averbaldumpingground

[averbaldumpingground]

Today, I am proud and honored to have voted for Senator Booker. Bravo.

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The sound of it is worse, the shattering of ribs, the spill of organs. And there's a voice that haunts him in his dreams.

It isn't guilt, he can convince himself when waking. It can't be guilt, or shame, or anything resembling regret.

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Imbolc, peppercorns, surrender

The feeling of your hand, the bruises that it traces in its wake. The way that I can't stand to breathe you in.

Surrender feels like this. Like dinner on the counter, cold and just a little bit congealed. Like peppercorns and bay leaf that you spilled. Like wine we've left undrunk, the stains already set into your sweater.

It isn't close enough, the way that I can feel the murmur of your whispers. That aftershave I hate, the feeling of your hair against my cheek.

It feels a bit like sacrilege, this need. Your skin, a pagan feast. Like Bealtaine, like Imbolc.

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Zuerst, war es "die Anderen". Anders als du, vielleicht.

The communists maybe. I have never been a communist. I have been called a communist.

Aber wie sind wir anders?

I don't consider myself a Jew. Most people might.

Wie kann der Hass so groß sein?

The anxiety is back now most mornings, a churning, festering thing, fueled by real fear. Intrusive thoughts that only alcohol can quiet.

But I don't drink. I can't. 

It would be a comfort, though. To slip into nothingness. Into forgetting.

Except it didn't work that way. It wouldn't end the subjugation.

Die Träume war undeutlich, komisch. Die Weckuhr ist nutzlos am meisten. 

It's something like 2,800 miles to Mazanar. Ellis Island is closer. I've been to the top of the Statue of Liberty twice.

Werden sie Armbanden tragen? Oder sind sie die Nachbarn, die Eltern? Kommen sie in der Nacht? Schießen sie, ohne Fragen zu stellen?

Я думала когда-то, что человечество имеет в себе больше хорошего чем... чем чего? Безумного зла?

Зло это есть безумство. Зло это пошлость и трусость и зависит. 

The days are getting longer again, that quiet, inexorable shift into spring. The garlic is starting to sprout through the snow. 

But it feels just as bleak, just as cold as mid-winter. An ending. A death. 

We are living through entire days of funerals, it seems. Each moment, just a little of our souls. A little of the lives that we imagined. 

Ich weiß nicht, wie ich lieben kann. Ich liebe dich. Ich liebe euch, ich glaube. 

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Die dritte Woche, oder, vielleicht, ist es nur noch die zweite. Die Schreckbilder haben zurück gekommen. Letzte Nacht, gab es Glas, das jemand zerbrochen hat. Mein Väter war da, älter als wie er war. So alt. Habe ich keine Wörter. Fehlen die mir. Es war noch dunkel und früh, wann ich aufgewacht habe, kalt mit dem Angstschweiß.

Sometimes, I take home old things. A panther lamp found on the side of the road. Somebody's recipe books. A chess set from Mexico, bought on an 80's vacation.

I used to wish, sometimes, that someone could love me like that. Like an old radio, a sewing machine left tucked away in an attic. Like a music box, a little chipped, a little too tinny.

That's all that's left of us really: maybe a handkerchief, a hat. A photograph sometimes.

It lingers, the smell of her perfume, somewhere on a scarf in a donation pile, left outside of a Goodwill. It's such an everyday thing, the box he sent his love with, now full of brackets and screws.

Что это Солженицын сказал? Они лгут? А какая у нас правда может быть. Кто мы? Кто я?

Я не знаю изыка моей родины. Я не знаю историю моего прошлого.

И кто они? Кто привёл их к власти?

Что делать, кроме правду говорить? И ждать, чтобы они её замолчили.

Wie kann mann lächeln? Wie kann die Kunst vorhanden sein? Wie kann mann so immer noch leben, inmitten des Kotes?

Vielleicht erinnere ich nicht meine Träume heute Abend.

Vielleicht wird die Schokoladenzuteilung wieder erhöht.

I saw a man pissing today, along the block or so between my office and the subway stop. It's barely remarkable now, this New York of my childhood. This New York of a time my childhood wasn't.

Where is the man, from maybe Venezuela, who took up a collection for the fireworks? Where is my third-grade teacher, her locs in a colorful head wrap, her shelves full of so many books?

Where is the safety of knowing, of certainty, we had a chance?

The skyscrapers stand higher now, soulless glass monoliths, zoning disasters. Monuments to the humanity we've lost.

