Michael Anthony Adams Jr.'s Blog, page 4

Original Face

In nothing but his underwear, Samuel sat down to meditate. Behind his mind, his room was a schizophrenic mess. Clothes were piled on shoes were piled on papers were piled on book bags… He ignored it all and focused on the tiny little corner in front of the exit where he’d brushed all the madness away from. He sat down on his bedspread (which was actually a sleeping bag since he didn’t have a comforter) on the floor since he didn’t have a carpet or a meditation mat for that matter. On top of the bedspread, between his butt and it, were the two pillows from his bed since he most certainly didn’t have anything resembling an actual meditation pillow. He criss-crossed his legs in the lotus position and set one hand on top of the other – palms up, thumbs touching. He focused his eyes on the base of the wall where it met with the floor and relaxed his gaze. After taking three deep breaths, he rocked his body seven times from side to side to get his spine properly aligned. He made sure his butt jutted out a little bit and that he kept his neck straight. He didn’t count his breaths anymore, and that was okay.

As he skimmed the surface of his mind, the koan he’d just read floated murkily upon it. With a psychic net, he lifted it off the pond and brought it closer to his mental eyes for examination (his physical eyes had already gone out of focus; the world was turning dark). He didn’t trust the translation, but he garnered a meaning still, which was exactly what he was supposed to be attempting at that point in his studies. Besides, he needed something only to delve deeper into, not a precise definition. Koans had layers upon layers to be exposed, and he dove straight into the deep end with that one. Three possible initial meanings: one – there is so much world out there that why should one limit oneself by convention (an invitation to swim deeper still); two – there are so many ways to be formal in such a wide world that the formalities one expresses may not be any more proper than the way one initially appeared; three – we are always formal… that is the key to our original face. What does it mean to have an original face?

A face before we were born? Samuel’s face before he was born was one of three things: nonexistence, the same face he wore right at that moment, or the face of the world that had created him and that still created him. In a flash, he realized all three were right. So… what was his face right at that moment? That was a piece of what had created him and what still created him, and in that way, it was the key to nonexistence. Nonexistence was the key to everything because everything did not exist, at least, not in the way that people wanted it to, namely, essentially. It did exist precisely in that his face right at that moment had existed even before he was born as a piece of what gave birth to him. The moments after his birth formed his birth as much as the moments before his birth. The mistake was how one looked at time. Who ever taught you that time was linear? Who ever taught you that if it wasn’t, then it had to be circular? Break the geometric bonds of your mind to break out of time.

Once time is abandoned, all of cyclic existence disappears. It could be said that the individual who is free of time has returned to that mystical Garden of Eden to eat from the tree of life… no longer plagued by the knowledge of good and evil – Nirvana is obtained. Of course, though, all mythology is as restrictive as geometry. There’s no reason to believe that there is any psychological truth to a tale told by a human being. That was Freud’s mistake. Presupposing an objective truth in a myth simultaneously presupposes something like Jung’s Collective Unconscious. That’s as erroneous as presupposing God. And He’s the one who didn’t want us to eat from that tree in the first place and become like Him. But for the record, we aren’t paying any attention to mythology anymore. That would be limiting oneself by convention.

* * * * * * * * * *

Earlier that night, a woman had read Samuel’s face (before he was born?). He’d been at a pool hall – not drinking, just hanging out with friends and shooting a game every now and again. “You have an amazing way with the opposite sex,” a female friend of his had told him after a woman unknown to him had introduced herself and carried on a long conversation – in between sips off her whiskey sour – about her best friend who lived in the Bay Area (“I thought it was close to San Francisco, but with the traffic, it’s really not”). He’d shrugged. What could he say to such a complement? “I don’t think I’d handle having that much power over the opposite sex as well as you do…” his friend had gone on.

“I never noticed that I had any power,” he’d responded. “Women just like me.”

“Regardless, you’re a real ladies’ man,” she’d said.

“I guess,” had been his answer. “I’m certainly not a man’s man.” They’d both laughed at that one.

“Did I introduce you to my boss yet?” his friend asked him next.

“Yeah…”

“She’s pretty?”

“I thought so.”

“I want to fix you guys up.”

He shrugged again.

“Where’d she go anyways?” his friend asked. “I can’t lose her.”

“I’ll find her,” Samuel responded as he set his pool cue back into the rack on the wall and went in search of the lost boss.

He found her in a corner of the pool room talking to a woman with penetrating, black eyes. The two were thickly engrossed in a heavy conversation. Above the music (at that moment, The Ramones) he could catch snippets of their shared words, but he couldn’t make out the details of what was being discussed. He tapped the boss on her shoulder. Expectantly, she looked up at him. “Remember me?” he asked. “We just met.”

“Of course I do,” she said.

He felt a bit awkward intruding upon the conversation, but there were no hints that he should leave. Leaning against a table, he merely waited for the moment of his introduction. With his proximity, however, he was better able to make out the state of their minds. The woman with the penetrating eyes was saying, “…And you need to pay more attention to men.” She looked at him. “Like this one, he’s got really nice eyes.”

“She’s telling me my future,” the boss confided in him. That piqued Samuel’s interest.

The penetrating woman went on, “See the color, the sheen of them. He’s…” she trailed off and stared at him for a moment. She shook her head, “Anyways. You need to stop messing around with women and find yourself a man. You will have children. You will have a daughter, and she will bring you great pain.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” the boss chuckled.

“Yes. But her father will love her and bring her comfort. She will do wonderful things, but you will not,” the woman said.

The boss laughed. “So I’m just going to be this ho-hum person bringing a politician or something into the world who’s going to break my heart. Great…”

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “It’s just what I see. I can’t help what I see.”

Samuel smiled along with the mood of the two. His eyes widened, and his lips pointed up at their tips. The penetrating woman glanced at him. She smiled right back at him. “You, on the other hand, are quite wicked,” she said – quickly adding, “But not in a bad way.”

“No. That seems true,” he agreed. As if it were a tractor-beam from a sci-fi movie, her energy pulled him closer to her. He wasn’t sure if it did or not, but his physical presence may have actually invaded her proximity. Her eyes were black as the hole at the center of the Milky Way. Like the morning star with the sun, he spun into a spiritual orbit around her. A light lit in the depths of her pupils – the point of collapsed gravity at the center of the black hole.

The light manifested still more tangibly in her words, “You’ve been through a lot,” she said. “You’ve suffered a lot,” her building frown quickly exchanged places with a smile, “But that’s okay. We all have, and you are okay. You will be okay. You will be married… in about five years. And you will have a son first. You will name him after yourself – as all men wish to do. You will accomplish what you wish to accomplish. You will…” her smile grew still broader. “You will…” she stopped in mid-sentence. “You have a powerful energy. I’m proud to meet you,” she said. She put her hand out for him to shake. He enveloped it with his own. She wrapped her other small palm over the back of his hand. “I don’t mean to see these things, I just do.”

“That’s okay,” Samuel said, “I’ve seen lots of things I didn’t want to,” but he didn’t stop smiling as his memories would have caused him to do a few years before that precise moment.

“Do you have children?” the boss suddenly interjected, directing her question at the woman with black eyes.

“I have three sons,” she said. “My oldest is 20. I had him at fourteen. My husband is right over there.” She nodded in the direction of a stout man with black hair who held a pool cue in his hand. “He’s wonderful,” she said, “But he’s so unpredictable. We’ve been together since before my first child was born. He’s a fire fighter, and I’m blind to him. I’m blind to him and to my children. I can’t see anything for them. It’s only with other people. I see auras.”

“You’re blinded by love,” our hero added.

The woman with black eyes shrugged. She didn’t seem to agree, and Samuel realized he was nowhere near as perceptive as she was. But he’d never imagined himself to be so. His gifts were otherwise.

“Everybody has psychic powers,” the woman went on. Samuel nodded. He most definitely agreed with that. He’d had his own experiences, but there was no need to go into them right then. Instead, with the benefit of her words and presence, he could feel them building inside his mind. It was time for him to sit still. As if she were marking him for all time, the woman dug her thumb nail into the back of Samuel’s hand. He didn’t cry out. He didn’t make any response whatsoever. He pretended as if nothing strange in any manner had just happened. “It was very nice to meet you…”

Samuel walked away from the encounter to return to his friend who thought he was a real ladies’ man. She was now shooting her own game of pool. She asked him if he’d found her boss. He nodded.

* * * * * * * * * *

His thoughts were getting to be a bit too much, and he stepped outside the pool hall for a cigarette. Waiting outside, sitting on top of a low-lying brick wall, was the woman with black eyes. As if he’d already been invited to a secret rendezvous, an assignation designated by mysterious symbols – which he very well might have been, he hopped up next to her and lit a smoke. She was already smoking a cigarette so he didn’t offer her one.

“I hope I didn’t scare you,” she said.

He shook his head, No. Then, he tipped his head to the side, But what did you do to me?

“I just feel such a powerful energy coming off from you. I didn’t say this in there, but you have to be careful. You will accomplish what you want to, but something will eventually stop you.” She stared at him. “I don’t want to scare you. You already know what that is.”

He nodded.

“It’s so strange. I feel you pulling my energy from me…”

I’m a vampire… he psychically whispered to her.

“Stop it,” she said. Then, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to freak you out.”

“Oh… I’ve seen much freakier than this,” he told her.

And as he said it, the unpredictable man who she’d nodded to as her husband approached the two of them. “What the hell are you doing talking to my woman!” he shouted at our hero, getting up in his face. Then, his tension relaxed, and he grinned, “Just kidding.” Looking at the penetrating woman, he said, “Come on, baby, let’s go.”

But before the unpredictable man’s snarl turned to a smile, our hero had already unknowingly stuck out his hand and said to nobody in particular, “I’m Gabriel.” as the two of them walked down the street – the unpredictable man putting his arm around the woman with the penetrating eyes and pulling her close to him – our hero whispered it, as if he wasn’t quite sure, again, “I’m Gabriel…”

By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
From his story collection Psychedelicizations.

I Can Feel Her Spirit

I can feel her spirit calling to me.
She’s here,
in the city,
calling to me.

She cries, she writhes in her bed
that’s too small
for the two of us
to go our separate ways.

I can feel her spirit calling to me.
She’s there,
outside my window,
freezing in the snow.

Her hands are pressed against
the panes of glass,
frozen like a tongue
that just had to lick the pole.

I can feel her spirit calling to me.
She’s behind
me, twittering in
my mind: a voice

who whispers that I’ll never forget
her like
I have never
forgotten… you?

I can feel her spirit calling to me.
She’s below
me, dancing
to the same wicked tune.

We dance together so far apart.
We must never be
bound by knotted cords
in (un)holy matrimony.

I can feel her spirit calling to me.
She’s above,
in the ether’s
spiritual expanse, where

the philosophers believed her to be.
While I’m here,
on earth, where
the deity has willed me to be.

By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
From his poetry collection Recipe for a Future Theogony.

Guadalupe Street

She exists as the entirety of Holy Faith,
but she lives right around the corner.
To my mind, there is no more precise way
to experience the wasteland than through her.
In her presence, my thoughts are the desert,
my eyes – the mountain sky; she is the earth.
I am the wickedness in humanity’s ways.

