Shoulders bump and scratch against mine as I walk to the stand, I hear in the distance faint yelling coming from a child, a smile heard from miles away.

The warmth of the sun places itself on my temple, slowly making it damp. I sweep it off with the back of my hand and continue my journey through the fire that burns in between bodies and gods. After a short while of walking on uneven tumbled rocks, the road hurting the soles of my feet, I manage to smell something through the overwhelming presence of perfumes surrounding me.

I get closer and screams, cries accompany my steps; a smell, putrid, redolent of horrendous bodies stacked upon bodies, starts slowly taking over all of my senses.

Corpses, more than one, but i couldn’t tell you how many. I fight through the crowd surrounding the scene, my movements becoming those of a rabid animal, my breath feels unsteady.

The voices of two men spread assurance among the now petrified and stagnant crowd through their certain authority.

The warmth washed over me one last time before disappearing. Leaving its place for a single word pronounced by one of the men, my wife’s name in the pile of repugnant immobility.

I taste and feel my own disgusting insides getting rejected by my body, by the impossibility of the situation and the fetid smell of vomit is now making its way down my wet and heavy shirt. Disgust. Disbelief. The smile of the child is no longer heard and the sun no longer dares to face cold sweat.

Weave,through time, your inability, forget everything you’ve ever learned and go back to what you once were; Be greedy with sugar, be greedy with love, let them destroy your health.

Give up your skills because none of them are worth going through anything. Read what you don’t enjoy Love what doesn’t serve you Drive yourself to a point so excruciatingly empty soundless that you won’t even strive for music you’ll simply strive for noise no matter how obstreperous it might be.

Then write about it expatiate that noise to the point of exhaustion because in the silence any wave is unusual water is scarce and your mind, empty of dreams as it is, will surf on said waves as it surfs past every terrible thing you are now inured to with ease, not stemming from strength but from natural laws and you pass away to a better place where life is repainted from colors never seen

Shoehorned words placed on top of one another Letters become drudgery Passion was your sin

Being alone has become taboo. No longer does anyone admit that they are still single or divorced past the age of 45, No longer can you stay alone during the breaks at school because that means you were unworthy of any love to begin with.

And when your heart shatters and you’re left all alone, you realize you’re in truth still accompanied by the fear of loneliness and you stand still in the space of your dark room, torn between truth and desire your abdomen slowly shattering, breaking in two and leaking your heart out.

You grow a certain proclivity for being alone because you’re not sure you even contain any heart after spending last night counting the hours of night between 11 and 3, fighting for your life agaisnt the lack of opponent.

But then it hits you “What if I were to be alone?” you start exploring the dark rooms with curiosity rather than fear that acknowledgment of death itself. “I will never find anyone to love.” But you will slowly grow indifferent, even blithe to the fact that your mind is lost to you through every day you count the nights. you see the freedom in realizing no one, not even you, will cry when faced with impending doom.

Fear has become your lover, you are now unshakable.

They speak of the man who went through hell and back to find his lover. They speak of his doubt and their need for one another.

But how did Eurydice feel as she was escalating the grandeurs of Hades’ beloved lair, holding her only hopes in a hand colder than the surrounding air.

Was she nervous or scared for her soul was she terrified that his, so intertwined with hers, would also perish? Was she so focused on her goal that she forgot to signal that she was still there to the man she would so cherish?

As she was suffocating in the dissonance of surrounding heat, far from the esoteric feeling of deliverance by only a few feet, her thoughts travelled far and fell out of reach, as she is now far below the man she would once preach :

can you see me as I hold your hand, Orpheus? Can you see that I am there as you traverse Satan’s home, Orpheus? Can you see that I am by your side as you burn through the flames, Orpheus?

Can you see that I am right behind you, Orpheus? Can you feel my breath as you bend and splinter under the pressure? Why do I feel your hesitance, Orpheus? Don’t you trust me, Orpheus?

Will you turn back on your path one last time as you simultaneously bid me your last murderous farewell? Will you dishonor the words of Beelzebub himself to glare upon my tearing face and make sure that it, unlike any mortal disgrace ended by death, would be eternal? Will you turn back to assess in the red moonlight that my body is still yours? Will I then be taken away from you and become but an ephemeral memory?

Orpheus, focus on your step. Orpheus, do not dare turn your neck. Orpheus, please. Orpheus.

I can’t help it. The way you talk to me feels like The sweet fragrance after rain. The magnificence of a castle. A hypnotizing waltz.

You pull me in and throw me out, A bittersweet way to love. The bitter taste is the coffee of fear Seeping into my every vein Keeping me up at night.

Then the sweetness comes in Making me doubt my senses Float in a heaven of agony.

We do not share our values, Our lives, Our heartbeat. Yet yours, Yours seems light and appeasing While mine is heavy on my limbs.

Oh, how I wish to be your heartbeat. How i wish to be yours.

Maybe it was the summer filled air, maybe it was the new color of her hair. She had changed so much i could not recognize her touch.

In the crowded airport of my life, i bid farewell to a stranger. with a smile that felt like a knife and a tear for the remainder of her kindness. of our history of my blindness of her toxicity.

So the tear would barely shine and the soul hardly affected for someone who had neglected a heart as tender as mine.

The sound of the shovel hitting the earth again and again was nearly deafening. Piercing and butchering the dirt, Michael was growing tired, no sign of dead bodies.

