themutewatcher-blog

[themutewatcher-blog]

I I watched the man die the way so many claim they wish to. He was at home in his warm bed, surrounded by his family, his graying dog laying at his feet. He was as comfortable and well loved as any man could have been in his final moments. He was an ancient soul, past the point of pride and futile notions of what masculinity and propriety dictate, even past the point of regret and the worry for what tomorrow could bring. He had gotten to every last drop of what he had wanted, imbibed the essence of this world through every pore in his body like hard bread in a warm, salty broth. He had lived as long as planned, done all that he wished, and seen all that there was to see up until Time had grown so jealous of his observation that it had taken his eyes. He was a self proclaimed happy man, and a well respected and powerful man to those who didn't know him as well as I did. It didn't matter though, in the end, death still came for him. II It is an odd thing to watch a passing. The sweat droplets on his forehead beaded and pooled in the wrinkles and pits of his once handsome and stern visage, congregating in the smooth bristle of his brows and traveling slowly through the crevices of his face into his tightly trimmed, snow white beard. The cool air in the room gave him a chill, though the temperature had not changed so much as a single degree from where he set it so many years ago. He always said that 72 was the perfect temperature for a calm conversation, a pleasant meal, or a roll through the sheets. He loved to say that last bit. I wondered if the sweat droplets ran down his face the same way they did now after those sheets fluttered back to their bedding, and as he lay shuddering below them with a smile on his face and faint electricity fading from his eyes– a flushed and loving head panting on the thick of his chest. He must have, but some part of me had a hard time seeing this man happy. It was almost comical to imagine this man with a virile glow to his skin and a devilish smirk besmirching his usual grimace. I stifled a laugh that caught in my throat and escaped as a guttural cough. In his youth, his eyes were always described the same way: as deep ocean blue with ebbing tides of green and flecks of yellow. People often made note of those chaotic orbs, though he never seemed to agree. To him, they were only ever ice and steel, lightning when he was mad, and a sharp grey when he was contemplative. Those eyes were growing dim. They weren't the ocean, or a storm, or even a haze. The light was leaving them, retreating inward to the base of his occipital lobe where the neurons were no longer firing. His eyes had a thin white veil over them, the smokescreen brought on from too many decades in the sun. Age had clouded the color when it had taken the sight from them. In recent years his eyes were more reminisce of the ocean as seen through a thick fog, or a frozen lake where ducks used to swim and children used to play. Now only a thick sheet of dark muddy ice was visible. Maybe it was the frozen lake inside him that was giving him the chills. It was hard to watch, like an unmistakable sign that the heart and soul was moving somewhere else, as if it had grown weary of this plane and had other things to do now. His hands, once so hard and thick they felt like stone, now resembled brittle shoots covered in a sheer, ill colored, paper. In a startling contrast to his eyes, his huge hands seemed to grasp the bed sheets with the strength of his prime. His body was holding onto anything it could, perhaps just to pull one more sensation from the soft silk sheets, or perhaps because his body just needed to flex its remaining muscle before it could no longer do so. It seemed his body was holding on to the world, because unlike his soul, it had nowhere to go, and on some unspoken, morbid, blissful level... we all know that. The eerie difference between soul and body, and the reaction to this transition, made me wonder how long it would go on for. It was like watching an ethereal noose pull his soul from his body in a not entirely unwelcomed way. The light in his eyes returned briefly, and his hands relaxed, just long enough for him to look around one final time with a dim, half aware gaze that lay somewhere between torment and serenity. Then, the same way all men do, he exhaled, and he was gone. I was gone. III I lay there on the bed as I looked off at the floating me. I finally understood why dead people left their eyes open; as it turns out, those windows to the soul are our only way out. I wasn't sad then, maybe I should have been, but I couldn't muster it. The dead man had spent years of his life living for other people, when all he had wanted to do was let it go. He had always wanted to go into some overgrown berth of wilderness and fight to the death with a monstrous beastie, and die as he had come into the world: screaming, naked, and vulnerable. The vulnerability in her showed then. I watched as she burst into tears. She was the lone ice skater that had glided across his frozen ponds. She was why he never found that monstrous beastie. She, who had once seen the swirling ocean tides and made him believe that they were there, just as she said, now wept. She was my love, and I was hers. She was the only person he had ever bowed to, as he was accustomed to power from a very young age; she was his queen, and mine. I wanted to wipe her tears away, but I found myself with a sudden lack of hands. I watched as my son held her and told her not to look at the now dead former me. He was a good boy, but he could not have known that she would steal another glance from around his shoulder, or that she would be relieved to see me go. I knew she was, I felt that selfless gift like a soft kiss on the cheek of a crying child. I wondered if he had seen it too. He hadn't. I watched from somewhere above them, below them, or through them. I was the sheets that had been wrenched by one shockingly powerful archaic grip, that now caressed a carcass. I was the foul odor that nobody ever talks about wafting through the air and assaulting the nostrils of those without the good sense to leave the room. I was the light emanating from the lamp opposite his bed, shining on everything I could, lending a soft glow to her tears and casting shadows to hide his now dull, hollow eyes. I was the tears rolling down her face, made of sorrow, and salt, and memories. I was everything, and just after that, I wasn't.

