i like girls' bedrooms. they're intoxicating. always sweet-smelling and soft and clean. and they're always so.
bright.
even when they are empty they always seem filled. they're like extensions. they're not there, just so she has a place to sleep in when she's not out, a table to sit at, a window to look out of.

i am a toilet roll

you never could write better than i do, but
then again, not many people could,
(and it never was an issue, at least not for me anyway).
until i asked, what happened, curious like a cat, and you told me.
and for all my words, i didn't know what
to say.

i couldn't tell you that it was going to be ok,
because it really wasn't, and it was fucking cliche.
or that i understand,
that i know what he meant.
i couldn't tell you if there's anything i can do for you,
i would do, because that wouldn't be true.
or that he would have wanted to be strong,
not grieving the way you are, for as long
as you decide it.
i didn't want to tell you what i didn't know,
because, for god's sake, i know you have enough of those.

i didn't know him
(and i wouldn't be so arrogant to think that i did),
and never will, and so i said something stupid and wished you well
while your eyes and everything else told me more
than any words would tell me how you feel.
i made up my mind then, and so when it is all over
(but who am i trying to kid, it will never be over)
when we talk and laugh and smoke and eat and whatever that we do,
when you sit beside me like you did last night
at least for those hours with me, you wouldn't remember.

while i hope you heal, the way things like this never seem to do
and see the way you smile like a fish, the way you used to.

i wish i could say i would have wrote this for him,
but that would be a lie.
i wrote this for you, and you know it as well as i.

my imaginary one armed, one eyed, club footed midget friend with scoliosis can play better soccer than patrice evra.

and golden point sucks. there's no email submission option? wtf? are they still using type writers and model t fords or something.

Three years back, when we first started out, I never thought this was what it would be like.
We went to plays, we clubbed, he brought me to playgrounds to ride the swings and the see-saws. We sat in the dark and looked each other in the eyes. We were like kids; twenty three year old kids. We printed out fake name cards one year, and went down to the beer festival pretending to be pub and restaurant owners just so we could get a few free beers from the suppliers trying desperately to get their beers on tap somewhere. They were desperate for a reason. Their beers sucked. We drank and we ate, and we drank some more. After the festival, we drove up to a quiet place he knew near the river front. We crawled to the back of the car and talked and laughed and made stupid jokes. I was warm from the free beer and I could tell my cheeks were flushed. My words were butterflies in my head, giggling dead moths when they came out of mouth. I felt like I was in love with the world, everything in it. I waved at the other couples in their own cars, on the park benches, and they would take one look at me and duck away like frightened rabbits.
‘Funny bunny,’ I shouted at them, laughing. ‘Hunny bunny funny.’
‘I love you, J,’ he said, and kissed me on the nose. His face was pink. His breath smelled of stale ale and pork. He looked at me and declared.
‘I want to marry you.’
‘Mm.’ I giggled and kissed him back.
‘I want to marry you too.’
We were cuddling in the back of his car, a little Suzuki Swift, and I was wearing a short skirt that exposed a lot of my legs. I saw him gazing at them.
‘Where shall we get married?’ I asked him, watching him, loving him.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.’
‘How about Paris?’
‘Cheesy.’
‘Pusan? I’ve always wanted to go to Pusan.’
He thought for a moment.
‘Hmm.’ He paused. ‘Let me think for a second.’
He was still staring at my legs. But at the same time he wasn’t. He was frowning that cute little frown of his that made his face, normally boyish to the point of being baby-like, age ten years. He was serious. About the marriage. About me. I wanted him.
‘Can you kiss me while you think?’ I asked, and leaned against him, pressing my chest against his arm.
‘That may interfere with the thought processes,’ He said softly. ‘Let’s see.’
And he leaned over and kissed me, one hand tilting my chin up to meet his. I love it when guys do that. Touching my face as we kiss. It seems some how, more. Intimate. His tongue flicked against mine and he reached up with his other hand. I took it and guided it to my breast. My heart was pumping away and I felt like I was sixteen again, like the time I went speeding down the highway at three in the morning in my mom’s car, with no other vehicles in sight. Three lanes wide and no one to stop you.
I wanted him so bad.
‘Mark?’
‘Yes.’
‘Make love to me? Do you want to?’
‘Yes,’ he said, a shadow in the dark. ‘I would like that.’
‘Now. Right here.’
‘Yes.’ I could see his eyes, wide in the dark, looking at me. They glinted in the street light.
“Oh, J,” he said, and when we met, I imagined a thousand cupids applauding somewhere after shooting our asses full of arrows.