No more metaphors… not this time. I
can’t take my mind anymore. All
I want to do is to say something
concrete: I remember when we first met,
when her eyes first lit upon my scars;
they sparkled in ways that I’ve seen
so many times since. I’ll work magic again…

My scars are the remnants of our hell,
when the inmates were released, when
they chopped the two of us in two
and burnt her alive upon the sacrificial pyre.
Virgin Mary Magdalene return to me.
Our myth goes deeper than Eve. We’re
never chosen. We’re their Adversary.

By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
From his poetry collection Indigo Glow.

Enemy Combatants

Tricky Ricky had a bone to pick with somebody. Maybe it was because his parents didn’t pay enough attention to him. Maybe it was because his older sisters always picked on him. Maybe it was just something inherent to his character. Who knows.

But when he got on the bus that day, he was very angry. He was always angry and always had something that he wanted to do on the bus. Sometimes he wanted to kick a sixth grader out of his seat. Sometimes he wanted to pull a girl’s hair. Sometimes he just wanted to bother the bus driver so much that she worried she might wind up crashing the bus. That day started as one of those days. Ricky was up and moving around and jumping from seat to seat so much that every five seconds, the bus driver had to look up into her huge rearview mirror and shout or scream, “Ricky, if you don’t sit down right now, then I’m going to pull this bus over and nobody will get home until you finally get control of yourself!” After one of those times when she shouted that, Ricky wound up sitting next to Eric.

Eric was new and didn’t have any friends.

He always sat in the same seat with nobody sitting next to him, and he always stared out the window until the bus got to his stop, and he grabbed his backpack and stood up and lumbered off the bus all alone to stand at the bus stop and wait for all the other kids to start together on their merry way before he dragged his feet a few steps behind them, hoping they wouldn’t turn around and laugh at him, wishing that he could get farther away from them, wanting a different route to his house so that they wouldn’t be able to see him all alone. He wanted them to believe he had friends, but if anybody knew he didn’t, it was certainly the kids on the bus.

He definitely didn’t have any friends in the neighborhood since nobody ever sat with him, and every day he rode the bus alone. They knew that he never went home with anybody else, and they knew that nobody ever came home with him. Everybody knew that he was new and that he couldn’t make friends. “They probably figure I’ve never had friends,” he would think to himself when he sat there all alone staring out the window. The sad thing is that if they did think that, then they were right. Even before he had shown up in his new home where nobody liked him, Eric hadn’t had any friends.

He was what people call a husky boy, but that really meant that he was fat. He smelled bad too. He couldn’t smell it, but everybody else could, and they constantly reminded him of it. It was a mixture between his weight and his diet. He never really stopped sweating, even though he was only in the seventh grade, and he had these intestinal problems that left a faint odor following him every time he went to the bathroom.

The smell was one of the many reasons that he never tried to make any friends. It didn’t take much of a conversation with somebody for that person to scrunch up his or her nose and hold his or her breath and wave his or her hand and remind Eric that he smelled bad and that the person wished Eric would just move a little farther away.

So it was very strange that Ricky sat down next to him. It was even stranger that Ricky started talking to him, and Eric figured at first that it was all just a precursor to Ricky making fun of him.

“Why you staring out the window?” Ricky asked.

Eric shrugged.

“You see something out there?”

Eric shrugged.

Ricky looked back to the front. He was fidgeting a whole bunch, and Eric hoped that pretty soon he might stand up and start yelling again and move to somewhere else in the bus and at least leave Eric all alone to stare out his window in peace. But Ricky didn’t leave. He fidgeted and looked all around until finally his eyes settled on something, and he stopped moving around, and his eyes lit up, and he smiled a little, a little diabolically.

“Hey. Hey Eric. Right?”

Eric nodded to let Ricky know he had gotten his name right at least, which was more than most people ever did, but maybe it was just because Ricky’s name was so similar that he wanted to make sure everybody knew the distinction between the two of them and didn’t mistake the “r-i-c” phonic with the “E” in the front for the one with the “k-y” in the back. Eric knew that anybody else would think that was just terrible if somebody mixed up the fat kid’s name with his own. Names are very personal things, signs that could confuse bodies if used improperly.

“Yeah, Eric,” Ricky went on, “You know that kid, that kid up there, Timothy?”

Eric looked at the person Ricky was pointing at. Timothy was a skinny, little kid with blond hair. He was a sixth grader who everybody seemed to be real nice to, but who never really talked to anybody. He smiled at a lot of the kids when they got on the bus, and most of them smiled back, but he never really talked to anybody except for this little, dark-haired kid who always sat next to him. Timothy got off at a different stop from Eric, but they lived right around the corner from each other. Eric always saw Timothy outside shooting baskets when Eric went on his long, meandering walks through the neighborhood that were his own way of getting away from the oppressiveness of the juxtaposition of his over-friendly home with respect to the calamatic coldness of the school. Melinda lived at the end of the block, and Eric always hoped that maybe he could get a glimpse of her walking around if he went near where she lived. Eric never saw her. But he always saw Timothy running around, throwing the ball at the hoop, dribbling between his legs. Eric couldn’t move that fast, and even if he could, the ball would get stuck on the flesh between his thighs if he tried putting it between them. There wasn’t enough room there for him to fit anything between. That was another thing people told him.

“I know who he is,” Eric said.

“Well, you know what I heard him saying earlier when I was over there?” Ricky was extremely earnest.

Eric shook his head, No.

Ricky leaned closer to Eric, confiding in him with his whisper, not even holding his breath when he said, “He was saying that he thought Melinda might like you.”

Eric’s eyes got real wide, and Ricky nodded.

“He was saying that Melinda might like you and that she wanted to go with you. But Timothy likes her – everybody knows that. So he was saying that he thought he should get off at your stop today and beat you up to teach you to stay away from her.”

Eric narrowed his eyes and carefully looked over at the skinny, little kid laughing in his seat with his friend. “He couldn’t beat me up,” Eric said.

“That’s what I told him, but he didn’t believe me. He said you were a big, fat pussy and that he’d kick your ass so hard all the fat would fall off your stomach.”

Eric tightened his lips and shifted around in his seat. Ricky could see the steam coming off of Eric’s forehead.

“I’ll kick his ass,” Eric said. “I’ll break him in half. He can’t hurt me. I’ll kill him.”

“I’m sure you will,” Ricky said, and he stood up and bounded into the aisle.

“Ricky! Will you please sit down!” the bus driver shouted, her fat face reflected in the rectangular rearview mirror.

Ricky smiled, nodded, and dropped into the seat with Timothy, scrunching the skinny kid up against his dark-haired friend who was scrunched up against the window.

“Hey Ricky,” Timothy laughed.

“Hey Timothy,” Ricky said.

“Hey,” the brown-haired kid nodded.

“Hey,” Ricky nodded back.

Ricky sat there for a little while, smiling and rubbing his hands down his pants. Then, he stopped smiling and leaned his head close to Timothy’s ear. “Hey Timothy, do you know that new kid, Eric?”

Timothy looked over his shoulder at the kid who he thought was Eric. He’d seen him walking in front of his house a lot when he was out shooting baskets. The fat kid who he thought was Eric was staring at him. He didn’t look very happy. Timothy turned back around. He swallowed. “Yeah,” he said. “I know who he is.”

Somehow things had suddenly gotten very tense in the seat. The bus was still bouncing with the same rhythm that it always bounced with, but Timothy and his dark-haired friend weren’t smiling anymore.

“You know what he said to me?” Ricky asked.

Timothy shook his head, No.

Ricky leaned down closer to him, confiding the truth to him. “He said that he was going to fuck up your basketball hoop.”

Timothy whipped around in his seat. His eyes met Eric’s. They glared at each other for a moment. Timothy turned back around.

“Why’s he wanna do that?”

“Cuz he said you make fun of him all the time, that you always say he’s fat and he smells bad.”

Timothy was dumbfounded. “I’ve never said anything about him. Maybe I should just tell him that. Maybe I could talk to him and let him know…”

“He won’t believe you. I already tried telling him that I knew you really well, and that I knew you’d never say anything like that, but he wouldn’t believe me. He said that he doesn’t care what anybody says. He knows you said those things about him.”

Timothy bowed his head. He needed to protect his hoop. He didn’t know what Eric might be able to do to it, but he was certain he didn’t want anything to happen to it, that he would die if anything happened to it. He wanted to make the basketball team, and there was no way he’d be able to do that if he didn’t have a hoop at home.

“What do you think I should do then?”

Ricky leaned back. He exhaled up, lifting a little bit of hair off his forehead. “Well, I was thinking that you should get off at his stop today.”

“Why?”

Ricky laughed like the poor sixth grader simply didn’t understand the wisdom of an eighth grader’s insight into life. “That way you can take him by surprise, and once you kick his ass, he’ll never mess with your basketball hoop. He’ll be too scared.”

“But won’t he think that’s what I’m doing. I mean, he already saw me talking to you.”

“It doesn’t matter. Just get off the bus real quick and wait for him.”

Timothy looked over his shoulder. Eric was still staring at him. He sure hates me, Timothy thought.

“What do you think I should do?” he asked his dark-haired friend.

His dark-haired friend shrugged. “I dunno. But you can’t let him mess up your hoop.”

Timothy nodded. He narrowed his eyes. “You’re right,” he told Ricky. “I’ll get off at his stop.”

“All right,” Ricky said. He stood back up.

“Ricky! If you don’t sit down this instant, then I am going to pull the bus over right here!” the bus driver shouted.

“Okay, okay,” Ricky laughed. “Jeez,” he said, and he sat down next to Eric.

“What were you talking to him about?” Eric asked Ricky when he sat down.

Ricky shrugged. “I just wanted to make sure he was still getting off at your stop.”

Eric nodded. “Is he?” he asked.

“Yep,” Ricky said. “He says he’s gonna kick your ass as soon as you step off the bus. He’s letting everybody on the bus know so that Melinda gets off at the same stop and can see it all happen. He figures if she sees him kick your ass, then there’s no way she’ll ever like you instead of him.”

Eric glanced over his shoulder. Melinda was sitting in the back talking to her friends. Her brown hair fell over her shoulders and glowed in the light shining in from behind her. She glanced up while Eric was looking at her. He didn’t feel like it, but as soon as he saw her, he smiled. She smiled back awkwardly and dropped her head and started talking to her friends again. Eric looked away. Yep, she definitely liked him. Why else would she have looked at him like that?

“Jeez, did you see the way Timothy kept looking at you?” Ricky wondered.

Eric stopped smiling immediately. He nodded.

“That little kid hates you.”

Eric glared at Timothy again. If Melinda liked him, nobody was going to mess that up, especially not some little kid who spent every day shooting baskets and running around and playing with people and telling them that Eric was fat and, and, and, and, and…

“He won’t kick my ass,” Eric said.

“I know,” Ricky said. “But he thinks he can. That’s why you should hit him before he even knows that you know what he’s planning on doing.”

Eric nodded.

“I’m gonna go talk to Tyler,” Ricky said. “I just figured you should know what Timothy was gonna do before you got off the bus. That way he couldn’t surprise you since that’s the only way he figures he can kick your ass.”

“Thanks,” Eric said. He really was grateful. He’d get off the bus and hurt that stupid, little kid before he even knew that Eric knew what he was up to.

