Category: Erased

  • 11:42

    11:42 on a Monday night. A banana is depleted, not ripe, just emptied into my liver, not alcohol, just three Michelob Ultras, not potassium, just alcohol.

    She was repulsed. My hand was left unheld. Was it me? I could tell it wasn’t. I asked if she was on her period. It wasn’t a question. Yes, I can see it. I can smell it. I can smell the blood and hormones and cramps and pain and the tears not yet able to fall. 

    Do it. Cry. Yearn. Want. Love. Ask for more until it’s enough. Because I can’t. Your vulnerability is poison to me. Your tongue wraps itself around my mind and licks parts of me I have yet to find. In due time.

    No one understands heartache. What are my words trying to say? Like crying in the rain. There are some sounds that you can’t hear. There are some eyes that cry no tears. Mine are so fucking dry. I feel it. I feel it all. Shit inside me Activia can’t get out. I’ll wake up tomorrow with the walls still intact, hell, restricted and reenforced with booze. 

    The pen keeps going, detached from my hand as if it has anything to say, empty of value to provide but its empty promises and platitudes, things I pretend to want to do, realizations I haven’t had, advice I’ve given but never received, dreams that stop me from being awake.

    One dream in particular holds me back. Being a plus in a life other than my own. It’s hard to believe there is no girl waiting for me. There are plenty wanting for. There’s treasure close enough that if I keep digging I’ll find it. 

    Or I won’t. I’ll come up empty again. Nothing in my pockets. Just sex and a new service care provider letting me know I don’t have any STDs. That’s a lot to show for it. But I’ll have more. I will. Die.

    I can’t get away. No. No matter how hard I try. No matter how far I go. My shadow follows me. You’d think by now I’d be alone. You think by now I’d have somewhere to call home. You’d think. So would I. And we’d get nowhere because of it. Thinking all day, as if it matters. I’m going to think so much tomorrow. At nine. At ten. At eleven. 

    I’ll drink until it all gets too heavy. Until my shirt is no longer just heat but another body on top of me, hugging and holding me as if it were the life I’m after. But it’s not. It’s a dirty button down with sweat stains in the blistering sun. I’m a tomato walking even though I look like I’ve just come from a run. The shirt is an obituary. My body is a coffin. I’ve died long ago. I don’t know where I’m going except that I do. A sorry grave. But there are no apologies when I’m dead and buried. 

    I’m not searching for an answer. I don’t have any questions. If I did, I’d feel better. I just have statements written in a pen I received from the girl who resents me.


  • Hialeah and Hell

    I’m somewhere between Hialeah and Hell,
    ignoring signs that bid me farewell
    because my tints are far too dim 
    and I’m under the influence
    passing hookers and hotels,
    Cuban cigars and every smell
    more forgettable than every street
    or how I felt when we first meet.

    I see a ring wrapped
    around her freshly painted fingers, 
    delivered from a guy 
    who needed a green card. 
    He paid, but so did she,
    her with youth, unfortunately.
    She cried all night 
    about not being a loving wife
    and not feeling sexy for too many nights.
    Can I blame her for taking a chance? 
    She did more than I did
    to have love in her life. 

    I’m taking wrong turn after wrong turn
    just to spend a little more time with her,
    hoping there’s more than meets the eye,
    that only the wine is dry,
    that the blonde is just a dye,
    that she’s smarter than I remembered, 
    that the thoughts in her head don’t die 
    the moment they leave her. 

    We roll to a standstill,
    knowing traffic only kills
    those who drive alone 
    staring at the wheel,
    not with a demoness,
    who only partly feels real,
    shaped like an hourglass, 
    ready to spill.

    She waved her red flags 
    seven years too late. 
    Every red light shined
    the evil in her face 
    and turned any desire
    of putting her on a plate
    into a realization that 
    I’ve made a mistake.
    Dessert can wait. 




  • Hallways

    My once great stride
    has now become a crawl,
    leaving the light of the world,
    for four haunting walls

    far more confined
    than I remember them to be,
    closing in until
    there is nothing left of me.

    Two left feet
    lead me to my knees
    to brace the narrow halls
    and beg for mercy.

    Do I turn around,
    hands for my eyes
    until they finally touch
    what kissed me goodbye?

