Days of candy

22. I write and make art.

[cybereucharist]

LOOSE TEETH IN THE SINK

(acrylic on hardboard)

[cybereucharist]

got tipsy at the bar last night and wrote this while sipping a cocktail that had a caramelized cherry as a garnish

[cybereucharist]

Excerpt from a story about a girl who shoots herself in the head and fails to die, part 2

[cybereucharist]

Excerpt from a story about a girl who shoots herself in the head and fails to die, part 1

[cybereucharist]

LA hotel worker who left the south laments

[cybereucharist]

Began writing a little story today about a dude working at a hotel in Los Angeles.

(transcription under the cut)

Hours of nothing and then all at once: swarms of people. Stuttering hives. I tell them everything they need to know. My consciousness split down the middle like that Bible baby. With the other part, the one that's not running my mouth, I look out. Out. Over the shoulder of the stout, red-faced British man who smells vaguely of cheese. Past the stiff, gray matter colored chairs in the lobby. Outside, the sun’s a mess. The buildings have all poked at it until it burst into runny yolk. The whole street—now orange. Five years I've been doing this. I say your keys, sir. I say breakfast is from seven til ten. I say ma'am, you can't go that way. Don't go that way, ma'am. Ma'am. I say nothing now. They've gone, the tourists. Gone to their rooms. They're nice rooms. Rainforest shower heads and bedsheets so clean they make my teeth itch. Tasseled pillows with scratchy brocade. Jewel tones cutting through the oatmeal. Yes, they're nice rooms, indeed. I go out. Out.

I stand off to the side in front of the hotel and light my third cigarette of the day— I've been good. It's good to cut back. The sidewalk exhales heat along with me. People walk solo, walk in pairs, walk up and down and up and down the street, licking pastel ice cream off their knuckles sheepishly. Monstera leaf motif on a woman's dress, stretched out ochre t-shirt lapping at the thighs of a bronze boy; much can be gleaned from appearances alone. Information tends to reach me before I can stop it. I close my eyes. I'm tired of faces, of voices. Back home, it's probably calm. Back home, mama's probably out on the porch shooting the shit with the neighbors and adding sugar to her lemonade. And Tom's inside most likely, killing bad guys with a flick of his bony wrist with the AC working overtime to cool off his ever growing temper. He's still too young to cuss like he means it, but he's getting there.

You come here with ambition and leave older. If you ever do.

[cybereucharist]

Apollo 1

I phased in and out of the party the whole night. It was Halloween in june because we needed the make believe. They called me Doe so I went as Shelly Duvall. Nobody understood my costume until I began seizing and shrieking and sliding down the door with my eyes halfway out of my head. They all laughed. My soul felt rickets stricken. I was a month shy of twenty-five.

"How'd you scream like that?" Julia said as she collapsed next to me onto Patrick's green velvet couch.

"I just imagined I was deaf or in space," I mumbled. I wasn't happy. I don't remember why, though. Life and my plans had mercifully harmonized that year. I'd gotten the desk job, the apartment with the cramped bathroom, the bar stool, the loft space, the small fridge that can fit a whole cake but only if it's circular, the oversized houndstooth blazer, the egg yolk brunches, the blue lagoons and metropolitans, the sociolect, the perpetually parched succulents. Julia. Life was good, but I was bad. I was always bad. I'd been bad for so long that asking myself why felt falsely virginal. We're at war because we are. We hate them because we always have. A rose by any other name wouldn't be a rose anymore.

"Deaf or in space, huh?" She chuckled, lighting a cigarette. Patrick didn't like it when smoke hung aloft in his apartment like a convict, but Patrick had gone to bed just as the sun threatened to rise above the horizon with a coworker from the IT department. Some aging surfer who claimed he used to hack into the waves. Which is all to say that what Patrick doesn't know can't hurt him. I took a drag and then another one. I didn't give the cigarette back.

"Is that where we should go on vacation then? To space?" Julia smiled softly, bushy brows furrowed. Crooked tooth. Julia didn't like to sleep. Said it was a waste of time and a time of waste, of shit suddenly deciding to become buoyant and top of mind. Julia did a line. I eyed a half-empty bottle of rosé on the floor, how the light cut the glass into ribbons like floor-to-ceiling windows.

