dancing louder

***Title YTBD. Enjoy...

2008-10-02T18:21:00.020-04:00

Pin, a name which the young man had unintentionally given himself, awoke exactly two minutes before his 6 a.m. alarm sounded only to look down and find his usually pristine white sheets muddied with red clay from his baseball cleats. His belly button was sore, but the sweet song still whispered in his ears. And the electricity he felt when she gazed at him across the candlelight still tickled his fingertips. He thought about Toaster; he thought about Amelia; A single tear formed as he thought of Marigold. Pin was careful to remove his shoes and calculatingly throw them onto his kitchen's tiled floor before alighting his twin bed and heading for the shower where he would once again make his transformation.

Mr. Pinneford stared into his bathroom mirror while being soothed by the buzzing of a halogen light. He tried to count his pores before carefully plucking each gray sprout from his head of black hair and placing them in a neat row onto the white sink where they would vanish. He would contemplate not brushing his teeth today, but as always, proceeded to brush and floss and feel utterly content afterward as a result of following through with this simple hygienic task. Mr. Pinneford bared his teeth with an empty smile and headed for the bedroom closet to get dressed for the day. He reached for a single pair of black leather shoes that sat neatly to the left of a large cluster of repurposed footwear. Hiking boots, climbing shoes, slippers, sneakers, flip-flops, rain boots: they had all served their purpose at one time or another but would not be needed today. He buttoned his heavily starched shirt and tucked it into his pleated black pants before clasping his belt and choosing a tie. His place of employment had done away with the formality of neckties, but Mr. Pinneford preferred them, and the simple pleasure he found in choosing which one to wear was a high point of his day.

Upon Waking

2007-04-23T17:19:00.002-04:00

My chin presses against his chest.
I look up to his eyes knowing
that when I can't sleep in his bed
his shirt will have to do.
His sweaty palms like a slug
slide from my jaw line to my collarbone
when he holds me like I'll break
and I am pale as porcelain.
His shower smell is dandruff shampoo
a sprig of rosemary
or the color green.
For a moment
I pretend we're perfect strangers
so he can make a good first impression
by recklessly tossing out song lyrics
that he prays I'll recognize.
I swallow his words, choking them down.
They float in a sea of me
crumpled into a swing-top, blue bottle
where I keep secrets
my imagination
last kisses
and repressed memories of his morning breath.

Snuffy

2007-03-13T15:51:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I think about my dead grandfather.
I don't remember him well
but I do know that his eyes were the color of steel
and that he looked hollow the night before he died.
Now I wonder if he sees me from the grave
when I back-date my checks
or lie to sweet boys.
My grandmother made him Catholic
so sometimes he and I nod off together in church
and take too much wine
before we sign and grin like the oldest of children
as we walk back to the pew.
I wonder if my sister wonders about him.
They didn't know each other
but I think he sees her trying to put on makeup.
And I think he sits with my grandmother
when she remembers what it was like to dance.

A Glass

2007-03-01T16:15:00.000-05:00

A culmination of Brazilian suns sits in her glass
as ice swirls in a whirlpool of stirs,
seeping out the sides
and melting into a puddle
that could flood a thousand nights
or stain the sleeves of the careless.
Glass clinks like a hundred bangles dangling
at the end of her slender wrist.
She wears the whiskey to match her shoes.

Its glow is as orange as her grandmother's ottoman
or a West Coast see-through tan
and lights the tip of her nose
sip after sip. . .
And the drink smells of the attic
where she was once a damsel
and is rescued only by last call.

The taste makes her cringe like
an old sailor getting a fresh tattoo.
She slams the glass onto the ancient, wooden tables
"Checkmate."
And the black and white tiles swallow her
as she sinks to the ground
when the lights turn up.

