The Furious Gazelle

Literary as hell.

Tag: furious gazelle (Page 4 of 8)

“Goodnight” and “For e.e. cummings” from “Love Poems” by Charles Bane

September 29, 2014 /
The Furious Gazelle is continuing to serialize Charles Bane’s new book of poetry, Love Poems. You can find more of his poetry here.

Goodnight

Goodnight, my love
sleep here beside me
my lifelong man. My
champion who hurls against
cobblestones the fears I reserve
for he, whose shoulders arch
city streets and deeper still
on concourses of sheets. I wonder
which of his ribs made me. Dust
settles in the sky as we name
fleeting things we have seen.
Light will dim eventually my
compass, glass and archer and
I will streak west contentedly.

For e.e. cummings

Fleeter be they than dappled
dreams, and every word for
Marion is such and every day;
when I was lean and long
and words scraped against
the city skies of pages one
foot high, I raced in swimming
meets; the whistle blew and
I churned, arms winding like second
hands but really my joy propelled
me down the aisle as I thought
that time was not like her who I
would immortalize like air.

Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of The Chapbook ( Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems ( Kelsay Books, 2014). His work was described by the Huffington Post as “not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them.” A writing contributor for The Gutenberg Project, he is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida.

Cold as Winter by Larissa Swayze

September 26, 2014 /

Cold as Winter

by Larissa Swayze

The freshly fallen snow glows blue beneath the Alberta moon and Christopher wades through knee-high drifts. He reaches into his coat, pulls out one of his grandfather’s cigarettes and lights it. He inhales deeply and the winter air mixes with the smoke, biting all the way down before leaving his frostbitten lungs in a puff as thick as ice fog.
He squints in the direction of the subdivision, his cigarette hanging off his lips. His hands return to his coat pockets. His frozen right fingers still curled around the lighter, Christopher flicks the striker to hear the sound. Once. Twice. Three times.
He watches the sky above the distant peaked roofs, breathing in his cigarette and the cold and the car exhaust from the highway. Where there used to be only stars—the streetlights throw a dull haze across the sky. The city has been creeping toward them for as long as he can remember. One day it was going to open its hungry maw and swallow them whole.
The night is strangely quiet. Christopher scans the field for his grandfather’s dogs. They usually follow him around during his evening smoke—bounding about, snapping at the air, barking at him, at each other, at nothing in particular. He inhales once more, then pushes through the snow. Each step invites the cold deeper into his bones.
Twenty feet from the barn, he widens his mouth to call the dogs’ names, but no sound comes out. He drops the cigarette. It melts the small patch of snow that catches it. He stares at the trail of blood, no longer wondering why the night is so silent.
The warmth of the farmhouse burns his cheeks and the smell of baking biscuits invades his nose. Christopher passes through the living room, where his grandfather sits in front of the television—crooked fingers wrapped around a glass of something dark, and enters the kitchen.
His grandmother barely looks up from the stove. “Damn it child, take off your boots when you come in the house. I just washed the floors.”
“What the hell happened to my dogs?”
His grandmother’s voice is smooth. The hand she stirs the pot of broth with steady. “They weren’t yours. And you smell like cigarettes. Go wash up.”
Christopher’s hands tremble. “What the hell happened to my dogs?”
She picks up a knife and begins slicing an onion. “Your grandpa kept saying if they wouldn’t leave the cows alone he was gonna do something about it. Well, guess what? One of the heifers damn near lost her calf because those mutts wouldn’t stop yapping at her. So grandpa called Uncle Joe over and had him take care of it.”
Christopher stares at his grandmother’s lined face, willing her to look at him. She dumps the sliced onion into the pot and moves on to a carrot.
Christopher’s voice is soft and flat. “Uncle Joe did it.” His hands stop shaking, but they remain cold as winter, even in the heat of the tiny house.
“Well, your grandpa sure couldn’t. You know how he loves them dogs.”
From the living room, the voices on the television grow uncomfortably loud as his grandfather turns up the volume.
“He didn’t have to kill them.” Christopher’s voice is lost beneath the laughter of a studio audience. His grandmother adds the carrot to the pot, then buries her head deep in the pantry.
Christopher moves back to the front entrance. He yanks off his boots and drops them on the linoleum. Thunk. He turns to the back of his grandfather’s head for a reaction. The older man coughs and Christopher can see spit spraying from his uncovered mouth. He watches his grandfather’s bald patch a few seconds more before turning away, unconsciously touching the back of his own head.
In the bathroom, he leaves the lights off and stands next to the sink. Through the two-foot by two-foot window he can see a cloud has moved over the moon. Still, the rolling hills on the horizon seem to radiate from within. But Christopher knows that can’t be. The snow is just reflecting the lights from the subdivision.
He turns on the tap and lets it run long enough that steam begins to rise out of the sink. He holds his hands beneath the scalding water until he can wiggle his fingers again. He looks in the mirror. His grandfather’s sharp eyes narrow. His grandmother’s wide nose steadily drips.
In the distance a coyote howls. Christopher’s ears twitch. Here come the dogs. Then, he remembers. He turns off the tap and heads back toward the kitchen. Shuffling his feet like an old man.

“The Air is Paved with Fire” and “Nebraska territory, 1853. for Alfred Corn” “Love Poems” by Charles Bane

September 23, 2014 /
The Furious Gazelle is continuing to serialize Charles Bane’s new book of poetry, Love Poems. You can find more of his poetry here.

The Air Is Paved With Fire

The air is paved
with fire; you are there
and I and in privacy
I sense the larger end
of land, and a wild and
waiting sea. None, my
soul, is small
upon its course
of flames and I oar
upon your love of me
to a waiting Face that
looks for me in flashes
of the dark.

 

Nebraska Territory, 1853. For Alfred Corn

I love the brilliance of this
hour; simple calico is turned
to Joseph’s coat and your
upturned face does not permit
transient light to wheel and disappear.
No furrows mark your cheeks and
I long to lengthen lines of joy
about your eyes, and dam them
high against the beat of flood. Emmaline,
our crop is heaped into flowered
fields, and our book of days is
waiting to be inscribed, one
generation at a time.

Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of The Chapbook ( Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems ( Kelsay Books, 2014). His work was described by the Huffington Post as “not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them.” A writing contributor for The Gutenberg Project, he is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida.

Time Unraveled by Breann Landry

September 12, 2014 /
I sat in the front room of my ground-floor apartment, hands clasped around a mug of hot coffee, staring out the window and thinking thoughts too melancholy to be revealed at a first meeting. I would not have you, the Reader, think too ill of me right away. I did not drink the coffee; I never drank coffee. I made a mug of it every morning, habitually, and then sat huddled round it, occasionally inhaling the fragrant steam, warming my hands till the mug grew cold. A mug of hot water would have done the job as well, but somehow I could never break the habit of making coffee, partly perhaps because Jane had done so. But Jane was one of the melancholy thoughts into which you, the Reader, have no business poking your nose just yet.

There came a single, heavy knock at the door, and I knew Oliver must be there. Oliver could never manage to do things quite like other people. Who else of my acquaintances would pay a visit at seven-forty-five on a Saturday morning? No one. So I knew, from the timing as well as from the knock, that it was Oliver, before I opened the door.

Oliver stands about five foot three, two inches below my own height, with a slight, active physique, like an exuberant gnome. A professor of philosophy, who dabbles in psychology and physics and has a penchant for science fiction of any kind, he is vastly intelligent and must have done an incredible amount of reading in his time, most of it speculative. He can source any reference from Verne, Freud, Goldman, and hundreds of others, and unlike Doyle’s detective, certainly knows something about the solar system, though I have wondered whether other information as generally known may have somehow escaped his notice. As, for instance, the time.

“I remembered we had agreed to meet for lunch,” he said, without greeting or preamble, beaming beneath his spiky grey hair. “I hope you won’t mind that I am a little early.”

“Not at all,” I said, making way for him to enter the little sitting room. The distraction from my own thoughts was a welcome one, and truth be told, I found Oliver’s company less of an imposition than that of most other people, perhaps because I had once shared similar interests. He, for his part, did not seem to mind (or notice) my habitually chilly and pessimistic demeanor, which put most people off; his own enthusiasm more than made up for it. I drew a second chair up to the kitchen table, drained my rapidly-cooling mug of coffee into the sink, and set a kettle to boil for tea. Oliver was a tea-drinker.

“So about time travel,” he began, as I filled the kettle, and I could tell he was bursting with some new topic of conversation, probably a new book in his favorite genre, on which he would bring to bear all the arguments of his trade, in true Oliver style. I was to be the sounding board, the devil’s advocate, the non-professional whose flawed arguments he could dismantle, which was fine with me. His next statement, however, took me by surprise, as he leaned forward across the table to give it more emphasis.

