NINE TAILS

There are five cats that sit in the alleyway and fight each other every single night. A mother and her purse are victims to the world at a late hour, tired and both used. Moss grows over a lawn sign and is laid over grossly, large old places, lost, in a new world. 

You will cry when you watch the drug addicts dance at night, resenting their freedom and liberty that the confines of your apartment halt you from experiencing. And when the night is ripe for a drive and close observation, you will cry more because the world is strictly saddened for those who understand it. 

I used to feed the ducks at the lake but the ducks died one day. That did make me cry. 

After I came to the understanding that smaller animals died sooner, I too understood that my life would be short and sweet and lovely. 

I'm sort of in a rut because my life sort of changed and I am left with these great emotions of love and God and fate and death. 

Pardon the paragraphs above, they are total metaphorical nonsense. 

I’ve never slept, or at least it hasn’t felt like I've ever done so. I ran around last week in total emotional zombification and strangeness. 

I drank every day in celebration for something unknown. Prayed. Fucking prayed that I’d love or that she would. Big gnarly glasses of wine and beers till I slumped dead. Just a breath of the new garden. Taking it all in and celebrating the fact that…

We sat on my bed and drank beers until the truth came out about how much we liked each other and I know that one day she’ll be gone and I’ll still hold these deep intimate feelings. And I’ll probably die because when you're young and sparks still fly like this, the world is so fucking limitless. What is better than this? When your little heart can’t take too much more and it's hardly from the love-sickness and more from the intimate addiction to booze or lack of sleep. And she’s gawking at the fact that you have so many Vietnam war books in your bathroom and that little tiny green reflecting sparkle from the top right corner of her glasses catches your eye, only to be gone so quickly and the only thing left to look at is her beautiful vast eyes that you’ve seen before but you're too stupid and young and afraid to ever tell her that. 

And how all of it feels really emotional like a boiling oil drum beating loudly in your stomach and ready to explode out of your mouth. 

Sometimes you really feel like you have the world, I’ll tell you so. 

After years of nothingness and loss and heartbreak, this feels so undeserved and relentlessly so. 

It all chokes up real bad. Not just the emotions. Everything. Lunch. Snot. 

Crying loudly at the type. Calling people about how much you like someone and how really insane it all feels. 

Choking on your voice. Choking on memories of life and these poor people that didn’t understand love, but knew how to say it. 

Thinking about the people that did it right, about those who did it wrong. Summing it all up to the fact that things like these must be taken day-by-day or night-by-night. 

Feeling raw emotion and I mean really raw fucking sickening emotion that keeps your eyes wide and stomach purring until you just croak a weird sad fiendish death. An evil monkey perched on your back that's got a lance stabbed through your back and straight on through your heart. 

She said cursing in text is corny and to that I agree, 

Fuck

Because it is. It isn’t prose. It's goblin popcorn and relate-bait for the masses because everybody does it. 

And she sits on my lap like the perfect fucking ending to a thousand piece puzzle. Blah. Blah. Blah. 

She’s really just gorgeous and a beacon of hope for sensitive men because sensitive men are sensitive because of sensitive, confidential things and sensitive men have been hurt by weird places and heartbeats and fathers and are left to just be sensitive by themselves surrounded by junk that they love and that really is me and this beautiful Mary character kissed my lips last night and told me the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard and I did cry. I did cry just a little bit in front of her while Robert Smith mentioned something about spiderman and her beautiful legs sprawled across my lap with her tiny white socks with hearts on them. She made me feel really loved and I have never felt that way before. 

And beyond my eyes and brain I saw this world. A beautiful big navy blue dark world that opened as I heard these words leave her mouth with the faint smell of her Miller Light trailing into my nose in combination with an insanely GREAT oral hygiene regiment and this fucking beautiful woman infront of me. 

I couldn’t help but lose myself on a night like this one. Really. Just amazed by life and love and how powerful it all is. 

note to self;

If it ends, just know, It’s real

its really fucking real

 65

IRON BRIDGE

“Will the rain just go away now?”

