine just a cleansing feeling of the end of the day.

She didn’t expect a single thing so as not to be disappointed. He had scars on his wrist from an adventure gone wrong. He didn’t mind not living past sixty, or moving to a country where no one spoke his language. She held her breath at every railroad and stoplight that turned yellow. Her main goal was to have none. Whatever was granted she thought was fine. The taste of joy was confused with the smell of rain. Mildew on the backseat fabric from the last good storm. She drove him home, she had tried and now with the succession of her independence and strong will she could let him walk away. He always came back when his muscles felt like stone. She just waits for the sentiment. He makes plans now without the push. And she accepts. She knows now.

“There nothing like you and I.” She toasts with an old glass of watered-down tea.

She let herself back inside her four walls. Now comfortable in the dark, she remains to breathe, a draft filling the emptiness of late nights. After all, with a little try, he had shone her that she too could shine on.