“No problem,” Ricky said. “I’ll see you when we get off the bus.” He grabbed Eric by the shoulder and dug his fingers into the flab in a friendly way. He was smiling when he stood up again. He was quick about it this time, and the bus driver didn’t see him switch seats again to the back of the bus where he could let everybody know that there was going to be a fight at Eric’s stop, that Eric and Timothy were going to fight because Timothy had called Eric fat earlier that day when the fat kid had knocked Timothy down just by bumping into him when he was coming out of the bathroom. Eric had told Timothy that if he didn’t get off at his stop, then he’d fuck up his house that weekend.

The news spread through the bus faster than whispers after a teacher leaves the room.

When Melinda and her friends heard about it, they decided they’d get off the bus too. Melinda felt bad for the new kid. She felt bad that Timothy would have called him fat, but she thought Timothy was really cute, even if he was only in the sixth grade, and she hoped that big oofus wouldn’t hurt him. There was no way Timothy meant it, and there must have been more to the story than just that Eric had knocked Timothy down. Eric must have done it on purpose because Timothy was always really nice to everybody. Eric was kind of weird. He was huge and ugly and smelled bad, and he kept looking at her. Why’d he keep looking at her? She really didn’t like it. It made her uncomfortable.

When the bus driver opened the door for the stop that Eric got off at, the entire bus stood up. There was a buzz of excited voices as they filed down the aisle. The bus driver watched them all pour down the steps, and she shook her head. When Ricky walked by her, she thought about grabbing him by the arm and asking that little shit what the hell he’d been up to since she knew he must have had something to do with what was going on. But that really wasn’t her place, and by the time everybody got off the bus, she was actually just kind of happy that there were no more kids to drop off and she could get home early.

It was early in the school year. Days were still long enough that the sun was still high when everybody got home. The bus exited into what looked like a pre-determined semi-circle with Timothy and his dark-haired friend standing close to the middle, but not quite in the middle. Every moment, they kept edging closer and closer to where everybody else was standing. And everybody else kept backing up bit by bit to stay away from the combatants. They were there to watch, not to fight.

Eric was caught up in the mass surging out of the open doors, but when he hit the open concrete, his bulk loped into a run headed straight for Timothy. Timothy looked over at his dark-haired friend. He thought that maybe he should run away because Eric looked like he wanted to kill him, and Timothy thought that maybe he could, but he didn’t have very much time to try to say anything. Before he knew what was going on, he heard a huge roar. He turned back around, and Eric was right in front of him, barreling down on him. Timothy tried ducking his punch, but Eric didn’t swing. He shoved Timothy by the shoulders. A gasp came from the crowd. Timothy felt the tremendous force slam against him. He flew backwards, lost his balance, and fell to the ground, catching himself with his hands, skinning his hands as they slid along the rocks in the pavement. Eric sure was strong. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

But he had to defend his basketball hoop.

Eric was standing there, huffing and puffing, looking all around him, letting everybody see the fate that would befall those who called him fat. Ricky was standing right in the front of the crowd, cheering and laughing. Eric knew Ricky was happy he’d been able to help the new kid out. He caught Melinda’s eye, and he smiled at her again, letting her see that he could defend himself, that he’d be able to defend her if the need ever arose. But she didn’t smile back this time. She glared at him like she hated him. What did I do wrong? he wondered.

But he didn’t have much of a chance to think anything else. While he stood there, his smile dissipating, his head drooping down, his thoughts no longer enraged at what Timothy had said about him, but now wondering whether or not he might have looked better to Melinda if he’d shown himself to be a lover rather than a fighter, Timothy popped back up.

The little kid’s fist was clenched, and with the same force that he used to propel himself off the ground, he slammed that fist into Eric’s nose.

There was a crack and a pop and a stream of blood flew into the air, splashing Timothy’s knuckles, spraying down the front of Eric’s shirt. The crowd roared and cheered. Eric stumbled back and doubled over, holding his nose. Blood dripped out between his fingers. His eyes were tearing up. He couldn’t see anything. He didn’t want to cry, but he couldn’t see Timothy anymore, and how could he fight the kid if he couldn’t see the kid. He had to be able to see again. He couldn’t lose the fight. It didn’t have anything to do with Melinda anymore. His nose hurt! It hurt real bad, and he didn’t want any other part of himself to hurt like that. He had to hit Timothy before Timothy hit him again.

Eric straightened up. Through the blur of his vision, he was able to make out vague, dancing shapes. He heard the crowd clapping and cheering Timothy on. Eric started swinging wildly, trying to hit whatever he could, but he never caught Timothy. He stumbled around, holding his nose with one fist, swinging his other fist, looking like a fool, and feeling tears trickle out of his eyes.

Finally, he screamed, and the tears burst out in full force.

The crowd gasped then quieted down a bit.

Timothy was dancing just out of reach of Eric’s fist. He couldn’t believe how much blood there was, but he was kind of happy that he could prove to that kid that he shouldn’t mess with him. He’d never been in a fight before. He was smiling. “You shouldn’t have talked about messing up my basketball hoop!” he shouted triumphantly.

“I don’t care about your basketball hoop. You called me fat.”

“I never called you fat, and Ricky said you said you thought I’d said that.”

“You did say it. Ricky also said you said you could kick my ass.”

Timothy stopped dancing. “I never said that.”

Eric was just beginning to be able to see again. His voice was very nasaly. His nose hurt real bad. “I never said anything about your basketball hoop. Ricky said you said you wanted to kick my ass because Melinda liked me.”

He never should have said that out loud. The whole crowd roared. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ricky said Melinda liked him? Him? That big, fat crybaby with the broken nose who’d tried to beat up Timothy? Oh wow, that was way too much, much too much to take! Oh my God! Oh my God! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ricky had pulled some good ones, but that was by far the best anybody had ever heard. Hey Melinda, you hear that? You like the fat kid! Oh my God! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Melinda looked all around. She couldn’t believe everybody was laughing. She wanted to walk up to Ricky, to yell at him, but she didn’t see him anywhere. She felt a little ill. She thought she might be sick. She pushed her way through the crowd and walked as fast as she could back to her house. Behind her, everybody was making fun of the fat kid. Everybody was laughing about her liking him. Everybody was hurting him by making fun of her. She didn’t wait for her friends to follow. She ran and ran and ran until she ran in her front door and up her steps and into her room where she could put her hands over her ears and try to cry because that fat kid had gotten his nose broken because of her.

In the middle of the circle, both of the combatants had completely stopped moving. They stared at each other, breathing deeply. Eric’s face was all twisted up, both from his nose and from something deeper. Timothy could see that. The original tears were gone from Eric’s eyes, but new ones were forming. His lower lip was trembling. He was shaking all over.

Timothy stepped closer to him, “I swear to God, Eric, I never said anything about you.”

Eric looked at Timothy. The little kid was so close to him. His fists weren’t up to hit him… He was telling the truth.

Oh God…

Eric whipped his head around to where Melinda had been. She was gone. He whipped his head around to where he had seen Ricky standing. Ricky was gone too.

His nose hurt so bad. He’d wanted to hurt Timothy so bad. Melinda had never liked him. Ricky had made everything up.

He bowed his head, and his shoulders shook as he started to cry.

Timothy was bright red. He swallowed slowly. He was real embarrassed. He didn’t know what to do. There was blood all over his hands, blood all over Eric’s shirt. The fat kid was crying. Everybody was laughing at him. Ricky was the person Timothy wanted to hurt, but Ricky had disappeared.

By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
From his story collection The Cars Behind, Beside Us.

A First Attempt at Flying

On the outskirts of the subdivision, beyond the skeletal construction sites, in the middle of a wasteland of rutted dirt, was Skill Hill. It was part of a ditch, a chasm that cut a circle at least 20 feet deep out of the earth. It plummeted down from the wasteland, bottomed out in a murky stream dotted with shrubs well fed by the sewage, and rose again into an island cut off from the rest of the land by the ditch itself.

But Skill Hill was only a piece of that ditch. It was a concrete wall that kept the earth from collapsing beneath gravity. It was a smooth rectangle of white cement slapped onto the rain-beaten terrain. It was a 20 foot descent, 30 feet wide, that was perfect for a bicycle.

Only the neighborhood’s bravest kids ventured there to force their bicycles’ thin wheels down the wall. With the wind rushing on their teeth, they would pedal as hard as they could. Furiously increasing down the cement, their speeds would top out just as their bikes reached the dark drainage’s closest laps. It was there, right at the water’s edge, with a sudden pull of the handlebars, that the bikes were supposed to screech their terror, their pleasure, whatever it was that happened at the bottom of Skill Hill, and if the kids had done what they needed to do, if they could look back over their shoulders and see that a beautiful, black skid marked the cement so close to the water that tiny waves would wash across it, then they had conquered the hill. Grinning triumphantly, they could sit beside the water and stare at the little island that was cut off from the rest of the earth.

Otherwise, if there were any hesitation, if even for a moment the idea of skidding at that speed was too frightening, the bike would stay silent. With a wide arcing swoop, the downward momentum would carry the kids back to where they had come from. Without them having to pump their pedals even once, Skill Hill would spew them from its depths.

* * * * * * * * * *

Earlier that day, the brothers had planned to ride around on the streets near their home, but the summer’s heat and humidity had driven everybody to the pools, leaving the subdivision’s streets empty. The two elder boys, leading the way, riding without using their hands, were talking to each other. Carey was staring at a bird when he heard them mention Skill Hill.

Now, as the three of them swung their freewheeling pedals and swerved their front tires, the skids stole their gazes. From the top of the hill to the bottom, the dark marks increased from the kids who had ventured deeper and deeper into the depths. Some of the skids were only timidly short, smeared stains. Others were the picture-perfect remnant of a kid who had attempted the hill.

Two of the marks were made by the two oldest brothers. Carey hadn’t yet watched his front tire dip off of the earth.

Burning between cotton-white puffs of clouds, the sun scorched their three throats parched even in the moist summer. The light and the heat separated the water from the sewage. It pulled the liquid out from between the shrubs – the only life in that desolation outside the subdivision – and left the drops evaporated in the air. The humidity stuck to the brothers’ skin, and even though it condensed in their lungs, it didn’t water the earth. The dust, crossed and marked by kids who had pedaled through the fall’s mud, was reddish brown and motionless around the three brothers who were all wearing tee shirts and shorts and all staring at the descent.

Being the oldest, Gabe was the first to break the silence. He kicked the kickstand on his blue BMX Racer. The bike tilted to its side, and he set his feet on the ground. “We shouldn’t even be here,” he panted into the humidity.

Seth was pedaling backwards and forwards as his red Diamondback wobbled beneath his attempts to keep it balanced. At Gabe’s words, he thrust his own kickstand into the earth. He glared at the brother who was barely one year older than him. “Well, Carey said he wanted to try it.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Didn’t you, Carey?”

Startled, Carey glanced up from the ditch. Both of his brothers were staring at him. The little boy couldn’t do anything more than blink at the identical faces wearing different expressions on their different colorings. When his mouth moved and no sound came out, he swallowed to try to stick some saliva together. Staring at Seth, he stuttered, “Yeah… Yeah, I did.” Then, he glanced at Gabe and went back to looking down the ditch.