“I think it’s possible.”

“How so?” I asked, thinking this must be some rearrangement of the usual order of events, in which I would be expected to question his arguments so that he might prove how false they were.

Oliver leaned back in his chair and chuckled.

“The power of the mind, Rebecca. You might say it’s all in your head.”

I was puzzled now.

“What do you mean?”

“Ah,” he said. “I used to dream of finding a means by which it might be possible to travel in time. I thought the answer lay in science. Now I see that I was quite wrong. It’s not science—at least, not strictly speaking.”

This was sounding odder and odder. However, I played along.

“So, science can’t give us a means of traveling in time, but epistemology can?”

“In part,” said Oliver. “And in part what might be called psychology—in the literal, not the common sense, that is: the study of the soul—and in part, simple human nature.”

“I wouldn’t call that simple,” I protested. Certainly not explicable. “Do you mean us to meditate our way into the Eternal Now? Shall I get out my yoga mat?”

“Only if you find it helpful,” said Oliver serenely. Probably he did not know what yoga was; few science fiction writers and fewer metaphysicians address it. The solar system.

The kettle whistled. I poured tea into two separate cups and brought them to the table, tea bags curling brown curvescent lines into the hot water, like serpents on a Chinese dragon tapestry. Oliver drew his close, inhaling the steam with absent-minded pleasure; I remembered how he had once called tea “the nectar of imagination”.

“The main principle of the thing,” he began, “is the power of human memory—and emotion. Suppose that you had a powerful emotional attachment to something in the past, as it was in the past. We all have them: one never wants the house one grew up in to change or be destroyed. Or it could be something smaller: a favorite childhood toy, an heirloom, even a lost limb.”

“Could it be a person?” I found myself asking.

“Definitely,” said Oliver, giving me an approving nod. The student had thought of something the master had overlooked. “That might be even better: emotion and memory would tend to be stronger where human relationships are involved. The key is that the attachment, the memory, must be very strong, and the thing must no longer be as it was in the cherished past—if it were still the same, or equally beloved in its current state, there would be no need on the subject’s part to use it as a link to the past.”

He took a sip of tea.

“Wait,” I said, still feeling that I must be missing something, expecting that at some point the conversation would turn around and Oliver would begin arguing against what one must presume to be impossible. But he was already discoursing again.

“With the help of hypnosis, or meditation perhaps”—here another nod, presumably to acknowledge my previous reference to yoga; he must have known what it was after all—“the subject may be able to enter a state in which he relives vividly former experiences to which he has a strong emotional attachment. Such things have been known to happen, for example, in dreams: soldiers returned from war often relive traumatic experiences vividly in sleep, and sometimes waking. Since these experiences were traumatic, they naturally have no desire to revisit them. The experience has been lodged irrevocably in the physical and psychological structure of the mind, which causes the subject to relive it when certain physical or psychological conditions are present.”

“You are saying that there would have to be a strong positive emotional attachment to some event in the past?” I said, struggling to grasp what exactly Oliver was getting at. So far, this was by far the strangest of our many strange conversations.

“Not exactly. A bride, for example, might desire to relive her wedding day. No, an event is too ephemeral, too immaterial. That is why I say the attachment must be to some object in the past, and preferably mingled with some revulsion, or negative attachment, to that object as it exists in the present.”

I shuddered a little. No need to mention what physical entity had come to my mind.

“To relive the past,” I said, “in one’s own mind and in reality are two somewhat different things.”

“But are they really?” asked Oliver, hunching forward over his cup of tea, bright eyes glinting between its curls of steam so that he really did look like a gnome or goblin, an uncanny creature. “Remember that a memory is a physical thing—a pattern of connections in the brain. The stronger the connections, the more vivid the memory. The recreation of a memory is the reconnection or recreation of those patterns. Over time some memories can be erased for lack of use: the connections disappear. By the same token, every time a memory is consciously revisited, its connections become stronger, more real.”

“Only within the brain doing the remembering,” I said.

“Ah, but how do we know?” asked Oliver. “If the physical world inside the brain is affected, why not the physical world outside the brain? The trouble with traumatic memories unintentionally relived,” he went on, sipping meditatively, “such as those of war heroes, is that the subject, or victim, is incapable of altering the memories. The negative emotion caused by the remembered events is too strong. And with positive memories, the emotion is usually not strong enough; the memory-imprint on the brain is less clear. In either case, the ability to change past remembered events is impaired. And of course, the only way we can know that a subject has truly traveled back in time is if events in the past are altered.”

“Time travel,” I said mechanically, for my thoughts were madly circling as he spoke, swirling in ever tighter spirals round a single point which was yet too tremendous to be defined.

“To the past only, of course,” said Oliver lightly, as if he had said “on Wednesdays only, of course.”

I sat up straight, shaking my head to clear the thoughts away. “I’m afraid I’m still missing your main principle. I don’t see how it is possible.”

“A student gave me the idea,” said Oliver. “Several years ago, I think it was. To begin from the beginning: I posit that human memory is the strongest physical force in the world.”

I opened my mouth to contradict this and closed it again, realizing that in the context of my own life, at least, it was very nearly true.

“Next, that as with any physical force, the stronger can affect the weaker more certainly than the other way around. Finally, that just as only diamonds can cut a diamond, so the only thing that can change human memory is itself.”

“But human memory is formed by past events,” I said.

“As diamond is formed by pressure,” said Oliver patiently, “and from coal, that is to say, from the physical substance of our brains.”

I was no longer quite sure what to say. A terrible thing was forming in my mind; I was half-afraid that anything further he might say would render it pressingly possible.

“Theories of time travel relying strictly on physical forces—time machines and the like—are doomed to failure,” Oliver continued, lapsing into the usual style of his lectures. His face was sharp, keen, absorbed; genius was clear on it as on a page of Aristotle or a portrait of Einstein. He was in his element; I was the spectator. “No physical force is capable of breaking or reversing the forward flow of time, because, in the physical world, the only time that ever exists is what we call the present. All physical forces are therefore limited to the present. Not so with the mind of man. I am skeptical of those who claim to be able to see the future, but there is no doubt about our ability to see the past, in varying degrees of accuracy, and even, under the right conditions, to relive it. I see no reason why the reality of a memory consciously altered should be limited or confined, so to speak, within the mind of the one remembering.”

“So memory can change the past,” I said.

“According to my theory, yes. Of course, it had yet to be tested.”

“I’ll do it,” I said.

Any suspicion that my offering to act as his test subject was what Oliver had intended in coming here was immediately removed by the expression of surprise and of something else—worry?—that replaced the intent, detached one on his face. He did not answer at once. Presently he pushed his teacup aside and reached across the table to cover my hand with his. It was an unprecedented gesture.

“Rebecca,” he said, his face crinkled in concern, “God knows—if there is a God—I would trust you with this experiment of this nature more—perhaps more than myself. You have experience and intellectual gifts suited to such an attempt that I will never have: I admit it freely.”

Hearing myself praised by this man of genius somehow made me feel more hollow and stupid than usual.

“As I said before, we cannot envision the future in the way we can the past, and so cannot travel to it. This would also hold true of the future of any past time to which one travels, since it would of course differ from this current present—unless one made every action and every choice precisely the same as they were the first time.”

Something in the words or the way he said them made me think, uncomfortably, that he knew more about my personal history than I had supposed, or had permitted myself to fancy.

“Which would be difficult if not impossible,” Oliver went on, “since no memory is completely perfect and since acting with foreknowledge of what may happen can bring about quite different results. So to travel back and alter past time would necessarily mean reliving all the intervening time between the point at which the first change occurs and now; I mean the now that will be.”

He smiled a little at his own joke. I had the feeling that he was trying to warn me, but all I could think of was that it was a chance.

 

*          *          *

 

I walked to the graveyard alone. Oliver had said it would be best to go alone, since only one person at a time could travel by memory anyway, and another’s presence would only be a distraction. And he had said I should get as near the object past affection and present revulsion as possible. Mercifully, he had been careful to give no hint as to what he thought that object might be. So I knelt on Jane’s grave, shoulders hunched under my hood. It was drizzling, and the tree beneath which her grave was placed dripped, heavy, swollen drops that fell with a tangible splat on the top of my head and shoulders. I had not been to the graveyard in years; I had avoided the whole area, even though the act of avoidance itself served to etch the painful memories more deeply in my mind. Well, memory would serve its purpose now. I bent my head, shutting out all exterior senses: the sound of the rain, the damp chill and smell of wet last-autumn’s leaves, the growl of passing traffic and the faint, bitter taste in my mouth (can thought literally taste sweet or bitter? Mine does, or did…), focusing only on the internal ones, bringing to mind that day in all its unbearably vividity….