[themutewatcher-blog]

Life Is Life Is beautiful. I spent my morning riding my mustang, Bravo, through the bluffs around the ranch. Bravo's tail was whipping back and forth at stubborn, biting flies. I was patting his neck to let him know when it was okay for him to graze. We wandered for a bit on and off the trails, in and out of plains and forests and cliffs. I studied the sun bleached skeletons of mule deer and elk that littered the plains. Wolves had torn them apart, a leg bone was often ten yards from the skeleton, confiscated from its owner before the rest of the pack could make the kill. Life is beautiful. I paddled hard through the Rapids as mayflies buzzed through the air so thick they cast shade, and Mosquitos used the swarm to stealth into the boat and drink from me. All forward. I avoid rapids that could flip me up in the air. The water rolled over my head as I hit a wave. The liquid lens brightened the sun and quieted the buzz of the flies. The thick black cloud of buzzing decay was silenced for a moment. I was drenched and cold and the sun came through in brilliant clarity to warm me. With it, came the swarm. I couldn't breath through the thick infestation fighting for a drink and a nibble. I must have eaten half a dozen just gasping for air. Life is honest. Bravo was small compared to the other horses on the ranch. He was a mustang, tamed a few years back by the ranchers. He walked slowly and had a bad attitude, he would bite or kick if he thought he could get away with it. He knew I would let him eat as we went, as long as he obeyed me when it mattered. He would reach back and nibble at me when he was tired and I would get off and let him wander a bit. He didn't know verbal commands, but he came when I whistled for him. We used no verbal commands in case we were being followed or needed to get away quietly, or in case I couldn't talk for one reason or another. He responded well, and was faster than any other horse on that ranch if he wanted to be. The sun was setting over the canyon and the light trembled over the sulfuric yellow cliffs. The baying started. Life is honest. The swarm passed over us. They didn't bite very much with the exception of a mosquito or a hungry horsefly, but for the most part is was an easy trade. They took small nibbles from me, and I ate all the fish that their recent hatch had stirred up. The fish jumped at anything that hit the water, including my lures. The mayfly spawn made up twenty percent of the annual diet of the trout in the river and lakes nearby, and they had just hatched a week or so ago. The fish were hungry. I payed the toll of small bites, and reaped the reward of full meals. Two of the fish would be dried and turned into saddle snacks. The rest would be grilled and eaten over the small campfire I made on the beach sometime later. Life is harsh. I kicked Bravo hard and stood up completely in my stirrups. I kept my knees bent and my hands tight on the reigns, though I left Bravo slack so he could run free. We were silent as the wolves howled and bayed. The east and the south sounded loud. The ones to the west were farther out. Could it be a separate pack? Were there two packs coming for us? The brush to my right rustled. Bravo was running forward but looking back. I kicked hard. He straightened out. I let my right hand out of the reigns and took the knife from my saddle. The sunset cast a red glow on the land like the twisted echo of wine swirling in a crystal glass. Life is harsh. I hit another fish over the head with my pliers and whispered my thanks to him. He died for my survival, and while I lamented his death, I still threw him in my bucket. It had been a fruitful day. The sun was still high in the sky despite it being a quarter past six. I knew I had to head back. You never stay out past dark in this part of the world. I looked across the river to see a Grizzly looking at me. I smiled. He was the Bald Eagle to my Osprey. I had done the work, but it was he who would eat hearty tonight. I rose slowly and so did he. He seemed curious, not territorial. I assumed he was a male, or perhaps an adolescent female. There were no cubs and it was birthing season, and the bear was small, 4-500 pounds at most, just slightly larger than a black bear. I started to push the raft off the shore as the bear started to walk up river a few yards to the