Yuki! Yuki! Yuki!

Blessing; snow. The sounds that don’t wake me up
in morning.
Little taps on eyelids and hair cells with tips of fingers,
little sweeping hands on ivory keys.

No one heard the Fugue in the night when he died.
Little pricks of blessed snow: It was the sounds
that didn’t wake me up.

That night in muddy water he imagined the piano by the window
and his wife’s scarf wrapped around his granddaughter’s head.
The first Christmas she decided not to trust;
her faith washed away like his life in the river.

Japanese chants trickle by and all she can understand
about a blessing
is the snow, a winter to end all.

Little slender fingers around mallets don’t pound out funeral melodies
but songs mimicking the way water moves.
All tears will be different, frozen. All rain drops become their own
when it’s cold enough.

The simplicity of Japanese folk songs is the ominous quiet
before the gusts and crashes of night;
the kind of silence one feels he must grab hold of.

The piano by the window swells with tiny frozen notes
that come through the window and melt into the wood.
Who taught his granddaughter to play this box? She sings
of cities, her fingers a flurry to rest on a black-and-white landscape.

She’s sorry about the ice. Or, she wishes she was sorry about ice.
But she lives a winter without the burdens of a birth she never found all that

fascinating.

Little Japanese blessings nestle into the scarf woven into her hair,
the Western canon shaken off like loose flakes that dissolve into the floor,
swelling the wood in obscure ridges like Braille for bare feet.

A death she foresaw.

Rolling the plastic baby Jesus over on her tongue
to discover the gustations of a miracle,
she leaves the table of a dozen people who fear they might have
consumed sacrilege.

Little hands clap together to spark an epiphany;
all she can remember is that her grandfather was too young.
The look of a river with a million plastic dolls floating through
all she knows is religion let her grandfather die too young.

She only wanted the blessing of moving water.

The only blessings are frozen.
Little farmer folk songs ring through the trees,
a peasant’s queen
steps into the river, her Christmas dress unfurling,
a blossom in the muddy water.

Wading to where her grandfather should have died
on a faithless holiday
all that kiss the surface are little rimy blessings.

Welcome to Lancaster's

my life hasn't even been kind of productive as of late. It's a shame. I wrote this a long long time ago. It was inspired mostly by all the weird looks I get in grocery stores and my friend's job at Wal-Mart.

