our eyes pop open, and the lids peel back—way back into
your head, and you look at the clock, it is grinning at you,
burning your stinging eyeballs.
3:12 AM.
You seal your eyes shut, scrunching your face, hearing the skin
crackle as it gathers and wrinkles around your skull, and you
say to yourself: three more minutes, and you throw your obstinate,
awkward body in the other direction, landing right next to her
and you feel the breath slide in and out of her open mouth: easy,
even, hypnotic, and the waves of her slumber’s warmth reach
you, making you sweat uncomfortably like some intruder stealing
her heat, and as you lie there and watch her sleep—sleep
with sweet abandon—you start to hate her, and the anger
makes your heart thump, thrashing around your empty body, the
sound of it echoes in your brain, but you shut your eyes anyway,
you squeeze them tight—tight in punishment for their disobedience—you
want to hurt them—and you try to look down, to fall into
the abyss of the rabbit hole of sleep, but the clock’s
laser beam is still drilling the back of your heat. Futile.
You swing your legs out from underneath the covers and onto
the floor where the cold of the room is a monster that clutches
your feet, pulling the rest of you from underneath the covers,
so you jolt upright and slither to the floor, trying hard not
to wake her, and you don’t, because she just sprawls
out and hogs more of the mattress as if you’ve never
been there at all.
Fine.
You get dressed, picking your wrinkled and discarded clothing
off the floor, and you hear the change jingle in the pockets
and spill—spill, clang, and bounce off the parquet, and
you look up like a burglar—a trespasser in your own home—but
she’s asleep, owning a bed that was once yours and yours
alone, and you hate yourself now—you hate yourself because
this place was once your cave, your refuge, and now you are
reduced to tiptoeing around its four walls with a consideration
reserved for guests and royalty, and you sneak into the hallway
and stuff your arms into a leather jacket while grabbing a
baseball hat off the hook and you silently slide into the hallway,
hearing the lock click shut behind your already escaping back.
Freedom.
You squint at the blinking hallway light and begin running,
flying—down the stairway, unsealing the front door, releasing
the frigid night air and wind that gives you a beating with
a fist full of ice, punching your already wounded face—repeatedly—over
and over again: your jaw throbs, your eye is barely open, yet
you manage to negotiate two broken steps, letting your Nikes
carry your body: one foot in front of the other, one in front
of the other, but you trip over something and hear it scurry
away with a grunt, and you look back over your shoulder—look
back and watch a bum retreat underneath a black thing like
a shadow, disappearing inside the obscurity of night, and you
keep walking. There for the grace of god walk you.
You kick at a can, it rolls onto the street; the hollow sound
of its rattle vibrates the caverns of the city—resonating
through your carcass, settling in your throbbing head, and
that single sound stabs your gut, turning the knife of loneliness
inside your body, tugging at your soul, but you keep walking,
sprinting, running away from the void that has nuzzled deep
inside, that parasite—it will not let go.
You look down at the moving pavement beneath your feet, your
head pounds with every footstep, and you thrust your hands
deeper into your jacket and pull the cap over your swollen
face—you are invisible—your clothing absorbs you,
blots you out of reality; and you burrow inside your brain
for warmth, feeling your face inflate, the blood pounding,
swelling your head like a balloon—and you can still taste
the glove, still smell the sweat of other’s before you,
the musky scent of mold, the sweet scent of blood—your
blood; you can still feel the impact of the glove on the side
of your face; you can still hear the stillness—the time-freeze—right
after, when the curtain of haze veiled your eyes, and your
brain shifted inside your skull like jelly inside a tin can,
and you remember his eyes: cold, gray, narrowed, calculating,
gleaming, menacing; he wasn’t stopping at one punch—he
kept going—the bastard—kept going until you couldn’t
feel your face, or taste the glove, or smell the sweat, and
you could only hear your gasps, and his exhales, pounding in
your ears, keeping tempo to the rhythm of his fists, so you
swung back catching air—overextending—hearing your
shoulder tear with a crack and a rip, wavering, loosing your
balance—your legs—you could not feel your legs
to move as he came charging, so you stood there, leaning on
him for support, taking a beating like a good little boy—a
punishment—and you asked yourself: what the hell are
you doing in the ring with him anyway, you were the king once,
you were The Shit for so long, but now it was his turn, he
was the next in line—the next Shit—so you had to
do it—you had to get in there and defend what was already
lost.
