Hold Your Breath

“My cheeks hurt from laughing’ reaching out the longer of her legs, drawing a pictograph in the sand with her toes. ‘let’s shave our heads and join a cult… want to?’ daring me. Her long legs stroke the sand like a brush, doting the eyes on her ancient drawings. Reproducing the cartoons, she loves so much found in French caves.

‘A cult wouldn’t want us… we’re not their demographic’, I yelled towards the pacific.

’I’d own the room. I’d be their queen!’, she threw back to me thru her teeth. Her hands hipped like a cardboard cowboy.

‘Which Is why they’d kick you out the first day’. I counted clouds stuffed with cotton, quoting Carl Sagan, finding faces in the sky. ‘The queen is dead!’

‘Exactly… ha!’, we shuffled thru the sand and treated the slow coming waves like ole age, a marching army challenging us to come no further. I poured the bottle of beer over our heads, already wet from the rain. We sipped but didn’t swallow. ‘Long live the queen!’

I stopped and tilted my head to an empty heaven. ‘That one looks like Pinocchio’ I was holding an invisible telescope. Aiming towards exploding stars and satellites of garbage.

She saluted the sun, spitting out a “I suppose so… oh, ya… I see it’, Surprising me. I knew she had no idea who he was. Her beach landscape taking shape on the shore.

‘liar’ I slipped under a sneeze, grinning like a gorilla. ‘What did you just say?’, hearing me fine and smiling back.

‘Think I could swim to China?’ I fired back, moving my fingers straight south. She loved my ability to cut and paste a conversation. a mind made of non-sequiturs.

‘I’d say so… but what of the sparrow?’ the waves washing away her portraits. Rain melting the Chalk on a sidewalk.

‘Who gives a shit about the sparrow! What about me?’ I asked, ignorant to the far easts' actual distance or the ease of drowning. A lame Cortez.

‘Oh you? Your fucked’ she pronounced and ran ahead chasing the rain, leaving me alone and still, a statue centered in a benchless park.

I caught up to her when she bent down to dig in the damp sand, setting my hands on her head, ‘Find anything? A lost treasure? A love letter in a bottle?’ she held up her hand, showing me tiny crabs crawling out of her fingers.

‘You said you wanted children’. She glanced at me like a pirate with one eye closed, playing the glare that punched thru the overcast grey sky, she tossed the crabs back into the waves and stood up. She leaned in and kissed me on the cheek and turned and ran ahead again. my lungs wouldn't allow me follow.

‘Will you still love me tomorrow’? I quizzed. ‘Do I even love you today, should be your question?’. She has an answer ready but held silent.

Stepping away from her I whispered, ‘Fair enough.’

2)

‘Guns kill’. She says.

‘Salt kills.’ I say.

‘Are you saying the soup is salty?’ I gave no response. I sipped from the spoon. ‘What about the perogies?’ asking as she dried tiny tears from her cheeks, not noticing I hadn't taken a bite yet. The dishes stacked like Mayan ruins in the sink. Dirty pots and pans cover the counter. ‘perfect’ I burped. She dumps another scoop of sour cream on top of my bowel. She was an adult with braces. Good for her. She had lovely smile but not the confidence to show it off. She was almost there. Soon to be too good for me, so I tried to enjoy her crooked smile for a minute longer. She went back to the sink and stood with her back to me, Speaking to me over her shoulder with her hands on a plate. She rolled off her yellow dish gloves and threw them on the floor. She confirmed her platinum wig and straightened her dress.

‘She’s a vegan now, you know?’ tossing down a glamour mag on the table in front of my bowel, a glow of uranium colors the photo keeping the cover. Two twenty-year-old pop stars laid like snakes on top of a velvet couch, with lights hotter than Venus, crisping their skin, pegged cemetery eyes announcing that these vessels have no passengers. ‘Which one is the vegan?’

She points her pinkie at the liar on the left. ‘You know… they don’t fry eggs, don’t drink milk, don’t eat liver.’ I wink at them, always wanting, ‘How exhausting that must be… and wonderful too, to be able to reject so many other potential food sources… to discard what others would kill for… and all those rules… they’re so dedicated to an idea you’d figure they’d be good at everything else they do... the privilege of having too many options.’ I put down the spoon and push everything to the other side of the table. ‘You know what they say… it might be simple but it ain’t easy’.

‘Who says?’, I say.

‘They say’, She says.

I imagined myself on a raft. ‘It’s Halloween… should we got out and knock on some doors?’ she was all dressed up. Marilyn Monroe as the bride of Frankenstein. I wanted to do her autopsy right there, right then. God, I was aroused. ‘No, I’m not really into Halloween and I have a problem accepting things from people, especially strangers.’

‘Even candy?’

‘Even a smile.’

I leaned back on the legs of the broken kitchen chair. ‘Pity… other people have the best stuff… at least better than what I have.’ ‘Oh, I’ll get you anything you want… you don’t need to go door to door, holding out a bag, hoping they drop something in it that I might like.’ I tilted my head back to her at the sink.

‘Would you like some candy?’ I wondered to her. She spun back to me spinning a rag on wet plates ‘I would like a piece of chocolate… yes.’ The chair crashed back down bending/folding the front legs, I hoped up and went to the cabinet drawer. I found a bar of chocolate that had been hidden under some envelopes. I walked back over to the sink and slipped it in her jeans back pocket. I took my teeth to her ears ‘I’d spend all my lonely on you’. ‘But you don’t have anything’. She was right, ‘Then I guess it won’t be so difficult’.

