Maru

It is said that a cat raised for seven years or longer would kill the one that raised it. I will have had Maru for seven years, tomorrow. I can see that her tail has begun to split. Tonight will be her last. She gives me a knowing look, staring through me with her cat eyes. Maybe tonight will be my last, also.

Cure

He woke suddenly, his face slick with sweat. "I had a dream!" he shouted. "I know how to save you, I saw it clear as day! I know how to undo this all, how to go back, how to heal you like nothing had ever happened!"

The night answered him with silence.

"Please," he said fumbling with the tangled, sweat-soaked sheets, "I know you're there! I have the answer!"

He managed to stumble from his bed and then darted through the darkness, tripping over some unseen obstacle and landing against the corner of a desk, opening a gash on his forehead and splitting his lower lip. He struggled for a moment as the night swirled around his vision, then managed to pull himself up to the desk. His hands shot out into the dark, groping desperately for something to write with.

"Fuck!" he moaned in despair, fighting to lock the dream in his memory even as it began to evaporate. At last, he found a marker and he began scrawling his thoughts out on the surface of the desk as quickly as he could, the marker slipping wildly in the blood that was pooling on the table. He dragged his forearm through the blood to clear some space but then his pen stopped moving. The dream was gone.

He slumped in his chair, his heart a dull pounding in his ears, and quietly cried. "I knew the answer," he said to the emptiness around him. "But now it's gone."

Peachy

"But what will I do?" he asked, his voice tinged with panic.

"當你想念我的時候 去找一杯南瓜拿鐵 聞著咖啡香 就像是嘗到了我的頭髮 我的唇", she told him. "Everything will be peachy, you'll see."

Tiger, Tiger

 I lay on a torn-up bean bag chair while my boyfriend grunts and spasms on top of me, the disappointing climax to about forty-five seconds of clumsy humping. After he finishes, he slumps into me for a few seconds, his fat sweaty body crushing the air out of my lungs as he pants and wheezes. When he catches his breath, he rolls off of me and charismatically pulls off the spent condom, tossing it on the bright blue shag carpet that covers the floor then pulls up his boxers so they halfway cover his hairy ass.

I watch as he makes his way insouciantly across the basement. Rays of sunlight pour in through the basement window, lighting up his pale white skin like an incandescent light bulb and smoothing out his blotchy skin, erasing the pimples on his butt so that he looks like a radiant angel of light. My eyes flutter involuntarily against the brilliance of his gleaming flesh and I have to look away because I can no longer bear the sight of him.

When my boyfriend gets to the couch, he fishes a joint out from between the couch cushions. He sits down unceremoniously and lights up, his eyes crossed and his lips pursed around the fat little thing in his mouth, a look of utter concentration on his face like he’s performing fellatio on a king or a minor god. Once he gets his joint going, he unpauses his Xbox and picks up his game where he had left off. Instantly the room is filled with the sounds of video game violence and excitement and my boyfriend forgets that I’m even in the room.

I close my eyes and my mind wanders off so that I’m not in the basement of my boyfriend’s parent’s house. I’m a thousand miles away. I’m with Him. I come without even touching myself and melt into the bean bag chair, the sounds of headshots and explosions and teabagging fading to nothing in the background. As I fade out of consciousness, I feel his fingertips running across my collarbones and up the curve of my neck, sending warm tingles down my spine and into my panties. I doze off soon after I come and dream of Him and our happy life together on the other side of the country.

* * *

“Sil!”

The sound of my name creeps into my head like a slow-burning fire.

“Sil, did you call in for the pizzas? Sil, are you awake? Sil, when will the pizza be here?” The questions are shot at me rapid-fire like hot slugs blasting from the barrel of a machine gun in a video game but I’m still asleep and while I hear the words I don’t really understand what’s being said. I shift in the bean bag chair and let my head flop over so that I can see the couch where my boyfriend is sitting but he isn’t alone anymore, now he’s there with three other guys.

