The old card player

The old card player looked around the crowded room

Felt, green, clouded air

Deal

Night vision, to see through

Raise

The old card player let the cigar smoke sink into his skin

Table, knock, golden drink

Flop

Pleasant surprise, touch of the chin

Call

The old card player listened to the surrounding scoffs 

Chair, creak, noisy shuffles 

Turn

Disapproval, with a cough 

Check

The old card player checked his queen

of heart and diamond

Chips, ash, parting eyes 

River

Realization, the dying sun

Fold

Nobody knew his deck was only numbered to fifty one

Notions

She woke in the dark of the night, suddenly. A small smile crept its way to show after she remembered where she was and felt the warmth of a back on her left cheek. Their breathing was in sync, she counted the long and quiet strokes and stopped at 37 to notice. It was cold everywhere else except near him, the vertical blinds danced as the fan led them in their respective waltzes, and the light from the lot across the way snuck in and played quick notes like a piano on the white walls. She watched the light move from space to space in unpredictable motions as if there was no range or domain it could not reach. She could feel him dreaming, his breathing was changing in lengths, and she felt him tense up while her face was still against his spine. For a moment she touched him on his mid upper back on the raised part of the piece that was carved into him. Still asleep, he rolled over and put his hand on her neck as if it was a familiar place. Then a sentence was spoken in mumble but still clear enough to hear, not from her. Saddened, she sighed and turned onto the shoulder she did not usually sleep on after hearing the very thing she had wanted him to say. It was there amongst pillows and sheets and a whisper that she recognized yet again, that some things can only ever exist in dreams.

Thrones

It was about two weeks after he had gone, just a few days before the fall holiday on the last of the month. There was only comfort in the borrowed room with the heron blue walls and the pressed wooden frames. Apart from going to the only place she had to go every morning, this room shaped with five walls was where she stayed. Twelve days had passed in which the only words that slipped off of her silent lips were 'no'- it was within those days that the girl who once was so alive vowed to stop the quick and quirky gestures and words that people had loved her for. She was still and always had been everybody's favourite- but those things were for him, and he was no longer.

The only light she had allowed for the duration was the face of the moon that looked through the window of the skylight every night, it was the only light that was ever sure to stay. The sun was begging the horizon to be had on this night and though there was still enough light lingering from its rays, the waning moon had made an early appearance. She stared at the walls that once held them close together, the guitar that he always left behind with the red ribbon around the neck, and the shattered hourglass all across the floor that had once been filled with black sand. Had she any desire to leave the bed that matched the colour of the walls and now molded her sideways shape, she would have broken everything, even the things that one would think could not be broken. They had always warned her about choosing metaphors wisely when broken- that if she chose the snapped strings, she chose to be irreparably broken- that if she chose the pulled grass, she chose to keep her roots- that if she chose the dead clock, she chose for things to be right even for just a moment or two. She always liked the strings.

Even before it happened, she was a creature of her own. She had made her nightstand out of shoeboxes and out of the corner of her eye she saw the bright light from her phone stay constant. Of course the last time she answered the phone she heard the words that brought her here, so the motivation to answer this call was nonexistent until she saw who it was from. His best friend never called her and though they were close, they only ever talked when the three of them were together. All of them had names that only belonged to them when they were all around. She was Brick and the one that had gone was Noisemaker.

They called his best friend Eyes- partly because his name was Isaac but mostly because he was blind, and that sort of humour was never absent from the three of them. They could have been twins despite their differing facial features, for they thought, acted, loved, said, read, and bled for the same things. Eyes would always tell his best friend that he was lucky to find this girl and he would always say back 'well I saw her first' with the sweetest victory smirk one could ever give, and always they would laugh after a claim of unfairness. They were like brothers and at the graves of people they once knew, they would stand side by side and say a line about death from a book they had both read, together. So she answered only to hear a voice that cried out much like the one in her head.

'Brick'- he sobbed, 'Brick, I need you to come get me'

'Where are you, Eyes?'- the first words she had spoken in days

'Im at my house'- his voice almost in a whimper, 'Brick, are you listening? I need you to take me'

'Take you where?'- blankly but worried

'To the ocean'- him, flatly

She told him that she would be there soon and did not question his request, to question that was the last on her piling list of unanswerable thoughts. It was getting darker still, the wind could be heard making its way through the branches of the many trees outside, and the house was quiet. She grabbed her keys and made way out of the walls that kept her warm, towards the burgundy door with the large glass oval at its center. Her mother jumped off the couch, surprised with a hint of worry- asking where her hallow daughter was going at this hour. She always had something to say.

'Im picking up Isaac'- her haired pulled back as she used to wear it, so that her widow's peak could not go unnoticed, along with a large grey hooded sweatshirt that she would eventually wear down.

