sunday prompt: message

every day she put a letter in the mailbox of the abandoned house. the look on her face: determined, deliberate. her stride, nonchalant, affected slightly, even in the hop up the steps to the front door. the kind of thing that you see when you have a window on the first floor. the passersby and their idiosyncrasies; the hasty gait of someone late to an appointment, the swagger of the youth, the hesitant, cramped dodder of the elderly. those walking dogs or hands fastened securely to children. and this, every day, mid-afternoon, the girl who puts mail in the mailbox of an abandoned house. gotta be crazy, right. one of those people kind of soft in the head who walk the same block three times talking to themselves or shouting obscenities at ghosts. but he's never seen her anywhere else, even in this little fist of a city. just the same time every afternoon.

he's only just moved into this apartment after a particularly nasty break-up that he swears isn't his fault but knows secretly inside, like a rotting fruit, that it was. he had become distant in the final months, felt his eyes and hands wandering. never committed an infidelity but dreamed he had. guilt stained his mouth and teeth. spent more hours in the studio, at the bar. bourbon after bourbon. then, tipsy and wilted, stagger back to the easel and the paints and the inks and outside, the night crashing down all around -

he had a tickle in the back of his throat. the girl was going away again, back down the street headed west. he drummed his fingers against the wall and pulled the curtain back. kept drumming. gnawed on his lower lip with his sinistral incisor, a nervous habit he had picked up only recently. something about the sensation of constantly biting into meat, maybe.

before he knew what he was doing, he had zipped on his sweater, his vest, was out the door, cigarette and lighter in hand. the cold rushed into him like a linebacker and he unconsciously grappled backward for the doorknob, slamming the door shut behind him. the wind was anxious, multi-directional, sweeping to and fro with a vengeance. god's broom, he thought idly, and was out the side gate with cigarette burning feverishly in his mouth.

the house had stood there, empty, for as long as he had lived in the town. there's always a house like it in every town, no matter how small. untenanted, condemned, landlord overseas. the kids don't even go in there to smoke weed and drink budweiser. the walls are curiously graffiti-less, you can see through the naked windows. it's almost as though the house occupies negative space, somehow escapes everyone's notice. everyone but her, of course. he climbs the steps one at a time, carefully, as though afraid the wrong foothold will cause the entire thing to come crashing down - or worse, fold into some sort of clichéd dimensional blip like the house in Poltergeist.

the mailbox was closed. a small metal box, black paint flaking off to reveal the mottled steel beneath. he opened it and looked inside. there was only one envelope, smallish, neatly creased. he had expected more, for the box to be overflowing with dead letters, and was surprised. he withdrew it from the box and let the lid clang shut. both sides were curiously blank, yet holding it up to the sun revealed there was, indeed, a letter inside. he hesitated, then left the house standing there, ducked down the steps two at a time and dashed back through the side gate. once in the lee of the house and the wind, he crouched over his find and stared at the back. could be anything in there. might not even be in English. he opened the envelope.


i hope you're getting these. i can get away from them for exactly the same amount of time at the same time every day but for no longer. you were right, they are watching me

love,
e


the wind whistled around the corner of the house and he jumped involuntarily, fumbling with the cigarette. it dropped to the ground and rolled away, winking like a villain, under the porch.
he stared after it for a long moment, then folded up the letter and returned to the house.

the cats were being affectionate when he re-entered, butting their heads against his shins and purring like twin jet engines. he bent down and kneaded their backs with his knuckles and they butted his fists with their jaws. they had been Rose's cats, but the apartment she was moving into didn't allow pets (landlord, childhood trauma, long story) and so, having had grown fond of at least one of them, took them with him. they had named them Fergus and Molly.

he absently gave the two some dry kibble, mind completely elsewhere. his phone was ringing, he could hear its insistent, childlike warble coming from the other room, but he didn't bother to answer it. the cats muscled their way into the bowls and began to crunch happily at their snack.

it had been Rose. of course. around that time of day, she gets lonely. gets bored. he knows her, knows her almost to the point of transparency, to the point of near-boredom. she's going to want to ask what he's doing tonight. does he want to go get a drink. does he want to just hang out and watch a movie? and all that everyone is talking about is how it's a season of breakups, always right before Valentine's Day, right? landlords must be making a killing, he can hear himself reply, rehearses the joke, knows she won't get it, will say it anyway.