shallow area where he could cross. We both knew what was going to happen. I threw two of the larger fish toward him on the shore. He ignored them and watched me. I got in my raft and pushed out into the river and let the current take me away. The bear walked toward the fish like a puppy toward a toy. The bear was young. Maybe a giant cub even. I smiled as I rowed toward more Rapids, thanking the mayflies and the fish for their sacrifice. Life is pain. The baying seemed to be coming from everywhere. Bravo was off the trail and running hard through a field of hemlock and goldenrod. I had my knife out, ready to slash anything that jumped toward us. I couldn't see the source of the howls. I could see the ranch ahead. I was sure that we wouldn't make it, though at this point my concern mattered very little in comparison to Bravo's panicked sprint speed. Bravo knew where he was going without me steering him. I knew that but I was worried he would be as full of panicked delusion as I was. He jumped the outer fence of the ranch. I heard a snarl and threw my right hand out wide, slashing the air wildly. Bravo was slowing. I kicked and he couldn't speed up anymore. He was tired. We had ran farther than the wild would let us. I jumped off of him and slapped his hind quarters. We ran to the ranch together. He was far ahead of me when the first wolf, a huge mottled grey, came out of the wood to my right. It howled one more time and snarled and bayed, pacing as I ran toward the front gates. A gunshot rang out. The wolf retreated into the night. The howling didn't stop for hours. The echoing call of the hunt chilled me as I undid bravos saddle inside the stables. Life is pain. I returned to my makeshift tent as the rain started to come down. It had been pleasant the last few nights in the warm summer evenings with a light breeze rustling the leaves, but now it was frigid. I packed up and headed back home- Home. A word? A concept? A location? Most nights it's where I lay my head. It's where my head wanders freely in the summer eves. Years later I would learn that home was a young woman named Celine, the current love of my life, and the woman that I came back from hell for. Life is. The curves of her body like rolling hills in a lush valley, welcoming, warm, and kind. Her eyes are secrets, and her lips whisper lies beautiful enough to make the wind rustling tall grasses jealous of its soft melody. She is the warm sun cutting through cold water. She is the fish sacrificing itself for my survival. She is the wolf hunting me and the howls haunting me. She is the adrenaline coursing through my body and the smile on my face as I roll on down the river, away from the bear eating my meal. She was the sunset leaving the warped red sheen and the moon rising full over the tree line. She is the swarm that paralyzes me, but in exchange gives me life. She is pain. She is harsh. She is honest. She is beauty.

[themutewatcher-blog]

A Plea to the Censors

People think I'm insensitive, but I'm not. I cry just as anyone else does. I'm not afraid to admit it, I'm not afraid to talk about my feelings or anyone else's. I'm not afraid to hear what you have to say, even if I don't like it, because what I want is for both of us to walk away feeling closer. It's not that I'm insensitive, it's that I've never felt like a more condescending drama queen than when I'm dancing around my own opinion to avoid offending you. I don't pretend to agree with my closest friends and family, because I trust them to be adults and be able to entertain an idea without thinking they're being forced to adopt it. If I can't be open around you, and you can't handle an idea without internalizing it, then on whom does that truly reflect? I trust you and I to be able to discuss things as equals, and just as I trust you to handle my opinion, I hope you will trust me to handle yours.

[themutewatcher-blog]

Cruising

It's the funny thing about a cruise. I look around and notice that I'm on a giant floating chili's- a manufactured and processed version of what a low minded millionaire thinks people enjoy. I'm on a corrupted sailboat tearing through the calm of the sea leaving a wake of filth from and for the detrivores. I see the way that she looks up at him, fearful and nervous, accepting of the fate that she'll find at the depths of his sheets. The waves crash.

