the roar of the ocean in the sky echoed in our room

the shush of sheets
over bare, scissoring legs

late night undulation
thrust, parry,
push, pull

the wind from the window
is labor-shallow,
the world outside
is a woman in birth
snarling

i am devouring your pain
through savage, blunted teeth
i am shoving fistfuls of you
into a small wet cave
whose walls are painted
with figures from a dead time,
with the paint from the heads
of dead marigolds,

shatter, spin,
suddenly:
rounded eyes,
as big as two moons
in a blemished sky

i cram your heartbeat
into my ears,
all eleven measures of it

i like you terrified.
i like me poised,
catlike,
on a branch,
entranced by the black glint
of your fledgling bird's eye
somewhere down
on the winter ground

the ceiling thrums
like a skin pulled
taut over a drumhead,
the bed hums
like a skin pulled
tight over the bones
of a skull

outside, a seagull falls
for no reason
from the endlessness
of the sky

in the morning we will find it
crested, regal,
on its back, with its eyes squinched
shut and beak
curving heavenward

you unknit, suddenly,
too suddenly,
in the cold breath of the dawn,

and i spend the rest of my life
chasing down
the fleeting pieces of you
tossed about by the teasing wind

saint oscar (pt. 1)

my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth and i can feel the heartbeat of the knife in my pocket.  the whiskey thunders through my veins like a disease and threatens my brain.  the architecture of my brain has become Brutalist.  lately i have been bleeding from strange places and all i listen to is a female singer-songwriter who is prone to write songs about winter.

a week ago i told Lucas that i loved him and he stared at me as though i had become glass and shattered.  i have never seen someone so horrified and it's not that i'm so ugly.  i am ugly like an overripe fruit.  on the same day, the season turned into summer like a depressed, irritable person shifting their weight to one side.  i abruptly vomited and he held me up while gobbets of myself drooled from either side of my mouth.  his look of horror had melted down slightly, like plastic, or wax, subjected to an intense heat.

'are you OK?'  he asked, solicitously.  i watched a long strand of my saliva fall to the back of his hand, like a raindrop in slow motion.

my voice had fallen away from me, had slunk out of my throat like a lover caught cheating.  i shook my head from side to side and vomited again.

'should I take you to the hospital?'

his eyes were so concerned.  there is a sheen of sympathy on his face, like sweat after a long run.  his voice is tired and weary.  he's had enough of me, i can tell.  i've had enough of me. 

i smelled of day-old garbage.  banana peels, orange rinds.  coffee grounds and sour milk.  i started to cry and mucus clogged the back of my throat.  one of my shoelaces came undone and lay on the sidewalk like a dead worm.

the only thing that will make me feel better is to kill him.  i considered a bullet.  i considered poison, the weird white lace of dusty arsenic.  i considered a bomb.  in the end, only a knife would do.  i've kept it in my pocket, folded like the legs of a cricket, for so long.  it's never had a use.  it gets warm in my hands when i grip it.

'HAVE YOU CONSIDERED JESUS?' a poster on the telephone pole is yelling at me. 

'no,' i tell it simply, lying, as i pass by.  one hand is in my pocket.  the other one swings haplessly by my side.  my friend the female singer-songwriter is singing in my ear a song about skinny trees bent over by the weight of the gray sky.  her voice is like a skein of yarn, unspooling, looping itself in thick coils on the floor of my skull.

i quit smoking in November but i want a cigarette right now more than anything.