The Two

2007-02-06T18:07:00.000-05:00

Two lovers sit naked in the winter,
feeding each other teaspoons of snow.
They exhale their smiles
and make beds out of frozen branches
and iced blades of grass.
They mix martinis in bird nests
from the pieces of a frozen pond,
and decorate each other’s hair with the spires of a cedar,
heavy with fleshy cones and blue leaves.
White-crowned sparrows float
while dangling light from their beaks,
illuminating the intimacy of the two.

The night is frozen
and sends glints of light flashing across
a blanketed substructure of crackling limbs
and soft shard winds.
The lovers make toast
with the concentrated light of a magnifying glass
and spread jam with the feather of a purple finch.
They disperse fragrant flowers of saffron to passersby,
dyeing their lips with the orange dust
from their fingertips.
Each touch creates veins of heat
that melt their thin skins of ice,
and a glow returns to their cerulean cheeks.

A Continuation

2006-11-21T04:48:00.000-05:00

When my slippers have seen the snowy streets of Chicago, I'll know that I can have an attraction based on chance meetings and sweet coincidences. Until then, I'll have to come to grips with my obscure being and lack of grace.

I wandered into Stagger one night. I firmly believed that a Whiskey on the Rocks would compensate for the night I had already had. The parking lot of the bar seemed empty, but I spotted my acquaintances through the frosted windows before making my way through the wooden doors. The barkeep was decked out in spandex from his earlier bike ride and seated atop his bar stool as if it were an ivory throne. After confirming my age, I turned the corner wherein I found both friends and enemy sipping cocktails as the birthday girl floated around from click to click, laughing louder than she knew she was.

On slow nights there are no bands to replace the awkward silences, thus the "Lament in a Bar":

She said that she was like an amputee—
her love cut from her body, but she still felt
the ghost pains of a limb
that no longer felt her.
Displaced again—
three moves in six months.
One of a lifetime
and one lasting seconds
compared to eons of love's evolution

The noxious fumes of her perfume nearly choked her—
she poured it down the drain
and it smelled like him.
A royal needle-in-the-hay moment in the bathroom—
only without the attempted suicide
while she watched clumps of hair
begin to fill the sink.
She couldn't remember when she went
but she was gone and tried
to find herself in her buzzing, florescent
light bulb eyes.
She never sees anything coming.

Mistaken Gin and Tonic—
it was a Vodka Gimlet,
but the coloring must have been the same.
She hears that song on an open mic night,
and now she feels how she should
before she orders another drink.
“It comes in threes,”
a friend assures her.

Beatnik snaps filled the bar, and a hipster girl who was seated in the corner was hoping that the boy with the too-long hair had overlooked the hole in her fishnets as she adjusted her boots. I started to over-analyze the shampoo.

One day he had come home with an economy-sized bottle of the shampoo that I regularly used. I initially thought, "How sweet of him to notice." Then, I started thinking about the large black bottle. A fleeting thought of his over-compensating for something ran past me. At that moment I knew that the shampoo would outlast us. The guilt he felt for his misdeeds allowed him to at least send me on my way packing; the shampoo lasted a full month longer than we did. I soon invested in another of the same size.

Once I was over it, I played to the crowd and smiled to my replacement. She offered me a light, and I ashed in her purse. She never noticed my glances as she slyly checked to make sure that her cleavage was centered. I moved on.

Days later a sweet boy beckoned me through the awkward doors of Stagger once again. I clamored through the crowd, kissing cheeks and giving empty embraces as I looked over their heads for the one I had come for. I finally found him at the tail-end of the bar, sipping on beer and noticing my every interaction as he grinned at my humorings. He thought he had me pegged. He wasn't the one, but it felt good to believe that he was until the bar turned up the lights.

