Excerpt from... something.

Margaret’s daughter, Siobhan, was a young, free-spirited sort of woman with too many friends and not enough things to do with them. She was defiantly pretty, in the way a mutt is pretty without being allowed to participate in Pedigree or Kennel Club bitch beauty pageants. Her blue eyes were like a child’s – wide and round and magnified a size and a half too large for her head, with long lashes that combed her bushy brown eyebrows. Her eyes had bags under them from a blend of school and her work as a stock girl in the spice aisle of an uppity gourmet supermarket. She was a caged bird; not a dove, but not a crow either. Perhaps a thrush or even a pigeon. She spent her time avoiding her parents and studying alternative music with sickeningly romantic lyrics. Some of the best songs had the most terrible words. But they did have minor augmented chords and half diminished thirteens and the most absurd tensions. Siobhan could not play guitar. She could figure out block chords on her eight hundred dollar Yamaha keyboard and play them in succession, but she left the actual music part to her audiophilic friends.

Siobhan was on the porch smoking down a pack of grape Swisher Sweets. Cheap blunts were her specialty; she loved the taste of artificially-flavored cancer. Her big eyes were not especially blue today, but then again neither was the sky. The snow-spawning clouds invaded her irises and filled them to the brim with a dull navy-gray, which only turned their impish size into those of a vintage doll, glassy and marble-like against her porcelain-painted skin. She smelled, as she always did, like copious amounts of various exotic varieties of different spices: Madagascar bourbon vanilla and pure aniseed were her favorite. At work she opened the aesthetic jars and took a pinch when no one was looking and rubbed it on her wrists. Spice had more character than Lovespell or Can-Can. It was a conversation starter, anyway.

It was a rather cold day. The snow – much less snow than white sheets of half-melting ice which was flowing glacially into the abandoned street below, picking up mud and dead grass from Mortimer’s tire tracks and spreading it haphazardly in eyeliner-streaks down the hill – was preparing its surface for another wave of precipitation; by the look of the pregnant, bulging winter clouds above her, it would start any moment now.

Why the FUCK wasn’t there any cell reception in the mountains by now?! The year 2010 was coming fast; the least society could have done was expanded to the more rural denizens. Duhring did have actual residents, after all. Why should they be denied the same luxuries as the more culturally up-to-date?

Siobhan lit her third blunt and sat down on the snow-soaked loveseat. She was hung-over. By her right foot sat a box of stale saltine crackers, from which she grabbed a handful and bitterly shoved a few in her mouth, taking the moment to ash her cigarillo. Drunkenness was not her favorite state of being. She preferred tobacco to anything, especially the middle-eastern variety, and weed was okay when she could get it. She liked the taste of vodka and she had been raised on wine (gradually diluted less and less by her grandfather), but too much made her murderously miserable. If there is anything worse than being a drunk, it is being an unhappy one.

In fact, Siobhan did not drink enough to alter her perception at all if she could manage it. She wouldn’t have touched more than a light beer last night if it hadn’t been for Paul, her ex-fiancé, forcing his way back into her life. She had been able to successfully forget him for the past three months; it was not until now that he had been able to get to her. Breakdowns are rarely graceful, unless executed by Audrey Hepburn or Kate Winslet, and that certainly rang true for Siobhan. Upon the midnight falling-out with her fiancé, she had reached for her cell phone, a bottle of vodka, and a twisty-straw, and sobbed incoherently to Nolan and Luna for an hour and a half. Nolan had not been much help, but then again he was probably drunk too. Luna listened patiently and intently and did the best she could to calm Siobhan down enough to reason with her about the evil Paul, whom she had dubbed the Cruel Overlord of Adultery.

Paul, the trust-breaker, the panty-raider, the virginity-thief, and the blame-placer, hadn’t known that Siobhan was good friends with his neighbor Martin. That is, he hadn’t known until he had seen Mortimer parked right outside his house, where it used to be at any given moment, and texted her. Then called to talk to her. Then wandered over to Martin’s house to talk to her. He had still wanted to be friends, as if they could still be friendly at all. He had still been convinced that she was just as in the wrong as he was, that they were even. When Siobhan told him they had no reason to speak, he got angry. He told her she had no right to be upset when she had cheated on him too. He was right. She had. With Nolan, no less. But it was once, and it was only a little heavy petting, and one or the other was not sober. Paul had been fucking some cheap broad (as far as Siobhan was concerned) for over a month, with no extra help from alcohol. He was totally blind to the fact that there is no equality in “I have been in a whole other relationship while we have been engaged” and “I accidentally went a little too far with a really good friend.” But she was already buzzed and he was smarter than her and he was manipulative and couldn’t handle blame. He made everything out to be her fault, and one way or another, she believed it for a moment or two. She did convince him finally to never contact her again. He did not agree gladly, but they both knew it was right. He left for home, and Siobhan immediately got shitfaced and swapped saliva with every gay man she knew in the household.

