Ba-Thump.

Lying in the valley of this saggy old mattress, my ear stuck to smooth quilted slip cover, I hear your heart beat: a ba-thump rhythm rising up through coils and foam. Listening to your heart mark the two-four meter twitch of eyes desperate to close, I trip the waking wire of semi-conscience and drop somewhere between awake and asleep, somewhere between touching you and only remembering the way you feel.

Your prosodic night song makes me miss you most when the moon is cloud covered and I can’t sleep. There was a time when I could sleep beside you, when life was easy, when life was good. But the older I get, the harder it is to measure the weight of your heart against the feather Ma’at; the tools I use to dig the truth out of the gut of the late night grow dull and the dirt caked skin holding sinewy hands together begins to crack and bleed all over my bedclothes.

Morning comes faster and faster – a ultra-violet blur of tomorrow’s stolen from today – and though I try to keep time with your quickly fading pulse, the sunlight washes the sound away, syncopated counts an unraveling tempo turned off till it’s just me and the silence, sitting back to back, awkward and shy.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Again.

I wake up in last night’s clothes, sticky with sleep, on the living room floor again; staring at the stained stucco roof of the old building where I’ve planted my urban life roots, I feel that familiar pang of regret start to turn my tummy, a tumble dry cycle of jumbled emotions slicked with the hangover grease of one glass too many.

The early morning sun streaks the tasks of another workaday week across the wall – an hour and I’m late again; a grumble escaping cracked lips, I drag my wrinkled jeans, my addict genes, down the hall to the bathroom stall and wash away last night, astringently cold water making make-up heavy eyes sting black tears.

Stepping out of last night’s tired clothes, I pull up today’s panties, pink with shame, but forget to change my socks again; a quick glance in the mirror and my habits are an obvious expression: red nose, bagged eyes, ruddy cheeks, creased forehead.

Checking my wallet waiting in line for a dose of wake-me-up, I count the cash left over and am thankful I didn’t spend it all again; fumbling with the creamer and the sugar and the headache, I nearly miss the bus and spill medium roast all over the hand I forgot to wash the bar stamp off of before leaving the house.

Licking ink and coffee off the backhanded skin that slapped me with the realization I’m too old for this shit, I plough into a blue shaded bus seat and catch the reflection of a little girl growing the worn lines of absent memory and feel that old familiar sting sneak up the length of my oesophagus again; bitter bile biting at my throat, I choke it back and close heavy eyes and silently count the stops until I arrive at work – just on time, but not all there.

The click-clack of a life wasted on an ergonomically adjustable keyboard sets the tempo of a day behind the desk again; the formulaic process divided into billable hours when, at the end of the day, I go home, hit the bottle back and start all over – again.

xoxo,

M.L. H’art

In Somnolent.

Holding sleep in the palm of my hand, I pull closed tired joints, each knuckle choking one more hour.

A hint of night light paints dancing wolves on white walls – the snarling silhouetted pack surging forward, pulling back: a sympatric shimmy, tree leaves making me believe I’m being hunted.

A sway in starlight and the man enters my room. He’s been here before, the stench of his dark trench coat a familiarly sticky scent of dank earth and rusted blood and dried skin.

The shadow bird perched on the closet door quavers: he has a knife, little girl. Be careful, little girl.

Heart knocking ribs, crouching under covers, arms clamped to wobbly knees, eyes pressed closed, sharp blows of breath heave heavy lungs – puffing away shadow puppets playing amygdala tricks.

A negotiation between conscience and imagination, the wolves retreat and the bird stops singing but the man, the man draws his blade. Refulgent metal catching moonlight, his silver sharp tongue licks slick shank.

On theatre walls of bedroom late, drips of backlit blood run a slippery wash over white paint, soak into threaded carpet, rise past dusted baseboards, spill over well-worn chair covers, splash into dresser drawers ajar, creep to the edge of the bed and, lapping at bare phobic toes curled, stain sheets, a blossoming claret bloom spreading over pillow shams, dying nightgown hem.

It’s been days since I last slept.

xoxo,

M.L. H’art

59.

Heaving coo, a woman moaning, stout body writhing – the sound, a disjointed image of sleep. Coming to, shading sun from crusted eyes, it is morning. The woman momentarily falls quiet and I am left looking round the room for evidence of her, her ghost gone.

The cracked window spilling fresh spring air is a speaker box clue: blaring her purr, distorting the ruffle of her clothing flapped loose.

Standing at the sill, I stare out onto the balcony but cannot find her in the filter of early morning light. A dream figment, faded.

About to turn from my windowed reflection, I see her scuttling, her fat body edging the old apartment brick.

Dressed in moulted blue-grey finery, her nose a cere of soft fleshy swelling, she collects the flimsy night sticks and dusty day old trash blown over the parking lot concrete. Holding them carefully in her mouth, she is greedy.

The descendent of the great figments of war and peace, she is not the product of her genes: she cannot race, she cannot carry; she is not a messenger nor a passenger; she won’t detect nor save.

Her great, great grandfather puffed up his chest, a cog integral to the machinery of the 72 lofts of the Battle of Marne; the grandfather before him, a peaceful conciliator delivering olive branch signals of landlocked safety following the flood.

A forgotten shame of her lineage, she floats from dumpster to dumpster, her next meal an a la carte menu of half-wrapped three-day stale burgers and rotting tin can residue pecked out of kitchen catchers. Her waste, the trace she leaves behind, has the acidic corrosiveness capable of eroding metal, eating stone. She is dirty, she is sad: she is the didus ineptus of downtown.

A superstitious lady, she makes the same rounds each day, bobbing her head up, down, up, down asking passersby to take pity, to throw her just a crumb, not realizing superstition is only the repetition of an action with no influence over desired outcome.

Pipio! I call over the balcony. Pausing, she looks up, cocks her head left, then right. On the breath of the wind, she escapes down the alleyway in flight to haunt another ornithophobic.

xoxo

M.L. H’art