The Chronicles of Stagger: The Beginning

2006-10-25T02:33:00.000-04:00

I walked into the bar like I do almost every night when I’m coaxed by a coworker or a sweet boy into going out. The doors of The Stag are old and wooden. They’re smooth and shiny and impossible to pass through without looking awkward to someone who’s not accustomed to people squeezing between two tiny doors that are too stubborn to open all of the way. The doorman usually waves me in, and I get a nod from the bartender, Tim. I found out just recently that he hasn’t shaved his bushy red beard in twenty-seven years with the exception of a charity event when he shaved it to raise money. There are shuffle board players trying to squeeze past each other in order to get to the end of the table where they are sandwiched between the game and a protruding beer sign that faces the street. I never get nervous if the friends I’m supposed to meet aren’t there when I arrive because there are people who are like fixtures at the bar. There are always the cooks from the dinner rush who sit closest to the darkened kitchen. There are the hipsters who walk Main Street and come into Stag for the Black and Tans and a game of darts. There’s always the boy hoping that I might show up, and there are always the musicians, ready at any moment to hop on stage to fill in the gaps for a jam session.

Now, the bar itself is decades old and the history of its construction, destruction, and restoration can be found on the back of their menus. The barstools are old and clunky, but they still spin smoothly despite the wobble in the legs. It’s awkward to sit on the stools, facing the bartenders because your knees knock up against the front unless you’re able to spread you legs wide enough to accommodate. There are multi-colored mints and boxes of matches for everyone who wants fresh breath after they smoke. Old trinkets and pictures decorate the register, and a countdown to St. Patty’s day is always posted somewhere. If it’s not, just ask the bartender, and they’ll let you know.

Though you can find Tim bartending almost every night of the week, there are others. Patty, the day bartender, is in her sixties as far as I can tell and has shaggy short hair with a rat tail that hangs down her back. She’s an avid White Sox fan, but she’ll give the Cardinals their dues any day. She is drinking Jameson by noon and serves anyone in the vicinity of the bar with a good sense of humor the same drink after they’ve finished their Bloody Marys. Brad is another night bartender. He stands about 6’6” and is usually sporting braided pigtails and cut-off jean shorts. He has a good sense of humor with a smile to match, and you can find him there with his hair down on the nights that he’s not working. Janet is the cute bartender that all the boys flirt with and pray that they can take home, but she’s a good girl and can drink them all under the table. There are a few others, like the girl who seems bitter about everything and angry to have to pour you a drink, and there’s the other guy who can stack up to fifteen rocks glasses on top of each other and carry them around the bar without breaking a sweat.

The college kids who have moved here from out of town sometimes don’t understand the beat of Stagger. Everyone from town knows that you go there to have a good time, listen to some good tunes, trade small stories, and drink. You don’t fight, you don’t get too loud, you don’t wave down a bartender, and you don’t get sloppy. There are other places in town for that.

The End

2006-10-11T02:12:00.000-04:00

“Hey,” he said as he grinned and looked confusingly intrigued.
“Hey.”
“Not to sound like one of ‘those guys,’ but haven’t I met you before.”
“No, we haven’t met. I’m here for Meg’s art,” and I extended my hand for him to kiss as if I were royalty. He nodded his head—acknowledging his place—and touched his lips to my knuckles without breaking eye contact. Ethan stood up straight once more, my head reaching to his chest, and he started right in with the wit and the charm.
“I’m sure Meg’s art is ecstatic that you were able to grace it with your presence, but how about a cocktail to quench our desiccated palates and make us more bold, yeah?”

We stood there and talked and brushed off any interruptions from friends. Gently grazing my earlobe, he told me he dug my earrings, knowing full well that they were another funky result of Meg’s design. He looked unnatural smoking cigarettes and had the habit of brushing hair away from his brow that wasn’t there while he nervously nodded and grinned through his beard. He closed his eyes when he laughed.

Some guy who seemed out of place at this sort of thing had stumbled over to the piano player and so- cleverly requested that he play “Piano Man.” The volume of the bar got to be unbearable, so Ethan and I ducked out and made our way to the empty pub across the street.

