. to chase is always past tense .

... it roars in, sounds, lights, colors, blurring movement, cold, light rain, voices, deep bass from bars, laughter, and the cuneiform calligraphic dismay.

If I told you this is how the moments, those compository fragments of our joined spirits pass, would you argue? Is life, or in my case, existence, so different? I feel the bellows of the hallways breathe, do you not? The gray black and white of it, all the shades of us in our collapse; you leaving me, joining me, tempting me, now having all of me. Perhaps it is only we, as contemporaneous meldings, who perceive in this manner? Can you see us now? I’m here, always for you, because of you, needing you. Take us in deeply, feel my shuddering form; warm us please, I’m so very cold.

Take hold of me wherever you lay; whomever with you lay; in those moments of release which you suffer gladly under, recognize me beneath your shuttered lids, share our skin. I am there flattened to the roof of your mouth testing his taste, feeling the slide, clinging tight and becoming your secret pallet for this. The anathema of what it once was.

The bus is quiet, behind me three college girls, so cute and busy chattering – one leans over and touches my shoulder “How did you get that braid to hold like that?” “It’s an ancient pattern from the Baltic and the knots used are even older than I.”

i look good today

Freshly showered
hair tight knotted Baltic braid
make-up more than usual
fall copper
Caffeine fix lips
yours if you want

.i have a note.
42.9 gig of 624 gig
10 year long conversations
love frustration anger
music we traded
photos of our faces

.the nurse.

.the room.

dusk dark

screen glow

her silence

while her fingers flew

i knew

.castoffs.

You want it?

There’s a nod, a drift of eyes from mine to lower

Then take it make it yours.

même plus petits moments de plaisir peuvent récompenser; car ils détournent du vide plus grande au sein de nos âmes

 .researcher.

He takes volumes of photographs, occasionally mounting filters, tints, using flash in macro settings for intense detail of after effects; the granularity of detailed imagery with the use of the newest of digital tech, ensuring that no portion of any scene escapes his need. Squatting and smoking from the edge of the reported upon event site he wishes he’d been here earlier, closer to its date of occurrence. ‘How could she have escaped?’ Later, in thin hours, he pores over the imagery, CS6 using tricks and more filters and grimacing at what seems to lurk still unclear. His eyes ache and the transparent plastics of his glasses printed with the oils of his fingers he yearns to scream out his frustration.

He’s spent hours in the local library, and then again with the microfiche collection at the University. Dead ends and partial statements; mysteries upon whispers upon rumors laid in funereal hopes decorated in bunches of lily-scented secretiveness. Had it really been her? It seemed undeniable. To where might they have disappeared? ‘Would all of that have been possible in the passage of only six hours?’ They’d gone in together.

His yellow legal pads have Venn diagrams, intersections of lists of names dates and times, concurrent sightings with arrows drawn in perfect curves from one entry to another until it looks as though he’s been plotting oceanic tidal flows, wind pressure directional zones. There are long detailed records of interviews given; though many have redaction strikes still./24 He’s interviewed as many as he can locate; even the officers present at the scene, the neighbors though most were Uni students who’ve drifted or graduated. The Postal Service employee who’d had that route, the volunteer fireman, Don, who’d stirred the ashes and remaining embering beams; his lists and scribbled notes never quite complete. He has chased down every lead to every location mentioned, documented, confirmed and accounted for. The yellow pads tower in stacks; edged with tiny tinted transparent markers, rippled with scraps of napkins scrawled upon, ticket stubs, task lists, business cards with coffee stains. Their blue lined compression leers in unbalanced sickly taunting jaundiced glows. The darkened reading room breathes in sighs this late at night.

“There's a dimensional operation to this black hole of desire I feel for her /25; I'm convinced; spending hours into the night scribbling formula. My physical shape twisted by her found music, to the recovered images, to these slightly heard whispers, in an externally intruding effort to find fit; my back and shoulders in constant ache. Did you hear that? I don’t yet even understand this presence of her drawing me onward deeper and more lost than I ever was as a child in my family’s winter pine forest. They found me in the pines that day, shivering and with blued fingers. Later in the dacha my sister asked, “What did you think you were doing Misha?” With clicking teeth I told her that the Winter Queen has taken my hand. She’d laughed and joked with our mother over it; but it was true. I need to check on that noise …”/12

"Mandy ... i saw the original photo set of that hooded girl ... is that you? Are you the model? Mandy? Mandy? Are you there? Mandy?"

