217 days
without speaking
or seeing each other
and suddenly she shows up
knocks on his door and says,
“Hey, we’re still together, right?
Still a couple?”

He didn’t answer,
just ushered her in
through a curtain of smoke
and moldy smells.
His small apartment
looked more like a cave
than ever before.
The walls were dark and irregular
with buildup of grime.

The cockroaches were long dead,
poisoned with cigarette smoke
and ashes

26 years her senior,
he was a modern caveman
Still lived in a cold, dark,
and gross cave,
but he had a laptop
and internet connection.

The screen
was the only thing
alive in the cave.

It showed a compilation
of short videos
featuring brutal executions
from all around the world.

“So how have you been?”
she asked.

His reply was a grunt
as his gnarled hand
reached into his breast pocket
and fished out the pack
of cigarettes and a lighter.

He placed one between
his lips and lit it
and then offered her one.

She took it
and as she stretched
her hand for it
a neat row of self-inflicted scars
shone from her wrist to elbow

“I take it you still haven’t
managed to publish
your writings,” she said.

It drew another
grunt from him,
a louder one
this time.

“So nothing’s changed
in all this time,”
she continued.
“You didn’t make it,
I didn’t make it,
and the world made it
without us.”

Another grunt from him.

He sat down at the desk
and paused the gore videos
that ran with black metal music
playing in the background.
The image that froze onscreen
portrayed a naked man
on his knees, hands tied
behind his back,
while a chainsaw was about
to dig into his belly.

“I was thinking,” she continued,
“you know how people make
those silly promises
that sound something like,
‘if we don’t find partners
by the time we’re so and so years
old we marry each other’?
Well, I was thinking,
what if we make a promise
just like that?
Only, not about marrying
each other.
Rather, if in two years’ time
we don’t make it.
That is, if you don’t get published
as a writer and I still can’t
find a good man to marry…
we suicide together.
What do you say?”

Puffing on his cigarette,
he watched her,
studied her from head
to toe and back,
and after another grunt
and a much needed clearing
of his throat he said,
“Aren’t we already dead?
What’s the point of
suicide now?”

They were both silent
for a long while
and then she said,
“Did I tell you about
the time I aborted
your child?”

He shook his head.
“Pretty sure it wasn’t mine.”

“It was yours,” she said.

He dismissed her
with another grunt
and a slight shake of his head.

Then they smoked
in silence and finished
the whole pack,
letting the ashes fall
straight to the floor
where they joined a gray desert.

He resumed the gore videos
but turned down the volume.

“Some days ago
I slept with a guy
only so I could use his computer
to check out stories of yours
on the internet,”
she said eventually.
“Aside from three or four
very short ones
there was nothing new.
Why did you stop posting?”

“I stopped writing,” he said.

“Oh…”

She came behind him
and they both watched
some poor homeless man
being held down
by a gang of teenagers
as two of them used a brick
to hammer a long screwdriver
up one of his nostrils.

He turned the volume lower.

“Well, I haven’t stopped looking
for a good man,” she said.
“I just hadn’t found one yet.
I thought that maybe if we make
that two-year promise…
maybe it’ll motivate us both,
but I see you’ve already given up.
You are already dead,
aren’t you?
I’m speaking to a ghost.”

He grunted
and lit another cigarette
from a new pack
and offered her another.

They watched gore videos
for the rest of the night
and smoked.

At some point
she said that she
had a loose tooth
and fiddled with it until it
came out of the socket.
There was no blood
and no pain.

She placed it on the desk
and he silently
took it and put it
into his breast pocket
with the pack of cigarettes.

In the morning,
she was ready to leave.

She borrowed
fourteen dollars
and two cigarettes
and stopped by
the corner store
to buy razor blades.

The cashier wasn’t any
more alive than herself
and the modern caveman
she’d left behind
for the final time.

“Say, you wanna marry
in the near future?” she asked
from across the counter.

The cashier just replied
with a grunt.

the last time they
saw him
happy
was when he told them about
that weird dream
he had
in which wine
poured from the tap in
his kitchen

and that
was it

he had nothing else
in life to
be happy about

They didn’t need to
ask his
profession

Somehow they
all knew
he was a
poet

she never finished college
but she was a pill expert
and took pride in it

"Here, this one'll make you rock
against your will. You'd need some."

"Not me," I said

"You afraid?"

"Yes."

"Hahahahaaa, afraid o' some pills, boy?
D' you know what being afraid of
this stuff's called around here?"

"I don't know what's called around here
I'll call it wisdom where I'm at. No
pills for me, thanks."

"Wow, you're such a *****, ain't ya?
Oh, well that's too bad, I guess.
Would've been fun to rock the bed tonight
but I ain't lookin' for no *****. I wanna give that."

She gave it to one of my friends along with
some sketchy looking pills
and from that night on they were a couple
of some sorts for a little over a month

And when she took the right pills
she talked in the wrong ways
In her sleep
to the walls
to her cat
to her left foot, but whispering
so the right won't hear

And when she was on pills she would have
her new boyfriend hold her phone
and not allow her to answer if her dad called
Her dad didn't call too often but
somehow managed to call when she was on pills
He just wanted to check how college's going
not knowing she'd quit
or was expelled
months ago

"Ah, my daddy would so **** me
if he found out. Like, yeah, he'd **** me as ****!
But that's all right. I'm all right.
I know this dude who prints 'em, makes 'em
look like the real thing.
Just give 'im the ID an' cash
and you're good. I'll be good."

