vignette four.

4.

There was something in me that seemed uneasy. Deep inside I always wished I was more of an impulsive person, someone who could take charge and go after what I really wanted, but my string of short-lived relationships, dynamite attempts at college that kept failing and epically failed battles against depression were just few of the things that littered my past as reminders of how pathetic I could often be. Gaining courage and desire to proceed as normal was hard enough some days, fighting to find the ability to facilitate abnormal and outrageous things was beyond my means. But I digress.

"Promise me you'll be careful?"

My sister stood just as nervous as I did, twitching almost at the edge of the stairs. Her grip on the end of the railing that stood directly facing our front door seemed fierce, the white of her knuckles piercing and harsh.

I grabbed my scarf, my hat, my sweater, my denim jacket and my fingerless gloves (I was in a phase where I wasn't sure what I thought was cool, so I wore layers in case one thing worked while another didn't. I also donned a lot of band t-shirts I'd skimped off on cheap prices of from ebay. Lots of alternative rock and classic rock bands, mostly, a few Jimi Hendrix and Bad Company, the occasional Bob Marley, and the very rare Dead Poetic t-shirt I'd managed to find. I liked bands, and I was in that phase for certain, and I didn't care what anyone else thought about it.)

"Promise me, Nona!"

Her voice quaked. I didn't blink.

"Of course, Tee." Short for Tegan, of course. My Mom thought it was nice. My sister hated it. Or at least, she would until she was nineteen and would meet a boy two years older that thought it was exotic. They both also smoked too much weed to remember each other's names half of the time, but that's neither here nor there.

"Of course." She muttered it just as I was closing the door, under her breath but loud enough for my ears.

Of course.

And I was. At first.

vignette three.

3.

"What'cha got there?" A new hire smacked her gum (which I was certain she wasn't meant to be chewing, especially not as obnoxiously as she was in my ear at that moment) as she leaned over the counter of dcs (downstairs customer service) and looked at the book I was clutching. Of course it was a planner, one I was far too interested in to not read.

"Nothing."

vignette two. all of these are on a whim, unedited. rambles.

2.

So much rain. Cold, hard, pitted against my button down shirt which was now matted to my skin. Shivering, shivering, shivering - I reached for the door handle to my truck, fingers slipping. Not sure if they were slipping because of the rain, how cold I was or the mere fact that I was dealing with my emotions shaking my core into an overload of catastrophic proportions.

"Nona!"

He called my name and all of whatever breath that had kept me standing was knocked from my ribcage and onto my rain pelted truck window. Every part of my body fell forward in a fluid motion of inner turmoil and the only reason I started to stand again was because I was in his arms, being held.

"Nona, stop, stop," he was cooing in my ear, pulling my drenched hair from my face, from my tear-stained eyes and cheeks. I melted into his equally cold body, seeking the warmth only his heart could offer. "Nona, stop," a now seemed to be added on without much actually being said. My body wouldn't stop shivering, I felt every inch and fiber of my being as I started to bring myself to a more level-grounded consciousness.

you just want his money, you just want everything, don't you, you fucking goddamn bint!

I'd never been yelled at by someone with a British accent, and now that I think about it, there was some comic relief found in it, but as I stood there (barely) shaking from top to toes, all I could think about was the pain I was forced to endure. Pain I didn't want, need or think possible.

"Nona, it's all going to be all right. I promise."

Even though I sort of knew he meant it, nothing in me wanted to believe him. At all.

vignette one, of a number i'm uncertain of. seriously first rough draft.

1.

Working in a bookstore meant a lot of things to me when I was younger. Mostly it meant books I wanted at cheaper prices, but there was the added bonus of meeting people who at least attempted to delve into literary minds. Well, some of them tried to delve into literary minds while others read drivel similar to the brain food equivalent of prune baby food. But I digress. Walking around a bookstore was more inviting to me than some people truly ever realized. See, when I was a child, I idolized Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Aside from this movie being genius in animated form, it created a standard I held for myself - where I was, whatever I was doing, I demanded it be surrounded by books.

So that never stuck so well, but I always wanted to think in the back of my mind that somehow I would continue to work around books until the day I died. Which in reality could be very monotonous. But I digress.

Subsequently, though I did manage to land a job in a bookstore at the ripe age of eighteen, I was planted in their cafe. Though appealing and quicker-paced in a smaller environment, I longed to wear clothes in shades other than black, gray, faded black and the occasional white if I dared. Apparently my lot in life was allotted under the category of "close, but no cigar", which now that I think of it, is not a term I often use. That's a shame.