Lucas lives in a five-story building on the other side of town.  i can see the brick of it in my head.  there is an obnoxious seagull that is following me.  i know it is the same one because it has a cock-sure look to its beady eye.  this started a week ago.  i ran at it to scare it off, yelling like a madman.  it just stared at me, and then took off, flying up into the sky where i couldn't reach it.  i'd like to rip its feathers out, one by one, and then burn them, one by one, with a lighter.  i think it knows what my plan is.  it's eyeing my pocket.  i've named it Lucas.

the other side of town is over a railroad track which acts like a tourniquet, cutting off the bloodflow.  all of the houses are drained white, blanched.  there is no color on this side of town, except for the trees in fall.  Lucas lives in number three-A.  his apartment building is full of beautiful people who never need to wash their hair to look good.  the kind of people you stare at on the street.  clothes were made for them.  i am in love with a number of them, but none so strongly as Lucas.  he wears an impossibly russet-colored shirt almost constantly, with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms.  he always seems to have a hooded sweatshirt on, even in summer.  when he wears a white t-shirt, his skin turns ruddy.  his eyes are brown and his hair is brown and straight and touched with weird brushstrokes of tarnished gold.  he is the kind of guy who wears one pair of sneakers and always has.  they are grass-stained and battered and their color is blue, as though they are out of breath and slightly cyanotic.  he can't seem to keep the laces tied. 

the sun sneaks out of a cloud and lances me right in the eye.  i blanch away from it and Lucas-the-gull caws loudly like he's laughing.  i wish i had a slingshot and a small explosive.  'fucking bird,' i mutter, and spit to one side.  my stomach is lurching around like a drunken giant inside of me.  i have to inhale, a shuddery breath that feels serrated, like a knife sawing deeply into a plank of wood.

i am pink on the inside, like a badly-cooked piece of meat.  i don't ever want to see the inside of myself on the outside ever again.  my tongue has unloosened from the roof of my mouth like the cuff on a shirt and barely feels attached to the floor of my mouth either.  if i open my jaw it will slide right out of me and fall to the ground, wriggling around desperately, like a snail without its shell.

my heart is aching.  actually aching.  it seems to beat like a tired drummer, desultorily hitting the snare, arrhythmically and out of time.

if i don't stop i will follow through.  i can feel my knife warming up through my jeans.  Lucas' building appears slowly, like a scene from a movie, and i push open the front door.  it is not locked.  headlines are cartwheeling through my head.  TWENTY-YEAR OLD BARISTA SLAIN IN APARTMENT.  LUNATIC IMPRISONED.  SENTENCED TO DEATH.  JURY.  JUDGE.  EXECUTED.  "HE WAS SO QUIET."

i turn around in the dark lobby and see Lucas-the-gull performing a small promenade outside, bobbing his head up and down, knowingly.  he looses a garbled cackle.

you're just death sans hood, baby

i watch you take your eyes
out of your skull
and place them on the table
reverently,
then step back and sigh,
crossing your arms
over your chest

cigarette smoke unravels
from your mouth
in long, knotty ganglia,
as though you are
exhaling your spine

i watch you
quietly and decisively
plunge your hand
into your chest
and pull your calcified heart out
and set it on the table

when it hits the wood,
it makes a noise
like a glass of whiskey
re-encountering the bar
from the hand of a drunk
and glitters
nastily
in the same way

your hair
turns suddenly white
with the effort of growing,
and you tell me
between mouthfuls
of your own fingers
how you've always
bitten your nails
to "the quick"

your wan smile threatens
to slide right off of your skull
and then makes good on its threat

you pull off your skin
like a set of rainsoaked clothes
and your skeleton shivers
like a windchime in a
dispirited breeze

i touch each one
of your vertebrae,
rap each one lightly
with a knuckle,
as though quietly
asking for permission to enter
as though quietly
begging you to stay

the electric universe (scraps)

the new world!
a blinking whirl,
a dizzy shimmer,
this lurching carnival &
sudden, dreamlike drift -
           have I been here before?
 (electricity's invisible kiss, a clock's devious hiss)

& the atmosphere is crackling
with unsung words
pickpocketed from the mouths
of drunken poets

(this winterbound city
purses her lips, hesitates,
crumbles, burns, shivers,
reassembles.)