so he doesn't call her back. not just yet. he knows himself, knows he'll get bored too. waiting for it to snow - it's supposed to. a right nasty blizzard tonight, coming in from the great white north. he's heard both the bum report and the weather stations. everyone is anxious, hand-wringing. he isn't worried. hasn't happened yet. the threat of a toothless dog, this winter, so far. has been the dominion of ice. lots of passersby on crutches this season, poking and staking their way down the narrow, root-heaved sidewalks. sun hasn't even gone under the trees yet. gets cold when it's dark, real cold.

he kicks off his shoes and sits down heavily at his desk, turning the letter from "e." over & over in his hands. he's already decided she's a crazy person, pirouetting in her room at her apartment at this very moment, mumbling to herself about Them and They and the constant, watching eyes. but that was just it. she didn't look like a crazy person. and why hadn't he ever seen her anywhere else? he leans back in his chair and sighs. feels like a detective. a weird, secret joy has blossomed in his brain. he grabs a pen and tears a corner-scrap from the huge pad of newsprint paper. writes

a cautionary tale

and stares at it for a long time. chews on the cap of the pen. drums a beat on the desk.

o

"so what if she's not crazy? what if this is a real thing?" the dialogue had gotten beyond the simple facts of the case to a drunken hatching of conspiracy theory. they had been talking for hours, beer and shot and shot for shot. listing like sailors on their barstools in the largely empty bar. the huge plasma TV was, as usual, showing the game, and Darren kept glancing at it, away from him and the conversation. someone was playing a lot of Foreigner on the jukebox.

"i don't know. it just doesn't seem ... i mean, how long has that house stood there?"

"it doesn't have to be about the house, though. haven't you ever read any Len Deighton, or, Tom Clancy, or any of those guys? haven't you ever seen a spy movie?"

"oh, so now you think she's a spy?"

"no - dude - i'm just saying. spies use abandoned locations for their mailboxes all the time. think about it. what better place to have a secret mailbox than a mailbox nobody ever uses?"

"well ... why not just e-mail? encrypt it or something."

"dude, you know that shit gets tracked," Darren said, slamming his hand on the bar as the game suddenly took a turn for the worse - "hacked, even," he added as an afterthought. "dude probably destroys the letters after he gets them."

"how do we know he's even getting them? i never see anybody else use it - and i've watched."

Darren shrugged, took another pull of his pabst. "just because you don't see something don't mean it's not happening."

"still."

"you don't think there's crazy shit happening out there in the world? people die, get hunted, fall down, break their skulls in their showers, get in car accidents, break up, divorce - " he cut himself off, slanting his eyes at him. "sorry dude. didn't mean - "

"it's fine. i'm not a wreck or anything over it."

"yeah. i noticed."

"she keeps calling. wants to hang out."

Darren shook his head, back and forth, solemnly, intoning, "women."

"yeah."

they lapsed into a silence, both with their eyes to the television. Darren's fist on the bar, again, and the startled eye of the bartender roving over in their direction. "maybe i should take a picture of her," he said, half-mumbling into his chin-rested fist.

"because watching her isn't creepy enough," Darren quipped.

"you would too."

"fuck yeah. you know i would. is she hot?"

he frowned. "yeah. i mean. yeah."

"maybe you should just go talk to her."

oddly enough, that hadn't occurred to him. "that hadn't occurred to me."

"dumbass," Darren said, affectionately, and punched him lightly in the shoulder. "did you forget you're single now?"

"dude. i don't want to ask her on a date or anything. i just want to know what's going on."

Darren laughed, a full, throaty sound that wriggled around his adam's apple and came easily out of his mouth. "then just keep watching, i guess. no help for it." he paused. "you could just keep stealing the letters."

he nodded. "it's just too weird, right?"

"you're kind of a weird-magnet."

"thanks. dick."