Phoebe drove Siobhan home. Phoebe did not drink. She did not smoke weed, and she was too sensitive to tobacco to smoke that either. Phoebe was highly disapproving of any form of vice, except of course sex. She had been in the practice of mothering babbling, boozed idiots for a half decade on account of her late husband Eoghan, whose many addictions were not limited to beer and cigarettes. If she had learned anything from Eoghan, it was to remain absolutely silent. Siobhan knew that she was angry, so she stayed quiet too, and resigned to wiping off her makeup before the waterworks started. It didn’t take two steps past the threshold of the house. As she was shedding her coat, and her hat, and her scarf, and her gloves, Phoebe asked if she needed anything. She responded by collapsing in her arms and wailing like the sick puppy she was. Phoebe made her go to bed, and returned with a piece of herbed toast (with pure aniseed), a dark chocolate truffle (with a Madagascar bourbon vanilla center), and a piping hot cup of Tension Tamer to calm her nerves.

It was at this time that she had begun her cellular tirade on the eardrums of Nolan and Luna. Nolan tried to listen, but ultimately changed the subject. He greatly valued his own sanity, and such conversations with a drunk friend-plus-benefits were not entirely beneficial to such. She appreciated his effort; she thought it was cute that he tried to get her mind off of the subject. He was actually getting his own mind off of her. Luna allowed herself to get personally involved so that Siobhan would not have to, called up the sonofabitch, and verbally castrated him. The Tension Tamer kicked in around that time. Siobhan slept heavily on someone else’s bed. She woke up hungry as fuck.

That was why Siobhan was smoking her life a few hours shorter on this cold day. Margaret was inside, and so were Phoebe and Luna. Innocent Margaret pointed out that something smelled peculiar. Phoebe choked and left the room. Luna knew the smell of Swishers all too well, but kept her mouth shut, for all Margaret’s other suspicions about her daughter would somehow be confirmed if she could verify that she smoked. That isn’t to say all the suspicions weren’t absolutely true. Margaret suspected a lot about her daughter about which she kept her lips tightly pursed. She did not know much at all about any of her relationships, and she even knew very little about Paul, except that he had long ago been Siobhan’s boss and that they both quit their jobs in order to be together. Therefore she knew nothing about her daughter’s sex life – which, of course, she always hoped half-optimistically was non-existent. As far as Margaret was concerned, Siobhan was ready to tell her anything that might happen in her life, and seeing as Siobhan never told her anything, she was leading a pretty decent one. She figured her daughter was repulsed by drugs and had a strong conviction concerning the role sex played in relationships.

“You and Paul didn’t…” Margaret would say.
“No, Mags, we didn’t.” Siobhan would answer. She refused to call her mother “Mom” like everyone else.
“Just making sure. I know you wouldn’t. It’s just that he’s older.”
“It’s cool, Mags. No, he respects me too much.” Like hell.
“That’s good. Just, if you are ever thinking about… you know. Come talk to me about it.” Once again, like hell.

Siobhan finished her pack in a record fifty minutes. She had taken a short stroll through the desolate campground, dragging sticks through the deep parts of the half- frozen swamps to wake up the hibernating frogs and toads under the surface. No one in the cabin would have enjoyed one blunt with her, and she was perfectly fine with that. It is one thing to enjoy a blunt with friends. That is when one has deep conversations and gets to know people, and depending on who one is with, it can lead to some pretty interesting topics and potentially to some mild sexual activity in the back of a pickup truck. But enjoying a blunt on one’s own is a twisted sort of meditation. Smoke has a way of clearing one’s mind by simply clouding it up. It clogs the unnecessary thoughts and chokes them and somehow has the wisdom to keep the important thoughts clean. Siobhan did not entirely believe this, but the thought came to her as she was walking.