Welcome to Lancaster’s

Condoms, a fire extinguisher, and calamine lotion.
She ducks her head.
I have to hold back a laugh.
Debit or credit, I ask.
Is he really that much of a freak, I wonder.
I chuckle. She probably notices.
For the record, I understand that I tend not to be a discreet person. But really, she’s making this too easy for me.
I have to wonder what kind of night she has planned. I mean, I don’t want to visualize her—with her frizzy aisle 5A bottle blonde hair and aisle 7B shadow/liner combo—having any sort of crazy sexual encounter with anyone, but I can’t help but wonder how comic the unfolding of that night would be.
But back to business...
Debit or credit, I ask again after a silent second. Maybe she forgot I was here. She’s gone to picking her aisle 7B nail polish—‘Reddy To Mingle’ is the oh-so clever name of that shade of red that’s coquettish in the I’ll-suck-your-dick kind of way. It’s chipping and flaking at the cuticle. I want to tell her to drink more water; that it’ll make her hair and nails healthier; that her cuticles won’t shred and tear and shrink like that anymore. But she looks like she has other things on her mind. I don’t want to burden her with such frivolous information.
Debit or—
She cuts me off before I have a chance to ask her again. Cash is what she tells me. She’ll pay cash.
“$73.19,” I tell her. “Are you sure you want to pay with cash?”
But of course, she’s determined. She’s digging through her pockets and purse, pulling out eighty dollars in crumpled bills. And I thought no one carried around cash like that anymore.
Maybe she held up a bank with a ski mask from aisle 19B on her way over here. Or maybe it was her who had issues with the ATM twenty minutes ago. (Maybe working from ten to six in a place like this every day actually makes you crazy.)
And again, I want to laugh. I want to laugh until my abdominal muscles ache and my diaphragm spasms and seizes with the lack of oxygen. I want to laugh until I’m dizzy because of hyperventilating. Basically until I’m blue in the face. Until the cows come home. Until I get that degree. Until I get that new job I’ve been intending to look for.
But no, I can’t laugh. I have to be congeal and friendly. They told me that specifically in the staff meeting. They told me “Yes, Leah, that means you Leah. I’m tired at you laughing at people for living their lives. They don’t like it, Leah. It isn’t your place to criticize every person walking through the doors.”
But they don’t have to like my attitude the same way I don’t have to like this job. So the customers can suck it. The managers can suck it too.
But back to business, because I clearly always have my mind on business.
Paper or plastic? I ask it just to fuck with her. I obviously succeed. She gives me a look that could freeze hell over and I want to tell her to wish me her worse; I want to tell her that whatever apocalyptic horsemen she casts unto me couldn’t be more horrendous than this. But I don’t. I just ask her again.
Paper or plastic?
And part of me wonders if she has a gun or a knife shoved in the space between the knock off La Perla bra and the silicone breasts or in the fake Coach purse.
But no, I’m not that lucky.
My jugular is not spouting blood like a cheap fountain.
I am not stabbed on the job.
I am not shot twice in the chest.
I do not have a bullet searing through the gelatinous goo of my brain.
I do not incite murder in others.
But I do happen to incite her to haul her shit up into that big ass purse of hers. The condoms, the calamine lotion, the fire extinguisher. All of it.
I would tell her that she is being very eco-friendly, that she’s helping the environment—just to fuck with her a little more—but she’s huffing away, towards the exit and out the automated glass doors that lead out to the real world (funny, the real world). And she’s gone out in to real life before I have a chance to react, before the transaction is technically complete.
No change.
No receipt.
No bag.
No explanation.
And I want to laugh until I pass out in aisle 15B—with the sugar cereal to my left and the beer to my right.
I would do that but alas, I don’t have the time. There are customers to assist. There is minimum wage to earn. There’s always some shmuck with some crazy combinations like a bible, a six pack of beer, and baby powder right behind the woman who I just scared off. There’s always some misguided lowlife begging for my undivided attention.
And since that’s always there, I’m always here.
I’m always “Did you find everything okay?”
I’m always “Do you have any coupons you’d like to use?”
I’m always “Thank you for shopping at Lancaster’s, please come again soon.” But I always bite my tongue before “Or just don’t” because I actually need this fucking job.

I dunno if people still read this . . .

A short story I wrote.  Please let me know what you think; I'm really insecure about it.

Monday mornings in the cafeteria are awful.  I enter and it reeks of tired, and it’s more than obvious that no one has any desire to be there.  Some kids are off in a corner, trying to finish the last minutes of homework before first period starts while others are just hanging around because hanging out with friends before class is a good alternative to hanging around at home.  The people who are in the cafeteria on Monday mornings are almost always the kids who live across the street from school, and if they didn’t get to school a half hour early they would be, without a doubt, fifteen minutes late each and every day.  

I am not usually in the cafeteria on a Monday morning.  It just happened to be that this Monday morning I woke up earlier than expected, got out of bed earlier than expected, and left my house earlier than expected.  I find a seat away from everyone, and oddly enough it’s a seat directly in the middle of the large room.  I wait.

The people around me are not interesting.  I only recognize a few faces, and even then I don’t know any of them personally.  Of course, this excludes Him, but He sits with Her and They sit together, like everyone else, on the perimeter of the room, Her binder spread out between them.  I can tell from where I’m sitting that it’s math homework and He’s helping Her understand whatever proof She’s trying to complete.  I don’t know either of Them very well, except that He’s in my grade and She’s a grade below.  They’ve been dating for a while now, and They remind the school of it constantly by kissing at all spare moments.

Like just then.  She finished a problem–all on Her own!–and He kisses her solidly on the mouth.  No tongue, but it’s a kiss that only a loving boyfriend could give his loving girlfriend.  Not the kind that occurs against lockers during change of class that’s always rough and disgusting-looking, but a tender one that will occur when there’s a bond of more-than-average love.  I look back down at the table; letting Them catch me staring would be an awkward to end all awkwards.

