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Daily Deviation
Daily Deviation
March 20, 2011
Whiskey boy, ruby boy. by *sirenseranade11 creates two inevitably intertwining stories with lyrical phrasing and well-chosen details.
Featured by Halatia
Literature Text
1. It has been twenty seven days since I last let the
hawk-eyed man into my head, ninety four hours
since I last drank myself to sleep, and thirty two
minutes since I last kept my mother from the truth.
Tonight, she still thinks I have hope, but it may be
the last time she believes I'm still whole.
2. The last time my father crossed the ocean, I explained
to my mother that the cogs ground too hard, that the
words cut too deep, that I was the kind of sick that
machines couldn't fix, that x-rays couldn't see. And
as his plane landed in Amsterdam, my mother laid
across my bed and asked me where she had failed, but
who was I to break her heart. She cried until the sunset,
until my father called, when she walked back to her room,
avoiding my eyes. We never spoke of it again.
3. My mother does not sleep, and some nights when the boy
comes to my window, I wait to hear her weighted breathing
outside my door. She never breaks the silence. As I'm
removing the screen and closing my eyes and hoping it's a
dream, she's listening to the walls creak and letting me escape
into the foggy orange sky. She turns off the light and pretends
she doesn't know.
hawk-eyed man into my head, ninety four hours
since I last drank myself to sleep, and thirty two
minutes since I last kept my mother from the truth.
Tonight, she still thinks I have hope, but it may be
the last time she believes I'm still whole.
i. Last night, I dreamt of the boy next door, the gun
in his drawer, the whiskey under his bed, the hate
in his eyes when he drags me out of bed to tell me
I've ruined another story, I've fanned another flame.
This boy does not know my mother, but I suspect
they would get along quite well.
2. The last time my father crossed the ocean, I explained
to my mother that the cogs ground too hard, that the
words cut too deep, that I was the kind of sick that
machines couldn't fix, that x-rays couldn't see. And
as his plane landed in Amsterdam, my mother laid
across my bed and asked me where she had failed, but
who was I to break her heart. She cried until the sunset,
until my father called, when she walked back to her room,
avoiding my eyes. We never spoke of it again.
ii. Some nights, I am addicted to this boy, this whiskey boy,
this ruby boy, this chemical boy who tells me it's okay to
die, it's okay to fail as long as he's waiting beneath my
window with something to wash the razors down. Some
nights, I hate him, I wish I never knew him, I wish I never
opened the window and whispered his name through the
dark. The next morning, his taste always haunts my lips
and his ruby touch stains my hips, the ghost of his scent
burns my throat until I want it, I need it. He never leaves,
and I don't want him to go. Perhaps I'm in love, perhaps
I'm insane. Perhaps I'm asleep just waiting to be woken up.
3. My mother does not sleep, and some nights when the boy
comes to my window, I wait to hear her weighted breathing
outside my door. She never breaks the silence. As I'm
removing the screen and closing my eyes and hoping it's a
dream, she's listening to the walls creak and letting me escape
into the foggy orange sky. She turns off the light and pretends
she doesn't know.
iii. My whiskey boy does not love me,
he only loves watching me burn.
Literature
Oranges
morning lifts to the smell
of oranges
he enters her eyes, a
stranger waving away
her dreams, which are thick and rough-skinned as the
carpet beneath her soles
she is getting up,
clinging to the up
because down
is a quiet fruit that she'd
rather not peel
alone
Literature
a tongue of tea leaves
she has spoken with a tongue of tea leaves
the autumn pied piper
across discarded beer bottles
plays to the phantoms
of summer
the wind, her dusky eyes
a twinge to her rouged lips
rouge, and ragged
her nail polish sparkles
little asteroids glitter
like Orion's belt
she has three places, out of time
three droplets of crystal
the crystalline
she, with her tongue of fortunes
the divine, prediction, prey and predator
she's counting courtship flowers
the tolling bells
among absinthe and aromatic rings
the nettle and bee stings
so that between chances
Literature
I Used To Be A Fox
To be a fox again, slender was my frame for once in my adult years,
the fat of my gluttony shed for a moment, like the athletic child I'd been.
Still, so hungry I bit and bat at the terrified rabbits, snapping a neck,
and so I began to eat a dear old friend of mine, none the wiser, poor Julia.
On the eve of our downfall, the cities stopped their incessant buzzing,
Rockets froze in the air, vapour and fire became a beautiful thing.
Some tired, bored creator, caught in a moment of whimsy,
Shifted our souls from one thing to the next, a wonderful game it must have been.
As a grasshopper, I perched on a tear in a paper door, playing my n
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Comments75
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I like this. At first glance the words are just a deranged ramble but with the whole picture in view, all the lines write a story. I'm sure it's different for others, the subtext - fill in the blank, open for interpretation and all that jazz but this story reminds me of the discomfort and discontent of being an outlier in polite society. You can't really train out the difference that people innately distrust but you can mask it under darkness for the sake of normalcy and mothers, mostly for mothers.
Or maybe I just like it, because the to and fro fits easy with the way my brain connects the dots and the concept rings true in my head.