Fail Safe Flower Mill Pancakes part I an II (well almost two)

I

The morning after. The silence between us is obsidian. Semi-precious. A quirk of violence. It passes between our equally possessive natures, not let go of very easily. Stoic. Stone faced. I want to rally pick up the mantle of the night before, but she is molting; Cacooned in an arrangement of record sleeves cross legged and naked, and truthful under her clothes. In this guise. She said years ago before we shared a bed, that words are atomic. That present future and past participles are the building blocks of our universe. When she said ours I thought she meant us. I heard nothing else. Now she is talking on the phone, to someone else, saying how she doesn't want to be here, but she is, so it doesn't matter what she wants, and it hurts and I take it... We both said many things and didn't, last night. The fault lines won't mend too soon, but I don't think I deserve...

Have you ever lost your personhood to someone? How could I not to her? She encapsulates the id of every single astral projection I ever broadcast. The hapless summons to connect in the most personal way that comes with inspiration, that spouts from the music and literature. It is not outward that we look, I fancied, we look into the universe. Hopefully. And when there is someone to fill the gaze of your spy glass it is not so lonely. Yes the sensation is there at most times, fleeting an infuriating. But what I have with her is slow and burning. Elemental. Wrought from the irony. It is unsustainable, but we endeavor. The ground, itself, is fruitless but who would demystify moon dust, capitulate to sense, even reason. Some would, I must concede, but I didn't. You see I was incapable. She obstructed life and splayed my spectrum out in front of me. She first did this in a bookstore. Whereas I shopped by authors, she'd look through genres, starting the books at their last chapters because, according to her, there would be no point to starting them if she'd dislike their endings. I was mortified. What made me give my heart to her was that she knew it was flawed but nonetheless it was her way. She admitted to the unparalleled ecstasy she found when the she did find a book she could finish, that brought her back to the beginning, that fulfilled it's promise. It is a whole body sensation that goes beyond sensory. I've seen glimmers of it. I've heard it over the phone numerous times. I've been jealous of it.

She is yet to pick a song. Ours is a simultaneous occurrence of history and the present making of, if you look too closely at the details. The day she chose to stay in my life was ominous and ghostly. She walked into my semi-detached, out from a phantom deluge. I woke from a sleep three weeks in the making, to her knock at the door. She was standing there soaked through, without a cloud in the sky to support her state. Not even a hint of a rain in the air. Everything seemed to deny her right to be that way. The sun. The smatter of neighbors in halter tops, under dry weather umbrellas. It was bizarre. She pushed passed me barefoot, her hush puppy half boots (man size 8) left at the door. Her feet padding across the hard wood floor, I followed till I couldn't. She was undressing as she went and my manners sought to preserve her modesty. I went to the kitchen made the tea I keep for her, wherever I live. I came back to find her standing on the window seat looking out, dressed in a housecoat. I set the tea on the coffee table and set about gathering her wet things. When I returned full of questions but mindful of impropriety and disingenuous motives I sat quietly. She had moved the tea to the floor. Teaspoon, saucer, and cup next to one another. Apart. Her travel bag was open and from it she had pulled magazines and some were arranged in a circle, about her. We never spoke about what happened that day. She stayed.

I always wonder about that day, what brought it about, what brought her; when I'm well within reason. When my higher functions are fresh war paint [...]. When she tastes the food and finds a grain of salt missing. When my compulsion to be right is petrified by our violent eruptions. When it feels like these limbs were meant to stoke the fire. After all; I am all too aware of our differences. I am a man of letters and by in turn one of law. My greatest existential crisis is one of causality; if words form letters, and letters form words... The irritation makes me want to minimize chance. She on the other hand is a fan of the Great Moving Pictures. She can sit in front of them for hours. Working her way from the temporal lobe to just exaltation. She is alone in this place. When all about her in the gallery turn them into talkies, disassembling then with words. Shredding them to confetti, scaling them till they can appropriately fit into words. She works through them and let's them work through her. Her incredible silence a relic of the golden age. She sits through it. Still. It's so personal, I can't be with her there or then. After all I do most of the talking.

I am not worried about last night. Or that this happens more often than not. Are we fooling ourselves? I wouldn't like to think so. I am well aware that a day will come when she leaves me. I am resigned to this. I died that day of omens and ordinary magic. An ignoble yet Happy death. Inconsequential in the greater scheme of things but fulfilling in many ways. The pull toward her had reached it's tan co-efficient. My orbit was close and safe enough to hold her hand. I am standing hand in hand with her and a missilery of telescopes across the heavens see us together. And I am fortunate in that way. Matter ceases to matter. With a mutual stare we face off against the great without. Every kiss, touch is a futile and elaborate death blow delivered against the void. Obstinate. We are the firmament. And we till new soil over and over again. In stasis and in full flight. ...

And she is out of her process and I'm decorating her plate with petals from the hanging garden that was a dark room until she decided it wasn't anymore.

And I got the pancakes just right.

And she is at table. And again she tries to tell me what about Cedric Nunn's picture of the boys on the rock and the other two swimming, makes her sit in that way for hours.

She attempts to find the words staring at her plaits in the mirror she fixed above where she sits in the kitchenette. Her cup and saucer and teaspoon separated.

"Yesterday was stupid" she says. I say nothing and pass her the cream when I so desperately want to say "I know". But I don't.

Of course when she leaves me this place will be haunted. And I will be troubled living here and with myself. But such thoughts are unnecessary right now. She thanks me for the pancakes and kisses me graciously on the temple. She is generous of spirit and I am mean and impractical. She walks out the door... I sweep up the caster sugar and petals from around where she was sitting. I empty the pan with its sugar dust and flower bits out front into two side by side home made potting plants. A pair of hush puppy half boots (man size 8)




II



I started my working life as a plant ambushing people. I hate it when we aim our gums at each other. So I maneuver all night long and let him spend his cartridges and wait until the morning then I break his jaw with silence.

Scene one: you've seen them all. They come and go. the effluent. Cast off. Dress the front of the house with lacquer. Impenetrable. The Crackling I keep as a just in case sustains me.

It's as if... I was always in his view finder. A cubists sucubus. Subsumed by curved glass. Tempered glass. No sound escapes from the void of a still photograph. This is what moves me.

Imagine a thousand conversations all going on simultaneously countering and canceling each other out. And the release of distillation. Why pick cotton when you can pick pockets. Moments are irretrievable preserves.

I am incoherent with words. You don't get me? Good. The maddening crowd be damned. I have a whole gallery of life times to pin my many emotions and my open palm gestures. Cupped hands draw sorcerers and once I knew a man who got plastered and got an axe to his head and an unkind word from a night nurse. If I could've framed him I would. His lover lay at his feet with her liver cut out. I took a shower in the clothes I was dressed in and put the pair of boots size 8 that he only wore to special occasions and walked till forever became burdensome to my feet and I landed outside this semi detached and my thumbs in the cups of my hands .

Tears like torn denim. I'm worn out. I'm staring at the mirror I stuck above the spot where I first took him in the kitchen. On the back of it in child proof crayon I have written a promise. I hope it never falls.

It takes a special eye to look past the nostalgia. To see that the constellations are not fixed. I am his fixation. His magnetic north. I give his complex complexion. And words spill from him. Because it's Argh...
What's the use -- words are his thing... Murder is mine