 

*          *          *

 

            It was the seventeenth of April, a Monday. It was sunny: the first real day of sun we had had that spring, watery and faintly warm on my cheek as I walked past the graveyard on my way home from a class in Aristotelian logic. I distinctly remember thinking that perhaps the light and warmth would help Jane as I had not been able to, thinking what a miracle that would be, and quickly dismissing the thought from my mind before hope could grow too strong. I no longer trusted the pretty spirit very much; it had disappointed me too often in recent months.

            The apartment I shared with my sister was two or three blocks on past the graveyard, just out of sight of the spire of the little community church to which it belonged. It was unnecessary—a bother, really—to walk all the way home after my morning class when I would have to return to the university a few hours later for a meeting with one of my professors; I could have studied much more effectively there; but I did not like to leave Jane alone for so long. A premonition, perhaps? All I know is that the thought was as vivid again as it had been all those years ago, somehow existing by itself alongside my newer knowledge of what was to come—or, if I could help it, would not come.

I caught my breath for a moment as I felt my hand reach in my pocket for the key to the apartment building, and my feet lift one by one to climb its concrete steps, realizing that Oliver’s mad genius had been proved right: past was living again, and I was living in it. Immediately thereafter followed a sudden fear that I might fail to reproduce some action perfectly as I remembered it, for I had no intention of changing anything but the one thing which I had come to change, which ought, needed, to be changed. But it was not hard; after all, I was remembering myself as a healthy, happy, nineteen-year-old student, and so did what she would do. It occurred to me that I probably would continue to do as she would do—as she did do—unless I specifically willed otherwise: I, the self remembering, who floated now somewhere between living past and living present, outside the bounds of the real but by no means detached from it, or lacking power over it. As my past self unlocked the apartment door, this other self took a moment to revel in the godlike power of the human mind, the recreative potential it had now unleashed. If anyone could travel back, knowing what ill had been wrought and with the power to change, what wrongs since the world began might now be undone…?

The apartment was unlit, the blinds drawn, the room chill and empty-feeling as the day outside had been light and warm. The furniture, the clock ticking on the wall, the bare spot in front of the door where the carpet had worn away, were just as I had known them so long ago. Nineteen-year-old Rebecca stepped across the room, switched on the lamp, and instantly winced. Clothes, books, and a half-finished research project lay in guilty mounds on floor and couch and coffee table, the remains of at least two meals on the dining table, and from what I could see of the kitchen, similar piles of cooking- and cleaning-related untidiness there. I had not cleaned in several days. There had been too much to do to prepare for my classes, I thought by way of excuse—there was still too much—Jane might have tidied, but of course Jane would not, I reminded myself, batting the thought away before I could become aware of the resentment it harbored. With a sigh, I bent to drop my satchel on the floor, opened the blinds—the sunlight would do at least one of us good—and began straightening the room. Studies would wait; meanwhile I took a brief pleasure in the physical action of cleaning. More than half the mess was Jane’s. My books and papers lay in at least relatively neat piles, out of the way of our traffic, but her clothes and mugs and whatnot had been dropped anywhere, carelessly.

“You shouldn’t bother,” said Jane’s voice, and I looked up. She had come silently into the room while my back was turned, my pretty, tidy, much-adored older sister. Her hair was dirty and unbrushed, her clothes had evidently been slept in, and there were purple shadows under her eyes.

“It needs to be cleaned,” I said.

She crossed the room, drew the blinds again, and slumped down on the couch. “That’s a change.”

I made no answer, knowing too well the route such conversations were wont to take.

“You should have stayed at the school.”

“I didn’t want you to be here alone all day,” I said without thinking.

“Why? Because I’m sick and can’t take care of myself? Because I’m crazy and might murder somebody while you’re gone?”

“Don’t talk like that, Jane,” said nineteen-year-old Rebecca, struggling to keep her voice calm as she replaced a stack of Jane’s detective stories on the bookshelf.

“Why not? Isn’t it true? Isn’t that what you thought?” Her voice was jeering now, provoking. She wanted a reason to rage at me.

“No, that’s not what I thought. I didn’t like to think of you sitting here in the dark by yourself. I wanted to make sure you got some light and food and human conversation today.”

I reached for the blind-string again and began slowly to raise them.

“Because I can’t do those things for myself,” said Jane bitterly.

“You haven’t been,” I said.

“I don’t need you to do them for me.”

There was a lull again. I felt a slow rage boiling inside me, familiar because I had felt it before, twenty years ago, which was also now. I struggled to quench it, as I had struggled twenty years ago, as nineteen-year-old Rebecca had struggled for the last six months and more, and as she still struggled. I loved Jane. I loved Jane. She was my sister. I tried to call to mind the image of her a year ago, or two or three, but the memory of the friendship we had shared then burned like a black hole, swallowing its own tears and adding to the bitterness. For the first time I wished that I had chosen to go further back in time than this day, so that I might see those times again, but another part of me still insisted, as it had insisted all along, that I could bring them back, and better than before.

“Come to the school with me this afternoon,” I said finally, setting down a now-folded afghan. Jane unfolded it and wrapped it around her feet, curled up on the couch. “We can get dinner at the cafe and get Jeeves from the library to watch on my laptop when we get back.”

“Looking like this?” said Jane with a laugh. “No, thanks.”

“You can change and shower first. I can be a few minutes late for my appointment. Dr. Knott won’t notice.”

Jane got up, letting the afghan slide to the floor.

“Stop pretending you care,” she said, and turned to go into the kitchen.

Something snapped in me, and I sprang across the room, seized her by the shoulder, and spun her round to face me.

“How can you say that?” I hissed, anger boiling and seething over at last. “How can you say that? When have I ever stopped trying? You’ve stopped—you’ve given up—you don’t care if you have a sister any more, maybe. You used to and you don’t any more,” I choked for a moment and went on, “you’ve changed, it’s like I don’t know you. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.”

“Don’t pretend,” said Jane dully. “If I dropped out of existence right now, or died, it would be better for you. And Mum. And Dad. Everyone who knows me.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I said, my voice shaking in real rage, but also in fear. “You’re talking like a crazy person.”

Jane’s head jerked up. The dullness in her eyes vanished, replaced with something I did not recognize, and she lunged at me. The action was so unexpected, so unprecedented—never, even when we were children, had she ever laid a finger on me in violence—that I was shocked. My arm flew out in instinctive self-defense, and without my consciously intending it, struck her full in the face. She froze, staring at me for a shocked instant, and then turned and ran away to her room without a word. I would wonder for years afterward whether my blow had really been unintentional, or some of my long restrained anger at the stranger my sister had become had in that moment broken through….

But no. That was my memory of the event, the thing I had come here to change. With a tremendous effort I, the older self who knew what was to come, chose to remain still and turn my cheek.   Jane’s hand, not mine, struck her sister’s face forcefully enough to leave a bruise. Relief flooded through me as I watched her turn and vanish into her room. I picked up my wallet and key and left the apartment for my appointment with Dr. Knott, each breath a sigh of gratitude. All would be well now. Jane would come back. She would. She must.

I was so distracted during my meeting that I hardly knew what I or my professor said, but I do recall at one point consciously altering something. Dr. Knott asked me, in an aside from our discussion of Aristotelian logic, what I thought the most powerful force was in the world.

“Human memory,” said my remembered self, distracted by the memory of the incident that had just passed.

“Human will,” said my remembering self, full of the godlike power of averted catastrophe.

I bought chow mein and sweet-and-sour pork dyed that impossible, artificial red, at a little Chinese take-out place on the way home from the school. I climbed the steps lightly, still feeling like a god, fumbling for my key; opened the green-painted front door; opened the door to our apartment.

Jane was hanging from something tied to a hook in the cracked, water-stained ceiling. Her body was limp and her face was black.

 

            My nineteen-year-old self rose from her knees where she had fallen on the carpet, shaking, got up on the stool that had been kicked from beneath Jane’s feet, and fumbled with the leather belt to undo it. The corpse fell unbreathing to the floor. I did not know how to do CPR, but I bent to feel for a pulse and to breathe into her lungs, twice. Her face was cold. Tears now streaking my face, I reached for the phone. I should have seen this coming.

I should have seen this coming. I should have known that undoing one small sin would not be enough. I had failed Jane in some fundamental way, else she would never have become a stranger to me. I must go back again and fix it. I must go back. I must go back. I knew already from my memory that Jane was dead, that the paramedics came too late, that horror that would follow on their pronouncement would never be undone. I must go back quickly, before they came again. I knelt by Jane—no, it was not Jane any longer, it did not even look like her, those horrible black, swollen features—I knelt by the corpse, and bent my head, straining to remember….

