Paloma: A Short Story

Paloma

You always told me that the pigeons led you home. That when the skies rained down and the water washed into your tears, instead of thinking about your saltwater polluting the atmosphere, you thought about flying. You stood in the empty slick blacktop street and revolved like a music box dancer, arms raised perpendicular to your body, finger fluttering as if they knew they were meant to be feathers.

This is how I like to picture you: I don't want to remember you with clipped wings.

You tried to tell me that in Spanish, the words for dove and pigeon are the same, and that the only difference was in how you looked at it. Or how other people looked at it. I told you to button your shirt, to please wear socks, to eat your dinner. But I never told you to look at a pigeon and call it a dove. Never.

Maybe that was it. You saw everything in the extraordinary, and I was your realist. Your muse in the mundane.

Do you know that I think about that day every night when I can't sleep? When the moon shines in my window, casting improbable shadows that all manage to look like you, and I'm suddenly lost in your world, in a nighttime horrorscape that I, suddenly, find lovely.

I count the pigeons that fly by, but none of them are doves, to me.

"Don't worry," you said, weaving your fingers into the awkward piece of hair at the back of your neck. "I'll be back in two minutes. Count them."

Did you know that I actually did? That I breathed in every second in time to the ticking of the impassive grandfather clock, losing oxygen without you to remind me it was there.

1200 seconds of breathing atmosphere vapors. Do you know what that's like?

Try a day of that. Try hours of waiting, counting stars and street lamps and drunken pedestrians. The number of times the phone rang before I picked it up, my fingers trembling like beaten drums.

There are millions of people in this city. You'd think that one of them could have stopped you. Every night I picture it; you had such an attention for details, and I know you made it picturesque. I see you standing on tar-laden rooftop shingles, pallid moonlight illuminating you from the back, standing over the city like an angel of death. I imagine you raised your arms and the light was drawn to them, that your feet left the ground with a movement of your muscles and that for a brief second, you were airborne above the city made of pinprick lights, held aloft by wings made of borrowed starlight and dreams and the knowledge that you were immortal.

Then I see you plummet, race towards the ground, and collide.

The clock stops. There is no more air in the room. The birds sit frozen on the rooftop, as if in a tableau from a bad play with static characters, and for a moment, I can almost tell them apart. Then reality hits, and I slide out of your world, out of the vibrant imaginations and movie subtitling, gasping like a newborn on the cold hardwood floor, I'm just alone in this apartment, and nothing can bring you back, no matter how I look at it.

There is one thing I wish I could tell you. You were my dove, and you didn't need to fly away to prove it.

Excerpt #1: Sandcastles.

...some things aren't meant to last, like memories and sandcastles.

I wander the small, cramped room, careful not to stumble on the crooked, garage-sale furniture. Next to her bed, on a garish little table painted rust orange, sits a single photograph in a plastic frame. She is smiling and radiant, hair blowing in the wind, perfectly matched pink cardigan and tan skirt, her arm looped around him.

He is dark and morose, eyes raised to the camera in a plea, mouth unmoving, jaw ever so slightly clenched.

It is a perfect photograph.

Because sometimes, one person's disease can spread in ways you couldn't imagine, and the only proof is in the before and after shots.

***
excerpt from a short story/novel I've been writing.

Why I Am A Terrible Person:

Oh my.

Well I never intended to let this go for so long...
but it became clear that it was
totally
unrealistic
to think that I could update every day,
considering I actually have a life
now.
so.

I will still post poetry, but
not as often.

Because I haven't been writing
But I will.

Poems #47-51: Sincere Apologies!

Fireflies

1.
If I could meet your eyes,
I'd tell you
about the lightning bugs,
and how I forgot them.

2.
If I could remember your name,
I'd sing about the thunderstorms
and shelter.

3.
If I had one wish,
I'd waste it.

___________________________________

Stopwatch

I'll pretend for a moment
that the world spins for me,
that time and space mean nothing
and that I am certain.

Please don't ask advice
you can't receive
from me.

I'd stop the world
And breathe
The air
from space

Just to know for sure
that what I do
is mine.

__________________________________

Reflection

Show me a girl who writes poetry
Whose love notes are whispers
That tumble to ash.
Who like walking barefoot
and loves rain for dancing,
but not the pounding,
incessant dark wet.
Show me the girl who gives tattoos
like kisses, who loves to use color,
Who swings from the heartstrings
Who loves apple picking,
and cherry-tree climbing
and drawing you pictures,
and painting eyelashes-
Show me this girl who loves the mirror
but doesn't know herself; she is
the dancing in the wildflowers
trapped beneath a parking lot
waiting for the sun.
Show me this girl,
hand me the mirror,
I'll turn it back to you,
you can't see the colors unless
You open those eyes.

______________________________

The Search

What do you do,
When you’re sixteen,
and they find you?

The mail pours into your home
Like floodwater,
Smooth pamphlets that sing
Of future security and success,
All the while lying to you
With their picturesque tongues.