Even though the tulip beds on State Street had started to show signs of budding, the melting snow from a late winter still dripped down the black awning of the pub. Ethan was drinking Jack on the Rocks but I preferred the Irish whiskey; I had given up soda and beer for Lent. We sat at the bar, jingling the ice in our too-small glasses. We gently swiveled back and forth on our barstools and cradled cigarettes between the tips of our fingers while we traded small stories and looked cool.

“I delivered a eulogy last week that moved them to tears,” he bragged.
“My grandma used to smoke tobacco from a rhinestone pipe…” I retorted.

I had only had a taste of Ethan, but I was now an addict--intrigued by the high and wanting to drink him in. I became acutely aware of every detail about him: the freckle in his left eye, the worn star on the leather band around his overly-slender wrists, the red lines below his cheeks, his long, sleek fingers, the broken zipper on his blue sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He must have been wearing at least three shirts, and his socks were mismatched in the slightest way.

We both went on in this manner—looking and conversing without my mentioning of the truth—until the bartender hit the lights. We squinted and smiled as we finished our sentences and gathered our coats. We walked out to the sidewalk where we could see his apartment across the street above the Italian restaurant. Through the window, I caught a glimpse of his bedroom; he had painted the walls deep red. We both knew by then that the walk past the abandoned projects to my apartment would have been too risky for this time of night, and to wait for the el at that hour would have been ridiculous. Without words he turned to look at me and motioned in the direction of his apartment. Without hesitation, I flicked my cigarette onto the pavement and took his hand as he led me through the clouds of steam that rose from the grates in the sidewalk. The streets were empty. There was no need to look for oncoming traffic.

Chapter 3 (edited)

2006-09-26T02:34:00.001-04:00

I checked his blog on almost a daily basis, keeping a steady watch for any new postings. I knew where he went all of the time. I knew when he had a late night and wondered if he had any one-night stands and thought about how bad his hangover probably was. I wondered if he would drink his headache away with a beer or immediately go for the water and the aspirin. I learned what music he liked when he would detail his trips to the "record store," as he called it, even though he only bought cds. I liked how he would take note of the smallest things like which pair of shoes he decided to wear for the rainy days, and then other times he would come to some profound epiphany about life, or himself, or the city. . .

"I think that Easter is a good time to take new directions in my life, just like the new year was. If my putative savior can resurrect himself, surely we can all decide to have our own bits of rebirth too, yeah? In that spirit, maybe we can worship at the altar of kindness. And softball with friends. And worms that come out to play in the rain :-)"—E.G., April 23

He lived in a movie where he was the star and had never been in love with someone more deeply than himself. I believed him to be pretentious in the most seductive way with his putting every detail about himself out there as if someone cared enough to care about it. It boggled me as to how it was even possible for Ethan to have lived this long without meeting me. The mere idea of him kept me company, and we would spend hours together. We were so much alike.

I used The Grind as my personal grab-bag of friends. I had a good collection, but I still kept my secrets and habits to myself. I was the closest to my co-worker, Meg, a recent architect and artist, a seamstress, and jeweler. She made funky bags and mismatched earrings and never stopped painting. Her clothes never fit her quite right, and she was always questioning her choice of shoes. She saved a few bucks here and there by cutting her own dark hair, and she had eyes like Frida Kahlo. She drank more than I did, smoked more, and cursed like a sailor, but we got along just fine. I would just sit back in awe of Meg’s streetwise and sassy ways.

Meg knew everyone. She frequented the local businesses much more than I did and always found places to hang her art. She would have tiny art shows in the larger apartments and smaller businesses that would have her, and she was always spearheading rendezvous with our friends. Still, most of the time we were at the coffee shop together, playing baristas and convincing ourselves that we were ‘it.’

My Chicago Reader discovery predated my friendship with Meg, but it wasn’t long after we started going to bars together that I found out she was actually friends with Ethan. Of course she was. I hadn’t seen him in the coffee shop because he only frequented the coffee shop closest to his house. He saw no reason to venture any further for a simple caffeine fix.