*          *          *

 

This is the point at which you, the Reader, lose all respect for your narrator. You may continue to read her—nay, most likely will, because of the human taste for the dark and sordid if for no other reason. Misery loves company. Hence my recording of this tale.

To my dismay, I found that I could go no further back in time than the morning of the day Jane died. The events of that day had overshadowed earlier memories too much for me to recreate them. I forget how many times I returned to the sidewalk by the graveyard, reconstructed the events of the day in an attempt to see that Jane’s life was not ended. Once I called my mother. She would not believe me. My father, who had not seen Jane in several months before her suicide and did not know how she had changed, merely laughed. The emergency line I tried to call advised me to take her to a hospital, but how could I? I dared not plead with her not to take her life for fear I should then have caused her to, indirectly, by suggesting the idea. I tried staying with her constantly, ignoring her tart remarks and her pleas to be left alone, but always eventually I would have to go to the bathroom or fetch a drink, and when I returned she would be swinging from the ceiling. Or slitting her wrists. I watched her kill herself four different ways. Always the paramedics were too late. Always I was left kneeling by her limp body, racking my brain for a way to change it all so that I would not be at fault. But there was none. Finally I had to admit it. There would always be pain, there would always be guilt and regret. I could only choose to go on despite it, or not.

 

*          *          *

 

I moved to a different apartment, finished my B. A., earned my Masters and eventually my Ph.D.   The school at which I had studied had a sort of satellite campus in a different part of town and, offered a teaching position there, I accepted gladly, grateful to be out of sight of the things that reminded me of Jane while still in easy distance of both my divorced parents. Dr. Oliver Knott was teaching on the satellite campus now, and we became reacquainted, as fellow professionals this time rather than as teacher and student. I was aware—perhaps because I had missed it before—that he cultivated my friendship on purpose, sensing but choosing to ignore the barriers I put up against the most of the world; for besides himself I had few friends. Perhaps it was the inevitable effect of so great a loss at a young age; perhaps the madness which had stolen my sister from me took a longer, slower form in the branching neurons of my own brain.

Twenty years passed, slowly.

 

*          *          *

 

I sat in the front room of my apartment, staring out the window and sipping from a mug of hot coffee. I drank coffee now, partly for enjoyment’s sake and partly because the mild stimulant acted as a sort of tonic, easing the cloud of gloom that lay habitually over me, making the day bearable. Perhaps that was why Jane used to drink it too.

A single, heavy knock came at the door, and I started, realizing that this was the day. I had grown so used to my relived life by now that I had almost forgotten. A sudden cold fear passed over me that perhaps my choice to go back in time, like Jane’s death, was an irreversible event for me, and a strangling horror at the thought that I might have to relive the whole episode again, and again and again, for eternity. But superseding this came a fierce and fragile determination to see that that did not happen, and more, to beg Oliver never to tell anyone about his discovery, never to tempt anyone else with that terrible choice. I got up and opened the door, still feeling strangled, but struggling to find my voice. Oliver said something which I did not hear, but only nodded a vague assent, as I automatically filled the kettle, set it to boil, and took my place at the table across from him.

“So about time travel,” he began, leaning forward across the table.

This was the moment.

“I’ve been reading a very interesting fictional piece on the subject,” he said. “A physical impossibility, of course, but nevertheless a most fascinating topic to ponder.”

I blinked.

“Don’t you believe in it?”

Oliver looked at me curiously.

“No, of course not. A physical impossibility, as I said—and those are by no means as common as most people seem to think.”

“The power of the mind,” I fumbled, “The power of human emotion. Human memory as the strongest physical force in the universe. Don’t you believe that?”

“Human memory?” repeated Oliver. “An interesting thought, but problematic. Decidedly problematic. I should rather posit the human will as the strongest force in the universe. One may contest that the will is not physical, but still…”

The kettle whistled. I got up to pour us both tea.

Breann Landry is a poetess, a student of dead languages, and an amateur actress. She lives in an old, old apartment in a small, small town on Vancouver Island, the most beautiful place in the world, and publishes all her stories and poetry on a personal blog, Gaily in the Dark, which her friends read and almost no one else.

“Listen” and “For Troy Davis” from Love Poems by Charles Bane

September 9, 2014 /

Listen

Listen: when I was a child, I explored the jungle of ferns
near my house on the island where the hibiscus close like
shutters at night. I found sometimes living things and
scooping them up, felt them beating in my hands. I blew
between my fingers and thought they would remember the
signature of my soul when they were free. That is how I
love you.

 

For Troy Davis

You were not a monster,
but gold robed and smiling,
shyly looked directly at a
camera lens and held a thumb
up as Emmet Till might have
done if he had earned a degree;
I wish I could have set you
free; there are flocks of you
migrating in the long and
practiced curves of boys who know
the difference between a cage
and the beat of air beneath
uncreased wings.

Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of The Chapbook ( Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems ( Kelsay Books, 2014). His work was described by the Huffington Post as “not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them.” A writing contributor for The Gutenberg Project, he is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida.

The Furious Gazelle is continuing to serialize Charles Bane’s new book of poetry, Love Poems. You can find more of his poetry here.

The Hands of Our Brothers by Paul Lewis

September 5, 2014 /

The Hands of Our Brothers is a short play by Paul Lewis. Click here to read.

Paul Lewis is a Seattle-based playwright, composer and lyricist whose staged work includes musicals, a children’s opera, and full-length plays. His ten-minute plays have been staged across the country, and include Guess What? which won the Audience Choice Award at FUSION Theatre’s short works festival, “The Seven” in 2012; Music Box; Timmy Perlmutter Goes Flying; and Oblivion, which won the Audience Favorite Award at the 2013 Driftwood Players Theater Festival of Shorts, and which is to be published in “The Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2014” (Smith & Kraus). Paul’s musical The Hours of Life premieres in Seattle in December.

“Forever Now and All I Might Have” and “In Paris” from “Love Poems” by Charles Bane, Jr

September 2, 2014 /

The Furious Gazelle is continuing to serialize poems from Charles Bane, Jr.’s book Love Poems. Last week’s poem can be found here.

Forever Now And All I Might Have

Forever now and all I might have   been. I have never loved like 
this. Never everything. Never from  town to town, or where I lay asleep;  
or my hand straight and deer watching  
as they take, hollowed before dark  
and venturing to where day breaks.

Continue reading

I Miss Her All Wrong by Alyssa Cooper

August 29, 2014 /

I miss her all wrong

My dad called me today, and the first thing he said was, “You haven’t been returning my calls,” as if I didn’t already know that. After, he asked me to come home. He wants me to take a semester off. He wants to look after me. And I told him that I want to be alone, which isn’t true, and I lit a cigarette even though I don’t smoke, and I yanked viciously at the hair behind my ear, wincing. I’m turning into her without meaning to. My body has absorbed her tendencies, so that I’ll never be alone again.
“I know what you’re going through, son,” he told me. “I know that you’re probably too young to remember what it was like when your mother left, but I know. I can understand what you’re going through.”
I hung up the phone slowly, very gently, wondering how long it would take him to realize that I wasn’t on the other end. She used to do this to me sometimes, and when I called her back, hurt and confused, she’d laugh at me. I tried to laugh like she would, but it sounded like a cough. My mother is living with her new family in Detroit, her handsome husband and her pretty little daughters. Sometimes, she still sends me colourful postcards.
Last night I fell asleep clutching her photo album and I woke up with bruises where it touched my chest.