David, John, and Peter are all crowded onto the couch with my boyfriend, cursing and yelling at the television as they crush the buttons on their game controllers with sausage-like fingers. They’re all like my boyfriend, unemployed part-time students who spend most of their days smoking weed and playing video games.

“Sil,” my boyfriend calls to me again, his voice rising in agitation, “did you call for those pizzas or what?”

I roll out of the bean bag chair and run my fingers through my close-cropped hair, rub my nose with my palm. “Sure, I’ll order them now,” I say, and then I walk upstairs, leaving them to their games and their pot.

In the kitchen, I slump against the wall and pick up the phone to dial for some pizza but my fingers are like wild animals completely out of my control and they begin attacking the number pad like it’s a piece of raw meat, my nails click-click-clicking on the numbers, dialing an exotic area code far, far from here and then pecking out seven more digits in quick succession. The numbers run through my head, clogging my better judgment. I run my fingers through my hair and tug at my ear and slump against the wall and then the silence in the earpiece is broken by the drone of a ringback tone followed by two seconds of silence, followed by another drone, followed by another two seconds. My heart sinks into my stomach as I think to myself that He won’t answer. He’s busy. He’s out.

Click. “Hello?” His voice is icy velvet, dark and luxurious and I feel myself come a little just from the way these two syllables roll out of his mouth, across a million miles of telephone lines, and into my ear. I hold the receiver against my ear in silence, sweaty-palmed and jello-legged.

“Hello?” I can sense the slightest loss of patience in His voice. I love how He sounds when He gets angry. Something in me wants to blurt out that I love him but I also want to extend the silence until he becomes angry and hangs up on me. Then I’ll call him back and soothe his temper and let his voice wash over me and carry me away like a flower petal floating on top of a fast-moving current. These two desires battle inside me while my fingers grasp the phone in a death grip. Finally, I manage to whisper, “Daddy.”

“Tiger,” he says, his deep voice suddenly soft and tender. I slide down the wall until I’m sitting with my knees under my chin. I open my mouth to say something but as I breathe in I catch a whiff of my own scent, of the smell of fresh sex, and I feel suddenly ashamed at what I’ve done, at having had someone else inside of me and not having asked his permission. Tears begin to well up in my eyes and by the time I open my mouth again to speak, no words come out, only a dry rasp like the sound of a small animal dying.

“It’s OK,” He says to me over the phone.

My cheeks flush and my eyes lock on my toes. I wiggle them a few times before asking softly, “how did you know?”

“I can hear it in your voice. Don’t worry, Tiger. It’ll be over soon.”

The ice broken, we settle into an easy conversation about what I did this morning. Our conversations are always about me. He loves hearing about me, about what I want and like, about what I think and care about. Before I realize it, forty minutes have passed and I cut myself off mid-sentence: “I’m sorry, I need to go! I was supposed to order a pizza for my boyfriend and his friends.”

“That’s fine, Tiger,” his voice is so fucking sexy. I think about asking him to tell me how much he loves me while I masturbate but I’m too shy to ask.

“Daddy,” I purr, “I can’t wait to see you!”

“And I can’t wait to see you,” he says, “do you have all your things packed? Is all your paperwork in order?”

“Yes,” I lie. I haven’t packed a single thing. I was going to show up in nothing but the jeans and t-shirt that I’ve been wearing since yesterday morning. I don’t even have a pair of clean panties. I feel suddenly childish and petty, realizing that I’d expected him to buy me an entire new wardrobe; new clothes for a new life. But I don’t care. I run my fingers through my short hair, massaging my scalp as he goes over the details of our plan. He recounts times and places and makes sure I’ve memorized his number and address. He deposited $500 into my Wells Fargo checking account yesterday so I’d have more than enough money for any sort of emergency that might pop up, including a ticket home if I got cold feet.

I can feel a little angry bubble rise up in my throat when he says this. I won’t get cold feet. I want him. I want him more than anything.

“Daddy,” I say, cutting Him off mid-sentence, “tell me.”

“Tell you what, Tiger?”