the old street still lives
beneath the new street,
the old hotel rooms hum
inside new apartments,
like a clock within a clock,
one pair of hands
in a desperate chase
after another,
sweeping indulgently past hour
after hour,
gathering up seconds like gemstones
as the face yellows
and clockguts rust

(& the rain falls outside
desultory, indifferent,
gathers strangth,
exhausts itself,
spatters, stops)

we are creating a new history
all salvage & twisted rope &
rusted links of chain,
feebly attempting any connection
between empyreal and concrete,
lashing down whatever
embattled spirits we can
(some nights i roll over
and there is a phantom
between us, eyes shut
and hands fists (as though in prayer)
beneath the eave of her chin)

and time clothes itself in
the discarded garb of our old enemy -
Death -
as we inch nearer
to the edge of
an unnamed cliff
only ever trangressed in dream -

(even it, doubling in the
drunken field of our vision,
reveals itself as hologram)

and time,
that awful invisible tyrant
who lives in the wings
hushing every actor
who has yet to
make their eager entrance

fishing

to Mike Foley

I am trying to slip sidewise
into this unwritten poem,
I am a sliver of a person
lodged in the palm of the bar,
surrounded by fidgeting fingers,
loquacious drunks, befuddled by
the intensity of the guy adjacent -
a man who provokes conversation
so that he can use the word "I"
as much as possible,
as though that ninth letter
at some indiscernible point in the past
became totemic,
and I keep slipping obliquely,
jarred by this man's insistent,
repeating narrative of
a missing tooth -
and they say when (within a dream)
a tooth goes missing
it means you're afraid of abandonment,
as though a part of you
has mysteriously & without reason,
politely & bloodlessly,
seceded overnight -
just like this damned poem,
a silvery flash under dark waters
(and me without a creel or even
a serviceable line, pun intended)
all I have is this wriggling worm,
too fleshy and insistent,
desperate not to be used,
so alien against
the iridescence of my palm -

The Mill (fragment of an exorcism)

[INTRODUCTION/SETTING THE SCENE]

That's just what they called it: the Mill.

It was a building where people went in, sat down for hours, and then walked out at the end. Some of them straggled outside to smoke, gnawing the filters of their cigarettes, hands moving sluggishly as they attempted to process the hours of the day and explain how they felt to the other blank-eyed smokers who stood beside them.

The parking lot was where these hapless escapees congregated, behind the dumpsters and beside the heaving growl of the central air unit. Some of them looked like kicked dogs, huddled into their coats, while others found momentary strength in numbers, complaining loudly and expansively to their comrades. Most just stood silently, staring into the bluer-than-blue sky, or off at the bigger building across the arterial, some firm with three names and what looked like ergonomic chairs at each desk. The winter was in the gray phase, when everything looked scuffed and corroded by the weird white markings of rock-salt and snow-sand. They felt their lungs, too, graying, like loose-leaf notebook paper gone to ash. Their eyes hung out of their faces.

It might as well have been Bedlam, but without the screaming and after the pre-frontal lobotomy.

Inside, it was worse. This was the Slow Season, and most of the people sat at their desks, hands on the home key row on their keyboards, staring sightlessly into too-bright monitors uncalibrated for hours of use. Overhead, garish rows of fluorescent lights stretched on for rooms and rooms, while stairwells were sinkholes of dark, flickering bulbs and breakrooms more of a storage space for vending machines and chairs with missing wheels or broken backs. Each room was structured as panopticon, with an overseer in the middle and their assignees grouped around them, all facing brick walls, so that the supervisor would be able to see their monitors. The Slow Season meant that everyone had just suffered through the crushing anxiety of Cut-Downs, where the wheat was scythed from the chaff, with blinding efficacy and seemingly no regard for circumstance. One grossly overweight woman, whom everyone knew had no acumen for the job, was kept on, while a young man who had just rented himself a studio apartment and was clawing his way out of debt had been told that he was “no longer needed.”

