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A Boy Bent on Disaster and a Girl with Rainbow Hair New Fiction By Valerie David I am lying on my back beside you to find myself in the lyrics that we listen to - Concrete Blonde, and in the shades of emotion that are my poets rhyme, lying nearby in a red notebook upon the floor. It is 7 AM, birds chirp outside my window and the sun has risen, playing in beams through the chinks in the red blinds. The light invades our privacy, we lie together upon my bed, locked in my room, bound by our secret world. Looking at you beside me, I trace the curve of your cheek, run my fingers through your hair. It is soft and thick, reminding me that you are real. Here in my world, to open your eyes and look at me, you lay on top of me and press your lips against mine. This is all you've ever known of love, your hands on my body - you breathe in short gasps. My head falls back against the wooden frame and I close my eyes. Later in whispers we speak, tangled in each other's arms, my hand on your tattooed skin, my heart in your fist. You will never understand how this hurts me so. You ask if I have chosen feelings or friendship. You ask my purpose for asking you to enter this world with me once again. "Because I love you," I say. No matter that I am only 16, that everyone tells me I'm too young to understand love. They say that life is going to change for me, some years from now I'll be looking back and see things differently. Quite possibly I'll be someone else, in another life, another world. A world without you, a world where you are only a memory of this lost and distant time and place in today. Today You rest your unshaven cheek on my bare legs. Last night there was no time to shave. On speed we found no time to sleep or eat or breathe. Only time to sneak inside and out of our minds. "Feelings," I tell you. "Of course I will choose feelings." Two cigarettes lit, ashtrays split on the floor, I get up to crack the window. Mom's gone now, to work, so I turn up the music a little. You're rolling a joint on my red notebook. Walking across the room with barefeet I can feel sticky dirt on the wood floor. Wanting to wash, loathing the trash and the dirt instead I collapse beside you on the bed. My eyes are open wide but I can't feel my body. You hold the joint to my lips and play with my hair. On the table beside my bed, the red notebook resting. Inside are pages smeared with ink and tears and blood. Poems and stories. I know that you do not know that they were written for you. Next to it an overflowing ashtray and an empty bottle of Robitussin. Your butane cans litter the floor, I feel the cool aluminum can and roll it back and forth with my foot. "Someone died instantly from sucking on one of those," I tell you. But you are dreaming of Sumo wrestlers and princesses, of flying through brilliantly green trees at breakneck speed. I wonder watching your eyes roll back inside your head, if in my arms you would die. Like in a twist of Romeo & Juliet, I would plunge a dagger into my heart. We will meet again. I touch your face. I tell you that I love you, that I will wait for you until the day I die. Your expressionless eyes stare into mine. You are now a dream, unreal and fading The smoke from your cigarette begins to curl through a sunbeam, twisting like a ghostly thing. The music plays for the dancing curling smoke"Joey, baby, don't get crazy, detours, fences, I get defensive. All is forgiven, listen, listen" I shift my gaze beyond your profile, my red notebook lying there Sleep steals upon us before noon. Wrapped in each others arms we close our eyes. It starts to rain, I fall asleep to the sound of your voice, telling me you will never love another When I awake, I am alone. The room is dark and you are gone. RAPUNZAL'S DREAM Upstairs on the third floor Imprisoned In her mirror a monster lived He had no soul, he was only an image In a mirror on the wall Princes with dreds paced to and fro, Waiting below for the girl upstairs To throw out her latest poetry Twice a day she kicked her leg out Combat boot white sock and all Dreams on paper fell from the wind Dreams of the monster that lived in her mirror One day when peering down from her window She saw a boy out walking Unlike the princes with dreds He whistled softly and stopped to speak To the trees A silken song, streaming waving Fanning out into the wind From his hair Looking up He saw her there She threw him no poems, she just smiled She was the girl he loved once Long ago In her throat a curling thorny vine In his hand, silken petals A blue brilliance glowing, A dream of the ocean and the last to survive When she looked, the monster in her mirror was no more Free from her prison She and the body tiptoed across waves And became invisible The poetry she once threw to the princes below Became a great wind and then silence She's got a pile of poems To burn in August With all the leaves PAPER SUN We are looking - We three little girls, At paper suns and flowers, shadows on the tile of the kitchen floor Glass shatters, on a boat, in a bar Out of the 2nd story window, three gypsies cut their feet A poet, a painter, a pianist They sit and watch him die, eyes closed Silent guitar asleep on his chest No walls cave in as three little blondes Wearing combat boots fail to greet him There is no melody to follow anymore And this is my world, Driving across the universe
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