    I may limp on through,
    reach the light with a crutch.
    The end is close enough to see
    yet too far to touch.

  • Benched

    At the park, holding a book, scribbling down thoughts I pray the page is worthy of, hoping someone, anyone, cares enough to read, or at least I care enough to remember.

    I peer from porous handwriting to a plethora of people so forgettable they could be Sims’ characters. The roller-skater chick in a too revealing sundress lets it sway with every stride for “self-confidence,” not for any man to see, especially not me, because she’s skating for nothing less than vanity, and the thirsty dog that’s chasing her, striving to catch a sniff of sweat or love, which is all the same to me, and the rapper ear-raping her AirPods with an explicit track that’s offensive to everyone, especially his mother, and the noose around dog’s neck that I’d love to share, don’t notice the stranger, head, toes, and eyes, shrouded in black, like shit cooking in the sun, dying a slow death in the unbearable heat on a bench near no one.

    Not having sunblock is a cockblock. My face is faded salmon, and I probably look like an expired strawberry — quite the hangover meal. Curse my dad for giving me his pasty complexion, his sullen temperament, his depression, his insomnia, his rage, but not his grey green eyes. No wonder I wear shades. He cursed me with life but not enough will to see it. What does it matter?

    Gusts of wind rising from the bay turn my pages into fans and sundresses into lingerie. Sometimes, I’m a fan of the wind. Sometimes. My hair is curly in all the right places, messy at all the right times, so even a blowjob from Katrina won’t make a difference. I couldn’t be any messier if I tried. But I can’t say that about everyone.

    I know a girl who fights every breeze like Tom Brady coming out of retirement just to shit on New Orleans (Katrina 2.0). The wind is the one thing she can’t control. She hates it. She yearns for a gust she can latch on too. She prays for a tornado that turns her cow into a steak instead of sending it away. All she wants is something malleable: a kiss she can bite, a hug she can suffocate. Imagine a world with such reign. It doesn’t exist, yet she fights hard to manifest it. She doesn’t hold hands; she imprisons them. She doesn’t run on grass; she kicks the roots under them. She doesn’t drink; she drowns… just like me. That’s why it’s so much more special when she lets me in. She lets me drive, she lets me order, she grants me the power to decide — something all women have inside. For once, she doesn’t oppose the wind; she embraces it. She replaces all her worries with fears I’ve instilled. She gives up her power for the belief that I won’t kill. That’s all that matters. She always has a choice, but I want her to pretend she doesn’t. Women have all the power, it’s up to them to give us what we’re after.

    Here comes another lap from the roller-skater, sundress still intact. She must be a professional by now. The dog is long gone, probably finding a new toy to catch or a better ass to sniff. Isn’t that all of us? Never satiated until life catches up and bites us in the ass. Unfortunately for me and my sundrenched cheeks, but fortunately for her sundrenched ass cheeks, she did catch the attention of another type of dog. Refs, as I’d call them in 2016, trace her scent. I haven’t seen this breed since the second-floor high school hallway that permanently reeked of chewing tobacco and sardines (don’t ask). They’re loud, brash, and whistling with an accent that turns “Walmart” into “Gualmar”. Their skintight jeans are far below what’s safe for work, showing more entryway than an airport. Why wear a belt if it’s just going to weigh them down? Maybe they just like to sniff each other for a true whiff of friendship. After all, they wouldn’t leave the door open if they didn’t expect any visitors.

    Can I blame them? We’re all the same, just hoping someone enters us in different ways. Me, my heart; them, their vape. What is love if not someone who’s willing to let you blow smoke in their face. I’m writing as if it’s for myself, yet all I want is to have someone cover the page with a vaped cloud of passionfruit or whatever-the-fuck causes my words to erase. I’m speaking, or writing, in hopes that someone will listen, or at the very least get hooked on the nicotine that I’m giving. Like all the refs from here to Cuba chewing tobacco on the mound just to remind themselves of home, it seems that the only time anyone is okay with the world pushing them out of place is when for at least one moment, one hour, one mouthful, one lick, one bite, and one date, they also get to control what they taste.


  • Flowers

    Oysters. 

    Dinner and dessert.

    Wasted.

    On poor company.

    Should’ve been booze.