No Leana I'm that thin now, and paler, but my nose isn't that noble. You know how I adore noses ...

“My responsibilities are my compass, without them I would be lost.” - @ Maxine12333

They are my constraining fence and as they fade i am freed to rage, to taunt myself, to fade at edges I designed. - @ blondeonhorse

.warehoused.

In my mind, that portion of it that machines away in lists, probabilities, preparations and “Plan B”s, I’ve made check-marks toward completion.

Stolen Ford Taurus – crossed off in that neon glow
Driven to location A for confirmations, task information - open
Dump Taurus - open

“You understand your requirements for the transaction?”
“It’s clear.”
“You will have the necessary equipment for conveyance?”

I ignore him as he goes through the extents of his own list, making only the perfunctory gestures. He seems nervous, the slight sheen of perspiration on his forehead and upper lip; his tell. ‘Why’s he nervous, he has a reputation.’ His wool suit stinks of the rain. Seated in this small office the stench of it is beginning to make me nauseous. There’s a second presence; not unusual but it’s making me jittery, a black guy who’s huge. I can only make out his darker shadow presence over beside the steel of the draw bay door.

I tire of his nattering and raise my hand in an open facing palm of irritation. “I know my job.” He rises and I see the extent of his shapelessness; he eats too much and sweats too much. There’s a stain on the place where his belly presses against his shirt, and his formula blue tie is twisted slightly crooked. He’s just too mid-management. “Right, then you will receive your final payment when the consignment is delivered.” I only nod, not even able to bear the sight of his pocked face any longer, and thanking the gods that he won’t be there at the turn over. ‘But why is he nervous?’

They leave, him with that hulking Michelin Man step that overweight men take on with the growth to their thigh girth, and his companion who moves like another warehouse shadow, until silhouetted, fills the human door to the right of the draw bay steel. That black shadowman turns slightly in that light, back lit and only a presence staring at me for a moment. He thins, and rippling, fades like a desert apparition.

I don’t switch the light off in the office. I’ve touched nothing, disturbed none of the dust; there’s nothing of me left. I’ve worn no perfume or scents of me to even inform the air of my non-presence here. I leave the door open and move back into the rain. Another neon glow slice drawn across my item list.

everyone has secret names - some given on their Name Day - some from families - some so secretly earned that only lovers know their pronunciations

“Has this happened before?”
“I don’t know; a couple of times maybe.”
“Breathe from here … try deeper if you can manage.”
“I think I’m okay now; I was just surprised is all.”
“Come in; you came alone?”
“I’m never alone now.”
“Then we are three.”
…
“Yes. Of course.”
“Sit down here now, let me get you a blanket. There’s no need to be anxious; you’re safe with me.”
“Thanks, it’s so very cold here; … listen to that wind!”
“It always is this here.”

.cannot see myself.

have my skins faded?
i feel the missing stones
of my Black Sea bones
that once cracked
in morning thunders
she counted

shuddering within the hollows of stretching floors
bracing as firmly as my weakened arms allow
between these narrow walls

Footnote 12. Op. cit

Footnote 24. See “Grand Jury Testimony: Case 2014-11-03-24119” - 27^th Judicial Circuit of Virginia” ewsocis1.courts.state.va.us/CJ…

Footnote 25. "Mathematics of Desire, Gordon Rugg" 2014 hydeandrugg.wordpress.com … I jotted notes though this was not the source I’d contemplated; related were the studies on the chemical hormonal attributes of the physical love stasis from the 1990s – though they to yield little in modeling numericals. Though Journaled, I’ve lost those bookmarked pages … my research of her remains incomplete.

© Amanda 2014
Image: "maranatha" by © 2014

poetic exchange © @ Maxine12333 and @ blondeonhorse 2014 - edit note: just push the s and the names together - we are creatures of Twitter™