*

Today, it has been three weeks since the funeral. Last night I dreamt of her, just like I always do. When I woke up, she was my first thought, the way she is every other morning. I closed my eyes and after a moment of trying, I conjured a perfect painting of her face in my mind, even her crooked teeth and scarred chin. I am faithful in my recreation. I thought that these things would fade by now, but they haven’t. I’m losing faith that they ever will. There are some things that we’re not meant to forget, and that girl, she was one of them.
With every day that passes, I gather more regrets. I never thought that I’d have any, I promised myself that I wouldn’t, but time teaches me to be more critical. She used to ask me to skip lecture with her on Friday afternoons, but I never would. She’d ask me to pick her up at night, and if it was after midnight, I wouldn’t bother. I’d tell her to wait till morning. She’d send me text messages of song lyrics and poem stanzas, and, unsure of the appropriate response, I never replied. Not until she said something else. I didn’t kiss her in public enough. I should never have twisted my hand out of hers for something as trivial as switching the song on my iPod. I should have stayed awake to watch her sleep. I should have filled her room with roses. Should have picked her up and spun her as we kissed.
I know that I couldn’t have stopped what happened. She was slipping over the edge long before I met her. The first time she stripped away her clothes in front of me, she was shaking. She tried to hide the scars that criss crossed her tiny body. The ones on her chest were risen and white. She had carved the initials of everyone who had ever hurt her across her belly. Including my own. The word ALONE stretched over her hip, distended by the ridge of her bone. FUCK UP flared purple and swollen across one thigh; FAILURE marked the other. A neat lace work of thin, pale lines decorated her left arm from wrist to elbow. I was horrified, and she knew, and she begged me to tell her that she was beautiful. But I couldn’t find the words. I’d found them so many times before, but in that moment, when she needed them most, I was frozen. She was already hovering, teetering, barely managing to balance. I could never have been enough to hold her.
Now that she’s gone, I find that I have to count the reasons to get out of bed in the morning. I lie in the patch of sun that she had once claimed her own, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember that there are good things in my life. Sometimes, it doesn’t come, and I turn off my alarm clock and I go back to sleep. I pull the blankets over my head so that I don’t have to stare at the room that she existed in, once. I press my face into the pillow until I cant breathe, until the pressure builds behind my eyes and I’m dizzy enough to pretend that I can still smell her conditioner in the sheets. There are so few things good things these days. Warm weather. Cheap food. Sympathetic professors.
She took everything with her. The smell of her hair. The glow of her skin. Her smile. Her slender, grasping arms. The skip in her walk. Her quiet voice. The way she kissed me. The soft, sweet sleep-sounds that she made. Every little thing. The pieces that are left behind seem so trivial, now, even the ones that were once so glaringly important. I don’t care about going to class. I don’t care about getting to work on time. I don’t care about eating, or cutting my hair. So I just go back to bed. I navigate my dreams and I pretend that the world isn’t passing by without us. I make believe that it’s standing still for her. Waiting for her like I am.
It has to stop soon, though. I know that. I’m getting too skinny and my homework is piling up. I‘m running out of sick days, and I can‘t afford to get fired. My father is worried that I‘m killing myself. It’s only appropriate to be sad for so long. After a while, it just makes people uncomfortable. After a while, they’re just waiting for you to be normal again. Like they are. One thing I learned when I lost her is that the world won’t end just because you ask it to.
To be honest, I think things would be easier if it did.

*

When I think about the night that we met, I can’t help but think that she deserved better. She deserved something romantic, a beautiful moment to hold onto. She deserved a love story, and I didn’t give it to her. I thought it was something that we’d be able to laugh about in twenty years, but she won’t be here in twenty years, and it’s not something that I can laugh at alone. Not now. I wish I’d given her more than I did. Maybe if I could have changed things, just that one night, it would have been enough to make her happy.
We met in my first week of university. She had already been there a year, and had moved on from the dorms, living alone in a small apartment downtown. But I didn’t know that yet. All I knew was that there was a party down the hall with open doors. I hadn’t been invited, but it seemed as if no one had, as if the entire dorm floor was flooding towards the room and its pounding music pulse. So I slipped in with them, basking in what I saw as my first true moment of freedom. A cold bottle was pressed into my hand as a guy I’d never met grabbed my shoulder and laughed so hard that I missed his name. I know it now; that guy was Kyle Watts, and without him, I might have never had her. He still lives down the hall. I could go and knock on his door, and ask him if she was better or worse before she met me. I could ask him if he had ever longed for her, if he had asked her there that night because he wanted her. Did I steal her away? I could tell him everything that happened because of that night. I could tell him about the gift he gave me. But he wouldn’t understand. He would give me that patient, pitying look.
This is my burden.
I went to that party because I had no friends and I wanted some. I went because they were playing the Beatles, and I could hear it even with my door closed. I stayed because the beer was free, and because it seemed like every person I met was incredibly happy to see me. The room was small, the people crammed inside, laughing and sweating and pressed together. More and more kept coming, until it seemed like all of the breathable air was gone, and my view got blurry and damp. Everyone was happy and smiling and dancing, except for her.
She was perched on one of the narrow beds, the only one in the room who was sitting. Her legs were crossed under her, hidden beneath a long cotton skirt. One bruised knee escaped the shroud, the purple patch of skin looking sick and diseased in the dull yellow lights. Her hands rested in her lap, wrapped loosely around an un-opened beer bottle. The glass was sweating at her touch, fat glistening beads of moisture that dampened her legs, so that her achingly thin skirt turned transparent and clung to her thigh.
It took me a while to notice her, sitting alone, leaning against the wall and smiling mutely at the people who stood near her. I watched as a small group turned towards her, encircling the bed as they tried to draw her into conversation. I watched her through the haze of my sixth beer, they way that she smiled and nodded, but never parted her lips. I watched them give up on her and move away, and the way that her heartbreak shone as bright as headlights through her eyes. A part of me I’d never met before swore vehemently that I’d never do that to her. She was already smiling up at another group of people, one that hadn’t noticed her yet. Her face had turned away from me.
I had an urge to cross the room. I wanted to sit beside her, offer to open her beer, and tell her how beautiful the curl of her hair was. Instead, I gulped down the rest of my drink and I waited to be offered another.
I stood alone and watched her as she watched everyone else. I barely noticed the subtle shift in her features that led from smile to frown. She started pleating a small fold of her skirt in her fingers, her beer still unopened, now resting on the pillow beside her thigh. A line appeared between her eyebrows as her frown deepened. Her eyes started to gleam as her shivering lips pressed into a tight line.
I should have left my beer on the desk as I pushed past a few clumsy dancers to get to her. Instead, when I dropped down beside her, I forgot the bottle in my hand. The neck tilted down, and a bubbling river poured into her lap. I stared at the growing puddle, unable to move; unable to speak. Finally, I lifted my gaze to her enraged face.
Her mouth opened and closed, and pressed tight again. She looked at me with vicious eyes. “Thank you for that,” she hissed between her teeth. The words hit me like a punch in the gut. I reached for her immediately, grabbing clumsily for her skirt, lifting it up off of her legs as she slapped my arms and squealed, begging me to stop.
“I’m sorry,” I said earnestly, clutching to the fabric, trying to ring out the beet as she twisted away from me, pressing into the wall and shoving my shoulders.
Her strength was surprising.
I stared mutely from the far side of the bed, searching for words that wouldn’t come. I said again, “I’m sorry.”
She stared at me for a tense moment as the party moved on around us. And then she sighed, dropping her eyes as she fanned her skirt with both hands. “It’s okay,” she said gently, “You didn’t mean to.”
I nodded gratefully, and for the third time, I told her, “I’m sorry.”
She glanced up at me, and she smiled. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not that great of a skirt anyways.”
I swallowed thickly as I sat back down. She didn’t say anything. She stared at me, the smile gone, her amber irises swimming with threads of pale yellow. There was far too much power in her gaze for a nineteen year old girl. It was like a weight on my chest. I said the only thing I could think of.
“I’m Shawn Hailman.”
She said nothing, with those eyes burrowing into me. A bead of sweat started a slow crawl down the back of my neck, and I was sure that she knew about it. There were too many people in that room, and she was stealing my air.
I leaned closer to hear, and she leaned in to meet me. “I feel sick,” I said, louder than I needed to.
She frowned, pulling back in distaste. “Are you going to throw up?”
My stomach roiled at the thought. “I don’t know.”
She sighed heavily. “Do you want me to take you to the bathroom?”
My pride shrivelled and died under her pity. But I nodded. “Please.”
Sighing again, she crawled to the edge of the bed and then stretched out her scrawny legs to stand. “Come on,” she said, reaching out her hand.
My heart fluttered as my fingers found hers; how cliche. She pulled me to my feet and I let her lead me through the throng and out into the cool, quiet air of the hallway. There, as the door closed behind me, she let go of my hand.
“Come on,” she said again, and she floated away. I followed on my heavy, graceless feet.
When we reached the bathroom door, she held it open for me, and for some reason I was scandalized when she followed me in.
“What are you doing?”
She stared at me incredulously. “Really? Nobody cares. Would you rather sit in here alone?”
Chagrined, I shook my head and trudged into the nearest stall like a beaten dog. I heard the sink start, and the slap of wet fabric as she started to wash away the stains I had left. I dropped with a thud to the floor beside the toilet, and I leaned my head back against the wall. A moment later she joined me, locking the stall door behind her before she sat against the opposite wall. She asked gently, “Are you okay?”
Embarrassed, I nodded.
“Good. Shawn, right?”
Again, I nodded.
She smiled at me. She was so beautiful. “I’m Anna,” she said, and I smiled back.
We never did anything right.

