Thank you for not smoking

~ Jess ~ Leave a comment

I sat on the steps in front of my rickety apartment building and watched her walk by. It was a daily ritual that took place in the day’s fading light. I went out for a smoke. She walked her Golden Retriever. A nice dog, but its namesake is tarnished when put in comparison with her eyes. Liquid fuckin’ sun. It was hard for me to understand what I was really looking at, because she doesn’t belong here. In this world, I mean. Life on Planet Earth is reserved for pain and brutal misery. But her?

It was those eyes. They poured out golden joy. It was enough to warm me up on those brisk San Francisco days. Or maybe that was the hot smoke filling my lungs as I took drag after drag. I wish I could take her in like this. Each breath taking me closer to a rattling death, but a journey I didn’t mind so long as she kept smiling like that.

Fire

~ Jess ~ Leave a comment

He traced the rippled pale pink flesh on her stomach. “It was a fire,” she said, “When I was a kid, my house was on fire and I was trapped upstairs.”

He kissed the flesh and she didn’t even flinch. She wore her scars gracefully, like a wealthy widow carrying a heavy pearl necklace around her neck.

As he entered her, the flames leapt up in a blaze. He could see them, dancing in red and orange chaos. They rose higher with a growing intensity as his body moved closer into hers again and again with a quickening motion.

His eyes were burning. He could feel the thickness of the smoke in his throat and should have been choking, but she wouldn’t let him go. The moment he felt the smoke fill his lungs, he came in her with a shudder and lost consciousness.

When he came to hours later, he thought he could still see the red-orange flames, but it was only the late morning sun shining on his face. Before he could feel relieved, he smelled smoke coming from somewhere in the house and fumbled out of bed. He ran into the kitchen and stopped short when he realized that it was only the smoke from a cigarette hanging off the lips of his late night companion.

His eyes traced over her skin and he was amazed at how smooth it looked. He was so caught up in how beautiful her skin was that it took a while for it to sink in. Her skin was completely smooth. Yes, completely, even her stomach.

“But…how? Your skin. It burned, ” he sputtered out.

“My skin? What are you talking about? No offense, but have you looked in the mirror lately?” she joked and looked pointedly at his torso.

He followed her eyes and couldn’t process what he saw. The skin from his hip up to his rib cage and over his abdomens was a mottled mess of pink scars.

“You told me last night. You were a kid and there was a fire and you were trapped upstairs,” she trailed off.

When writer’s block happens

~ Jess ~ 2 Comments

When I feel like I have exhausted the language quota given to me. As if words were rationed out and some get more than others, while those, like me, get less. When I’m paralyzed by my own expectations for success and failure simultaneously. I get low and no one knows, but it was all okay because I could write about it—except now I can’t. The problem is I’m afraid to get high. It’s not about losing control. It’s about realizing I had no control to begin with.

If you left now

~ Jess ~ Leave a comment

If you left now, the pieces would go…everywhere. After years of refusing to lean on anyone for too long, you’ve refused to let go, even when I’m pushing at you with the blunt end of a knife, the sharp end pointed towards me.

I worry sometimes if, without you, my sanity would cling. I worry more if, with you, my insanity will grow and overtake you.

Strong hands and I caress the tender blue rivers crisscrossing your skin. Gentle eyes that burn low but intense. During those times when the banality of my life excruciates me, your touch reminds me who I am.

I am we.