The first time I met him was at a tiny wine bar at the corner of Taylor and Loomis in spring where Meg had scored an art show. Even though I had spent time with Meg, watching her cut and paste and glue and sew her art, this was the first show that I had been to. My hair was longer then, and I had decided to dress up for a change in a skirt with pockets everywhere and tall shoes that laced up my ankles. I wore a pair of plastic green earrings that Meg had designed just for me. They were definitely originals, and anyone who knew Meg would have realized that I was wearing them out of respect for her and in celebration of the evening. As I walked to the door of the bar, feeling beautiful and looking mysterious, I could already imagine that Ethan was inside, talking about his latest “records” and pretending he was insightful. I pictured him bragging about Bill Clinton as if they were old college pals, and giving Hillary credit for “sticking in there.”

“That Hillary—she’s a classy lady,” he would say. “But no seriously, has anyone listened to the new Elliot Smith record? Oh! Oh! Oh!” he would yell, clutching his chest as he closed his eyes and looked to the ceiling as if he were having a heart attack.

The bar was dark and cramped but charming with lampshades that looked like fantastic hats. They had nine-dollar martinis in the most exotic flavors and only the top-end beers. Meg, who was passing out homemade business cards while trying to double fist a martini with a beer chaser, stood at the door and greeted me. She spilled a little of her Cosmo on my shoulder. I was excited for her and found myself humoring her for the moment because I was trying not to act as anxious as I was feeling. Her family was there, so I made the rounds. My friend, Marty, was trying to dance to the piano and swing his girlfriend around even though there was no room for it. Our boss was there and stopped me to discuss the next week’s schedule, but he had bought me a glass of wine so I stood and acted interested. I noticed the glue from some of Meg’s art was still glistening with wetness—she always waited until the last minute to get ready for her shows by drinking a bottle of wine and prepping her purple glue stick to work wonders. I hadn’t even made it half way across the room when I spotted Ethan. I knew it was him in an instant, and he quickly saw me.

His hair was much lighter than I had imagined, but his carefully groomed beard made his jaw line look incredible. He was tall and trying to convince people shorter than he was that he really did like Scotch as he took sip after sip, shaking off the chills. He had the attention of a group of people who were sincerely interested in what he was saying, and, as he stood there talking to them about hard liquor and Howard Dean, he kept looking up at me and finally excused himself to make his way over to where I was. I watched him cross the room as he unnecessarily raised his glass so high above everyone’s heads and twisted his hips in order to slide his way through the crowd of blooming artists and wannabes without spilling a drop. And then there he was.

Part Dos (still in editing)

2006-09-24T04:36:00.000-04:00

Every Thursday morning at The Grind, like clockwork, I would go out for a smoke and visit with the paper kids. Little Paulie would drop off the bundle of Readers on the street and snap the string from around the stack while I asked him about the park. He would tell me about the new graffiti on the playground and how much money he had saved from his summer job. On these lazy summer afternoons while I babysat the iced-coffee drinkers, I would poke around on my laptop and skim the Chicago Reader--my weekly holy writ--for hot bands, foreign films, and shoe sales. It was on this morning at The Grind that I came across the article, “The Lost Children: Donor Sibling Profiles.” Apparently there was a sort of epidemic of donor offspring who were desperate to contact any half-siblings. In response to this, many clinics, including the one my parents used, offered a donor sibling registry through their websites in order to meet the demands of these lost children. Despite the fact that I was quite resigned to never revisit this intricacy of my life, I of course had to see for myself, so I logged on. I entered the numbers that they asked for, and there was a match, and that’s where I found Ethan Gray.

“Charming and loving son of Charlotte Gray and donor 9573-b. Desperate for the opportunity of a little sibling rivalry,” is what he had written. His contact information was all there: address, telephone, e-mail, even a link where you could read his blog. All of his info seemed fake to me as if it were just a template portfolio of a Mr. John Doe. It was all too perfect and just witty enough, and he lived in the city within a few blocks of my tiny apartment.