She said to me reluctantly, quietly from across the car. I could barely see out of the windshield. I rolled my eyes.

What am I to do about this

Supposedly, the forecast called for light showers until noon, which happened to be false. It was now the early evening and there was no sign of the storm letting up. Street lights went out around town and vendors ceased operations early. Ambulances raced on every intersection, hauling the dead from five car pile ups. The lifeless, homeless, fleeing for cover.

Torrential downpour ensued and the eye of God showed itself upon us — man. Swelled toward the top of the sky were large, impending clouds that hurled millions of tears down upon the emotionless — me and mine.

With blank faces, we watched as the rain fell. I would propose today.   

She wore her grandmother's day dress and it smelt like death. I cracked my window before we left to avoid offending her, additionally, to avoid offending my nose. This beautifully ugly mess of stained fabric lived in many closets, eventually ending up in ours. Was a meal for many moths and household insects. She wore this dress to adhere to a maternal tradition on her mother’s side of the family. Leaving me to bear the haunting scent.

The window remained cracked for the entirety of the drive, leaving my left side soaked. 

I never could focus with windshield wipers.

We hit the railroad tracks hard causing her to lose grip on the beer bottle she sipped on. The commotion caused a cracked tooth and a trail of blood down to her hemline. I watched as she examined herself in the passenger mirror. Red blood stained the olden dress and beaded at her chin. In this tragedy, I saw beauty, but when she looked at me with a broken smile, I saw that before death, we would part.

She wanted a ring and I wanted to return home to fuck her. Or to do anything else aside drive in the dark, awful weather. The only store that remained open during the storm was the pawn shop across town. We had called ahead to make sure. The man who answered sounded excited to do business. We’d been there before to buy a few guns, but the background check came back negative so he’d sent us on our way. 

I loosened my tie to reach her face and undid my seatbelt to get a better look at the damage. She got herself good, that's for damn sure. Half of the tooth was missing. I didn’t have the guts to break it to her. She was too drunk to care and frankly, so was I. I grabbed a few tissues from the glove box and told her to bite. 

The parking lot was dark and empty. The glowing neon lights of the shopfront stung our eyes. Outside — a violent wind-hell hurling tiny needle drops at high speed.

When she opened her door a few bottles fell from the side. Full ones. 

She pranced through the rain like one of those magical elves, with a mouth full of cotton and a head full of booze. Her stilettos cackled and that beautiful blonde hair of hers battered by water,

I remember only one, tiny, reflectant droplet on the top of her cheek. 

Lovely, is the world when you're sick and young and insane. 

The shop owner sat at his podium like a big, judgemental pig. The overhead lighting was just as bright as the outside fixtures. She ran towards the glass like a child — stuffing her face against the display. Signets, Opals, gems, and big diamonds all caught her attention. Just about every ring was stolen or sold in desperation. 

I walked towards the back of the store to meet the Devil for our usual business. He came in many forms, today coming in the form of a taxidermy quail. 

We got to talking about the proposal and the likelihood that I would walk out of the store with a ring. It was slim. He suggested dope and to forget about the whole thing. I tried to steer the conversation back to finding alternative ring options. He told me about a ring in the store that the owner kept behind the counter with a big swastika on it. I told him no because we were both communists. 

“Let's get back on track.” I said.

I fixed his feathers and turned him towards me. He sat on the fifth shelf of the cabinet. His beady little yellow eyes stared at me blankly and that demand didn’t sit well with him. He refused to give me an answer after that. 

She was toying with a large Samurai sword towards the front of the store as I made my way back from my conversation. I asked if anything had caught her eye and she said yes a few things. She walked me over to the cabinet. The storm picked up outside. 

Everything she pointed at was a grand and collectively we had twenty seven dollars. 

The first ring she tried on had a big abalone pot leaf stuck in the middle of it, the second had a skull — the third was a cat with devilish eyes and I quite liked that one. 

We forgot that the smaller zeros on paper tags meant cents and we walked out with a ring that we both liked.

She gave me a big adolescent smile when the man rang us up. He handed me the ring in a bag and gave me a strange, black-toothed smile.

