2 in 2 days eh?

            They said their eyes light up, at the carnival.  They said they drank a lot and went on the rides and it made their eyes light up.  I didn’t listen to them because they liked to ride around town in a pink Mazda Miata that I always thought was a little too ironic.  Artists.  I’ve only been taking public transportation for a little while, but I see them all the time, they drive around like vultures, I’ve actually timed their flight plan.  Every thirty-seven minutes, sometimes from the north, sometimes from the East.  I tried painting my apartment, this will all make sense, but I didn’t tape anything down and everything splattered over the furniture.  The fumes filled the apartment and I started to laugh, laugh at the failure, at balding, I saw a commercial of abused dogs and I laughed.  I now have three dogs, the guilt ate me and then licked it’s lips.

            She breathed heavy, paced her words and said she’d never done anything like this before.  She held onto my arms and I wanted her to love me.  I let my fingers fall down her waist to her belt and unclipped her harness.  I wanted her to continue holding on, but the blood went back into her head and she kissed my cheek and ran to the van.  I got out of my harness and started folding the parachute, it would need to be refolded (I messed up).  I frequently get asked how I got into the instructing business, I always reply that I went to catholic school.

            Every time I bring someone home they ask if the room was painted with a wet parasol.  That would have been a good idea, but I just regret bringing them home.  I’ve been looking for a good parasol online with no luck, just umbrellas.  Where’s the line?  What makes one something and the other something else?   I want a hamster, but I have gerbil hands, so it just wouldn’t work out.  I took a sip from their bottle and decided I felt a tingle.  So much burned, me being a protestant, I wondered if Moses would come to my lungs, take off his shoes, and hear God.  You Shmuck!  I started to pray that someone would plug me in, a new line of light brights.  Kid friendly, flammable: Don’t put near curtains.  I see the earth growing smaller and smaller, dangling from a string on the plane.  Every window is a screen, it’s all fake like the moon landing.  I joined a pyramid scheme for comradery, I work for you and you and you and you but they work for me, and my cousin twice removed still wants me to take him skydiving but only if he buys from me and my associates from now on.

            BUZZ ME IN! I FORGOT MY KEYS AGAIN!  The landlady is upset, but I pay her not to be.  She doesn’t remember that I live in a Jackson Pollack so she tries to call the police.  I haven’t been robbed, I just need professional help.  They let me keep the bottle and I keep drinking, I haven’t stopped since they gave it to me.  It is endless, like a dark pit or the food at OCB.  I wrote it in my journal but when I read it later it had been replaced by a picture of two stick figures sword fighting, the peeing way, not the knight’s way.  I’m gallant I scream at the top of the ferris wheel but by the end I’m clear headed and all business.  All hail King Tut!

            I go to the pet stores every Thursday morning and look around.  I made two tiny parachutes, but I don’t think I could ever throw them out of the plane, besides, gerbil hands.  I want to invite them over, let them see my apartment and hope that they will think it was intentional.  I want the girl to keep holding on and my landlady to brush her teeth.  The backs of my hands are wet, I’ve been crying, I don’t know about what.  My eyes are dim and lackluster, theirs are tie dye. I don’t have any more money so I wait for twenty-six minutes when they will come back, I will ask them for a ride and what was in the bottle.  I will ask them if they want to go skydiving and what they do for a living.  I will ask them for help painting my apartment and to check my pockets for my keys.  I make a promise that when they come by I won’t laugh at their pink Miata, but I do and they don’t care, were all apart of the pyramid.

I’ve seen them try, they sit cowardly turning blue while the fabric seeps into their skin. They are pitiful. They wallow quietly for months concerned with only their pain, too focused to live. They have forgotten, their minds have become applesauce that their bodies devour from idleness. I don’t know what to do! The weight is unbearable, I feel like I’m drowning. Remember! Long ago we bargained off our right to mourn, we talk and talk and talk and talk about progress or what it means to be civilized, while at the same time demanding so little of ourselves that we’ve gone into atrophy. We’ve forgotten how to grieve.

There was a woman, I don’t know her name, it wasn’t worth learning. She lost her husband and daughter in a car accident. I read about it in the obituary, I looked up the address and took a stroll on over, I needed to see that someone remembered. She hid her face, ashamed that her loss would cause a public outburst. How long had she cradled her daughter for, 12 months, 18 months, two years, or had she ever stopped? Her freckles mapped out like stars across her face, each one in the midst of a solar flare. The black dress held loosely around her shoulders and waist though her make up was applied with a delicate touch that made her look, other than the freckles, like a natural beauty. Now she is like a dog trying to see color.

The bees all left for no one knows why, but millions of dollars were lost, causing us for the first time to wonder what was happening and why we couldn’t control it. I like the way hyenas laugh, without reason or remorse. We should teach kids to laugh like that, buy them hyenas instead of dogs, hyenas instead of cats, clowns instead of teachers. In retrospect, I think all the bees went to Africa where they weren’t being pumped full of glucose syrup and preservatives. They became farmers, tilling red soil till it sifted cleanly through their fast beating wings. Praise God for rain! They buzz in unison, from miles around you’d swear a train was stuck in New York traffic. Ominous, starts low with just a few, maybe even a cricket Crick-Eting, and then its like a wave pool, buzzes coming in slow rising flashes, then they synchronize BUZZ BUZZ! [Expletive] BUZZ BUZZ!

Must have been in the 60’s or 70’s that candles became so popular, I think I know why, but I’ve been labeled a conservative and I like to keep opinions to myself. Before then they were used for very few things, light (quite awhile before that, unless you lived on the set of Little House on the Prairie, though you too may have gone blind), churches, birthdays. Those are my favorites, though they are not in any particular order (Little House would still be first). We’ve taken them over, given them into a part of everyday decoration. People used to seek solace in the little flame they held and now its just a regular part of monotony.

The woman began to quietly cough, trying to play off her sadness as the cold. She couldn’t see the color, she could only tell it smelled wrong; death that is. Maybe if the bees were still around she’d still have a bit of the mystery, she’d need to know why the candle doesn’t all melt at once, how the flame seems to hold everything in it’s grasp. Now she only wonders how long it will take to regain her normal life, her normal life she hasn’t had in the 16 years of her marriage. What everyone else has figured out is that it hurts less over time, you get used to it, like having your feet bundled to stay small. She’s chopped off her legs and now has nowhere left to go.

She’s forgotten how to grieve though her body no longer knows how to relearn it. She is like the rest of them, only caring about the scent the candle brings and the honey they eat instead of the impending noise. It all just continues to run together, meeting at a focal point/an intersection, where the lights green but no ones moving. BUZZ BUZZ! [Expletive] BUZZ BUZZ!