Bite my Thumb.

I toss the butt of my cigarette on the lawn of the Fort Knox Methodist Church and bite my thumb at God.

My mother – she did not raise me to be spiteful, but I am angry for no reason.

Frustrated at the sun shining in my eyes, I shuffle another smoke from my pack and fumble the lighter from my pocket as I cross an intersection without looking both ways, causing a white rusted work truck – gas cans and loose wrenches slamming to the front of the bed – to come to a quick stop.

I am immortal on days when the wind is just right and it’s not so cold and the perfect tune pumps through the cheap ear buds I bought on sale – the same ones that, if not sitting just-so, shock my ear drum with enough electricity to make me swear out loud on the street corner – the days when I understand, you and me, we’re not so different.

Of course, your past, it’s not quite the same storyline – yours is glossy pictures and sappy songs and saved birthday cards and glowing memories.

I am jealous – mine is cocaine hangovers and morning after bruises and tear-wet pillows and “I’m sorry” two minutes too late.

Your new girl, I bet she’s pretty – after school special pretty, all blond hair and cute giggle and pretend morals. I bet she’s popular – teen magazine popular, all Friday night parties and saved lunch room table and doting offers: “let me, babe.”

I bet she’s boring – wet cardboard boring, all uninterested in learning, experiencing, living, laughing. I bet she’s easy to please – bobble head nod: “oh yes, if you want to. Oh I don’t care, only if you do.”

The doormat I wipe my feet on.

**

Down on the platform waiting for the train, we are all performers.

I pop my coat collar and stand wide legged, straight backed and take inventory.

New shoes and old coat, he paces back and forth checking the time again and again – a big rush for the long wait when, at the end of the date, she’ll say: “let’s just be friends.”

Androgyny perched on the edge of the bench fights the urge to cross legs, ankles, fingers – stay cool.

Hardass twisting bent baseball cap left, right, 180, 360, he can’t remember which train’ll get him home.

Student, lonely nose shoved in book, salty fingers shovelling cheese chips between raw lips, nervous mouse eyes jumping back and forth and back again, she’s wondering if she’ll miss her favourite late night true crime drama.

The train blows in and we all scatter – our performance interrupted by life.

**

Shambling away from my stop, I walk head down against the wind. When I run into you I nearly knock you over, my shoulder a solid thump against your chest.

We head into the bar.

The awkward hello: a crisscross of words over the liquor lacquered table, the shine of our consonants bouncing off bar grubby pints. We are thirteen again – second guessing our intentions, wondering if he feels the same way she feels the same way I feel. I am inspired to walk right out the door and not look back because I don’t want to see your puppy dog eyes when I say the words: “it was just a phase.”

You and me, playing the game, we smile and pretend nice – we are sharing our bucket and shovel in the sand before lunch even though I want to push your face into the rotting shore seaweed and make you say “give.”

You hug me and you smile and you say: “I promise baby, we’ll always be friends,” smirking the same way you do when you tell your new girl behind closed doors I am the worst thing to happen to you since your wisdom teeth were pulled.

We order another round. I drink mine down fast, before you even sip the foam from the lip of your glass.

In the morning you’ll remember the fragments of my smell, the shine of my smile, the ratty shoes with the frayed laces I wore. You won’t remember my clever conversation, my witty comebacks, my biting, bitter laugh. You’ll remember the score and the fourth glass and the impossibility of us having such a good time.

I’ll only remember the awkwardness lurking dark and weird in the corner, the one I believe I created.

xoxo
M.L. H’art

“I jus’…”

Whiskey-sour stench, his breath a heavy haw on her cheek, his eyes are droopy glazed red gum drops. Leaning against the frame, he leers as she stands pressed, blocking the cracked-open door; her body is a guard between him and her empty apartment.

“C’mon baby, jus’ lemmin,” a slur of words slicked with pounded back pints. “You can’t liv me out herr all night, y’know.”

The buttons of his work shirt are crooked, three squinting eyelets left open; the tongue of his shirttail is lapping the hem of his dress pant waistband, un-tucked drool dripping past his hip; his usually meticulously polished shoes stand scuffed, road salt staining glossy-black white.

“I jus’ havta talk t’you ‘bout something, an’ I jus’ gotta, I gotta lay dun on yer couch, k?” Pushing past her, he trips over the doormat; shoulder slamming into the front hall wall, he crumples – a folding accordion – half laughing half wincing.