Well, I don't know
I guess wisdom comes in many, many forms
that friend of mine she hooked up
with considered it wise to
one day just tell her father the truth

The phone rang for the fourth time
and she was lying in bed
naked with froth about her lips
and eyes staring up into her skull
probably looking for salvation or something
He answered and introduced himself to her father
and told him everything,
even switched to video call to show the man his daughter
He thought he'd save her life this way

Sacrifice the relationship to save your partner's life
I guess that's wise

She went into rehab, I heard
and, what do you know, a few years later
she's married and pregnant
I wonder how wise her husband is...

she hadn’t been his wife
because her religious family would never
allow their sweet treasure
to marry a lowlife like him

But she had been his girlfriend because
she needed to rebel
against her family somehow

But very little of that mattered now
She was no longer among
the living

and it was her own choice

Enforced by two fistfuls of pills
and half a bottle of 65% proof *****

Her family was beginning
to forget her
now
Suicide was something not even Jesus could
forgive

“I’m stronger than Jesus himself then!”
he shouted in the
hand mirror she left behind
at his place. “I forgive you! And I
still love you.”

He smashed the hand mirror against the wall
and knelt amongst the
shards

They watched him from below
with crimson eyes

Eyes that reminded him of hers when she was
crying in his arms,
talking endlessly about her stupid family who
won’t take mental issues like depression
and anxiety seriously. They said
it was but a phase
and she just needed to grow up
and pray some more. Also, her lowlife
boyfriend needed to go

If only that last
rule wouldn’t have been in place…
She would’ve been here now,
he knew

He reached for the
largest shard,
not breaking contact with the crimson eyes,
and stabbed it deep into
the wrist of his left hand

“Haha,” he said, still looking
at the eyes. “Just like when you took
bathroom breaks from the sermon to video-call me. I… still love you, babe…”

The world was growing colder
because the weather
was akin
to people’s hearts,
he was told

in a dream

The people had denied him
the world
and he was left with the backstreet
dumpster
And he had to share the
backstreet dumpster with the dogs
Or rather the dogs had to share
it with him

Regardless,
they agreed

and at least this corner of
the world
was a little warmer

To work at the peak
of the desert heat

The adults told him he’d need
an injection for that
and the man dressed in white
grabbed his arm and lifted it
and stung him with the needle in the shoulder
and injected the serum

It took away all doubt
from his mind
and all weariness from his heart
and limbs

He was ready

“Good boy,” the adults said
and patted him on the back

They gave him an assault riffle,
one he’d held and used
before for practice,
and sent him out of camp
and towards the enemy soldiers

It’ll be fine

sunny day outside
streets full
of people seeking water
and cold beers

overcast day inside
the cold, irregular walls
of the basement
in the abandoned building
The clouds are alive
and very annoying

She slaps his forehead
with a sloppy hand
soaked in *****

“Ouch!” he screams

And she says, “I can’t stand
these *******
fruit flies. Why must
they follow everywhere we go?”

He turns around
on the wool blanket and
shoves away a few empty bottles
of cheap wine
and
drops his head onto
her naked lap. “Because, baby, we’re
putrid. You and I, we’re both
dead on the inside
and out. And the fruit flies
love the smell
and taste of our bodies. Especially
when they come
together and sweat a lot.”

His hand grabs at
her upper thigh
and the fingers
tap playfully along the
piano-key-like cut marks
that adorn it
from crotch to knee

She tries to squash another
fruit fly
on his back

fails

gives up

drifts into sobs
and cries

“Noo, don’t cry,” he whispers

“Darling,” she says through
sour tears that
get immediately assaulted by
the fruit flies, “are we
really dead?”

“Yeah,” he says after
two full minutes
of struggling to open his eyes.
“Dead to them all
who walk outside in the warm
sun and go to jobs
to feed families, and dead
to our own families. And
to God. We’re dead, alright.”

She wails and
moves her *****-soaked
hand before her face
to chase away
the fruit flies

achieves the opposite
effect

wails some more

looks around for
her favorite razor blade

doesn’t find it

wails some more

grabs a bottle and swings
it against the wall
behind her back
but not strong enough
to break
just drops it

And she wails some more
until
he grabs her hand and
holds it against his
face and
starts ******* on her fingers

It tastes not very
different from
the wine they drank
so he keeps *******
and tells her, “Don’t worry.”

“What?” she asks

“Don’t worry, I said. Even if
we’re dead, at least
we’re dead together. And it’s
a thousand billion times
better than
being alive and apart. We’re still
better off than those
walking outside in the warm sun.
Those fools stay together
till death does ‘em apart. Pathetic.
We’re staying together in
death itself, dear. Our love
is eternal!
We got each other
and our cool grave
and our thousands of flying children
here roaming about
and the sweet nectar of each
other’s bodies. What else
could one ask for in life
or in death?”

“Aw, you sweet talking
failure of a poet,
come and kiss me!”

He did

and not even the
***** or the
coughing of blood could
break their lips apart

and the
fruit flies
joined in

and outside people still
walked in
the warm sun
oblivious of what true love
looked like