It was at a small theater in Brooklyn, close to where I stayed. I was smoking a cigarette, walking back to my place when I saw it. The poster on the wall of the theater was grubby. Romeo and Juliet, it proclaimed, in bold Times New Roman. The matinee was today. Above, pink light flickered. THE GLOWING BELL. The double “L”s were smashed and dark. As I looked, the “-WING” behind GLO sputtered once like a death rattle and went to neon tube heaven. What kind of theater calls itself “The Glowing Bell”? I took one last drag from the cigarette. It was a spur of the moment thing. I took the money I had been thinking of using to buy a new pair of shoes and after a moment of hesitation, I stubbed out my cigarette on the sidewalk and entered the theater. The ticket lady was a fat, bored looking lump filing her nails with an emery board. I approached her and cleared my throat when she didn’t look up. “One ticket please.” Jabba the Hutt put down the board and pushed herself on her little roller chair over to the machine. She tapped stuff into it. The machine grumbled, spat out the ticket and she slapped it down on the counter, chair squeaking in abject pain. No words were spoken. I smoothed out my ball of crumpled notes as much as I could and passed it over the counter. “Packed house?” I asked, trying to break the silence. She looked up and stared at me like I was crazy. I let the excuse of a conversation die, took the ticket and walked in. It was dark and damp. I could smell mould. There were no ushers. I couldn’t tell what seat I was supposed to be on as I couldn’t read the smudgy font on the ticket. I grabbed a mid-row seat anyway, not that it mattered. The theater was nearly empty. There was a young couple snuggled near the back, moving shadows in the dark. The girl was on the guy’s lap making stifled moaning noises as they tried their best to have stealthy sex. They couldn’t have been more than sixteen. There was an old man on the left, head hanging back, sleeping. He was Jewish, that much was apparent by his beard, and reminded me uncomfortably of a long buried memory I couldn’t place. He looked dead. The lights dimmed further, stage lights went on, and that’s when it started.

i could fly,
oh yes, i could.
but i would rather
sleep instead.

Sex.

That’s what it’s like.

The way his fingers found their way around the keys, like lovers. There was a silence in the hall, a silence you never heard, will never hear again. A silence not made up of whirring minds counting off twenty four full bar rests, minds running through the next entry, minds tensing up for the conductor’s glance and baton twitch that will cue you in. a silence not made up of nicotine craving minds in the audience, impatience to give the flowers, for dinner, for the inevitable sleep when it was over and you got home. Just enraptured faces staring on, swallowing everything greedily, everything, everything in case you missed out on a single moment.

We watch like voyeurs, violinists and woodwinds and brass, all as part of the audience as the audience as he, with a name no one can pronounce, let alone remember, made love to the piano the way we could only dream about, making love to our girlfriends, our boyfriends, our spouses. It would haunt me forever, whenever I lie in the dark with a warm body next to mine, that it would never be as great, never be as good as all the porn in the world, which would never be as good as that nine minutes I still remember from six years ago when I saw an ugly, skinny man who could not speak a word of English spoke in the language of angels with his piano.

Love. I am in love with that man, and what he could do, what he had done in that single encore as the last note trailed away and everyone stared at him like he was god, a god who couldn't speak, a god whose name we don't know and never will, a god who stood up and strode off in the silence after that miracle.