“I really miss you, y’know, yur like, like, like that girl, right? Y’know like…you jus’ havit all,” trailing off he silently mouths her qualities, counting on one hand: 1,2,3,4…putting a knuckle in his mouth, he bites down hard, an imprint of teeth on his ruddy fingers.

Caught in a conversation between himself and his hand, he becomes the ghost of her father, mired potential puddled on the tile floor, the remnants of an empty bottle and emptier wallet.

“Yur jus’ like no one els-I know, k?” Struggling, he gets one foot under him, a weak flamingo leg teetering under his barrel-chested bear weight.

“Y’know what-I think we shoul-do? Y’know what-I think? I think, I think, I think we shoulda stuckit out, right? We, we’re great!” a ping pong ball, bouncing once, twice, three times off the hallway wall, he ticks to a stop on the arm of the couch and slip-slides down onto the cushions, long legs hanging. Trying to sit up, his foot catches the edge of the coffee table – water glasses, remote controls, lighters, yesterday’s mail: a confetti spray covering the carpet.

“Ah, sh-sh-it. Sorry. Sorry, sorry. I’m not tryin’ be a jerk, okay? Wait, I jus’ have somethingta tell you…”

While he mumbles about other girls – blond girls, girls who “dun know nuffin’” – she pats up wet carpet patches, tidies unpaid bills and retrieves a blanket from the hall closet. Covering him, his mouth is an auto-pilot recount of who he hit on, who hit on him, where he’d been, the shot glasses lining up all night long.

She pads to the kitchen, her lips pressed tight, and fills a plastic glass with tap-warm water: her own autopilot. Realigning the coffee table with one slippered foot, she places the cup within his arm’s length and clicks off the overhead light.

He is still yelling her name as she slinks down the hallway to her bedroom, clicks shut and locks the door. Before she’s turned out her own light, his drunk-heavy snores fill the apartment.

She knows he won’t remember this in the morning.

xoxo,

M.L. H’art

Conversations with Dad (Canto II)

Choking its neck, his plump red-raw fingers – small flaps of torn skin pulled loose around the cuticles – curl tighter and tighter. He tilts the bottle to his lips, a light amber trickle dampening his beard. Swallowing loudly, a gush of afternoon-warm beer swills in his gullet; taking pause to catch his breath, he pushes wheezing stale air through the last of his teeth – only three calcium soldiers stand stained, nicotine and alcohol pocking their once strong enamel armour.

Wiping a paw across a wrinkled brow, his white widow-peaked hair revealing dark weather-leathered scalp, he averts eye contact. Lecturing the carpet as he speaks, his words fall into the snags of the flat orange-yellow flowers.

“I won’t be running for office any time soon,” his laughter deteriorating into a fit of phlegm-heavy coughs. “Do what you will,” a hand covering his mouth as he struggles to catch his breath, three sharp sucks of air kicking at his chest bone.

“I get to see what you’re going to do with this before you show anyone, right?” his hand waving away invisible flies when he says the word “this.”

“Like, editor’s rights before publishing? I should have some creative control over the way you paint my life. Then again, you don’t know the half of it. Not like you’ll share the worst of my story,” a wobbly chuckle, the sound of gravel squished under a worn-soft running shoe.

“Don’t matter much to me. I’ve done the worst I can with this life,” absently tapping a heavy gold ring against the lip of the table, his feet shuffle under the table as he readjusts his weight to fit a chair too small for his decades-widened girth. A hand patting his rotund tummy, he struggles as his lifts his weight. He adjusts the collar of his plaid driving jacket once steady on his feet.

“Nope, don’t matter much to me. Let’s go have a smoke.”

Outside, talking with a smoke in his hand, he is animated. He tells stories of a friend named Weasel who got them kicked out of the strip joint in Winnipeg the time Weasel tried to fall asleep in the girls’ pile of blankets set to the side of the stage. Or the time Weasel shoved a half empty beer bottle into the open fly of his pants and asked all them girls to take a taste. The stuff of urban legend.

Gasping the life out of the last flakes of nicotine caught between his finger and the filter, he tosses the butt to the ground, grinding it cold with the heel of his steel-toeds. Coughing again, the shudder shaking giant shoulders, his broad height becomes round and soft, old and worn. He throws open the door and yells on his way back to his seat: “Sweetheart, bring another round of beers, will ya?”

xoxo

M.L. H’art