Les Mots

There were ways to wear what he wore, ways to make it better, ways to make him seem less worn, and it weighed on him. God, he said. Oh, god.

Holy hell, she said, her arms heaved in air, sensing the breeze's sting, sex seeds slicing through it, horny, thorny plants surrounding her.

The bed rank with rumpled sheets. Tissues balled. The scent of Vicks. It smells of sick day, she says, but at least it don't smell of death.

I love art school girls, he said - sly, smiling, remembering the flirting, the romps, the ringlets of carefree curls, the boy he used to be.

How's he plunging the valves with those peanut fingers, she asked. Spit flying, catching on lemon-colored lights, catching us all off-guard.

He was a god, the greatest crazy in the place - the prince of paper gowns, of pills in plastic cups; a giant in white, a ticker tape parade.

She chewed the aspirin, aspiring to be better, bitterness blooming, making her mouth water, making it desire water, little water in Russian.

She was way too twee, an engine chuffing with exuberance, glancing at all the fancy - the food she didn't pay for, the life she didn't plan.

It was just lunch, the two out of tune, remembering the lessons, remembering the end, the keys, the pedals & sustain. But it was just lunch.

They were missing connections, planes and bags circling slowly, a tall latte to-go, transient and alone - kissing until the moment's passed.

The grackle crackled through the afternoon, a death song, its beak tweaked into the sparrow, a quick shudder through ringlets of pipe smoke.

She stumbled in her own imagination, under her star signs, under her house, on pointe, as a ballerina, scared of tomorrow, scared of today.

She saw the potential in her arm. And the freckles, speckled, past the elbow, toward the food she didn't want, & the date she didn't either.

A walk around, a novel day, a day like any other. Anemic advertising. Anthemic antics. It was his day to be great, to be drunk, to be Bloom.

This ain't no lost luggage story, he said, sweaty, crowded by the belt in Baggage 2. Bags circling and under his eyes. Weighted, in waiting.

Attitude? You think I have an attitude, he seethed, without her, without gratitude, knocking the coins to the ground, a gratuitous gratuity.

That string still, dead tense, like a dog crawls. Then the sudden up and over - a symbol maybe, of what we were, of what we wanted us to be.

There was disquiet, here among the appliances, quiet in their aisle, and disbelief that it's Sears where this happened, where we fell apart.

Tangrams trisected, splayed tableside - rings of tangerine, juicy, divided, a part of the plan: a simple addition, the change she waits for.

Back in places not been in years, tears stirring, glinting off cheeks like icicles broken in the breeze, torn off, shattered on the asphalt.