Desks changed every so often. They would come in to their position, only to discover, as though through some sort of dream logic, their desk was no longer their desk. Disorientation followed, and the onus of figuring out what, exactly, had occurred, fell on the hapless worker. He could always turn to ask the overseer, but they, likelier than not, would simply frost their gaze and point in a direction that the worker would then follow, hopefully, to some sort of answer. By the time the new location was ascertained (on another floor, but still facing another brick wall), the worker was considered “late” and suffered through the acid tones of their own supervisor as they sat down to prepare to do nothing for hours on end.

Most took up smoking just to be able to get out of the stifling atmosphere for 15 minutes at a time. These fifteen minutes were highly prized possessions. Some, especially those on the entry level, or the third floor, were in the unenviable position of having to ask their supervisor for an OK to leave. Cruelly, the supervisor would often either ignore their question, or simply say “no” with nary another thought. Their eyes, it's true, hardly ever left the monitors before them.

At five in the evening, the doors exploded with the rush of those freed from the innards of the Mill. Of course, there were some who had to stay behind, perhaps for hours, perhaps on a later shift. This, then, the optimal time to be there. Throughout the night, the third floor windows were illuminated. The hazards of being open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, even on Christmas Day. The Mill simply never slept.

It is a small city, perched on the edge of a harbor like a child testing its courage. The Atlantic turns into a widow in the winter, chilly and unforgiving and bitter, making itself a mirror for the world and showing nothing but bile and vitriol. Snow and ice crust the streets for months before melting into a gray sludge that looks like the residue of a painting after being attacked by turpentine. But this, the knothole of winter, the time after the old year's gone and the time before the new spring comes, this is the worst. The cold is unabated, the wind is hawklike and uncivil, and the hours leap by like whitetail deer before the sound of a hunter's rifle. The sun's passage across the sky is mortichnic, like tired clockwork performing a final time, every day.

There's a joke that runs through the city like an old thread, stained like a smoker's teeth: “You could always go work at the Mill.” And most, if they're lucky, know what that means and have been lucky to escape it, but some are desperate and don't know, and don't have anyone to warn them. And those who do go, stay for a long time. Hardly anyone ever quits the Mill - you're either fired, or you're a lifer. Most have been there past the three-year mark, declaiming with ever-withering tones as the months pass, “No, this time I mean it. I'm out of here. This is my last year. No bullshit.” And all the others nod their heads in mock-sage agreement, knowing better. The year passes, and even through the warm bounty of the summer and the crisp of fall, the ague of winter descends again and the year's wheel turns, and they're still there, at their desk, strapped in and just a bit more smudged around the hollows of the eyes.

This is a place where questions, once asked, lie unanswered on the floor like dead leaves. Eyes dart from corner to corner as if seeing shadows move, or as if seeking shadows. The breath of every single worker at the Mill is rotted and stale, and they stink of fear-sweat as it saturates their clothes.

And when they are finally off of a shift, they proceed in rank & slumped-shoulder file to bars, bars of different colors and stripes, different drinks clenched in different hands, but always a drink and hardly ever a beer. They chase away the weird grit of despair that lodges in the cracks between their teeth and in the corners of their eyes with the cleansing burn of alcohol. Soon enough, they overdrink, and the anger worms its way back into their hearts and their fists clench anew as eyes slowly creep back towards the clocks on the wall. As last call approaches with a heavy, almost tender step, the only thing on their mind is how many hours are left before returning to their desks and once again snapping closed the shackles around their wrists and tethering themselves to their desks.