[averbaldumpingground]

"Orange Juice" Noah Kahan

It's the patronizing tone that makes him shut his eyes.

Step ten. Deep breath. Step ten.

It's not the feeling of detachment. It's not the isolation. Guilt again, maybe. The silence that comes from not having the words. Not wanting to speak.

"I'm sorry. I should have been better with calling."

Step ten.

And it's continuous, isn't it? All of it.

Not just the prayers or the meetings or...

"I don't think it's a good idea for me to come, though."

It's not the temptation to drink. It hasn't been as bad since he got out.

It's all of the rest of it, maybe. All of the laughter, flush-cheeked. The late-night, idealistic bullshit. He still believes it, he thinks. At least a little bit, sometimes.

But there's no real fixing it. No real way to make amends. That's what step nine says.

Anna will be there, most likely. She slammed the door when he tried. He won't upset her again.

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A morning shoveling snow, the anti-climactic silence of a long, holiday weekend. It's so mundane. It's not even a whimper. 

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The 5 times he took a drink and the 1 time he left it untouched

1.

His fists are still bloody, the bruise of his eye swollen shut. The ice doesn't help. Neither does whiskey, but maybe that means he hasn't had enough of it yet.

The pretty brunette behind the bar that he had half-heartedly been trying to impress is glaring. He finishes his drink and leaves the melting towel on the counter.

2.

The storm feels almost like a benediction, almost like learning to breathe.

He can't see the sea out his window, but it feels like he's still drowning, still struggling for air. Still waterlogged in his clothes, the weight of them dragging him under. He'd tossed them on the floor, sandy and muddy and wet.

If only he could shake off the taste of vomit and brine as easily as the ruined mess of his sweater. The bottle is on the table by the window. It's doing very little to help him stop shaking.

3.

The ghosts that wake him up at night, they're usually the same. Blue, sightless eyes. Mute accusations. Fingers that brush past his cheek.

He doesn't want to remember.

4.

It's really not much of a toast. It wasn't much of a funeral, either.

Not that he expected anything different.

But the shock hasn't really warn off yet. He's still waiting for the finality to sink in; the guilt.

5.

It's a bullshit coping mechanism, he's perfectly aware. But he can't look himself in the mirror most mornings. He can't make that voice just shut up, the one that sounds a little too much like his father.

He can't...

Whatever was left in his flask tastes disgusting.

+1

It's not cold enough outside for the snow to stick to anything, but it's still strangely peaceful in the quiet before the salt trucks begin their rounds. He knows he should get up to turn the coffeemaker on, and maybe brush his teeth and take a shower. The sleepy rustling from the other side of the bed doesn't seem particularly interested in coffee, though. He yawns, fumbling a little with the alarm clock.

It's still only 7:02, he reasons. It will be a challenge, extracting what used to be his half of the blanket from the barely sentient cocoon by his elbow, but maybe he can get another twenty minutes in. The snooze button is there for a reason.

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"You don't get to die, you promised."

"I lied. I'm going to put myself out of my misery with this salad fork and you can use my lifeless body as a distraction to catch the first bus down to Tijuana. You took Spanish in high school, didn't you?"

"...wow. You've clearly thought this through."

"I had time. A lot of time."

"I told you it was going to be a Catholic wedding."

"No, you told me it was going to be in a Catholic church. Those are not the same thing!"

"You didn't have to come with me, you know."

"...You offered to pay for groceries for a month. And do my taxes for me."

"Okay, so maybe I was a little bit desperate--"

"--I mean, I get it, I've seen how hot my ass looks--"

"--Oh, fuck off! Here, the dessert fork will probably fit in your eye socket better."

"I thought I wasn't allowed to die? That committing seppuku with the butter knife 'would take people's attention away from the bride'?"

"Fuck you. You can stop it with the air quotes, you asshole. We both know you're only here because you hate her."

"That's not true. I'm also a little bit here because you're a masochist and most of her family still hates you."

"But I didn't even do anything! She broke up with me! It--"

"--After she told everyone she thought you were in love with me and--"

"--was five years ag--"

"--she didn't want to walk in on us fucking. Which, good job, by the way, on inviting me. I think her sister hates you even more now."

"Ugh. You could have said someth--"

"--I mean, you can still prove her right. I'm sure there's a bathroom here som-- OW!"

"You totally deserved that. Just shut up and eat your damn chicken. If we're both lucky, maybe you'll get salmonella."