I’m not quite sure what to do this Monday morning.  The clock hanging above the door reads fifteen more minutes until first period starts, which means about eight more minutes until my friends appear, and there They are, at it again!  I don’t understand why people find Them gross; it’s really kind of sweet.  It’s nice, that They have each other.  The public displays of affection would make some people mad, but I think it’s kind of adorable.  I can’t help but look at the couples, flirting and smiling, their eyes dancing about, and think how cute they are and how wonderful it must be to stop everything and kiss in the middle of the street and not really care who sees.  How beautiful.

At this moment, You walk in.  You run over to me, long before I had expected You, and You snap me out of my trance.

“OH my God!  Guess who I talked to last night?” You ask, even though You know that I know and You know what my reaction will be.  I say Mitchell in my best monotonous voice, and You say “Duh!” just like You always do, and you sit next to me and you wait for me to ask you for all of the dirty details, but I refrain because I’m not really in the mood.

“What’s eating you?” You ask me and I try to shake You off by calling it the Monday Morning Blues.

“Of course.  WAKE UP!  IT’S MONDAY MORNING!  IT’S NOT THE WEEKEND ANYMORE!” You scream at me.  Usually I am the one screaming at You, and after a morning of watching Him and Her, I don’t really feel motivated to be doing much of anything, but at the same time, I don’t really feel like listening to You yell at me all day, either, so I take your bait and ask what it was he said.

“Well,” You begin, but I stop listening.  You say something about him calling you or you calling him and something about awkward conversation, as if any of this is new or original.  I tell You that You should just go for it with Mitchell–he’s a good guy, and you have a lot in common.  You tell me that I’m crazy.  I shrug it off.  

I sit through class and feign paying attention, and all I can think about is that ridiculous image of Him and Her in the cafeteria.  Three hours and three classes later, I’m back in the cafeteria again and the image is right in front of me again, and You’re in front of me, too.  Everything is always in front of me.  All of the thinking gives me a headache.  You want to go to lunch, but I have no money so we decide to splurge at whoever’s bake sale is in the lobby and hang around the cafeteria.  I make it my mission to avoid sitting near Him and Her, but from the start I know that there will be no avoiding it.  Soon enough, You run off to hang out with one of your freshmen friends and I’m left all alone again.  Story of my life.

And then again someone else is talking to me and I look up and I realize that it’s Ben and that Ben is the one talking to me.  Ben, you are cute, I think to myself, that and Ben, you pay attention to me, and Ben, you could be kissing me right now ‘cause I got a math problem right.  Math isn’t that hard.  I’ll get a thousand right and then Ben will give me a thousand kisses, right?  And then I remember that Ben is talking to me and that I’m not paying attention but with my luck he probably won’t have noticed.  

Ben sits next to me and leans towards me but not like he’s going to kiss me, like he’s trying to figure out what the hell is going on inside of my head.  He asks if We’re still going to hang out after school like We usually do for that hour between classes and extra curricular activities.  I tell him yes and then he finally asks what’s up, like everyone’s been asking, and I tell him that I just want to sleep because really that’s all I want right now, even though nothing’s really stressing me out and I got at least five hours of sleep the night before.  He offers me his shoulder and I take it because maybe he’ll think I’m flirting with him and then maybe he’ll like me except I already know that he kind of likes me and he already knows that I like him but whatever, it doesn’t matter, because neither of us would ever admit it to each other’s faces.

You come back after a half hour of doing whatever with whoever wherever You were and You pull me off of Ben’s shoulder because it doesn’t matter what We have going on that We won’t admit to, he’s still Your best friend.  The period is nearly over and I glance up and force my eyes open and I look away from You and Ben but if I’m not looking at You and Ben the only thing to look at it is Her and Him and they disgust me.  He still helps Her with math and sometimes I wonder if She really needs it or if it’s just an excuse because if it were me it would just be an excuse, even though I would never dumb myself down for a guy, if I had a guy to dumb myself for.  Then lunch is over and everyone packs up and moves to class and tries to navigate through the hallways that are suddenly a lot more crowded than usual in this small school, and I can’t remember which class I have next but it doesn’t really matter since I know that somehow I’ll end up in the right place eventually.

Two more classes and I’m done for the day so I leave the school and go to the top of the hill and I wait for You and Ben and everyone else.  It always surprises me how much faster I walk when I have no where to go, and when I get to the top of the hill and look down I realize that I am the only person there and the first one out of the building, which is stunning for a Thursday afternoon.  Slowly people make their way to the top, some with bags filled with book for studying and a few with nothing at all except their cell phones and cigarettes, which magically come into sight as soon as they exit the doors of the school.  I don’t see Them, but I know that He and She are somewhere in the crowd, making their way home holding hands and stopping on corners for quick kisses.  The thought of it depresses me.

