Stories Every Day

Very unfinished

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 21:13:17 -0600

Woodchips scratch the inside of my knees. My hair is covered in dirt. “I love you,” I say.

My shoulders are pinned down on an oilcloth motel sheet. Your sweat drips on my face; my eyeliner’s running. ”I love you,” I say.

We eat cereal for breakfast. You’ve got a hangover from the night before. You owe me fifty bucks. Still, I love you.

The second time you get drunk, I can’t even cry. Still, I tell you I love you.

How to be Depressed

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 09:23:24 -0600

1. Wear sour-smelling pajamas for at least two days. Don’t take them off.

2.Spend sleepless nights watching reality TV reruns.

3. Ruminate about your pitiful life.

4. Cry.

5. Stare at the TV until you stop thinking about your pitiful life.

6. Feel mildly comforted by your disgusting pajamas.

7. Feel disgusted by your comfort.

8. Cry.

Martha

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:00:45 -0500

Ballet exercises in the
Morning. Studying in the
Afternoon. Bottled
Water all day.

She makes an excuse
Not to eat her pasta.
“You always were a princess,”
Dad says.

Nights- writing letters
To an older boyfriend.
Staring out the window.
Hamstring stretches.

Losing My Virginity

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 19:19:44 -0500

Mostly I just lay there
And waited for an orgasm
To magically descend

Artemis and Actaeon in the Suburbs, aged 12

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:19:07 -0500

Skinny-dipping in the pool
The boys and waterguns behind the trees.
Long hair floats up in the water.

The boy comes from behind,
Jumps to the fence.
Staring.

“Actae’s a fag!”
She yells.
The boys turn the guns on him.

Sixteen

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:28:00 -0500

I read
late
into the
Night.

I listened
to
the same songs
on repeat.

I ate
only
cucumbers
for dinner.

I fell
in love
with my
best friend.

One poem

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:27:46 -0500

The Science of Too Much

Late nights are spent wandering the dark rooms of the apartment
Cupping a tumbler of bourbon. Step lightly on the floorboards
As to not wake your lover. The kitchen table is littered
With dirty dishes, food wrappers, poorly done collages.

The mornings come blearily with a potfull of coffee
And awkward goodbyes. Clothes, makeup, out into the cold
For another day. Life is the thin ice underneath
Your shoes; it fractures into infinite patterns.

One poem

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 08:28:14 -0500

To My Friend

I’ll never know
What’s in your head.
I’ve stopped
Chattering to you
And I just let
Crickets and car engines
Fill the air
Between us.

Microfiction

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 17:34:02 -0500

New Year’s Day

He stared out the window at the snow and snuffed out his cigarette in a too-full ashtray. The pale sun was finally coming up and casting sharp shadows of the pile of dirty dishes against the kitchen table. “I’m alone,” he realized, as he leaned back in the wooden chair.

One Poem

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 16:13:56 -0500

Five Scenes about You

The woman on the train says,
“Your hair is the same color.”
You grab a strand of mine and compare.

We sit on a park bench.
It’s early November. Your jeans
Make a scratchy sound rubbing against my tights.

Your hands are big and never
Cold. I hold them up to warm
My face when I come inside to see you.

I lean against you, my knees
Tucked in between my chest and yours.
“You look so small like that.”

The day after you leave, I find
Long red hairs in my bed. Mine
Or yours? I don’t change my sheets for weeks.

One poem

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:15:00 -0500

(Edited to remove one poem to place in a separate post. I’m not good with tumblr formatting yet.)

Untitled

A blonde girl runs in the grass Followed by a large black dog.

…

Teenagers loiter in the parking lot Slapping at mosquitos on their arms.

…

Cars go too fast down alleys. Gravel hits garage doors.

…

A young couple walks hand in hand Pink hibiscus petals are on the sidewalk.

Open Letter to My Exes Whose Stuff I Still Have

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:44:22 -0500

(Bonus post! I’m working on a couple things and I’ll get something posted after the Work of Art finale. In the meantime, this was rejected from McSweeney’s!)

Dear Exes,

Hi! How are you? No, I mean it! Me? I’m doing okay. I recently moved and am moving AGAIN shortly. Exciting, right?

Yeah, but there is a lot of packing and unpacking involved with moving. I have a lot of stuff and I’m looking to cut down. Now I’m realizing, hey, a lot of it’s yours!

