"I confess that as a young girl I loved a man who would not marry me for want of a dowry. I confess I had a mother who taught me a different way of life, one I resisted at first but learned to embrace. I confess I became a courtesan, traded yearning for power, welcomed many rather than be owned by one. I confess I embraced a whore’s freedom over a wife’s obedience. I confess I find more ecstacy in passion than in prayer. Such passion is prayer. I confess I pray still to feel the touch of my lover’s lips. His hands upon me, his arms enfolding me… Such surrender has been mine. I confess I pray still to be filled and enflamed. To melt into the dream of us, beyond this troubled place, to where we are not even ourselves. To know that always, this is mine. If this had not been mine-if I had lived any other way-a child to her husband’s will, my soul hardened from lack of touch and lack of love… I confess such endless days and nights would be a punishment far greater than you could ever mete out. You, all of you, you who hunger so for what I give yet cannot bear to see that kind of power in a woman. You call God’s greatest gift-ourselves, our yearning, our need to love-you call it filth and sin and heresy… I repent there was no other way open to me. I do not repent my life."

The Bird Killer

Growing up with a plethora of animals, I came to expect their little gifts. Sometimes it would be just a liver on the kitchen floor, accompanied by tiny splashes of blood as if the cats were attempting to make modern art. Other times these presents would be brought to me still alive—my calico was especially fond of bringing these to me while I was sleeping, meowing around the squirming form in her mouth until I woke up and acknowledged that, yes, she was the best little hunter I knew. Silky, the Persian, once brought a chipmunk into the house. It took me an hour to chase it back outside. The dogs even joined in the fun, until our mole- and skunk-filled back patio looked like a sacrificial altar of the Aztec gods. I learned to step warily in the dark, and if I decided not to wear shoes or slippers I was taking my life into my own hands. More than once I would tiptoe my way down the stairs for a midnight bathroom trip, only to feel bunny guts squish between my toes. Spring was always the worst season when it came to these rude awakenings, but even winter saw its share of mousey remains. The dead rabbit behind the washing machine was the most horrific of my pets’ kills, as we were alerted first to the smell and then to the decaying corpse, but it was the sight that met me after school on afternoon that just takes the cake.

Jackal, my mom’s black cat, was the worst of them all. Though the smallest of our feline family, he had the most personality and the biggest attitude. It wasn’t enough to beat up the dogs or stalk the chickens across the yard; he had to kill every living thing that dared to cross his path. Or, as he was even more fond of doing, bringing it inside and releasing it so he could chase his prize again (we once came home to a blue jay flying around our kitchen, unharmed but intent on escaping through a closed window). Often this happened during the day when no one was home, and as the first one to return in the afternoons I generally found the half-eaten remains and had to clean them up. This didn’t usually bother me, but one Tuesday I opened the door to find the living room covered in white feathers. There must have been thousands of them, swirling around in the slight breeze and never quite settling back onto the carpet, which I could only see in erratic flashes of beige when a particularly large clump lifted from the floor. I couldn’t see a body, nor would I find one, he’d eaten that. It made the corpses I was used to feel like the presents they were supposed to be. And the bird-killer? He was sitting on the kitchen bar, where he wasn’t allowed to be, watching me.

“Jack!” I screeched, stomping across the living room and making the feathers scatter across the floor in my wake. “I’m going to kill you, cat!”

I swear he damn near smiled.

"the shadow of the flame consuming nothing,
but stroking everything as if it could
grasp, hold, take, devour. How ardently it hungers
because it cannot have us.
How chaste the bright flame, because it can."

Blood And Water

Salvatore Vinci was a twisted individual. But with the sort of work he did, it was only to be expected.

“Where’s the money, Baccarat?”

He had his back to the man he was addressing, but Salvatore could see him in the dirty window before him. Seated on the floor with his hands bound before him, he wasn’t even bothering to try and alleviate the pain having them tied above his head for six hours was sure to have caused. He didn’t even seem concerned about the blood turning his fair hair a ruddy brown, or the bruises that stretched from temple to jaw and sealed his right eye shut. Baccarat seemed more concerned with his captor, whom he was staring at with blatant fear. Which was exactly how Salvatore liked it.

“I don’t know. Sal…”

Salvatore smiled at his reflection in the window, if the perverse turn of the mouth could be called that. From the pocket of his leather jacket, slung over the back of a chair he drew a handful of receipts, turning to saunter to where his underling sat, letting them flutter from his fingertips to the man’s lap. That he was enjoying this wasn’t hard to tell.

