ifeifeifeifeifei

A lovely
appetite
TERU
STORIES BY
ALEX ARO

2

Akbnm
Contents
o Skin
o White Walls
o The Noise porcelain
makes
o Frozen
o Pumpkin Patch
o Minus The Queen
o The Cake
o Prince
o Pieces Of Glass
o Devour
o bOXES
o Headlights
o Body Language
o Under The Tree
o War Zone
o voyeur
3


SKIN

She had beautiful milky skin and he had only kissed her for the taste, sweet and succulent,
loving and unattached. He was married and yet he still kissed her, but only for the taste. He felt no
emotions towards her, though she longed for him and he could feel her loneliness as if it seeped
through her pores and wondered how her beauty had isolated her.
They walked together on the brightly lit strip of the city night, vibrant reds, blues and
yellows reflecting in one anothers eyes and masking their faces in various colorful shades. In his
company she still felt alone; desperate to touch him in the same manner he caressed her skin.
During their nightly escapades their bodies kept close but their shoulders never touched, their hands
never met. His eyes were everywhere except on her as he scanned the crowds for a familiar face,
someone that would recognize that she was not his wife. And while he was out his wife was home
waiting as ice melted into cups of never ending soda and the same reruns blared on the TV.

These damn meetings, he lied.
Another one? his wife asked.
Just that busy time of year,
Well goddamn, when is enough going to be enough? Does that company have any
consideration for your actual life?
Honey, you know how it is.
I suppose, she sighed. But I dont have to like it. Just once Id like you to tell them no.
Who has meetings at night anyway?
Ill be home as soon as I can, he said as he blew a kiss and shut the door lightly.
He left the apartment with his briefcase, which held a change of clothes rather than business
forms, and met the woman with the beautiful skin around the corner. Out of sight from the
windows of his apartment, they began their nightly routine. First they stopped at a coffee shop
where he used the restroom to change into more comfortable clothes. When he came out she had a
hot cup of coffee ready for him and they exited back onto the street.
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He watched her take out a cigarette and place it between her lips. She made smoking look so
elegant. She pulled another cigarette out from her purse and handed it towards him but he shook his
head. No thanks, he replied, certain his wife would pick up on the odor.

He remembered the first time they met, nearly three weeks ago. He stood under an umbrella
at the bus stop as the rain poured down while she sat near him on a bench collecting water upon her
delicate skin. Youre soaked, he said. Care to join me?
She strode over to him and smiled, ducking her head under. Thanks.
He took a careful look at her face and casually his eyes moved to her neck, shoulders, breasts
and then arms. You have such beautiful skin, he remarked.
She flashed him another smile. You can touch it.
The idea warmed his insides. How about we meet up later tonight?
They met later that evening and he touched her skin. They sat on a park bench obscured by
shadowy trees. The more he rubbed her shoulders and stroked her arms the more he felt like he
would never desire any other womans skin. He smoothed it under his palms like soft butter; over
and over, hoping to absorb a part of it to take home.
And then she had asked, Do you touch her like you touch me?
His hands stopped abruptly. Touch who?
Your wife, she replied. I see the ring on your finger. Do you touch her like this? It feels
nice.
He thought for a moment. No, she doesnt have skin like yours.
She smiled and said nothing in response as his hands continued to move once again. When
he returned home and his wife reached over to hold him in bed, he imagined the womans skin
rubbing up against his.

At work he had begun comparing the textures of things on his desk to the womans skin.
Nothing was as soft and the more he touched the objects the rougher they became. The stapler was
uncomfortable in his hands and he got frustrated trying to staple papers together. He started to
notice the dryness of other co-workers hands when he shook them, the cracks and calluses. Even
the small teddy bear his wife gave him last year for Valentines Day had turned to stone.

5

They had met on the street and their relationship remained there, but one night he broke the
rules and invited her inside while his wife was at her mothers. She tiptoed across the tile in the
kitchen as he gallantly poured wine into sophisticated glasses and handed her one.
She took a big sip and then set the glass down on the table. Delicious.
I want you to do something for me, he said.
What is that?
He led her to the bedroom and she sat on the edge of the bed while he skewered the closet
for the black dress. He pulled it out and held it up to himself and then pointed to her.
Pleasewear it.
Your wifes?
He nodded. She stripped slowly, revealing more of her skin until she sported only her lacey
lingerie and then began slipping the dress on. The black dress wasnt particularly appealing against
her skin and he rushed back to the closet in disappointment. The night wore on and the moon
peeked through the windows as he dressed her in his wifes clothes. She danced and teased, shed
layers of clothing only to put more on but none of the clothes pleased him enough and she left
before his wife came home, slipping away into the dark streets. He rearranged the clothes in the
closet and dreaded his wife might feel her aura present in the room. Her skin was everywhere.

You dont look at me anymore, his wife said at dinner a few nights later. His nighttime
rendezvous with the smooth skinned woman had gone on for over a month now. He was inhaling
his food in a hurry, shoving in spoonfuls larger than his mouth allowed. His eyes darted up to look
at her while his face remained tilted towards his plate.
What do you mean? he asked with a mouthful of spaghetti. It was slightly hard and he
wondered if his wife had undercooked it or if he was imagining it.
Sure, you physically look at me but you dont look at me. I used to know you loved me by
the way you looked at me.
Well we may not be as romantic as we once were, but things change when you get
married.
They dont have to. She choked back a tear. I talked with my mother the other night you
know. I told her about us and your job, your stupid night time meetings. You know what she thinks?
She thinks youre cheating on me. Youbetternotare you?
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He said nothing, had no idea what to say. She sniffled and he could see the tears forming,
actually looked into her eyes and saw her fragility as though her bones and blood and organs were
nothing but glass. He wanted to rise up from the chair and grab her, show her he could still be a
good husband, but something kept him immobile. After a minute of thick and heavy silence she
threw her porcelain mug against the wall and fled to the bedroom to cry. Instead of chasing after her
he snuck out to meet the woman with the nicotine skin.
She too was crying and he rubbed her arms to ease his own discomfort. She pushed his
hands away.
Do you love me? she asked.
Love?
Thats what I asked!
Oh, he said and looked at the ground. What a strong word
Then how do you feel about me?
He counted the Rorschach blots her tears left on the sidewalk and reached to put his hands
on her shoulders but she slapped them. He thought of his wife crying on the bed, alone, her tears
hitting her gravel skin.
What do you see in me!? she cried out.
His stomach churned, he couldnt lie any longer. I see nothing, nothing at all. You are
simply beautiful skin.
She knelt down on the curb and cried harder. He listened to her sobs for a moment and
then, knowing he would never see her again, said II love my wife. It felt good to say and even
nicer to hear and he repeated it before walking off. I love my wife.
As he became a shadow in the distance, she lit up a cigarette. She always looked elegant
when she smoked cigarettes. Black mascara ran down her checks and she exhaled the smoke into a
cloud around her. She stood up and began walking down the neon lit streets of the city night, a
ghost amongst a sea of living strangers.




7

WHITE WALLS
Its a funny thing, how a crush can rise above your head like a tidal wave and wash you away.
How one person can render you motionless, advance the beats of your heart and enhance the desire
of touch. You hardly know this person and yet you imagine things, their smile lit up in a
photograph, how you would spend afternoons together, the secrets their mouth will expel, and the
kisses their lips have to give.
And here I am, at the town festival, walking among crowds of shadowy strangers, searching
for Becky Farber. I dont know what I was expecting to happen, what I would say when I saw her.
We were friends, or rather sometimes in school she would ask me questions about homework or if I
had a pen to borrow. I always made sure I had extra pens handy, just for her. And although Im
almost positive she is seeing a boy named Evan, something inside thinks I still have a chance if I can
only convince her I am more worthy of her affections. Silly, I know.
But summer has begun; I havent seen her since school ended nearly a month ago. I take a
second to lean against the brick wall on the eastside of the festival grounds. My body becomes a
radiant rainbow as the enchanting lights of the rides and attractions swirl about. All around me are
people laughing, couples stride hand in hand, and the sweet smell of kettle popcorn and cotton
candy fill the air. This is how we welcome the warm season.
To my right two people are talking and I cant help overhearing a male voice say, How is
he?
It is a boy and a girl, about my age but I dont recognize them. They stand under the shade
of a large oak tree and their silhouettes continue in conversation. Hes still the same as he was
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yesterday, the girl replies. They say he could wake up at any time but we cant be sure of anything
at this point. All we can do now is wait.
I check my watch, nine o clock. It is still another hour before the fireworks, an hour for me
to find Becky before they begin. My search continues, walking past the hall of mirrors and the
haunted house. There are plenty of good looking girls here, long legs in short shorts, but I do not
see Becky.
Son! Are you there son? A voice catches my attention, the attendant at the dart game. He
has three darts in his hand and shoves them towards me. I look around to try and catch a glimpse of
Becky, but again only unfamiliar faces. The attendant slams the darts down on the counter and
figuring I can spare a few minutes I slip a dollar out of my pocket and hand it to him.
Three darts, three chances to pop one of the balloons pinned to the wall. I throw the first
one and miss by a half an inch. The second goes too high. I breathe in deep, shut my eyes for a
moment of concentration and then throw the last dart. It hits and the balloon pops into a shriveled
red mess. Without a word of congratulations the attendant hands me an alarm clock as my prize and
I walk off. I stare at the clock, not paying attention to where Im going when I bump into someone.
Sorry, I say naturally. Then I look up and realize its Becky.
Thats alright, she says. She speaks in a soft tone, as though she doesnt want to draw
attention to herself.
Howuhhave you been? It is the next best thing I can think of to say.
Me? Ive been alright, trying to enjoy summer. Im probably going to visit some colleges in
the next few weeks. And you?
About the same, I reply. Just taking everything day by day you know?
She laughs. Yeahhey, the fireworks start soon. Are you excited?
A little. Isnt it always the same every year though?
I guess so. I just hate watching fireworks alone.
Alone? Youre not here with, uh, Evan? Is that his name?
She shakes her head. Not anymore. Long story, but Im over it. Would you like to watch
them with me?
Id love to. I blush slightly and she smiles. Her smile is the beach, exotic and captivating,
sensual and sunshine rays.
She takes my hand and pulls me along and I almost drop my alarm clock in the process. We
weave through the crowd towards the hill, away from the rides and attractions. We find a spot on
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the grass and sit and she leans into me. A man in a white jacket and a stethoscope in his ears sits
cross-legged next to us. I assume he is a doctor from the hospital across the street, possibly taking a
short break to enjoy the fireworks. His face is trapped in an odd trance and he is staring off at
nothing as though he sees things we cannot.
Slowly, the lights begin to fade from the festival. One by one the brilliant lights encircling the
Ferris wheel diminish to darkness. The signs advertising candy apples and hot fries and pick the
lucky duck to win a prize become shadows of the night. The echoes and screams from the
rollercoaster end. With a snap the large stadium lights that cast life over the entire festival shut off
one by one until the only light that remains is a small sliver of moon.
We watch other families gather below us at the belly of the hill, eager for the fireworks to
begin. I turn my head to look back over at the doctor and see a man and woman sit down beside
him. They all start talking and from the looks of his lips I think the doctor says something like
anytime now. The woman looks upset and shakes her head, saying Oh God
Becky strokes my cheek and brings my attention back to her. We lie on our backs and stare
into the night sky. She caresses my hand and our fingers flirt back and forth. Hers are warm, fresh
baked cookies coming out of the oven.
Which ones are your favorites? she asks.
Which what?
Fireworks, silly!
Oh, oh, I like the palm tree ones, I say. I like how silent they are going up and then
BOOM! The colors fall and sizzle like palm trees.
Those are so beautiful, she replies. I like the shape ones too. You know, the smiley faces,
the hearts. Its just sobreathtakingto see a heart in the sky.
I nod. I turn to look at the doctor once more. There is a bed there now and the woman and
man stand over it. The doctor remains in the same position. The woman taps her fingers on the
sheets and cries. The man places his hands on her shoulders for comfort but it doesnt look like it
helps. The doctor speaks into the stethoscope and says there is nothing more I can do. Im sorry.
It is nine fifty nine and the people around us holler and clap in excitement for the fireworks.
Some stay sitting while others cannot contain themselves and stand up. Becky and I stay lying down.
And then the fireworks begin and the crowd cheers. Spastic patterns of all colors spiral
across the night. Red and blue sparkles, purple and yellow palm trees, green bursts that produce
maraca sounds. After the first few fireworks explode Becky leans in closer to me and we kiss. A red
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and blue kiss, a kiss under purple and yellow palm trees and kissing to maraca sounds. The sky
above is a spectacle to behold and the field below a shadow land of awed onlookers and us, kissing.
The kiss is awakening. Over the noise of the fireworks and passion, my alarm clock begins
going off. The ringing interrupts everything, I cant concentrate on Beckys lips, cant lose myself in
the groove of the kiss. I need to turn the damn clock off.
We part lips and I open my eyes. Becky is gone and so is the festival, replaced by white walls
all around. No more grass, no more games or rides, just white. There to my right is the doctor, still
staring and seeing something I cannot. I turn to my left and my mother is crying, my father with his
hands on her shoulders. I pull down the white sheets off my body and sit up. First breath.























