The Whole Damned World

     The setting for my life is a 12 by 12 cell. It’s got windows, you know, so I can see a bird walk or a man die a slow-quick death. That’s mostly what I do; I look out my windows and look at the world running by. That’s right, I said running. Don’t nobody walk these days, not from what I can see anyway. I don’t do much myself so I can’t say why it is they do or don’t.
     I think I can leave my cell when I want, but I don’t try. These windows ain’t barred and the sunlight don’t have no qualms about makin’ himself at home in my world so I expect I got it pretty good and well right where I am. Can sit on my head and read a book if I want, I can love myself and hate everybody else. Thrice a day that big ole guard comes by and gives me my food. I eat it most the time. There’s about four hundred of us all told; I’ve never seen ‘em, but the Old Sack says he hears ‘em wailing in the middle of the night while I sleep. See I gotta sleep my good 10 hours a night or I start seein’ good inside out and bad upside down. Been in here now since hairs was on my face. Long time to think of.  Make a man start remembering black and white instead of colors.
     Me and the Old Sack, we sit up all day by these windows watching these marathon runners. They all in love with these little screechin’ beetles they hold up to their heads while they run, but they never bump into all these others. Like, almost, they hung up on some old clothesline like mama had and just getting’ pulled along on a track so they don’t even need to think about where they go. But where they go? The Old Sack says they don’t go nowheres, just like me an’ him, but I think they got homes and jobs and families and all that stuff to set places on fire with life. Yeah, I think everybody running to get to that fire life, that ugly beautiful real they live. That’s the stuff the Old Sack don’t have, I don’t have neither. We just kinda sit and watch all the hat-tippers and change-counters do their thing. Watch them boogie-woogie on Saturday night, shuffle all solemn-like on Sunday morn, off to apologize for barrel-housin’ like God was their man or woman. The Old Sack got a funny laugh when he see them walkin’ those days, like he’s gonna laugh all the breath out of him. We laugh good and hard Sunday morn, like we’s livin’ our fire life those times.
    I’ve seen a whole batch of lifetimes run by these windows. Babies bounce off concrete still covered in that sticky, clear life their mommas give ‘em to slide along easy like those fancy cars that almost run ‘em over. Those ladies who got enough beauty to make God hisself change religions come every now and then, smelling something lovely like they gathered up all the goodness there is and wear it on them. Once, though, I seen one of them ladies get roughed up something nasty by two of those no-goods you see when you think of what a no-good look like. Made me think thoughts they say I shouldn’t, ‘bout the kind of revenge I shouldn’t be takin’, they say. The Old Sack calmed me down, though, and next we see an old gray man give this young green girl a bag of sweet candies. Me an’ the Old Sack get to talking and we decide there’s good and there’s evil and there’s somethin' in between them two, but we ain’t got no name for it.
    See we play games in the drinking dark, that dark that just drink up everything in the world. Some nights we play chess in our heads or we play games of thinking of our black-n-white lives. My black-n-white life weren’t bad, but weren’t good either. My daddy never beat me, mama never did. Nobody yelled, but nobody loved. That’s what makes me think there’s somethin’ in between good and evil, almost like nothing, but like everything.
     Like me an’ the Old Sack, here, we don’t got good, but we don’t got evil. What we got a lot of people might say is nothing, but my windows give us near everything. We gets the stink of life and death so bad it creeps into your bones, screams so loud you can’t hear anything.  The whole damned world lines up nice and neat at my windows and comes in real polite-like. Yeah, we got everything.

The Smile

     There once was an old man who lived in a small house at the end of a small street in a small town. All the children knew he was crazy, and the adults whispered that he was a pedophile. No one knew for sure because the man kept to himself. In fact, the only time the townsfolk ever saw him was when he would shuffle down the main street in his old brown suit and fedora. It was at these times that the few citizens who had lived too long to be prejudiced would remark how distinguished he looked in his pleated pants and hand-shined shoes. Always on his trip he would turn between the old general store and the gas station and head down the small dirt path that lead back into the woods. The children knew he went there to count his buried teasure and the adults speculated that he might bury the bones of his victims there.
     This ritual continued for several generations until one enterprising young man decided to find out just what all the fuss was about. Isaac, a skinny 10-year-old with glasses too big for his father's head and a perpetual runny nose, hid just in the door of the gas station. As the man shuffled by, he stole out of the shop and fell in silently behind, catching the faint aroma of musky aftershave. They traveled about a quarter of a mile into the forest until the man reached a tiny brook and sat down on a nearby log. He took his hat off and looked up into the trees. Isaac took a few quick steps to get a better look at his face and the old man caught sight of him.