"any time," Darren replied, cheerfully. "goddamnit!"

o

midnight, sloppy drunk. parted ways with Darren at the corner of Gray and K____, stumbling only once over a too-long step over an ice-slick. no falls though. he had begun to hiccough, and the wind was causing his eyes to water. he was half-thinking of a half-finished painting that had lain on the easel in his studio since he'd broken up with Rose. a girl on a staircase, hands clasped to her breasts, dark hair flying. something in her eyes. he felt guilty finishing it now. half of it remained pencil lines, smudged by the meat of his right hand. like a building with the scaffolding left on it.

in the house and wading through the feline miasma, he realized he had left the letter at the bar. could see it in his mind's eye, resting on the open envelope, right beside the emptying pint glass. "fuck," he said out loud, and sneezed violently, so hard he stepped backwards in the dark, much to the dismay of Fergus, who yowled in protest as he scampered out of the way, eyes luminous and mistrustful, flashing like warning signs on a wet highway. he fell into bed with his clothes on and regulated his breathing, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling. rising, falling. rising, falling. his eyes went to the window, curtain still coyly masking the night.

he got up and listed toward it, pulling the side of it just far enough away that he could see into the windows of the house next door. nothing stirred. the sky was scaled with gray clouds, moving heavily and ponderously. the wind rattled bits of stray refuse - an empty bag of chips, a crushed soda can, a newspaper - down the street. a shadow within the window's frame. moving. he riveted his attention on the scene, hand fisting tightly around the curtain's edge, keeping it firmly in place despite his drunkenness. something was moving inside the abandoned house. he squinted. just kids, probably. but he'd never seen that before. but just because he doesn't see something doesn't mean it doesn't --

no. it's nothing. it doesn't repeat. all he has is this tiny thing. can't trust his senses. he pulls the curtain back in disgust and collapses back into the bed. snaps off the music, even. curls into the sheets still fully clothed and refuses consciousness.

o

she doesn't come back.

this is the seventh day now. she hasn't returned.

he has watched. he has developed a habit of checking the mailbox on his way home from work, on his way to work, when he smokes a cigarette. he is knotted up inside with worry that she has been caught. he knows it's his fault. gnaws on his lower lip until it bleeds. if he just hadn't left the letter at the bar. they found it.

no. that's crazy talk. there's no they.

he has moved his chair to the window. he sits there hours a day, watching. waiting. it had snowed the night after he lost her letter, snowed just like they all said it was going to. the landscape had gone from naked and icy to plump, voluminous hills of white, miles of blinding white expanse no matter which way you looked. there were no footsteps up the stairs to the abandoned house and its mailbox save for his, ever. perhaps she's only snowed in.

on this day, he is writing a letter:

dear e. (whoever you are)

i'm sorry. i hope you are okay. i hope this isn't my fault. there's no such thing as They

and crumpled it up and thrown it out and is writing a letter:

dear e.

i am receiving your mail - hope this finds you well

love to you

and crumpled it up and thrown it out and is writing a letter:

dear e. (whoever you are)

i live next door. i found your letter and i stole it and i lost it and i'm sorry. please forgive me.

yours,
J.

he stares at it, his crabbed, messy handwriting, and sighs. looks back out the window. watches til the sun goes down. the sudden, shattering ring of his cell phone. he ignores it. lets it ring until it, quite suddenly, doesn't anymore.

a poem in pieces (while intoxicated, on coasters)

so this guy
& this girl
look

at each other
& laugh

at how drunk
they both are
then

write haikus
with vomit

sunday prompt: milestone

the invention of a milestone:


in place of an albatross he wore a millstone
around his neck. suffered through
the blinding sun and the twisting highways
and the dusty backroads,
head hanging and back straining
a torrent of sweat cascading
between sharkfin shoulderblades

he has come to this place,
read the sign that says
WAY STATION
and has halted, unsure.

there is an old building,
falling down around itself.
the sun cackles and crackles
and ascends like a madman who
runs up and down the same stairs
every day,
gibbering.
he is deafened by its noise,
folds himself into the station
and sits in the dust
and in the dark.

he has come in search of
Away,
and has yet to find it
but knows he is closer
than he ever has been.

he has named his shadow,
has given it a name in order
to control its waspish tendencies to
stretch out in the direction
he has come,
to sneak inside the soles of his shoes
and hide.
he has called it Miles,
somewhat frivolously.

he talks to his shadow, addresses it.
scolds it through cracked, dry lips
and with a lumpen tongue -

at night, in the cold,
her ghost: a pale blue shiver
like a pilot light about to go out.
parts her lips to speak
or kiss
and is gone.

in the morning he is walking again,
struggling with the weight of his millstone.

at half-past noon,
he unknots the rope and hurls it
as far from him as he can.
it lands and lays
like the shatter of Ozymandias,
quiescent. still.

he walks away
and leaves it to be covered
by the shifting wind