We held hands and walked out of the pawn shop into the pouring rain.

I lit a cigarette in the car because by now, I needed one. We began discussing places where I would ask. She mentioned the front steps of the church and I suggested the drive-in. She didn’t like my idea, or any of them, so we just went back to driving around in the squall. 

I blew smoke out of the crack in my window and swigged my drink. 

We drove over a bridge that overlooked the terrible weather of today, revealing an opening to the end of it, above a vast sea of treacherous waves and wake. Maybe it wasn’t the damn church or conventional by any means but we were young and had a few fuck-ups to cash in. 

So I pulled off to the side and told her to run down the sand. 

The water ran down the sides of the big metal beast above us and reflected as her chin did,

her hair soaked and body silhouetted against the smothered sun. 

I asked,

And we were divorced a year later. 

 

  YOU ARE RISKY

The damn girl I laid beside on a Saturday afternoon ended up having herpes and it sort of messed with my head for several months. Basic California type. Gorgeous, dangerous, and into that fucking polyamory shit everyone totes around nowadays. I really wanted to get in bed with her, but of course it was risky, naturally. She told me she was born with herpes. That sort of statement never dawns on a young man until he is faced with the infected pussy. 

I lived in the barracks on the marine base. Fresh out of divorce, freshly 21. I picked her up, we got some grub, and made our young way back to my place. I always played it classy, especially the hookups around noon. The wind from the ocean blew through the parking lot and I watched her glistening medal framed glasses shine in such yellow-golden California sunlight. Thinking bout’ fornication, ripping her top off, fucking her brains out. 

I played the cheesiest card in the book and put Cat Stevens on the turn table and got to work. The place was 200 square feet, the only thing we could really even do was fuck. Make-out action turned to foreplay and then came the high dive. I remember having my member out and her eventually reaching out to grab it. I hesitated and scooted back. I was on my knees above her, saying,

“Well, what if I ate you out?”

I always remember that weird awkward press and release look of despair in a woman’s eyes. 

It’s sort of emasculating to let a woman down, but that's just my preference. She nodded quietly and I went down. 

I couldn’t let her touch my dick. She had herpes. I wasn’t risking my entire manhood for a cheap date? What would the rest of my life look like? I spelled the alphabet backwards with my tongue and got the usual— enthused gasps and awes I go for in these situations. 

Even with a condom on, I wasn’t risking it. When she wasn’t looking, I slipped it off and hawked a big ball of spit straight to the end and slipped it back on. She told me she was ready and I told her I was done. 

Radiohead played in the car, she looked out of the window on the ride home. 

I was safe. A close call.

 Introduction, in June.

I could never explicitly tell you why things changed, but they just did.

It all started in June, the month of scorching sun and hot rain.

Everyone says this ‘thing’ about the sun being closer to the Earth, causing these nasty wicked solar winds to blow early in the morning. 

What a fucking place to live. Too damn hot. Too damn wet. It’s 8:00am and I’m already sweating. 

I lived with my parents and that was wonderful for the time being, until I really had enough of the cramped feeling and the

“Eat, eat, drink, drink.”

I was done sleeping on the couch and so was my back and neck.

And then I wanted to be alone again.

I’d go over to my grandmothers for coffee in the afternoon and what-have-you, to talk to my grandfather about the Vietnam War and that pretty hooker who taught him how to catch bugs and make his bed.

My grandmother would make me coffee and offer me things I didn’t need and I would nod and believe that I would need them. Taking these things, to have them rot away in my car.

I’d drive, drive around everywhere because my home was filled with little bugs that could really never hurt me. Giving me the feeling of dread and loss, the bugs did— and made me think of pins and needles in my brain when I saw them at night. Walking around my apartment like they wouldn’t go. To which they never did.

Things just don’t go bump in the night. Bread isn’t just eaten around the edges. My mouth isn’t that small. 

One night, I reached out across my desk for my glasses and three of the little things walked over my hand as if it were some sort of bridge. 

So I broke the lease and let go of my connection to that little place that I loved so much.