11


This microphone is my spoon and I feed the words to those that are hungry. They attack the
spoon like starved wolves, mouths wide open and screaming for the words, for the voice I have
given them. As if what I have to offer has godly powers. I am suddenly lost in an ocean, waters
made of arms and legs. We all drown in the words I have written, the words in which they thrive.
The men around me command the noise that controls the pack and together we tell them
what to do. And while I drown in my own creation and I am God for one moment, the others create
the noise, the beautiful noise, over their seizures. When we stop and breathe it is then they who
control the noise and they offer their approval.
And its nights like these that keep our blood pumping and our hearts beating and the sea of
arms and screams are the hospital wires keeping us alive in the bed of life. We are so thankful to
have found a place of solace, a reason to live for all of us.
Like birds we fly across cities and barren deserts to our next destination and the people there
will be hungry as well. Everyone is hungry and we are birds of prey. We arrive and they want my
words, they want my name on their skin and my hand touching theirs. Im as poor as the bum under
the bridge and its beautiful. In the backseat of the van there are puddles of crumpled receipts and I
unfold them and laugh at how broke we are.
I lay down in the backseat, no more laughing at receipts, and close my eyes. I hear a phone
ring and I answer and the voice on the other end is a sweet girl, and her words are soft violins. We
miss one another through static and I want to fly back to the city where we fell in love. She says the
weather is nice, beach weather and I feel the cold ocean sweep against my toes.
There was a time when I didnt fly and it was just us and we would go to the beach. We ran
with our kites dragging behind us in the sand and the clouds above chuckled because there was no
wind. We kissed sugary fried dough kisses and left our greasy hand prints on the arcade games.
Receipts were serious.
When the city where we fell in love falls asleep and her voice fades from the receiver, I close
my eyes again and drift off into the sea. Im on a raft past the shore where my toes were tickled and
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far off where under me lays the abyss of everything we wish we knew. I peer out from the side of
my raft and stick my head under the water and I can see for miles and miles and I breathe the water
into my lungs because I want to take a piece of this beauty with me. I reach down to pull out an
octopus and place it in my pocket. Whenever I feel out of touch with the world I know I can take it
out and experience this overwhelming feeling and everything will be alright.
Im awake and my comrades, the men of the noise, they are all sleeping. Curled over the
leather and stretched where their bodies can find room, and I silently step out into the night. The
moon is high and it is mine to keep. I smile and stroke its craters and I feel sad. This city is now
asleep and I feel sorry for those that cant be standing here with me under this ethereal radiance and
feel how I feel. Everything is fine.

*

The moon has left for now and the sun warms our faces as we fly farther away from the city
where my love stands by her window and throws her alarm clock out onto the pavement because at
that moment time doesnt matter to her. She reaches for the telephone as the clock falls and shatters
to pieces, a broken machine. Her love crosses through the morning traffic and kisses me gently on
the ear, and I place my love on my hand and blow it back.
Were in the sandy desert and there is nothing except us and the cacti. We fly with the
vultures above our heads. Sleep, wake, fly, play then sleep again. Tonight is the night we have been
waiting for, the starved are waiting in the longest line we have ever seen. The van stops and night
transforms the desert into a black and blue bruise. My words have never meant more than they have
now, everything I have carried with me from the city of my love, has seeped into walls of this
building on the great Arizona bruise.
We are loved; I am loved, in a city and a desert.

*

The night is dead and were flying again through the dark sand. My phone is ringing and I
can feel her tugging at me, at my arms. Hold on, I tell her, one second. My wingmen are all around
laughing and I want to participate. We laugh at the empty road, we laugh at silly things girls do, at
the wind, the sea and our hunger. The one driving, he looks down for a moment at the floor.
13

Someone else yells, and our wings are clipped. Shes still calling but my phone is flying faster than I
am right now.
We never take the time to think; never take the time to notice how fragile we are. And there
we sit like porcelain dolls and we shatter like the windshield. The noise that porcelain makes is no
longer important and I cry as I drown in a sea of glass and blood and the moon wishes it could
rescue me. There are blue and red lights and the sirens cancel my screams. I crawl out through the
glass mouth of the vehicle and lay down in the street and nothing matters. With slow trembles I
reach into my pocket to pet my octopus and find nothing but lint and pennies.
























14

FROZEN
Its true, she said. You can be anything you want.
Her eyes shifted, staring down at the floor and then back at me. She kept a manila envelope
held tightly against her breast, guarding.
In pictures I mean,
Well, I said. Thats why I do what I do.
I had told her that before. This was her fifth visit to my apartment. She started as a subject
but through the course of our conversations and photo sessions I could feel the relationship shifting
from art project to friend. She was fragile in every sense of the word, even just in the way she
walked, as though her legs were weak twigs ready to snap at any given moment. But it was the root
of her fragility that interested me most, what was she hiding behind those sad eyes, what housed
itself inside her bones?

I was a clown once, she told me. She set the manila envelope down onto her lap and
opened it. She pulled out a photograph and looked at it and then handed it to me. It was black and
white, with her standing in a wooden doorway smiling, makeup covered her face. Her eyes
resembled a failed boxing match and it appeared her mouth had swelled across her face like a bruise.
I was six years old, she began. It was Halloween and my father had forgotten to get me a princess
costume. Princess, thats what he always called me. He would always come home and say princess?
And I would say yes daddy? And he would say I love you.
My eyes remained transfixed on her story, her mouth and her words.
He felt so bad. I remember running to the door when I heard it open and there he was. He
saw me and immediately slapped his forehead. He apologized and we took my mothers makeup and
turned me into a clown. He took this picture before we went out trick or treating.
I studied the photograph further after she finished her story. Her innocent smile stretched
up into her cheeks, her small hand pressed against the doorway, the faint trace of her mother in the
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background. You could the shadow of her father taking the picture stretched across the floor before
her.
I have been lots of things, she said after a minute of silence.
What else?
I was once beautiful, she said.
You arent beautiful now?
Her hands weaved through her black hair and the smile that had reminisced of being a six
year old melted into melancholy. I dont feel beautiful.
What do you feel?
Nothing.
Slowly she pulled another photograph from the manila envelope and handed it to me. Again
it was in black and white, she was probably sixteen or seventeen. She was lying on a bed, her eyes
were closed and she was smiling. She wore a white dress scattered with polka dots with a matching
bandana folded and tied neatly around her head.
I was in high school then, she said. I was popular. A lot of guys wanted me, especially
Travis.
Did he take this? I asked.
Yes. He took this right before he took my virginity. He told me how beautiful I was and I
believed him. I remember lying there on the bed, floating with his words. You can see it, the
expression on my face. He told me so many things. We had plans. He told me he loved me.
What happened?
She shook her head. He was lying.
With disgust she reached into the envelope and pulled out another photo. It was a picture of
her at prom, standing next to a blonde haired boy. This photo was in color. Her hair was suffocated
in curls and her violet dress shimmered like an ocean sunset. The boy was in a standard tuxedo but
his tie matched the violet of her dress. His matted hair covered his eyes. They both smiled, his wider
than hers.
Who is this lucky guy? I asked.
Matt, she answered. He was a good friend of mine. He was there for me when Travis and
I broke up.
Did you guys have a good time?
It was okay. I was so heartbroken though. You know what happened after prom?
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What?
Matt took me to this party. There were probably a hundred or so people there, everyone
drinking and having a good time. We both had too much to drink. When I woke up we were both
naked. I couldnt even find all my clothes so I walked home half naked. I couldnt look at him the
same after that.
At that moment I snapped a picture of her. Her eyes blinked at the surprise of the flash. I
couldnt help myself. She was wearing the memory on her face and I needed it. I imagined her
walking home from the party, covering the parts of herself she couldnt find clothes for, her eyes
down, her mouth in a contest to see how low a frown could get. We spent another moment in total
silence. She turned her head and looked over at the wall. I watched her and listened to the bustling
streets outside, car horns, the collective chatter of passersby and the faint air of satisfaction that the
day was more than half over.
I heard the rustling of the envelope and saw her pull out another photograph. She looked at
it longer than she had the other ones and then handed it to me.
I had a job once, she said. I looked at the photograph to see a picture of her standing at a
cash register ringing up a customer. Her face burst with happiness as though tickled by someone
invisible. She seemed to be enjoying her job and enjoying herself. My mom took this picture on my
first day of work. She was so damn proud of me. I worked at the discount market downtown, she
explained. I worked there for three years, until I was twenty. I got fired.
Fired?
I got caught stealing jewelry.
But you had a job, why did you need to steal?
I dont know. They were so pretty but it felt like such a waste to spend money on them. I
was slipping them into my pocket when my manager came from around the corner. He saw me and
fired me.
I snapped another picture of her. Each time she brought out a memory and briefly felt a
daze of happiness, it was immediately followed by a wave of sadness, of emptiness. Her head sagged
down, hollow and hiding. She had brought her feet up in the chair and her knees bent at her face as
if she were naked and shielding herself. I kept moving about the room, snapping pictures while she
sat there. At one point she sighed and said Im still not sure why you want to do this. I am
nothing.
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Things will get better. And when they do you can look at these photographs and say I was
once in despair.
Its funny about pictures. How they never lie and whatever you were in that moment is
frozen forever. At that moment in time when I was six I will always be a clown. I am frozen in time
as a clown. Im frozen as a beautiful teenage girl on a bed and as a store associate. And now I
suppose, I will be frozen in despair.
I finished snapping the photos and thanked her. She nodded and instead of reaching into the
envelope once more she reached for her purse sitting next to her. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes
and put one in her mouth. She lit it and took her first inhale, the end of the cigarette lit up like the
flash on my camera. Smoke billowed out from her lips and into the room.
I hope you dont mind, she said.
Well, I laughed. You already have it lit.
She got up out of the chair and paced about the room. As she walked back and forth,
inhaling and exhaling, surrounded by smoke, I took some more photos. The smoke left her mouth
quickly and caressed her face like a bad lover that she couldnt quite quit. I took a picture of her legs,
again her steps, frail, glasslike.
I was once a model, she said after her final drag. I didnt have an ashtray so she stubbed
the cigarette out on an empty plate and apologized.
Really?
I didnt like it. I felt like a prostitute or something, the way they needed my body to help
them sell their clothes. I was frozen as a catalog whore.
Why did you do it then?
Why do I do anything I do? she replied. She collected her photos and slid them back into
the manila envelope. She tucked the envelope under one arm and held her purse in the opposite
hand and started for the door. I have to go.
I walked past her and opened the door.
When will I see you again? I asked.
We shall see, she said and walked out the door and down the hallway. I called her that
night without an answer.

Days later a manila envelope showed up in my mailbox with no return address. Inside was a
letter from her with some pictures. She was in Mexico with a friend, a girl named Maggie.
18

Her letter was sincere, she thanked me for taking pictures of her and she hoped I
accomplished what I had set out to do with the project. Throughout the letter she continually asked,
Did you see that side of me that you wanted? and then would answer herself, I think I have. She
was hiding under the Mexican sun.
I thought about her standing there on the beaches as I looked through the photos she sent.
Her skin was warm and her smile was fresh, like the six year old girl that hid under the clown
makeup. I tried to imagine what exactly had drawn her to Mexico, and what had happened to make
her seem so much more alive. I thought about all of our sessions, of all the photographs she had
shown me and all the stories she had told. About how she had been a clown and a beautiful and
popular teenage girl and how she enjoyed her job. Earlier she had told me about her childhood pet
dog, her first kiss on the playground and how much she wanted to be an actress.
I was still stuck on the question of Mexico when I reached the last photograph. There was a
dazed sun illuminated across the desert in the background, while she and Maggie sat kissing against a
rock. This kiss, their kiss, was what I had been looking for the whole time. That spark of happiness
hiding below the shadows in her blood, every little dream she kept inside, here it was, lip to lip,
tongue to tongue, hands to cheeks.
I wish I could have given her the picture I had taken our last time together, the one of her in
the chair, shielding her clothed nakedness. And as she kissed Maggie and Maggie kissed back and
their love was heard throughout the barren Mexican sands, she could pull out the photograph and
say Here Maggie. Here is a piece of me.
Shed kiss Maggie again and then nose to nose, I was once in despair.











19

PUMPKIN PATCH
They stood before the pumpkin patch. He held her tight against him; his hands grazed hers
inside of her sweatshirt pockets. The clouds above were gray and heavy. A rusty sign with a large
pumpkin that read Grandmas Farm swung loosely on its chains in the breeze.
Resting his chin on her shoulder, he turned and kissed her cheek. Lets go find the perfect
pumpkin, he whispered.
She smiled and they walked down the hill towards the patch. They picked up pumpkins too
small, too big, too round and others covered with brown spots until they found the one they
deemed perfect. Just like the painting on the sign, without the rust, he held in his hands what they
had come for.
The clouds let loose and rain began to drizzle upon them as they sprinted to her front door.
Once inside, they took off their damp sweatshirts and covered the kitchen table with newspaper. She
took a knife from a drawer, and he watched her as she intricately cut around the top, taking caution
with her fingers.
When she had finished, she delicately grabbed the stem and pulled the top off. Peering into
the hollow fruit, her head slumped and she sighed.
Whats wrong? he asked, placing the scoop down on the table.
Its rotten on the inside.