*

She had nightmares. She never did tell me what they were about, or why they made her sweat and gasp the way that she did, but some nights, I’d fall asleep with my arms around her, her tiny frame moulding to my chest, and hours later, she’d start to scream so loud that she choked on them, or she’d start to fight against me, biting and clawing, or she’d start to shake so badly that the reverberations through her body would wake me up. I’d hold her, and say things like “it’s just a dream,” and “I’m here” and she never said anything. She always let me know that it wasn’t good enough.
Some nights she would set the alarm on her cell phone, so that it would wake her up just a few hours after she fell asleep, before the dreams could take such a solid hold over her. She always switched off the alarm before it could wake me, hiding the screen with her palm so that the light wouldn’t touch my face.
Somehow, she managed to get out of bed every night without waking me up. She’d stumble around in the dark, plugging in the kettle and scooping instant coffee into clean mugs as she waited for it to bowl. She would sit at my desk and doodle on the top with permanent markers. They’re still there now, a reminder that will last until some new soul claims this room at the end of the semester, or until a well meaning janitor scrubs them away with bleach.
A moment later, she would pour the hot water, and the smell that filled the room would wake me in a way that sound never could.
We’d sit up together until sunrise. She’d drag the desk chair across the room, beside the open window, blowing cigarette smoke into the night. Sometimes, once the sun had finished its bloody climb into the sky, we’d wrap each other in comforters and curl up together on the floor as I coaxed her back to sleep for a few more hours. Other days, we’d crawl back to bed with the taste of morning still on our tongues, and we’d find oblivion together in the sheets.
Now, for some reason, it’s those nights that I miss the most. My body doesn’t understand. It yearns for sleepless nights and solemn gifts of caffeine.
Sometimes I wake in the dark and I swear I can smell the coffee. I’ll stretch out my arms and throw my feet onto the floor. I’ll cross the room, where my kettle rests on the tabletops. I’ll look around for a few minutes, wondering where she is. I turn on my heel, glance around the room, feel the first tendrils of panic–
And then I remember that she’s dead.

*

She emailed me naked pictures of herself once. She called and woke me in the middle of the night, using a smokey voice she had learned from old movie stars. “Wake up,” she crooned, and I imagined dark red lipstick and those hard, stiff flapper curls. “Turn on your computer.”
“And then what?” I asked her, the anticipation building, my blood rushing. I ached for her.
“Check your email,” she whispered, her words kissing the receiver. And then she hung up on me. I tangled my legs and almost split open my skull in my mad rush to the desk and the secrets my computer suddenly held.
The only email waiting for me was from her. No subject, no message, just thirteen attachments; what a prophetic fucking number. I should have known.
The photos were clumsy. She took them in her living room, with no room mates to interrupt her as she fought with her digital camera. She was wearing too much make up, just like I thought she would, her lips glistening like apple skin and her eye lashes clotted with mascara. She was trying too hard to pose, and she had the lyrics to my favourite song written all over her skin. My name marched across her chest, in marker this time. My hands moved towards my waist, kept creeping lower, until I groaned as if she was with me.
After the funeral, when my well-meaning friends had finally retreated, I pulled my laptop onto my knees, and I clicked open the folder that I had hidden so carefully. I went through them slowly, staring at every detail until my face was smothered with salt and I pawed at the shape of her on the screen. And then, I deleted them, one at a time, and I made sure that I could never get them back.
I can still see them painted on the inside of my eyes; frescos that are plastered into my very anatomy. The way that the smudged ink melted into her skin, sliding over her bones. My name sinking into her heart, the ink poisoning her in a way neither one of us could see. It makes me crazy.
I don’t know what I’d do if I still had them. I think of her half closed eyes, the high colour in her cheeks; the pucker of her lips and the tangle of her hair. It makes me ache. It cuts me up from the inside out – I wish I had them, but I wouldn’t survive seeing them. My sanity saved me before it deserted for good.
She had a constant kind of panic that hid inside her eyes. Her scars left her skin thick and uneven, but so soft in my hands. If I could find a marker, I’d scribble the story of us all over my body. Bright red. I want to carve her memories into me. I think I’d like that; her ghost hovering in the corner, watching me use a razor blade so clumsily, when she had become so adept with hers. She would smile at me. She would guide my hands. Forgive my mistakes.
And this is how I remember her. I miss her all wrong.

*

Each morning, she crawled to the foot of the bed, and she would stretch her arms over her head as I watched the pull and twist of the tight muscles in her shoulders. She would scrub at her hair with both hands, igniting it to a frizzy cloud around her head before she flattened it back down. Her skin glowed in the semi-darkness of morning. When she stood, her legs always shaky for the first steps, I could spot the secrets hiding in the damp bend of her knees.
Wondering with aimless steps, she’d twist her hair up off of her shoulders. The sun kissed the golden down that grew on the back of her neck as she tied her tangles into a graceless knot. She kept bobby pins wedged into the frame of my mirror, and she’d pull two down to hold back her bangs, bearing her face and her arching forehead. Only then would she turn back to me, her eyes still half closed as she smiled. Usually she came back to bed. We’d lean against the headboard and crawl all over each other as we waited for the day to start. She’d scream with laughter and yank handfuls of my hair as I chewed on her skin.
Sometimes, though, mornings were hard for her. Sometimes the thought of stepping outside my door and back into the world was enough to reduce her to tears.
A few weeks before she died, she turned to me in the morning and she wasn’t smiling. She wrapped her arms around her waist like an embarrassed child, and her face collapsed under the weight of her own sadness. She tried to say something; I saw her lips move, but the words wouldn’t come. And I was frozen. I screamed at myself to go to her, I berated myself violently, wishing I could break my own bones. But I still didn’t move. Her tears started to flow as I watched, and even when she sobbed, I simply sat and stared. It wasn’t until she dropped to her knees and let her head hit the floor that I finally got my feet under me. And even then, I moved with sluggish steps. It seemed to take an eternity to get to her, as if her misery slowed time to a crawl. Finally, though, I reached her. She was there, at my feet. Hold her, my mind told me. Wrap her up in your body. Show her.
But I had never been in love before. I was so afraid. So I laid my hand awkwardly on her shoulder, and I rubbed her back as I leaned my head against hers.
“Come on,” I said gently, trying to pull her to her feet. “You need to go back to bed.”
She looked at me with wet, wild eyes, gasping for air behind the tangled cage of her hair. “I’m sorry baby,” she cried out, reaching for me with both hands. She pulled my face close to hers, clutching handfuls of fabric and flesh. “I’m sorry. I wish I was stronger. I’m so fucking weak.” She collapsed against me, a shaking ball of muscle and tendon.
I sighed. Sadness is tiring. I knew this, before I took hers on.
“What do you mean baby?”
“I wish I was strong enough to end it,” she whispered, burying her face in my chest, hiding her eyes from mine. “I can’t even fucking kill myself right.”
To protect myself from those words, I set up cold, hard distance. I could hear the callousness in my own flat voice as I locked my hand around her wrist and stood, pulling her with me even as she cried out in surprise.
“Come on,” I told her, “Let’s go back to bed.”
And she went with me. We took a funeral march back to my bed, and I tucked her in like a child before I crawled under the sheets beside her. I closed my eyes, and wished sound could be blocked as easily as sight as she cried to herself beside me.
She was reaching for me, and I had swatted away her hand. It was just so hard for me to accept the truth. I couldn’t believe that she was so miserable, that I wasn’t enough to make her happy.
And so I pretended that she was fine, every day, until the very last.

*

I wanted to give her everything.
From the first moment I saw her, I decided that she deserved the world, but I didn’t know how to give it to her. I tried so hard, but she still needed more. There was never enough to keep her happy, to satiate the beast that lurked in the back of her mind. She never really trusted me. She was never really happy; I couldn’t give her that.
Even when it seemed okay, even when she spent her days laughing and smiling and turning her shining eyes on me, she still needed more. She still glanced over her shoulder like a caged animal. Her lips still bowed down when she thought I wasn’t looking.
She was a constant struggle, and I was willing to suffer through it, but the time came when I ran out of ways to fight
“Make it better,” she said, and I tried, I tried. But she said, “No. Make it better.”
So I did the only thing that I could.