As I sat there, I felt flush and nervous as if I were reading some sort of top secret document and would soon be busted for snooping. I examined every word he had typed in his profile while my heart beat faster than I thought it could. I began to wonder if he was a Republican or a Democrat, a believer or a skeptic. I wondered if the fact that he called himself “charming” meant that he was clever or that he was simply conceited. I immediately started to imagine what it would be like if we met. I wondered if I would recognize him right off, or if we would pass each other without ever questioning the other’s presence. Then I would become almost enraged at the thought that because I worked in his neighborhood we had most likely already seen each other and, without flinching, gone our separate ways. I wondered if he was handsome or tall, or if his hair was cut sort of like mine and if it would be like looking into some kind of weird mirror if we ever saw each other. I thought about what kinds of movies he liked, and if he hated long, drawn out, epic films like I did. I began making outlandish assumptions from his language about how he must hate country music and never listen to the radio; that he would judge someone simply by their taste in music and feel completely justified in his doing so. He would be right to.

An Excerpt

2006-09-19T03:49:00.000-04:00

I lived on the south side of Chicago in the Italian neighborhood. I was a block away from a cigar shop, three delis, Italian ice, and Chicago-style hotdogs at all times. My neighbors—the ones who had always belonged there because they built the buildings and they made the rules—would set up folding lawn chairs on the sidewalks and yell at each other from window to street corner on Sunday afternoons while they showed off their grandchildren. The Grind was the hipster coffee shop and internet café where I made my rent and spent my hours away from school. It was shoved in between Marmino’s Bakery and Frankie’s Shoe Repair on Taylor Street. I, along with so many other cool kids and paesanos, was part of this neighborhood: a clash of culture and generation. But I wasn’t born or raised there. I wasn’t Italian, and I didn’t speak like the natives of Chicago—fast and with drawn-out vowels. I needed to finish out a degree, and Little Italy was starved for my attention.

My apartment was just a few feet from campus, and my appearance in Tuesday and Thursday morning classes made this apparent. I would roll out of bed, stagger into class, and dream through lectures without minding the pillow creases on my face. I lived alone, and though my apartment was modestly priced for Chicago, it was even more modestly spacious. I had a bathroom with a shower, a kitchen with a dishwasher, and a bedroom that doubled as a living room when I folded my bed into the shape of a couch: no money for cable, no time for pets. But I did love that apartment. I could see the sparkle of all of downtown from my rooftop and could hear everything from the echoes bouncing off the concrete. I had just enough room for company and a table where I could draw. But that’s not what this story is about.

stay tuned. . .

Chainsmoking

2006-09-13T22:18:00.000-04:00

This is one of my series poems. The way this one was made was by taking random observations throughout a month's time, and then, through a process of elimination and combination, I came up with this crazy thing...
*
Brick wall of smoke.
Spongy hair soaking up the stench.
It makes you cool. You look so sexy.
Vintage case. Awesome lighter.
Teary-eyed and stinging.

**
Silver or gold.
Menthol or ultra.
Regular or light.
Short or long.
Hard or soft.

***
Delicate fingers.
Lipstick filter.
Hypnotic smoke.
Wrap your lips around that.
Inhale, exhale, shallow breath.
Worst craving.
I need one.

****
I didn’t have an idea for my paper, but I did have gin and cigarettes. I wondered what he would say if he came in the door to find me chain-smoking while drinking a dirty martini in front of a blank computer screen.