20

MINUS THE QUEEN
I want to cut off my lips and rip holes through my cheeks. Maybe then I wouldnt be a definition.
Yes, Ill cut off my lips and rip holes in my cheeks because no one wants to look at a girl who looks
like that. No one wants to photograph a girl who looks like that.
I wish I had a dick, and surrounded by my friends, I would hold up a magazine containing a
picture of myself and say I dont see whats so great about that chick. And I would fall in love
with that man, myself with a dick. I would get on my knees and suck out the emptiness of the man
that gave me the best compliment I had ever received.

When I was six years old and attended private school, a girl named Susie invited me to her
birthday party. She stood with her hands behind her back and she tipped back and forth on her
heels and addressed me with rosy cheeks. I smiled and said yes. Later on when I told my father he
said I could not go. He said I was far better than that; I was the jewel of the family after all. His little
angel would not be seen at a party so small and unimportant. He gave me a fathers smile and said,
In a few years you wont even know that girl, she wont be important to you.

Daddy with his millions, daddy with his worldwide hotels, daddy with his princess of gold,
she never smiles.

I cried and told Susie I couldnt go. When she asked why I walked away without answering. I
see Susie sometimes, an apparition in a white house with the white picket fence, her husband carries
kisses home from his long day at work and she is in the yard with the kids. She had told me once;
back when we were six, as we swung back and forth on the wooden swing set and our dresses
parachuted in the wind like careless ghosts, that she was going to name her son Michael and her
daughter Sophie.

21

I want to puncture my eyes just enough, not to blind me but to make them bleed. And when
the blood dries I will walk down Rodeo Drive with crucified eyes and people will see me then look
the other way and say, That girls mascara is running, that ugly girl. And the men with cameras will
flash away because they care that I am walking down this street. Then he will walk up behind me
with his muscular arms and say jokingly, I didnt know Jesus was in California.
And me, Ill say back, I dont mind, Jesus was an ugly man.
Afterwards the magazines will be on the stands and the people will mourn, the people will
cry. The front cover is their only window, their only light that has just burnt out.


I lay naked beside him, his dick erect and standing as proud as a child admiring their art on
the fridge. He moves the hair covering my ears and whispers, How about this time Diamond?
No, I say. I speak in blood clotted words and the syllables leak through the holes in my
cheeks. I cannot pass this burden of beauty onto another, No, not this time.
Me with a dick, he begins to masturbate and looks over at me, my breasts rising with each
breath and the silence blankets us both. He reaches his left hand over and strokes my chest, his
finger rolls down past my belly button and ends at my pubic hair then starts over.
That feels good, I say.
He smiles into the darkness, Im glad. Hes done pleasuring himself and turns to rest his
chin on my shoulder.
I cup my breasts and I say, I hate these.
Why is that?
Look at how stupid they are, I hit them and they bounce, men love them.
I love your cheeks, he says and sticks his finger into the hole and feels around the edge.
My tongue darts up and licks his finger, a playful gesture.
22

Did I ever tell you about that girl that drank the bleach? I ask him.
No, he says and touches my breasts to feel their pointlessness.
Her father had always told her boys were the devil; sex a one way ticket to hell. She went
down on her boyfriend and felt so dirty afterwards. She drank bleach to wash out her mouth, the
stupid girl.
His dick shrinks and rests on my thigh and hes still cuddling me and listening.
The girl drank bleach because she felt like she failed her father. I want to fail my father.
He takes his hands and covers my cheeks then bends down and kisses my scabbed mouth. I
close my male eyes and my female eyes remain fixated on the dark ceiling. I cant count the bumps.

There was a beach I used to visit with a boy, free from flashing cameras and the eye of the
world. The waves reached out for only me, tickling my toes and I let the boy bathe in my ocean. We
scaled the rocks in search for snails and crabs, hands locked and smiling. I felt as though I was six
years old again, in my summer dress and when I talked to him I would sway like Susie did. The sun
went down and still we did not leave, we spoke better under the moon. We danced and our pattern
was mapped out in the sand. I came home early that morning and felt like a mermaid. Sand stained
my hair and my body smelled of fresh ocean air. My father was furious and destroyed the beach, he
revealed my secret. Like machines hidden under the shore, the cameras plagued my solitude and I
never returned.

One day I wake up and there I am naked, spread eagle for everyone to see. My head has
been super imposed onto another womens body, her breasts as dumb as mine. All the men and
boys will be staring, wondering what my pussy tastes like. And me in male form, I know what it
smells like and I have tasted it with my tongue. The smells and tastes men imagine are not mine and
I laugh because they do not know.

23

Im looking at myself in the mirror and this is real and Im beautiful. There are no holes in
my cheeks and my lips are puffy and red. My father is downstairs waiting for me; another shoot for
another magazine cover. Click, click, flash, flash, ooh, the endless parade of me, me, me.
Give me some advice, I say.
Me with a dick, he says I left something for you in the dresser drawer.

Last year on my birthday there were thousands of people I didnt know, but they all knew
me. They were so sincere and polite, all of them. Balloons covered the ceiling and colorful streamers
hung down and touched my shoulders like the boy from the beach. The cake was the biggest cake I
had ever seen, and the knife to cut it was the biggest knife I had ever seen. After I had blown out the
candles and they began to dissect it, I expected the cake to bleed.

When I open the drawer there is a knife, the same knife that cut my cake last year. I reach
inside and pull it out. I examine it and it gleams in the light as if to say Hey there! Remember me?
I unbutton my shirt and bra. Im looking at myself in the mirror and this is real and my
breasts are meaningless. When I punch the one covering my heart, I can feel a jingle of satisfaction
pump through my blood. Daddys little angelic baby doll, she smiles.
I seal my princess-lips tight and hold in the screams as the knife cuts into my stupid fucking
mountains of skin. I wonder what pain sounds like when it pours out of a cheek-less face.
The large wooden door to my room opens and my father walks in. What the hell is taking
you so long?
I whirl around, and splatter the walls and carpet.
Diamond! he cries, as one my breasts hits the floor, just flat skin. What have you done?
Youre killing yourself! Youre killing me!
I turn and look at myself standing beside the mirror, myself with a dick. The boy from the
beach is there too, smiling, and his teeth sound like the waves crashing on the shore. And so is the
24

girl. She is standing softly with a cup of bleach held out towards me. I take it and swish it down fast,
my insides happily burning. Today I killed my father. Today I killed the world.





























25

THE CAKE
A wedding cake sat in the middle of a street seldom visited by cars. A chubby boy about the
age of five stood on his porch and watched the cake melt in the warm afternoon sun. The bride and
groom figurines had fallen forward slightly in the soft icing and their faces met in a plastic kiss.
The boys mouth watered as he stared at the cake. He imagined the frosting in his mouth,
plastered all over his face. He took a step down, sat and placed his pudgy fingers on the concrete
steps. In the house across the street, the yellow one with sky blue shutters, he heard shouting.
The boy couldnt make out what was being said. After another minute passed he saw the
bride run out the front door and across the lawn. The groom followed not far behind.
She was yelling and choked over tears. The groom ran after her.
I can explain! he offered. The bride was almost at the end of the street. The boy watched
all of this and his gaze followed them until they disappeared. Once his mother had told him about
her own marriage and the boy remembered something about the groom not being allowed to see the
bride before the wedding. He laughed and lifted himself up and began walking across the lawn.
Reaching the edge of the pavement he looked up and down the street and then made his way
towards the cake. The boy wondered what flavor the cake would be and plunged his hands right into
the center. To his surprise it was a happy medium of chocolate vanilla marble, and sitting Indian
style on the pavement he ate.









26

PRINCE
She hovered near the table of elderly relatives, surrounded by wrinkly skin, hoping to not get
caught in conversation. She kept herself ghostly, hair down and across her eyes and was about to
retreat farther away from the guests when a shrunken hand clasped itself around her waist. It was
her grandmother from who knows where, flashing false teeth, asking her where all the time went, it
was only yesterday she was a little girl.
The yard was a fiesta of lawn chairs and tables, plastic bowls of potato chips and fruit,
coolers of soda and a grill overloaded with hamburgers and hotdogs. Her father stood by the grill,
smiling wide, waving to the guests and opening the lid every few minutes to inspect his cooking. Her
mother waited by the gate at the front of the yard, letting in more guests and collecting the gifts they
brought. White balloons were tied to each chair and strewn across the back porch. The plan had
been for red and white, her school colors, but the party store had sold out from all the other parties
in town. There is too much white, she had said when her mother came home from the store. Her
mother shrugged and said there was nothing she could do.
Her grandmothers pale hand relinquished itself from her waist and the rambling stories of
her childhood ceased when her father hollered to the guests that the food was ready. The adults
stood up and made a line towards the grill, paper plates ready in hand as her father served fresh
hamburgers and hotdogs and slid them onto the buns of the hungry guests.
She went over to farthest empty chair and sat, not hungry. She listened to the adults
laughter, her uncles banter on sports scores and the compliments on the food. She looked off into
the forest that surrounded her home, staring off in between the trees, listening to nature. A slight
breeze blew in and rattled the balloons.
Once the plates were empty her mother came out with the cake. Her father came up to her
and flashed a lions smile. Come on, he said. Lets cut your cake. She didnt say anything but
stood and followed him over to the table where a large cake, white of course, sat begging to be
27

eaten. She looked next to the table over at the wicker basket her parents had left out for gifts and
how it overflowed with cards and wrapped boxes. She knew each card contained money and she
wondered how much was in each and what she would buy with it. Her father cut the first piece and
placed it in front of her before doling out pieces to the rest of the guests. She picked at the cake with
her fork but didnt take any bites. There was silence as her relatives carelessly ate the cake and
painted their lips and teeth a vanilla white.
Her father stood behind her while her mother focused on the guests, the strangers
meandering around the carnival of white. Like a waitress at an outdoor diner her mother floated
about the tables and inspected the elders and aunts, the potbellied uncles and young cousins who sat
at their own table, swaying their feet inches above the grass. She looked about the yard and built the
white walls of her school gymnasium around the guests, she placed a punch bowl on the table and
loud music erupted from the sky. She was back at prom, all alone.
Once her piece of cake could no longer be disfigured by her fork she pushed the plate away
and walked over toward the front of the yard. Cars filled with screaming teenagers flew by her house
and she peered through the picket fence to watch them. Cars with red lettering on the windows and
the passengers inside laughing, arms bent and waving like tentacles. She clenched her fist and turned
back to face the party. The cake was nearly gone, frosting still in the cracks of the guests lips. She
watched them continue to converse with one another, heard her name mentioned a couple times,
saw them laugh like the kids riding behind the blood red letters. Her mother was still running
around, collecting empty paper plates, making sure the guests had everything they wanted, no tips
collected from the tables.
Her father pulled out a chair; the one with two balloons tied to it, and set it in front of all the
guests. Come on and open your gifts, he called to her. He sat her down and kept his hands on her
shoulders. She shifted a couple of times, trying to get him to release his grip but he kept his proud
stance. The old and strange faces leaned forward with sunshine smiles and watched her, as intently
as she had spied through the fence, as she opened her gifts. She tore through the envelopes,
pretending to read the cards and pocketing the cash, with a thank you murmured closely after.
Throughout the crowd eyes blinked and hands shot up to give short waves when their respective
gifts were being opened. She looked up at all of them from the chair and again rebuilt the white
walls around her yard. Heres the prom princess with no prince. Red letters on the walls and the
music has stopped. They want her to speak; they want this little joke to open her mouth.
28

The cards and gifts were all opened, the torn envelopes and paper in a garbage bag and she
brought down the walls once more. The forest came back into view and the guests began to mill
about to themselves again. She remained in the chair, the balloons whispering beside her ears.
Where are the other kids? her father asked. Didnt you invite some kids from school? She
closed her eyes and turned her head away. The tiara must have really sparkled under the disco ball
but she refused to open her eyes. Her father asked once more before shrugging off the silence.
Like the kids in the cars, like the laughs that echoed throughout the dance, like the eyes that
never truly saw, like the words she never heard anyone speak, they came. Bouncing slowly through
the brush on the edge of the forest, the rabbits entered her yard. Hundreds of them, twitching their
little noses and spreading their white disease across the yard like living snow. The guests gawked and
some of the young cousins chased after them. The walls had collapsed and the pieces were hopping
in every direction. There is too much white, she said to herself.
Some of the rabbits had climbed upon the tables while others examined the guests shoes.
The adults laughed and cheered and some even picked up the rabbits, holding them close like a
baby, softly patting the furry creatures. Her eyes darted up past the bushes and through the trees.
She saw something the rest of the party didnt. She watched it creeping slowly through the forest
coming closer to her yard with each massive step. She didnt even move when it emerged and the
guests started screaming. Her mother ran for the young cousins and her father ushered everyone else
onto the porch. Some ran straight for the house while others remained on the porch, transfixed in
horror. She stood from the chair as the prom walls danced at her feet and the giant bear came closer.
The spotlight was on, her prince had arrived. The bear was inches from her face and she
stared infinitely into it eyes. She smiled and turned back towards her family, her father screaming her
name, and stepped backwards towards the porch. The bear bellowed and reared its head down into
the cluster of rabbits surrounding it. They scurried like white sand on a windy beach as the bears
paws swiped and slashed. The blood of the rabbits sailed through the air and anchored onto the
tables, chairs and balloons. The guests ran inside once the onslaught of the bear had come but she
remained on the porch, hands perched over the railing in awe. Her smile hadnt faded and as the
bear retreated back into the forest and the rabbits lay as still as lawn ornaments she saw something
beautiful. Her prince had left her for the evening but had come bearing a gift. Skipping down the
steps and galloping over the bodies of rabbits she untied a balloon from one of the chairs. She
tugged on the string before letting the balloon escape into the sky. Her red balloon.