[themutewatcher-blog]

Surf'sUp

The cars came in clusters. Not neat, or tiny, but almost a reluctant acceptance that driving near people was comforting. It wasn't conscious, maybe. It was instinct. Our drive to be together, forever, for better or worse, Untill death due us part. Till we sort ourselves into units, then squadrons, then armadas of isolated, insulated, and fiercely guarded communities of cars, rolling lazily down the freeway, like waves rolling toward a crashing shore.

[themutewatcher-blog]

On Wanting

It's been years since we last spoke. It's been only minutes since I last spoke to you. I can still hear your voice if I'm alone and in the dark and things are quiet, if I try hard enough. That calming melody doesn't come in words anymore, only a twisted echo of the chantings from the cabal. I hate that I have to try at something that used to be so natural. Our love making is the reflection of a moon on a pond with too many ripples. Your eyes smiling at me gently and your silken hair falling like a perfect frame for your smile are clearer than anything I see in front of me now. It's amazing what you remember about certain times in your life. I've said aloud the beginning of a voicemail to you thousands of times. As you've probably noticed, that voicemail never came.

[themutewatcher-blog]

Internal Affairs, and International Relations: On Remembering Budapest

The plane flew smoothly if you didn't pay too much attention. I was sitting between two men, and like myself they were not slight of frame. The three of us were shoulder to shoulder like one dreary wall of meat. Occasionally part of the meat bricks would shift a bit and those adjacent would settle accordingly. Chain reaction. There was no resentment over the move, no bother, just a slight sigh that was a near annoyance with being awoken from the trance of over-oxygenated air and bad movies, and part relief that we had an excuse to bring a little lifeblood into our heavy limbs. I watched a few of those bad movies on my way from Chicago to Budapest, but mostly I just stared at the pictures and let my mind drift away- out the window a few seats to my right where nothing else lay but water and the giant open blackness of the midnight Atlantic. I thought of Her, then. There were so many hers. I thought of the petite little Beauty who got away; she had golden eyes, silky hair, and caramel skin that seemed to bask in it's own light. Those soft lips, so full and so gentle, used to be the only thing that could soothe me when I felt the beast inside me start to stir. She had such a kind wealth to her. She had this laugh, it caressed my ears and used to bring a smile to me even when my heart felt black and icy- as frigid as the seas outside the window. I don't know if I ever told her that in those words. I think I tried, but sometimes you can never fully understand the incredible worth of a single moment until it becomes a memory. I told her once, as we lay there on the beach, that she was it for me. I told her that no matter what happened that I would love her until I was dead, and if some part of me carried on thereafter it would carry on with the sweetest moments we ever shared therein. I said a lot of things as a young man. It's been years since we laid there on the sand. Its been the return of an engagement ring since then. It's been other relationships and countless other women, but when the plane isn't quite still and the seas look so black and so cold, it's still her that my mind seeks for warmth. She made me hope for a brief time that the beast inside me was just a little darkness, an innocent shadow behind the Christmas lights that shine through pine needles casting me patterns around a room; or the seductive darkness of a bedroom that dances with candlelight to cast shimmering black on golden skin. It wasn't though. It was none of those types of darkness. It was a consuming, hungry, vile dark that consumed everything. It was a foul carcass left to rot underwater in a black cove forgotten by all good things in this world; it was spawned of hate, and fear, and suffering. It was sad more than anything, not evil. It had much of me, but it often felt as though it was not me. She told me I needed help. The dark is gone now, reborn into the beast that holds all my darkness in it's own devilish heart. My beast and I get along quite well to this day, we even have tea a few times a month just to catch up. She was not the only she passing through my mind that night. There was a period of soul searching after her, and by soul searching I mean that I found the souls of others and did my best to nibble on them. I've found that to nibble a soul is to find alleviation from the black for a bit, and it's not hard to do. It is not a permanent consumption, only a temporary tasting. Soul searching is my vice. Vices, and there are many, are all about escape. Some drink until they can't remember what hurts them, or until they can only remember what the hurt is; others act the dragon and billow smoke from between their teeth, altering reality with whatever drug fits the bill that night; some seek a temporary outlet through violence. I prefer sex. It is not a guilty pleasure, I have never felt guilt for my pleasures, but it is still a vice. Carpe Noctem. Perhaps the worst vice of all. Sex is not always about intimacy. There is no closeness or even interest in the act or in the person sometimes- not since the golden eyes stopped beckoning me through the candlelight. Sex is about forgetting I exist for a few hours. It's about relinquishing thought and control of myself to the beast. The beast does well in the darkness. It is, after all, his domain. It brings me closer to balance when the creature born of hideous violence finds a gentility, or at least releases the violence in a way that hurts so sweetly. He can taste her soul when he traces my tongue down along her hips, as He slowly pulls her exquisite reservations loose with one sucking swirl after another. He feeds as her inhibitions fade when he sinks his sharp teeth into the meat of her bottom lip hard enough to make her whimper- which is only half as hard as she wants him to. Surreptitious sensuality. I try and take over that beast at times and ask that he go gently, I try to add in a little of myself- I am often ignored if not forgotten. I allow the beast to do as he will, we work well together, after all. Sometimes a feral growl escapes my throat and I almost worry that she'll be afeared. I am always, always wrong. The beast in me awakens the beast in others, and they like it. There are many kinds of beasts in this world. Beauty and Myself. Watching someone unfold is like watching a flower bloom in a matter of minutes. The petals soften and grow fuller, the outermost