“Come now, you don’t take me as a fool, do you? How do you explain the rather expensive jewelry your wife just received, or the dinner at the Globe? How about the hotel suite afterward?”

Salvatore was rewarded for his casual inquiry with silence and a dropped gaze. He sank down into a crouch before Baccarat and drew a knife in the same liquid movement, smiling in an almost paternal way at the weapon. Pad of his forefinger pressed gently against the lethal tip while his opposite hand twirled it slowly he spoke softly, gaze never lifting from the surface of the flashing blade.

“I don’t think you’ve met the Vergine. Do you know why I call her that?”

He felt rather than saw Baccarat stiffen, and in response his smile changed and his dark eyes rose to bear down on terrified blue.

“Because no matter how much blood I make her spill, she always comes away as pure as the day I got her.”

Salvatore stopped spinning the knife. His hand rose, resting the length of her steel blade along the man’s better cheek, applying just enough pressure to make him go completely still but not draw blood. He stared silently at the man who had worked under him for the past five years, under his father before he’d met his death in a back alley in the south of the city. At the man who had shrugged when denied a promotion and never given Sal a hard time when he rose above him in the ranks though Baccarat was ten years older.

Salvatore felt no regret for his actions. Or if he did, he stifled it, showing only callous indifference.

Baccarat stared back, realizing now that it had been a mistake to assume that five years of camaraderie would mean anything to the man, that the loyalty he had shown to Sal’s father would matter. No, Sal simply saw figures and his own agenda, protecting his own hide and ignoring the welfare of everyone else. Baccarat knew he was a fool for hoping, even now, that the boy he’d taught to drive at the edge of thirteen would remember his father’s closest ally, instead of seeing nothing but a cheat.

“You’re lucky she’s too good for you.”

Derision in his voice Salvatore lowered the knife from his flesh and sliced instead through the rope binding his wrists. Rising without another word he returned the weapon to its sheath. Turned away and headed towards the door—picking up his jacket on the way and slinging it over his shoulders—he listened as his captive rose to his feet, shook the broken cord away and let it fall to the floor. And only then did he turn back, one hand on the doorknob but the other holding a gun that he raised with a lazy familiarity and cocked. The soft click bringing Baccarat’s gaze up once more, disbelief overshadowing the lingering terror as Salvatore smiled coldly and pulled the trigger.

It was with that same emotionless expression he stepped outside and past the two subordinates he’d brought with him, voice colored with something disturbingly close to amusement.

“Cleanup in aisle three.”

Ways To Procrastinate…On English Homework

Stare at the ceiling.

Sweep the floor…
Perhaps Swiffer, “fresh clean scent”, quick-to-fade faint gloss.

Shower.

Take very long, unnecessary naps.

Eat dinner.

Contemplate conspiracy theories,
Watch old movies
(Roman Holiday, The Thin Man, Arsenic and Old Lace)
Read old books,
     old comics,
     old—bad—poetry
Write new bad poetry
  “…springs from genuine feeling”

Bake a cake (red velvet, almost from scratch) and watch water boil

Search, desperately, for a meaning, a theme, a thought, a word with which to start.
End that search with a new one:

                              “London Calling”

         Vegetarian recipes
                                                                                         Annabel Lee

                                 Cameo pins

    Cottonwood trees and New Orleans

Watch paint dry, permanent rose and cadmium green on an 8 by 10 canvas

Learn the difference between phthalo blue and French ultramarine


Feel accomplished with just a title:

   Go get a snack.

These Dreams Made Flesh

Black velvet and that little boy’s smile
Black velvet with that slow southern style
A new religion that’ll bring ya to your knees
Black velvet if you please

The song settled heavy as a Mississippi summer in her veins, the singer’s molasses croon raising an ache in the pit of her stomach that was as painful as it was pleasurable. Slender hips rocked against those of her partner, a dark-haired amazon dressed in a rhinestone-studded black velvet corset to her carmine satin slip, as slow hands traveled up her thighs, catching on the silky fabric long enough to reveal lacy white panties before continuing upward. Her own fingertips buried in black laces, yanking sharply when the tempo increased and pulling the ribbon free in time to the music, easing the corset from between them without disengaging from the taller woman.