'Why?'- still acting motherly as if nothing had happened

'We're going to the beach'- the girl said as if it was an unremarkable demand

'You can't leave now'- her mother's obedient strawberry blonde hair moved with the tone of her voice

The girl gave one of her famous looks to the woman standing across from her as if she was a stranger, with her head cocked to the right, one eye slightly more open than the other, shoulders open, and her expressive eyebrows doing their dance- she laughed a small sad sigh and before she left she pronounced,

'As if we have any say when it's time to leave.'

She made her way to his house and approached his small stoop in order to lead him to the car she would soon come to love. Apart from the sixteen track disc playing, the car ride was filled only with the deafening silence that they could feel running through their bloodstreams. The highway was screaming, rubies and diamonds getting more scarce the further they drove. It was not the closest beach, but it was the one she knew best and so she pulled into the sandy access that led to a place she had once spent most summers. Turning the car off, she told him they were there.

The smell of salt took over her, the wind was stronger here and ran races in her hair and through the small open spaces that her sweatshirt allowed- her legs were never cold. Without hesitation or tremble he told her take him to the shore, but only to where the tide could just touch his ankles. It was dark now, the kind of dark that made all surroundings disappear- she led him to where he requested, telling him to watch out for spurs just to have some sort of normalcy to this quest. They stood there for brief moments that felt like eternities, her slightly behind but still beside him. She looked to her right to watch his face as he stared into the black abyss sounding in front of them. It was odd because for the first time he looked like he could really see, and the sea was always looking back. He looked back at her and started again to sob and muster out his short sentences.

'I needed to know, Brick'- he was still in tears not bothering to wipe them away

'Needed to know what?'- in her short quipped tone on the verge of tears herself

'I needed to know what it felt like, what it sounded like'-him. The lump in her throat was there to stay.

Him again, '.. that his last moments sounded like these terrifying waves, crashing and taking and never giving back what once was', another pause- 'I needed to know that it was just as lovely, just like this'

She was on the ground now in violent shakes with dispersed waves of wails, he felt for her there and held her in the way that his best friend once did- not knowing that his hands were around her shoulders like his would have been or that his chin was resting in the same spot on the side of her head as the others' used to.

She finally spoke in an angry slew that slowed to a sad song with unceasing rivers of tears flowing, 'What am I supposed to do, Eyes?? What is this feeling?! Why do I feel like everything was just torn out of me? Why should anyone feel this? What is this?!? Everybody wants me to talk and say what I'm feeling and how I'm doing and act like I didn't just lose the thing that saved me every day. What am I supposed to say? What-' he shushed her and spoke firm

'There is only one thing we can say'- he said, and she moved her head from the crook of his neck so she could see him as he handed her a thick envelope from his pocket that had a familiar scrawl on the outside of it

'And what's that?'- her soft mutter

'The only thing we can ever say, Brick, "not today".'

Killers

She was worse than a cheater and she was worse than a thief. Something much worse. She was a killer. She had killed something, and she had killed it when its back was turned. There was a time when she had something to live for and something to fight for and something to work at, and that made her a better killer but as it always is, she massacred the very thing that sparked her fire.
It was not a loud massacre and no blood was shed but it was more brutal than someone getting what they longed for, and that is hard to achieve. She now knew why she was a guarded soul. She now knew why she never told the whole truth. She now understood why. That was always her burning question. Why physics would always win. Why she could not throw a jagged stone into the ocean and expect still water. Why the asphalt beneath her would always have grooves and missing pieces- because having the courage to do the right thing was always harder than turning something so good into a killer of its own.

Whispers of an end

They were in his room, the bare walls and dark sheets oddly overwhelmed the sort of emptiness they were surrounded by. It was more than midway through the year and they had been at this sort of thing for awhile but the occasion of being together was rare and cherished. There wasn't much to look at but she had a knack for scanning rooms despite their seeming blankness. She never thought things could be empty, foolish perhaps, but she stuck to it. Every now and then when he was in the bathroom or kitchen she'd steal a long look across the bookshelves or night stand or how his shoes were placed on his floor- she would lie to herself and say the first thing she looked at with people was their eyes but she always looked at their hands and feet. There was this unspoken knowledge between her and her father that taught her that a pair of shoes could tell more stories than anything else, and stories made up the basis for who people are and who they had been. So that's where she started.

He had no clocks and usually she could tell the time of day within minutes of uncertainty, but today she was off. Without looking through the blinds she could only tell that the sun was nowhere to be found and the clouds were being territorial as if the royal sky was their battlefield. The room was not lit, as both preferred, but the change in light could be seen by those page-like shadows sweeping across the walls. The thing about rooms was that there was always a sense of wanting to be welcomed, as if a room could grant such a thing, but there was always that elephant of strangeness and uncomfortableness that served to be greater. 