But I digress.

Working in cafe had it's perks, though. All employees had specific discounts within the company, and considering the amount of business each cafe in the company received, our discount was fifty-percent. Though I often despised the idea of indulging in cupcakes and sandwiches drenched in oil that would probably entail an earlier death rate, the cafe area itself was fun. And whenever I was about to go on a break, I'd just ask them to start on whatever drink or food I was going to end up getting. Even though there was sometimes a line ahead of me when I eventually came to purchase, the fact that the beverage and food was already ready made it easier to anticipate the amount of time not wasted in the quick-finished half hour break I was given. Eight hour shifts, and all I got was a half hour and a fifteen. Criminal. Well, not really, but I often liked to seethe on anything that made it seem like I hated my job, because deep down inside all I ever wanted was to get paid enough to live off of that dumb job. But I digress.

One day I was sitting at work on my fifteen, up on the second level right in front of the kid's section. There's a railing, comes level to about the middle of my torso, and I even out at about 5'9" so I guess it was a decent sized fence. There were always two mini-mission or mission tables up there, against the railing. It's easy to spot those tables - they're all black, and some are about half the size of others. I was sitting between the two tables - there was a lengthy amount of space - when I heard a manager nearby tsking at something I saw in her hand.

"That's ridiculous."

"What is?"

She hadn't seen me, but didn't jump. My best friend and I had a tendency of sitting there to read on our breaks. Kept us out of cafe, but in the store incase we needed to jump into action somewhere. I'm aware I lived a sad life. I digress.

The manager held up a planner, the pages flapping madly as she twisted it at it's binding. "This planner, I just found it on the table and-"

"Oh, I love those planners. I get one every year." Another manager chimed in as she passed, wheeling a v-cart (these tall-ish black carts that carried books for particular sections on them. I loathed them in a way, because I was always too scared to bring them down the escalators in fear of spilling the contents of somehow maiming myself. Trust me, if anyone who knew me were telling this story, they'd mention how horrible my balance is - and in combination with how accident prone I've always been, the likelihood of a spill occurring up or down an escalator with a v-cart in hand was as good as it could get.

I'd actually fallen on the up escalator. Technically at the time it was temporary stairs, since we'd been closed and the escalator was turned off. I had literally tripped going up stairs. Sprained my ankle and was out of work for at least a month and a half. And all of this isn't even counting how often I feared stepping onto escalators out of sheer terror, solely because my over-active imagination pulsed with the idea that somehow I'd get stuck and then sucked in between the cracks and slowly tortured by the grainy lines on the metal steps. But I digress.)

"Me too, but this one is going to have to go into our damaged goods section." The first manager whipped through some of the pages and showed it to her colleague and I sat, cross-legged, curious as ever as to what it was they were looking at. But I was positively forgotten and I had no intention of interrupting.

"It's not the worst I've seen," the second manager, who was the older and wiser (in that, 'I've-worked-here-longer-and-seen-more-than-you' sort of way) nonchalantly waved her hand before walking off with the v-cart (seriously, they're scary and made of evil.)

The first manager laughed and shrugged before zipping passed me to the down escalator, and she was gone. I went back to my reading, the seemingly ruined planner taking a backseat to the horrid shoujo manga I was reveling in.

oh, nonsense.

"oh nonsense?" she says, dipping her honey-coated spoon into her tea. "nonsense. hmm."

disappointing triumph on honest lust

disappointing triumph on honest lust

cold as the knife in the back of the moment
tasting the cooling sensation of a bittersweet fear
can't it feel like it

wasn't

gone.

freeze that virus on that fingertip-tipping icy trails of
what was it called
that
that

that damn

heartbeat

beating heart

thumping of chilled veins, biting as if they were as
acerbic as toxic butterflies in my

shaking head

sophisticated as his head between her legs
on the glance of his glasses, rimmed by
anticipated desire like an
uninterested whore on an iceberg of

unsatisfied triumph.

mounted on the pike of the marrow of the useless
caressing the tendrils of a sun-kissed afterthought
"oh, yes, sir, it's all real"
suddenly not as tasking yet
suffering of fraudulent
perception.

no sir, it's not real
never could have been,
so do try again before the mask falls from her
breast
onto the throbbing disrespect
nestled between the curls
laughter.

when she almost remembered

There was a rally down the road,
something about
hopelessness in humanity
and starvation in our generations
lackadaisical
emotional
hibernation, but all I wanted was a
comfortable goose bump sea
on my skin, cooling my
insatiable desire to find intimacy
in unorthodox ways. You’ve been too long from my touch
so I try to find you in these rallies,
and almost do in the wrangled
smells and sounds of humans grunting, but
I find myself more unsolidly weaving
to the thrum of my heartbeat, instead,
forgetting you enough so i can make it to
my bed before I remember you’re still saying goodbye
on the cool side of the sheets.

please

just let me already

sixty
to sixty
to twenty-four sixties
to eighty six thousand
four hundred
and each time i'm
waiting for that moment
to be ours.
each moment
second
thought
breath
heart beat
millisecond if i could
find it.