Well, it's either this or a life of crime. Or a life working at the convenience store down the hill, where you're more apt to be stabbed than you are smiled at, and you'll go home with less in your pockets than you had when you arrived. The fifth floor of the Mill is reserved for these kinds of arguments, when the heads of the company bother to address the concerns of those who work below. The fifth floor, indeed, is never trespassed upon, not even to make use of its bathroom. Most do their business quickly, though the stalls don't lock and the urinals don't flush, and paper towels are hardly ever in supply. The handles of the bathrooms are almost always wet with someone else's residue, and most workers use the pinched sleeve of their shirt or jacket to open them. Once inside, the noisome chamber affords little privacy or even sanitation. In a sublimely cruel trick, the flusher on the toilets is situated in such a way that one must reach through the horns of the seat to depress, or put the seat down entirely. This is a problem endemic to the men's room, but there are other problems, and most would argue, somewhat worse, to the women's. The fifth floor argues that they are lucky to have a separate men's room and a women's room. This, they say, is an expense and ill-afforded.

In the lower levels, the temperature is hardly ever regulated, and most of the workers there are seen wrapped in layers throughout the day. Some prefer gloves, though that does make it more difficult to type, and the overseers frown on inefficiency. So the first floor are called the “Bluefingers” because of the strange hue of their hands, due to the cold. This is ironic, because those who deal most consistently with rich, upper-crust clients are on this floor. It is an enviable position, if only because of the prestige, but no one wants to work there because those who do inevitably come down with the First Floor Sickness: an unexplained phenomenon consisting of a constantly running nose, pertussis-like coughing, and a strange, low burr to their exhausted voices.

•

A pale, membranous blue, lit spectrally, as if from behind. The sun, slunk already between buildings, and the waves going in and out of the harbor like murderer's knives.

The still quiet of between-holidays, a city emptied from its brim to its dregs. The crunch of snow underfoot like day-old pastries, the street itself with a thin crust of delicate icing.

A toothache, like a black hole in his jaw, and his mittened hand at the side of his cheek, rubbing ineffectually. This is a different kind of cold, one that does not respond to half-hearted friction. Best thing is to relocate the pain. He strips off his left mitten and uses the teeth on the left side of his mouth to bite down hard on his index and middle finger, already pinking in the frigid air. He bites carefully, pressing hard on the divot between the third and second joint, and applies more pressure. The cold air seeps in around his fingers and saliva trickles down the side of his chin like a dam secretly preparing to burst. He feels the slimy trail go gelid as soon as it leaks from the corner of his mouth - too cold even to launch itself from the rampart of his chin and shatter on the sidewalk.

A carhorn, and headlights flashing - he's inadvertently crossed into the street at a green light. The driver, an old man with white hair and a Burberry coat (with matching red-plaid hat) is gesticulating angrily at him. He stops, standing directly in the road, staring at the man. The car is a shiny black BMW 5-series. There is not a single spot of rocksalt or sand on it, not even in the wheel-wells where plump, satisfied tires rotate on finely-greased axles.

The driver rolls down the window. He notes that the man is also wearing a scarf that matches his coat. “Whaddaya doin? Are you fuckin retarded?” Re-tah-ded. He doesn't recognize the accent. He shrugs and blinks, fingers still in his mouth. He removes them, gingerly, and the toothache gleefully reasserts itself. He notices the weird, nearly topological crescents of tooth imprints on his fingers.

“Toothache,” he says, by way of explanation, but his voice is quiet and the wind pulls the sound away from his lips before it has a chance to reach the irate driver-man's ears. Drooping ligaments of saliva are still attached to his fingertips from his mouth.

“GET OUT OF THE GODDAM ROAD!” The driver is turning purple. Like Veronica Salt, or whoever, from Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. Maybe he'll explode. He laughs a little, wondering where the driver-man has got to go that's so important.

“Are you late for a very important date?” He asks, tossing out his voice like a lasso. He does not move from the spot he's stopped. A weird rash of light has grown in his eyes, making him appear almost feverish. “You should check your pocket-watch!”

The man has rolled up his window again. He is now holding the heel of his hand against the horn. The sound obliterates anything else, for blocks around. The whole world becomes the F# of the horn.

He opens his mouth, saliva still dripping from his teeth, and looses a sound to harmonize with it.

