“When you love someone and bite your tongue, all you get is a mouth full of blood.”

_______________________________________

A warm weather muse wilts in winter months, suffering as a God suffers when her believers become few.

Twine, you see, is wound round our necks—wound round our ribs— and the heat, wretched and sweltering, hangs heavy between our shoulder blades.
It drives you because heat makes us suffer in wet, miserable silence.
It drives you because heat shortens our attention span from the cold, verbose prose to the choppy, hot breaths of musewords.

_______________________________________

And she meant it.
And she wished so hard—so hard she could feel it hit the back of her skull—that attraction wasn’t a part of it. That the flesh bag we all trudge around in; that the worm food we paint and primp and pamper; that the fat suit we all complain about but never fix—that none of it mattered.
But it did.
But it does.

_______________________________________

You’re not home enough to care.
I don’t feel like I can talk to you anymore, anyway.

_______________________________________

I like having you around.
It’s comfortable, not forced, and… well, comfortable.

_______________________________________

He has a little cape!

keep the promises you make to yourself

Hope
it’s the fresh start so many of us have been waiting for.

He lives with it every day
                     watching her
                                   as she’s
                                         waiting.
                                          seething.
                                            wilting.
She’s a boring girl;
                      she reads.
                        she sulks.
                          she sleeps.
What wrought her mood
                          [he's sure]
                                     is her fear of fun.
           it only takes so much before she
                               r
                               e
                               c
                               o
                               g
                               n
                               i
                               z
                               e
                               s
                        the feeling
           the unbearable lightness that
            fills one’s bones in times of
                     D E L I G H T
and instead of reveling in the happiness
                         she panics
                she hollers
       she gathers together a great pile
                        of “how dare you”s
                    of “don’t you dare”s
              and traps the positive beneath
                          sitting upon                 the
                          indignation
                    like a great throne
                                  irritated with all she sees.
He can hear her begging
                  “please, push me off.”
           but every time he tries there’s a lot of
                                                        biting involved
                                         scratching involved
                                                 screaming involved
      It’s just so much easier
               to let her be discontent
      It’s just so much easier
               to let her squander her happy

While he gets along with his own.

You can’t even get out of bed, you fat fuck.

She couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t cold: the back of her arms, the small bit of fat that clung to her sides, her feet and hands—all icy.

Her apartment, drafty and damp, did little to help her condition. The desolate basement served as the laundry room and was, on average, about 10 degrees colder than the rest of the building. An artillery line of alternating washers and dryers lined the far wall. Flickering, the soda machine’s pathetic glow made use of their reflective faces.

She stood there without much poise, staring dispassionately at the glaring equipment before her. A single dryer rattled on in the quiet, the tinkering sound of loose change made for a makeshift rainstorm.
Metal on metal.
Painful.

She waited, patiently.
She wanted to climb inside.
–to curl up against the hot metal walls;
–to call Neighbor from within and tell him she was finally warm.

The sweet sound of stopping filled the room.
She dove forward.

Kneeling in front of the dryer she seized the hot sheets— yanked them out, her clutching fists high above her head in dramatic fashion— and wrapped herself. Enveloping warmth; momentary relief filled every cavity. The heat quickly began to slither out the other side, preferring the ambivalent air to her chilly skin.

Fuck.
She had to get warm.

Tyrone wasn’t sure what to do now that his horse jockey career was over. Modeling was out of the question, as he had fetal alcohol syndrome which left his eyes far apart and explained his rather unfortunate haircut. It also explained his success as a jockey, being that he could see at some odd angles other jockeys couldn’t. He considered being a line cook, but the idea of being around food all day and possibly ruining his perfect 110lb figure was an asinine thought and he disregarded it immediately.

There he was, caught between the only thing he had ever known and a world of pint sized possibilities.

Begrudgingly, he drug his feet to the nearest payphone and dialed the number to the one person he promised himself he’d never contact again. He then realized that he hadn’t put any change in the payphone, which was probably best; the receiver wasn’t connected to the phone. To represent his defeat and embarrassment he decided to cry, but quickly found he’d forgotten how. No tears, no career, no visible means of self sustenance, yet somehow Tyrone still possessed a spark of hope somewhere deep and decided to make that phone call anyway he could.

Tyrone couldn’t understand why none of the other jockeys would let him borrow their cell phone; all he did was kill his horse and throw the entrails onto the crowd. It’s not like it was his fault, it was the only way to get the possessing demon out of his horse.

If only he hadn’t accidently pushed that gypsy down the stairs the week prior. He knew she had something to do with this whole fiasco. It’s not like it was his fault, anyway. He didn’t even know she was there, he couldn’t see over the single paper grocery bag he was carrying. He asked for plastic, so she couldn’t rightly blame him. People should make themselves more stand-outy, he thought to himself

He began to walk to the horse stalls, knowing there was a phone he could use. Inside, Tyrone was met with the violent braying of his competitor’s horses. They’re probably angry because they had no idea my horse was possessed.

He hadn’t made it halfway to the phone when the what sounded like a thousand coconut halves being violently tapped together thundered through the steel structure, startling Tyrone and sending him in a panicked race towards the exit; towards safety.

Unfortunately, Tyrone’s legs were too weak for running, as he’d spent his whole life having other creatures do it for him. The angry thoroughbreds caught him without any problem and painstakingly stomped him to death.

There were more than one murder on the track that day.

Songs on the radio sing to me my day, reading my laugh lines lyrically. The music turns me over, studying my lifeline and reminding me, fervent and urgent, of myself.
Yeah, yeah.
I get it, Radio.

Please stop.

Every damn time.

For those of you who don’t speak with me regularly, I’ve recently found a new place of employment. While I miss my people at Photobucket, I’m relatively content with my new work environment. All in all, everyone is pretty nice. I mean, nobody says, “Bless you” when you sneeze but they make decent coffee and the soap in the bathroom smells nice.

I’m discontent and I can’t quite put my finger on why. Maybe it’s just a spoke in my menstrual cycle or some other hormonal explanation.

I started dreaming again.
I’ve begun disappearing from yours.
Dreams, that is.

Were you holding me hostage?
Are you why I haven’t been dreaming?

Oh dear.
I couldn’t forthelifeofme clear my head this evening, so I took a moderately cool picture of a blue deer that was roaming around my house.

Also, my new friend Roy:

I’ve got the word sickness, but I’m dreaming again.