I didn't have time enough to shift to hold the phone with the arm that wasn't still asleep. The floor I was sleeping on was made of maple.  It was Jenny or Lucy's voice.  They were both pitchy and shattering.  I tossed my cell onto the couch behind my head like salt for good luck.

A few white pills were scattered by a bourbon glass of water atop pictures mayor's latest scandal that don't exist, yet. I had a meeting with The Washington Post senior editor at 9am, 2 hours.

If it was Jenny she knew I forgot to pick up our kids from Lois' cookie-jar, cat-ravenged house yesterday.  Now would be the time they should be getting to school.  The pinch-faced attendance lady, Ms Griselda, would have called her.  That was probably it.

My numb arm fell somewhere on my face and I groaned.  I let my hand course down my craggily beard and fall heavily on my chest, resting on the mound of my stomach.  I stretched out my leg onto some pencil-scrawled statements from mistress, spouse, and culprit, which I took yesterday.

If it was Lucy, she knew I stole her found her article idea and followed her six-week trail of research all yesterday and was about to make a couple thousand dollars of her money.

But it was probably Jenny.

My mirror is overflowing.

The best-of-me's been up my sleeve,

but the self-potential has begun to slit my wrists.

These secrets keeping all the secrets secret to my own mirror is cracking and distorting the image.

The fabric girl tears.

And tears divide the face of the fabric girl.

The girl screams to the mirror, and which cracks ?

These secrets are written on me, on the mirror, and

so I shatter them both and sweep up the glass girl, and lock them, 

and I know her features come out on my own.  But I have all these angles to show people, clothes and wit to block them from dark sides, 2-D is easier than 3-D to stay in the lines, deference and diffidence to disguise my self-demise.

I miss the girl some times.  

She knew me best of all.

these walls have ears.

  fleshy, they've crawled out one by one.

                                                    I sing to them the memories that make up my mind.

THE words i forget   --to the litanies--    i simply make up.

   i can tell they like me because they stay around;

   i recognize these ears, they're all the ears of the noone,

                    which on heads wouldn't listen;

   i repent and profess and purge and pray and lean and grovel and recount and beg,

           they hear it all,  like a priest, like a child, like a woman in bed,

and bend 

   at the pinna when the slot in the knocker exceeds itself,

   delivers me the edibles.

oh, white walls, white walls, 

help me forget about the SUNSHINE.

white walls, white walls,

they deliver to the morgue, i watch through my window.

oh white walls, black stains,

one day they may scream back at me.

white walls, white walls,

i never see but only hear,

that's why in white linen they've brought me here,

to these listening,

and cataclysmic white walls.

We met in line at a blood-donation clinic.  

She was wearing a long, 

   feathered headdress 

and a sparkling 

   cocktail bodydress.  

She said, "hello, cutie," 

  and she pet my dog.

Rando ran out as soon as he went in.  Black gray smoke hazed the room, drifted into the pools of liquid that swelled in the men's eyes and didn't filter as they swallowed it in short breaths.  Solemnly they pretended not to choke on the ashes.  There was a red glow emanating from the decay at the front of their room.  The last part of visible skin was the patch of tattoo, branded over with the insignia of the east side gang.

  you' wouldn't dare, this caveat warned.

Joseph was made a whipping boy, wrapped up in a tawny, gamboge, golden shrine.  And the smell was acrid, the snap of sizzling fat, enough to make a man curl up in fetal position.  A scent like animal but with a white pungency that churned everything in the centers of them, like their muscles organs bones and souls were all molten.  Some didn't have shirts to cover their mouths, those who did wouldn't dare.  They had to breathe their brother in.  The men pounded on their chests to withstand the causticity.  

They despised the shivers this display incited.  It made them want to hide, to relinquish no more of their brothers to the street wars. And they detested the feeling. The blood dripping in red through colored flames that turned it black.  And hard.  And viscous.  Joseph burned like ritual, and like ritual they prayed again,

Kill the fucker who did this!  The voices came through the air, sharp as the flames.

     Knotted ponytail in the glaring moonlight by Cole Canyon Lake.  He was already naked and swimming, breaking up the spotlight trail of pale moonlight.  She scanned every bush three times before he impatiently cooed, "come on" and she unvested and dipped in.  They splashed and for the most part didn't know what they were doing.  They took turns professing their movie scene love.  You're beautiful, he said to her.  And he touched her kindly.  She smiled nervously and felt the mess of her hair.  It wasn't a good line -- maybe it was.  He drifted and watched her expectedly, and put his hand to her breast but lost the strength in his kick, grabbing her side and pulling her down a foot or two, them both exclaiming in surprise.  When they found themselves upright he didn't know what to say, so she tried her best Nicholas Sparks line.  You're glowing.  You make me so happy, like bringing me light.  You're my sun, she professed.  And he touched her kindly, but not lovingly.  Her skin tingled like being touched by something too hot.  Even in the cold water.  His presence felt more like a tanning bed than a fireplace.

     The next day she was slumped over in the kitchen.  A clomping came down the stairs.  "Ugh.  Go back to where you came from," he older sister jabbed, unpeculiarly hostile.  She slumped on the couch and turned the television up loud and ate directly from a box of Cheerios.  "You look disgusting," she continued to jest from the couch.  "What have you been doing all night?"

     Kelsie tried not to stare at her cellphone before, but now she felt she needed it.  Like ointment to a sunburn.  Even with the fish and the water and the open-window car ride home she smelt his skin on her.

     Her dad came out of the master bedroom door, which exited into the family room.  "Morning," he offered unaffectionately and hefted onto the couch.  "Kelsie, make your old man some eggs."

     But she couldn't move.  She stared at her phone so hard she thought she might burn a hole through it.  She texted him less than ten times, but not much.  Her father called again angrily in a tone that resonated like a slap.  But she felt that if she moved her skin would shout at being pulled.  Everywhere he touched felt warm still, but not in a fuzzy way, more like an ugly bright red glow.  Her eyes glowed and were swollen for lack of sleep, still staring at the cold, black screen.  Her fingerprints were shriveled up and her hair was darker from the water.  She sat there with her clothes from the day before irritating her skin, her skin emanating a warmth and a creeping bright pale glow, her, staring at the screen of her phone for an antiseptic text she knew wouldn't come.