chafe falls away. Raw intimacy exposed when there is nothing left to hide. Perfection through reduction. Reality is not altered, it is revealed. Life is given meaning and the taste of all the substance in an entire galaxy can be found in one succulent droplet at the edge of a softened petal. For a moment there is no difference between anyone. We all simply are, and are not, existing- in a swirling, dripping, ebbing vortex of passion and lust and escape; we are painted with the entire pallet of the human experience; filled to the brim by the essence of humanity, and swept up into raw, chaotic, feral vim. We rejoice by releasing that gasp that's not so unlike a death rattle. Le petite mort. My beast found a new She after I landed. The She I met in Budapest was from Kosovo. She was barely 20, a child by all western definitions, but she had lived through the war. She had been living in Belgrade when my country blew it to pieces. She had watched her father tear away the roof on their home and scatter the debris around so that when my country flew over it appeared to be already bombed. Reclusive resourcefulness. She learned too young how to hide in plain sight. She was a lucky one, some of the architecture nearby that was weaker would fall apart without the cross beams to hold the walls together. She was a lucky one, her roof was only removed by choice. She slept in a cold winter for 108 days under the open sky because it was too risky to live warmly- she had to choose between shelter and life. She was a child who knew what that meant- she grew up fast. She was young, but she had an aged look and mature feel to her. She was enlightening to behold. She had beautiful eyes, large and kind and wounded and curious; they were paired with a smile that could melt the coldest ice and soften the hardest steel. I was no exception. Her lips were like the galaxy's edge, and tasted like a constellation falling into place. Her hands were small for a woman as tall as she was, but her fingers felt so strong as they dug deep into my back. She did that when I tried to let my beast apologize to her for what my country had done in her childhood. She must have still held pain from that, because as she traced the tender wounds along my shoulders made by her teeth and apologized, she had a wicked smile of satisfaction. She took a drag off of her rolled cigarette, and the smoke slithered out from between her teeth like eels between a smooth, porcelain coral. The eels swam around a bit before reuniting in the dark cloud forming above the bed. She was beautiful, gorgeous even. She was dangerous only so far as she was harmless. Harmed. She was deeper and more rich in experience than anyone I had met in the states, and some small part of me loved her for that. She seemed so raw and so unrefined that I knew she was exactly as she seemed, and she seemed an amazing woman; earthen, corporeal, honest. I loved her nearly as much as she hated me- which is to say, not at all. We lay there for hours, wordless but not in silence, tracing the tendrils of one another life through the sensations of the body. It was amazing how similar we were despite having nothing in common. I was from Los Angeles in the States, and she was a young Albanian woman living in Kosovo. I was born into poverty by American standards, but won the birth lottery by international consensus. She made me feel privileged, and ashamed of ever feeling otherwise. Weak little beast. I loved her for that. We never said anything to signify emotion was a part in our evening- in truth we said very little at all. Nature invented the kiss for when words become superfluous, I remembered. We were healing each other, sharing in the life of another that was so fundamentally different from our own. We were evading death and dealing in life as we rolled and licked and pulled and bit chunks of experience and memories out of one another. We shared countless stories as we thrusted and twisted our hips into unfamiliar truths. She whispered soft moans to the smoke cloud above us, it seemed like a billowing deity looking down with approval. The beast inside me had done well for her, and she was happy to be feasted on. Soul searching. She was dripping in experience and love when we were done. I felt drained and empowered. The room smelt of cigarettes, sweat, and pride as she slipped into the shower. It gained a hint of rose perfume when she got out. I watched as water danced with the light and ran down her skin- the water seemed to be following the trails of my fingertips. We were reborn as we were cleansed, softer kisses came- from me, not my beast. Conflicting stories. I realized then that she had never awoken him fully, that for once it was me, and I wasn't using her to forget, but to remember that which I had never known. It was beautiful, and I loved her for that. A few short hours later she had to go. She had a 13 hour train ride to Kosovo, and had to split the cost with a group. As she slid into her undergarments I couldn't help but notice small holes in the thin fabric. She had an incredible wealth about her, a profoundly different type of wealth than what I had been taught to consider. That night, as she walked across the wide beautiful bridge in the heart of Budapest, I was the saddest of all it's paintings, the most fractured of it's many monuments. She took with her my secrets, and had left me shaken. International Relations. The plane flew smoothly if you didn't pay too much attention. It's funny to me that I have to return to the States knowing what I know, feeling what I've felt. I wonder if I can even do so. There is a gripping and absurd difference in the way I relate to people in the States, the largest difference of course being that I, in fact, don't. The Eastern Europeans make sense to me. They shake hands and make love to those they should hate. Americans can barely tolerate those who they claim to love. Forgiveness doesn't come easy to them, at least not any more easily than it does to us, it's just that they know that even the people who are aggressors in conflict once suffered. The coldest hearts once cared too much. At a point, people look for any reason to rejoice. At a point, people look for cause to despair. It seems to me the difference is selecting your narrative. I had forgotten this. There are some things you should never forget, and if you want to be happy, this is one of them: events in your life mean very little. The way you choose to interpret them is all that matters. Life is beautiful, exceptionally gorgeous. Life is dangerous so far as it is harmless. Harmed. Life is deeper and more rich in experience than anyone you know, but you have to love it for that. We are remarkably similar, even to those we have nothing in common with.

