#graveflwers

[corpr8]

[ ALLISON WARD ]  :     stop texting me.

[ UNSAVED ] :     invalid response. Input not recognized!! [ UNSAVED ]  :     Been five months, A. not askin for much here. just a quick update. unless you want me to stop by? I know where you live! XD

[ ALLISON WARD ]  :     don't be stupid.

[ ALLISON WARD ]  :     I'm swamped. maybe later.

[toeat]

in the shadow box theater of her house,   the only sounds are of struggle and the burble of the fountain—an almost cheerful dissonance.   she imagined, to the ignorant onlooker, their tangle of limbs resembled an embrace.   a wine-addled impression of dance.  

"listen, no more tricks."

listen, @graveflwers says in a voice muffled by burlap. listen,   as if to a misbehaving dog he intends to scruff. and she considers the paltry distance from her teeth to his cheek.   the mask.   realization frissons and olivia’s rage recoils into something slicker.

“can’t blame a girl for trying,” she mutters, relenting to this nonchoice of trust.   I should have shot you. he held her arm in the fashion of an insect pinned for display [dissection], fingers a vice around her wrist. she flexes her own in an affected and overcooked dullness, scouring her face of expression to middling results.

[bykoi]

"where you gonna go, in the middle of nowhere?" — @graveflwers, as delta wayside.

the show's over by now, but heaven stays captivated beneath the awning. the scaly shine of glitter winks at her, spinning sparkles against the venue light and drawing her attention downward. it's enough for her to stay crouched down— knees to her chest, eyes flickering from the toe of his boot to his face. the platforms give him the height of a giant with the (imagined) grace of a mermaid, stuck in a fishbowl lens with only the bar's drinks to swim in.

the cigarette between her fingers filters everything in grey. it sticks to the gloss of her eyes, lashes blinking in rapid succession to clear it away. if she'd been more sober, she might've wondered where her john of the night went — if he'd gone to the bathroom and fell down the drain, if he'd found some enchantress in the back room and fled to greener pastures — but the heavy-handed pour of a previous bartender leaves her pink-cheeked and heady, blowing ringlets of smoke out as ash flutters to the concrete beside her.

her attention snaps back to the conversation, foreign for only half a second. (somewhere in the past ten minutes, she'd mentioned finding a bus. somewhere in the past five minutes, she'd forgotten that buses exist.) her head tilts upward, delta's form resembling a skyscraper building, lighting up the night. heaven glances back to the cigarette in her hand, clamped between her thumb and pointer finger, and then extends herself back up to full height.

"somewhere." it sounds like half a sentence, but her fingers twitch from the cold— and the cigarette drops to the ground before she can finish the thought. (the rest of her words run amuck, sprinting wildly toward any possibility of extending the night a minute longer.) "could go on your bus. we could trade." bodies, transportation, spit. whatever he has in mind. the conversation pivots. "i like adventures."

[spicegrrrlarch]

she's humming quietly as she finishes the final braid on his head, french plaits that go down the back of his head and paste the nape of his neck, tied with red elastics she had in her makeup bag. the last few shows of the tour were looming -- then what? never see logan again? much to think about. her heart grows heavy. patting the top of his head, liv smiles, "you're all done, @graveflwers." from here!

[religun]

delta wayside is no fool, even if he's pretended to be. sometimes, she can still see it: that etch of drunken stupor, an itch of intoxicated blaze. a memory of a man less sober, almost inches from his face. he smiles more, now. not that sleazy, slow crawl of a grin he used to give her— not that high glaze of a smirk, either. it's different. everything's different since they've been on the move. blared music and rolled windows, cigarettes collected in a roadside ashtray ... something fierce in the distance, urging them to go on.

some eat-pray-love bullshit, is what she jokes. one long, long line of running, is what some may say. but when the night's young and the world grows dark and there's nothing but them, counting starlight in the fractals of their windows, she thinks it might be love. for him. for her. for some opportunity abandoned, long ago. digging up history to find past bodies, digging up sobriety to find themselves. cliche, maybe. but so's everything else.

"you're my star." — @graveflwers, as delta wayside.

when delta speaks, the sky sings. he doesn't need an instrument to sound melodic. (truth is, he never has.) as their van cradles them in the dead of night, chirps of crickets chorusing in the background of the conversation — mari's thumb paces circles over the back of his hand. delta waxes poetic as if it's the only thing left to say.

"you know that's not what i meant." she replies, but it's sweet. honey-stuck and slipped between a smile. "i just mean .. in another life — if things were different — do you think i could've made it?" music, she means. stardom, fame, the whole nine yards. her voice quiets. "it's weird, sometimes. looking back at everything." a beat. "no one even knows who i am."