“Tell me what I want to hear.”

He laughs throatily then says, “You’re mine, Tiger.”

“I’m your what, Daddy?”

“You’re my lovely boy. My plaything. My toy. Mine. My beautiful boy.”

I shudder involuntarily and have to sit down as my legs turn to jelly. I fucking love it when he says this to me. I’m His. His beautiful boy. I don’t know why. It isn’t that I don’t like being a girl. I love being a girl. I love my vagina. I love my body. But I identify as a boy. I am a boy. And He is the only person who knows this. He’s the only person who understands me.

“I love you, Daddy,” I whisper.

“I love you too, Tiger.”

I hang up and look again at the time. “Fuck,” I sigh.

* * *

I’m in Michael’s room, looking through all of my stuff that has ended up at his place over the course of our relationship. There’s a picture of us from last summer, his hand cupped over my boob, pinned on the wall. I kick a pile of dirty clothes then look through his closet for a hoody that I know I left here and I want back. Mellow electronic music drones on soothingly as I wait on hold. I pick through Michael’s hockey jerseys and worn-out polo shirts, humming along absentmindedly to the music.

My brain slowly starts to unravel and I feel like a kitten chasing threads of yarn dancing in the wind. I wonder what His hands will feel like against my skin. Should I wear socks? I imagine how his lips will taste. I scratch at the inside of my thigh.

There’s a click-pop followed by a raspy near silence. Then: “What are you wearing,” a voice says with unnerving intensity. I feel my skin prickle with annoyance but I don’t say anything. I can’t find my hoody so I leave Michael’s room and walk across the hall into his mom’s room. It always smells so good in here. I rifle through her panty drawer and find her vibrator. After a long and awkward silence, the voice finally says, “would you like me to take your order?”

“You’re a stupid bitch, Randy,” I say flatly, flopping down on Michael’s mom’s cushy pink comforter. Her room is decorated like she’s a spoiled sixteen-year-old girl.

“I bet you’re in your panties,” Randy replies. I can hear his tongue flopping around dryly in his mouth like a dying fish.

“I bet you’re in your mom’s panties,” I say, my annoyance growing.

“Actually I’m in my sister’s panties,” he says. I know he’s got his dick in his hand. I just want to punch him in the neck. I click the vibrator on and off, on and off. Three more hours, I say to myself.

“I want two pizzas,” I say, not playing into his little fantasy, “pepperoni and sausage on one, pepperoni and olives on the other.”

“How bad do you want this sausage,” Randy says, “how bad do you want this sausage in you?”

“I’m going to tell Michael and he’s going to kick your stupid pimply ass, Randy.”

“Aww, come on Silvia, don’t do that.” I can’t help but smile at how quickly his facade cracks. Michael is a pudgy mama’s boy. He wouldn’t protect my honor, not even from a little ginger scarecrow-like Randy. But something about crushing Randy’s ego has thawed my annoyance into a mildly horny playfulness so I say to him: “I’m going to tell him everything.”

Earlier in the summer I was really drunk and let Randy touch my bare breast. Ever since then he’s lived on a knife’s edge; on the one side a deathly fear that my limp dick boyfriend will find out and kick his ass, on the other side an almost self-destructive craving for more. I don’t know what it is but boys love me. Boys love me but I love men. I press the vibrator against my clit and let this irony buzz away.

His voice cracks as he pleads with me, “No, please don’t do that, I was just kidding.” I stifle a giggle. He’s so pathetic. My Daddy isn’t pathetic. An involuntary shiver runs down my spine and I let myself collapse on the bed. I can hear His voice in my head: Don’t play with your food, Tiger. I sigh and say to Randy, “Give me some free breadsticks.”

“Ok Silvia, anything you want. Pick up or delivery?”

“Deliver it.”

“Ok.”

“I’ll be in my panties when I answer the door.” He gulps audibly and I can’t keep from laughing. “See you soon, Randy.”

“Bye.” There’s a click and then a dial tone.

