the city took your girl

[psychedelicate]

All she ever talked about were skyscrapers. And the subway. Imagine, in one day, to be four stories underground and then thirty stories above. One minute you're deeper than any roots can go, the next you're higher than any bird, but you'd never know it because everything is glass and concrete and steel support beams as thick as a man or two. If you stuck all the houses in town together, all in one lump, even then they wouldn't make up a single office building over there.

You'd sit in the tall grass at night and you'd touch her face and tell her that this is plenty, that there isn't a subway in the world that can make your heart race like this. The night before she ran off her eyes narrowed at you and she said you don't know anything, you'll never be more than an animal, a child in this grass. Fuck this, she said, I'm going to learn to navigate the pavement, the tunnels, the corridors. I don't want to stumble out here in the hills anymore.

What the hell did she know? You get cable. You've been to the city to visit family. It was just the same, but everything in multiples. A bigger anthill, more ants. But when she came back a few years later, out of money, out of breath, she said no, it's so much less than the sum of its parts.

You sat out in the grass again but she couldn't stay still. Let's go to the power station, let's listen to the hum again. Let's go to the lake and smoke a joint by the water. Let's watch the sunrise, have some breakfast, drive your truck through the fields with the radio blasting, drink in the ravine behind the school, climb the dead oak, fuck on your scratchy hand-me-down couch, and then she was done, gone again.

You can't keep her. The city took your girl.

 

[psychedelicate]

Tonight, when I didn’t feel like talking to you after dinner, I stood at the
kitchen sink and scraped at the dishes with a spoon. I heard you come up
behind me and when I felt your arms creeping around my waist, I brought
the spoon, face up, to the faucet, spraying you and me and the window. You
withdrew, went upstairs to change into a dry shirt, and I took everything
from the fridge and shoved it down the garbage disposal. I took your bills
and pushed them down too, and your photos on the fridge and socks by the
door and anything that was soft, anything that was hard too, like your
sunglasses, yes, even our wedding china, and the telephone and the keys.
And then I decided to feed it my hair, and then the rest of me, and from inside
its bowels I encouraged it to swallow the kitchen and the staircase and the

upstairs bedroom with you still in it, halfway into your shirt.

 

[thujone]

I really enjoyed these. The first one really resonated deep with me because I live in the city and "know" how deep the subway goes and how high up my apartment is but never really pause to reflect about how wondrous it really is. The sombre surrealism of the second one was also a fun read. It reminded me of Raymond Chandler and the way in which he takes these ordinary, everyday slices of life and exposes sides of these situations that we think we know but don't spend enough time in awe of.

 

[herbavore]

I am blown away by the beauty in your writing of terrible things.