Finding the Schwa

we found the world spinning on its feet and thought hey let’s get out of this place and go somewhere so we ran off with our hair flying and drove through the dark night owning the world while it tripped to a stop and grabbed a hold of us to slow us down but we were too fast

I’m not very good at this friend-making business.
I sit in my room and make friends with the shadows on the walls and with the books in my hands.
No one ever told me I should make friends with people.

I sit in the tub watching the water lap softly against my skin like the ocean beats itself against the sandy shore but all I hear are the faint dribblings of water on the floor as the waves I create spill over the ceramic base and hit the fine cold grid my feet cringe away from. Steam rises in pillars of smoke that creates a hazy atmosphere that I slowly sink into as I drift into space. My hair billows out from my core. I raise a pair of rusty, orange plastic pair of scissors and place them unhinged next to my head. Snip. Slosh. The water surface breaks as my lungs reach for air in the space between ceiling and water. Hair falls away onto my shoulders and linger for eternity until I wash them away. I am swimming in a tub of fat bubbles and follicles clinging to the edges of salvation. My skin is dark and hairy. I reach through the grit and pull the plug and watch with a grim satisfaction as the hair gets caught in the net and a soapy residue is left behind as a ring is formed on a tree as it ages. My head is light. Pounds of nothing have been snipped away and now I shake my head and feel the soft rounded ends fly away like wings from my skull. I emerge from the filmy cocoon of temperature and water and clothe myself. A tub of ice cream is waiting for me in the fridge.

we dream of the stars but only ever reach the moon but someday soon one of our arrows will hit and happiness will reflect on every body

Yesterday I watched a couple through the steamy, snowy grit windows of the bus. The girl stood on her tiptoes and tilted her head back while the boy leaned down at the slightest angle. Then their lips met. For an eternity time stood still and watched their embrace with feathery snow angels falling onto their shoulders. I couldn’t avert my eyes. It was wrong, I know, to intrude unknowingly into this tender moment. And yet I was captivated. I stared, my eyes transfixed, and yet oddly I held no emotion in my heart. There was only silence, echoed by the rumble of the bus engine as the doors pulled close and the vehicle moved down the street. Only in that instant, as if alerted to the outside world, did they pull apart. But they were not embarrassed, only ecstatic. Happy to know they could get lost in themselves like they did when he first held feelings for her and when she first felt the stirrings of weakness in her heart. It reminded me of my own heart and the feelings that I cannot quite understand yet, how the earth moves underneath my feet as I walk down muddied slopes and yet my shadow elongates in a different direction, taking me east. I can do nothing but move forward and wait for my shadow to return to me, and I hope it always does. If the day ever came where it never returned, I would surely wonder where it eloped off to and hope it finds happiness. Perhaps it will find a happiness within the snow. In the dark. And be watched and envied from bus windows.

when we were young there were trains that could carry you to the end of the world but now they lie in a heaped junkyard, collecting moss and broken things. sometimes the birds will fly in from the journey south and land on the sharp corners to discover that everything has already begun to rot. their white wings shine brightly in comparison and they soon leave. to the south of the yard is a river that curves from west to east and in the summer dragonflies buzz through the tall stalks on the banks and their wings beat out the pleasure of mating. mother ducks lead their young through the currents and the children follow earnestly because they have no where else to go. once in a while there will be a group of teenage boys who light out to the pier and smoke a fag or two, kicking coke cans with their torn up shoes. their mothers work 9 to 5 jobs but the sons don’t care. they weren’t and aren’t loved enough so now they show no love to the land that they think has forgotten them and given them up to the wildness that grows in their actions and thoughts. too bad they never discovered the time of trains.

My friend, well, she’s got a coke addiction, but it’s a love hate relationship. She gives and she takes but when it gives and takes too she cannot handle it and she’ll run around the room singing the blues and yelling and screaming about why it’s happening too soon. Her breasts will jiggle because she’s wearing nothing but a t-shirt, if even, and her short red hair dyed a million times will float above her head as she shouts “EWWW” to the million bugs crawling up and down her white cold skin. She is a snake that never sheds, a tree that never drops its leaves. All around her are the broken bottles of half drunk tequila and lime she began hoarding the moment she began using. It’s a mixed up life of sex and addiction and she is the star.

insomniac misfit judgmental suicidal purist electric eclectic golden fake wood-worked pacifist honed murdered inclined crazy determined matched forgotten weak tempered heavy broken muddied drenched pure strong submissive clueless trustworthy angelic poor tasteful accidental leech dirty influential psychic extra-terrestrial anemic emotional ironic alcoholic human