Anyway, tobacco was supposed to be relaxing, right? She never inhaled all the way more than once per blunt, because it made her cough. Her lungs were quite more used to shisha and other smoky susbstances, that the queer pureness of the cheap cigarillo excited her nerves too much.
She had enjoyed the first Swisher of this pack down at the swimming hole with her dog, Carmen, chasing invisible sprites around the thick ice which stifled the usually rushing waters of Pine Creek. The monochrome of the ice and snow and gray, rolling clouds made it unreal enough that no thoughts needed insult her relaxation. At that point, Luna had been off somewhere taking pictures of the snow-covered branches and broken ice and dogs and General Winter’s ambush on Northern Pennsylvania. She had abandoned Siobhan at the creek to chase a windstorm whose breath blew the forest’s new cover into a snowy maelstrom around her. That is where she began thinking of the art of smoking solitaire.

Smokers smoke for any variety of reasons, obviously. Kids smoke because they think it’s cool. Women smoke because it brings them at level with men. Men smoke because it makes them more animal than they already are. Social butterflies smoke to make more friends who smoke, teenagers smoke to disobey. Loners smoke because they’re alone. Some people smoke for fun, be it social or masochistic, some people smoke to punish themselves. Alaska smokes to die. Old men smoke because it’s what they did when they were young men. Young men smoke because they hang out with too many old men. That’s all cigarettes, of course. Once you get into things like straight tobacco and other potentially harmful lung-steams a whole new slough of reasons surfaces. Siobhan made a mental note to recount them to… someone. Nolan would listen, but he was not a camper. Nolan was probably presently smoking as well back home in the jolly Christmas suburbs, where the snow forgot to fall on the roads and the cold was abolished once you went inside. Nolan smoked blunts almost more regularly than Siobhan. He also smoked weed. Nolan smoked because it wasn’t as scary as dropping LSD. Nolan smoked because he was a musician, and all the good musicians smoked. Tom Waits smoked. Tom Waits was a good musician.

Siobhan smoked because…. Because she was Siobhan. She smoked because she didn’t know a good enough reason yet not to. Cancer didn’t scare her; she had a family history of it but it was comprised solely of survivors. She didn’t value her voice musically, others did that for her. All she valued were her fingers. And what would smoking do to them? Burn them, perhaps. She had certainly burnt herself many a time. But it had never done any permanent damage. In fact, a glissando was much more possible on her heavy-weighted keys now than ever since she had burned her pointer on a roach. The scar ran the outside length of the finger, and had calloused so well that it was tough as leather.

The second blunt was spent at the peaceful junction of path and creek on an old private covered bridge. (Margaret had always called it the tunnel bridge, as if it were both.) She had already made a mental inventory of reasons to smoke, and saved it in her internal files, fresh to be scrawled on a sticky-note and left in Nolan’s copy of a Kerouac novel, next to the little phone number he had scrawled in the corner of the inside back cover for strangers to find, with the words “for a deep anonymous conversation” to add effect. Now she was busy contemplating the complexities of winter. It was so miserable and yet beautiful at the same time! The black-and-white-photograph-beauty of it all was enough to make her pinkest orifice all misty and warm. While outdoor sex had always been a prominent fantasy of hers, she hadn’t before considered sex in the snow. She was suddenly all the more grateful for her solitude, as the concept itself snuck a curious finger into her jeans and made her gasp out loud, forcing unwanted grape smoke into her unprepared lungs and initiating a momentary coughing fit.

The remainder of this smoke was devoted to hopeful remedies to the problem of the snow’s biting cold which would inevitably ruin any good sexual experience by finding its way to all the wrong bits of anatomy. The covered bridge itself was a good idea – there was no snow at all beneath its carefully thatched roof, and the weather-worn wood was soft enough to accommodate a romantic encounter. Perhaps, Siobhan thought, the body heat produced would be enough to warm one another, though she knew this was impossible. If anything, it would be sufficient to melt a reasonable circumference of accumulation around two lovers, should no covered bridge be available. A heated blanket would do quite perfectly – or two, one beneath and one atop, to shield against the frozen ground and air. But those required electricity, and the idea of being electrocuted while in the act of public lovemaking was too frightening. Perhaps the solution was not to be sought in electronic bedding, but, in fact, in the little chemical hand-warmers sold at football games and drug stores. Perhaps she was becoming desperate.
God, she needed a lay. Maybe one day it would be in the snow. Until then, Nolan’s station wagon would be satisfactory. She figured that would be where the impending new year led them, anyway, if not to some uninhabited room at a party. She had insisted upon their very sudden introduction into the world of fuck-friends that they never rendezvous in their own houses. That, to Siobhan, required some level of commitment, and while Nolan was not entirely opposed to their growth, she abhorred it quite viciously.