[averbaldumpingground]

Because you have given me prompt powers: Halloween by Noah Kahan

You've always had prompt powers. Even if you horribly misuse them.

There is a letter waiting for him from his sister at Mrs. Olafsson's boarding house when he returns to settle his accounts. Mary is already teething. And Little Jacob, named for his father, has started learning his letters. He does not crumple it into the fireplace, but his reply is curt, and hastily scrawled. He has no need to linger any longer.

She does not comment on his agitation when promising to post his response, but Elna, the Olafssons's niece, does ask him to wait for her for a few moments at the threshold. She has a bundle for him, fresh bread and hard cheese and salt cod. Her eyes are troubled when she sees him off, and he is grateful for the kindness she has shown him, even if it is borne out of pity rather than any sort of particular fondness or regard for his person.

Elna's own father had sailed for a time on a whaler. She knows what awaits him past Greenland, perhaps far more intimately than he has dared to inquire himself.

But Nathaniel does not wish to dwell on the dangers of his newly chosen profession any more than he had wished to dwell on the contents of his sister's letter. He was to except a new niece or nephew by Christmas. Jacob had been tasked with producing a rather execrable tract by one William Gilmore Simms. A canal is being built, and there is plenty of work to be had should Nathaniel be inclined to embrace such a wonderful opportunity. Frankly, it seems preferable to him to perish at sea.

On the long walk to the harbor, Nathaniel has too much time to ponder his own unfortunate circumstances. Were he the sort of man inclined to marry, he supposes it would be to someone like Elna: diligent, kind, and well past the age to hope for anything more than the same in a husband. She is quite a bit older than him and seems content enough in her prolonged state of spinsterhood that she is unlikely to be particularly desirous of children. Nathaniel has considered it before.

It would be a farce, of course, but he has long since abandoned all notions of meaningful companionship or anything resembling desire. He had been acquainted with it once, as a boy, and thought those foolish feelings reciprocated, with promises whispered between stolen kisses smudged into his hair and his skin.

That pitiful illusion has been thoroughly shattered with news of his sister's engagement to Jacob.

There had been no prior indication, nothing to prepare him for the gravity of Jacob's betrayal, the whole of their apprenticeship shy glances and fumbling hands and brief, pilfered Sundays together. He could not object to the match without likewise exposing his own inclinations, so he had said exactly nothing, and signed on to the crew of a merchant vessel, in a spectacular disappointment to both his uncle and his mother. By the time his ship had returned to port, Jacob had wisely moved on, his journeyman years as a convenient enough excuse.

It is just as well, Nathaniel thinks. His sister's letters, too frequent and rather too long when he is in port, present the sort of portrait of a man Nathaniel counts himself exceedingly ashamed to know.

Or is it that he never really knew him?

Rather than ponder his own youthful folly, Nathaniel contemplates the voyage he is about to embark on. The Anna Elizabeth sits waiting for him in the distance, her captain a stoic old Quaker whose cousin he has sailed with before. She is a beautiful ship.

He is not certain of her destination, the Davis Strait or maybe the whole of the Pacific, but breathing in the salinity of the harbor air, Nathaniel discovers himself temporarily at peace.

There are no letters at sea, no sisters. He only has to close his eyes to disappear.

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Word prompt: yarn, trickle, suffer

I was going to attempt one of your song prompts, but I'm still honestly disappointed in you about yesterday. Soooooo this is the least loaded one I could do I think. Just a quick bit of nothing. I'm not feeling very inspired.

The attic smells of leaves, and maybe late October damp. But she feels warm enough, curled in her blanket and her armchair, the rain slowed to a trickle. Minerva has crawled into her yarn basket again, a calico disaster, just two yellow eyes and a paw sticking out of a heap of now tangled merino. She knows she'll have a few hours of detangling to suffer through in the morning. But for now, ignoring the hush of the voices downstairs, she is content to drowse away the fading afternoon.

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"Cosmic Ballet" Sarah Slean

You really are The Worst. But I suppose I can work with this one. I am continuing to refuse to tag this properly. I have faith in you. Edit: Adding tags now. My faith was misplaced.

The quiet of the night is gentle: the steady falling of the rain, the infomercials turned to TV static. The damp, warm breath against his neck, it overwhelms him too.

He wishes for infinities like this. More eons than he's seen to breathe him in, to sit what he's been told's too close, and offer up his shoulder as a pillow.