I remember many long nights there. Many drinks. Many hungry nights.

I hadn’t been there too long. Only about a half-year, but jeez did that feel like a lifetime. 

The summer solstice neared, the days grew longer, the nights shorter. 

I remember sitting, accomplished across the floor on the first day, listening to music and smoking inside. 

My apartment downtown was my friend, but he grew sick and infested. A great time for the both of us and I do miss you (apartment) from time to time. 

As time grew I knew that I couldn’t go back, because this complex fear of going back would mean more bugs before my eyes and many more nights alone with them. They could reasonably do anything they wanted to me while I slept with my mouth open. Crawl in and out, clean my teeth, travel down to my stomach and back. 

They aren’t very friendly or hospitable and they also carry many diseases. Terrible things. Terrible, perfect looking things.

So I read a book on divinity and complexion and figured out that I fear bugs because of their strange mechanical appearance.

Wouldn’t that be the weirdest thing? Because my fishing rod is mechanical and it is lovely and also a piece of machinery.

Fishing, in July.

Weekends were for fishing with my cousins and the day after fishing always felt like my last. Those days were usually Sundays, so driving around as I usually did, was extra sentimental because I knew that I’d be braced with the job and more expenses on Monday.  

Monday is the worst word in the English dictionary. It wouldn’t be so bad if I was unemployed.

Unfortunately, hating Monday is a relatively normal thing. It has always been. The dawn of man most likely hated Mondays because it meant hunting deer or something. And it probably meant a lot more because it was a means of surviving until Tuesday. Hating Monday is sort of like hating traffic or sitting next to someone who smells bad. Regular.

I wrote this back in June. After a long day. 

 “The sun is beating down on me from the skies and it is incredibly hot in Saint Petersburg, on a Monday, on a fucking Monday. On this fucking Monday the boss decided to put in a work order that made me lose my lid, because now more than ever, on this very Monday, blood is running through the top of my head and around my cheekbones. Monday is filled with nannies that don’t have jobs anymore and have a sort-of lust for killing on the road that cannot be satisfied with fucking. Fucking Monday. Monday is wild and weird, when you never stop working, because Monday means death to your Monday. Capital ‘M’ in Monday is for the Mildew that cannot go away when the sun comes out, capital ‘M’ in Monday is for Mortuary, where I will spend my very last Monday on earth. Why does Monday have that capital ‘M’? Well, because it’s Monday, of course. And Mondays will persist to the working man for an eternity.”

Anxiety can be a great tool when writing. But I've grown bored of being alone. This sort of thinking is almost woman repellant. Fixation is almost a bad thing. Shit, even the word is weird. But amidst a crisis in life, it is so easy to get fixated with something. Bad things, like people walking their dogs or the thought of bugs crawling all over you when you sleep. 

Incorrect women can also be a poor target of fixation. After the smoke clears, when you get your bearings and when the fixation goes— the woman might not. 

And then you're stuck with a timebomb. 

Crazy women and unlovable men like me come together like magnets. This subject is unfortunately overplayed in most writing, so I’ll keep it short.

I get vulnerable, hungry, and bored, and for whatever reason, this headspace is the Bat-Signal for grade-A crazy chicks with schizophrenia. 

In fact, I’m still getting calls from a girl who rides the bus to Walgreens to call me on a payphone. 

 Ridiculous. 

Anyways… Where was I? 

Right. The effects of fixation and anxiety—

That slow little pin begins to push into your skull, driving you quite mad.

You definitely don’t want to be the guy with a frown on his face, not in this world. 

Tiresome is all, and gee does it get old. 

I don’t crave the sea because I spent a year on it. It generally behaves the same way under circumstance and varies in color based on who you ask. To me, it's always blue. 

When I see the sea, it looks back. I feel that we know each other and act like we can coincide together on an evening. Like divorces or ex-lovers, Sea and I have some time together, as it took from me, I take from it. No kids. It was a clean break. That is just how we operate now. 