“Careless idiots dive into a real relationship too soon after losing a fiancé,” she had said to him one night as he kissed his way up her thigh. “Harlots will have sex, though. I’d rather be a harlot than a careless-- Oh, Jesus!” Nolan wasn't kissing her thigh anymore. That was all she had to say about relationships that night.

The last three cigarillos diminished slowly on the lower porch of the old cabin. The dogs were usually quite sensitive to the sound of snow boots stomping up the rotting stairs, but Siobhan had been quiet and the dogs were fast asleep, legs twitching and all. She sat on an old loveseat – why was it called that? – and lit one, then another, and another, smelling of spices and confusing her poor old mother in the kitchen above. When she came inside (to inescapable glares from Phoebe and telling glances from Luna) she downed a glass of warm water and three Excedrin, then stood in the tiny yellowing plastic shower until the water turned cold. Then she curled up with Nolan’s book and wrote sticky notes and fell asleep with her face in page 128. When she woke up, she no longer was hung over, and Margaret was yelling for her to help wash the dishes; she had missed dinner.
 

We All Belong

It was hard walking up the dew-kissed lawn with the giant comforter draped about her shoulders. Her slippers were in no way made to provide such traction, and in the short climb to the street from the lower terrace, she slipped and fell a good number of times, wetting the knees of her pajamas. he was tired and her head was throbbing from the shrill chatter and drunken shouting downstairs.
Having caught her fall a third time, he was now busying himself with a cigar at the top of the hill, his face wrinkled slightly with exhausted concentration in the flickering light of the flame. When she caught up to him, shivering slightly in the chill, ears ringing from the noise which was now dwindling slowly as they walked farther and farther from the open door, he took the glowing cigar from his mouth and handed it to her with a vague and sleepy smile. She accepted it gladly, and as he lit another for himself, she stood silently on the sidewalk, breathing in deeply, letting the smoke invade her airways.
"Where we headed, anyway?" he muttered, pocketing his effects and taking a long drag.
"Nowhere," she suggested. "Anywhere."
The stars were glistening overhead. Some winked down at them with a coy appreciation of their venture into the night. Some looked close enough to touch; some looked billions of miles away. No crickets' song. By the soft porch light, a bat danced, gracefully swooping out of the still night air what little was left of the insects of Indian Summer.
"The truck?" he asked, quietly accepting a corner of the blanket as she offered it. She nodded, coughing lightly, and the two shuffled in the direction of the parked cars.
The truck was a celebrity among vehicles. Each piece of the body was a different color, in varying states of rust and decay. The color of the tailgate was long-forgotten, for every inch was plastered with colorful stickers for bands, charities, or clubs, or promoting political views, or sporting a popular cartoon character. No one knew to whom the worn-down truck properly belonged. It was always parked at these parties, anyway, and its six-foot bed was ideal for a private conversation or a peaceful smoke or a little bit of secluded intimacy.
The dew had already gotten to the plastic lining of the truck bed. She learned this upon sitting straight down, now wetting the seat of her pajamas along with the knees.
They giggled. Then, he climbed over the tailgate and laid out the comforter beneath them. They sat facing each other, leaning their heads and shoulders on the opposite sides of the truck, looking into each other's eyes. There was silence. She flicked her ashes behind her shoulder occasionally. He flicked his straight onto the comforter. They sat and smoked.
Just sitting and smoking was boring.
They tried talking. As fragrant smoke lingered around their heads and lifted their hushed voices gradually higher and higher into the darkness, towards the twinkling stars, and diffused itself casually into the brisk air around them, they exchanged every bit of information which had been locked away before, but which had been unleashed, were it by the exhaustion or the privacy or the burning cigars or the dew blanketing everything.
Her uncle was the only smoker in her family. He was a fucking failure, man, but he was a genius. An alcoholic. A junkie - literally addicted to every substance you could think of. Everyone hates him now, he ruined his life. Not her, though. She admired his ideas. He was clean now anyway, so he could see his daughter again. He was a Colorado pothead without a stomach, a cancer survivor with a PhD in biochemistry. He was a Buddhist Christian with two DUIs, a two-time divorcee with a lesbian crack dealer for an ex-wife. He had been clean for years. He had paid off all his debts and gotten a better-paying job than her parents. She was proud of him - he was so open about his addictions. But they were all anyone else ever saw; they never saw his recovery or his achievements.
He watched her face as she spoke. He watched the way her body melted into the blanket as she exhaled. He realized he knew nothing about this girl, and he liked it.
He asked if she knew Plath. She didn't. He asked if she knew Hughes. She didn't. He explained the complexities of Kerouac and Kafka and Tolkien. (She knew Tolkien. She loved Tolkien.) He became a storyteller of iconic tales. He summarized his favorite transcendental novels and recited his favorite beat poetry and together they analyzed syntax and gave birth to new meanings and possibilities and opinions. They laughed at how nerdy there were. He got out to relieve himself on the pavement. She didn't look.
She lit another. She could feel the dew creeping through the fibers of the blankets. They sat silently again. She put out her cigar.
"You're shivering," he said.
"No, I'm not cold." She coughed again.
"Come here." He returned to the truck bed and sat stiffly beside her. "You are freezing." His sweater was soft and warm. She leaned into him, nestled in the crook of his arm.
The stars looked down silently. They knew a secret. How cheeky they were.
He lit another, and smiled. "Go to sleep if you want," he muttered. "Let's not go back." She smiled and sighed and nodded. He looked up at the bright stars. They winked down at him. He winked back.