29

PIECES OF
GLASS
Mom said it hurt like a bitch to push me out of her. My arm was broken and she took me to
a glassblower who blew a new one for me. Youre lucky Im a good mother, she says.

Im upstairs with my boyfriend Andrew; hes lying on my bed while I try on new clothes.
So you could like go back to that glassblower and have him blow you bigger tits or
something right?
I throw a rumpled shirt at him, Shut up.
He laughs and its so cute I laugh too.
Whats wrong with my tits? I ask, and I shake my chest but nothing moves.
Nothing at all, he says, I like how smooth they are.
How does this look? I ask.
He looks me up and down. You shouldnt wear light blue. The color fades into your skin
too much. You need somethingmorevibrant.
I hold up a red v-neck with short sleeves. This?
Try it,
I do and he applauds.

Andrew and I are shopping downtown and before we leave I break off my pinky toe and
leave it on one of the store shelves.
What are you doing? he asks.
I used to come here as a little girl, I say, with my grandma, every Sunday.
So?
I leave a little piece of me in places like this.
I take his hand and we head down to the park. I bring him down to the duck pond and reach
30

my hand into the brown water. I pull up a small piece of glass, my middle finger from when I was
younger. See?

I dont feel anything when Andrew and I have sex, and he cries because he says it hurts. I lay
down on my back while he thrusts into me, but there are only tears. His crying leaks all over my
chest and drips straight down onto my bed. Stop it, I say, youre getting my bed all wet.
When he finishes, I look down and can see the pattern he left inside of me. One time he asks
me, Why isnt there any glass left in me?
What? I ask. My head still down on the pillow.
Glass. You leave it in those places, like your memories. Why isnt there any in me?
I sit up and look at him, Maybe because this isnt such a good memory?
He puts his clothes on and leaves. He doesnt call me for a whole week.

I walk around town one afternoon and leave pieces of me all over. In the shops I used to
visit as a child, in the diner I always used to eat at, in the yard of my grandmothers old house, under
the bridge where I used to throw rocks into the river. Maybe someone will find them and remember
me. Then I leave a piece on Andrews front porch.
He calls me the next day. Theres a piece of you in my foot, he says.
And? I ask.
I dont want it there, I dont know how it got there, he says.
Well, I say, what do you want me to do?
I dont know he hangs up and doesnt call for another week.
Hello?
Im turning white, he says, Ive been bleeding for a whole week straight. Can you just
come get it out?
Why cant you just pull it out yourself? I ask. Im a little irritated.
I tried. It wont budge. Its just sticking out. My shoestheyre ruined, he says, I bled all
over them. Please.
You just dont get it, do you?
Get what? he asks.
Forget it, I say and hang up.

31

Now Im crying, the tears just running down and glossing my body. Im rolling around on
my bed and kicking. My foot slams into the wall and my heel breaks off. I dont want to remember
this, so I throw it out my window. The sound of my heel shattering in the driveway, like sad falling
icicles, it makes me cry harder.
I hobble down my stairs, straight out the door, past the pile of me in the driveway and all the
way downtown. Im still crying and people are staring. I go into the shops, into the diner, stick my
hands down into the duck pond; Im wobbling across the yard of my grandmothers old house and
grabbing every little piece of me. Cradled in my arms are toes and fingers, a hip, a kneecap.
I take them all to the glassblower. He looks at me funny when I walk in and drop the broken
body parts in front of him. What can I do for you?
Melt all of this down, I tell him, and use it to make my tits bigger.
His eyes widen a bit and his brows furrow, then he shrugs. If thats really what you want
his voice trails off.
I stand there while he melts all the pieces down. He asks me to come out back and I lean
down into the fire. It burns and I wonder if thats what sex feels like. He blows and blows until my
chest is bigger than my head.

I trudge all the way to Andrews house. I want him to remember me, I want him to miss me,
I want him to see my new tits and smile. I want to rip out the piece of glass in his foot, the piece of
me and say see? Dont you see?
But his house is empty. I look through the window and theres nothing inside. The furniture
is gone, the walls are bare. I start to cry again and sit down on his porch. The tears fall onto my
chest and wash away all my memories.









32

DEVOUR (OR A LOVELY
APPETITE)

The fork plunged into her arm, and as I raised the knife to cut out a piece of flesh, she
moaned with desire. With the delicacy of a newborn I slowly lifted the fork to my mouth and began
chewing as she watched with a ravenous stare. With each bite her hands slid down her chest until
she met her panties and a feverous groping fiesta erupted; masturbation and mastication.
With the skin swallowed I raised my eyes and spoke in a lustful hush, Your turn.
Her hand remained on her panties for another minute before she stood, her face harboring a
horny smile and she tiptoed over to me and snatched the fork and knife. With gentle caress she ran
the fork up and down my face before stopping at my cheek. Her arm darted back and then forward,
the fork pierced my cheek and I leaned forward to kiss her. We held lips for a brief moment and she
lessened her grip on the fork, lost in the translation of love and lust contorting throughout the room
and radiating from our wounds. Our lips separated and her eyes rolled into the back of her head, but
she returned and brought the knife to the lonely fork stuck in the side of my face.
The knife danced around the fork as though some bizarre ritual to entice it, and a circle of
skin separated as she pulled it from my cheek and to her mouth. The sensation was tantalizing and I
shut my eyes and imagined us as skeletons on a hill enjoying the city skyline. The fork escaped from
under her lips and emerged bare. Her smile exposed blood tainted teeth and I chuckled, Oh, you
devil.
My arms extended and I tugged her violently onto the couch and we lay side by side facing
one another, my gaping cheek staining a crimson circle onto the cushion. The lustful intentions
calmed and my eyes pierced hers and vice-versa, fork versus fork, and our noses embraced like
Eskimo knives.
Youre beautiful, she said.
I answered with a barrage of kisses on her neck and her body shivered. Like a cunning snake
my kisses slithered down across her breasts to fill her chest, which I still had yet to taste; Id hardly
known her for a month and only knew the deliciousness of her arms. The time was not a factor to
me; my heart told me this was love.
33

With force beyond her own she grabbed my head and shoved it between her legs. The
antique clock across the room struck midnight and sirens echoed from the city streets but the
sounds never truly reached our ears. Blood still leaked from my cheek as I came back up her body,
bloody kisses marked my route. She blinked when I kissed her between the eyes. Her arms wrapped
around me and she whispered into my ear, Devour me.
We made love until the final lights of the city faded and as we collapsed beside one another
we only heard the symphony of night and felt the electricity jolting between our hands, which were
so close yet so far. Our bodies were against each other, our legs conjoined scissors and our eyes
returned to utensil uniform. She turned slightly onto her back and I mimicked. We stared at the
ebony dcor the night had veiled over the ceiling and for a long while we said nothing. Our eyes
darted and spoke the words we werent speaking, moving frantically as if there were some hidden
picture in the darkness above.
I turned my body to face her as her head rolled over until her chin rested on her shoulder,
and I admired her. I could trace the shadows of her mouth, her thin and defined lips, raised to show
off their liveliness. I followed a bridge of black that connected her top lip to her nose and my eyes
darted slowly upward where her eyes should be, but were now nothing but gaping holes of endless
midnight wonder.
I smiled a smile she could not see.

i
I awoke first and saw her naked beauty bathed in sunlight, I got up slowly so not to stir her
and went to put some coffee on. She woke a few minutes later, rubbing her eyes and walking in
small strides, shaking off the last bits of dreariness.
Good morning sunshine, I greeted.
Good morning to you too, she smiled.
I sat at the kitchen table and sipped coffee and felt drops run down my chin onto the marble
top. She sat down across from me, her breasts rising with each small breath and her arms stretched
above her head, her knuckles cracked together.
34

Care for some coffee? I asked.
She shook her head no and nodded towards the bathroom. I set the coffee down and walked
across the room to turn on the light while she started the shower, Good thinking.
With early eyes we climbed into the shower together. The water splashed down over my
head and cascaded down her slender body. She danced when she put shampoo in her hair and
seductively washed it out, making swift motions that made her breasts jiggle. She watched me while I
washed myself, scrubbing the soap over my chest, legs and arms and as I began to wash it off I felt a
wondrous bite in my shoulder.
I turned to see a thin line of blood dripping from her lower lip, she stood chewing.
What a beautiful animal you are.
She backed up against the wall of the shower and slowly slid down, until she was lying down
with her legs bent. She uncurled her finger and I too lay with her under the rushing hot waters.
I pressed my face against her left thigh, turned and bit into it. She screamed with passion,
her eyes darted wildly and her hands were clenched so tight she could pull the tiles right from the
walls. The blood dripped from her thigh and leaked red blots across the shower bottom. I wanted to
grab one of the blots out of the water and ask her What do you see in this picture?
Maybe her response would be clouds or dolphins. Or maybe just ink on paper.
I finished chewing and we made love with the hot rain on our backs. There were no words
to be said, and we often found ourselves locked in silent staring contests. The motion became faster
and faster and yet, our eyes never parted gaze. The only sound the cascade of water and even that
grew inaudible after some time.
We climaxed, turned off the water and began to dry off. She whipped me with the towel and
laughed. I picked her up, she kicked and screamed and I tossed her onto the bed. We got dressed
and while she put on her makeup I finished my cup of coffee at the kitchen table. She came over,
her eyes lined in a thick black and her hair was pulled up and burst out like a fountain, little tentacles
of hair sprouted everywhere. Her lips were a thin pink and a baby doll dress colored with abstract
flowers adorned her, Picassos garden.
The car was on and I fiddled with the radio while she locked the door. The sun was high in
the air, petting the trees and taking the obscurity away from the birds songs. She hopped in and off
we went.


35

i
We ended up at a small sidewalk caf. A thin fence lined around a cobblestone yard of tables
and chairs, the caf a mustard canvas that sprouted out of the earth. We sat down at a table as a
waitress came over to take our order. I looked around at the people surrounding us, as the couples
sipped their tea and stroked one anothers arms.
It was so beautiful to see so much love. Over to my right a young girl laughed and I saw her
tongue lash in and out through her open cheeks. The girl reached her arm up, chunks of flesh
missing and her elbow bone peeped out, and her man kissed her palm.
Look at them, I said, pointing.
Such young love, she said, I hope it works for her.
The waitress brought our teas and as her arm extended to place them at our table, I noticed
her arm was still bare and intact.
Havent found the right one yet? I asked.
The waitress smile slanted to a crooked crack in her face and she shook her head. I thanked
her for bringing the tea as she made her way to other tables of wounded lovers.
Lets be them, she said to me, her eyes alerted to the table behind me and I slightly turned.
Two gray haired skeletons sat hunched over cups of tea and nibbled on a pastry from the
caf bakery. The sun shone off their bones and illuminated them like the opening of Pandoras Box.
The only flesh remaining was their lips, which they kissed each other upon before I turned my head
back to stare at my love.
What a rare sight that is, I said, her hands grasped in mine. She smiled.
The tea is delicious, she commented, and I nodded in agreement.
Behind me I heard chairs scraping and feet moving, the skeleton couple was getting ready to
leave, the man placing a tip on the table while his wifes bony hand waited for his. As they began to
pass our table, I stopped them.
Excuse me,
The skeleton man turned first, his wife still slightly oblivious as to where the voice had come
from. He guided her around to face me, her jaw bone open.
36

Thats just so nice, I said, the two of you.
The man nodded, Thank you son.
I was just telling her, I pointed to my love, how rare it is to see people such as yourselves,
so in love.
The man chucked a skinless laugh, Sixty years strong.

