how is it that a painting i spend one hour on is better than a painting i spend days on…. wtf douche art skills

ode to dead girl, last page

old photograph, ‘10

Somewhere on an old roll of film that belongs to a Leica camera that belongs to an old man is two photographs of me at the Fountain Di Trevi, with a notebook that’s only half full. In those two photographs, five minutes apart from each other, are two versions of me, five minutes old apart, and a time-locked photocopy of my notebook that no longer exists because the rest of the page is now filled with Catholic patterns and statues of a saint being stabbed at the heart with an arrow of gold. I sat in front of this statue for two hours, staring at the ecstasy of a woman who drew such pleasure from knowing God that her state was immortalized by rivered marble. I drew her as I saw her, locking her in a still in a time that only belonged to me, just as a two parts of myself, five minutes from each other, belong to an old man with a Leica camera and a sweet smile.

scraping.

“We should smoke when we get back,” he said as he exhaled. It smelled like sweet, ripe pomegranates, the kind you couldn’t tear open without the juice spraying onto your white clothes. I loved rolling my fingers over the ridges and bumps until the seeds loosened and unfolded over themselves like snowballs down a hill. But there were no pomegranates, mangos, mint apples or white peaches - just the smoke and people breathing out clouds of it, covering their face.

“All you guys do is smoke,” I muttered, passing the pipe over to Brett.

I slid the tea candle in front of me and let the flame singed between my fingers. As Barry puffed away, I emptied the wax onto the table. Then I started ripping the metal, folding it in halves and over until it was like a cheap knife. 

“You should try it,” Brett said. His eyes were bright blue and a bit crazy. They always got like that when he talked about weed. “It would expand your little mind.”

I dropped my hands underneath the table. “My mind is not little.”

James handed the pipe over to Brett, who inhaled sharply. His mouth kept around the end. The base of the hookah pipe was beautiful as the water bubbled as if it were boiling. The steam filled Brett until there was no space left within him. “You know what’s fucking terrible,” Brett said in between breathes, his words filling in the empty spaces, “the way Audrey laughs. You can just tell she’s laughing at you.”

The light metal felt cold and jarred between my fingers. I pressed it on my arm and dragged it. The edges scratched my skin leaving white dry lines like condensed cat’s nails.

Brett shook his head. “And the way she asks questions, you just know she’s trying to get information out of you. Fucking gossip.”

I watched Brett blow rings and snap them into hearts. As he talked in between mouthfuls of smoke, I moved the make-shift knife over my arm wondering how long it would take to break through the skin. Back and forth, back and forth, all the metal did was collect tiny tears of skin.

“The other day she asked what I thought about Sonia,” I looked up just in time to see Brett roll his eyes, “and if we had,” he did a set of air quotes, “a thing.”

I cocked my head. “And what did you say?”

“I said it was none of her business.”

And I went back to it, my wrists did most of the work as I willed my arms to keep still. James rolled his eyes. “I saw that,” Brett chastised, but handed the pipe over anyway. 

“Guys, watch this,” James mumbled, his mouth over the opening. As the smoke flowed out like a waterfall from his nose and into his mouth, this liquid like petrol broke through my skin. It all kept going, and James stared at Brett like they were in some weird competition. Except Brett was a long distance runner, he had the lungs of a hot air balloon, and while we all knew that James would never win, my mouth dropped open when he winked. The pain of watery plasma burned my raw skin. 

his blue eyes

“I can’t read novels anymore,” she admitted.

“Can’t? You mean you suddenly stopped knowing how to read?”

She rolled her eyes as he laughed. “You know what I mean.” Her hands wrapped around the overly circular circumference of her chipped coffee cup. “I find myself losing track, losing rhythm - dying when it comes to getting through how long an author takes to describe breakfast, or how a fucking room metaphorically represents a wife’s drifting relationship with her husband. Space is metaphorical. Whatever.”

“It’s poetry. You can’t get tired of poetry.”

“I don’t think it’s the writer’s fault. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I don’t believe in love enough to think that green eyes are worth a comparison to a forest at twilight. Let’s be honest. Every pair of green eyes are like a forest in some light.” 

She let herself look at Daniel. His eyes were blue. His hair was black, rotten dry chestnut, if the author in her demanded that she describe it - blue as a paled sapphire if the reader needed the words in order to believe he was real. And he was looking at her with a combination of mirth and disappointment - like he felt an angst tear (again, if the reader needed it) in his memory. His lip twitched, a tight kink, but then he shrugged and looked away at the grains of the table. Perhaps deep in thought, or just possibly just digesting her words.

“If you say so,” he muttered. “How is someone ever going to win your heart if you’re not a romantic.” 

“I am a romantic,” she defended.

“You said you don’t want poetry.” 

“It doesn’t mean I don’t fantasize. I’m a writer. I obviously have an imagination.”

“Alright,” he sat up, interested in winning this argument, “tell me one of your fantasies.” 

It didn’t take her long. She’d been writing about her fantasy ever since she started writing. She held up her novel, rather confrontationaly and over aggressively. “A place where all this makes sense.” It was right next to her face, and she felt a bit silly, like she was advertising to her best friend. 

He simply raised his eyes. He had read all her books. They sounded like reality.

Mary held her breath, the words congesting at the front of her mouth. “I can write about a world that sounds beautiful, but it’s nothing more than words. Hands don’t care if they are soft or rough, as if friction is really what the girl really cares about when she’s in love. This is completely bullshit… because, because in the end, we’ll just settle for something warm.” She put her book down with a thud. “That’s reality.” 

“So you’re saying that you’d go for whatever will have you.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But so what? In the end, I may be happier with stability than love. I won’t be constantly worrying where the next paycheck will come from.” 

When she wrapped her hands around her coffee, she realized it was cold. He had no response for her, so she tried not to look at him.

“Here, let me sign my book for you. You can sell it if you want.”

She grabbed the novel that was between them and signed the title page quickly. Not every author has to believe what they write, she thought furiously. Wasn’t that the point of an imagination? The bitter calamity drove her to write and replace existence. She had always blamed paper words for her warped reality. If beauty be the love from John Keats then words had been used, long buried and gone. Her world was nothing like an oyster, the cave of shadows was more interesting than the source; if dusk’s songbird sang a tune, only a disturbance the chords would be, and if his eyes were like the sky’s then cataracts must describe the clouded appearance. 

to love death, dearskye.