It's so unbearably easy, to love him, this man. To chart the constellations of his freckles. To wonder at the twitching of his fingers, so beautifully calloused, where they're loosely curled in his shirt. It's such a foolish, selfish thing to want.

Perhaps the humanity of his own longing should startle him, as unused to it all as he is. Be not afraid, he softly laughs to himself.

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Maybe this will work for what you want: 'SIlver Springs' Fleetwood Mac

Fuck you. You are The Worst. I am also not going to properly tag this until you figure it out. Have I mentioned you suck? This is brought to you by that one performance video from like 1997 with all of the ridiculously loaded eye contact btw. Because that's kind of living rent free in my head. Edit: Adding tags now. I continue to be baffled.

It's just another night, another dingy, damp motel room off of I-695, south of Baltimore. He thinks the carpets here used to be green. They haven't been properly cleaned since the end of the Reagan administration. The first one. 

His suit jacket's crumpled up over the back of a chair, still where he tossed it that morning. He really needs to do laundry. Not tonight though. Tonight...

The whiskey bottle's still exactly where he left it too, conveniently in reach on the corner of the nightstand. It's still mostly full. And barely a step above paint thinner. 

There isn't any sense in wasting anything better. Not when it's him and his nightmare again. 

One nightmare. Singular.

Always the same, ever since--

He slams the radio on, scrambles for the knob, trying to find something that isn't just thin, tinny static.

Britney Spears? No. Some rapper he doesn't recognize. What sounds like it might be an ABBA cover band. Which? He's not even sure why that would be a thing. REO Speedwag--

He groans when he recognizes the song. It's just a little too pointed. And not really any better than being alone with his thoughts.

He flops back on the bed and avoids looking at the liquor bottle. It's still to early for that. But Kevin Cronin must really have it out for him tonight.

He wonders if maybe he should have just stayed at the bar. Maybe even gone home with that waitress he'd spent the better part of two hours chatting up. Yeah. She was pretty. Long, wavy hair. Curvy in all the right places.

But then she had looked up at him, laughing, and he knew he that couldn't go through with it.

Not when her eyes weren't blue. Not when she just wasn't--

He doesn't bother trying to rationalize it to himself anymore. The whiskey really isn't any better than industrial cleaning solution, but he's already starting to feel the muscles in his shoulders unclench.

Good.

And yeah, maybe he is too old for this hangover bullshit. Maybe that's going to catch up with him one day. But tonight? He doesn't want to think about it anymore tonight.

He shuts the radio off. The light from the motel sign blinks, a dirty, muted yellow through the curtains.

If he gets drunk enough, maybe he won't even remember those words. Maybe--

It hasn't worked before. He always wakes up panicked, in a sweat.

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word prompt: temerity, lemon balm, suture

It's the plants on the shelf by the windowsill that surprise him the most. Lavender and mint and what looks like lemon balm, from where he's hunched over the sink, blood swirling down the drain in a thin trickle.

The fluffy, grey tabby that's sprawled at his feet seems rather disinclined to knock them over. It's strange, he thinks, ignoring both the cat and the constant, slow stab of the needle, that the ceramic, white pots should remain there, still somehow mostly intact.

"I'll have you know that playing your nursemaid is not included in my job description."

He smirks over his shoulder, the expression more forced than he'd like. But, really, the sutures do hurt. "And yet, you do it so well. Perhaps it should be."

The other man pulls the thread a little too taut. He doesn't let himself grimace.

"I could still send you back to medical, you know."

"But that would mean admitting that you found me at your flat. Despite your biometric scanners."

He manages to bite down on the groan, but only just. He usually knows better than to antagonize the person stitching him up. But he can't really help himself, it seems.

"I should just let them sedate you for this. And stick you with a catheter."

"It's not what I typically enjoy in the bedroom--"

"--You will not be finishing that sentence!"

The scandalized blush isn't quite enough to distract him from the throbbing of the open gash along his deltoid. Pity, that.

"All I'm saying is--"

"--That you probably deserved it from whoever tried to kill you with a penknife?"

"I'm wounded. You know me better than that."

The other man scoffs at him, eyebrows still knit in concentration as he ties off the last bit of thread at his forearm. It's deeper than the cut at his shoulder, but doesn't hurt nearly as much.

"I know you probably provoked them. That famous temerity of yours--"

"--Is that how you usually speak to men who bring you presents?"

He slips the memory card from his pocket out onto the counter. The smirk he manages this time is only slightly less painful.