from the back of a pickup truck at 3am

is that my breath
or the smoke from
your silly lit-
-tle cigarettes

shhhhh! hehe

i see your friend
from the party
why does he have
to spy on us

--look at him--

it must be my
breath my cigar
has been out now
for a long time

hey...

the stars are bright
i forgot how
cloudy it has
been this past week

come here.

it is so cold
look you are shiv-
-ering so bad
you are tired

can i have a drag?

no lay your head
down youll never
get better if
you dont sleep some

i guess

life is so hard
lets not go back
lets just look up
at the bright stars

If I had one wish...

to see for one more day
with the eyes of the child
that i once was
where lies are simply mistakes
mistakes are simply lessons
lessons are simply words
and words mean exactly what
Merriam-Webster says they mean

to hear just once more
with innocent ears
not yet tainted with Four-Letter Words
(why did some not have four letters?)
or empty promises
or bad news
(even worse than "i am not
your friend")

to speak, to announce
with foolish confidence
and dauntless pride, for
i know something that someone else doesn't
and i can sound like my Parents
with big words
(like "Enthusiasm")
without the fear of being wrong
or of sounding dumb
or of offending a friend
of a friend

to love with an unbroken heart
whose limits have not been tested
and whose hopes are high
unbitten lips smiling
(because i used chapstick and
they're soft)
not having yet learned
that there's a "Too Far"
or a difference between
love and a waste of time

Wet Wings

I would fly away,
A symbol of how love does sting,
But you wet my wings.

We Spoke True Things Once...

Twilight glistens silently above our droopy eyelids
The summer air on the rooftop couldn't be more quiet
Placing bets on falling stars we swhisper nonsense words in two part harmony
Don't sing me a love song
I've been chased and loved by Romeos before
No Elizabethan prose
Don't try to make me laugh or make me cry or make me understand
Just tell me something that nobody knows
Here beneath the stars
Among the cigarettes and cars
And crickets singing
Tell me true words
Oh, tell me true words
Tell me true words you've never spoken before
Something keeps me lying here and waiting for a token
Something more contagious than nonsense words we've spoken
Breathing out and breathing in we whisper nonsense words in two part harmony
I've never been so sure
Wandering the streets on silent nights before
And mumbling in twelve bars
No on the roof we pass the bottle and we stare into the sky
And whisper secrets to the stars
Between the sting of rum
And all we've said, how far we've come
Maybe we're singing
Tell me true words
Tell me true words
Tell me true words you've never spoken before


The song stops here. So did the relationship, though.
I would have told him sooner if he hadn't been busy drinking himself dry.

How Is Your Heart?

Parkway lights driving home
Mix and blur with music
And passenger-seat complaints.
Stay open, eyes -
One hour more.