     "Come over here, son", he said, and Isaac dutifully obeyed. Once the boy was seated, the man looked back up into the trees.
     Isaac asked, "what are you looking for out here, mister?"
     The man looked at Isaac and said, "I once knew a very beautiful young lady. She had the brightest, most beautiful smile I have ever seen."
     Isaac, perplexed, reponded, "So is she up in the trees?"
     The man chuckled and looked back up.

To Love Remembered

     Do you remember the day at the aquarium? Sitting in the grass, eating those awful, overpriced amusement park hot dogs and you still pretending I was actually funny? That was the day I discovered your feet. That was the day I discovered that face that really meant it when it said “stop it” through giggles, squirming, and curses loud enough for the ears of impressionable children.
     I know you’ll roll your eyes and purse your lips at me saying it, but that will always be my fondest memory of you. Ass all grass-stained from the struggle and laughing in spite of yourself, I saw the woman I’d always wanted then. Yes, yes, my love, you’ll say I was torturing you; violating the Geneva Convention in my selfish desire to see that gasping, unrestrained smile. But you were filled with a new kind of beauty.
     Yes, you were tired, sweaty, and still pasty from the winter. You were wearing the old t-shirt and shorts from college because I’d surprised you too early and demanded we get up and go without putting ourselves together. I remember you scoffing at me as we left the house. “Guys can go out without getting ready first and still look ok. It’s not the same for girls.” It’s too bad I know the power of a sincere look and a passionate kiss. You’ve never been able to say no to that one-two punch. Or perhaps you’re taking pity on a fool who thinks too much of himself?
     In any case, it’s important for you to understand what I saw that day. I know all of your preconceived notions about the sexiest iteration of you. It is little black dress and heels neither too high nor too ostentatious. It is subtle makeup highlighting the lipstick intended to focus my attention on your mouth and all of the possibilities (psychological, metaphysical, and impure) associated with it. It is gracefully swaying hips on your way to “powder your nose” and me wondering if that’s for my benefit or your own. It is that peculiarly frightening and comforting gaze of yours, appearing intensely interested while I speak and nodding earnestly at the appropriate moments. It is a wry, seductive smile forcing me to overcome my fears and press my lips to yours. It is relentless teasing and genuine, laughing amusement at my flailing, inelegant attempts to pretend that I knew you were kidding all along. It is, you hope, me completely enamored of all of the things you think I ought to be, finding myself wrapped around all of your fingers and wondering what a girl like you could want with a guy like me.
     You have been each and every of those things to me. You have been the pinnacle of feminine grace, beauty, intuition, obstinacy, generosity, and kindness. But among these great, generic platitudes of love, I’ve discovered that you’ve been hiding a good portion of your beauty. Indeed, I find it difficult to sleep on those rare nights I can’t hear your quiet snoring in my ear. The sneak attack nasal calamity of your sneezes is impossibly endearing, you know, and that incessant, idle wrist cracking you do when reading the paper makes the house feel full of all the memories of our life together.
     It was that day on the grass that I saw the first instance of the beauty you’d been hiding. Yes that old, ratty shirt was stuck to you with a day’s worth of sweat and your hair had been hastily pulled back, leaving a few errant strands to tug at your self esteem, trying to convince you that you were hideous. You had mustard at the corner of your mouth that you were trying to lick off and you were complaining that your feet hurt. Maybe if you hadn’t been so proud about not being ticklish, I wouldn’t have relished the discovery so much. Maybe I wouldn’t have seen you so sublime in your imperfections and maybe I wouldn’t have been able to kiss you this morning and wonder still what you could possibly want with me.