"time jumper series" draft one, sort of.

There was a misting, swirling trail of smoke that flittered about the chair my husband had been sitting in. He'd disappeared, of course, and his fork dangling in the air for a moment before clattering down to his plate, the pancakes forsaken. My five year old, who was sitting across from him, pouted and crossed her arms. If Daddy doesn't have to eat, then I don't have to she whined, and I sighed, giving her a look over the rim of my glasses reiterating that her father would, indeed, be eating his breakfast.

By Jesus the girl was five and she was already worried about her figure; I assumed it was because she watched too much television at her Grandmother's.

My husband reappeared moments later, blinking obsessively as if he'd just been sprayed by something, though I'm sure his large-frame glasses would've protected his blue eyes of such a thing. Blinking back what I assume was the aftershock of the time lapse, he waved the smoke from in front of his face and scratched at the beard that had started to flourish on his chin.

"Anything good," I queried, turning back to the cooking bacon on the stove. My daughter let out a squeal of joy as she picked up her fork and started to eat again, mimicking her father who had begun to do the same.

I sniffed the air, pausing my husband with my index finger. "Where on earth have you been this time. The after -smoke reminds me of a fire. I wish those smells wouldn't linger." I poked at the frying bacon again, watching it crack for a moment before turning off the flame.

"All I know is that some man named Harrison is no longer a fan of my skipping time so easily. Whatever that's supposed to mean. I'm fairly certain he was CIA, though, and no one from the CIA has yet to be a fan of me at all."

I pressed the palm of my hand to his right shoulder blade before filling a portion of his plate with a few fresh strips of bacon. "Well, I'm glad you're home, and scruffy," I mused, running my nails against his beard with a laugh.

"You do love my scruff - I think it was about three days this time, but you know I can never seem to remember those details."

I nodded my assent, silently curious as to where exactly he was. Of course he couldn't tell me, but even after fifteen years of this, I couldn't quench my eager mind to know the great unknown that my husband was privy to. I put two strips of bacon onto my daughters plate before sitting between the two at the table and cutting into my meal.

Calling it "time-jumping" doesn't seem the most true description of what my husband does. It's more of a relative awareness of his past lives that requires he skip through time like a huge book of the world, whenever crisis requires him to be there. Sort of. And even then, I'm not quite hitting the mark, because even I'm not too far in the know of what he does. And as much as his sudden disappearances worry me, often leaving me in a state of fear that my husband may not return, he does return, and only rarely hurt and bruised. The fear that he doesn't come back to me at all outweighs the fear of what he sees, so after the first two years of his leaving, coming, going, the like, I stopped asking questions that would only have me receive a Sorry, Honey, you know I can't answer. Watching him as he would sit beside me, eating his meals, smiling his smile, still being the man I grew to love and admire keeps me sated. Mostly.

I peered over the rim of my glasses as he licked at a few drips of syrup at the edge of his mouth. Leaning forward I took the corner of his lips between mine, smiling as I kissed away the remnants. "Don't forget to set your watch, dear," I chimed, leaning back into my seat. He jumped to do so, pressing a set of buttons on either side of the metal band.

"I don't know if I'd-"

"-remember my head half the time. I know."

The pancakes got soggy as I lost track of time watching him in the moments when time can't steal him. It's rare that I get that spare time, he usually clicks his watch before he leaves for work, but I can't help but feel selfish in the rare chances I get to spend time with him, on my own.

aha, apathy, aha.

"apathy!"
she said.
in that tight blue cut-off sweater that
makes me think of
how great
her boobs are.
"apathy is you,"
reiterating that
sometimes what i want
is so far away
within inches of my dreams,
the cusp of reality at the tip of the
surreal.
find it for me, i scream my apathy away
as i stare at the eyes that
are her
chest,
tongue darting to taste her,
my anti-apathy, unrealistic.
sitting, sit, sat still
and now her cut-off blue sweater
is on someone else's
bedroom floor.
aha, my apathy,
one love
never forsaken.