“oh my god, oh my god! I can’t believe we’re actually looking for these guys, are we fucking insane?! They’re dead! For fuck’s sake..dead and gone and we won’t find them! ” His voice was hoarse and raspy, like the song of an old bell. The general panic over my confession had confused everyone’s sense of direction.

Lost in their thoughts, they simply wandered to find the hidden graves, praying they won’t stumble into hell. Now there they are, all before me, at my place of sin.

Michael kept digging as Lione and I watched, his muscles pulling back and forth, the sweat mixing with the dirt fallen on his forehead.

“Where’s Clay?” Her soft voice rang in my ears, in between sobs, her words were barely understandable. Lione’s eyes were scrutinizing me. At every turn of the wet eyeballs, i felt her hope and fear.

I simply smiled as an answer. The shovel hit a skull, as samuel screamed in excruciating horror.

So i sat on the plastic chair, worn out and cracked from years of usage. Blowing softly on the cup of noodles before me, i listened to my cousin’s tales.

She would act the sorrowful scenes, while we watched in mortified peace. Sitting in a circle, the yellow lights hung on the trees above, the winds chanting along with her.

Like an old song that brings comfort, the grass and the stories, the food and the family, in the middle of the night playing card games, all ears in the dark.

My little brother such a sore loser, when he lost the act would have to stop as we realized the noodles were now cold the night almost concluded the sun showed and our eyes closed.

i smiled in the face of it all the narratives my cousin acted and the tears my brother cried the moon’s soft laughs and the winds beautiful eyes, my cousin’s tales were a lullaby to my never ending sleep.

Blue cardigan.

The man’s pink hair was flowing on his shoulders when I invited him in. A novelty he was, when he came into my apartment. He later grew dull as i slowly learned his name. Walking into his messy room, i saw mountains of small black notebooks, all looking exactly alike, along with canned beers scrambled on the floor, leaving his desk to be the only perfectly clean part of his room. It seemed like he lived in small patches: A corner for messiness; another for art; then for cleanliness; the last for the slow death of his character. A person so interesting that the bright colors of his soul were tiring to look at, even for him i believe. The smiles faded as the months went by. His hair no longer flowed, it was now cut to his ears. Occasionally (and the more i think about it, it increased gradually) I noticed a soft moaning in the middle of the night, like the howl of a small wolf, some kind of cry. So after nights of admiring his every habit and every shape, the black under his eyes get deeper and deeper with winter coming in, the blue cardigan and the pink hair left. I had to welcome another roommate.

Long legs.

The first thing that hit me, as i watched him arrange the boxes in his room, was his peculiar height. A tall, fit man that could be mistaken for a model, could have been one if he tried. He never emptied them, these boxes. They remained completely full until his last night. This one helped with the dishes, unlike the other renter, he was less of an inconvenience and more of a mystery. Some days he would be gone, out of sight and almost out of mind. Until he came back, cleaned the entire house, then sat in his room. One particular thing I remember is how he spent every night—when he was there, at least—looking for something in the newspapers. Undivided attention would go into reading each and every single page, then he would give in to exhaustion at three in the morning, every single night. One foggy morning, after he had done the dishes with me for the eight-hundred’th time, I decided to present some of my gratefulness. I asked him about his papers, i asked him if i could help. He was suddenly bewildered, scrambling through the stack of papers on his desk (the only messy part of his room), his eyes darting from one corner to the next and his tongue forming incoherent syllables. “Please never ask such questions again” He finally said. The next morning, he was gone.

Explanatory mouth.

The third and final time i rented out the room, a woman, old as an oak, stayed there for exactly 5 nights. Her chapped lips and dry tongue almost repulsed me, but her mind kept bringing me back to experience something unexplainable. One might say she was deranged, i would now say she was right to act this way. The first night, as she moved in, murmurs kept evading her mouth, almost fighting to get out. As low as they were, they felt excruciatingly loud. Especially when i heard the names of my first two roommates, over and over again. The woman was both an inconvenience and a mystery. Some days she rocked back and forth on her bed, repeating words until she fell asleep. Other days she was functional, no more no less. I watched her almost constantly, borderline obsessed; some kind of passion had emerged for her. She kept repeating the names. She only ate twice her entire stay, she never did need to help me with the dishes. And she kept repeating each name, each time clearer than the last. Three nights had passed when i finally got weary of her misconstructed sentences and unexplained coincidences. So I asked about everything, at that time, i simply exploded. Some might say i was deranged, i don’t know if i was right to act that way. After my uncontrollable anger was subdued, she described pink hair and vivid colors, her soft son that she hadn’t seen for months and missed so dearly, assassinated by a man with attentive eyes and a cautious lifestyle. The police were looking for long legs, long legs killing a blue cardigan. Torturing night after night, stab after stab. The woman finally rested after bursting from the story held inside her heart. I never rested a single day after.

I simply didn’t understand. No explanation and no heart.

He poured out his love like a shot of vodka, then left it sticking on the cold floor.

A silence filled the party as his lips touched hers, she touched his clothes like they were made of satin, his chest like his heart was made of gold.

I tried and tried asking why, he didn’t understand, i didn’t either, the silence did.

A slow breeze travelled through the door, and as he left, he shut it wide open.