Tick Tick Kcit

He liked to wile away his time. Knowing that wasn’t how it was spelled, but liking the idea of tricking time to shuffle on by.

“That’s no way to live,” the old timer at his elbow, both belly up to the bar, said after he slurred out his theory.

“Or that’s what someone else should tell you.”

The bartender asked if they wanted to roll dice for shots.

“Gotta do something, clock’s watching. Ain’t that right?” the old timer said and winked.

Later time got had its revenge, as it stopped moving after he texted someone he probably shouldn’t have.

Suffix

Once home, Toad wondered if maybe he could have surreptitiously slipped a sock from his laundry bag, so the woman walking her dog towards him would find it and hopefully holler he’d lost something.

Later at the bar, after the sun and the rain, twice over, people tried to talk to him, ask him what he was reading, draw him away, but he was twenty pages from the end, and these weren’t the people he wanted to speak to.

Even later, a toddler ran around the playground, barking like a dog, while his father asked him what was the matter.

Gatefold

There was wine and writing. But later, once they and the words dried up, and he’d finished the half bottle from yesterday, he’d have to wax and waterproof his boots. He’d been meaning to do it for weeks.

Earlier he heard a song he had loved and completely forgotten until just now when he heard it. And he wondered why that was. That you can just forget. Something like that. Then later. Boots still not waxed, by the way, he wondered if maybe we didn’t forget on purpose so one day, sometime, we could find it and be amazed again.

twenty minutes between

first it was gloomy brown
then it was so sunny he could stand on the balcony for the time it took to smoke
then it was the grey storm that looks worse from a bus
it cleared up again
then it was a blizzard. with the kind of flakes that stick to your coat and pants and anything they touch and everyone is covered after walking down the block
or it might be more appropriate to say they’d
emerge. that’s what it really was. because it was snowing so much and everyone was covered you couldn’t tell what was what.

Seven Inches in Under Twenty Four Hours

A gaggle flew by complaining how they should have left long ago, before the snow fell and has been falling since yesterday. The first real dump and still white enough to reflect the street lights back into the sky so that what would be usually be pitch black was something more like dusk.

Coyote stubbed out his cigarette and figured he’d enjoy it.

The last couple months had been dark enough already. It was as if the sudden heavy the snow had landed on the raised seat of his inner teetertotter and made him feel just a little bit lighter.

Laundry Three Fold

Wash

Thinking and feeling and reaction and then examining those reactions. Nothing felt right. Not completely and he wanted something that would. The laundromat was as full as he’d ever seen it. Every one of them facing the door and waiting.

Rabbit fed the machine and sat down to read.

The main character was too similar from the start, and other bits reminded him of the things he was trying not to think about. He pulled the treat from his breast pocket and struggled against the plastic wrap. The middle had warmed, and the layers slid apart as he bit in.

Rinse

Then you peel off the soaked socks and leave footprints from the front to the back to drop off the groceries and other things you’ve bought because you thought buying things would make you feel better. Different. Changed. Or at least get you out of the house. You’ve spent too much time there lately. The air is stale and a little suffocating. Too many of the same ideas are trapped have have begun to smell and the two hours you were gone weren’t enough to clear them.

Maybe if you opened the window the rain’ll come in. Maybe that’ll help.

Dry

Trout didn’t know what should go where.
Non and fiction next to each other. Alphabetically. Did that had something to do with it? He thought if he could figure this problem out, the solution to the other would fall into place.

Trout dropped two books on the heap and answered the door. The neighbourhood mystic stood there, his laundry bag over her shoulder.
“I knew you’d show up,” he said.
She sneered and stepped in, dropping the laundry on the bed.
“Reorganizing, huh?” she said. “That’s a nice distraction.”
Trout shrugged and shuffled to the kitchen to start the coffee.

Wakey Wakey Eggs and Bakey

I wanted to get up and go, but my leg had fallen asleep, and before it woke up, the server came by and asked if I wanted another, so I had to say yes.  Because who knew how long the tingling, not-dead, not-alive feeling would last. It’d been happening more often, and lasting for longer, and I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I kind of figured my extremities had to be tired. So, maybe then the whole of me was likely tired, and that was a little surprising.

But less the more I thought about it.