My phone vibrates in my pants and I look at the text message, telling me that You and Ben are almost there and I wonder why You bother to text me that, since I will be seeing you all soon anyway.  Standing up at the top of the hill in my much-too-heavy jacked with my much-too-heavy backpack is awkward and hot and unexciting, except for the large masses of people pushing me away from where I’m supposed to be waiting.  Soon enough I see You approaching with Ben a ways behind and you walk up to me and we “kiss” by pressing our cheeks together, and You rush to tell me about Your plans for the evening so that You can hurry home and leave Ben and me alone.  I tell You that it sounds exciting, and that You really should call Mitchell because I really do think that you would make a good couple.  As always You glare at me and insist it would never work even though I’m sure it really would and we press our cheeks together again and You’re off to the subway before Ben has even made it all the way up the hill.

Again I’m standing their awkwardly waiting at the top and finally Ben is there with me and We decide to go back to school, since We’d just end up back there in an hour anyway and there isn’t really anywhere else to go.  He gives me a hug and We link arms and skip down the hill, almost as if We were together, and even though We aren’t.

Inside the school is empty, since everyone is either in class or outside or home already.  We aren’t sure where to go at first, but quickly decide to just go down to that room in the basement, where We’ll end up in the end anyway.  It’s small, but for some reason when We rush ourselves inside it feels a lot smaller.  We can hear the class being taught next door, probably full of juniors counting down the minutes until they’re finally free to go home.  I put my backpack on the large conference table and Ben does the same and We take off our jackets in unison because it’s hot in this room.  Ben makes his way to the row of computers in the back of the room and I follow him because I don’t have a better idea for what to do, so I let him sit down in front of the Mac with the camera on top and I sit on top of him as usual even though I wouldn’t be surprised if I weighed twice as much as he did because he’s so skinny and so adorable.  And I’m sitting on top of him and he opens up whichever application on the computer lets us take pictures and he presses some buttons and We pose together as if We were in a picture booth.  I’ve never been in a picture booth, and I wish We were right now, for real, because then maybe We’d be more alone than We are right now and then maybe he could tell me that he likes me and We could take pictures of us kissing without it being obscene in the same way that it would be if We took pictures of us kissing on a school computer.  

The minutes pass and We don’t move from the chair, except to switch so that he’s sitting on me instead of vice versa.  I like to smell his hair when he isn’t paying attention, because it smells good even if I can’t recognize the scent.  I play with it a bit, run my hands through it and if he turned around to face me it would be so easy just to bring his head closer towards mine and my fingers would already be running through his hair and it would be all romantic and beautiful just like Him and Her.  I tell Ben that my legs are tired and that he should get up for a minute and he does and I get up and walk around and I wonder out loud whether or not anyone will be coming into the room any time soon.  Ben reminds me that everyone who will be coming into the room later is in class, except for Alex, and Alex wouldn’t come into the room until everyone else does, at least, he shouldn’t.  Yet again I think about how easy it would be for Us to clear off the table and just make out on top of it for the next twenty minutes, and that fault is replaced rather quickly by the thought that reminds me that maybe I don’t really want to be kissing Ben and maybe this whole thing is stupid and nothing will ever happen because neither one of us would ever make the move it takes and a crush is really just something to get over, anyway.

I sit on the reclining chair, off to the side between computers and the printer, almost out of view from the window of the closed door but not quite.  It’s a comfortable chair and I lie back and try to sleep a little bit and then Ben walks over towards me, flirting beyond belief and he knows it and I know it as he approaches me, about to straddle me in the chair.  I welcome him onto my lap and I know and he knows that it would be the perfect opportunity to do whatever we wanted, right then and there, but instead I remind him that someone could walk in at any minute and it would be bad and he agrees with me even though I wish he wouldn’t and he turns around and sits there, and we lie together thinking about how much we maybe want each other until Alex walks in and says hello and we realize that there’s only two more minutes until everyone else crowds into the room and so we both get up and sit around the table and We wait together.