Somebody had whispered something on a day she didn’t want to hear it.
“It’s normal,” he muttered…
Softly quibbling with the chains that held her.
But she didn’t listen.
She was in another world.
Some other world.
Far away from this one.
Where she mopped up sweat and apologies
To the sound of dead poets
Whose words were rendered meaningless through repetition.
He thought about the things within her
The maggots that fed on her insides
The ones that were probably benign.
But they weren’t.
They couldn’t be.
It would have been too simple.
Instead she swallowed pills and forced herself to open
Hoping in the sea of black they’d say that she’d been strong.
She read all the books of all the fighters
But she didn’t feel like winning the tour de france
She had never been a novelist and had no desire to save the world.
She pulled up weeds in her garden and went on road trips with her husband.
Where they’d pull to the side of the world and have sex or make love or fuck.
Depending on their mood.
She wasn’t very good at cleaning,
So she bought new gadgets from the infomercials.
But the walls remained dusty
The closets unorganized
The drains clogged
And the toilets irreversibly stained.
She wrote thank you cards when she was supposed to,
Sang “happy birthday” on answering machines when it was obligatory,
Baked lasagna when people died,
Bought blenders for “happy” couples,
Took her children to the local pool
And then skating at the frozen pond.
She knew how to read thermometers
And stitch shut holes in her husband’s slacks.
When her children were young, she was their rock.
Their indelible fortress, their infallible hero.
When her children got older she was their anchor,
Holding them back, suffocating them in her storms.
They started to blame her for the waves,
Blame her for the ugly currents.
Until she could do nothing but dream of drowned mermen.
And how beautifully strange their washed-up bodies might have looked against the sand.
Her other watched her ocean eyes as she drowned within herself.
He was waiting for the trap door to fall out from under her…
Like some terrible scene in some terrible movie of some terrible execution.
He dreamt of being the protagonist and saving her,
But you never could saw off a padlock with a butter knife.
He tried all the same, but his gallant effort was pathetic or tragic or some other thing.

“Stop.” He said. “You’re stunning.”
“What do you want?” I shot back.
I didn’t intend to make my words stab him but it was an ugly disposition.
I wanted to see him how I usually did. Funny, respectable, strong, kind, whole.
So I forced myself to look.
I looked past his swollen skin, past his heavy eyes, past his unbalanced stumbling and watery words.
He was 19 but still a boy and I wondered on him.
Who he really was, what really ate at him and whether or not his misery was drowning in the liquor and drugs.
He was handsome, behind it all.
But his inhibitions were shattering around him;
quickly whirling away but lingering behind him waiting in anticipation to strangle him in the morning.
The whole situation was draining.
It was twisted and not what I expected and for some reason sympathy boiled beneath my skin.
It was his choice entirely to be so ugly but maybe not to be that broken.

I am lost in your colors, your strokes and your story. And maybe I can stay here in the oneness and complex simplicity of your imageless image. A man is lying with beauty protecting her and all the while, staring at the sleepy sky. The heavens are eternally silent. No matter how long he sits there, they won’t speak to him. Like you said they would. He is remembering when they first met, how he saw her and thought, ‘Oh so that’s what beauty is.’ She tilts her head towards his chest but she is frozen. Stuck forever. Eternally in the midst of almost embracing. Caught up in a need for touch. In that moment of before. It is the most alive something still can be. An artist flicked his brush and created two lovers who had never lived in any world. But at least in paint, they can dream.