i
We met purely by accident, or perhaps it was fate. I boarded the city bus simply on my way
to a local club to waste the night away. Carnival was in session and the nightlife exploded for two
straight nights, the time when many learned that life continues to exist under the light of the moon.
The bus was crowded and as I walked down the aisle, my head jerked from side to side as my eyes
scanned for an empty seat anywhere.
And there she was, the only rider on the bus without a companion.
I shuffled past and sat next to her, she turned her head slightly to examine me, as if I may
not be worthy to take the seat next to her. The bus rolled forward and for a long while I said
nothing and simply stared at my knees. Outside people screamed and hollered, and the brilliant
lights paraded through the bus windows and illuminated the seats and riders. I looked up and people
became blue and red, the seats glowed green and yellow and at times a slight rainbow could be seen
haunting above all of our heads.
Where are you headed?
A soft knife through the carnival chaos struck me; the girl had broken our bond of silence.
Oh, I began, just shooting around, killing some time. You know.
She nodded. I love carnival.
Ive never been that excited about it, I said. The bus came to a stop and as people piled
out into the street, more piled back on to party on at some other destination. The bus moved once
again, blurring across scenes of smiling midnight clowns and lines of drunk dancing.
Thats a shame, she said.
Why do you say that? I asked.
37

Its the one time of the year you can be someone else, you can be whoever and whatever
you want and theres no one to call you out on it, because you know what? Everyone else is
pretending to be someone else too.
I thought about it for a moment as the bus screeched to a halt once more. So who are you
pretending to be?
She laughed and her face turned to a pale yellow against the spotlights outside. Whatever
you want me to be.

i
We slumped over a table in some smoky bar, a drunken aroma melted into our skin and
hysterics flew from our mouths as alcohol glided down our throats. She stuck to her word, she was
exactly what I wanted her to be, but I hoped she wasnt pretending.
Someone across the bar began yelling Carnival! Carnival! and everyone raised their glasses
in rejoice. I raised mine to the false cause as did she; our glasses clinked together and downed what
was left. We left without paying, as we escaped past the occupied waitresses into the wild night of
Carnival.
The streets were crowded, staggering drunks abounded, and wild screams shot out from
crowds illuminated by glowing sticks and trashcan bonfires. As she held her composure, my walk
had transformed into a slight limp and my body rocked back and forth trying to keep up with her.
We found ourselves in a dark club, lit by purple florescent lights and filled with a miasma of heads
and arms, dancing outside of their own bodies.
She grabbed my hand and pulled me through the crowd and faces swirled by me, all delirious
and bobbing to the music that flowed throughout the small room. We danced under the flashing
lights, her face stared back at me in split second motions, a smile, then blackness, a smile, then
nothing. I moved unaware of my actions, just allowing the music to take hold of me while her eyes
composed.
38

We awoke that morning on a park bench. Her head slumped into my shoulder and my arm
cradled around her. Her little nose crinkled as she turned slightly and the first rays of sunshine
entered her eyes. She looked up and kissed me on the cheek.
Morning,
I stroked my hands through her hair. Morning,
I looked around and heard the stillness of the air, the slight and soft song of the early birds
and the rolling driftwood remnants of Carnival. There was no one in sight, the park completely
empty and beyond that I heard not a sound from the city. Carnivals chaos was over and bleak and
mundane shadows had crept back to claim their stake on life.
Were all alone, I said.
We are all we need, she said.

i
The lights were out and we were surrounded by candles. She tiptoed towards me with
ghostly flight and I was on the couch without my shirt on. She wore black lingerie that Id never
seen before, her arms sported my inflictions of love and I had the desire to rip her cheeks off.
Her eyes were focused and anyone other than me might mistake her glare for lunacy rather
than love. She straddled me, her arms wrapped around my neck and I looked down to see a fork and
knife tucked into her panties.
She brought her mouth right next to my ear, her chin against the hole in my cheek. Her
tongue tickled my ear lightly and she giggled. Happy two months,
You too, baby, I whispered.
Each time we kissed it was like the first time. Each time I felt like a child again, back in the
eighth grade under the bleachers at the school dance. Her hair was done up, twisted into a tall poof
and strands fell onto her cheeks. Our hands quivered inside each others and I stood on the edge of
my childhood waiting to leap off. As teachers patrolled the gymnasium and other kids frolicked to
the music and huddled around the punch table, we sat with our legs crossed under the abyss of the
39

bleachers while small beams of light cut through the cracks in the seats and gave life to our eyes. Her
mouth was a time machine.
Her skin against mine, her kisses paraded down my chest while she removed her lingerie and
the silverware clattered to the floor as she stood naked in front of me. The candles cast their flicker
across her body and made her skin dance. I stood up and took off my pants and we both took our
own ends of the room, staring and bare. The candles licked the black air and slowly, with the ease of
a hunting lion, I stepped forward and upon seeing my action, she did the same.
The game continued, step and stare, step and stare, my turn, her turn, my turn, and hers,
until we met and our noses bent together, her chest melted into mine and our hands became a piece
of each others bodies. There was a tangible energy between us that filtered through our veins and
absorbed into the nooks of the room.
She knelt gently and retrieved the fork and knife. Oh, lover! she cried.
I lay down on my back while she hovered over me with surgeons eyes. Up and down, her
pervious eyes searching for the tenderest piece of flesh before her gaze stopped.
I want a piece of your heart, she said.
Its all yours, I replied with a smile.
Her eyes lit up, her thin lips widened and her cheeks puffed out slightly. My hands reached
up to graze her gentle skin as her breathing sped up and her chest pulsed in and out rapidly. The
candles watched from all around us, small flares of fiery passion encircling the darkness in the room.
She raised the fork above her head and her porcelain grin morphed into an animalistic sneer.
The fork pierced my chest and my heartbeats radiated against the cold metal. She was fierce
in her approach and the knife cut voraciously into my skin, such bloody delight. Further and further
the thin fork traveled and I stared at the ceiling and my chest became my eyes, her face casting a
sinisterly loving mug over me.
She held a piece of my heart in her hand, drenched and dripping and I could see her legs
tingling while her other hand groped between them. I sat up and looked over at her as she held up
the piece of me. This, she said, This is our love.
I grabbed the fork from the floor, My turn.




40

i
We were dressed in our finest for the party of the year. She sported a silk dress that stopped
just above her knees, black and crunchy with a belt to accentuate her waist. I was in a suit far too
fancy for my taste, white shirt and black tie and as I adjusted it around my neck, she stood with her
elbow slumped against the doorway and waited.
I could sense her excitement as it radiated from her and washed over my shoulders. Every
part of her complained and whined to me as I slipped on my shoes. Her elbows moaned against the
doorway, her fingers dangled with tears and when her feet sighed her heels would click against the
floor. I stood up, Ready baby?
She raised her elbow and it smiled like a joyous puppy. Her fingers dried their tears
immediately, sat patiently against her sides and her feet jumped for joy while her toes wriggled with
delight. Her mouth widened like a crescent moon fallen on its back, bright and gleaming.
I followed her down the stairs as she seemed to hurry from some invisible predator. The car
was on before I had made the corner of the driveway and she began to beep hysterically.
Im right here!
Her fingers were ravenous, curling and uncurling, as they tapped against the wheel and
groped the stick shift. I barely had time to slam the door shut as the car sped off. Her feet became
bricks tied down onto the gas pedal, and I clung to the door handle with all my might. There was a
sense of ruthlessness about her that I had never sensed before, as if Death were sitting in the middle
seat caressing and kissing her neck. She drove with one hand, her other flailed excitedly about in the
air, an undead hand job.
The scenery outside flew by like shattered glass, fragments passed before my eyes could
adjust, blurs in time. Birds were long black lines and trees assembled themselves from a watercolor
palette, houses collided into one another and the pedestrians were decapitated by chain link fences
and street signs.
Whats the hurry? I asked.
We cant arrive late, she said. This is the party of a lifetime.
Whose party is this again?
41

Walter, she said, I met him at the last carnival. He throws the most wonderful parties.
Whats so special about this goddamn thing anyway?
Because, she said, we can pretend to be someone else.
What is wrong with who we are?
Her eyes remained straight ahead on the pavement as it thundered under us and the stop
signs melted past us in red blaze glory. Her foot was still heavy on the gas, with one hand on the
wheel and the other maniacally squeezed her knee. She was madder than she had ever been, more
crazed than anytime we had made love and Id never seen the stare she inhibited now, not even
when she gnawed on my flesh in her piranha-like prowess.
The mansion was bustling with life. Vines suffocated the stone pillars that outlined the
gardens and picayune fish swam through the endless maze of streams and ponds. Over every corner
maidens whisked about in frenzy as though their imaginative dresses would turn to rags at the stroke
of midnight, while suitors scurried to find the perfect damsel in distress. There were punch bowls
and drunk dancing to music that seemed to sprout from the wind and the moon peered over the
roof like the uninvited guest.
She led me to him, holding my hand as though I wore the plague. He stood there so smug,
in a divine stance and he kissed her hand when she extended it in greeting. He reached out to shake
my hand and shed a smile of egotistical pearls.
Im Walter, welcome to my party.
I went to get some punch while she remained next to Walter as he offered her drinks and as
her voice carried in the wind I often heard her respond to him Oh darling, that is simply
marvelous! The falseness fell from her flesh and she blushed red lies. I watched her from under the
solitude of a large willow tree as she removed the person from my own body and replaced it within
Walters; I became a part of the tree shade.
Finally she left him and walked over towards me, peering in through the opening in the
weeping foliage. Her face wasnt her own, but a variation of someone I once knew, continually
stacking layers upon her as the night wore on like a matryoshka doll.
Darling, she said, why arent you my fabulous Romeo?
I grabbed her and pulled her close, the stench of intoxication heavy on her lips. I stroked her
arms and tried to pull off the cloaks she had placed over herself, endless shades of woman. Outside
the tree the party raged on, the spotlights moved across the lawn and lifted the gardens into a
42

phosphorescent fire, while screams and shouts seemed to echo around us and we were the lonely
couple under the tree.
I kissed her cheek, lightly at first and then clenched my teeth down hard. She pushed me
back as I ripped a small piece of flesh away and she stared at me wide eyed while thin lines of blood
raced down my chin and splattered onto my suit.
What are you doing?
I looked at her hard and hoped I had succeeded in ripping away one of her artificial layers.
She reached up to cover the hole in her cheek and rubbed it, only smearing blood instead of
repairing the wound.
I want your heart, I said.
Im not hungry right now, she replied.
As she stepped back she tripped over a rock and landed flat on her back, the shadows
consumed her body and I pulled her in closer to me.
What did you say?
Her eyes were not hers, her lips were not hers and even her dress had seemed to change
color. My hands were tight around her waist and I got drunk from her breath, but the closer I
looked into her new eyes I saw someone else inside of them. There inside the blue spheres Walter
pranced around in his over the top glory, showering her with champagne and skimpy lingerie and
she danced for him while he sat and admired. Walter saw me staring into his utopia and swung a set
of keys around his finger, Looking for these?
I dug my teeth into her shoulder in a storm of rage, and ripped the skin all the way down to
her knuckle. A small chuckle filtered from her eyes as my head swayed from side to side, tearing and
tearing.
Im not hungry anymore! she screamed.
And still that bastard mocked me and I moved past her skinless arm and began chewing on
her eyeball. She continued to scream but was lost somewhere between the hugging arms of the tree
and the ruckus of the night outside. Every muscle within me tightened and I snapped with every
ounce of love I had until her eye hung down from a string of sinews against her mouth, and I saw
Walter escape out the other door in the rush of tears.
Im just not hungry anymore.
I stood up and she ran from the tree, her arms waved and colored the evening in a blotchy
burgundy as her eye swung like a pendulum trying to hypnotize the party guests. I laughed as she ran
43

and so many people stared at the gaping holes in her body, the skin hanging and her falling eye and
remarked, Now if thats not love I dont know what is!

i
When I trace my fingers around the scabbed formations all over my skin, she is there lying
on top of them. She is running down my leg every time I bleed and she darts in and out of me every
time I breathe. She is in my refrigerator every morning and she still sleeps in my bed at night, tossing
her eye up into the air and trying to put it back in its socket.
One night Im walking outside and there are no sounds to be heard. The city is dead and the
last lights fade in honor of the stars in the sky. She might be in the house, or maybe she is out for a
drive, but Im alone on the sidewalk.
There is a stir and in the distance I see a homogenous blackness running towards me. Under
a smiling moon the blob takes shape and the infinite pack of coyotes run past me. Snarling, their
keen eyes never move anywhere except forward and their noses twitch with a killing instinct.
I watch them run past me but their bodies dont seem to have an end. And wherever she is,
she will never see my face again. Whether she is tucked under my sheets or at a stop sign, she will
come home to an empty house. I want to see nothing but scars on my arms and legs; I dont want to
see her tongue in the hole of my cheek.
I rip off my shirt, shredding it as easily as her skin and I run into the pack. There I am
running with the coyotes into the concrete jungle of night. I feel their instinctual gaze accept me and
the moon and stars applaud. We run past darkened homes and abandoned buildings and I am one
with the beasts.
By the time she comes home Ill be a million miles away.





44


His room was not a room but a series of boxes. He invited me over one afternoon and told
me to sit.
I asked him where?
He put his hands in the air and said choose a box. He sat at the far end of the room, nude in
a box filled with water, body curled like an eel.
I tried to sit in the box closest to me but it was filled with broken glass. I stepped out and
tripped into another box covered in spikes.
My friend, he said. Learn to let the world comfort you. Let go.