Sighing, Gabe said, “Well, if I let you guys come all the way out here, then I guess I have to let Carey try it.”

“Oh come on, Gabe” Seth whined, “Nobody put you in charge. You didn’t ‘let’ us come here.”

“Yeah, I know, but you know Mom and Dad would flip if they knew you came out here with him, and if I’m here too…” he ended by shaking his head.

“It’s all right, Gabe,” Carey whispered, “I wanted to come.”

Leaning over his handlebars, Gabe looked past Seth at Carey. Carey was too young to break the same sweat that the heat and exertion brought out on his older brothers. He was simply leaning forward, resting his chin on the checkered pad softening the crossbar between the handles.

“Yeah, this is definitely a mistake,” Gabe said, almost to himself.

But Seth heard him, and he spat, “Jesus, Gabe. It’s not like we didn’t do it.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t not allowed, and you just did it anyway.”

Shaking his head, Seth laughed, “So you can go down Skill Hill just cuz Mom and Dad never said you weren’t allowed?”

With his toe, Gabe picked at a pebble wedged into the dirt. The tiny rock popped out of the ground. He frowned and said, “Yeah, but as soon as I told them about it, none of us were allowed.”

“And so Gabe’s allowed to do things that we’re not?” Seth mocked.

Gabe ground his teeth. Kicking the pebble into the ditch, he reminded his brother, “You did it too.”

“Yeah, but I got grounded as soon as Mom and Dad found out where I’d been.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have told them.”

“Did you want me to lie when I came home after dark?”

“So, what, you wanna get Carey in trouble too?”

“Nobody’s getting in trouble, Gabe. If he wants to try it, then you gotta watch him. We gotta be here to prove our little brother went down Skill Hill. At least, I know I wanna be here. Right, Carey?”

Picking his chin up from his crossbar, Carey answered, “Sure,” but he added, “Don’t worry, Gabe, I can do it.”

“Whether you can do it or not doesn’t matter. Mom and Dad say we’re not even allowed to be here. That means that if anything happens, even if we’re just not home on time, then we’re all gonna get in trouble. That means you too, Seth.”

Seth looked down the hill. “Nothing’s gonna happen,” he said.

“Look. If anything happens – I mean anything, I’d be responsible…”

“What the hell could possibly happen?”

Gabe didn’t respond.

“Fine,” Seth hissed, “But if Carey wants to try it, then who are you to say he can’t?”

“Who am I? I’m his oldest brother.”

“Yeah, well I’m his brother too, but I know that he should be able to do what he wants.”

Just like when he had puffed and pedaled so hard to catch up to his brothers riding through the neighborhood, to tell them that he wanted to go to Skill Hill today, Carey quietly entered the conversation, “I don’t see what the big deal is, Gabe.”

Both of his brothers stared at him. Gabe tilted his head, creased his eyes, and pursed his lips. Seth flashed a grin that neither of his brothers ever made.

“Carey, look down that hill,” Gabe said quietly.

The cement dropped into the ditch. The dark water sat still between the shrubs. Gabe spoke again, “Do you know what’s in that water?”

Carey shook his head.

“You see all the spots, they look kinda like rain drops even though there’s no rain?”

Carey nodded.

“Every single one of those little spots is a mosquito. They lay their eggs in the water, and they live down there. Nobody goes down Skill Hill without getting bit. As soon as your bike stops, when you skid, it’s like they knew you were coming. They swarm all over you.” Carey bit his lip. His brother kept talking, “Plus, there’s snakes down there, Carey – water moccasins. They live in the bushes, and they swim underwater. So if you’re down there, you can’t even see them coming. That’s why Mom and Dad don’t want us here.”

Carey’s eyes grew wide. He wasn’t scared of the mosquitoes. They lived everywhere, but he thought he saw a snake slither through the brush and drop into the water. Its scales reflected the sun. Then, it was gone. Carey scanned the stream. He was almost certain that he could see the snake beneath the water.

Carey choked and coughed. The sun beat down on his neck. He finally started sweating a bit on the back of his neck. He wiped it off, but he couldn’t look away from the cottonmouth at the bottom of Skill Hill.

“Is that what you’re afraid of, Gabe?” Seth laughed, “Cuz Carey could be bit by a mosquito anywhere. Just cuz they’re born down there doesn’t mean…”

“It’s not the mosquitoes, Seth. The only big deal about them is that if he comes home all bit up, and we’re not, Mom and Dad are gonna wonder how that happened…”

“So you’re afraid of the snakes?”

Gabe didn’t answer.

“Carey,” Seth smiled, “Snakes aren’t a big deal.”

“What do you know about snakes?”

“I know a lot about ‘em, Gabe.”

Gabe shrugged, but Seth didn’t notice. He kept talking to Carey, “Look, Carey, you can catch any snake down there.”

“What are you talking about, Seth?”

Standing up on his pedals, Seth blocked the sun and shouted, “I catch ‘em all the time, Gabe!”

Gabe twisted his features. He didn’t believe Seth, but Seth didn’t pay any attention to him. Still standing on his pedals, still casting a shadow over Carey, he told him, “The snakes swim underwater, Carey, but as long as you stay at the edge, you can see ‘em comin’. Then, when they crawl up from the sewer, you gotta sneak up behind ‘em, and if you grab ‘em right behind the head, they can’t bite you. Once you got ‘em, you can do anything you want with ‘em,” and Seth reached down to mimic the action of catching the snake.

  Smiling and still holding the imaginary snake in his hand, he plopped back into his seat. The sun reappeared, and Carey squinted. He was speechless. When he looked back into the ditch, the water moccasin he thought he had seen was nowhere near as scary as Gabe had made it sound.

“And you’ve done that before, huh, Seth?”

“Yeah, Gabe, I’ve done it.”

Gabe didn’t say anything.

“Gabe, if the snakes don’t matter like Seth says, then why does it matter if I try Skill Hill?”

Gabe looked down the ditch. One long and dark streak near the bottom caught his gaze. A long time ago, when the seat he was sitting on hadn’t been much higher than Carey’s, that mark had been screamed into existence by his own BMX. Thinking, he frowned. “Carey,” he said, “Do you see that one mark down there by the water?”

Carey tried looking where his brother was pointing.

“I made that mark,” he said, “You know you don’t have to go any closer to the water than right there. Okay?”

Carey nodded.

“Except,” Seth added, “You can’t even see my mark. The water’s too high right now.”

Gabe scowled at Seth. Seth smiled at Carey. Carey breathed deeply.

“Go ahead,” Gabe said.

Carey swallowed hard. Exhaling slowly, he tightened his hands on the handlebars.

“You’re gonna wanna back up some,” Seth told him, “So you can get good speed.”

Carey lifted his kickstand off the ground. He stood up on his pedals. He pressed down with his left leg. Swerving back around, his little Diamondback jumbled through the ruts.

A short distance away, he heard Gabe call, “That’s good Carey!” He stopped pedaling, and he turned back to see Gabe and Seth sitting at the edge of the ditch.

The sun burned above them. Skill Hill loomed before them. Its bottom was invisible now. A trickle of sweat dripped down Carey’s forehead. It stung his eyes. “Go ahead,” Seth told him.

Carey pressed down on the pedals. The chain spun. It pulled the back tire along. Bobbing up and down, building his bike’s speed, Carey rumbled through the rutted dirt. Both of his brothers turned to watch him.

The heat folded the earth. The humidity got thicker. Skill Hill opened up in front of Carey. Coming closer to his brothers, he swallowed and held his breath. Soon, he was alongside them. Then, his front tire dipped off the ground.

Still pedaling as hard as he could, he was flying down the cement. The glittering surface slipped away. A whooshing noise rushed across his ears. He could see the pinpricked bodies of the mosquitoes. They were raindrops on the black stream. Carey sped over the skid marks. The air smelled dead. The world was zooming past quicker than Carey could have imagined. The smell got stronger. He reached Gabe’s mark, but he kept going, trying to find Seth’s invisible mark.

At the water’s edge, he inhaled the ditch’s decay. He stopped pedaling. Spinning faster than it should, his front tire passed off the concrete onto a patch of asphalt that was permanently stained by the sewage. Carey strained to pull the handlebars. With a cry, a spray of murky water skidded out from beneath his tires to drench his Diamondback’s blue frame. Below the earth, as a sheen of mud slipped between his wheels and the ground, Carey saw the world tilt.

For a moment, he really was flying. In that second, he thought that maybe he had gone as far as Seth had, but then, his wings melted. With a small splash, he fell into the water.

He kept his eyes closed. His palms, his elbows, his knees were burning from their slide across the concrete that wasn’t quite so smooth when you got so close to it. The rocks in it had sliced off pieces of his flesh, and each one released its own piece into the drainage flowing overtop of it. This far into the ditch, the smell was so strong. Carey tried focusing on it so that his body wouldn’t hurt so bad.

Then, a buzz beside his ear and a prick in the back of his neck made him start up. He inhaled a short breath of sewage. Not too far away from him, he couldn’t see the bottom of the stream. Something darted beneath the surface, and Carey scrambled back onto the concrete.

Still spinning its wheels, his bike was on its side, but a brand new mark was on the cement. Small waves licked the twisted handlebars. Breathing deeply, Carey scooted beside his bike. The sudden motion hurt his hands. They bled a trail from where he had been to where he was now.

The smell swirled through the air that was too humid to evaporate the water sticking to Carey’s arms and face and clothes. He looked at his hands and elbows and knees. Blood was dripping from the maroon scrapes and the deep gashes that had infected him. Mosquitoes landed on him, taking a piece of him away with every buzz of their wings. Carey felt his cool blood wash across the warm sludge caked to his knees. He was about to cry.

Then, a scream echoed down through Skill Hill. With sweat stuck to his forehead, Carey turned to the sound. The sun was behind his brothers. In order to see them, he had to shade his eyes.

Both of his brothers were shadows now. They looked exactly the same. Only their mannerisms revealed their names. Raised high in the air, both of Seth’s fists were punching holes in the sky. With a grin on his mud-splattered face, Carey lifted his arms to mirror his action. Gabe hung his head over his arms folded across his handlebars, and he shouted, “Come back, Carey!”

Suddenly, amid a clatter of metal on metal on earth, Gabe and Seth dropped their bikes and leaped into the ditch to run down the cement wall. Gabe was yelling something about getting out of there, but the words didn’t make any sense. And Carey couldn’t understand why Seth was staring at something to his left.

Slowly dropping his arms, Carey turned to see what Seth was running at.

The water moccasin must have been woken up by the screaming bike splashing into the ditch. Now, its tongue was flickering back and forth as it slithered into the light to sun its whip-like body on the concrete. Carey stopped breathing. He wanted to escape, but he couldn’t move.

The sun baked everything it came into contact with. Skill Hill’s dead smell permeated the air. Drops of water pooled around Carey. Mosquitoes were buzzing everywhere. Drops of blood dripped onto the concrete. Hissing at Carey, the snake revealed the cotton-white mouth behind its fangs. Seth shouted to his paralyzed, baby brother, “Get up and catch it, Carey! Catch the snake!”

By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
From his story collection Welcome to the Modern World, Charlie.

