Beginnings

Fuck—someone's stolen the light bulb from the hallway again. But whatever. Last time it was me. No one cares enough to say anything anyway. I guess I'll be cooking in the dark tonight.

It's August, sweltering hot—on the days it doesn't rain, which are just sticky. If you close your eyes in a rainstorm, you can imagine the city sky, filled to overflowing with ooze, has burst its bladder, and is taking its revenge on the crawling ants below.

The potted plants are all dead or dying. Someone forgot to water them. As they're mine, and I'm the only one here, it must have been me. The Venus flytrap looks alright, though. Everything else may be dying, but the flytrap and the flies are both prospering. It's been one of those summers.

Some days, if I lie completely still, and close my eyes, it seems I can feel my heart slowing down, and I can pretend that eventually, if I lie here long enough, stay still enough, I'll hear its final beat, and finally understand what the wind has been telling me all along. Maybe I already understand…I just can't seem to translate it, and that frustrates me.

I made a bird out of construction paper and Popsicle sticks, fully functioning wings and all, with a little pull-cord to make them flap, and stuck it in a golden cage. But the poor thing looked so unhappy there, and refused to sing. So I dowsed it in kerosene and gave it a nice little sendoff, complete with voodoo rights and chanting. It's singing now…wait, no, that's just Scrack.

He was a kitten when I found him, lying in a gutter. It's been a while (I'm not sure how long, the days won't keep their places), but he looks exactly the same, only bigger. His fur is matted and dirty, and one of his back toes is missing, taken off by a rat as big as himself. One eye is gone--I don't know that story—but the other's as bright as the sun, a great golden orb. His left front tooth is broken off, completing the terrifyingly vicious visage. He's still the most beautiful man I know.

I hate when my cigarettes taste like candy. They should taste like nicotine and ash. I need to feel myself dying, to remember what it feels like to live.

Today started early, at six instead of noon. The buses are crowded, and so are the streets, people packed like sardines, some even as slimy. One girl's hair brings uncooked Ramen noodles to mind, as if it would crunch, should you bit into it. I eavesdrop on the conversations, each quietly, urgently colliding with the others. "I miss your voice," one comes through clearly, with a gentler touch than the rest. I quit listening.

Spring coddles the hills with a comforting blanket of fog, leaving the city to fend for itself. See how it clutches its sides and hunches its shoulders, tall buildings all huddled together in a desperate grasp at warmth. By summer, they'll be straining apart. Wait, you say, I thought it was August? I made that up, hoping that if you believed it, I could too. It didn't work.

I was young—to young—when I discovered that the world is bigger than a backyard, bigger than a hometown, that the sugar and spice is just the frosting on the top, and we live in the soggy underbelly. Before that, the possibilities were endless, from here to tomorrow—back when "tomorrow never comes" had an optimistic ring to it. Now that brave new world is reduced to duct taped windows, a stray cat, and the taste of jungle rot.

But in a garden near a house that's busy growing, there's a rock. When I listen deeply, I can hear it sighing, a long, drawn out sigh, millennia in the making. Some rocks grown, some are restless; this one just breathes out slowly, unhurried, as if it has all the time in the world. I am learning.