So you found your feet and finally moved away from him and
his young fists that were jabbing at your insides, jabbing
at your face, jabbing at your ribs, and you did the side step—cha,
cha, cha—your arm went up, the tendon cracking, the pain
of it diluting the throbbing in your brain, and you saw his
face, the black mouthpiece like blackened teeth—smirking,
and you faked a jab, threw a weak right, then, stepped in,
bumped his knee—cha, cha, cha—then you launched
your powerhouse—the left-hook—then another to the
body, and before you knew it; you were all hands, all technique,
all rhythm and music and he’s hunched over—hunched
like a baby in a womb—the bell rang:
you stopped, retreating into the corner with arms dangling
limply at your sides, hanging on the ropes like dirty laundry,
panting, hungrily filling your lungs with oxygen, and you looked
down at blood—your blood and his—as it dribbled
onto the white canvas of the ring, mingling with the rust colors
of others before you, and you slumped down, squatting, head
hung low, but he stood, walking it off, bouncing from one foot
to the other, because: he’s young and you’re not—you
were the used goods he took out with the trash—and with
your tail between your legs you slithered between the ropes,
as coach waved you out of the ring, dismissing you, and you
felt the stares at your back, felt His eyes burning, whipping
you some more, because: you’re out; you’re old;
you’re tired.
So, now you keep walking the barren streets of the city and
the neon lights of an all-night diner spill out on the gray
sidewalk. The wrap around windows make it look like a fishbowl:
the waiters are swimming between tables, smoking cigarettes,
telling dirty jokes, reading the paper, so you think maybe
that’s what you need—coffee, so you can be even
more awake, even more wired, but you brush past the diner,
huddling deeper inside yourself because the bright lights hurts
your eyes—it’s too well lit—too much like
a night’s version of daylight, so you run into an old
man bar. Sanctuary.
It is dark, hushed, black. The jukebox is crowing something—it
is lulling, methodical, velvet. You grope for a stool, anchor
yourself, and watch a single black bulb illuminate the gin
and the whites of old men’s eyes—eyes like fireflies
flickering at you out of the shadows. The rank smell of stale
human misery lingers in the air, copulating with the stench
of old tobacco and alcohol. Everything is brown and black and
neon. You signal the bartender, who gives you a side glance,
and you point to the bottle and then the tap; he slides the
drinks and steps back into the wall of darkness, and you take
the shot and roll it in between your fingers, feeling the ridges
of the glass, trying to activate some magic potion with your
heat, hoping this holy water will exorcise the beast—a
beast that is still knocking persistently at your brain. You
smell the alcohol rising from the thimble, so you exhale and
tip your head backwards—it feels heavy like an anvil
dangling on a thin cord—and you unseal your swollen mouth
and let the liquid burn a path down your throat. Your eyes
water as you grab for the chaser—grab it like a dying
man for absolution—and the liquor is clawing the cut
on your lip, scraping your face, your eyes, your esophagus,
and you feel it explode like a fireball in your belly.
Your one good eye is swimming in its socket, lubricated by
tears and liquor.
It roams around the room stopping at sin-dipped-in-misery as
she perches on her stool, staring right at you. Her body is stuffed
in a bright pink suit, her breasts are peace offerings spilling
onto the bar—a five-and-dime beauty queen—and she’s
looking at you, oh, yeah, she’s looking right at you, so
you stare her down with the one good eye and you take off your
hat in a gesture that says: here you go honey look at me, look
at me in all my glory—and you watch as her eyes slide away,
retreating deeper into her glass; her face fading back into the
darkness, and her outfit sits there beheaded like a mannequin
in a shop window.