“Oh, Daddy,” I say out loud as I grind the vibrator against the moist cotton of my panties.

* * *

“I’m going to the store,” I say to Michael’s back, “I’ll be back later.”

“What do you need,” he mumbles around a mouth stuffed full of pizza.

“Woman things,” I lie, “... for my vagina,” I add loudly. David giggles and Peter gags. Michael turns and looks at me with a disgusted look on his face.

“Gross, Sil,” he says, as if he wasn’t inside me just a couple hours earlier. Boys are stupid; this is why you need a man, I remind myself.

I head up the stairs, through the kitchen and stop in the living room, admiring myself in the tall mirror near the front door. I’m wearing a pair of jeans with a crop top and a cardigan. My ass looks amazing. I run my fingers through my short hair and really look into my own eyes. Well, I say to myself, this is it.

In my car there’s an empty canvas bag packed with absolutely nothing. Despite months of buildup and planning, I still waited until the absolute last minute to pack anything and didn’t even do that. Part of me is sure that He’ll just buy me whatever I want. Another part of me is afraid and didn’t want to pack. The third part of me is just a lazy bum. All three of these parts all conspired together and left me with little more than a canvas bag and the shirt on my back.

I stand beside my car, take a deep breath, then say to myself: “Fuck it.”

I drive to the airport, but stop at the cell phone lot a few hundred yards from the terminal. I pull in robotically, not really knowing what I’m doing. I park and turn off the engine, then pull out my phone. My hands are shaking. I unlock my phone and try to text Him but I can’t do it. I get out of the car and walk in a circle around it three times, then I lean against the driver’s side door and feel myself start to tear up a little. I check my phone: two hours until my flight. Why did I leave so early? I kick the dirt and swear at myself for being an idiot.

Overhead, planes are circling and taking off and landing. Parked next to me, some guy is reading a Game of Thrones novel. On the other side, there’s a lady talking on her phone. I look around guiltily to see if there’s anyone I recognize, then get back in my car, pull out of the lot, and drive back to Michael’s. My phone buzzes as I’m driving. I check the message and it’s from Him. I can’t bring myself to read it and throw my phone in the back of the car. I push on the gas and speed down the road while my stomach twists into a tight knot.

When I get back to Michael’s, I sit in my car for a few minutes, sobbing to myself like a little girl whose kitty just died. I can hear my phone buzzing in the backseat of the car, but I ignore it. I blow my nose and wipe my eyes, and take a deep breath, then I get out of the car and walk back into the house. I can hear the sounds of Michael and his cronies swearing at their video games, all the way down in the basement. I smile weakly to myself and whisper to myself, “home.”

I go downstairs and flop down in the beanbag chair in the corner, watching Michael and his friends. I feel a warm spot swelling up in my chest for this fat, lazy chump. I watch his chubby fingers smash into his video game controller. I watch his belly jiggle as he gesticulates wildly, screaming curses at the screen, his eyes burning brightly with a passion that makes me feel more than a little envious. The warm glow of the television reflecting off his skin, he looks suddenly so very young and innocent and I feel a deep sense of longing to take care of him. I want to be there for him. I swallow hard, choking down a ball of guilt over what I almost did.

“Michael,” I say softly, though I know he can’t hear me. I get up and walk toward him where he sits on the couch. I walk in front of Peter and David and they both shout for me to move, then I stand in front of Michael. I turn slowly so that my ass is right in his face, and he lowers his controller. When I’ve made a full circle, he puts his hands on my waist and my heart skips a beat.

“Move your ass, Sil,” he grunts, then farts loudly. Peter punches him in the arm and they all laugh like a pack of mentally retarded hyenas. I feel my cheeks grow hot and I clench my fists in anger. I look down at his blotchy, fat face covered in peach fuzz like a prepubescent child. His bloodshot, smoked-out eyes look back at me from deep within his stupid face, and I see nothing. I turn and walk away. When I get to the foot of the stairs, he calls to me: “Where are you going, Sil?” But I don’t respond.