What if you, unlike them,
Do not have a plan?

What if all you want is to be,
To decide later and live now,
To burn the slick pamphlets,
Rip up the booklets, and finally
Hear the trees?

What do you do,
When you’re seventeen,
And it’s one year closer?

________________________________

Lillywrite

A little man
makes a little time
to try again.

The letters shake
his hand the cobwebs
holding his mind together.

Dear, he writes,
save me from myself.

Save me from becoming
what you are.

Letter 473 mailed in a box
in his attic,
carried by angels
to a god's sacred brothel,
she plucks it with pale palms
the fingers like lilies
she reads-

Dear, save me from myself.

And the little man
has little time
to lie in the snow
and wonder,
surrounded by those beautiful
pale,
waiflike
letters
like tombs.


***
I KNOW I MISSED 5 DAYS!
but here are 5 *NEW* poems

Poems #45 and 46: Solar Systems and Melancholy (Plus a very long apology)

Solar Systems

Be
Mine.
My solar system,
Because your face in photographs
Is like staring at the sun,
Because you are
A
Star.

And because no one
Cares
About profanity, no one
Cares
About sexuality,
Or at least-
You have to pretend not,
Have a witty response, like-
Supernova with me.

Like enter my black hole,
Lightspeed read me,
Try and
Touch my
Ultraviolet rays

Or write me more poetry
To stargaze.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Melancholy

I promise:
That when the roof falls in on your head,
I will be there to hold your hand
Even if you died in the crash
And I’m comforting your ghost
Through a divide in time.

I know I said:
That raindrops tasted of summer grass,
And lamplight made you beautiful
That blue felt like the wind’s soft kiss
That I was nothing special
But I forgot the truth

I wanted to tell you:
That even in the dark, there is light
Reflected from your eyes, and even
If you jumped the ship, I would be
Standing in the wake, and even
Though you’re gone away-

I wanted to whisper:
That love feels like sandpaper and pebbles,
And both will wear you away
But they can’t erase you because
Only you have that power
And I hope to god you forget


***
Oh my.

So I seem to keep forgetting days, which makes me feel like a slacker in so many ways since I am mostly just copying and pasting old work, not even being original. Most of the time I don't even have a good excuse. It's probably a good thing that this is most likely unread internet trash, since if I did have followers, they would be ticked off and most likely trolls and spambots.

Anyways. If you are an honest actual person and stumble across this, know that as penance for my forgetfulness, I have posted two poems that I promised myself I wouldn't, mostly because I think they're dishonest, oddly personal, and at the same time impersonal and cliche. Enjoy.

Poem #44: The Icy Wall

The icy wall before them, they sat in an irregular circle, hands on their knees and heads bowed. Wintertime was their one glory, the only time that the tempestuous earth seemed to agree with them. It became cold, gloomy, as they were year round. Light barely even reflected through the frozen waterfall, and where it did, gave off blue and purple hues.

“It looks like a bruise,” one of them mumbled, breaking the silence that haunted their melancholy group.

There was no response.

A fire flickered in the middle of their circle, struggling, like them, a bare blue wisp of light billowing more smoke than flame. It had been constructed haphazardly with no regard for size or design, and so it failed to produce warmth.

They all wore thick coats of a dark material which enveloped their bodies, to counteract the futility of their fire. Together they looked like minuscule bears hiding in a cave, hidden behind a wall of glass that would not shatter, even in this cold. One of them peered out, seeing nothing but frost and suffering trees.

Inside their bare sanctuary, the dirt floor was layered with slick ice and the walls dripped inconsistently along to their own rhythm. A lantern glowed, inefficient, casting wilder shadows juxtaposed with those from the fire, turning all of their faces orange and yellow.

They breathed in unison, filling the space with smoke, with hopes, with dreams that glowed cerulean for only seconds before flickering out.

Like the fire, like the lantern, like the insubstantial wishes, they were evanescent.


***
What? Did I hear you say prose? Really? No Way!

tags ftw.

Poem #43: Was He Caught?

“trust me” she’d said,
almost invisible without light,
almost laughing without sound,
and so, masking his aching eyes with
the back of a weathered palm,
he stepped to the edge of the rooftop,
pebbles skittering into the obsidian water
under the rubber soles of his
not quite cool shoes.

he exhaled softly in relief,
trusting that, everytime someone brought him this high,
they would inevitably reverse the action
like broken gearshifts.

“are you ready?” she asked,
holding out a pale hand that somehow
glowed in the moonlight, making him think
of how unnatural they were

his feet left the ground like a cloud
crashing to earth, and he gasped
--not out of shock that she had released his hand
and now stared unbelievingly from above,
her mouth a frozen yell of “stop--”
but because from here,
the air was ten times more dazzling,
and whistled in his ears
full symphonies.

the water swam upwards,
and his body bit through to the bottom,
as he realized that finally, he had found something reliable
that would catch him if he fell
with open arms,
and keep him forever.