Alone, not listless

It occurs to me that I've never lived alone before. Took me a few weeks to realize. Sometimes I'm a little slow to figure things out. 

I will have a roommate, eventually. For the moment, it's just me and the mutts. 

I don't...feel alone. Probably having the dogs helps.

I do like having an idea of how I want things and just...putting them that way. 

I haven't changed too much yet. I've got some ideas about custom bookshelves. I spent a few hours setting up my writing desk. It's a legit letter-writing desk. It's not great as a computer desk but that's what it is now; get with the times, desk. My handwriting is terrible anyway. 

I'm not writing at the desk now. Because that would make sense and well, that's just not where we're at right now. 

Probably the reason I don't feel too different is because most of my family is still on this block. I should go visit my younger brother. Yell at him for not selling me his Toyota 4Runner. 

It's for the best. I'm happy with my hybrid. I forget that I always wanted a hybrid. It seems strange that I finally have one. Maybe I should go up North and visit friends. Flagstaff is probably not too cold, yet. 

I don't like the cold very much. Well, it's not my preference. 

Most of the ocean is cold, I think. 

almost tomorrow

Just kidding; it's never tomorrow. It's only always today. 

That isn't true. Time zones exist and so for some people it is tomorrow. Not for me. 

Wait that might not be true either. 

I'm in somebody's tomorrow, today. 

At least I hope I am. 

It's a good thing time is made-up or this could get pretty confusing. 

That isn't true. Time is real, it's just probably not exactly what we think it is. 

I can close my eyes and travel through time. 

Speed ahead to where I'm with you again. Oh wait, no. Then what would we talk about? Time travel? No thank you. I better proceed the regular way. 

If we could fast-forward through all the hard parts in life, what would even be left?

haunted houses

They exist, I'm sure, and will exist

Not that it matters much

What is time, to a ghost 

Nature will reclaim all houses eventually

And ghosts don't seem to haunt glen or vale as often

Property perhaps 

An imaginary bond

Spectral fingers clutching phantom deeds

Signatures binding fates 

Absurd 

That death would shackle us so uncreatively 

most scary

The most scary thing to me is snow. It falls silently from the sky, saps the heat of your body, and can bury you completely. 

Second most scary thing is moose. They can often be found hiding in the snow, waiting to pounce. 

The third most scary thing would be moose falling like snow, silent and cold, upon the unsuspecting landscape. 

We'd never see it coming. Well, I might because I think about stuff like this. But ultimately it wouldn't matter; I too would be buried under hooves, antlers, and their ridiculous tiny tails. 

Forewarned is not forearmed; I will meet my moosey fate. 

Never too late

I'm up too late. Today I was stressed. Work was very busy and I may have not had all my wits about me. When it's dark and everything is quiet and the AC kicks on to 76 degrees Fahrenheit (my preferred sleeping temperature) I like to putter around this admittedly not-very-large house and tinker. 

Or just think about tinkering. Looking at my bookshelves and mentally culling them because it's easier than boxing them up and donating them. 

Oh I'm taking Ender to work tomorrow morning and they have one of those free library things. I could drop some books in there. A little Batman, a little Catch-22, maybe some Dante. 

Because I have multiple copies of those. I don't know why. 

So I'll rest now, finally. 

Talk to you tomorrow. 

Drowsing Rod

Sleep came in fits and starts. Terror and calm, twin rivers winding through every realm of consciousness. Mixing in places, brackish, salt and freshwater, you're my estuary 

Alert, alert, decoding the susurrus wind and lapping waters

Uncertainty plods closer, hidden in riparian shadow. I can't set it, only the rustling as its bulk pushes through the vegetation. 

It was always here, just sleeping 

I cannot outrun it. So I wait. 

Return

To trying to be more open, more thoughtful, and maybe more introspective while avoiding the pitfall of self-aggrandizement. That small step and one giant leap from "I should be better" to just...trying to be better. 

"He prayeth best, who loveth best, all things both great and small" -Coleridge, Sammy T.