 The sea looks great on weekends. It doesn’t look as good on weekdays. It’s not forgiving and it's grueling and never-ending. The bites on Mondays feel better than the ones on the Saturdays. I guess, in relation to a ‘Sex-Life’ — you’d expect the electricity of something so unexpected for a Monday to jolt you with the dopamine of spontaneity. Just like sex with the old woman outside the regular programming. 

The fish bite every once in a while. 

I’d like something bigger than the usual trout or catfish, but the event is much greater than the prize. This activity is one of the few things that eases my mind from the loud and unrelenting world. So much to care about, absorb, digest in life, but on the docks— my mind is sort of quiet. I don’t care about what I’m wearing or the amount of women passing through. There never is any girls, and the ones that do roll in, are big and weird looking. 

We went to John’s Pass and waded out underneath the bridge. I believe that this was on a weekday. The sun had been gone for about thirty minutes and my jeans were soaked and rolled up to my knees. Constricting the life out of my legs, wearing one of the most uncomfortable fabrics when wet. In life, wear wet jeans with a goal like catching a fish. That will teach you a lot about being patient. 

On that night, wind carried from the gulf blew under my arms, I was at peace, amongst my cousins. Life is golden in these moments. Nothing bit except a big and dumb sailcat and that was okay with me. 

Lures and bait. Buying this dumb new rod as an ‘in’ to the sport. I shouldn't have done that. Big waste of money and an impulse buy. My uncle had about a million that I could've used. And the thing sucked anyways. 

But I caught a few on it, so it did its job and fulfilled its mechanical purpose. It fulfilled its purpose, being the cheap plastic piece of shit it is. 

It sits in the back of my cousin’s truck. 

Fishing has made me appreciate a certain convenience that I condemned at one point in my life. When I shop around at Walmart or the bait shop, I geek on things that clip to my belt, or hang from my hat. Little hooks or pins that dispense weights and lures, just things that appear tacky… Yet prove to be useful in certain situations. I hate digging around in the tacklebox for things, especially with something freshly on the line, yeah, why not buy a glove that clips to your belt?

When I pick this chintzy stuff out, I am never worried about being perceived with it on my person. Because as I mentioned before, there aren’t many people to impress on the dock. No girls to gawk at your clip-on sunglasses or belt-clip pliers. 

Asides, your appearance means nothing in the light of a big fish.  

Fishing has shown me that when you find something special, the world closes out. Nothing matters except the love for it. 

When you’re binded like that— wear funny t-shirts. 

Who gives a fuck. 

Argument, back in June.

I had spoken to this guy who had seen me at a low point back in January. I don’t really mind him, but he has an ego like a professional wrestler or something. I don’t really get along with the overly-Macho, but he wasn’t bad. I’d driven him and his girl to a party, unfortunately ending up as the dedicated driver. 

 

He’d drank and drank all night long. The party was sub-par. But instead of embracing the socially confused— I decided that talking to him, sober, was probably the safest decision I could make. Anxious, outward, and gay people aren’t my forte. I have a hard time relating to any of those things 

We got on the subject of a mental state he had seen me in the last time we’d seen each other. I had to recall, but then I remembered when he and his lady had visited me back in January. It was cold out and I had just gotten denied publication from Marrow. I was most likely a mess. 

It is sort of funny thinking about it though. I certainly chuckled when he said

“I w…was really worried about you, man.” 

He should have been, rightfully. But he went on to say

“I looked like a man without purpose.”

I followed up with,

“Wrong.” “Too much of it.”

He hadn’t known that I wrote in the passionate way I do. There was no use explaining that to a drunk guy. I can’t blame him for being worried. 

When we went back inside he slammed some more beers and I ran to the bathroom with two shooters stuffed in my pants. I got them down as quickly as I could, looked at myself in the mirror, and let a big wave of sullied soberness disappear into the night. My favorite game in the world is pretending to be sober. The lips start smacking for conversation, the dick hardens to about fifty percent, and the scheming begins. 

When I’d found my stupid brute again I walked in on him explaining some niche mechanical component of a Nissan bike. To which I approached quietly like a game hunter on the trail of some sort of large obnoxious prey. 