[themutewatcher-blog]

First Date

She's fresh out of a multi-year shitstorm of a relationship, so probably not long term. Not just lovers either though. I'll show her the way she should be treated. She'll love me tooth and nail. I'll worship her body and she'll be enchanted by my mind. In the end, she'll walk away and I'll sit here smiling, knowing that I've helped her heal. She might marry the next one. There is often a difference between the beautiful bliss we have in our night, and the purifying clarity the morning sun brings to our thoughts.

[themutewatcher-blog]

Family of 9

"Family of Nine Perish in Fire" The man with hair too perfect read from the TelePrompter without showing any signs that he understood what he was saying. A Kentucky house went up in flames and 8 of them died all in one bedroom. The ninth died ten feet from the door out in the hallway. My mom stood there with shock in her face and a hand over her mouth. My Father had his feet up and his brow furrowed. I was doing dishes, wondering how it is that the man and his hair could have neglected to mention that no family that owns a three story Kentucky mansion sleep in the same room. The runner probably set the fire. There were people on the screen crying now. I never understood what that was like- to cry because people you didn't know and had never met were no longer alive. To me, it seemed like that meant absolutely nothing had changed in your life. That person didn't exist before and from now on would continue to not exist. Empathy. I used to have that. I used to be able to feel what someone else would feel and put myself in their shoes and understand what that meant. Now I observe people, wondering what it's like to be one.

[themutewatcher-blog]

Couplet

No longer friends, never mine enemy. You’re now a stranger with shared memories.