It was always these nights that were the hardest, the ones where she nearly got lost in the music and the way the lights played across slick skin. She preferred when the air was thick with heat and lust, the shows raw sex and sharp gestures. Liked when the bass vibrated in her bones and the costumes left little to the imagination. This honeyed melody of desire and loss, combined with soft lighting and a silent house was too similar to something Calla the girl would have enjoyed, if the hands buried in ruby tresses were not so small and slender, the mouth lingering at her throat murmured her name in low-pitched bourbon and fire. It made it harder to keep her mask in place, to abandon her reservations and play the shameless jezebel. The makeup was lighter, dance a slow, smooth grind, silence deeper. As partners, they were quiet, engaging with their bodies but not their eyes, the witching hour’s crowd bearing a slightly more refined taste and catered to once every other week and paying handsomely for the privilege.

But tonight, tonight Calla felt herself slipping more so than usual, the self-disgust burning the back of her throat and turning the quiet smolder fueled by a knowing chant to heavy ash. One hand rose from caressing the other dancer’s lower back and followed the curve of her spine, burying in her black coif and tugging gently, a signal that would be lost on the crowd but one the other woman understood. Within a matter of a minute Calla was disappearing backstage, leaving her counterpart to finish with a blonde that cast her a slightly disapproving glance as she took her place. She ignored it, waiting another minute or so before making her way to a side entrance of the club, pushing through the doors with hands that trembled with the need to escape.

Gooseflesh beaded along bare skin, as a tousled mane of vibrant copper slipping back over her shoulders with the change in atmosphere. Her lips parted and she drew in one deep, ragged breath as she stepped out onto the pavement, letting the door slam shut behind her. A beryl gaze lifted to a sky polluted by heavy clouds and dirty streetlights, searching for a star that wasn’t there before troubled eyes closed against the sight.

There would be no escape from this life tonight.

The way he moved, it was a sin, so sweet and true
Always wanting more, he’d leave you longing for…

Ether

Skeleton fingers on charcoal skies, stripped of their autumnal foliage.

Bleached denim summers with cirrus cloud rips in the knees.

Airplane trails destroying unassuming ultramarine, heavy black scribbles on white paper.

Rain clouds on the horizon, the bruised color of dark circles under tired eyes.

Watercolor streaks not yet dry, violet and fuchsia and tangerine.

Deceptive March afternoons, tasting of summer but biting with glacial force.

The gradual ascent of the sun, banishing the fog that cups its hands around straining ears (hushed voices on the wind, soft laughter of invisible leaves).

A perfect cow-jumping moon in a field of firefly stars.

Dishwater winters cast in monochrome.

Aztec gold, copper penny and smoky topaz burning on cornflower blue.

Full gibbous in a velvet cobalt dream, a silver disc suspended.

An arc of color across slate, light caught and reflected in drops of suspended rain.

Visions in smoke obscuring a dust blue canvas, lightning sparks dancing in the night.

Razzle dazzle rose playing peek-a-boo with the silhouettes of trees, while lapis lazuli tiptoes in from the east.

Au Clair De La Lune

They always begin with her in a cell. Sometimes, she is on the ship. Other times it is the galaxy’s capital. She never knows how she got there, how she has been exposed. Discovered. If it was something she did, or said. If someone had recognized her. But she is always cold, shivering, fingertips blue, with only the rats scuttling along the walls for company. The prison is close and dank, its floor slick with substances she does not care to identify. Her hair hangs limp and oily in her eyes, and her uniform is stained, clinging to her skin so drenched is it in her own sweat. Sometimes it is torn and bloody as well. Sometimes she is barefoot. Always her body is bruised, her lip split and mouth unbearably dry. Were she to speak, her voice would be a cracked whisper. She is past the point of banging on the walls, the only remnant of the tears she has shed the lines cutting through the grime on her face. She is numb.

The guards who come for her are faceless. They lift her from the floor by her hair and their hands are rough. But they are also—blessedly—silent. Distantly, she knows these men have raped her. Have used her in their twisted games, because she is nothing. She is a prisoner, a traitor to her world. They don’t care why she did it. They don’t care that she’d done it for her brother, and her parents, and that the navy is all she has left now that they are all gone and she cannot bear the thought of being adrift, alone. They only care that she will die for her crimes, and theirs will go unpunished. The handcuffs are cold when they place them around her wrists and rub at raw skin, already caked in blood, but she tells them no when they move to put a black hood over her head, and stare at them with what vestige of defiance she has left until they relent. They think she means to look into the eyes of those who have condemned her.

She just wants to see the sky one last time.