"I guess," I began, feeling my voice coming out of me. "You can practice belting out operas up there. Croon Sinatra to the moons. Use a pulsar as a metronome. Watch the compass needle run laps. And you just glide, that's all you do. A life free of friction."

She hummed. Sniffled. Wiped her palm down her face like it's an apron. I stood up. She didn't. I picked up my baseball bat, part of my costume. Julia reached for my wrist. "Don't go home yet. Look," she gestured at the hardwood floor under her feet. I looked down. She was missing a sock. She coughed up a laugh. "No, no, not that, look at the wood grain. Looks like Africa."

I squinted my eyes and twisted my head this way and that until the shape decided to unlock itself. Amusement felt like flightless confetti, but at least someone remembered. "Huh, would you look at that, it actually kinda does."

"We can go there, to Africa," Julia decided and dropped my wrist. Then she laughed again in that way only people who don't wanna cry anymore do. "I can take you, I've some money. I can't go to space with you, Jane. I'm down here and it's beautiful if you let it be. But you have to let it be.”

"I'll think about it," I said. I couldn't look at her so I looked out the window. Sunday morning had wedged itself in between buildings. What I wouldn't give to be on a tree-lined street and on my way to somewhere. And In the sky, the moon was fading away.

[cybereucharist]

"I AM NOT WHAT I USED TO BE"

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ALL TOO HUMAN / HE HUNGERED

blacked out page from a National Geographic article about George Washington

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something!!!

[cybereucharist]

Loose leaf tea and cold cream—the moon glowers in her furs. Chocolate milk after toothpaste, gun toting TV bride on mute. He likes me cause I make him feel good, the little boy I idle away with. He wants me to praise him, to kiss the stone in his clawed setting, the only thing he has. I don't want to. I do. There's nothing else better to do. And so it goes. I'm naked and spilling over. I'm blubber for the hose. Summer's doing the keys-phone-wallet tango, her bangles jangle, her halo stutters to life. Outside, a bark shocks the dark like cattle. Something tells me I'll die in this place.

[cybereucharist]

Something I never finished

[0ddoblivion]

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[cybereucharist]

an alcoholic looks back.

(transcription under the cut)

All I need is to be. On the landing, I told you I hate you for thinking I deserve the things I want. Detestable urchin, insatiable hand-biter. I shattered across town. But I loved you—yes, I did. I wanted to leave my life, to be as brief as a beheading or as jarring as a tornado—just a bit of rotation to keep things interesting. But I couldn't do it. Something kept clawing at my back as soon as I turned it; a rabid poltergeist confusing me for some sort of business. I had no business, truly no business, being the way I was—constantly in and out of my own skin and liking it, my heart a poodle trapped in a hot car. There was something about keeping that door locked. Letting it whine and bark while I drank and drank. I drank with friends and I drank alone. I drank at the bar and in front of it. I drank at the funeral and after it. I am beautiful and life is beautiful and there is plenty of time. I am beautiful and life is beautiful and there is plenty of time. This is what I kept thinking. This is what I kept thinking. 

[cybereucharist]

an alcoholic looks back.

(transcription under the cut)

All I need is to be. On the landing, I told you I hate you for thinking I deserve the things I want. Detestable urchin, insatiable hand-biter. I shattered across town. But I loved you—yes, I did. I wanted to leave my life, to be as brief as a beheading or as jarring as a tornado—just a bit of rotation to keep things interesting. But I couldn't do it. Something kept clawing at my back as soon as I turned it; a rabid poltergeist confusing me for some sort of business. I had no business, truly no business, being the way I was—constantly in and out of my own skin and liking it, my heart a poodle trapped in a hot car. There was something about keeping that door locked. Letting it whine and bark while I drank and drank. I drank with friends and I drank alone. I drank at the bar and in front of it. I drank at the funeral and after it. I am beautiful and life is beautiful and there is plenty of time. I am beautiful and life is beautiful and there is plenty of time. This is what I kept thinking. This is what I kept thinking. 

[cybereucharist]

From a story about a model who kills her boyfriend and then goes on the run.