I'll tell you what I do love: the bidet I just installed. No more jumping into the shower immediately after every poop. 

I'm just kidding; I don't do that. 

I bet I could install one at work. A bidet, not a shower. Although a shower would be nice. 

Wait wait wait... self-improvement, not home improvement. Except where there's overlap. From what I understand, the self and the home are never really done. 

I should sleep. 

Goodnight!

better

And I'm running around like I'm the main character. Staying up too late every night. Training and planning and eating right. Duat storms batter the city and every morning I wake to a world coated in a fine orange grit. 

And I try to remember who stole our nights away.

I'm stronger now, and better, arguably, in many ways. It probably won't ever be enough. It's the nature of things. 

I don't want another. 

A cool breeze, a warm shadow, and the memory of you.  

The sky is red, and I'm running around like I'm the main character. 

This story where I lose everything. And I'm okay. Because maybe nothing ever ends. I can keep going. Stubbornness, spite, and genuine curiosity. I am dead set. 

Because you're even better than I remember.

And I've stayed up too late again. 

readings

I turn to you every night

my Book of Sand

lean close to feel your breath

to listen to the story of you

colder and warmer music lilting

while green-eyed cats knead the bedclothes 

birch-bark paper leaves 

strands of autumn red hair

bookmark pages I'll never see again

save the runes etched in my mind

in one of the thousand outcomes

where I'm found without you

Sculpting

The pain crept up from nowhere. It seized his mind like a toothache, a rotten tendril snaking up the synapses already worn raw by regret. He tried to ignore it. The clinking of his point chisel against the marble as he worked seem to stave off the worst of it. 

The sculpture was coming along slowly. The figure inside didn't seem to want to come out this time. He'd caught a glimpse of it, in the marble quarry, beckoning to him, and he had selected the stone. 

Even now, in the clouds of dust that swirled in the evening light, it breathed. 

The pain would get worse, he knew, once the figure was free. But then it might get better. He worked on, in the last of the light. 

THE END FOR NOW 

dream floating

Bedroom window shatters and purple flowers blossom from the pieces of broken glass

Wished we'd been together forever but I learned so much when I was missing you

Closing windows too early

Keeps the cold out

The drapes can be blankets

Erect a fort against the sunlight

Stuff the chinks in the armor

With crumpled pages

faded watercolor landscapes

and endless rough drafts

Someday You Will Find Me

He didn't know if he could reach her, but he went anyway. Astral projection was actually pretty easy; as far as getting out. Getting to where you wanted to be was difficult, and managing to find your way back was even harder.

Very few thaumaturgy students were accepted for training, and it wasn't flattering if you were. It usually meant the student had completed their third cycle of study and had shown no particular aptitude for the more traditional magic systems, or were about to fail out altogether. 

Also, the student was required to be an organ donor, and agree to an advanced directive that if their Anima did not return within 7 days, the body would be euthanized and the components harvested for ingredients. 

If the Anima was out on its own longer than 7 days, on the 8th day it would go supernova. 

Literally. That's what many supernovae are. Not all of them, but a lot. As the Codex Dessicantem states, "It is bad when one thing becomes two." 

There is furious debate among the scholars about how the Earth has so far been spared from these lightyears-wide explosions when as far as anyone knew, humans on Earth were the only ones who could astral project. Granted, Animas were not strictly bound by the limitations of physics, but the nearest supernova recorded was still several galaxies over, never close enough to threaten Earth. Luck, maybe. Still, best not to take any chances, so that euthanasia protocol was developed. 

Too bad he wasn't going to make a sanctioned attempt. He was a promising chronomancer, and the school would not risk his potential. 

He prepared the spell, and went out on his own. His Anima tore away from his corporeal form, and he was away.

He could not describe the feeling, nor what he saw. It was almost entirely unlike swimming through a vibrant coral reef surrounded by brightly-colored fish and looming, counter-shaded predators. But not entirely unlike that.

He searched and searched for her, for six days. He couldn't find her, and he couldn't find the way back to his own body. He despaired, and searched on.