Not all of it is stuff you forgot to take back; a lot of it is gifts. But I’ll still let you have those back. Heck, maybe you gave away your copy of “The Threepenny Opera” to your college girlfriend only to realize years later that Brecht is your favorite playwright.

Or maybe you gave me Stranger in a Strange Land and, even though we both have red hair and would fit into a Heinleinian universe, the waterbrothers thing didn’t quite grok. I won’t hold it against you; if you want your book, take it back. Free love!

If you left beer at my house, I drank it all and cannot give it back to you. Sorry! It was pretty good, though.

I’ve kept most of the clothes left at my place in good condition. I’m especially looking to get rid of the soccer jersey that says, “Los Alamos,” on it. Don’t get me wrong; I like it and I wear it out to all the lesbian bars. It makes me look pretty gay, but it’s way more trouble than it’s worth. I get all these questions about what a Chicago girl is doing wearing a shirt from New Mexico. You inevitably come up in conversation and then I look undateable because I’m the girl wearing her ex’s shirt at a meet market bar. Yeah, I’m still single. I’m sure there’s someone out there, though!

The book The Russian Fascists is also up for grabs. I thought you might like it since I’m Russian and you seemed close to calling me a fascist when we’d fight sometimes. Those were some explosive fights, eh? What a memento from our relationship this would be! (Also, I sold the other book about Russia you got me. Again, sorry!)

I could always sell this stuff or give it away, but I figured you guys might want first crack at it. Additionally, I don’t want to be known as that bitch who stole your copy of Riven.

We should get coffee sometime and catch up. I can’t wait to hear about your new girlfriend!

Love always,

____

3 Poems

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:58:02 -0500

(This is most definitely a thrown-together post. The last poem is an attempt to recreate something that got destroyed in the great hard drive crash of July, 2010. I wonder if it would violate the spirit of this project if I were to revise these and post them at a later date. Hmm…)

Untitled

We are both quiet in bed and our hands constantly move.

After, your head is against my chest. This position makes your legs stick out two feet further than mine.

My fingers run through your hair and you moan. Softly.

You sink into my flesh. Grab me.

I kiss your forehead. “Are you hungry?” I ask.

August

I sleep in catnaps between 4 and 6 AM.

Before and after, I can’t write and count dimples in the walls.

83 below my poster. Maybe more. They’re hard to see.

I see shadows in the daytime. Want to die around noon.

Time disappears with the sun and I write and think about you.

I only believe tomorrow will come when I hear birds.

Mid-Summer

The sun comes up too early.

I’m always cranky until noon.

We argue about books.

We can’t agree what to have for lunch.

We fight until we can’t.

Then we nap.

I slammed my fingers in a car door once when we argued.

I like to play with the bruise to make it hurt again.

Cemetery

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:12:16 -0500

James walked out of the office into the heat of a fading August day. He stuffed his last paycheck into the back pocket of his jeans and unlocked his bike from the handicapped sign. Not a hundred yards behind him was 20 acres of fertilized grass dotted with gray granite tombstones. About 3 or 4 dozen of those stones sat on top of graves James had dug.
    He got on his bike and started to ride away from the office. He took the long way through the cemetery. He’d worked here every summer since starting college and now, well, he started law school in two weeks. His bike was the same bike he’d gotten as a high school graduation present. The chain had rusted a little from too many times being locked out in the rain, but overall James was happy it hadn’t gotten stolen after four years of college. He liked riding around the cemetery on it. It was something vaguely eccentric that didn’t quite rise to the level of transgressive.
    The graves were topped with bright, almost neon bouquets of carnations. The pinks and reds looked electric against the chemical green grass. Graves came in three varieties, James noted. There was the stone that was fully sunk into the ground. If these weren’t tended to, the carved name in the stone faded away quickly. There was the simple stone that rose perpendicular to the ground. Sometimes there was carving or a picture set in along with the name, but the shape of these stones was essentially the same.
    Then there were what could properly be called monuments. These often looked different on the surface. One in the cemetery looked like an old fashioned lamppost with six sides. Each side had the name and dates for a different family member. One was a small stone mausoleum with the family name in block lettering above the door. But these were always alike in size, more or less, and the fonts used. Something swirly to convey love or something harsh to convey dignity.
    James had seen the same graves every day for the past four summers. He could distinguish from place in the cemetery the approximate age of the grave, but they all started to blur together into hundreds and hundreds of granite rocks. What caught his eye now were the three girls riding their bikes on the sidewalk on the other side of the fence. They were bigger girls and their thighs bulged out of their short shorts. They giggled and shrieked and a family laying flowers at a grave shot them a dirty look.
    James slowed down a little to keep up with the girls. He thought of Martha and how they were still technically together. Martha and her dancer’s legs. She’d be in Brooklyn, he’d be in Philly. They could make it work. James pushed the thought out of his head. Summers to him had always meant chubby girls with bouncy tits on bikes. They all blurred together to him. He’d taken a couple behind trees in the cemetery at times a bit later than this. They were nothing like Martha, hell, he couldn’t remember their names; he didn’t think he was cheating.
    James looked at the asses of the girls on the other side of the fence and thought of taking one of them with him. He thought against it. He turned his bike left and nearly cut the girls off as he crossed the street away from the cemetery. A plane shrieked above him; the cemetery was in a flight path. He biked down wide suburban streets, trees on both sides, sprinklers taking advantage of the quickly cooling afternoon. Neat concrete paths led to steps and steps led to doors, mailboxes, and window boxes.
    James never felt as home as when he was biking down the nearly-empty streets. The sunlight shone through the trees and took on a slight green tinge. Occasionally you could hear a child or a dog cry out. James imagined Martha and himself in one of these houses. Martha would have nice legs and teach ballet. He would be a lawyer and spend his nights riding around cemeteries and fucking heavy girls. He would not ask her much about what went on in her head and she would not know that there were three kinds of graves, but they were all essentially the same.
    He should use his last check to send her flowers, he mused as he biked up his parents’ long driveway. His mother had left him a plate of dinner on the table. He ate it, then went up to his room to jack off.