She liked him, well-liked him at that. Something about how he looked almost fluid and never changing pace whilst walking or the way his cheekbones would rise especially high during something amusing. Maybe it was those resplendent blue eyes that would change shade depending on his mood or the way he would offer a low hum only doing certain things. Foiling her parents, she had always been a listener and a researcher- that's how she learned people. Quiet discoveries were victories and a sick part of her got off from asking specific questions she already knew the answers to. There were certain parts of him that were more than predictable and then other parts of him that one could never guess. It was a multitude of things, and that was the only thing she was sure of.
He was lying beside her now, the comforter strewn across the bed and tangled between their legs- another preference. As for him, he liked this strange girl next to him. In fact, he liked her more than she liked him which was something neither of them knew. He liked the way her hair curled after showers and how she could only fall asleep if she was curled up in a ball on her right shoulder. He loved the way she tapped her fingers on the side of her leg when her mind was doing backflips or the rare times he would catch her dancing to silence. Though he liked the most particular things about her his favourite was the sillage of her perfume tracing her path as she walked away- it was as if she was leaving parts of herself for him to keep, the residue of her presence. There was something to this girl, and that was the only thing he was sure of.
She was giving him one of those vanquishing small smiles that could only ever fit her face. Before he met her back through their coil of sheets he had put on a song that they both knew quite well, there was something to this frenzy between them. So they lie together in the most serene of silences despite the music playing, tangled and warm and as one. If there was not something else occupying her mind she would count, this was one of those times. Out of the corner of her left eye she would watch his stomach slowly rise and fall, it reminded her of the way he walked. She got to the fall of his stomach on the seventy-second breath and he broke the somewhat silence:

'I think I know'- short and fast and low as usual

'You know a lot. What do you think you know?'- her, engaged

He let out a slight huff of a chuckle signifying that he knew that she already knew what he was going to say
'How you think it ends'- him in a congruent tone to his previous break

'Tell me, then'- the girl

'You first'- him, knowing she loved but did not like it when he twisted the game

'That's against the rules'- her, now propped up on an elbow eager per usual when he offered a piece of his mind to her

'Apart from the fact that you're right, I wish you weren't in a way.'- him, averting from disclosure

'Say it'- in the way she sometimes got demanding

He laughed and propped himself up as a mirror to her. He ran the fingers on his left hand through her hair and made his way past her ear and at the nape of her neck with his lips. Now holding a fistful of locks to his face he knew why there was something to this. Though he never kept her gaze for long, he took her chin so that her eyes pierced him back and through..



'It doesn't'

Second Hands

They had visited the old man Mr. Emit every Sunday afternoon for the last 4 months. Listening to his stories about his days with his brother in law on their first motor boat 'Stella', his wife Anne, or about the trouble he would stir up with his buddies 'in the good days'. It was their 17th Sunday with Mr. Emit and as he sat in the burgundy corduroy-like chair, he looked at the boy and girl with a different expression on his face. The man was nearing 94, he still had all of his hair, and wore slacks with a light button-up shirt every day.
'why don't you youngins take a seat?'
The boy and girl looked at each other in puzzle, as he had never greeted them in such a manner. Always obedient to him, they sat cross legged on the old carpet of his little Iowa home.
'i have something to tell you folks and all i can ask is that ya keep it to yourselves and not do a thing about it'
In unassured agreement, the couple nodded their heads for obligatory pleasing of Mr. Emit.
'you have been too good to me and you deserve to know this. i am leaving. i am leaving and i am leaving for good. there is nothing here for me anymore. my wife is gone 11 years, i am too old for the sea, and though i have enjoyed your weekly company- you can do me no good. i am sorry and i am leaving.'
Congruency in time and tone the two softly offered an, 'and where are you going?'
'away. i am going away. not to any specific place for i am not sure where this will lead me', Mr. Emit's voice started to veer off.
The two knew exactly where he was going and despite their nature, did not object.
'i know this isn't fair and i know this may seem fast but i have a favour to ask of you two. it's a rather long term favour that will be difficult'
The girl still staring in disbelief and the boy nodding with his usual sense of trying to please everyone.
'Stop keeping time' the leathered skin man pled.
the girl blurted, 'and how exactly do you expect us to do that?'
'just stop. stop looking at your wall clocks, stop waiting for something that may never come, just stop tracking the things that aren't meant to be watched'
the boy this time because the girl knew the answer, 'and how are we supposed to know the things that aren't supposed to 'be watched'?'
'you'll know because those are the things that you want', Mr. Emit replied with certainty.
'so if all the things we want aren't supposed to have a time on them, then when do we get them, when is the time for all these things?'
'you have it all wrong my boy, the time is always now- for now is all there ever is. you cannot wait, you musn't wait for those things that you want. those things will not always be here. you will not always be here'
*silence and steady gazes*
'what if we aren't ready for the things that we want?' the girl finally spoke again
'ah, my dear, if you wait until you are ready then you'll be waiting for the rest of your life'

Their goodbyes were long and their tears were many but the girl and boy took something away from Mr. Emit, or at least the girl did. As she sat at the bank of her stream she realized that the old man was talking about his heart. His heart had its time, his heart was now old, his heart had waited.