One of his shoelaces has come untied, he notices idly. It lays like an old, dead worm on the asphalt, after a spring rain. He cuts off his sound, and stoops down to fix it.

Redandblack birds fill his vision. It feels like he's falling through a strange, wet, leaf-pile. The pain of the toothache, finally freed, explodes throughout his entire body as the car slams into his side, rupturing his skull and shattering his bones.

The sound of the horn continues to echo, pitch-shifting, like a scream unsure of itself, and then finally pinches off.

•

He wouldn't have done it if there had been someone there to see. He wouldn't have done it if his daughter, who looks to be about the kid's age, had been in the car, or in the state, for that matter. He wouldn't have done it if he hadn't just left his ex-wife's house, dropping off the kids' Christmas presents. His ex-wife's house, his old house.

He adjusts the chunky Rolex on his right wrist and turns the seat-warmers up. A not entirely unwelcome heat seeps up and into his buttocks, rising through them. He catalogues the various aches:

right knee
third digit of right ring finger (where the ring used to be)
knife-edge of left hand, near to wrist
indigestion
a rough tickle in his throat (post-nasal drip, perhaps)
rattling in the lungs

He'd light up a cigarette, but he promised someone he wouldn't. His hands are shaking slightly, and his nose is running.

He wouldn't have done it if it weren't so late in the day.

He wonders if there's blood on the front fender. He wonders if he bent the fender. The goddam mechanic won't be in until the new year, which means he'll have to drive the Benz, which is a year older than he'd like it to be and doesn't have the seat-warmers.

“Fucking hell,” he grumbles. There is nothing about this season he likes. He drives past buildings liberally festooned with tinsel and blinking lights and ho-ho-hoing plastic Santas lit electrically from within. He doesn't like the cold, and he doesn't like the lines you have to wait in just to get a coffee. He'd go to the Dunkin Donuts instead of the indepedently-owned local shop, but they don't have the kind of beans he likes.

He is the kind of man who changes his clothes three to four times every morning before he leaves the house. He can put them out the night before in order to conserve time, but by the time he gets up, showers, and gets ready to go to the office, he feels differently, and staring at himself in the mirror, he just doesn't feel right somehow. As if he knows - can see himself hours ahead - having a miserable day. He is possessed of a certainty that if he changes what he's forecasting, changes into a new suit of clothes, the day won't be as bad. He knows this is entirely erroneous. He does not care.

Kiesenwetter (1)

cloud-watcher on his hill.  inscrutable & yet approachable.  wise, wry smile which rises over horizon-lips.  reflects in his eyes: twin sunrises.  a gentle curve of conversation, gliding evasion, after every posed question.  he is somehow akin to warm ice, oxymoron notwithstanding; constantly in the process of melting & yet, more solid than anyone else she has ever met before - including & up to her most recent boyfriend.

in fact, said boyfriend is the very reason she has sought out Kiesenwetter - the tumult of her dilemma has driven her to seek out the nephomancer, despite her loathing for divination in all forms.  she instinctively, unconsciously, turns to the methodology of fate - when one has no God, she often (drunkenly) opines, one seeks out God anywhere one might find it ... and that is how she references deity - by the genderless, vague, indiscriminate pronoun.  it settles easier in her stomach & lungs, like a less acrid smoke or a milder hot sauce.  still causes heartburn, but nothing a quick pill won't quell -

& she stands before the (irritatingly) cross-legged Kiesenwetter on his prophecy hill, his too-blue eyes cast reverently firmament-ward, somehow discerning (through whatever meteorological calculations) the future of each & every cloud.  at this point in their relationship, she can recognize the Linnean nomenclature of those moist bodies, tossing their particulate selves heedlessly against the unyielding wind.

she can tell, now, by the gentle, near-unconcerned furrow of his brow, that the seemingly placid stratocumulus are about to mount, galvanize, revolt, up towards the troposphere - gain vertical height & discover (somewhat triumphantly) a heretofore unseen power within their heavy, gray guts - become tyrants of the sky, and rage beautifully until they, inevitably & always, expend themselves & expire in the effort.

by the time this happens, she will have unmounted prophecy hill and be safe within the (albeit quivering) walls of her apartment, staring at the refrigerator-blue of her phone & wondering when he will call.

