The dread to express my feelings. The perfect collection of words packaged and sealed. But, there is no such thing as perfection. It's always simply good enough. As if my feelings were simply good enough… or my thoughts… or my ideas. These characters that float in my head, suspended in the void until some rational order takes place to form a chronology of acts. I am a character living out my life in someone else's suspended imagination and random acts catch me off guard. Phrases that are insightful enough to make me think and question my reality.
The dread to write myself into the story. Everything animated comes from my experiences. Dull and anticlimactic until her lips touched my lips and I lose my thoughts and breath. The introduction took way too long. But here I am held inside her arms, as she pulls me closer. The ferocity in her kiss. The fever in her burning skin. But, I cannot give in to the nature of the subject and shove her hands off of me. There is no story to tell. No pages to read. Like a ghost, I disappear and the shock in her eyes turns to anger. How could I? She shouts, pulling me once again. I am a robot that answers the question. A reply to a command but all my fingers want to do is play, strike the keys on the board and spin my next tale. The temperature in my temperament, the illness to complete the ultimate arc and yet say nothing at all.
Each life, alive with a beating heart and sad jazz that rings for days in the reader's harmonic existence. The waltz that I rehearse until my soles bleed. But her fingers twist like the gears of a watch whining to midnight and by morning I'm still sleepless and wasted. Her nude back, a carved pear. The curves that tempt me until I give in. The advantage that has taken my weakness. I am her instrument as I sharpen my mind to the loss of the un-spilled words. Lost forever but that's how this game always ends. The liquid of my memories.
The dread of what's left of spoiled. Caricatures of barely mended drivel. The thin thread of a poor's man's hand weaved on an aged spindle, and she gazes at me through the morning fog with satisfaction and another day of rules and diversions. She spins in her pleated mini. Traces of her wings parade across my cheek. Smile. She demands with a bark and I but smile because what is there for me to do. After all, I am not a storyteller nor will I ever be. It's a hobby if it doesn't pay rent. She says and she is right. The starving artist doesn't die because he serves the latte with a drip of honey at the corner café and jots down his ideas on loose napkin besides a doodle of a sad face and a FUCK YOU with an asterisk as if there was some footnote he forgot to reference.
Another day has gone by. Another night in her arms. The tip jar filled with abandoned notes, nickels, and strips of jargon. Next to it, an attempt to build a city with wooden lollipop and popsicle sticks within an empty hinged tin stationary box. My fingers covered in red paint as I smudge it along the crack in the floor drawing out the blueprint to my life. How many ideas have escaped it and fell through this crack? How many attempts does it take to start all over again? How many beginnings can one person have? It finally ends here, tonight as I light the match and burn the script in the trash can setting off the kitchen smoke alarm and waking her up with a scream.