    The real company is sound asleep.

    No messages.

    It’s been morning for six hours.

    Dinner ended long ago.

    Do I snore in my sleep?

    Don’t turn on the light.

    Don’t stay the night.

    That would make my morning worse.

    Night or day, 

    asleep or awake, 

    when the light is off, 

    they become one and the same.

  • Shells

    Shells

    The shells I picked out of the sand
    as the sunlight licked my skin 
    in a different tongue
    are now gathering dust,
    on the top shelf of my dresser,
    above rows and rows of
    worn out boots, 
    unused sneakers,
    sandals longing for socks, 
    repulsive crocs, 
    all of which are gathering dust, 
    because the one pair I always wear is still by the door,
    strewn about, 
    the sole separating from the shoe,
    having sacrificed itself for the pleasures of the day,
    and tracked sand all along the house, 
    and protected me from the tiny grains
    that are still big enough to inconvenience me, 
    is begging to be cleaned, wiped, and forgotten,
    rather than remind me of 
    what they have taken from me,
    a beach under the sun, 
    a place I’m still running from,
    the only proof that I have lived at all.

  • Endlessly

    I’m greeted by 11 floors of spirals,
    turning my head endlessly,
    parking spots kissing
    the ass of the car in front of me.
    I ask how you’re doing.
    “Fine.”
    You ask how I’m doing.
    Here comes the wine.

    “Did you get home safe?”
    How could I?I just left it.
    I tried to hold on for longer,
    to the home you provided me.
    My fingers squeezed tightly.
    A moment to an eternity.
    But I’m still at arm’s length.
    Until we meet again.

    My hand treats you like a stranger.
    My word speaks like a friend.
    My mind thinks like a lover.
    All amiss to hesitation.

  • Watch

    My watch is watching me waste my time. I don’t look at it enough. The glass is scuffed up but sits on a beautiful silver and black submarine. I can dive to ocean floor, ears bleeding, and it would still be ticking away. Another second floats away; another bubble floats to shore.

    I see it’s relentlessly ahead—thirty minutes into the future. As it chugs along, never stopping for even a moment, I’m reminded of the time I just gained with this glimpse. Then I wind the handle and set it straight. My alacrity subsides as I sync it to real time. It keeps going, slowly getting ahead again.
    I’d have to break it for time to stop. But it won’t.

    I’m not peaking at the present. I’m watching it vanish with every tick.
    The pendulum swings back and forth, to and fro, like my lack of balance, one toe in the future, another in the past. The watch is on my wrist, not my hand; I don’t have a grip on the present. I suffer in a timeline that I will never reach.


  • Dry January

    Boring texts. Chapped lips. Dirty clothes. Sex on sandpaper. Shitty pick up lines. Unfiltered thoughts. Overdressed thots. The Titanic without a story. A really sad melon.

    I take Dry January very seriously. Take my booze; I’ll take every bit of moisture Mother Earth has to offer. Foreplay? Gone. Girl? Gone. Sour and sweet? Gone. December? Still here. It’s the honorary 33rd.

    It’s not the end of the year—or my sobriety. Why restart my problems? I’ve mastered them. I can tolerate a glass half empty; it hides the end. Sleep only reminds me, I have to wake up again. I’d rather tirelessly travel through the next day and the next, as they flow into each other like a pair of ice melting into paradise—a place I’d happily drown.


  • The Storm

    The Storm

    A storm named Mariah Carey is visiting me in mid-February to fuck me like a Christmas song. The waves are inescapable. I can’t even tell how big they are until they hit me. A light peers through. Am I saved? No. It’s fucking lightning.

    The lighthouse is gone. Now I’m just a beat-to-shit ship in the storm (hopefully the ship has devil horns). I’m no captain because I have no one to lead and no where to go. I’m in a whirlpool—no life jacket, just booze.

    My compass is flaccid. I was two knots away from home, practically getting a sunburn. Now I’m sinking. I’d much rather get burned and know I’m on the right path than drown alone.

    But who cares? None of these words change how I’m feeling.

    The world keeps telling me that that time heals all wounds. I can’t see the wounds without light. I can only feel them. ‘Walk into the light,’ is the moribund advice. That would be nice. But there’s no light for me.