"Is that--"

"--Ah, ah, ah. Stitches first."

[averbaldumpingground]

Dialogue prompt: "You can't save someone that doesn't want to be saved."

It's quite when the man comes in, his baseball cap pulled low. A little after 4. That Fleetwood Mac song's on the radio again.

Jazz smiles, and passes him a menu. The tips are crap when she's stuck on the graveyard shift, but really, it's the motherfricking boredom. She's restocked all the ketchup and the straws and halfway through her eighth or ninth sudoku. It's been unusually slow.

It's mostly truckers that they get, this late. Or really fricking early. She likes the chatty ones the best, the ones who flirt. They're mostly all too old for her, but it's something to do to pass the time. This guy just nods his thanks and asks her for a coffee.

He's dressed the part, Jazz thinks, as she wakes up Miguel to start the grill, but she's still pretty sure he's not a trucker. It's something in the way his shoulders tense. His face is worn, what she could see of it, at least. Jazz pegs him as mid-40s, maybe.

"A Monte Cristo, please." He slides the menu over. "I don't suppose that you serve any scotch?"

The smile the man tries on looks mostly pained.

"No liquor license, sorry."

He shrugs. His eyes are blue. Jazz thinks his nose looks like he's broken it before. He dumps a flask of something in his mug.

Jazz probably should care. She doesn't, not very much. She thinks she'll call the cops if he starts driving.

"You promise that you'll go sleep whatever that was off?"

He looks at her, and tries that smile again. It's somehow even worse. Miguel slides her the plate.

"Here. The grease should soak some of that right up."

"That would rather defeat the purpose of my adding it." He takes the sandwich that he ordered anyway. The way he talks sounds off. It maybe sounds a little bit Chicago? He hunches down to eat. His knuckles look more bruised than the bags under his eyes.

Jazz refills his coffee. He stares at her, but he doesn't move to spike it again. It's unsettling, but she thinks Miguel could probably take him if he needs to. Miguel's got a few inches and forty or fifty pounds on him, at least. Jazz doesn't think he'll do anything stupid, but it never hurts to be careful. Not when it's only her and Miguel this late. Early. Whatever. Miguel, who decides to step around the counter from the kitchen.

"Hey man, you some kind of boxer or something?"

"Me? No."

He's got the face for it, though. The healed up nose, the somewhat prominent ears the Yankees cap does nothing to hide.

"Long haul?"

"No, not that either." He finishes what's left of his coffee, and nods at the pot behind Jazz. "Just visiting a friend."

Miguel nods. This close to Dulles, it's mostly Nationals country. He reaches for the coffee pot to give the guy a refill before Jazz can.

"You in town long then?"

Jazz isn't sure why Miguel is out here, running what passes for his version of interference. He usually stays in the kitchen with his audiobooks. Or takes a nap in the office. It's why Jazz brings her sudoku with her.

"No."

"You want anything else, hon?" She's playing it up a bit, she knows, but this guy has got Miguel on edge too.

He smiles again. Maybe a little less forced. "No, that's alright."

Jazz doesn't buy it, but she picks up his plate and rings up the total for him at the register. And then she makes herself scarce.

It's only later, after the guy's gone off in the direction of the convenience store across the parking lot, the Miguel says anything.

"You can't save someone that doesn't want to be saved."

He shows her his bronze sobriety chip. Jazz nods, and puts on a fresh pot of coffee.

[averbaldumpingground]

@iamstartraveller776 Merry Christmas friend!

She'd used to wonder what was up there, in the stars, and dreamt of him, a boy, his smile a constellation she had charted.

But that had been before the nightmares came. Before the waiting rooms, before the headlights always racing closer.

Except, sometimes, she could have sworn he'd joined her there. An older face, his smile a little forced. But in her dreams, he might have held her hand. And then she'd scream herself awake, and spend the night with scribbled calculations.

***

She's certain that the readings aren't right. They've been a little too convenient since-- she isn't sure, but she first noticed several days before New York.

And something's pulling at the corners of her dreams. It's not the chemo or the car crash anymore. It's angry, but a little bit familiar.

It feels like someone's there, like someone's almost mirroring her breathing.

Except she's still alone. And her computer's on, her coffee's gotten cold, and she's got red ink smudged against her cheek.

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That inkling of a smile, I still remember, how he'd made it curl.

But kissing in the back seat of a car, with fingers tracing up the creases of my t-shirt, the feeling of it's gone and lost to time.