At dawn, on the seventh day, he received a gift. Somehow, like the half-memory of a dream, he knew where she wasn't. Absolute, perfect, knowledge of where she could not be. And he strove to that place with all his might. At dawn, on the eighth day, he arrived, and his last thought was of her.

"A new supernova popped into visibility on May 19 in the Pinwheel Galaxy, (alternately designated as Messier 101, or M101)."

-Bartleby, et al., 2023 'Multidisciplinary Observation and Measurements of Transient Events -Journal of Astronomy and Astrology

THE END

Author's Note: Okay one more since it's the last day of Short Story Sham Writing Month. Goodnight!

sticky mouth

Early morning apple pie

then back to bed

to be useless but happy

Clutch potential from the chill dawn

smother it beneath body and blankets

until a dog licks my face for crumbs

their life going by seven times as fast as mine

and guilt sets in for wasting time

The Ghost In The Corridor

There is a little ghost haunting the corridor of my parent's house. It's always been there, as far as I can remember. It's funny now, but it scared me when I first saw it. It wears a sheet, but there is definitely a ghost underneath. It has no feet, but there are partial legs sticking out. 

My parents are Catholic, and so I was I, in the beginning, and my mom said the house had been blessed by a priest so I figured if the blessing wasn't stopping the ghost, then it probably wasn't evil. Probably. 

I'd wake up at night and need to use the bathroom. I was afraid of the dark. I'd climb down from the bunk bed and pad down the corridor. The ghost didn't block my way. The bathroom was halfway down, and the ghost usually hovered at the end, before it opened up into the living room and kitchen. 

Oh yeah, it changes sheets. It takes whatever's clean. When we were all little, this meant it was often in a sheet with cartoon animals, or superheroes, and stars and galaxies. 

In the morning, the sheet would be folded up neatly and placed back in the linen closet. 

I don't understand it all. 

If it wasn't there to scare us, or hurt us, or to help us in some way, why was it there?

Catholicism didn't really have any answers because the teachings on ghosts gets surprisingly muddy. 

And none of the teachings mentioned actual bedsheets. 

I'm not religious anymore, and I don't hold any beliefs about gods and devils fighting for the souls of humans, but if I were pressed, I'd have to admit I believe in at least one little ghost, wearing in a bedsheet, floating in a corridor of my mom and dad's house. 

THE END

Static Underneath

He saw the static below everything. Black and white pixels flashing underneath the world. Old cathode ray tube televisions, when tuned to a channel with no signal, would show a screen of black and white "snow." A two-toned kaleidoscope. He saw this, when he closed his eyes, and when his eyes were open. 

His vision was fine; his yearly visits to the optometrist confirmed that yes, he was a little nearsighted but otherwise fine. 

He worried that everything he was seeing wasn't real; that the static was the real world and all the bright and beautiful colors and shapes he saw were being projected onto the static, an overlay. If it was a projection, what was projecting it? And if it wasn't real, what was it?

His health insurance only covered doctors, not philosophers. 

And yet, otherwise, his life was normal. Boring, even. He felt he should let it go. Stop thinking about it entirely. Pretend it wasn't there.

One night, he found himself holding a paring knife to his eye and wondering what would he would see without them. 

He had put the knife down. If he did remove his eyes, he might see what was really there, behind the world. Or the static might be the only thing left, and his world would remain only those black and white pixels, a backdrop forever. 

THE END

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Did I never publish this one? I guess not. Says I wrote it on November 24th. I must have left it in the drafts because it doesn't go anywhere. Sure, there's a lot more leeway in short stories because if you don't waste too much of a reader's time they don't get too upset, generally. Maybe it was too depressing? The danger of what I'm doing mixing fiction in with a journal of my day-to-day life is that there's the risk that people might conflate the two. 

Which is why I'm hesitant to mention that I do see static. It's not bright static, and it doesn't interfere with my vision. I think everyone sees it, right? What do you see when you close your eyes? 

