"fabricated responses"

i may return.
may?
yeah. hopefully not, though.
why's that?
because.
because why?
because if i don't then it'll have all worked out.
what?
everything.
everything?
yeah. everything. the plan, the stakes, everything i set up. everything i gambled on. everything.
but what if it doesn't?
then i'll come back. we've already established that.
oh.
yeah.
well, i hope you come back.
why?
i mean, well, not because i don't want it to work out for you. just because i think if you don't then that'll be then end of that. the end of us.
i'm going away. wouldn't that be the end of us?
i guess. maybe not.
well what good is it staying around here?
i don't know.
exactly.
so...
so?
so, i don't know.
well, neither do i. but this is better that staying around here.
why?
there's nothing for me here.
oh.
not anymore, at least.
well, good luck, i guess.
thanks.

seagulls'

"think about scandal. think about a mother's love." the time when his father passed out on the couch, unknowingly locking us out of the house until his mother came home, spent from an unsupportive job, hours after the neighborhood went to sleep, and took what might be considered illegal to some people. "shit happens" says the tacked up calender hanging inside the glass of a hollow garage. "think about a tree house. a tea party. a fort." i never had the privilege of a tree house. i feel like somehow, maybe, i missed out on a crucial part of childhood. like not reading "where the wild things are" or playing tee-ball. what kind of person would that have made me? "think about a death. a tear." is it possible to have one without the other? i can't. i'm emotional. i'm concerning. concerned with the what/who/why. what kind of person does that make you? to have one without the other. "and what the aurora looks like in the arctic." it shifts, like a tumbling rock, or a withering tree, from one life to another. i imagine it to look like heaven on psychedelics, if such a thing exists.

"love it would be much better"

"i've known for a few weeks now," he started, bringing a cigarette to his lips, igniting the tip with a quick flip of his finger. "the fact that it's true really doesn't make any difference."
her body shifted, a subtle, uncomfortable movement linking the past to a present awkwardness. "so you don't care?" she asked.
"well, i care. how can i not? but really, what is there i can do about it?" he spoke calmly. assured. convincing only to himself. a slight breeze blew though, shuffling the papers on the table. she shuffled again, purposely distracted by the noise.
"i don't know. it's not like i really had a choice," she said.
"no. you did. and you made it, albeit the wrong one," he countered, taking a deep drag from his cigarette.
"how can you say that?" her emotion poured from the ends of her sentences like broken dams. "you're such an asshole, you know?"
"yeah, well, don't act so surprised. it's not like it's anything new."
a silence grew, slow but heavy. the two sat for a moment, soaking in their forced discomfort.

hexafractal spermwhales

two minutes into the future a bomb goes off south of tel aviv in a market square at the break of dawn and children scream for their parents and the fathers beg and pray and bargain for their daughters to be safe while half way across creation a mother drowns her son in the frigid cuyahoga. her prints are latent and the smell of christmas is fresh in the air. newspapers scoop it up like dogshit while the priest puts the silent to rest. five minutes ago a young child loves his neighbor in the vein of every television show he's ever saw. a dispicable act is concieved and carried out and the paper beneath his dresser describes it as "holy" and "destined". in a day or two it all blows over but the tastes still swim in the synapses. my mother said once that the truth is the only thing that will set you free but i think it was all bull shit because i heard that, years later, in a rundown movie theater.

prologue

Lately my brother sleeps in the living room on a brown corduroy sofa that our mother inherited when Grandad passed on. It was the only thing he left her, the only thing she has of his. But it's more of my brother's now, I suppose. He started sleeping there about a month ago. "I can't stay there. I can't do it anymore," he'd say of his room, a small spare space tucked away in the corner of our house, no larger than one of those walk-in closets you'd see on the television. The mattress was pushed up against the wall, leaving only a couple feet for his legs to hang of the end. Stacks of clothes outlined the remaining border punctuated by a single window above his shoes.

i needed one more

cause that's the pattern of late. but this is made up. the others, well, they were real. i knew a kid named albert. i knew a girl named stella. actually, i didn't. or don't. i don't know anybody by those names. i did know a kid named nathaniel. he ate the stucko off the sides of houses. we made fun of him for it. he had one kidney. and one time his bladder exploded. this is true. nathaniel and the kidney. but i don't know what happened to him. and i can't write something honest without an intermediary. it's just not possible. if you filter it though it becomes less of yours and more of something else. and i don't want this to be mine. not really, at least.

albert navarro

albert navarro was a kid who lived on my street, back when i was more of a kid then a man. he liked birds and trains. his mother would always make him breakfast before class. he'd say, "did your mom make you breakfast?" and i'd say, "i don't have a mom, asshole." and he'd go on about his mother's breakfast and i'd just walk away. i found a notebook of his a few days after he died. i didn't know he kept one, but he did. i found this in it:


i love you, little hands, you keep my face safe
i love you, tiny feet, you send me quick to escape
i love you, skinny arms, you let me wrap the cold
i love you, clumsy legs, you give me control
i love you, and want to love you



i could never write like that. but he was that kind of kid, i guess.