Can something end if it never starts?

The song she had replayed nearly 50 times that night seemed to be slowing, less recognizable, and more painful with every measure. It was the way that he said, 'now if you don't mind, leave', it was those words that danced down her spine, it was a farewell to arms all over again. She was simply walking, periodically picking up a piece of gravel from the broken road and throwing it as far away as she could. Headphones in, a rarity- she always let the music echo, but not tonight. It wasn't supposed to end this way. He had given her a letter after he ran his fingers through her hair at their departure, his touch was different and that she was sure of.
She had the unopened envelope at hand, feeling that there was more than just paper inside. She already knew what it said, she already felt the pain that the silent words would bring, and she knew it was the last of these letters. These letters. These letters in cheap white envelopes, these letters inscribed on scraps of copy paper, these letters written in the kind of ink that bleeds through the sheets so that he could only write on the front. She would miss those obvious things about the letters- the frequency, the seductive loops of the s's and y's, the same but never monotonous terms of endearment. 'Darlin', he would call her.. She would miss that the most, it was always her favourite. This letter, this letter with the number 94 circled in the top right corner, this letter would be it.
Continuing her stroll in a 'mas despacio' manner as the Spanish would say, she ran the sides and tired edges of the envelope over her lips as if they were the tips of his fingers- the song seemingly fading despite its volume. It was nothing she did, it was without provocation, and unquestionably inevitable. That, she had known from the beginning. She always asked him why he continued to do things if he knew that they would hurt him in the end but now she knew why, words couldn't explain it but she knew. Nowhere to be, no clock constricting, no one to see- it was time. Time, she always thought was one of those sacred ambiguous kind of things because it is something that people always have and never have simultaneously. It was time for that ending he always asked about, time to encounter the final 'last' of what once was.
Perched upon some random ledge now, headphones out, staring at the envelope. She had always opened envelopes like her father did, tearing from the left side fold because of her inability to properly and wholly lift a sealed top flap. She had learned that tearing things apart in one shot was always much easier and durable than shredding them bit by bit anyways. As she tore this one she felt her heart tear with it, the kind of tearing that brings an everlasting scar with it. She could always tell you how many pages were stuffed inside an envelope by its weight, she knew there were 4 in this one. She tugged at the contents, pulling the weight of the foreign object still hidden within. The sound of paper against paper was one she enjoyed, one of those sweet sounds of life. Before reading those familiar scrawls, this time in the deepest of blue inks, she shuffled the sheets until she found what that object taped to the last paper was. That nervous, sad laughter she had no control of leaked out as her eyes watered up and she grasped it tightly. He knew how to make and break her.
She finally began, hand clasped over mouth and violent silent shakes as she read the words she had already guessed. Surprise was never the issue. The first two pages were his apologies, his reasons, and his pains in having to do such a thing. The third page was his favourite memories, the things he wished they had done, and his assurance that everything they did was true and without regret. Horrific yet beautiful pains swelling inside her, waves of bittersweet memories, bursts of a wide range of unstoppable emotions. The first three pages were the ones she could have guessed, the ones that would haunt her, and the ones that she would reread until she could recite in entirety but it was the fourth and final page that she had no words or exact feelings for. Written so orderly and seemingly yet unusually planned, the fourth page was a list of promises and lies that he had kept to himself all this time. Every lie he told her, every promise he wanted her to keep, every word he thought she deserved. It was so unsettling, so despicable, so full of beauty- the truth. It was all so surreal, every word.
She looked at the half inch leather bracelet resting in her palm and felt her favourite words of his pressed on its insides this time in Latin, 'sunt paratum te pro carmine, deliciae?' and 'omnia ieram.' There were no other words that needed to be said, no other feelings that possibly could have been exerted, no other way to end such a thing that had never really started. It was all lovely, every moment, and she couldn't take that away if she tried. Some things really could not be and if they tried to exist in whatever form they surely would not last, as much as she tried to fight the concept, he had been right about it. If she could put the whole experience into just a few words she would say that it was a candle with both ends burning. His world moved too fast and her's burned too bright, and the horror of it all was that they couldn't do a thing about it, they had to go mad and accept things for what they were as they watched the last page of their story turn.