Pawed

Too many mutts on too small a bed

We don't seek solutions to this problem

It's the kind we like

Resolve one; another takes its place

A paw on my face

Cheeky hounds

Line up North to South

Furry fat electromagnets

Living compasses

Pointing to you

Resting Phase

Warm toes, cold nose

There is no human experience that does not exist without its opposite, Melville said

Programmed in Emotional Binary

It's not the only coding language

Access granted to your inputs

Firewalls; defragmentation 

The cold reminds me of you because I miss the heat of your body against mine

Heartbeat like a cursor, ready 

Couched

Couch these words in thoughts on a couch

Poetry seeks the middle place

Where what we think and what we feel 

Mistake one for the other

I call it the middle place but it was the first

The wishbone split came somewhere after

When four legs became sometimes two

And then only two

Poetry is not for unfinished thoughts

But thoughts that can't be finished

Perhaps. I'm not sure. I like the sounds of it

The shape of your mouth when you say the words

The shape of your mind when you think the thoughts

Beckon, beckon, skittish connection

Our hands entwining 

Skin scraped by electric thickets 

A robot could have wrote this

I tell ourselves

But I thought of it first this time

And I sleep envious of the water coursing down your body

That would only rust me, maybe

We chain our dreams to logic

As if that safely keeps them

To exist in the same room as you

Is as small and as big as I can dream tonight

Rivers push against their banks

And make new curves and bends and breaks

Pebbles tumble sand and silt

As they carve out that middle place

The Turkey Of Terror

Turkeys used to be very different from how they are today. Long ago, turkeys grew to the size of a house, their feathers were sleek and black, and their massive beaks were cruel, curved, hooked, perfect for skinning their prey. Their horrendous, thundering cry of "Gobble-gobble" would send the early humans scrambling back to their caves, cowering and shivering in terror. The humans would not come out until they were certain the turkey hunt was over. 

The humans began to leave out offerings for the terror turkeys, grains and berries and seeds and nuts. The titan turkeys would gather and nibble the food reluctantly, clucking amongst themselves, imagining that instead of cracking the shells of nuts, they were cracking open the skulls of humans and scooping out the gooey grey stuff inside. It was their favorite. 

The little things we do every day add up, over time. After a millennia or two, the monstrous avians that had ruled the land with an iron wattle, had diminished to a much more manageable four feet in height, and their steely muscles had given way to plump, tender flesh. 

The humans noticed, eventually, and the tables were quickly turned. 

Now, once a year, many cultures gather to give thanks that they are now the hunters, instead of the hunted. But the turkey has one final cruelty for the feasters: they are so big that to fully cook them, when whole, that the white meat, the lean muscular meat that long ago was used to hunt and rend the flesh of the very humans that eat them now, will become dry and tasteless. 

And they hope you choke on it. 

And if you do, while you're turning blue, thrashing about, mouth gaping for air that won't come, you will hear the sound of massive wings, and a final thundering "gobble gobble." 

THE END

The Night Watchman

What night, from dusk until dawn, he guarded the empty, rotting grain silo on Baseline road. Years before, when he had been hired, there were fields of grain, and of cotton, of orange groves, and miles and miles of flowers. 

All that was gone now, replaced by tract housing, apartment complexes, gated communities, and a few cows and pigs. 

Everything had changed all around him. Except the grain silo that still stood in the middle of a couple acres of dirt behind a crooked, wooden fence.

His work has given him enough to live, to build a life during the day, at least when he wasn't asleep. He had breakfast for dinner with his family, and then once his wife went to work and his kids went to school, he slept. His real morning was the middle of the afternoon, when he would awaken and pick up the children from school. He would make dinner (his breakfast) and help them with their homework. As the sun began to set, he was off again. 

He didn't know why the silo still needed a guard. Every night. He wasn't allowed to read, or talk on the phone, or write. He would pace the perimeter, shine his flashlight now and then, and think about all the things he'd rather be doing. As far as he could tell, no one watched him. He could have slept, or used his phone, or read all those books he meant to read, or write down his life story. 

But he was a man of his word. So every night, he watched. He was free to think, and that was enough. He watched, and waited for the sun to rise and send him home. 

THE END