I take the stairs two at a time. When I get to the kitchen, I take a final look at this house. “What a waste of time,” I say to myself. I stomp through the house and slam the front door when I leave. In my car, I dig my cell phone out of the backseat, then start the engine. I check the time: one hour before my flight. I back down the driveway and speed toward the airport, weaving through traffic as if I’m embroidering a portrait of the Mona Lisa. I park my car in the overnight lot, then shoot a text off to my sister, telling her where it’s parked and asking her to pick it up the next day. I take a look at my old car, but don’t feel the nostalgia I had thought I would. “You’re just some old car,” I say to it.

I sprint to the terminal, which is just a little ways from the parking lot. After I’ve made it through the security check and everything, I collapse into an uncomfortable chair in the main terminal. I take out my phone and scroll through my messages. I tell Him I’m at the airport.

See you soon, Tiger, he texts back.

Xylene, Toluene, Urethane

 He sat across from her in the predawn darkness watching her drawing slender girls.

"Why do you like drawing girls?" he asked her.

"I have this idea," she said, her short eyebrows furrowed in concentration. "I want to draw myself, but I think I'm not good enough. I'm missing something. I need to practice more, so I draw these girls, because I am a girl, also."

"What are you missing?" he asked. "What do you need to practice?"

"Well," she said, putting down her pen, "see, there's this certain awareness I have of this true form of self." She looked up from her drawing, her eyes dark as ink. "I mean myself and it is not something that I could bear to live with daily, and although I am not afraid of being vulnerable to anything," she paused, fiddling with the port in her chest, "I am most afraid of someone other than myself learning my purer form of self because then I am afraid that they would be able to cripple my identity."

He nodded, settling back on the couch. Watching her made his heart hurt.

"Anyway," she continued, "I need more practice. I guess mostly with the colors. The colors aren't right."

Catharanthus Roseus

Abbey looked at herself in the hospital mirror and frowned. "Why do I lose all the hair on my head, but it still grows so thick on my legs?"

"At least you still have your eyebrows," her sister teased.

"For now," Abbey sighed. "Did you see the girl that was in my last room?"

Kat walked to were Abbey was sitting and rubbed her palm over her sister's smooth pate. "Today's the last day, then we get to go."

"You get to go," Abbey laughed darkly. "I'll be back in two days for another round of chemo before the surgery."

"And then you'll be done, and then we can go home," Kat added, ignoring Abbey's pessimism.

"No," Abbey said, looking into her own reflection. "Sometimes, I feel like it's too depressing to talk about all that. It's too much to talk about going home, about things being over, whatever."

Kat opened her mouth to speak, but then stopped herself. The two sisters shared a long silence, each lost in their own thoughts. At last, Kat bent down and kissed her older sister softly on the lips. "I love you," she told her.

"I love you, also," Abbey said, turning her head to bury her face in her sister's long black hair.

Strawberries

Tomo peeked over the low hedge of rosemary that divided the garden, screwing up his eyes as he searched for Miya among the cabbages and radish tops. She was there, somewhere, he was sure of it.

"Miya," he whispered into the garden. "Where are you?"

A plump bee buzzed past Tomo's nose, pollen falling from its fuzzy body like pixie dust, and Tomo sneezed.

"Shhhhhh!" Miya hissed from under the hedge. "You'll wake them!"

Tomo went to his hands and knees and scrambled under the hedge with Miya. "I was looking for you," he said, "why didn't you answer me?"

Miya pursed her pink lips and scowled at Tomo. "Shush!" she told him, her voice soft as rose petals.

"Why?" Tomo asked, annoyed with his friend.

Miya gestured silently toward a smallish bed near the hedge where dozens of tiny, ruby red strawberries lay in the warm sun. "Strawberries sleep all day long," she whispered.

2022

I took some time away from writing in 2021 and most of 2020. I think I'm back now and I'll be posting more or less daily, though we'll see how long that lasts. Here's to a healthy, prosperous year in 2022.