The First Last Poem

John Coltrane was taking giant steps while
I felt like I was falling headfirst into a leap. For
the first time, I couldn’t make everything all right…
We didn’t make love at all that night.

The whole drive down, we didn’t say a word.
I was writing this poem in my head. I didn’t
tell it to you because I didn’t know what
you would think. What do you think?

We’re free now, my dear, free as birds descending
through the clouds. The wind catches our wings.
We soar amid the heavenly blue… Me and
you, but there was another there, too.

She wasn’t with us on our initial pilgrimage,
but I want to thrust her hands into the holy
dirt as well. I want her to join us while
I’m alone in my bed that smells of you.

By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
From his poetry collection Indigo Glow.

January

A long time ago,
when we were children,
there was a tree
outside our window.

One day, I saw you
climb as high as
the highest branch
we could see.

When you got there,
you told me
there were more branches
we could climb.

I’d never tried to climb
that high, and it wasn’t
until I finally got there,
I realized you had lied.

We used to pick the fruit
off the ground. We used to
eat the sweets, pick out
the seeds to give to mom.

She would hold them,
seeds as big as her palm.
She would save them.
We would watch them change.

The seeds would turn
from green to brown
to green as they lived,
died, and lived again.

Then, one day,
a birdie said
the tree was
getting sick.

We begged our mom
to tell us why
the tree outside
our window died.

She didn’t have an answer,
but I believed it was because
you had climbed too high.
You told me that was a lie.

There was no more fruit,
nothing to climb.
There were no more lies
for us to tell each other.

All we had left –
a stump where
we could sit
with nothing to see.

Where do you think
our mom kept those seeds?
If we could find them,
we could plant another tree.

By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
From his poetry collection The Tree Outside My Window.

To hear Ursrpung Collective’s interpretation of this poem, click here.

The Mirror

Don’t open your eyes. Because I want to sleep. I want to close my eyes and leave this harsh reality behind. I want the world to crumble so that something beautiful can steal a piece of my mind. If I try to forget, maybe serenity will catch me unaware, wrap me up in its embrace, and never let go.

I’m just tired.

Every night. Every night of my whole life, this melodrama plays its overtired tunes. Keep my eyes closed, try not to think, try to concentrate on my breathing, on my heartbeat, on the sounds I hear, and then I try to forget. But the sensations never leave. I feel everything: the sheets rubbing against my skin, the mattress holding my body, my hair spreading across the pillow. No matter what I do, I can’t sleep. I can’t stop thinking.

I wrestle with the black sheets strapping me to my bed. One of my thoughts whispers some words through the window that never closes to secure my mind from the outside. As my hands bunch and punch the pillow beneath my head, images scrape their claws through the soft flesh of my forgetfulness, trying to tempt my soul to pursue them. Life never leaves.

But sometimes it fades. At the edge of reality’s plateau, my body loses sense of itself. My mind peers over the edge to look at nothing. The temptation to tumble into the numbing abyss overpowers every image that the world encourages me to follow. And then, from the deepest corner of my being, fear comes as a savior. That unlikely hero grabs my arm to keep me from slipping into that gorge. Because my mind forgets that if sleep has an end, we’ll land together on the rocky depths of our own reality to writhe in spasms of our broken imaginations, and if sleep doesn’t have an end, we’re beginning a fall into forever.

Don’t let either happen. I need to come back to you. Please let me come back. Nothing I conjure in my head captures the beauty of our poetically painted Euclidean world. Nothing in sleep feels the pleasure hiding inside the intensity of a waking moment. My fear pleads that I love being alive and I never want to leave. With a jerk, my ally pulls me back onto the mountain of the waking soul. And only then does sensation bring back the hideous discomfort I was trying to escape.

If my eyes open, that means this strict world inflicts its rules on my senses with all its rage. But I can’t hold out any longer.

The red lights from the broken numbers that make the digital clock ignite a swath of light across my face read 2:17. That clock is the mortal enemy of my tired soul. It hopes my eyes stay open. That way the beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep in four and a half hours can slice deeper slits through the semblance of my rest with greater malice than if I gave up on waking hours now.

I closed my eyes again, and I tried snuggling down into my bed because I just wanted to go to sleep, to find some peace, but sleep refused the invitation to my boring party. Instead, one of my random realities clicked to a channel that switched off the white noise that usually composes my mind.

The station showed a scene of me sitting on a bus years before tonight’s scene. Stretches of tape attempted to bandage the wounds from the children’s pencils that had scarred the green back of the seat that was creating a still life before me as my skinny adolescent body bounced to the bumps in the road. Nobody sat next to me because nobody was my only friend.

But somewhere in the back of the bus, real people had tangible friends. When I listened, I could hear them laughing. I smiled at the sound because laughter’s feeling spreads as a contagion, and I wanted to catch it. If people saw me laugh, they might tell me what they were laughing at. They might realize that I could be their friend. And they might invite me to join them simply because my smile was the piece missing from their puzzle. But I remembered that nobody laughed at my jokes, and that, before, when I’d turned around and smiled, only nobody noticed. Instead of turning around with a smile, I looked down with a frown so that somebody would notice something about me, even if it was only me staring at my own beat-up, old, black sneakers.

All of those kids knew what to say to somebody else. I only knew what to say to me. Alone, up front, letting everybody else laugh, refusing to greet the eyes of my peers as they walked past me to get off at their stops, daydreams plucked reality away from me. I would pretend that as the girls walked past, out of the corners of their eyes, they would steal a glance at me. And then, later, when nobody who wasn’t in love surrounded them, or maybe it happened when the girls sat alone together, when they retreated away from the guys who could never understand them or me… That’s it. It happened when, together, on the floor in a room, a group of awkward middle school girls crossed their legs and began to talk that they fantasized about the new kid at the front of the bus, the one who was so cute, who looked so interesting, who they wanted to say something to, anything to… HA HA HA HA HA. My daydreams disintegrate. I’ll never turn around. Don’t force me to watch them laugh.

I’ll sit here all alone. I don’t want any friends. I don’t need any friends, but my fantasies betrayed me. There was one girl with black hair. Black hair and dark skin. I needed her to want to know me. Amid all the other fantasies of those noisy people stepping off the bus, she lived as the only one who needed to exist because if she would talk to me, then friends wouldn’t mean anything. If her lips could push air into my ears, my heart would ease my thoughts, and she could make me never feel alone – forever a friend, something real in a world of falsehood.

So young and so lonely. So naïve.

And naïveté told fantasy that one girl could fill my empty soul, that one person noticing me, one person who mattered, would make me forget that nobody noticed. I was young (and now I’m just tired).

She was sitting somewhere behind me. I could hear her laugh. How did she make friends? Picturing her hair thrown back, falling below her shoulders, her lips smiling, laughing at the air, I smiled. Staring at the ground, bouncing with the bumps in the road, a tickle of inward pleasure caressed my lips and eyes, and I thought about turning around again, but I was too scared.

Footsteps were approaching me from somewhere behind. They tapped along the bus’s rubber mat. Can I make that person look at me? How does somebody see you? I couldn’t answer the question. Nobody sat silently next to me. Both wanted to help me, but both were trapped by all the insecurity, all the fear that kept me alone. I turned to look out the window.

Out there, outside, the trees brushed across the family homes. It all went by so fast. The blur faded into one long stream of white and brown peppered green as the road moved beneath the bus. That whirring world twirled into my head and created a fantasy of something that attracted my attention. I lost myself in the embrace of a landscape that was all my own.

The footsteps stopped (I guess I forgot about them), and something hit my head. I reached up to feel what was in my hair. In the blond strands that my mother always told me were so cute, a mass of sticky tape (the tape that bandaged the bus’s wounds) was wrapped and tangled. An eruption of early teen guffaws exploded from the real people with tangible friends who were sitting behind me.

So that’s what they were laughing at. They were laughing at me. They were laughing at what they were going to do to me. I was enraged. I turned around, snarling a frown, to see their faces, to confront this transgression. But all I saw was her black hair bouncing back to the smiling faces that pointed fingers at what my fantasy had done to my reality.

The tape stayed where it was (I didn’t care about it). I bowed my head (it felt so much heavier than usual). My lips trembled (why did she do that?). My breath heaved (don’t let them see your emotions). Tears were in my eyes (please, don’t let me cry). I silently screamed: I HATE YOU! ALL OF YOU…

The pillow was so thin. The blankets were so heavy. My thoughts had wandered too far, and they had come back to reflect on themselves in the heat of trying to fall asleep.

Children are cruel. I know that. And I know that in the real world, their petty cruelties mean nothing. But in their kingdom, amid the rules they invent, those games and jokes mean everything.

Why don’t they think about what they do? Why don’t they realize that everybody else is just as scared as they are? Why can’t they be the way adults picture them? And why do we picture them like that? We all start out as children. How do we forget that everybody starts out afraid of what waits for them in the darkness? How do we forget that everybody starts out alone and unable to communicate? How do we forget that we turn those feelings against our friends, acquaintances, and enemies because we don’t want anybody to know that we’re scared of letting them know what we don’t know? Why don’t we ever change?

My eyes burst open. “I don’t understand.”

A pack of cigarettes was resting on the shelf next to my bed. I flipped the top back, pulled out a tool of death, and placed it in my mouth. A spark ignited a slice of light. With a drag, I inhaled, and the tickling sensation at the base of my tongue was appeased.

Now, I was awake. Awake and thinking. I was so tired, but sleep never got rid of that feeling because sleep didn’t exist. It lived somewhere outside my surreality of darkness and outlined shadows.

I’ll stay awake. Just let me smoke this cigarette, and I’ll stay awake a little while longer.

I tamped the butt out in the ashtray. My throat burned. My breath tasted foul. I didn’t have enough saliva to wet my begging mouth. I went across the hall to the bathroom to get a drink of water.

In the hallway, it felt so good to be out of my room. It felt good to be out of my bed. Everything had been too small, too confining. The pillow had tortured me by lifting my head too close to the ceiling. The darkness had brought the walls closer than the light of day that expanded our separation. But once I left, it all felt a little bit better.

There was a doorway outlined in the darkness. I flicked my fingers across the wall to click the light on in the bathroom that stared back at my sleep deprived senses. There was a dirty wash basin, a book of poetry on the floor in front of the toilet, black shower curtain, black tiles, white walls, white ceiling… It all reflected into my disillusioned senses.

The walls’ reflections blinded my unaccustomed eyes. So I stared down to see my reflection in the patent tiles. I blinked, massaged my temples, and squinted as I walked over to the sink. It needed to be cleaned. It needed to be scoured of the remnants from other days.

A red cup was above the basin. I reached my shaking fingers toward the cup. I turned on the faucet. I put the cup under it. It filled with the splashing sounds of sinky, slapping water. And then, a leady, warm taste wet my burning throat. I filled it up again and took another drink from the fountain. Cooling my insides, washing my soul, the Lethean floods relaxed the thoughts that had tortured me when I was imprisoned in my bed.

Everybody needs that. Everybody needs a chance to taste something sweet and feel something soft. The water cooled every flame of hate that burned in me in my prison.

Resting my arms on the basin, I looked around for something to stare at for a little while before I tried going back to bed. I looked to the left, the right, up, not forward (not into the mirror), and down to the basin.