[themutewatcher-blog]

November

It was November- that night when the sun was shining. Everything in the parking lot had turned an icy grey under the pale light of the lamp posts. The moon was barely visible through thick sheets of fog that fell just short of a misty rain. There was a soft pitter-patter of water rolling off of tree branches and buildings alike into puddles not quite deep enough to make a splash. I was unconsciously aware that Color had left the world. I was wearing dark jeans that seemed darker than they ought to have been. The glossy asphalt surrounding me smelled of oil and the paint on my black truck with the leak in the ceiling seemed to have lost it's shine somewhere in the muddy frost. The charcoal interior was old and faded, older in that light- it looked like half dried concrete in your childhood home, the kind you place tiny hands on to make memories for the next owner. Even my hands and arms, tanned from a decade of labor in the sun seemed pale and ashen. Foreign eyes looked back at me from my rear view mirror with a steely metallic color- they seemed to tick like tiny gears in a clock with flecks of copper held still by fingers of frost and bound by ice. It took a moment before I realized it was my own reflection. I looked down at the long dark hair that was flowing from her shoulders and melting into the silky black fabric hanging loosely from her body. I couldn't tell the difference between her and I; where I stopped and she began.... It was all one softly burned landscape laying dormant in the quicksilver luminescence. She nuzzled her head into my chest, as if it were keeping her warm. Her hair fell away to reveal one shoulder. She was golden, even in the dim moon sheen. She outshone the darkness like the sun burning through the clouds. She was the first fingers of Spring reaching through the ice after a long winter. The charred tips of my fingers cast a vermilion glow as I traced the golden heat of her shoulder, gathering warmth and brilliance as I came closer to her neck. By the time I felt the velvet of her cheek, my hands were alight. She looked up at me with two ebbing pools of melted gold, the color that made me realize what inspired stories of Eldorado, made men flock to harsh and foreign lands only to die while mining for a metal that would have been a lifeless and imperfect imitation of those eyes. She was summer. As she looked at me I felt the frost begin to thaw around It was November- that night when the sun was shining. Everything in the parking lot had turned an icy grey under the pale light of the lamp posts. The moon was barely visible through thick sheets of fog that fell just short of a misty rain. There was a soft pitter-patter of water rolling off of tree branches and buildings alike into puddles not quite deep enough to make a splash. I was unconsciously aware that Color had left the world. I was wearing dark jeans that seemed darker than they ought to have been. The glossy asphalt surrounding me smelled of oil and the paint on my black truck with the leak in the ceiling seemed to have lost it's shine somewhere in the muddy frost. The charcoal interior was old and faded, older in that light- it looked like half dried concrete in your childhood home, the kind you place tiny hands on to make memories for the next owner. Even my hands and arms, tanned from a decade of labor in the sun seemed pale and ashen. Foreign eyes looked back at me from my rear view mirror with a steely metallic color- they seemed to tick like tiny gears in a clock with flecks of copper frozen with shards of ice. It took a moment before I realized it was my own reflection. I looked down at the long dark hair that was flowing from her shoulders and melting into the silky black fabric hanging loosely from her body. I couldn't tell the difference between her and I; where I stopped and she began.... It was all one softly burned landscape laying dormant in the pale lighting. She nuzzled her head into my chest, as if it were keeping her warm. Her hair fell away to reveal one shoulder. She was golden, even in the dim moon sheen. She outshone the darkness like the sun burning through the clouds. She was the first fingers of Spring reaching through the ice after a long winter. The charred tips of my fingers cast a vermilion glow as I traced the golden heat of her shoulder, gathering warmth and brilliance as I came closer to her neck. By the time I felt the velvet of her cheek, my hands were alight. She looked up at me with two ebbing pools of melted gold, the color that made me realize what inspired stories of Eldorado, made men flock to harsh and foreign lands only to die while mining for a metal that would have been a lifeless and imperfect imitation of those eyes. She was summer. As she looked at me I felt the frost begin to thaw around me. I was pale, but I felt her glow. I saw her as she saw me- I wonder how many people I have looked at my entire life and never truly seen the way I saw her then. I kissed her and I felt the sun. I felt the heat on my shoulders and a warm breeze on my face. That icy night was warm. That smooth arch of her back felt right as I drew her closer to my body with one hand and ran the other through the silky night of her hair. That night was made for us. I wondered if I was dreaming- it seemed too real, too good. Despite the fingerprints coming down my windows, I still wonder how any lips could draw me in while pushing me away, how the ocean blue of my eyes could meet her twin suns like the dawn. I wonder how anything could ever feel that right or if anything could ever be that real again. Winter had come and passed over us, and we had turned the season with our passion. It was November- that night when the sun was shining.