“The 970x is a better exhaust, man. It growls and gets the heads turning.”

He says.

“You will literally have to pull the bitches off of you…”

To any man who thinks this way, I salute you. There was one point in my adulthood that I thought the ‘Fonz’ type, douchey guys you see on TV died off in the last two generations, but I was clearly wrong in thinking that. They are right under all of our noses. 

After the night ended, that “Purposelessness” statement kinda stuck so I’ll give him that. I’m not published yet, so in a sense it sort of stings— 

If I saw a man walking around with a bottle of wine in his coat pocket with no reasonable explanation on why he was doing so, I’d probably be worried for him too. 

Or maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I would've celebrated him. Life is hard.

 I had a great idea today. 

But someone had already made a movie about it. 

There is a four by four image of a living room that has haunted my mind. I’ve written about it when I imagined it, but orgasming a quick thought into words usually ends up retarded. 

I’ve thought of this place for years and it is now a place that I’ve seen beyond just daydreaming. 

In loneliness, you tend to think about women. It’s a fact of biology. 

There was once a country girl that had taken me to church with her family. We’d spent the winter together and I thought that I loved her because she had a big ass and a way of loving that I hadn’t felt before. She had little black brothers that she loved and that settled some young and racist bone in my body. It was an untapped way of loving that seemed right, at an age when nothing did. 

When you meet the right lady, you remember the sunsets— or what the sky looked like in the evening. You remember the music playing and you remember what you whispered. We’d drive around at night, in our youth, and talk about life and crud. She’d bring her lip gloss around and let me try it. She’d only wanted to be my friend, even though we kissed in my bed. 

When I looked over her fence one evening, I saw the tops of homes and the sun in a way that reminded me of being young and innocent. When I used to visit this old lake house in the summer. Remembering my wise and old look into beyond, as I saw the sun set on that day as it did, the same way, on the lake when I was young. Somber. And embraced by nothing but the magnificence of sky and heaven. Quietly watching the sun go away, without any impending thought, like the feeling would never end. 

She made me feel that way again, as an eighteen year old that was addicted to pot and a good time. 

The last time I had seen her, we reconnected with ambition to relight the flame of southern American whites. She’d greeted me in the night and we made something in the ball-park of love. 

This untapped loving woman was still alive and breathing as I left her. 

But, 

I often see her in an imaginary living room, in Savanna. White drapes, deep oak flooring, long candlesticks. The window is just open, into the night of hanging spanish moss and orange streetlights. Some weary, beautiful country medley is quiet behind her beautiful blonde hair. 

If I think of heaven

That's it.

 Barista.

“Well, honey, the check doesn’t come until next week.” 

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay in? We could watch a movie.”

Amidst a small and rank mercado, Jessie and Iven lived comfortably within a small apartment in uptown New Jersey. Jessie worked at a coffee shop across the street and Iven worked in retail. Both had graduated from the same high school, both in the same year, and both far too broke for university. City life is what they both considered success, even if it meant living uncomfortably. 

In desperation of life, both characters of modern America, flawed to their own unique devices. Iven dealt with a crippling pornography addiction and Jessie battled pills. 

She let him watch his girls when she worked late, he always paid the extra hundred at the pain clinic. 

Money was dry, as the local nightlife tilled both of them on the weekends. Jessie loved to drink and Iven did as well. Jessie liked to mix her Vicodin with amber gin so she would be more of a liability for Iven. Iven liked to fuck Jessie when she was drunk and high because it was much easier than doing it when she was sober. Jessie loved making important relationship decisions while intoxicated. One evening, she advised that they’d go about acquiring another credit card and another partner in the bedroom. She would additionally decide to open the relationship up afterwards. Allowing the visitation of others on weekends. Iven hated this idea and watching his beloved be fucked by another, but Iven could not afford rent alone. 