My hands were supporting me there. The left one was spread open, caressing the edge of my fountain. It was comforted, having somewhere to rest. My right hand was shut tight, angry at the moment of grace that the ledge offered me. Staring, meditating on the open fingers of my left hand, watching the ligaments and veins that lived below the surface (something I only had hints of, no proof other than the vague outline), I remembered another time when my hand had lain outstretched like that.

Then, it had been on a small, round table, on a piece of paper on that table, years before any tape had been stuck in my hair. So many years ago.

Children had laughed. Scissors had snapped open and closed. With a calm voice, the teacher had spoken soothing directions from somewhere behind the table that the hand that I was staring at was resting on. I had had to spread my hand as wide as it could go, to trace it, to make the feathers for a turkey on a Thanksgiving card.

My lips were pursed. So that my fingers wouldn’t move, I tensed my left arm until it trembled, and my fingers moved anyway. They shook so very slightly. And you could see those tremblings in the shaky outline that I cut of myself.

That card made its way into my mom’s hands. What words had that child who had grown into me written? I can’t remember. Something about my mom and my dad and our dog and our home…

But I know I was thankful. I was grateful, full of love and hope. My mother’s eyes must have lit softly with tears when I presented her that card as a gift for making me live. She must have smiled that beautiful smile that seemed so all-encompassing when I was young. And she must have felt something warm inside herself at seeing a manifestation of my love because I know that I had meant whatever words I had written. And I know I must have smiled the broad smile of my childhood when my mother probably said thank you as she turned slightly red and kissed me on the cheek. Then, I must have turned around to go somewhere to play until the feast that night. I don’t remember the words I wrote, but I know that I was a child who was happy to be alive.

We still have that card somewhere. I saw it not too long ago. It’s hidden, buried under years of collected debris. But it is still somewhere. My hope was saved forever. My love is eternal. I just don’t know where we put it.

I wish I did. I wish I could read those words again and remind myself of what I had thought. Remind myself what it meant to love purely. A child.

Staring at my left hand, lost in remembrances of what love had meant, trying to remember something if it was anything, a half smile crept across half my face. I looked in the direction of that smile, and I was looking at my right hand.

My closed fist. The pieces fit so tightly together. There wasn’t room for anything else in that palm. My veins reached around to strangle and misshape my smooth skin. I stopped smiling. I brought my fist to my face so I could look at it closer, as if its proximity would help me make sense out of it.

Turning it around in front of my widening eyes, this way, that way, looking at the indentations in the flesh, the protrusions of the knuckles, I noticed that one knuckle was missing, and I remembered why. My rage had destroyed it. My rage had pushed it back to be lost somewhere inside my hand. I had hit a tiled wall. Nobody had talked to me. Nobody had noticed me. And I slammed that piece of myself so hard against something unbreakable. I remembered then that sometimes the tiny bones in the base of that fist popped out of place because they had never healed from the act of destruction that had shattered their strength.

When I hit that tiled wall, I didn’t realize that what I was doing was irreversible. I just knew that something had to get out from inside. I didn’t know how to say it, how to tell it, how to convey it, but it had to get out.

Behind me, everybody was laughing. They were having fun. They were talking to each other and making sense out of everything that was happening. Sometimes, they tried to approach me, smiling, reaching out their hands, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to let myself out of myself. I wasn’t able to keep it in any longer, and I hit that wall. I screamed, and then I hit that wall. Everybody turned around, dropped their jaws, and stared.

But I don’t remember why I was so angry. I must have been about thirteen. What had happened to that child who was grateful for his mom, his dad, his dog, and his home? Why hadn’t I been able to run off and play until the feast that night?

I should be able to remember. You’d think that I could remember rage, but it must be buried along with that remembrance of love that I can’t find anymore. Maybe wherever that card is we put something else that could make my hate real. Then, that anger might mean something other than a simple reminder of being scared and trapped away from everybody else.

I closed my eyes again.

I needed the world to not be so bright so I could see inside myself (maybe then I could remember all the secrets that my hands hid so poorly), but all I saw was darkness. I shook my head as if I were trying to clear away the incessant nothing that existed inside of me. My thoughts were simply left to contemplate the dichotomy that existed between my hands. I rolled and turned my head as the darkness crept closer to my mind. Overpowered by my vision of nothing, I quickly opened my eyes and found myself staring at the one thing I didn’t want to see: The mirror.

– Don’t look there! Not at that reflection of so much of you! What do you want to see there?

I panicked. I looked to the side, but before I escaped, the contours of my ear stole my gaze.

I love you.

Where had I heard that sound before? So many breaths had materialized the air into that sound. A girl’s voice crackled across a phone line: I love you. Good night.

Her words had traveled miles to spark the smile that had put me to bed, that had let me sleep. I slept that night amid visions of her breathing those three words: I – Love – You.

Those words had floated into my stomach, caressed every organ, and let me rest in her arms of breath. Sitting in a chair, hearing breath I couldn’t see, some feeling had comforted me. Who was the girl who said that? Where was she now that I needed to sleep? Where were those words now that I was so tired? I can’t remember anything.

If I can’t remember where we hid that card or why I hit that wall, maybe I could at least remember her. I remember. My face tightened. I remember I stopped believing those words. There was another sound, one that I remember better. What was that one? I remember: I hate you.

She had said that too. Hate had torn through the same phone line that love had floated through. Hate had attacked the same ear that love had caressed. Hate had exploded inside of me with the same amount of force that love had had to calm. She eventually hated me. She did something, or I did something, or God did something, and love turned to hate. It can do that, you know. It happened with her.

I tried so hard to reach across the gulf separating our bodies to give her my voice, to let her understand my thoughts, and her spit flew back with hate to slice away a piece of my heart and let it fall to the bottom of my stomach where I was never able to digest it. All I needed was to hear three words. Reality turned that into an unholy trinity, the inversion of my rest.

Her hate hid with my lost love. My hate materialized in her mistaken love. Why did I hit that wall? What happened to my Thanksgiving card? How come children are so cruel?

Love turns to hate. Hate perverts love. Whichever way you want to see it, it means the same thing. It either means something, or it means nothing. This is real. That isn’t. How do you know which is which? Only by words, but you can’t know if the words are real when they’re never tangible. You can never know which to believe because the existence of both in the same person is a logical impossibility. You can only trust that air means something, and it’s so hard to trust (I don’t want to think about any of this).

The memories singed my mind. I tried escaping before the sparks burst into flames. I turned my eyes to flee down and out the base of the imprisoning mirror because I needed to run and hide in the distorted vision of myself that appeared in the black tiles. The mirror made everything too much like it really was.

– Just get away from the mirror and go to sleep.

I tried a new angle to get my eyes away from the mirror, but before I was free something else stole my gaze. My eyes stopped right above my thin, skeletal chin. My lips protruded from my face just like my words protruded from me. Something about glimpsing the mechanism for my voice demanded my attention.

Those are my lips, I thought. Those lips speak my thoughts. My heart sunk into my lungs. Those lips have formed the same words that everybody else’s have. I wanted to cry.

I tried moving the muscles that produced those sounds just to see if I could do it. My skin felt like it was cracking. My jaw felt tight. It felt like it hadn’t moved in so long, too long. Trying to see if my face could mold into what had floated sightlessly across a phone line, I opened my mouth backwards to horrify my sight with the unspoken sounds: I – Hate – You.

The reflection of those bitter words rattled the mirror’s smooth surface.

Once, when I was sitting in a chair, my mother sat across from me. She had a pursued look on her face. I felt so trapped. Nothing could reach out from me. Every thought was strapped to the chair that held my body. Confused, lost, abandoned by myself, the bones at the base of my right fist popped out of place whenever my hand moved on the armrest.

Where is everybody? I asked myself.

They’re all outside of you, I responded.

My mother and I were talking about something that day. She had just told me something that aggravated the ulcer that my stomach acids had produced when they tried in vain to digest my heart. Staring at the blank walls and the sterile tiles, I wanted to run outside and play, but I couldn’t. I was too old. So I sat there. And then, my mother saw my muscles work the same contortions that had just distorted my reflection. My mother heard my tongue click against my teeth to make the final “t” in that disgusting word. She dropped her head forward, closed her eyes, and cut herself off from my rage. She responded with silence. Consumed by the flames of love’s waters, I drowned inside the silent expanses of my head.

And then, when I saw that image reflected, I refused to believe it any more than she had. I never meant those words. My eyes blinked back open. Mesmerized by the contours of my lips, I felt the need to maneuver them into a different shape.

If that wasn’t what I meant, if that wasn’t true, then let me try to say it now. It was hard. My jaw was heavy. The muscles didn’t work very well, but my struggles resulted in a new form: I – Love – You.

I mouthed it again, one more time just to make sure I could do it: I – Love – You.

My lips grew into my entire vision. My thoughts couldn’t focus on anything other than the muscles producing those shapes. I’ve said that to my mother, too. I said it before and after I said the other combination.

Crying tears that burned away the layers between my thoughts, my lips melted into my teeth to reveal my sincerity. I meant it. When I said those words, I didn’t know how or why, but I knew they were true. She knew they were true. She said the same thing to me, and all our tears were forgotten. My hatred dissipated into the fog of our cigarette smoke. Something else took its place.

Maybe hatred was only a distortion of love, a mistaken registration of thought. Maybe love was true…

How can you know anything is true? I’ve said words so many times. Too many times to believe myself anymore.

There was a girl, not the one with black hair and dark skin, not the one who had crackled across the phone line, but a different one. She had watched my lips struggle into that shape, and then, her lips had reached out to mine to consume the power of those words. With a ferocious longing, she had tried to use her mouth to pull those words into her soul.

She spent the whole day at my house, lying with me between those suffocating sheets. When she left, when her back faced me from the other side of the screen door, I realized I hadn’t meant what I’d said. I walked away from our last embrace and sat down. I rested my temples between my fingers. I closed my eyes, and I mouthed those other words: I hate you.

I said that to me, to nobody other than me.

Who did I hate and what did I love? How can I know what’s real when you’re so cruel, and I can’t trust myself? Is there anything that means something?

My hands were real because they were physical. They showed the truth. What my ears heard was only air, but the air was made of matter, and that made it real. My lips spoke my thoughts. My thoughts materialized as words…

It didn’t make any sense. I must have meant something real, something true sometime.

The mirror never moved. I must have looked too long and too hard at it because, somehow, I gave life to something like my thoughts, and I shouted words that had no air to breathe: “Look at me! If you want to know what’s true, if you want to know what’s real, then look at me!”

“I don’t think I really want to know.”

“Yes, you do. If you didn’t, you never would have stayed.”

“I didn’t want to. I tried to leave, but you trapped me.”

“You trapped you.”

“I want to go to sleep.”

“How do you expect to sleep when you’ll never look at me?”

“I’ll close my eyes and let my thoughts fade into nothing.”

“How can you escape what you’ll never face?”

I refused to believe that accusation. I bellowed against the trap that was supposed to be my relief, “Let Me Go To Sleep!”

I raised my eyes to confront the mirror’s unending stare. It answered me with its gaze.

