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.

WHEN YOUR SMILE FADES

When your smile fades,
it's like the bleachers
giving way in a stadium
of overcrowded capacity.

LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT

I thought about writing you a poem about the colors reflecting off of the petals of the lavender plant. I'd've used simile and some sibilance to cement the conceit in its place. But it meant nothing to me, so I wrote this:
You,
walking on the dark sidewalk,
so close to me
that I feel the swish
as you change feet:
left
     right
left.

STILL LIFE

The car, leaving a wake of swirling, invisible exhaust, presses us toward the back of our seats, forward down the road. Our hands make warmth of friction, sliding and holding and letting go and grabbing on. When you write those things on the page and when you say those things to me, I become stilled, and I feel the whole of the world, all the people and the winds and the cars—I feel them moving.