45

HEADLIGHTS
There are barely any cars left in the parking lot when I leave the theater and its starting to
snow. I fiddle through my pockets to get my keys, and a few of the street lights are flickering.
Goddamn.
I feel my phone, cigarettes and lighter, but no keys. I can hear them jingling somewhere, a
soft ring echoing into the snowy night. As Im standing there still searching through endless pockets,
I think of the actor in the movie. The way his mouth appeared to speak from some other script, the
way his face refused the emotions of the scene. As if he was standing there without actually standing
there.
There are my keys. I fish them out and I can feel a light layer of snow atop my head. Im
walking and leaving a trace of my steps from the theater across the slushy parking lot. The night is
quiet and asleep. Im the only one alive.
My car is at the far end of the lot, and when I reach it I rest against the door for a moment
and pull out a cigarette. The cold air thins my lungs and my breathing is short, but the cigarette
tastes delicious. When I exhale I cant tell the difference between the smoke and my cold breath.
When I put my key into the lock, it wont turn. Im twisting with all my might and nothing is
happening. Is this some fucking joke?
I wonder if my lock is just frozen, so I heat up the key with my lighter and try it again, still
nothing. I sink my head in disgust, the snow tickles against my cheeks and hands. Im not laughing.
Need some help?
Theres a voice that I once knew, far back. And for a second, its like Im floating and this is
all just a dream: the snow, the dim lights, my keys and everything. I turn and the voice is real and
Ive just stepped out of a time machine.
Jamie?
He doesnt say anything for a second. His eyes squint, his black moustache ruffles and then
he strokes his chin. Then he says it. No shit manDuke?
Yep, I nod.
46

No shit man, he says it again. Talk about a fucking reunion my friend!
Yeah man, I reply, its been what, like ten years?
Something like that, he comes closer and pats me on the back. His strength hasnt
changed much from high school; he still makes me wince a little. He looks me over, studying all the
differences in my appearance. I look at him too, his eyes are still a vibrant brown and his lip still sags
a little to the left. He didnt have a moustache back then, and Im proud of him, I never thought he
could grow one.
You havent changed so much, he says, his head nodding up and down.
Nice moustache, I say back.
So, he begins, whats up with the car? Hes gesturing with his hands, pointing at the car,
swirling them about in the air and I have no idea where he picked that up.
This fucking keyit wont work, Im getting pissed off again.
What do you mean it wont work? His hands are holding an invisible key and moving back
and forth.
Exactly what I said man, I say, I put the goddamn thing in and it wont even turn!
His hands rise up and his mouth begins to open but I stop him, No. It isn't frozen either,
trust me. He drops his hands, and theyre idle for a moment.
You know, he says, I have no clue. Did you snap a part off your key or something? You
were always breaking everything else back in the day. He chuckles, his hands rest on his chest.
I look at the key but nothing is broken. Its perfectly fine. What the fuck then?
He shrugs. Let me give you a ride man. Well have a little chat, like old times.
I look up at him and smile, Yeah, old times sounds good.
He presses a button on his key ring and his car unlocks and starts running. Woo, look at
Mr. Fancy over here eh?
He laughs as he opens the driver side door, Shut up.
He puts the key in the ignition and the radio turns on. The music is soft and dreamy, like a
lullaby. The guitars are like gentle hands and the voice is like that massage Ive been promising
myself for months now. He puts the car in drive and we make our way out of the parking lot. My car
sinks deeper into the shadows behind us, and Im not even worried. Im in his car and I really dont
care about anything right now.
For a moment everything is silent except for the radio. Were just sitting, looking straight
ahead at the white dots flying at us through the windshield, and I can hear the mush on the road
47

spraying out from under the tires. We slow down and stop at a red light and theres no one else
around. And I think, we own this town, its all ours right now.
He breaks the silence first, So you end up tying the knot with Shauna?
I laugh, No man that ended a long time ago.
Wow, he says, I thought you guys were it, the end. Nothing was touching that.
Yeah well, we also thought the band was the end too. And look what happened to that.
Look where we are now, sitting here in this car, practically strangers.
We turn left down some road with barely any streetlights, just black. The trees mesh into the
road and all the houses are snoozing. The snow is starting to move faster, and the wipers do too.
Ah, the band, he says.
It feels like that happened in another lifetime. As if who I am now isnt the same person as
whom I was back then. I stare out the window and I can see my reflection staring back. I look old.
Those were good times, I say, remember the school talent show?
When we threw those fucking water balloons all over everyone!? his voice raises and for
a few seconds his hands are completely off the wheel, we are driverless in this abyssal street. For
some reason its comforting, seeing his hands off the wheel. His ghost hands with the ghost key he
held in the parking lot.
Everyone was so pissed! Now Im laughing.
And Im thinking about that day way back when, us on the stage of the school auditorium,
flailing on my guitar while Jamie yelled into the microphone at the crowd. Some people were into it,
dancing and bobbing their heads. The teachers stood in back, their eyes empty, trying to understand
what our musical message was. As if we had some hidden meaning behind it all. Then the slingshots
came. We let our instruments ring out, feedback and noise, while we grabbed the slingshots from
our pockets. We loaded the balloons before anyone had any idea at all, before they could get up and
move, before anyone could say anything.
Everyone was soaked, balloons flew through the distortion. Girls with fresh nipples exposed
through their wet shirts, all the boys stared while their hair dripped down into their faces. We started
to finish our song and we could see the teachers running as they stomped through puddles and
pushed past drenched students. The good old days.
Were both still laughing on this black road that doesn't seem to end and Im thinking of
Shauna now, beautiful Shauna. She certainly was something, the way she would lean against her
locker and wait for me to get out of class, her eyes rose like a hot air balloon when she saw me, her
48

little fingers grazing at my sides. We were so in love.
Shauna, I say.
He stops laughing and looks at me, hands back on the wheel. What did happen to her?
We justwe now Im the one with my hands in the air, rolling them like I can spin
webs. We grew apart I guess.
Man, he says. I really did though; I really thought you guys were the real fucking deal. If
anyone was going to make it past high school it was you two.
I did too, I reply. And there are some days I still find myself wishing things were that way.
I could come home and she would be leaning against the kitchen counter the way she did the
lockers, and there would be something delicious in the oven and I could kiss her all over. Thats the
way we had it planned out.
We talked about that once, her and I, our future. She wanted to be a vet, she loved little
animals. I wanted to be pretty much anything other than whom I was now, some low life in a
cubicle. She wanted a small house, just enough for the two of us and a baby. She wanted a child so
bad, my child. She always looked at me in a funny way, like she saw beyond me, something I would
never be able to pick up no matter how hard I looked into a mirror. She would say, I want our
baby to look just like you.
We had plans, I tell him.
He looks over at me, I look at him, and snowy shadows give him a polka dot appearance.
Then we pass under a bridge and for a few seconds hes gone. What kind of plans?
Big plans, I say, we were going to get married and all that shit. A child, she wanted a child
that looked just like me. I
You what? he asks.
Theres a car coming in the opposite direction, the first sign of life Id seen all night outside
of this car. Its headlights are intense, two eyes piercing the night. All I can see are these lights,
blackness and lights. Closer and closer, widening the way Shaunas eyes would when we made love.
Then they are gone and were alone again on the road.
I dont know, I say. What about you, are you married?
Not yet, but almost. My girl, were pretty serious. Kate. Thats her name. Finally were at
the end of the road and he takes a right. I cant read the sign, its covered in snow. But you, youre
married right?
Yeah, I answer. Shes a good woman.
49

"Yeah? Tell me about her," he says.
"About her? You know, she cooks, and she cleans. We get along just fine."
"You're in love with her right?"
Theres another car coming, its headlights tinted a faint blue. I wonder what the driver is
doing, where hes heading, where he came from, or if he too is chatting with an old friend. Maybe
there isnt even a driver behind the wheel, just a ghost wishing it was alive. The ghost passes and I
wish him well.
We are back to silence, just the soft crunch of tires over snow. I remember the last time I
spoke to Shauna, how removed her voice was, her eyes lost color as we stared at one another and
how she wouldnt touch me. I begged her, I pleaded, but she was done. I was so sorry, and her
mouth, it moved as if someone else was speaking for her. I just cant, she said, my heart just isnt
in this anymore. You dont even realize what youve put my heart through, it hurts. This hurts. I
cant.
I stood up and slipped off my skin and left it there on the couch. Here, I said, in case you
change your mind. I walked out the door and never spoke to her again, my skin, Ive never seen it
since. Sometimes I wonder what she did with it, if she threw it out, or maybe she tried it on herself,
to see where I was coming from.
I look at my reflection against the window, and the more I look, the less comfortable I am. I
feel like I never should have left myself at Shaunas like I did, my skin just lying there on her couch.
You alright man? he asks. I barely hear him.
Theres a line of cars coming up ahead, three or four. All of them staring and straining to see
inside our car. I can see the light leaking across them all, staining the back of the car in front. When
I look over at him, his skin looks so comfortable, he looks so lively. The cars, theyre coming closer
and its in that moment, right before their light swallows up the hood of his car and cuts into me
that I see it. That moment when the road disappears, there is nothing but you and the lights, staring.
And then Im bathed in light, one, two, three, and four.
Jamie! I yell.
He looks over and his eyes widen, but he keeps his mouth shut, hands on the wheel tight. I
can see right through myself, I am the ghost I imagined in the other car. Im that phony actor
pretending he knows where he is, pretending I know the right lines. My keys, they arent real, my car
back at the theater, its not really my car, and this skin, its not my skin. Im scratching at my arms,
theyre so tight against my bones and Im starting to bleed.
50

Fuck man! he cries, Youre bleeding on the seats! Goddamnit! Christ! The fuck are you
doing anyway? Im bringing you home. Where do you livefuck! Theres blood everywhere!
Just stop here, I say.
Were in the middle of the fucking woods!
Stop here, I say, calm.
How are you getting home? Your wife? Your car? His eyes are trying to stay on the road,
but he keeps looking over at the blood dripping onto his seats and dashboard. His hands are
shaking, and I really dont care.
Stop, I say again.
He pulls over and I open the door to greet the black trees. He has his blinker on, and the
forest opens and closes in flashes. I turn back to face him. You know, I really dont think my house
key will work either.
He looks at me and Im dripping blood onto his window. I apologize and try to wipe it but it
only smears, and his face is a burgundy mess through the glass. I look back to the forest, open,
close; open, close and I run. I hear his car pull away and then there is nothing.
Im still scratching at my arms, and the small branches on the night floor pick away at my
legs. The moon is high and the stars are shining only for me, guiding. I can smell it, my skin hanging
in her closet. Shauna still thinks of me.














51

BODY LANGUAGE
She moved her lips so I couldnt kiss them and told me I didnt appreciate what they had to
offer. I asked her where she had put them; she looked strange without a pair of lips on her face. She
told me she had hid them and wasnt going to put them back until I realized what I was missing.
When you kiss me, she said, your lips are always pulling away, pulling back. You should
be pushing them in, pressing them into mine.
How am I supposed to do that when you dont have lips anymore?
Figure it out.

When she left for work the next morning I ripped through the apartment searching for her
lips. I pulled frantically at the clothes piling in the closet; I went through each cabinet, under each
sink. I checked inside books and bottles, through each item in the fridge. I couldnt find her lips
anywhere.
She came home and saw the mess and knew what I had done. Youre not going to find
them, she said. She shook her head, disappointed. I sat on the couch looking at her, nothing to say,
desperately wanting those thin pink strips of skin to adorn her face.
And besides, what makes you think they are in the apartment?
That thought had never crossed my mind. But where else would she have put them, in the
desk at her office or somewhere in the car? Would she have put them somewhere in public, tucked
beneath some random rock in the park or dangling from the limbs of a tree?
She could see the confused desperation leaking across my features and laughed like an
animal before going into the bedroom. I got up and left. Outside the couples of the city strolled
about, hands and arms linked together and everywhere I looked lips, lips, lips. Under neon signs and
damp streetlights I saw couples pursing their lips and touching their lips, moving their lips across
body parts and kissing, kissing, kissing.
At the top of the highest hill in the city I looked out at the shadows of the buildings, the lit
windows staring straight into me rather than me staring into them. I lay down on my back, eyes to
the stars and began kissing my hand so I wouldnt forget what kissing was like. It wasnt anywhere
close to the same as kissing her.
52


I came home in the black of the early morning and she was asleep. I stood at the foot of the
bed for minutes or hours or years and stared as she lay in her sleeping state, content and relaxed, and
in the darkness I couldnt tell that she no longer had lips and for a little while I even forgot that fact
entirely. I smiled as I undressed and slipped under the covers silently, trying my best not to wake
her. That night I dreamt of a city where everyones lips were three times the normal size so there
were plenty of kisses to go around.

The next day her breasts were gone. She walked around the apartment topless just to prove
to me that they truly were absent. There was nothing there at all; her chest was just flat and empty
skin. There was no shape, no nipples.
What are you doing? I asked.
Oh, this? she said. Darling, Im much more than this.
She moved her hands up and down her chest, teasing and taunting me. She looked even
more bizarre with her combination of a lipless face and a breast-less body.
Tits dont make the woman, she said as she slid a shirt over her head without putting a bra
on first. The woman makes the tits. Maybe you will see that?
She blew me a kiss, though the true intentions were lost on me, before heading out the door
for work. I was once again left alone to brood all over the apartment, to be haunted by the loss of
her body parts.