Its eyes were so much softer than I had expected them to be. Envisioning them, I’d thought they were angry, set on fire by rage and hate, but they weren’t. They sparkled with tears that hadn’t yet cried themselves away. Do you love me? they seemed to ask.

“I don’t know what that is, but I know hate. You’ve seen it. You know it.”

I reminded my eyes of something they must have forgotten:

“Do you remember when we were downtown that night? You were looking at the trash littering the streets. The bums were begging for change so they could get more liquor. A fat man dressed as a woman was selling calendars of himself dressed in lingerie. There was a strip bar on the corner. That was where all the men hung out. The pierced punks strutted past you. The gangsters were checking their pagers. A skinny crackhead slithered over to a payphone.

“You were waiting to go inside a café and look at a book while I drank coffee and talked and listened to friends. I heard an argument. There was a man and a woman yelling at each other. I turned around so we could look at them. Do you remember what you saw?

“They were people you knew. They were faces that were familiar. You loved them. They loved you. And they loved each other. But they were arguing. They were yelling. Spittle flew off their lips. Their hands flailed. And then, he hit her.

“Do you remember that? He hit her, and he threw her into a wall. Her head careened into that wall, and her hair spilled down to stick to the tears that dripped beneath her hair. Somebody else threatened him. He ran, but I stood there motionless. The lips you just stared at opened, but nothing came out. We were friends. They were more than friends. They were in love that meant nothing. Do you remember that?

“Do you remember that he came over to our house one day? That he begged me to forgive him for what he had done to our friend? But I told him that he had lost our trust.

“He bowed his head forward, but he never apologized. His eyes just filled with tears as he pulled his hands off the window of the truck that he had pulled up to our house in when he had still believed that somehow he could quiet my hate. I never spoke to him again because it’s so hard to trust. Do you remember that?”

My eyes looked back. They were searching for a response. They couldn’t argue with my example. They remembered seeing all of that. They remembered hate.

But, they asked me from somewhere deeper than the surface of their tears, Why can’t you remember other parts of that story? Why can’t you ever remember that you never forgave him but she did? She went back to him, and you stopped talking to her because you said that you wouldn’t let us watch the results. She left him again and came back to talk to you, and she brought the result with her.

It was a child. A baby boy with soft hair, a sweet scent, lips that made their own language, ears that couldn’t understand what you said, and eyes that were wide and innocent. You played games with him. You folded his tiny hand into yours. Enamored by everything, he crawled across the living room floor. We watched his mother smile when you told her how beautiful he was. He started to cry, and your friend reached down to pick him up. She rocked him and talked, almost silently, to him. It was something soft, something sweet.

“You’re my best friend,” you told her. And she said the same thing to you. Then she left, carrying the fruit of, the truth of her love in her arms. Do you remember that?

I did. I do.

Inside my pupil, my entire face was reflected. For the first time that night, in the blackness of myself, I saw all of me. I had two ears, two lips, two eyes, but only one face. Shocked by the revelation, I stumbled backwards.

What happened to my Thanksgiving card?

The bones in the base of my fist popped out of place as I reached up to turn off the light to let my senses plunge back into the darkness.

I’d looked too long, and I didn’t know what to do.

Why did you do that? Why can’t you sleep? Most people sleep. Nobody needs to occupy themselves with a mirror. Why did you do that?

I don’t know, but now I need to sleep more than I ever did before. The day will be here before too long, and I’ve been awake forever.

Tumbling into my bed’s prison, I greeted the mirror’s images. My thoughts were dark, tired. Just forget. Focus on your heartbeat, the sound of your breathing. Forget.

I can’t. I’m right back where I started, except that, now, it’s all too real.

Keep your eyes closed. Don’t open them again.

I won’t.

Don’t open your eyes. Because I want to sleep. I want to close my eyes and leave this harsh reality behind… I just wanted to go to sleep and find some peace, but sleep refused the invitation to my boring party. Instead, the mirror left me with one final reflection.

It must have been the mirror because my self never wanted to see this sight. So many times, my ears had disregarded what they had heard. My mouth had disregarded what it had said. My eyes had disregarded what they had seen. But tonight, my reality met my thoughts in the midst of a bright light reflected by some memory of a stream that collected my debris.

I had to open my eyes. I had to look because I couldn’t avert the steady glare of myself.

They opened on a scene of a child who played with toys in the security of a room that he thought was his. The floor was littered with the tools of his innocence. His small hands, scarless, flicked the spinner on a contraption that his father had made. Lost in the security of those fantasies made real, the boy sat on his knees contemplating the vast expanse of the world made perfect because his parents had allowed him to name and number its parts as his own. Everything had come from them, but love had made it all his.

He played to pass the days, and he slept in the security of his parents’ home underneath the watchful eyes of twinkling, twinkling little stars.

There was a knock at his door: “Michael, could you come into the kitchen. Your father and I need to talk to you.”

Scratching his head, the boy stood up. He looked at his toy friends sprawling across the floor. “I’ll be right back,” he told them, and he walked into the kitchen.

The overhead lights lit the white walls with their unearthly glow. In the middle of that blinding light, the boy’s mother and father sat at a kitchen table with their legs crossed. From an overfilled ashtray, blue cigarette smoke twirled into the air. His parents looked so much older than when the boy had last seen them the night before. His father’s massive body had somehow tapered into a shade of how he should have appeared. His mother pursed her lips and squinted. A dog wagged into the kitchen to nuzzle its nose against the boy who was its best friend.

Silence.

His father stared at the walls, at him, then back to the walls.

His mother rested one arm across her chest. With her other hand, she pulled at her lip. She stifled a slight cough, breathed in deep, and said, “Your father and I have something to tell you.”

Trying to act as if the silence and the seriousness hadn’t startled his mind of make-believe, Michael scratched behind the dog’s ear, but he knew that a momentous fate was about to befall him in the next exchange of words.

His dad looked at him.

Michael drew himself upright. He was suddenly conscious of the cold seeping in through the floor. If I’m strong enough, nothing will hurt me, he thought.

His dad said, “Michael, I’m going to be leaving here.”

Michael didn’t move. He looked up at the ceiling. It didn’t fade away like those words made him hope it would. Some sort of heaviness lodged in his throat as his tears tried to suffocate him. All that he was able to say was, “Okay.”

“Your mother and I have been talking…”

(Is this true? Please, Mom, tell me this isn’t true.)

“And we think that would be best,” his mom finished.

(This isn’t real. None of this is true.)

“Okay.”

His dad spoke again: “Don’t be… don’t be… angry. Don’t blame yourself.”

(Who else can I blame?)

“It’s only circumstance.”

And it was his mom’s turn. “Your father and I both love you very much. We just need some time apart from each other. Not you.”

“Okay.”

Michael wanted to get away from them before the lump in his throat moved into his eyes to force tears to stream down his face.

His father said, “So, I’ll probably be leaving first thing tomorrow morning.”

(So soon?) “Okay. I’m gonna go back to my room now.”

Father: “All right. I love you.”

Mother: “I love you too.”

Michael: “Okay.”

And he turned to walk back to play with toys that he didn’t want to play with anymore. Panic and fear and rage and pain rushed over him, nauseating him. As soon as he closed the door on the dog’s nose, his tears rushed forth from an ocean that must have dug itself during that short conversation. The expanse of his room was suddenly a prison that he had to escape, but there was nowhere to go. It was all real.

His mom came in a little while later. He didn’t say much to her. His dad slept on the couch that night. He left the next morning…

My eyes burst open. I shot up in my bed. I reached up to rub the remnants of that vision from my sight. I lay back down. I closed my eyes. But it was all too real. The mirror had reflected back every portrait of itself, and I couldn’t do anything other than lie there as emotion after emotion washed across me.

My stomach tightened and tried to tear itself out of a knot. A spike drove through my skull, but my thoughts didn’t stop. I squeezed my eyes tight together. A high-pitched, nearly inaudible cry escaped through my lips that I couldn’t close all the way. Doubling over, I slammed my hands against my temples to try and stop the maddening sensations that existed somewhere inside of me. For a moment, all my thoughts stopped. Then, they flooded back again, drowning me. I struggled back to the surface.

I whispered, “Why does it hurt so bad? I can feel it in my stomach, my throat, my eyes, my head. Why does it hurt so bad? This is terrible. This is horrible. Just let me get away. Let me escape. This is the worst it’s ever been.”

Flailing through the sheets, I jumped out of bed. I knew the cigarettes on the shelf couldn’t help anymore.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I shouted. “I can’t live like this anymore. I’m so tired. I can’t live with my thoughts. I want to sleep. Help Me!” My hands were pressed so tight against my head it was like I thought I could force God to pop out of there and give me some sort of answer.

I cried, “Why am I alone? How come children are so cruel? Why does love turn into hate? How can I trust myself to speak the truth?”

Nobody responded.

I tried to filter out the tears that had never been able to become real. My jaw tightened. My head felt like it was going to explode. I wanted to bleed my tears out through my flesh, to make some sense out of tiny drops of red. Looking to my right, at a wall, drawing my fist back to slam it so hard against something unbreakable…

“Do you really think you’re alone?”

I froze. I… I didn’t really know what to say. I’d never expected an answer, but I whispered between my grinding teeth, “Yes. Yes, I’m alone. I’m so fucking trapped. I’m so fucking lost. And all that ever happens is that my lost love comes out as hate because I don’t know how to tell anybody how much I love them.”

“Why don’t you try one more time?”

“Why? How? I can’t do it. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Spit it out. Spit it all out. Face it, feel it, then turn it around and tell it.”

Sitting there, I suddenly discovered how to tell all of you how much I love you.

My cigarettes were resting on the table next to my bed, but I didn’t need to spark the match to bring me closer to death in order to light a little piece of my world. I wandered through the darkness to a desk where an empty notebook sat. It had sat there since I had shown up in this place after my mother had given it to me as a gift for graduating from high school, as a symbol for recording my life from the beginning, a gift from my mother at a time when my life had become mine.

I flicked the switch on a light that illuminated the empty, white pages. They burst into existence. The world became bright. I grabbed my pen in my right hand. The bones at the base of that fist still throbbed from turning off the light on the mirror.

I don’t know if I finally fell asleep or if I really woke up, but I know that I opened my eyes a little bit, and I saw that I had finally begun my fearful fall into forever. I wanted to rip my heart out and smear it across the page to bleed a tiny thought onto the beautiful, blank paper.

“I love you,” I whispered to everybody: to me, my mom, my dad, our dog, the girl who had stood behind the screen, the girl who had hated and loved me, the girl with the black hair and dark skin, real people with tangible friends, my best friend, her child, his father, and even my oldest friend, Nobody.

As my tears dried into salty crevices on my face, I started writing while the sun rose to shine its golden light through the window that never closed to secure my mind from the outside.

By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.

From his story collection Notes from the Idle Mind.

The Joke

Suddenly –
as suddenly as a silent cat springs
upon a feeble mouse who is innocently
clutching a seed in hands meaning no harm –
I heard a knock upon my door.

With the sounds of music pulsing into my ears,
swirling into my head, and reaching every inch of my body,
I approached the door separating myself
from the rest of the world –
So innocent… I never suspected this world to bring pain.
So naively I assumed, the way only a child assumes,
that I heard a faint laughter waiting to
suck me into its joke on the other side.
So, inside the safety of my room, I
gave a slight chuckle opening the door
between myself and the joke.

