Near Matches
Ignore Exact
Everything
2
I haven't seen her in a month. She is still beautiful.
(
person
)
by
junkpile
Fri Aug 11 2000 at 6:01:04
Alice and I go to the civil war wagon trail ravine.
She has never
been there so I drive,
straining to widen my peripheral vision so I can see more
of her. Every time I change lanes I get to look over my shoulder and catch her profile in my sweep of vision. I feel consciously dumb doing this but it has been a long time since I got to be in a car with her. I am making it count. This is still odd, we have not spent much time together since we stopped being
Aliceandme
. It was her idea to go today and I have been
trying to stomp the life out of false hope
ever since she called. Lets go somewhere today she said. You pick where.
When we get there Alice points out that every parking lot in the whole world has somewhere in it a trodden defeated taco bell hotsauce packet. It's true.
We walk along the edge of the lake and admire the weird beach made out of wood. It
doesn't make any sense
but the whole length of the shore, from the water to the woods, about 20 feet, is mostly wood. Not planks and not trees embedded in sand, and not petrified wood - but
wood
- jagged but cohesive, not wood chips - is this shale? We've heard of shale but we don't know what it is. Anyway it is weird and we don't know how we will describe it later to ask people what it is and how it got there.
We walk down and down along the wagon trail, each of us in a wheel-rut until I point out
what a shitty metaphor
that is and we walk on the high ground instead. We see
three toads and a crow
which I know Alice interprets as a lucky sign but she does not say it out loud. I hope it's true. We always do this, we are the silliest of college educated booklearners.
There are trees leaning over us from both sides so it's shady but still very hot and we do not talk much. Her hair is stuck to her neck in little wisps where her ponytail is coming loose. It's just the sun I tell myself, but
I remember when it was me who made her skin flush
and her neck damp enough for hair to stick to. That used to be me. I walk a little bit ahead so that knowledge isn't right in my line of vision, and also because I have a trick for Alice.
She doesn't notice
I'm walking a half step ahead until she pulls in front of me a bit, and I push her back with my arm. What are you doing? she says. I don't say anything until it happens, and it does, and then I am pulling terrible sticky fibers off my face and I say Alice I would take a spiderweb for you.
By now we are down deep in the ravine. The walls rise steep around us and we are down in the deep-cut channel
inside the earth
. The walls are plates that slid there, all the strata are diagonal, cut on the bias. Rocks and dirt and roots and ferns, all crooked, sliding. It is Alice's idea to spin. We find a flat spot and stand apart and spin, I have my eyes shut but
Look up
she says. I look up and the walls are circling around me and if I go fast enough they form a solid circle around the bright leaf-crossed center of sky. We are at the bottom of a pit, an elevator shaft made of rock and dirt. The world is dirt and leaf smells and birdcalls and breezy whirling heat and the sound of our faster faster dizzy footsteps and her hand that knocks against mine, she was closer than I thought. We spin until we can't stand it and give up and flop down on the ground panting and
laughing like we're six
, laughing at
how easy it is to amuse our bodies
.
Alice leads the way up the steep sidetrail up to the top edge of the ravine. We throw stuff off and watch it flutter or plummet. There are memorial markers up there for a fort where a lot of soldiers froze in wintertime. Alice reads the signs aloud in her best somber civil wo-ah debutante voice. I am very good about not noticing the sweatcircles under her arms that darken her shirt dangerously near her breasts.
There is nothing else cool up here so we are going back down the sidetrail to the bottom of the ravine. Let's run I say. She says Are you crazy I'll break a leg. Alice if you break your leg I will personally carry you back to the car, I say, and I believe I could. She smiles. We run.
I remember when it was me who made her skin flush
How I fell in love with Alice
Trying to stomp the life out of false hope
Girlfriends are basically just really good porn
Poetry you found that you wrote when you were ten but secretly still like
I thought paper cuts were like lightning
I don't want to see her
Alice without opening her eyes says You have to stop crying you are shaking the bed.
I will take one ticket please to whatever you have to say please keep talking
The truth and who I am when I look at it
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful
I was a homeless bum
When time travel in science fiction just doesn't make any sense
Fingerfucking your best friend
Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice ne la miseria
"My God," she said, "I'm beautiful."
How would you like it if they took your subculture and made it a theme night?
Making someone feel loved
Wouldn't it be nice if I could remember her as a firework
To kill persistent tears, befriend sunlight.
Might be like leftovers. Would not taste the same, however sweet.
Log in
or
register
to write something here or to contact authors.