my hallway could be a river

I found her repeatedly jumping out a large wooden wedding cake on the cliff overlooking the lake. She said she was obsessed with the idea: the surprise, the male fascination with sudden and bursting femininity, the pink tutu.  I was walking away as a drunken avocado from that night’s costume party. I was paper-mache, chicken wire and green paint. It was 2 a.m. and there we were on that cliff: her, the center of a wedding cake, and me, the center of an avocado. 

After she helped me out of my costume we sat there on the edge of the cliff, our legs pendulant. The lake was below us. We had nothing to say really. Her cake was on its side, lifeless. My avocado was on its side, a shell torn at the arm holes. When we made love i couldn’t help but think that we were just two passing invalids, both of us representing only the center of worthwhile things. It was easier for me to concentrate on the lake than her body, though they were both dark and looked like desert. 

I remember when she tore that pink tut from her waist as if it were some large production, as if some brass section somewhere, maybe down by the lake, should take notice and salute her suddenly exposed hips. It was a night of being backstage i thought, where nothing held its illusion, where everything was exposed as an actor. 

-Zachary Schomburg

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race” - Calvin Coolidge

He pulled away in a truck. Like the front half of a big rig. It was purple. Because size and physics don’t apply in dreams as he pulled out he passed under a car and then another as the car spun around amity street. Looking from the window his steering wheel was engulfed in purple flames about indiscrrnable from the royal shade of the cab. Charcteristically he leaned further back in his chair. Get out get out. He was driving on the right. There was no left door. With a smirk and pomp he calmly tried to blow out the flames like he was blowing a kiss. The door was on fire. None of us moved. My voice barely squeeking from my throat. The flames caught him and he tumbled out onto the pavement in front of ua the flames now swaddling his body. I looked over to his ben standing behind the bar next to the fire extinguisher. No one moved. No one spoke.

I opened my eyes and repressed the urge to puke.

Even in my dreams we are careless and indifferent.

Today I wrote you a letter I’ll never send. There’s nothing for you there. Sure, you made me a better woman but I made you a well dressed Man.