[saintsdawn-a]

↬ @graveflwers, as firefox, says, “ where have you been ? damn you ! where have you been ? ”

horse and rider stand, side by side, in complete and total surprise. the horse’s ears stand straight. the rider makes a wish for the ground to pull them under, or for the sky to suddenly open and pour. ( it never will. ) to think that he is scolding her. . .

mouth opens, closes, and lips press together. gods, who is he to be the one barking? shouldn’t it be her? the roles have been reversed. it makes her restless. 

“ there was trouble, ” she says, “ and people were in trouble. i was there. ” so simple, so unworried – she hopes it makes the grime and lingering smell of smoke bearable. “ we’re fine. i’m fine. ”

should she do something? say something? not added explanation, but a biting tease. familiar and casual and nothing like what she ought to say. 

fingers tighten around vervain’s reins. “ i had to help. i couldn’t leave them. ” and he knows that, doesn’t he? after all this time, he should know. “ i’m sorry ? what do you want me to say ? ”

[ihmissutta]

                                    › › › @graveflwers / for Dodge

Paukka liked to think that he did not smoke a lot. Not like others did. When he felt the itch, it would be right before a nervousness would set in. Smokers were fidgety people to start with, that was why they smoked. Tapping fingers, playing with their box of matches, looking around in the room. He knew what those signs meant.

Sitting across from Sling and listening to him talk, it was hard to phathom how much time had passed since they had last sat together like this, face to face, talking with each other. He asks of the wife and asks of the son, because he considers it civil to do. Then something bitter sat at the back of his throat: he had neither.

Ever since she and her family had moved out of Defiance, Paukka had talked to her twice ever since and he had realized how quickly things could change. She was dating a married cop now and Paukka was left to wonder how many mistakes he had made staying in that small town and how many he would have made by leaving. He did not realize it then, but it had taken a previous lifetime to get to this point. You had to be ready. You had to open your mind, or else that point never came. Now, he was out of money, about to take back with him another youngster that needed learning, incredibly burnt on his job, on relationships and life in general.

But at least he could now roll a decent cigarette.

He take the paper in his hands, concentrating, and placed a few pinches of tobacco inside. Loosely, just enough to fill the paper. Back then he had always tried too hard, and had always used much more tobacco than he really needed to. Placing his fingertips on the edges of the paper, he rolled the ends of the paper together. Gently now, and he could feel the mass inside beginning to take shape. Quietly folding the paper over with his thumbs, he did not worry about the bits sticking out the ends. Simply rolled the whole thing up. It was simple if he let it be. Wetting the opposite side with his tongue, he held it tight against the roll. If it was meant to stick, it would stick. If it didn't, he could always start over. 

             „How long are we talkin'? When do you want your boy back?“ He had broken the silent, only to strike a match against the roughened sole of his worn leather boot a second later. The sulfur hissed as it birthed a flame, which the visiting Sheriff held against the end of the cigarette clamped between his lips. Breathing in once, the thing was ignited and the match was waved out again.

The next wave of craving returned sooner than he was used to. When he was sitting on the back of his horse and waiting for the same young man he had agreed to take with him, to pack his horse and get in the saddle.

[toeat]

from within the veritable fishbowl of her house, she stares at him—watches as he watches her—with a face starved of expression. he reminds her, in this proximity, of an animatronic, of mannequins and wax figures: humanity replicated in crude, inexact, strokes. fine enough from afar, serving their respective purposes as set-dressing and still-life snapshots, but, face to face, almost uncanny in their shortcomings. @graveflwers looked hollow. stiff.

it’s a moment before olivia registers his voice, the question that was the apparent thesis of this whole business.

“what are you?” as if whatever perception, what working understanding, he’d drafted of her defied quantification. good.

she bites her lip, making a half-hearted show of her consideration: what is olivia bloom? agitated. sleep-deprived. a woman contemplating homicide—no, that’d been rendered, annoyingly, a moot point. she circles the island to settle atop a skinny barstool. smoothes her hands atop her thighs, if only to smother their tremble. to crumple the anger that throbs inside of her into something useful.

“what would you call me?” the melody of her voice isn’t as smooth as she’d like, catching halfway up her throat. she looks past him, out the wide windows into the lush greenery of her backyard, slowly oscillating in the stool with the tip of her toe.

she liked the effect of calling herself boring—the rush of others to assure her the opposite. she liked the gossamer softness of mother, wife, sister. but that wasn’t what he was asking. “you don’t know, [do you, charlie?]” she answers for him, almost airily.

“does it bother you?”