lily.

She sat leaning sideways in the chair, a lily of hands and legs folded up as if the green could ( no, would) swallow her whole.

He laughed, "that's the position I've carved into that chair with my ass"

really? I didn't know. I just thought it would be comfortable to stay away from the world for awhile. And it's almost easy, here in China, too far away, with its foreign consonants and vowels, its easy strangers and purple convoluted sky, because I know that you couldn't possibly be seeing the same sky.

At home, I left a bar of Lindt chocolate on my bed, on top of the chair and the suitcase and the clothes that are no longer me ( like skins I sloughed off periodically- blue, red, orange, a rainbow grown stale with the liking.

I see myself fingering the paint lightly, saying "I like this, I really like this"

and he says,

"do you want some?"

        but we don't keep airtight containers in the house; something about drowning in ourselves and tiny airtight bottles of oxygen lining the windowpanes while the house turned black with wanting.

  and the paint would simply dry into too many cracked lips, opening and closing with their fetid breath and thick syrupy drool, asking,

                          why?

                                why?

                                        why...)

I've been hoping the chocolate won't melt, but summertime in Texas leaves an ugly drip of brown oil down the side of everything - attracting bugs and all the nightmares to come crawling out of the closet, again.

After I spent so much time locking them in. Hoping they'd grow complacent and fat on the old dresses instead - a piano recital, a valentine's dance.

~

She had plans to tell him Today ( it was vital to do it Today) that it was over. A few good friends' refried words becoming heavy and dull through her funneled throat as she heard herself telling him she didn't care at all, and if he wants to be friends, then of course they shall be friends (!)

or is today really a good day?

And suddenly, she wanted to hold him, not as he had always held her - two spines curved as gentle as waves on the shore, but to cradle him to her stomach and feel-

feel what? a silver umbilical cord tying them together so that they could be close again?

She tried to telepathically transfer love across the 3600 miles of atmosphere and pollution but felt only a withered string drifting in the open airwaves of a radio,

can you hear me? is anyone out there? is anyone...

It seemed the silence was some kind of monster who ate voices like tiny grains of rice, and unbidden, I thought how lovely if it had eaten him too.

Crunching and chewing in the same small gulps as English woman with their almond biscuits and fine-boned hands. And suddenly, the words seem too generous, too pleading and weak, a woman I don't know at all;

She dances for them, those men with rough half-shaven faces darkened by fear, their legs pressed together away from the light of breasts and thighs shaking, miniature hurricanes of golden discs clinking gently as their hands reach groping up out of the shade-

I am not her.

            (SNAP!
                and we are broken, like porcelain cups lying shattered
              in the dip of my tongue, unable to stop this from happening)


Today is over.

He has not replied, he hasn't in days.