*****
Worsdsworth is waiting.
Cough into a passed on book.
Splintered toothpick.
Bent, saliva straw.

******
Can I bum a square?
Am I still here, Babydoll?
You wanna go burn one?
Can I get a light?

Just a Glimpse

2006-09-05T18:44:00.000-04:00

This is the poem I got 'The Perfect Table' thing from. I like it:

A Glimpse of the Afterlife
by Chard deNiord

I’m smoking a cigarette and having a drink
with the only woman who’s right for me.
I’m telling her a joke that isn’t that funny
but we laugh anyway as if it were, and then it is.
Ideal forms are everywhere, the chairs
on which we sit, the windows to our left
and right, our risen bodies at the perfect table.
It’s my idea of heaven to be with her on earth,
breathing the air in a smoke-filled room,
drinking tonic laced with gin, listening to the king.
The conversation rises to a deeper level.
She disagrees with me on a matter of religion,
as if religion still mattered in the afterlife,
as if there were no greater joy than to converse
with the one you love about an idea that’s impossible
to prove. I am drawn to her in direct proportion
to the differences of our opinions, ecstatic
to find our bodies have survived in heaven.
There is also time as the darkness thickens.
I retrieve her shawl from the back of her chair
and cover her shoulders which have begun to shake
in the chill of heaven. I have passed from one plane
to the next without detecting the slightest change,
except I know my body lies somewhere beneath
the dirt I walk on now as we leave the bar.
I know the greatest mercy of all is to be with the one
you love beneath a sky on which it’s written:
You’ve died ten thousand times and you’ll die again.

The Elevator

2006-09-05T11:26:00.000-04:00

She decided to leave the candles lit while she went out for a cigarette. She gently closed the door behind her and stepped into the hall. The green, Berber carpet was almost too thick for her stilettos. She pushed the down button and listened to the buzz of the elevator as it climbed for her floor. It dinged, the door slid open, and she stepped inside onto the faux-marble tile. Her heels sounded great against the floor, but when she looked down she saw that her Gucci shoes were now ruined from the puddles that had bled through the leather. She pushed the button to the lobby and paused to look at her reflection in the mirrored wall of the elevator.

She stood there with her head slightly cocked to one side as she swiveled on the smooth pads of her shoes. The top button of her coat had finally fallen off, revealing a hint of the flimsy material of her red dress that peeked out just below her collar bone. She pulled and twisted the frayed button string between her chipped, Twinkled Pink nails and tried to remember how long it had been since her last manicure. Grazing the tip of her nose, she reached to sweep her bangs out of her eyes and could smell the stench of the last cigarette that lingered on her fingers; now the smell was in her hair.

She studied her face and tried to decide if she looked pretty when she cried even with the black lines running down her cheeks. She furrowed her carefully-plucked brows and pouted her faded, Iced Raisin lips, mocking her own expressions. She practiced shock and sadness with her eyes, reflecting upon the details of her last exploit.

Watching herself, she reached into her shallow, silken pocket and pulled out a dull, silver lighter and a bent cigarette. Her eyes shined as she held the flame to the tip. She studied how she smoked. She pulled the cigarette to her mouth and wrapped her lips around the flattened filter. She watched her chest slowly rise as she breathed in the tar and nicotine, and she studied the lift of her chin and the extension of her neck as she exhaled a haze of white smoke. Her long fingers looked especially delicate when she held the thin cigarette.

Without finishing, she tossed the cigarette with a melodramatic flick of her wrist and ground it into the tile with the sharp heel of her shoe. Smoothing the front of her coat with her hands, she pressed her palms against the wool and slid them down from her breasts to her thighs. She wiped the lines from her cheeks, blew her reflection a kiss, and turned around to step into the lobby.

Look

2006-09-05T00:41:00.000-04:00

The center of attention, always talking louder than the rest.
Laughing louder than the rest. Dancing louder than the rest
as he periodically looks up to see who's looking; if he's impressing me;
if I have his attention.
He says something that he thinks is clever and laughs with his eyebrows raised
as he waits for my reaction rather than just letting the moment naturally pass.
When he wants to be serious he raises his eyebrows again, but this time
with pursed lips to convince me he's deep.
It's all an act because I've seen him laugh, but in a genuine way.
And I know what his face looks like when he doesn't expect me
to disappoint him. His novelty has worn off.
He got the attention and failed to impress
with his exaggerated stories about close friendship rituals and drinking escapades.