There was a time when we were on and bright. When we would stroll through parks and
lonely avenues, arms linked, hands held, laughter poured from our lips. Last December we secluded
ourselves up in a motel room for three days and didnt look out the windows once. For three days
we left the world behind and created a new one within the confines of four walls and a bed. During
the day we lay in the bed and kept the television at a low hum and we talked about everything there
was to talk about. When the sun dipped we shut off the lights and explored each others bodies. Her
lips were full, her breasts ripe, her body curved into mine. The veiling darkness made us both seem
all the more naked. At one point she wrestled me under the sheets, our bodies wet with kiss and
sweat and whispered in my ear, baisez-moi. The sound of it shivered across my skin, though I did
not know the meaning of what she said. That December was the warmest month of the whole year.

53

I waited around the apartment all day until night washed over and she still hadnt arrived
home. I wondered what she could be doing. I pictured her at some grand party, dancing on top of
tables; exposing her non breasts and making men want her all the more. Out the window the city
was so alive. The buildings breathed with light and the streets celebrated with the noise of traffic and
conversation. The apartment felt so empty, as though I was the only inhabitant on a distant planet
and here, beyond the glass, was the discovery of a new galaxy teaming with energy and life. And
somewhere out there my fellow astronaut had abandoned the planet she had come from or maybe
the planet had abandoned her.

Her ass was the next to go. In the morning I looked up over the sheets with half opened
eyes and saw her getting dressed. She caught my glance and pulled down her underwear to make me
aware. Her back went straight down to her legs. I closed my eyes and shook my head and could hear
her chuckling to herself as she tossed her hair about in front of the mirror.
Thats right, no more ass.
I pulled the covers over my head and listened to her walk around the apartment as she
opened cabinets and drawers in her routine before work. I refused to get out of bed until I heard the
door close shut and the click of her heels on the sidewalk out front. Once I was assured she was
gone I quickly threw on some clothes and left to who knows where.
All I could notice on everyone I passed were the very body parts missing from her. In the
coffee shop young girls with young lips blew on their lattes until the temperature was bearable. I
watched a group of three, chatting and giggling, watched how their lips moved with their words and
gestures, how they parted so slightly to let out that filtered burst of air into their porcelain cups. My
eyes moved and I traced the shapes of their bodies under their clothes and tried to pinpoint the
exact moment where things began to spiral out of control. How did we end up in such a place where
she felt the need to remove the most beautiful parts of her body?

We only went to the beach when the skies were gray because no one else did. We put down
towels and lay down and stared at each other. We said nothing but that void of silence spoke
volumes. With each blink we ripped away the layers of our lives, the dilemmas that plagued us, the
haunt of the everyday, until we were at our purest forms and instincts guided and connected us on
that long stretch of sand. I felt like as long as we had these sands under gray skies we could solve
anything.
54

The summer season, which only ended a few months ago, seemed to stretch for miles. There
was always more time, more adventure to be found, and more moments that rippled through us to
the core of our hearts. We rose with the early sun and exhausted ourselves until its very last rays, on
beaches and lakes, atop mountains and hills, through long winding streets and under the shadows of
skyscrapers, love was abound in our travels. Still, as I thought, I couldnt find that one moment
where everything shifted for the worse. There was only a fine line that distinguished the past from
the present. I can only remember back then and right now, whatever lied in between was lost in the
far off seas of my mind and I sat marooned on a lonely island without a raft.

I didnt see her for the next three days. She was home at times, I saw evidence of it, dishes
moved from the table to the sink, new envelopes opened and left astray, windows I had left opened
suddenly closed, but she could only have been there when I was asleep because I never left the
apartment.
On the fourth day I awoke and immediately her absence was still heavily present. I stumbled
into the kitchen and saw a glass bowl on the table with what I thought at first had two marbles in it.
The glass bowl wasnt there before I went to bed, further evidence of her coming and going whilst I
slept. What was inside the bowl werent marbles but her eyes. Her beautiful viridian eyes, sitting idly
at the glass bottom like some surreal display. I touched them once, felt their squishiness and
retreated to the living room in fear I might somehow blind her by pressing them too hard.

The first time I told her I loved her she said nothing in return, though I could tell in her face
that she wanted to. We sat in a theater, the credits rolling on the screen, all the seats emptied except
ours. She was babbling about the movie and the infidelity of the characters, about her lack of faith in
the future of our culture as a whole when I turned to her and said it simply.
She stopped talking mid sentence, stopped moving her body entirely and stared straight
ahead at the screen as the names whisked by faster than she could read. We walked home that night
in silence but she held my hand to let me know she was still there. I waited three days for a reply. It
came during a botched dinner. Id burnt the chicken and we both attempted to eat the blackened
meat, forcing smiles at one another, when she shoved her plate off the table, climbed on top and
crawled over to me. She shoved my plate aside as well and pasted her lips to mine. She pulled away
slightly for a soft moment and whispered delicately into my ear the words Id waited to hear back at
the theater.
55


I finally saw her one evening when she burst through the door in a hurry. She saw me sitting
on the couch and stopped. Oh, she said. I didnt think you would be here.
Where would I be? I asked.
I dont know, not here.
Ive been waiting for you.
Then I noticed it. Now her arm was missing. She was deteriorating at a rapid pace. Rather
than hide her fingers and then her hand, she had taken it all off at once. Her whole left arm and
hand, the one I had always held, gone. She didnt make a comment on it, instead strode past me into
the bedroom.
There was the noise of the closet door opening, objects inside being rumbled about, clothes
being strewn aside, the door closing again. I heard her sighing and grunting and when she came back
into the living room her other arm was gone.
Did you just leave your right arm in the closet? I asked.
No,
Well where is it?
I wish you would just see it, she said.
See what?
I barely saw her leave she walked out the door so fast. I tried again to think of those
moments lost in the void, the moments between then and now, the wires that connected us between
the joyous and passionate heartbeats we once felt and the cold and isolated moments we now
shared. I could vaguely recall fights where we said things we didnt truly mean, but somewhere
inside, I had begun to tug my heart away from hers. I could hear insults that stabbed and maimed us,
and kisses and pathetic apologies trying to bandage up the wounds. I could slightly see her across
that ocean, that void of memories between us, waves crashing onto our shores, her island eroding
and moving further away from mine.
And there was one night, I could see the details of it now coming to the surface, when we
made passionless love, like it was a uniform we wore, and she looked at me afterwards, her breasts
still moving fast with her breathing, strangely and intently. I stared back at her but could not meet
her eyes fully, they were invading, peering into me and I wasnt in the mood to be so open. I looked
around her eyes, at her nose, her mouth and she took her hand and moved my face until her eyes
met mine and she stared right through me, saw me more naked than I was there lying beside her,
56

beyond my flesh. I love you, she said. And this time it was an utter reversal of the theater, her
mouth spoke and mine was silent. She laid out her heart on the bed, let its beat ripple across the
sheets, made it pound into my ears and I could not find the right words to return. She stroked my
hand, her fingers soft and inviting, her eyes still piercing, anticipation swelling for my mouth to
open, my voice to speak, and my heart to flutter out of my chest and join hers on the bed between
us. I muttered the words and turned over to face the other side of the bed. I wanted to believe what
I said, I wanted to fully mean it but somehow I couldnt. I had started tugging away my heart with
each increasing fight, each violent outburst. Here was the moment I had seamlessly forgotten,
perhaps purposely, where our love took a separate path. I questioned if I could ever fully love at all.
A moment I now, upon looking back, wish I could have ended differently, displaying my affection
adamantly, curling her into my arms, locking lips and singing love so loudly wed paint midnight a
new shade.

I remained in the apartment, not wanting to go out and see happy couples, smiling teeth and
kissing cheeks. I kept replaying all the lost moments in my head, the places where we turned all
wrong, where I turned wrong. There was still love in my heart, I could hear it and feel it, like the last
drops of liquid swooshing around in a bottle, enough to satisfy your thirst. I wanted to erase the
bad, to set us back on the right path, to kiss and understand why, to hand my heart over willingly
and with a purpose. I phoned a florist and had him deliver roses to the door and then I waited for
her to come home. I did not see her for another four days. I forgot water and the roses wilted, the
petals sailing down to the floor like a slow suicide. She was in and out the door again, muttering
something about the roses, she had no arms and one leg and I tried to find some sort of words to
throw at her before the door slammed. I reached down into my heart for something, my anxious
chest tightened but my lips kept shut. I heard her one legged footstep on the sidewalk outside,
walking to wherever it was she going and dreamt of a time when those legs walked to me and her
lips were on her face and we kissed and kissed until our vision was so black we swore we were blind.

I slept off hours until I couldnt tell time. At some point the phone rang and I picked it up.
You should have found them by now. It was her.
What?
You werent even looking. My lips, my arms, you could have put me back together
goddamnit!
57

I tried already. I dont know where the hell you put them, really, please
You know what I have now? I have all these boys bringing them back to me. I was in the
park and all these boys were holding my body parts, trying to put them back on me, wanting to love
me.
I pulled the phone away from my ear for a moment, picturing boys holding her in pieces,
kisses on their minds, eyeing her. My stomach punched itself, sickness shifted in my veins.
I wantedoh, never mind, she said and hung up.
I couldnt keep the images of other boys out of my head, watching them scramble to gather
her arms and legs, kissing them tenderly, handing them to her with utter adoration, eyes twinkling
with romantic intent. I wanted to smash them all, snatch her arms and legs, gather up her lips and
put them back myself, bow down on one knee and confess my love, shout it so loud the city would
shudder under the weight of my words. I wanted to kiss those lips and push in, push in so deep wed
frolic in her throat and soak up the heat inside each others bodies. I wanted her skin and arms, her
legs wrapped around me, our nakedness apparent and our body parts intact. I wanted her sex and
lust, the silent moments and loud conversations, the moods and tones, the ambiance that she carried
like an extra appendage.

*

There is a crash of glass and Im awake. I rustle around in the sheets for a minute, trying to
find myself fully, untangle my legs and swing out of bed. Theres music blaring from the living room
and I can hear lots of voices shouting and laughing, male voices.
I open the door and there is a crowd of boys around the coffee table, downing alcohol and
praising the air. There is movement on the table, I can hear her footsteps but she is nowhere to be
seen. They are screaming for more, stroking her ghostly legs as they dance, her invisible dress
parachuting out and giving them a show.
I start to shout but the boys dont acknowledge me. I run to the stereo and unplug it but the
music still pours out of the speakers, bouncing bass and hot rhythms and I know she is dancing,
painting the room with her elegance. She is smiles and bulging cheek bones, she is sweating
happiness, all attention on her, hearts beaming.
And then I can see her, pieces of her appearing, her arm flails in the air, her other arm grabs
at her hair, sexually pulling. Her legs bob to the music, stomping across the table, accepting the
58

caresses of the drunken boys. Her lips are full and pursed, kissing apparitions, her eyes awake and
open to the world around her, the party of life, a city offering its arms.
Then there she is in full, moving her dress in all directions, teasing the boys, torturing me
and Im the one fading. We are trading full flesh for unobservable wounds. Theres a flash and I see
our time together condensed into minutes, her birthday celebrated in laser lights, her hips swinging
in a yellow dress, our hands clasped under streetlights, kisses under the shade of trees in parks, a
fabulous kite swaying in the breeze, candid conversations under the covers, the language of our
bodies, the flight of our hearts and the darkness around it.
With nothing left I make a dash for the window and over the music and her radiance no one
looks over as the glass shatters. As I fall I can feel my skin fading into bone, fading into nothing and
all around me the windows of the city stare and hold their breath, waiting for the last whisper of a
lover and his empty heart.




















