MY CRAZY

My crazy is that I feel like I do a better job of putting myself in other people's shoes than I do of putting myself in my own. I think it's a form of narcissism, whereby I allow myself to endlessly study my own actions under the guise of knowing what others think but not knowing how I feel. My crazy is that I'm mellifluous and gullible and I constantly take advantage of myself. My crazy is semiviscous and nearly fills a cup that I carry with me in my free hand. When I'm jarred or forgetful or lay myself down where I don't belong, it spills. Without proper cleaning: it stains.

YOU SOLD MY FAVORITE BRAUTIGANS

You sold my favorite Brautigans (the red one and the yellow one). A young woman was reading them at the bar and I noticed my handwriting on the inside of one of the covers. The books were wet with substance that sat on the table. At first, the lady was upset when I took them from her and began inspecting them for other tell-tale signs that the books were mine. They were all there, the notes I'd written to you when I thought that we wouldn't ever not be together. I apologized for my behavior and paid the lady too much for what she saw as petty poetry books, not important enough to keep safe from spilled drink. When I got the books home, I spent an hour or two drying them, page by page so that they wouldn't stick together. Then I placed the books on a shelf so they could start collecting dust.

HEARTBREAK HAPPENS IN THE GUT

True heartbreak occurs in the gut,
not the heart.
It's a slow, symphonic chorus
born of the vibrations of
one hundred thousand strings at once.
It's the moment after you've
plunged into the water
and all the little bubbles
that had been refracting light
leave you behind.
They each burst
with a lazy,
dragging tone;
or else they just float away.
And it happens in your gut.
It happens slowly and
it happens in the dead center of you and
it doesn't stop happening.
It gurgles, and
it churns, and the cello
makes you languid
with worry, and the violin
slices your cells
until you're sitting,
immobile in fear, and
torn apart, and
you look around you, and
you see all of those things—
those things that used to make life
a place where you could breathe easily—
those things leave you,
those things turn on you, and
your stomach wrenches,
churns,
gasping
hoping
holding
waiting
waiting, and
sinking.

OUR STORY

When the words "OUR STORY" are written in the stars, it's easy for any two-bit literate with a date to think that the universe is talking about their love. Maybe the stars are just talking about themselves: "We get to be badasses in the night's sky because we burn, literally, with the heat of the sun." It isn't until you've experienced the profound gravitational instability that occurs when you've met someone that is perfect enough to disrupt the core of your being and cause a flame that will last through the creation and destruction of entire planets—it isn't until then that your story is the same as the stars.

I HAVE FOUND A GOOD THING

I have found a good thing. It was in the street and it was making Slinky movements when the wind pushed on it. I snatched it up and on it was written: "Good morning :]"

DREAM: 1/26/14

I'm not sure where the girls came from, but we all seemed to agree that we weren't doing anything wrong by freezing them. For my piece, I'd show up and watch the girls until another member of the crew relieved me. During my watch, paranoia seeped in along with a breeze that massaged our small, New York City apartment.

Originally, we ran a successful, albeit stressful, mid-level escort service, operating out of an apartment in the city. Half of us found the girls, and half of us found the johns. It turned out to be a scarier prospect to find escorts than we'd hoped, so, at some point, we decided to freeze them. It didn't seem to be that they were cold, so much as they were preserved.

It wasn't long before the money started coming in, and, with it, the police. The whole business changed from sex trafficking to a constant and diligent watch against getting caught. How do you not reveal illicit activities in a world where the NSA can bug your phone without any physical presence?

After a shift of looking after the girls—never seeing what happened to them behind the closed doors—I'd count the money and wait until a partner would show up. Without phone or internet, it became a game of delirium: quietly watching television and trying not to believe the police were outside the doors.

AND IN THAT LAZY CAFE

And in that lazy cafe, whose chief auditory export was the low, dull grind from an old, dull refrigerator, their minds drew patterns in the air between them to create a cacaphony of thoughts, winding and weaving like grown vines holding up the aesthetic value of an abandoned home. They grinned at what they'd done. They'd forever changed Tiny's from a store where people went for coffee into their place to fertilize their conceptual flower bed.