Vacation

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 22:03:00 -0500

She was wearing a red bikini that almost matched her stringy hair. She sat down at the edge of the hotel pool and slowly dipped her feet in. Her toenails had purple polish on them. She sighed deeply as she kicked her feet underwater. A chubby child in an inner tube paddled by and nearly brushed her.

He sat across the deck in a chair and looked at her. She had done most of the driving here and her left arm was darker than her right. Her eyeliner was running from being out in the sun. Seeing her hunched over shoulders, he got up and walked towards her.

“Are we talking?” he asked.

She shook her head and let her body fall into the water. Her hair bobbed to the surface like seaweed. He admired her consistency.

While she was underwater, she puffed her cheeks out like a child and looked around at the legs around her. Most were doughy pale tinted blue from the water. Some were hairy man legs, some were fleshy woman legs. Her own legs were too skinny and could use a shave, she thought.

He was still standing at the edge of the pool when she came up for air. She blinked back the water from her eyes and climbed out of the pool. Her swimsuit bottom gaped and puckered at the thigh as she struggled to get out. She walked past him and headed for a bleach white towel hanging on the chair next to where he had been sitting.

“Why won’t you talk to me, bitch? What did I do that was so wrong?”

She wrapped the towel around her middle and didn’t say anything. He looked at her matted hair.

“Go back to the room and run a goddamn comb through your hair.”

She held out her hand for the key. He gave it to her and saw her walk away. Her large feet left wet footprints all along the concrete. He followed behind her, watching as the footsteps grew fainter and fainter.

Inside the room, she sat crosslegged on the bed brushing her hair. He sat in a chair opposite her. She grimaced with pain. The black makeup streaked on her cheeks gave her the illusion of crying.

“We have to.” He said. “We can’t take care of it.”

“It ain’t an it,” she whispered. She walked over to the mirror and began to part her hair. Her face was large in the mirror, his seated body smaller and in the background.

“Either way. You’re with your folks and I’m barely making it as it is.” She tugged at a knot. “Besides, I ain’t fuckin’ no pregnant belly.”

She whipped around and turned her back to the mirror. “Well, it ain’t my belly you’d be screwin’!”

He walked up behind her and put his arms around her. “Ssh, baby, you’re right. But why’d I want to see a pretty girl like you become a mom? Besides, it’s like a vacation for us. We spend the night here, then tomorrow we’ll see the doctor and it’s all over.”

Her head was buried in his chest and his hands smoothed her wet hair. “I did like the pool.”

“See, like a vacation. Let’s go back, baby.” He reached around and goosed her. She smiled.

Down at the motel pool again, they swam together. As the water moved around her flat tummy, she felt something moving inside her. She wasn’t far along enough to have it kick, but she felt like there was a body inside her. She wanted to cry.

Blog

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 22:02:21 -0500

Hi there! This blog is my attempt to write a short story or poem every day, no fail.