Your eye travels to the bar mirror, and you see yourself reflected
in its convex shape—it distills you—and you realize
her look of lust was really a look of fear—disgust: the
right half of your face has completely inflated into a misshapen
glob—a glob composed of skin and bruises; your right
eye has disappeared well beyond the confines of your cheek;
your mouth is unevenly swollen, smirking at some toxic joke,
you’re lopsided, you’re a circus freak—half
of one and not the other: one side normal the other a monster—look
at you! You’re a mess—you’re shit—not
The Shit, but shit.
There for the grace of god sit you.
You shove a cigarette in between your lips and light it; the
smoke flies directly into your eye and stings a tear out of
it. You signal for another drink, and this time it’s
not only easier to swallow the fire, but to let it burn, and
you lower your face, escaping the invisible stares blinking
out of the darkness, and you bow your head in respect—in
silent prayer: a prayer for your lost soul; a prayer for your
lost loves; a prayer for your lost self; and you back-off into
the blackness with the others: you fade away, and sit there
with your chin at your chest, inspecting the wrinkles etched
in the lip of the bar, strumming the bumpy lines with your
fingers.
A tiny hand, like a shy white mouse, covers your arm—the
hand has claws—they are gnawed down to the flesh with
clinging speckles of red polish, and your eyeball rolls up
to see her face: see the sin, see the misery—it is outlined
in the edges of her mouth, the creases underneath her eyes,
and you try to speak: your lips feel rubbery, unmanageable,
like two flapping tires; your voice is trapped inside your
mouth, but you manage to squeeze out a word or two, opening
and closing your mouth in silent dialogue—and she smiles,
but it looks more like a frown, and she brushes her finger
up and down your forearm sending chills that make your hair
stand alert, and she nods to a door—a door in the darkness,
and you suddenly feel old, very old; you have no legs for the
chase of younger, finer looking pray; you have no legs to run
away from her—the prey is hunting you—and she takes
your hand and leads you to the door, and you stumble behind
her, obeying the gentle pull at your sleeve.
You enter a dark closet—a bathroom: the sink is methodically
dripping; the bowl is overflowing, and on the yellowing walls
are scratches of profanity—graffiti—man’s
last stab at immortality, and she leans on the tile wall and
hikes up her skirt revealing pale legs—legs with skin
that is stark, ashen, slack—devoid of pulse—contrasting
with the neon pink of the outfit, and she stares at you: rocking
back and forth, teetering drunkenly on heels, cleavage up to
her neck. She blinks a few times—blinking away the fog
of liquor, and she moves her legs apart, an invitation or an
anchoring, you’re not sure, and your eye is rolling up
and down, and up and down—from the top of her matted
hair to the bottom of her ghostly legs—and the eyeball
gathers momentum—gathers speed—so it starts revolving
uncontrollably—spinning—sending you off balance,
and the floor swerves and tilts underneath your feet, and you
fall—fall to your knees feeling the cold hard filth spread
out underneath your shins, and you bow—bow to the little
red pumps and the feet stuffed inside them and worship at the
altar of this broken idol. She tilts her head to see what you’re
doing down there; and her hand reaches to scrape you off the
floor, because she’s pitying you—pitying your ugly
face, your pathetic self—the pitiful is pitying you.
There for the grace of god crouch you.
You scurry and crawl out of the bathroom—your legs gaining
strength as they move; you stand upright, rushing back to your
empty seat, and you down the remainder of your drink as the
bartender flicks the overhead light—last call—you
cover your eyes with your hands, and slink out the door.
The air smells sweet. The sun is gently kissing the sky, caressing
it into the gentle gray of dawn. A cab’s tires swoosh
over the empty wet and hollow pavement. A single bird is yawning
awake. You hear the groaning of trucks, delivering fresh baked
goods and newspapers, bringing the next day’s soon to
be trash. The sidewalk is virginal—clean, waiting for
the pump and loafer crowd to trample on its body. The streets
are melancholy: half of the population is in their beds; the
other—like you—are stranded, shifting into corners,
hiding in the cracks until the sun disappears once again.