*

There are still nights when I miss her so much that it’s hard to bear, when I can feel her absence as a weight on my chest. So that I can’t breathe, so that my heart struggles to beat. I wake up alone in the dark and I can see her everywhere. I can feel the shape of her beside me, the warmth of her breath at the back of my neck, her tiny hands on my shoulders. I can see her in the shadows at every corner, her face in the folds of the sheets. I can smell her hair and very nearly hear her voice, and it makes me so lonely that my stomach roils and my throat feels so tight that it might burst.
And on nights like those, I want something. I don’t know what; it’s like a hunger that I can never feed. A deep, gaping hole that will always be empty. I don’t know what I need. I just need. I need a stranger to take my hair in their fists and yank, pull my head back until I can’t breathe. I need someone to suck my lips and hit me harder than I can stand. I want to see the vessels burst under my skin. I need to cling to someone and bite, harder, harder, harder, until their skin splits and the blood flows hot and salty down my throat. I need to go out into the night, find a seedy bar, say something stupid. Bump a stranger. Start a fight. Tear someone apart. Step out in front of a speeding truck. Anything.
Anything.
But before I do it, I think of her. I wonder if this is how she felt. And then I start to cry.

*

Yesterday, when my alarm went off, I didn’t think to count the reasons to get out of bed. I swatted the clock off of my nightstand, kicked the blankets to the foot of the bed, and stood nearly naked in the morning air. The blood rushed out of my head, leaving me dizzy and breathless, and without waiting for my thoughts to clear I bent to step out of my boxers. I tipped forward, with no hands to catch myself, and my forehead hit the hard floor. I picked myself up slowly, I knelt, and listened to the pain sing.
I dressed quickly, and I reached into the box on my desk for a granola bar as I headed out the door. I flew down the three flights of stairs and out into the lobby, pausing in the blinding light. It was as if I hadn’t seen the sun in years. Outside, there was a chill in the air, and it made me smile as I unlocked my bike and carried it out of the courtyard. It felt good to be moving. I straddled the bike and started to peddle. Usually, I take the bus to work.
After twenty minutes of thoughtless mechanics, beautiful numbness, I missed a turn I need to take. But instead of turning around, I rode my bike out of town. I found long stretches of road that I didn’t recognize, peddling faster and faster, until my legs ached. The pavement turned to gravel, and bright, leafy trees closed in on me. I laughed at the new world I had found. I kept going until I was exhausted, until there was sweat streaming down my back and I could hardly breathe, and then I left my bike in the ditch. I wandered into the field I had stopped beside, and I fell down in the corn, staring at the sun through the stalks. After a moment, my breath to came easy, and my heart stopped pounding. I rolled onto my side and fell asleep without thinking of her. I didn’t wake up until night fall.
It’s okay to be me, sometimes. To be honest, it still feels pretty damn good. Today, there is a purple bruise blooming beautifully above my eye.

*

My dad called me today, and the first thing he said was, “You haven’t been returning my calls,” as if I didn’t already know that. I looked out the window at the setting sun, lighting up the sky with bloody fire, and I listened to him talk until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Dad?”
And he said “Yeah?”
I shook my head, just for me. “Me and her, we were terrible together. I told her that once. I said to her, ‘I know that you make me angry sometimes, and that I make you cry sometimes.’ I said, ‘We’re a total disaster and everyone knows it, but we were made for each other.’ And i think I meant it. Do you know what I mean, dad? She was like a burning building to me, and I think it was the same for her. You look at it, and you know that it’s dangerous, and people keep telling you to just go home, that there’s nothing to see, but you’ve already caught a glimpse. And its just so damn beautiful that you have to get closer.”
Sounding overwhelmed and confused, he said, “Shawn…” and I shook my head again.
I said, “I’m sorry, dad.” And then I hung up the phone.

*

She didn’t like to talk about her life. A listener, an observer, she was never a storyteller. When it was clear that she knew everything there was to know about me, I was sure that I had learned absolutely nothing about her. Every time she offered a glimpse into her past, it was like a gift. Every offhand comment about the boys who broke her heart or the girls who threw their garbage at her was precious; I filed them away like video reels. She didn’t want to give me her past, but I needed it, I craved it, like a drug. I needed to know as much about her as she knew about me. I needed to make her real.
A few days before she died, we were sitting on my bed going through old photo albums. I showed her pictures from a camping trip I had taken when I was twelve or thirteen, when our campground had been over run with squirrels. They crawled into our hands and onto our shoulders, sitting while they ate. They seemed to know to pose for the cameras. They were performers.
She had laughed at the pictures of my dad buried up to his neck at the beach; had smiled at the pictures of me covered in melted marshmallows. When I came across a picture of a red squirrel sitting on my head, a shelled peanut held in its tiny paws, I was sure that she would like it. I would have let her keep it, if she had asked. With a smile, I offered it to her, and watched as she looked closer, waiting for her to react. But the smile faded from her face very slowly. It seemed to melt, as if it had never been there at all.
“Cute,” she mumbled, tossing the photo into my lap and dropping her eyes.
I didn’t know what to say. She looked up at me, forcing a tense smile, waiting for me to keep going, but I couldn’t. I had to understand. I knew that she wanted to tell me, even if she wouldn’t admit it on her own, and so for the first time, I pried. She wanted me to. She was letting me in deeper, the only way that she knew how.
So I said, “What’s wrong?”
She dropped her eyes, shook her head minutely. “I used to catch squirrels that looked just like those when I was younger.”
I almost laughed. Almost. “How the hell did you catch squirrels?”
But she was stoic. “I found traps in my old shed.”
Some strange instinct tried to warm me, chilling my stomach, but I didn’t listen. “Did you try to keep them as pets?”
She turned her wide eyes on me, shaking her head slowly. “No.” She frowned deeply, starting to twist a thin lock of hair around her fingers. She yanked on it viciously, her head jerking to the side with the force. But finally, she said, “I killed them. I set out traps and I caught them and then I drowned them.”
Words disappeared. language became meaningless. I could see her like a silent movie, reaching into the rusted cages. Young and scrawny, the way that I had seen her in photos, her dark hair falling into her eyes. i could see her sink a thrashing ball of fur under the water in a hard plastic kiddie pool. Holding them under. I shook my head, certain that I had misheard her.
I opened my mouth with no sound. It took time to remember where I had hidden my voice. “What?”
She put her hand on my knee gently, as if she were afraid that I would push her away. She looked up at me with huge eyes, suddenly swimming with the threat of tears. “I didn’t do it because I wanted to, it wasn’t for me.” She paused, her nails digging into my skin even through my jeans. Clutching me, clinging to anything real. “You believe me, right? I didn’t do it for me. It wasn’t like that.”
All I could feel was her claws in my leg, and it made me wonder if she had felt the rodent claws tearing at her wrists, begging for air.
“They were in our backyard all the time,” she said. “They’d come right up to the windows and put their feet on the glass, and at first I thought it was fun, but there eyes, Shawn. They started looking at me with those little black eyes, and they just looked so sad. I tried everything, but nothing made it better, they always just looked at me with those eyes. I had to.”
I stared at her, at her face that was dissolving into hopeless tears. And here’s the really fucked up part. Looking at her? I understood.
“They were so sad, Shawn,” she whispered. “They were so sad, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

Alyssa Cooper is a born wordweaver, swallowing stanzas like sustenance and leaving thumbnails of poetry everywhere she goes. She was born in Belleville Ontario, where she lives with her vintage typewriters and her personal library. She is the author of two novels, Benjamin and Salvation, and a collection of poetry called Cold Breath of Life.

The Rocket Scientist by Matthew Laffrade

August 8, 2014 /

THE ROCKET SCIENTIST

Michael hated going to dinner parties, fundraisers, or any other formal gathering where he’d meet strangers. During introductions and pleasantries he’d always be asked what he does and he would have to reply with “rocket scientist”. At some point in the evening someone would always say “it’s hard but not as hard as what Michael does!” A slew of laughs would follow.
People would always ask him what he does “exactly”.
“So you’re a rocket scientist huh? So are you like an engineer?”
“No.”
“Oh, so more like a physicist then?”
“No. I am a rocket scientist.”

 

At this point he’d always feel the urge to slap people, an urge he came close to succumbing to on multiple occasions after a few scotches. What bothered him most is that people never got so detailed in their employment inquiries with others.
“What do you do?” they’d ask.

“Banker” the person would reply. That would be that. They may get more specific but it never got further than:

“What kind of banking?”
“Oh bonds and such.”

Not much by way of explanation and it really doesn’t say what the sorry sack did for a living “exactly” but it would do. It always did. This went for doctors and lawyers as well.