On Mondays, Iven would return home late from the department store. The manager had him count the bills at the register to make up for the amount of time he’d spend on the phone. He’d count until the clock struck twelve, then make his way home to greet Jessie. Jessie was always in bed by twelve, but Iven had a twisted method of disrupting her sleep by washing the dishes loudly or slamming doors. Jessie would walk from the bedroom to the kitchen and cross her arms at Iven. Iven would talk about his day, about how he worked harder, and how he knew that she had broken the rule of ‘No guests until the weekends.’ On some nights, Jessie would return to bed and crawl under the covers. On others, she’d spend them patting at blood in her reflection.

On Tuesdays, Jessie worked from nine to six and Iven had the day off.  The coffee shop across the street had a plethora of daily traffic. Jessie offered to stay the extra hour past closing, duly part to the fact that she could be alone from five to six. She steamed the espresso machine, wiped the counter down, and listened to hip-hop music that Iven hated. In her mind, this was the only part of the day when she could be alone, in her thoughts, and away from the busy world she’d never been apart from. Making coffee was a difficult task for a modern woman, taking a wavering toll on her mind and body. She’d smoke half a pack of cigarettes and chew three sticks of gum in the slim, New Jersey evening, and then she’d go. 

When she arrived home, dinner from a delivery service waited cold atop the dining room table, and the kitchen remained a mess from the weekend before.

On Wednesdays, both Iven and Jessie had the day off. Iven was up by eleven and Jessie later rose by twelve. Iven would spend his day off chatting with friends on a video game and Jessie would scroll through her phone until she’d ask Iven if they could spend time together. Iven retorted on most occasions, proclaiming that he’d been busy all week and “This was his only chance to relax.” She’d roll her eyes at his comments, grab the keys, and go. Iven would smile, in security of his relationship and the lease agreement, and quietly make his way into the bedroom to fondle himself. 

On her way to pick up food, she’d check her bank statement. Only ninety dollars left between the two of them remained and she stayed confident that this amount would suffice until the next pay cycle. Even if they had decided to eat out on most days. Jessie liked leaving the house on Wednesday. Iven liked staying home. 

On Thursdays, both worked until late. While Iven’s phone buzzed with notifications from credit agencies, Jessie’s buzzed with notifications from dating applications. Iven would miserably dismiss these notifications from his home screen, while Jessie eagerly opened messages from better men. This went on all day. Iven grew more miserable to the thought of being desperately trapped and Jessie grew horny at the thought of her weekend plans. Jessie made her way into the ‘Barista Only’ bathroom and touched herself. She thought of Kevin, the man who had complimented her rack last weekend. 

On Fridays, Iven was off of work by three and Jessie worked her usual nine to six. Iven would clean the house after he had gotten off and begin drinking. He’d look at the hanging pictures around the house and smile, knowing that his beloved Jessie would be joining him later. The booze eased Iven’s gears. He’d smile and remember the year that they had gone to the family reunion in upstate New York, when things were tighter between the two of them. Unlike Monday, Iven gently cleaned the leaning pile of dishes inside of the sink. He ensured every last cup, spoon, and plate were spotless before entering the cabinets. While Iven tidied, Jessie spent her Fridays in a similar bliss. She too thought about the wonder years, thinking that Iven was truly the man for her, and felt guilty and depraved when thinking about how it had all gone to shit. 

When Jessie arrived home, Iven awaited with a generous welcoming ceremony. Prepared, Iven had laid out Jessie’s favorite cocktail of pills and a freshly iced gin soda. Jessie would smile, hesitate for a second, and smile again. 

On Saturdays, both Iven and Jessie started their weekend. Iven rose in expectancy of Jessie’s absence. Iven, sad, but tempered to this pain nonetheless, would open up his porn and think about the mysterious man that Jessie had left with the night before. Jessie, far away from home, arose distraughtly. She’d woken up in a motel across town, one she’d never been in before. On the rug below, Jessie’s clothes lay scattered among used condoms and varying sex toys. Jessie grabbed her keys and made her way home.

On Sunday, unlike the many Sundays before, Jessie rose to an absence in the bedroom. Iven laid beside her on Saturday night, but on this Sunday he was nowhere to be found. Jessie made her way into the living room to find that Iven had taken his own life.