Of Course Butterflies Are Ghosts

There’s a human sized monarch butterfly playing Tom Waits songs on the piano in the middle of this restaurant and everyone’s just ignoring how impossible this is. They’re talking about splitting appetizers and what wine to order and he can’t fucking believe it. “Are you that self absorbed?” he wants to yell at these people who were friends ten years ago but now just know and feel obligated to see each other every few months.

Orange and black wings hunched over the white and black keys, and the growing darkness that makes his insides scream but keeps his mouth shut.

Terrace 1

Worry works its way in. Fills any, all, empty cracks. Bakes and hardens in the heat of what we don’t know. From nothing, to mortar. Becomes bricks we cart.

“What’s rent like in heaven, I wonder,” someone at the next table says. And you can tell they really want to know.

Someone else walks by with a handheld transistor radio to their ear, but playing loud enough for us all to hear.

“Rah, rah, Rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen,” the radio says. The people around dance in their chairs, and can’t wait to tell this story to others later.

You Might Be Sad, But You Could Also Just Be A Little Hungry

“Someone was talking about the differences between heartbreak and loneliness,” Coyote told the neighbourhood mystic.

“Someone, eh?” she said.

Coyote ignored that. It was impossible to speak with anyone who saw everything as it was.

“More about the shapes of the pain of each. Sharp and teethed and jagged, or rounded and dulled and ever-present. Hard to say which is worse.”

“They both are,” the mystic said. “We all know this. Why are we talking about it?”

“It came up.”

“Lots of things come up. Doesn’t mean they’re important.”

They watched the bumblebees bend the stalks of the flowering mint.

Prologue For the Book, Yet Unwritten

Coyote sat outside reading and drinking wine until he couldn’t do either anymore. Got too dark. Things meant a lot when you want them to, he thought, and especially when you don’t want them, too. Moving from the balcony to inside to the fridge to finish off the wine to the couch without lifting the needle from the record but turning off the few lights, he wished he was in charge of his thoughts. Hours later, groping through the dark, he put another record on, stood on the balcony, hoping for rain to wash this taste out of his mouth.

Balcon 1

What am I to do once it gets dark?

With a lapful of letters to previous occupants and the clouds forming to look like the Jack of Diamonds. Or whichever one has an eye-patch. It’s too hot inside. And this fucking housefly I thought I got rid of. The two of us. Can’t find a way out besides the two open doors and all the records. And all the other options.

The upstairs neighbour said “do you like that?” in a tone that underlined what she did for a living, if you’d figured that out earlier, based mostly on coincidence.

Ruins

We sat in that tree all night. Hands tied tight around the trunk, even if we could barely reach. We’d run away because of something dumb. Dinner not to our liking. Or. Being too hot and loud inside. Or.

We watched the shadows grow across the moonlit field come together, gather wood, build their fire, until it grew big enough for their shadow arms to touch the trunk where we hid. Did what we could to not listen to the songs and the screams. Dug our fingernails in and said we were dreaming.

In the morning’s ashes, we climbed down.

Things Were Going Great

“I didn’t. Never did,” Toad said. “But now, I’d be open to adoption.”

“Oh, really. Why now?”

“More mature. More secure. Financially. Mentally. Spiritually. I could offer them a future, now.”

“That’s surprisingly self-aware.”

“And, I thought of a great joke.”

“What?”

“Years down the line, after we’ve both grown together, and learned how to trust each other, there’d be a frayed moment, I could say ‘I saved you, you know,’ at that crucial point. And it would be hilarious and devastating.”

“What?”

Misunderstanding. Outrage. Comprehension. Explanation.

“They’d have had to know they saved me first. It wouldn’t land otherwise.”

The Secret to Reheating Leftovers is to Add a Splash of Water

Coyote can’t hear what they are saying, but can tell the couple seated across the bar are arguing.

Her hands are shaped like a woodpecker’s beak. Spearing the air between them. Drilling into the situation. Trying to get at the insects beneath the surface.

He is simply finishing off the nachos.

A while later, after the plate has been cleared, the nacho eater responds. Arms flapping and eyes wide as he speaks. In full flight. Flying high out of danger.

Her sunglasses and crossed arms are impenetrable.

“Those two,” the server said, nodding, “have been squawking since they got here.”