It is a short walk, but each step pulls at the numbness that has settled into her bones as if it were nought but gossamer cobwebs. Her world reduced to a constant, sharp whine, the thud of her heart in her ears and the soldier’s boots on concrete. Her skin is too sensitive, her breathing too loud and uneven, and it is getting worse with every passing second. Because she knows who waits for her, each with a rifle in their hands. Each loaded with one bullet, meant for her. Though she meant to watch the sky her eyes fix on the cold ground when they step outside, cast in the pale blue of predawn light as they walk her to the far end of the firing range. This is the soil that will be stained with her blood after it leaves her broken body. These are the plants that will drink in her life to feed their own. But when they release her and step away, she finds her gaze lifting unsteadily as she looks into the faces of those who are to kill her.

She knows them. All of them. They are shipmates she has laughed with. Has cooked for more times than she can count. Cried beside, when they watched their comrades die. Some are friends who have already passed, taken by injury or sickness or accident. One is her brother, green eyes as unforgiving as they once were kind. They are men she has loved. Men she does love. Loves enough that it makes her bones ache, enough that she cannot condemn them for this. For killing her, and convincing themselves it is their gun that carries the blank cartridge.

She remembers the lie she told each of the men who bribed the guards, who risked punishment to see her one last time.

I am ready to die. Make it quick.



Here she would wake, struggling for breath, drenched in a cold sweat and blanket twisted around her slender frame. But the dream never ended there. Arms wrapped around her torso and legs tucked as tight to her chest as physics would allow she would squeeze her eyes shut though it did not stop the images from playing across her eyelids, did not keep the fear from settling in sharp knots in her stomach. Her mind cannot help but visualize the rest; perhaps they will read her crimes one last time, in a voice made indifferent from reading so many such missives. Perhaps they will offer her a final prayer, from a priest who prays to a god she struggles to believe in. But as the sun breaks over the horizon all formalities will have been exhausted, they will raise their rifles to their shoulders and the captain will order them to fire.

She wonders if she will have time to admire the way the gun smoke hangs in the crisp air, before the pain. If she will hear the birds as they sleepily greet the morning. If she will see the light spill across the horizon like water from a glass tilted on its side before her vision fails. Or if they will do as she asks and aim for her heart or her head. If she will even feel her body hit the ground. She wonders if any of them will shed tears for her. If she will be another face to drink into oblivion, or if she will simply be a footnote, easily forgotten. And in the empty, inky dark of her quarters, when the dreams are their most vivid, the tears will slip through her defenses.

These are the mornings she cannot bear the sunrise. That the blood-drenched dawn rays warming the deck of the ship make her hands shake and her heart seize and she closets herself in the galley, consuming massive amounts of alcohol while making breakfast for the crew. Refusing company, just so she can avoid seeing the faces of the men she is convinced will some day kill her, as they do in her dreams.

Embrace

Give me distance,
give me space,
Room to live,
and breathe,
and be.
But keep an arm outstretched,
a door open,
So I can crawl back into your arms
When I need home.

11:53

She enters the sixth-floor apartment, glancing at the silver clock that hangs on the wall in the hallway; it reads 11:53. She sheds her ivory pashmina scarf, dropping it to the hardwood floor, and it is followed closely by a black wool pea coat that is left in a heap not far away. Next comes the right boot, followed by the left, each in its own puddle of melting snow. The woman pauses by the answering machine with its blinking red light, fingers caressing the buttons before she continues on without pressing play.

Her stockings are discarded in the doorway of the bedroom. She stands in the yellow light from a streetlamp that filters in through the blinds while she empties the contents of her small clutch onto a glass vanity: a set of three keys with a tube of lipstick, mascara, a pack of gum and a cell phone, turned off. A credit card follows, but the crumpled ticket stubs she retrieves from the bottom are studied a moment before she places them between her teeth. Reaching up to pull the bobby pins from her hair she drops them beside the empty purse, leaving the two that fall to the floor where they land. Cabernet red lipstick is rubbed from the glossy surface of the tickets that are again in her hand, until not even a rosy blush remains.

Three measured steps across the plush carpet and she is dragging back the feather comforter and the grey Egyptian cotton sheets of the queen-sized bed, unzipping her evening gown, burgundy and gold, and leaving it in a glittering mess on the floor to be tripped over in the morning. Under the covers she crawls, turning away from the light that streams across the bedspread and closing her eyes. A pair of ticket stubs crumpled in one fist.