How strange it is to think
that as a ten year old I mistook
the heavy sobs of my mother’s tears
for a joke that she wanted me to be a part of.
However, as the door finished its creak upon
the hinges, I saw her face distorted:
eyes swelled from a flood of tears
produced by torrential rains,
her face so twisted that
it appeared her soul was being
stretched upon a medieval torturer’s rack.
And what I mistook for her jovial laugh
were the sobs of a woman who could not understand
why God would do this to her.

She said to me, “Grandma’s on the phone for you.”
Like a robot, I walked into the kitchen
and held the yellow receiver against my ear –
“Hello,” I spoke into the machine.
My grandmother greeted me with the news
I knew would crackle into my ear from
somewhere far away. I set the phone down.
I remember my mom returned shortly thereafter,
no longer making the sounds that I mistook for laughter,
and told my grandmother I was in shock.
But I just stared out the window at our
deck shining brightly in the sun,
at the fence that kept me from ever really knowing my neighbors,
and couldn’t believe my grandfather was dead.

By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
From his poetry collection, At the Side of the Road.

Quantum Fluctuations

The first time it had ever happened was when who was now a man was still a child. The second time it had ever happened was when he was a teenager. The third time it had ever happened was just now… just now…

The first time:

Who was now a man was playing alone with his GI Joe men in the flowerbed where his mother did the weeding with a spade and a fork and gloves on her hands. But she wasn’t weeding right then. Instead, who was now a man was playing alone in that flowerbed with his GI Joe men. His dad was in the garage. Who was now a man could hear the roar of the table saw. He could feel the pounding hammer. He could smell his dad’s beer-drenched sweat.

Who was now a man was playing alone in the flowerbed where his mom gardened while his dad worked in the garage because the week before, he’d gone over to the house of some kid from his soccer team, some strange kid with a French mom and an American dad who went hunting all the time. They’d invited who was now a man to go hunting with them the next weekend, this weekend in fact, but who was now a man didn’t want to kill a deer. He didn’t want to see a deer’s blood. He still remembered Bambi, and Bambi’smother still reminded him of his own.

But the real reason who was now a man was playing alone was because after that weekend at the strange kid with the French mom’s house, who was now a man didn’t trust any other kids to play. Most sensible children would never believe it, but who was now a man no longer knew what children might be sensible: That kid with the French mom buried his GI Joe men when they were killed in battle. He would perform a funeral dirge, and he would bury them in his own backyard’s Arlington cemetery where he’d never dig them up again. That strange kid with the French mom’s backyard was a veritable graveyard of dead and decaying action figures. If he were precise about whom he killed and simply killed off the action figures he didn’t like such a notion might not have been so bad. Who doesn’t want less uncool action figures? But somehow, in that childlike world of play, the fates managed to dictate their decrees and spin the non-existent bullets from the little plastic guns in all sorts of directions different from the ones you wanted them to go in. Zeus himself had never had less control over the world he was supposedly responsible for. Any action figure could die at any time, and that action figure would never come back to life. Who was now a man had had a huge argument over his own Snake-eyes who was somehow hit by a non-existent stray bullet. Who was now a man refused to part with Snake-eyes, but the kid with the French mom said the Joe had to die. Who was now a man didn’t believe him. Permanence had yet to infiltrate his world of play. His action figures had infinite numbers of lives. They suffered, died, went back into their boxes, and came out themselves again – an 8 year old’s version of the transmigration of souls. The kid with the French mom was more of a nihilist. He didn’t believe that consciousness could continue after a non-existent bullet ripped through an action figure’s lungs, and he certainly didn’t believe that that action figure could go into a box and come out itself again. Who was now a man decided that if Snake-eyes were going to have to die, then he wouldn’t play. He snatched his Snake-eyes out of the kid with the French mom’s hand, and he walked all the way home. His parents weren’t mad at him. They were actually quite understanding when he explained the situation. After all, Snake-eyes was his favorite Joe.

And it was a good thing he hadn’t let Snake-eyes die because at that very moment, Snake-eyes was rescuing Lady Jay from Zartan’s clutches. Not that Lady Jay was defenseless. Who was now a man was not a chauvinist. As could have happened to any GI Joe on a dangerous mission, she’d simply been tricked by an under-handed ploy of Zartan’s. Snake-eyes crawled up the rose bush and sat in a nook where a couple of the branches came together. He took a sniper’s careful aim. He slowly squeezed the trigger. And he popped one shot straight into Zartan’s brain. Zartan died instantly. And even though who was now a man didn’t like Zartan (not that the character wasn’t cool (he did change colors with heat), he was just evil), he still didn’t perform the action figure’s last rites.

With Lady Jay safe and Zartan dead, who was now a man took his box of action figures and walked back to the house. That was when it happened. Who was now a man was passing right by the garage. He heard the sound of the saw. He was close enough to smell the sawdust. “Damnit!” his dad said. It startled who was now a man, and he dropped Snake-eyes. But as he leaned down to pick the action figure back up, who was now a man was passing right by the garage. He heard the sound of the saw. He was close enough to smell the sawdust. “Damnit!” his dad said. It startled who was now a man, and he dropped Snake-eyes. And he leaned down to pick the action figure back up. Yes. It happened twice. Who was now a man stood still. He didn’t have the words to describe what he had just experienced.

The second time:

The mall was a real madhouse that night. All of the adults there kept trying to figure out what the kids thought was so funny. Little did the security guards know that acid was making the rounds. The high school kids, the middle school kids, everyone was looking to score, and most already had.

Smoking a cigarette, Joe Smith was standing out on the sidewalk in front of the food court when Jay came back up to him. Jay was the one who’d hooked Joe up earlier that evening, about an hour before that cigarette that Joe was smoking. Jay was already tripping pretty hard when Joe and his girlfriend had found him sitting on the curb, staring intently at a long line of ants. The blond-haired hippie-type-headbanger had told the freshman couple that he was pretty sure he could get them both a couple more hits if they’d front a few bucks for Jay to get another one as well. This shit was good and he didn’t want the trip to stop. Joe and his girlfriend didn’t think twice about it. They pooled their money (which incidentally added up to twenty bucks – she had fifteen; he had five) and bought four hits… one and a half for each of them, and another for Jay. Needless to say, Jay was seeing elephants dancing in the parking lot when he approached Joe smoking that cigarette.

“Man… I swear to God you’ll never believe what I just saw, man…” Jay said. Joe nodded. He didn’t want to hear about it. He wasn’t tripping yet, and he didn’t want to hear about the wonders another was experiencing. It would only be a second, now, he was certain of it, before he’d start catching trails. What time was it anyway? How long ago had he dropped the acid? Was that a trail following behind Jay’s hand as he ran it through his hair? Damn it, no. Patience, Joe, patience. “Man, I was just talking to Zoe Tan, and I swear to God, man, I could see her thoughts. No shit. She had these little bubbles above her head just like in a cartoon, man, and I could see what she was thinking right in that bubble, man… It was fucking wild. This world’s a fucking cartoon!”

Joe thought Jay was sure as hell crazy. He’d already dropped a bit of acid in his time, and he’d never seen anything like that. But one thing he did know was that on acid, anything was possible. He just wanted that hit and a half to kick in…

Walking through the mall: “You know, man,” it was Jay again, “You know why they call it a trip, man? See, I realized this tonight. As I was walking it felt like I stepped down a little bit, and suddenly I was tripping, man. You get it? It was like I stepped off reality’s ledge and into acid-land. Like there’s another reality right next to this reality that I just stepped right into. You know, like it’s just a couple inches away from us, and acid can drop us down to that level. Somebody must have tripped once stepping off the curb like that, and that’s why they call it a trip…”

Jay wasn’t annoying Joe anymore. Joe’s cheeks were warm. A smile was plastered across his face. His lips felt purple. His pupils were dilated. His joints cracked whenever he moved his arms: strychnine. He was nodding. Everything Jay said made perfect sense. Everything made perfect sense. Had Joe stepped off a curb when the acid had kicked in? Maybe. He wasn’t sure anymore. That seemed like it could be right, though. There was another dimension right next to where he was walking. A scientist had tripped into it a number of decades ago when he intended to find something else. Acid existed. That other dimension was so close Joe might have been able to reach out and touch it. That’s what made him laugh. He could touch it…

Suddenly, he was smoking a cigarette outside in front of the food court again. His girlfriend, her long brown hair splayed back from her cherubic face, was sitting on the ground. Joe thought she might have stumbled and fallen. But she looked all right. She was laughing. A young security guard was helping her stand back up. That sure was nice of him. He was smiling at her and asking what was so funny. He probably had a crush on her. That was okay. She was hot. Joe had a crush on her, too. He laughed. Of course, he had a crush on her, silly, he was her boyfriend.

A beat-up, gray Toyota pulled up in front of the mall. It was Joe’s girlfriend’s older sister. Cool. Time to go home. Joe got in the car. He sat down in the backseat, scooted all the way across the pleather to the window. He touched the car’s ceiling. It looked like a mattress, which made him think of sex. He glanced out the window to his left and then, looked to his right again. Joe got in the car. He sat down in the backseat, scooted all the way across the pleather to the window. He touched the car’s ceiling. It looked like a mattress, which made him think of sex. He glanced out the window to his left and then, looked to his right again. His girlfriend was following him into the car. Joe leaned back in his seat. His eyebrows creased. That was weird, man. That was fucking weird. He’d just tripped into another dimension, and contrary to what he’d thought earlier, it wasn’t funny at all. It wasn’t until the next day that he remembered that that had happened to him before, when he was a kid, before he knew words like deja-vu, at a time when there’d never been any drugs heavier than sugar in his system. It had happened to him before… without drugs.

The third time:

I just finished this story. I woke up this morning at 5:30 AM. I couldn’t get back to sleep. I made a cup of coffee. I ate a bowl of cereal. I sat down at the computer, and I wrote this story. When I finished, it was 8:30. I went to go to work. I opened the front door, lifted my foot to step outside, and I woke up at 5:30 AM. I couldn’t get back to sleep. I made a cup of coffee. I ate a bowl of cereal. I sat down at the computer, and I wrote this story. It wasn’t until I was done that I realized I’d already written this story. I went back through the files on my computer, looking for something entitled: Quantum Fluctuations. I couldn’t find it. Thinking that maybe I’d changed the name again sometime after the point I’m at right now (this is the fourth title I’ve given it already) I reread the beginning of every piece of writing in My Documents. None of them started with: The first time it had ever happened.

I’m not 8 years old anymore. I’ve become a man. I’m not on any drugs right now. I haven’t eaten acid in close to fifteen years. But still, I wrote this story twice, and I don’t know what happened to it the first time. I don’t know how six hours have passed since I woke up at 5:30, and somehow, it’s 8:30 and time for me to go to work again. This last paragraph is happening right now. But the last time, it must have happened right now. I’ve done this before. This has happened to me before. This is at least the third time. It’s like three times I’ve taken a pitch. The first time, I dropped something. The ball flew straight by me while I stood there staring. The second time, I tried swinging, but I tripped. The third time… What happens after three times?

By Michael Anthony Adams, Jr.
From his story collection, Psychedlicizations.