59

UNDER THE TREE
There were echoes all around them, their shadows delirious and only existed in short spurts
under the breath of the streetlights. They danced as their cigarettes leaked calligraphy across the
night sky and she tried to trace it with her finger. He asked her what it said and she replied Its a
secret to the stars.
The smoke towered over them for a few moments, observing before dissipating into the
darkness and she took the cancerous pen to her lips to write some more. There was a light veil of
frost over the front yards of the neighborhood and the cars glistened like midnight ghosts with a
message. He looked up to the stars for a moment but their lips were sealed with her secret.
She wore a polka dot party dress under her open coat, ribbons and bows snaked across her chest,
and he wanted to unwrap her like a Christmas present. He imagined them pulling at each others
clothes until they were naked in the snow.
Every night she confronted the grinning monster in the mirror, she saw her blood flow
across her insides, a stomach that begged for food and a heart that didnt beat quite fast enough. She
knew of nothing internal, for without covering, everything inside her belonged to the world.
He edged closer to her as they continued around the block and the comfort of night
decreased as the gap between them grew shorter. Her life was a game of hide-and-seek with only
one rule; no one could ever find her.
Do you ever wonder if somewhere out there, across the stars, there is someone just like
you, walking along a street, thinking the same things you are, doing the same things you are? he
asked. She took a few steps away from him to keep the distance.
I doubt it. She replied.
Why? he blew smoke out through his nose and it tickled her face. His footsteps were
closer and she took a few steps away, arms folded across her chest.
She had picked up smoking from her mother and would lock herself in her room and watch
the smoke enter her lungs. She would watch them blacken, and her heart rate increase. He thought
there was something beautiful about cigarettes, something aesthetic about the smoke slithering out
from under his lips and the loss of care that lasted until that burning line reached the filter.
She shook her head, Burdens.
60

He knew all too well about burdens with his lizard skin. As she stared into the mirror before
meeting up with him, he had too. He stared at the scaly patterns across his body, trying to make
sense of the designs. He felt their hardness, like smoothed braille, before putting his clothes on and
wishing he could wake up soft.
It was days before Christmas and all around them houses gleamed with blinking light and
holiday figures guarding the lawns. He had set up his tree earlier in the day. It was taller than he had
thought, and it bent at the top like a sad haircut. He stood under it, star in hand, and wondered how
he could crown it properly. Finally, he placed it in the middle on a fat branch and said I give you
heart,
She didnt have a tree this year. Lately her melancholy mother sat at the table with a pile of
bills and cried to long glass bottles. Her house was empty and black, the paint peeled in the hallways
and the cold air seeped in through cracks with the cockroaches. Sometimes she awoke in the middle
of the night with roaches all over her, under her shirt and over her heart. They saw everything
though her transparent skin, they danced on her veins and followed her blood flow like water slides.
She never moved an inch.


For a long time she had talked with him but she remained behind the wooden fence in her
yard. He peered over at her but she was splinters from the neck down. He kept his coat snug and
tight, the cold air dried out his scales and it irritated him. One day he asked her if she would come
over the fence, if they could walk somewhere. She stood silent for a moment, her heart beating
furiously and she wondered if he would be able to see it. She finally accepted but when they walked
around the block it was as if she carried the fence with her and each time he tried to step closer she
would see hammers in his hands.
Their walks became an everyday occurrence and she started to look forward to seeing his
face appear above her fence. One time, as she climbed back over the fence into her yard, she leaned
over and kissed him. His mouth was the evergreen trees she and her mother used to cut down every
Christmas. She held the kiss and could feel the axe in her hands, see the smile on her mothers face
and then the tree falling down.


So you really dont think
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No, she cut him off, its not that I dont think. I hope. I hope there isnt someone out
there exactly like me. I wouldnt wish that for anyone.
He leaned back and stretched with a groan. Again, his steps drew a little closer but his
breathing sounded sweet to her, soothing. When she looked down at his hands he wasnt holding
hammers, and when she came back to herself she had already started climbing the invisible fence
between them.
They held hands and he smiled. This is nice and new.
When they arrived at her yard she climbed back over her fence then turned to kiss him. The
kiss was pounding excitement, like bounding down the stairs on Christmas morning to see what was
underneath the tree. She let go and he asked, Will you come over tomorrow for Christmas Eve?
Perhaps, she said.
When she walked inside her house her mother was sleeping with the long glass bottles. She
went upstairs, lay on her bed and dreamt of a girls night. She dreamt of being surrounded by girls
with budding breasts and letting their secrets spill out across their sleeping bags. Girls named
Therese, Kelsey and Amy. They all chatted in their t-shirts and underwear because that is what boys
want, girls in their underwear. She was all the rage, all eyes on her. Therese stopped painting her
nails, Kelsey stopped combing her hair and Amy stopped twirling hers, and all of them stared and
said, You are so beautiful. Were so jealous. Then Therese cupped her breasts and said My boobs
are way too small. She giggled with the rest of the girls and they turned the lights off. Morning
came in the dream and when she woke the girls still slept. She slid down her underwear and took her
t-shirt off, because that is what boys wanted, naked girls. She paraded over the sleeping girls and her
heart was hidden, her blood veiled and they all watched, even with their eyes closed.
He was home and stared at the ceiling. He wondered if she could love a lizard, if she could
rub his scales and be pleasured by it. Downstairs his tree sighed but its heart glistened, and so did his
when he thought of her. He rolled over in his bed and shut his eyes as the memory of her kiss lulled
him to sleep.
She woke and was alone, her imaginative sleepover gone. He slept through the afternoon
then went to her fence to wait. He waited and waited but she never came. He looked into her
windows but didnt see her walking around. He rubbed his head and walked back home, slouched
with his hands in his pockets. It was Christmas Eve and all the houses jumped, the inhabitants
partied and kissed and exchanged gifts while his house frowned with darkened windows.
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When he walked in and turned on the lights, there she was under the tree. She was in her
party dress with a bow on her head and a gift tag tied around her wrist. She didnt move and she
didnt smile. He stared at her for a moment then sat down next to the tree.
He picked up the tag and read his name. He grabbed her by her feet and pulled her out from
the tree bottom and she still remained motionless. He pulled the bow off her head then grabbed a
pair of scissors and started to cut up the seam in her dress. He ripped the dress off her and saw her
heart as it thumped wildly about, saw her blackened lungs, saw the blue lines of her blood running
throughout her body and he said Im glad you didnt bring the fence with you.
She smiled and reached over to unbutton his coat. She pulled his shirt and pants off and
looked him up and down. They kissed and fell and rolled under the tree. They made love under the
branches and the heart of the tree slipped forward and crashed to the floor. The light faded into the
carpet, while his heart illuminated his scales. Hers burned bright too, he could see it.












63

WAR ZONE

Her mouth was a war zone, with pistols for teeth and a knife for a tongue. Shed never been
to a dentist, but was very familiar with gun polish and a rag. She didnt know the pain of a cavity but
shed be damned before she got rust.
She was the life of the party. Open windows and open booze, she stood on tables and
danced. There were always thick black lines racing around her eyes and her hair fell in tangles that
bounced against her puffy cheeks, while her dress flirted with the air above her knees. Sometimes
the boys would throw wine glasses in the air and ask her to shoot at them, and she would. Bam,
bam! Broken pieces embedded in the carpet and everyone clapped and yelled. More! More!
Sometimes they placed fruit on their heads and shoulders and trusted her in their drunken
state. Apples exploded and oranges burst all over as she twirled; the bullet spewing ballerina. When
she got too drunk her tongue lazily hung and cut up her lip. Thats when she sat and the party would
too, eyes off the table and to the floor, cans rested and slowly as the night wore on bodies would
drift to sleep.
When the sun crawled in through the windows and spread across the floor, she woke up
with blood clots on her chin. There was a haze across her eyes that made the room sparkle like
empty snail shells glued to the walls. She looked around at the boys, how they curved around the
furniture and rested in crime scene chalk fashion. There were other girls too, she didnt know their
names but they followed the boys like thunder.
Some mornings when she was the only one awake, she would go outside and set up beer
cans along the brick wall in the backyard. This morning however, she just sat on the wall, whipped
her feet across the grass back and forth while she rested her chin on a clenched fist and thought
about what else she could shoot. There were birds dancing across the telephone wires and squirrels
running across tree limbs. There was a rotting tomato garden and a statue of an angel that
overlooked a birdbath. She looked up as a plane disrupted the morning silence and she traced its jet
black trail with her mouth. When the smog cleared and the clouds returned, she wondered if she
could ever shoot them down and blanket the world in white.
As she stood up one of the boys came out through the backdoor. He staggered over towards
64

her; his hair disheveled and molesting the air. He leaned his hand on the birdbath to keep himself
balanced and he smiled. Hey,
Hi, she said.
That was some party last night huh?
She nodded. Yeah
Slowly, he sat down on the grass. She sat down too, across from him and the edge of her
skirt tickled his knees. The sun had climbed higher into the sky and the clouds moved like rush hour
traffic. The rest of the neighborhood still slept. The morning song a slow and silent tempo and she
listened as her hands pawed through her hair. She thought the boys name was Eric, but she wasnt
sure.
I cant wait for tonight, he said.
Mmmm, she hummed in agreement. Her hair was clumped together in tight twists and she
fidgeted to separate them. He still sat with his arms at his side and he stared beyond her at the
wooden fence at the end of the yard. She stood when the soundtrack changed to the early afternoon
and she heard cars engines starting, people walking on the sidewalks and music pouring from screen
windows to fill the summer void.
She walked back into the house and everyone was awake, moving around on the couches
and touching things that didnt belong to them. Some people patted her on the back as she made her
way to the kitchen. Some yelled at her, Yeah! You fucking shoot that shit!
She sat at the kitchen table and wondered if anyone here even knew her name. The only
name she had heard all night was that chick with the guns. Sunlight dimly lit up the room, trying to
push through the closed curtains. Life sprung throughout all the rooms of the house, girls showered
upstairs while boys wrestled with the remote and outside cigarettes were lit over the excited banter
of tonights party.
The afternoon wore itself out and slipped under the shady comfort of a starry blanket. The
moon was bright and bore its craters proudly. As the boys dragged in booze and the girls trampled
down the stairs in skimpy outfits, she was still in the kitchen alone. She thought of shooting the legs
off the table, shooting through the refrigerator door and damaging the cartons inside, she thought of
shooting through the windows to let in the summer night.
Someone came into the kitchen and touched her shoulder. She didnt turn her head to see
who it was but she smelled cheap cologne treading over a musty odor. Whoever it was squeezed her
shoulder and asked You gonna stay in here all night?
65

She pushed the hand away and got up out of the chair. Give me a beer, she said.
She was on the table in an hour as she danced to the deafening jams that erupted from the
speakers. All around her everyone cheered, and then the boys grabbed one of the framed artworks
off the wall. Shoot it! Shoot it!
She stopped her dancing and stood spinning. She looked at the piece of art in their hands,
the intricate designs, the swirls and black smudges, the circles that might be eyes, eyes that stared
through her, and the hidden message that was dried somewhere on the canvas. She swayed and the
more the picture moved with her, the more it made sense. The lines connected into the pattern of a
heart and the eyes all around it watched. The black smudges like the boys and girls that held this art
for her to destroy.
Cmon! Shoot it already!
The girls were as excited as the boys. They clawed at her feet and threw their arms into the
air, the music never stopped. She felt like the art up on the table, all eyes on her as they waited for
her to perform, to make her message seen and heard. The heart began to beat as the boys started to
throw the painting into the air in hopes she would shoot it. Up and down, the heart and the eyes
were alive with pastel flair and acrylic awareness.
Fucking, lets go!
She opened her mouth and everyone cheered, the music stopped and they waited for the
bullets to pierce the painting. It was the boy that threw the artwork, he was first. The bullets riddled
through him and he flew back into the wall. She caught the painting with one hand before it hit the
ground, and then laughed with gung-ho spirit.
The boys and girls panicked and ran circles around the house, trying to wake their bodies
from their drunken stupors while the bullets Swiss-cheesed across the house. She couldnt stop her
laughter and each time a bullet hit, the painted heart pumped violently. There were holes in the
windows and outside lucky footsteps raced up the pavement. She had never been as excited as she
laughed and laughed, her head tilted back and gunning the ceiling. The glasses and fruit hadnt run,
they hadnt screamed, they just broke.
Finally the house was silent and she closed her mouth. The heart was frantic and leaped on
and off the canvas as she placed it back on the wall. She stuck out her tongue and licked the
bouncing organ, slicing it open. She took a step back to admire it and wondered who the artist was.


66

Voyeur
He and she are fucking while I watch. Shes moaning deep desire and hes pounding flesh
into flesh. Im fully clothed, eyes attune to their fornication, studying. He comes inside of her; their
bodies stiffen and then wriggle against one another.
Youre not naked enough, I say.
They tear at each others skin and lay it down like a new mattress and fuck again.
More.
Their muscle dissipates in frenzy and their bones come apart at the joints. There is
movement on the sheets but I see nothing. Hearts beat heavy, breathing mists the air. I applaud their
naked form.
















67


War Zone was previously published in Parnassus, where it won the award for Best Fiction in
2007. It is also published in the April 2012 issue of Jersey Devil Press.
The Noise Porcelain Makes was previously published by Electric Windmill Press.
Under The Tree was previously published in Parnassus and Oberons Law.
Minus The Queen was previously published in Parnassus and Green Light Press.
Pieces Of Glass and Devour was previously published in Parnassus.


68

ifeifeifeifeife
"A Lovely Appetite" is a collection of bizarre and surreal
stories that deal with the quest within us all to find beauty in
the everyday of our lives and shows that sometimes we have
to travel to very dark places in order to find a light.

"Skin", the opening story, tells of a man so obsessed with
the softness of another woman's skin that everything else in
his life becomes hard and calloused. "Minus The Queen"
concerns the beautiful daughter of a hotel tycoon who
struggles to escape her fame and wants nothing more than
someone to point out her ugliness and flaws. "Devour"
deals with lovers that take turns eating one another and
show off their wounds as a sign of their love. In "War
Zone" a girl with guns for teeth attends nightly parties until
she realizes no one knows her for who she truly is.


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