‘How do you think I’ll look embalmed’. She turned off the sink and pushes the clean dishes to the floor. ‘Beautiful…’ I swore. ‘How do you think I’ll look cremated?’ she looked up to the ceiling in thought. ‘Not bad, but I don’t think you’d have as much to say’.

‘Just do me a favor, if you outlive me; promise you’ll mix some of my ashes in the punch and have a party’ she leaned in and kissed my forehead. ‘of course, I will. You know when you die, we’ll have a party that lasts a week’.

‘They call it a wake.’ I say.

‘Exactly… I’ll get the invitations’ she says.

‘You have more confidence than common sense’ clearing the dish from the table and tossing it like a horseshoe in the sink, ‘And you have more butt than breasts. I push away from the table and walk into the other room. she stays behind, yelling the rest of our conversation.

‘Is Thomas coming over tonight?’ heading back to laugh at the puzzle pieces broke in the sink.

‘Ya, he’s gonna stop by… how he behaves himself will decide how long he stays.’ Asking me with judgment. ‘He does ramble on… and about the most inane, boring things.’ I crashed down on the couch.

‘Ya, it’s true.’ She came over to the small table in front of the couch. Sitting down like an Indian chief. ‘he’s always on and on about how we need to wake up to the world, that were all sheep, and nobody knows it…’

‘Except him… he’s enlightened to all the details of how we’re manipulated, that we’re just being led around by our noses, just robots begging for fuel.’ Slumping down, ready for surgery.

‘Ya, except him’.

‘Right, except him. We know were all sheep, it doesn’t stop us from being sheered. I try not to get ulcers from things I can’t control, maybe I’m just selfish or ignorant, but I try to only impact the lives that I come in contact with.’ she posed like the Buddha, radiant and buzzing. One life away from nirvana.

‘Right. I don’t need to know how they make the sweater from the wool. There is nothing to be done. Let fate takes it course, embrace our human nature. Destruction or bust!’

‘Well, anyway… if he gets going… you got to tell him to shut up or leave… or you two can talk and I’ll leave, I’m sure there’s a bar full of lonely, horny guys down the street.’

‘If you can find someone that will give you their last piece of chocolate. Then you should go.’ She laughed and leapt into my lap. ‘I’m sure he’d give you his last of anything to you… car keys and his credit card… but I like you… I probably shouldn’t, but I can’t help it’. She was near close to perfect.

‘Good… I like the way you fry an egg, burn toast or make pancakes… and I can’t go out searching for a new gal that can cook as good as you.’ I reached out and squeezed her breast. Her eyes grew large and flushed with life, green as a mossy rock. She leaned in a grabbed my ear with her teeth.

‘Oh, ya there is that’ I shivered. ‘But when we’re old and you’ve lost all your teeth and I’ve lost all feeling in my limbs you will still be able to make pancakes.’ She turned turn lips into my ear. ‘true’ and hugged be tight like a life jacket. The ship was going down.

There was a knock at the door. She smiled and stood up.

‘Is Elton john gay?’

‘I’m not sure… but I think his husband is.’

‘I never realized… I never paid attention to such things… he does like to dress up.’

‘you’re right, strange… straight men don’t wear those type of outfits of play that many ballads’ she picked up an old newspaper. ‘that’s a week old.’

‘it’s new to me… I’m behind the times a bit… I was just told that women can finally vote.’

‘Ya, your behind… the poor also.’

‘What?’ she said thru a toothy giggle.

‘You are magic’, I say.

‘I don’t believe in magic’, she says.

‘You ever stole anything in your life?’ as I whistle dixie. ‘Not that I can think of nothing I need to confess of any value… but I have changed the price tags before.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’d find something with a certain price on something and it was more than I was willing to pay so I’d negotiated a better price… so I don’t know if that’s stealing but I’m guilt of discounting’

‘I like that, discounting’ I glanced with a hazardous smile. I would either explode or run across the room and throw her on the uneven kitchen table and prove my lust to her. I enjoyed feeling unstable. I forced my head back to the paper.

‘I can feel my heart beat down in my clitoris… It’s pulsating’

I learned that trick from a witch’ I slide my hand between her legs.

‘It feels swollen like a bee sting’ she jumps as if a volt has just gone thru her as if she touched the end of a live wire.

‘boom’ she screamed. ‘Pow, pow, pow’ I fired at her with two fingers. We decided to be onomatopoetic the rest of the night. She hides her eyes behind her hands. ‘Boo’ she peeks thru her fingers. I reached to the table and grabbed my wine glass, she reached from hers.

‘clink’ I look to see her neurons firing. ‘Clink, clink’ she sips from her glass. I finish mine. She bites my ear again. ‘Roarrrrrrr’ my voice raise with each sound as my arm pulls her in tighter, closer, trying to push her thru my body. ‘purrrr’ she digs her chin into my shoulder.

She stands up and takes my hand, pulling me up. I lose the tug of war and stand. She turns, spinning on white heels and heads down the hall, towards the bedroom. I chase after like a dog. she hums, ‘La, la, la, la, la….’, My hand hits her bottom. she jumps like a mule. ‘Wetcha!’ I wish I could paint, but even Leonardo couldn’t haven't done her justice.

‘Uuuuhhhh!... she squeals and gallops thru the bedroom door, pulling her dress over her head, tossing the silk behind her, ‘Plunk’, landing on my face, blinding my view.

She disappears behind the door. ‘Rrrrr’ I growl thru the clothes covering my eyes. I hear her hit the bed and bark. ‘Ruff…. ruff.’

'Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm', I say.

'Mmhmm', She says.

It’ll be a sad day when she leaves me.