When Michael shared his frustrations with a friend, the friend, meaning well, told him to just say scientist when asked next. So he did. The exchange went like this:
“What do you do?”
“I’m a scientist.”
“What kind?”
“Rocket.”.
This is when the usual conversation would end. But not in Michael’s case.
“So what do you do exactly?” the person had asked.
Was it because all little boys wanted to be astronauts and that is why they’re so intrigued? Michael was at a loss. He wanted to start making up jobs. Not boring one word answer types but if people really wanted to talk maybe he could say he was a lion tamer or a mime or something.
As it stood he was driving to a fundraiser for some charity that helped provide scholarships to kids who excelled at the sciences. He white knuckled the steering wheel with both hands. Only when he removed his left one to wipe the sweat seeping from his scalp down his forehead did he realize his hands were cramped.
He turned down a side street and parked. The sun was setting and people were shuffling home from work or out for some fun. Michael wondered what they all did for a living. Did it even matter, he thought. Why should what I do be who I am? I am more than a rocket scientist, or much less for that matter. My existence is a constant rally of going to work and enjoying my job and going out and hating everyone who asks me about it. Why can’t I be content with people’s inquiries and describe to them the joys and successes that I experience in my work? Why do I hate them for their genuine curiosity? Why do I feel like some circus sideshow?
He locked his car and started walking. He came across a bar and went in. It wasn’t his usual type of place. Not low-brow or run down but certainly not the high class leather chair watering hole he was used to. It was more middle of the road. What a better place to keep to myself, he thought.
The waitress asked him for his order and not what his employment was. For some reason he expected that for some odd reason she would ask.
He spotted her; Jane was her name, from across the dining room area where he was seated. She was at the bar, drinking something he’d never seen and reading a newspaper. Michael had always been a little intimidated of women. He thought it was an inherent trait of the nerd. And to him the rocket scientist was atop the nerd pyramid, a messiah of all things lonely men cling to. He had had women before but usually other scientists or the like. He had never just approached a woman before that wasn’t somehow linked to his profession. He downed his pint in one gulp and went and sat next to Jane.
“Hi, I’m Michael,” he said extending his hand.
“Jane,” she said eyeing him in his tuxedo. She met his hand and he shook it like you would the father of a date not a woman whom you met in a bar.
“May I join you?” he asked, shocked by his own bravado.
“Sure.”
They sat in silence for a moment, taking each other in.
“May I ask why you’re wearing a tuxedo? Attending a special event tonight?” she asked.
“No, it’s the only thing that fit me.”
“I don’t get it. Was that a joke of some kind?”
“No. Thirteen years ago I lived here in this city. After building up a successful beginning in a career as a pilot I was on a two day break in Amsterdam. I went to a market on the first morning I was there and I met a man. A monk. I was eating a pear and he asked me how it tasted. It was good I told him. He asked me how the crunch was.”
“The crunch?” Jane asked.
“Yes, the crunch. He asked me about the quality of the crunch. It was fine I said and began to walk away. How about the grower, the person who picked it, the person that brought it to the market and sold it to you, do you think about them when you enjoy this fruit? Do you take a bite at a time and enjoy the different textures, the skin, the meat? He was asking me all these questions in the middle of a busy market. I would have thought him crazy if it weren’t for the attire from the monastery that he wore.
“I told him that I didn’t think much when I ate, I just ate to feed my body. He told me that I can feed my soul with food as well. He called it mindful eating. He invited me to the monastery for dinner that night.”
“And you went?”
“At first I wasn’t going to. I was tired as anything and I’d be flying out the next night and just wanted to enjoy my downtime. I thought about it though and figured I had nothing to lose. It’d be a story to tell at the least.
“So I went to the monastery that evening and I really didn’t know what to expect. It was a nice place, not too far outside the city. I didn’t even know they had monasteries there. I thought I’d be the only regular person there but there were other regular people, mostly locals and from speaking with them some of them had eaten there before.”
Michael took an extended sip of the pint handed to him by the bartender. He couldn’t believe what was coming out of his mouth. Where was this all coming from? He felt the dim light of the bar in his bones, he heard the slightest movement of a chair or the clink of a fork hitting a plate. His senses were heightened. He felt so alive. He looked at Jane who was listening intently. She was intrigued and he was so exhilarated. He was beginning to get an erection from it all. He took another sip and continued as much for the woman who hung on his words as for himself who didn’t know where this was going either.
“So I was lead to this great dining hall and we all sat at this grand hand carved table. There was about 30 or 40 monks and about a dozen lay people there. The atmosphere was relaxed and so exciting. It was so new. I was soaring to feelings I had only felt in the fleeting moments of my youth.
“After everyone was seated someone hit a small gong near the head of the table. Another monk, whom I assumed was the leader came in and addressed us. He told us that we were here as their monthly open house to teach people about mindful eating. We were to eat our meals slowly he said. To properly observe our meals we were to put our utensils down after each bite. We must consider our food, truly experience each atom of it. We were to not speak at all unless addressed by him, who was referred to as Sifu.
“A few monks came out from a side room which I assumed housed the kitchen. They placed before each of us a small bowl of a rice and vegetable mixture. It was fragrant and colourful and we were instructed to observe the mixture of food. Think of the farmer who grew the broccoli, the trader who first introduced the spice to this part of Europe, the truck driver who brought the rice to the Netherlands. We were to observe all of this for about five minutes before eating. By the time we were told to pick up our forks I was salivating.
“I took my first bite and swallowed within seconds, without truly appreciating the food. The texture, the flavours, the experience. I sat in anguish looking at my fork waiting for the instructions to take another bite. It was madness I thought and fought the temptation to shovel my food and plow through the meal.
“By the second course I began to get it. I tuned out the world and I believe I ate for the first time in my life that evening. It’s such a reflex, a filling of an urgent bodily need that I never truly enjoyed it before.”
Michael sat silent for a few moments and Jane silently sipped her drink taking it all in.
“That sounds so serene. That is a truly fantastic story. I don’t mean to get off the topic of the monastery but you had said all this was about the tuxedo?”
“Absolutely. I was so amazed by all of this. So absolutely filled with a desire to feel. My whole life up until that point was a series of moments lived to attain a means whether it was social status or career advancement or what have you. What I learned there was I could live for the moment. Live for what I am doing now. I was so preoccupied with living for the next moment I let every single second of my life pass me by. I never left.”
“You stayed at the monastery?”
“Yup. It wasn’t easy to convince the monks let me tell you. These monks were 30th, 40th generation Buddhist monks and here I was a pilot from the western world trying to convince them to let me stay. They thought I was some yuppie trying to do something to impress my yoga class or something. I went for a walk through an orchard that night with Sifu and he said he’d let me stay for one week. That one week got extended for thirteen years.”
“Why did you leave?”
“A few weeks ago I was walking with one of the monks, one whom I had grown very fond of in my time at the monastery and he asked me why I didn’t leave? Now I understand this may seem a tad abrupt and even offensive but it was direct and sincere and real and from the heart. In this city we are so consumed with people’s ulterior motives we look for underlying meanings in everything they say. If someone is direct we see it as rude. What we fail to understand is when two humans have a genuine love for one another, a genuine compassion for one another’s well-being and happiness such annotations and backhanded compliments cease to exist. If we know that every word spoken is thought through with the same intensity we take each bite of our food with then we shall truly hear the speaker and must consider their words with the same thoughtfulness and soundness for which they thought them with.
“So when he asked me that question I truly thought about it. So much so in fact that it took me over a week to answer him and in that time I didn’t utter a single word. What was I doing there? What was I accomplishing in my time and what did I hope to achieve staying there? I awoke one morning and just realized I had accomplished all I could there. I wasn’t a monk, never claimed to be, and never planned to be. I was just a man who wanted to learn to live. I learned how. It was time to go out and practice what I learned. I told Sifu and I left this morning. The clothes I had come with were too big and Sifu had this old tuxedo lying around for whatever reason even he could not remember. The others found it fitting that I would return to the western world in a tuxedo of all things like it was some sort of royal reception.”
“Well that explains the tuxedo,” Jane said with a smile.
Michael couldn’t believe what just happened. What struck him was this was the first woman he had had a connection with in years and it was built on a lie. Very unlike the fake self he had created.
“So tell me Michael what are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. I doubt I can go back to flying as I’ve been away much too long. I’ve always had an affinity for science. Maybe I’ll become some sort of scientist.”
He waited. With a trembling hand he took a sip of his pint and stared at Jane, waiting with cocoons birthing butterflies in the pit of his stomach for the dreaded follow-up question. She never asked. She didn’t seem to care.
Matthew Laffrade’s fiction and poetry has been published in various publications including The Wilderness House Literary Review, Sassafrass Literary Magazine, Verse Wisconsin, The Coe Review, Hitherto, and Requiem Magazine, amongst others. He is also the recipient of the University of Toronto’s Harold Sonny Ladoo Book Prize for his novella Past Present. He is currently at work archiving his work at www.matthewlaffrade.wordpress.com. He lives outside of Toronto, Canada.

Continue reading

« Older posts Newer posts »

Archives

Categories

Subscribe to The Furious Gazelle via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

© 2024 The Furious Gazelle

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