Anecdote: before she descends, Kiesenwetter will say, somewhat enigmatically:

'the compass, spinning,
always returns north.
why not follow the sun?
turn west.'

she will take it to mean: try something new.

she wonders if she is quiet love with the cloud-watcher.

seconds later, she dismisses the conjecture in favor of tequila - and later, beer.

the phone rings & it's him, and he wants information.  she is tired and all day (all week) it's seeped, somehow, into her bones, and when she walks to work, she cracks & groans like an old floorboard.  she calls him Simon though his name is Peter (it's an old joke, tarnished by too many years spent together like pennies rubbing together in a drawer) and answers his question while lying on her bare mattress.  outside, the sky hums a tune to itself, which is rapidly shearing away by an increasing wind, turning ugly, basso profundo.  Simon's voice is twittering away in her ear.

she looks up and backwards, out the window over her head, through the slats of dusty white blinds.  blue is turning purple-black, and the now only the bottoms of clouds are to be seen, opaque & grim.  her mind wanders to Kiesenwetter, probably now inside his small, one-room house (built himself) with the wide ceiling aperture. 

'i feel like i never see you anymore is all,' he is saying, and she catches a glimpse of his pain through his words, but finds a callus growing over her feelings for him.  'are we still even friends?'

'of course we are,' she soothes with a false balm.  'we're more than friends.'

'what are we?'

bad question, she thinks to herself.  come up with something poetic, that'll shut him up.  'twins,' she says, finally.

'that's kind of gross,' he immediately responds. 'twins don't have sex.'

'you know what i mean,' she deflects, and this is the precise moment the rain begins hissing against the ground, spattering virulently against the leaves, and the first unfurling of thunder works its way through the buildings.  she imagines the sound like a panther, shouldering its muscular way through the jungle - lean, controlled, unblinking.

'sure,' he deflates, and she she can hear him sigh through the phone.  his sighs are always accompanied by a hand through his shaggy blond hair.  'what are you doing tonight?'

'dunno,' she says, casually.  'maybe a margarita.'  her eyes wander over to the empty shot glass on the desk.  she'd opened a can of beer, but can't remember where she put it, and feels too lazy to traipse down the hallway to find it.

'i'm out of work around seven.  i'll come meet you before i come home.'

she likes it that their work schedules don't align.  having the whole apartment to herself is a luxury.  she sometimes walks naked down the long corridor, hearing the sound of her bare feet sucking at the hardwood floor as she goes.  she takes a shower with the door open and doesn't wash the dishes when she's done cooking. 'okay,' she agrees.  he has to come home sometime.  better that she's a little drunk and in public before he does - or at least, that's what she's telling herself.  'will you pick up a bottle of Silver on the way?  i just drained it.'

'we just bought that bottle on Sunday.'

'and it's Thursday,' she says acridly.  'what's your point?'

'nothing.  nevermind.'  another sigh.

'i'll see you up there?'  all sweetness & light.  more thunder, from behind.  she sits up and rakes a hand through her hair, viciously, through the snarls.  lightning reflects off of the white walls of her room.

'yeah, i'll come by after work.  love you.'

a fraction of hesitation.  'love you too.'  she hangs up first, almost too fast, and worries over the speed for a second before collapsing back onto the bed and closing her eyes, silently repeating the cloud-watcher's words.

she dreams of compasses, of mountains, of lightning seaming the sky, of a dark-clad individual with no face leading her into a chasm, of crossing a pewter river in a boat with a man in a hood, and of a song that is gone from her mind the second after the second she opens her eyes.