A pang of loneliness stabs at your wounds and your heart—the
kind of loneliness you can only feel at sunrise—the vacancy
of a new day and the hopelessness—the pathos that is
you. The buildings are towering in judgment, swirling around
your head, flaunting the warm beds and warm bodies nestling
within—you are an alien strung-out on adrenaline and
booze, alone. The cold you feel does not come from the frigid
wind nor from invisible ghosts. The cold you feel is an interior
draft fanning the emptiness around the vacant husk that is
your heart. So, you look up at the buildings and peek into
the cozy windows, envying those bodies wrapped in each other’s
arms and you want to be one of them. There for the grace of
god stand you.
Your feet begin to move, slowly, lethargically and then gaining
speed, sprinting, running, flying—desperate to flee from
the prison that is your body, but, your skin still clings to
you, you can’t shed it, instead it’s doing laps
around your body, shifting and moving with every step, and
the liquor sours in your stomach, and the morning dew stitches
your skin with needles—pricking you—yet the closer
you get to your street the quicker you run, and your legs are
caving in under you, as cold sweat drips into your eye—the
salt of it stings—you can hardly see, but you look around
the street anyway; it is a past life made anew, and you loosen
your pace; your breathing is heavy, labored, loud.
You sprint up the stairs, wavering on the summit of the top
floor, in a desperate search for keys—straining your ears
for the familiar jingle inside your pockets, and your heart skips
a beat and sinks in the silence as the usual list of excuses
runs through your brain—you hate this part—hate the
ritual that lies beyond this door—an argument fought with
stares and slams, then kisses, promises, caresses, but you know
how to manipulate yourself from the former and into the latter—how
to waltz out of her bad temper and into the good graces of her
arms—cha, cha, cha—you’ve done it a million
times; you just wish—for once—you could skip the
argument, so you take a deep breath and check the door, shaking
the handle with force, and it swings open, and you charge though
it like a clumsy bull.
It is warm here.
The clinking of the radiator lulls you. Dust sparkles like
snowflakes, floating on the beams of sun. The window glass
protects the apartment from outside noise. The place is quiet,
enveloped by hushing carpets: they are shushing your footsteps.
Peace. That is how you feel now—at peace. Your heart
stops thumping. Your breath slows. You have this impulse to
collapse, right there on the welcome mat, curl up in a ball
and sleep. Sleep.
You look to the end of the hall, and there she is—an
apparition, in tidy-whiteys and your college sweatshirt: the
same college sweatshirt she not only stole from you but made
her own, and you hated when she took it; hated when she molded
it to her body; now you see how it fits her, how it sexes her.
You try to focus your vision, but your one good eye has swollen
itself blind, yet you can still decipher her form: her hair
is a shaggy halo around her head, ruffled lovingly by the pillow;
her eyes are blinking open and close, heavy from sleep and
too much sunlight, and she’s smiling at you—smiling
with that knowing grin that can either mean trouble or lust—you
don’t know which—you don’t care, and in her
hand is a steaming cup of something—she’s extending
it to you. Her head is cocked sideways; her eyes are narrowed
and sparkling, and, suddenly, you see yourself mirrored in
those eyes, not as some monster—not as some has been—but
as something else—something loved, and you don’t
see obstacles or reprimands: you don’t see the past;
you don’t see the present; what you see is the future—the
future though her eyes, and you glide—glide to that extended
chalice—obediently—extending your hand, reaching
for it, not beaten or trodden, but anew—re-birthed—not
crawling, not running—but gliding, and suddenly you realize
that there is nowhere you’d rather be than here.
Nowhere. There for the grace of god are you.
[END]
© 2006 Anna Varshavsky - Contributor's
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