[themutewatcher-blog]

The Visional

It is my curse to love the unloving- The free spirits who shine like the sun cresting the peaks of the hills and blind me as the first fingers of mo(u)rning reach across the darkness. I find myself telling her that she's beautiful, not because I'm interested but because it's true. She is the graceful majesty in a tigress— the subtle beauty in a viper. It's that curve, that smile, that poisonous drop of human experience delicately held by a quivering lip kills you as it brings you closer to seeing the hallucinated tides of what you wish to be ebbing and flowing through your soul. It is the way she looks at you for only a second, then looks away—taking you with her. She is feline, she is fragile, she is freedom-- to be appreciated, but never had. Always loved fiercely but always just out of arms reach. To be loved completely by those who have the curse. The blessing. The eyes that see past the visual. The eyes that see the visional. It felt strange, talking about it after so many years. I could almost feel the sensations again- the tingle in the back of my mouth. The sound of a faucet that someone left on to fill a steel bucket. The taste of copper on my lips. The bizarre contraction of chills as I sweat, and the feeling of my pupils dilating as my vision came in and out of focus. My pulse was too loud and my heartbeat seemed far away, even though I had never really heard it the way I heard it then. It's amazing the things you feel when you think that soon, you may not. I recanted the story mechanically and without hesitation; the way I had practiced. I felt eyes on me this time though. One pair was glossed and focusing in and out between me and the story he was seeing in his head; they were kind eyes, but only vaguely aware of what he was hearing. The other pair was fixed, as if they wanted to stop what had happened through a veiled awareness of the impossibility of the notion. A hand was on my arm and the grip was firm and grounding, comforting even. I didn't know why I was still talking. Perhaps it was the whiskey in my gut setting fire to my better senses, or perhaps it was the calming touch on the arm that felt like it belonged to someone else. A gentle ocean breeze seemed to come from these eyes. I felt safety from the only thing in the room that could hurt me. I looked toward those eyes and saw tears pouring down her face in the corner of the hospital as blood dribbled down my chest. My chest?-- it looked too pale to be mine. I looked at my hands and saw how oddly ashen they were. I blinked and saw the faintest trace of one tear being concealed in her eyes. It wasn't a tear for me as much as it was a tear for the masses. She felt it all, the free spirits are always in cages when the demons escape their holes. She felt the memory as much as I did, and I hated that. I didn't want her to feel that sensation of being ripped inside out. I didn't want her to know what it felt like to look at your own body and feel a coldly morbid curiosity at what was happening. I didn't want her to feel foreign in her own skin or to suddenly be aware that no matter where you look you can always see your nose, or that if you hold your breath long enough you can feel the avioli in your lungs popping like little balloon animals. She saw it though, the same way I saw her friends huddled together mourning a member of the family they had chosen. I blinked away my feelings as they leaked from someone else's eyes. I was thinking all of this when I realized that I had finished my story. She held onto my arm for a moment, to reaffirm the comfort that she had given me. I could still feel her hands in mine. I focused on that as conversation happened. I don't know what was said, I just felt her hands holding mine and I ran my fingers over hers, and then up into the place where so many IV's had been on the back of my hand and in the crux of my arm. I was flashing in and out of reality, into dreams, and memories, and nightmares. For some reason I felt safe as I heard that hideous heart pounding in my mind, as the beatings seemed far away and the beats grew more labored. It wasn't eerie the way I remembered it to be. Perhaps it was that this time I had someone holding me there, who wouldn't let me be ripped inside out, or maybe it's that I had never been put back, and I was still existing just outside my body- able to see the visual, and the visional.