andrew'n'margo.
He doesn't love her, but says it anyway, and she does, but can hardly look at him. she says, instead: "but oh my darling, why did you change?" and he can only watch her push shades over the lamplights--yellow sheets, that make it look a brighter color, Andrew thinks it's a secret that the light is white on the other side--Margo knows that the whole world knows, she knows what they know, and cana't really smile over it, because Andrew still cries, sometimese, only sometimes, between the earliesstt and latest hours. She'll say, "darling, you're a boy," and mean child with damp, crusted eyes.

Sunday morning, and he stops by, torn jeans and white t-shirt, toastandeggs to go for two, "breakfast in, dear?" he asks, and kicks off his shoes by the door. "margo, margo." and he works late, into those hours before, he works too late, and she waits, wwaits and wonders and guesses things that could be wrong. "I love you," he says, and misses lunch in, but says, "sorry, I'm so sorry," with flowers picked from the neighbor's rotting pot. he doesn't mean it, and she could never figure why he cries. Margo doesn't cry, Andrew would say. In love. in love, in love, somethiing like that, although he's never read those sorts of books, only ttexts on the fall of the roman empire, and 1001 Ways to Live Longer.

she falls out of love, he blinks and smiles.

she forces it. she always has, and whn he says, "do you think it's time i move in?" she can only push her hangers to the left side of the closet and slide ovr in bed, press her hands to his chest and think "okay," as tthey kiss. she never meant to love him, and never meant not to. She had asked: "Do you love me?" He said: "why would you ask a quetion like that?" and when she meant for him to kiss her, he only smiled. There are things she never told him: thoughts into gray files, slices of paper with thin lines of neat handwriting. "Never again," one says, and when their shoulders brush, she makes herself still, anad thinks: "nothing, it means nothing." one day, she has fallen out of love--she always was so productive, her teachers would say.

he blinks, he smiles, and finds her face beautiful, in the way it is turned away. She says: "I didn't tell you how great you were" and he cannot speak. He is beautiful. The sort of man the girls line up along the walls for, giggle into their palms, say: "that man is beautiful." The sort of man, with friends who can't decde if they want to be him or be with him--it's not wrong with him. She falls out, and he faalls in, and wonders if that was how it always was. He says: "Margo, Margo, dear, would you care for a walk by the park?"

and she onlysys: "Good bye."

That reminds me of sex. 69, the way it is and all. It's filthy, filthy and fucking and sweaty palms.

so? so the crickets are loud tonight. hroug the glass andhte walls, atleast. i've been far today, and I couldn't say way, although I've been told, and if you thought the wood was warm... well. Well.

Well: everything is sticky, sticky, fuckingsticky, and it's tiny bits of water, I like salt water best, and "it's all yours" or so he says, but i'd rather you have it, anyway, but cana't figure why. My lips feel sown shut sometimes, thick needles and blood that drips and floods andn washed over, like dew and rain and fog, red looks bright against whitee, against gray. I've no preference for color, although I like thte scent of grass. I've no preference for...

Well, so. Stupid children anda their stupid familise and 'no, that is not recommended.' but sure,yes, at leasat wash your hands, use a condom, sterilize your needles/knives/pitchers. pictures. i was a piicture, once, a polaroid, "M. age 3" scribbled to the bottom in pencil, someone tore it up, someone lost it in tthe piles, someone lft itdown stairs, and now I'm only this. i have a picture of you, though, posted to my wall, and i can remember a time when we smiled togethr, spoke together, and it was more than ink. but ink is lovely in the right lighting. squint. click, the fucking cd player doesn't work. i'm waitin gfor a call and can't see 'round the corner of the building. I've been promsied it's there, though. there are mirrors, reflecting one image across themselves, and it's a promise.


they say: just a promise of sleep, though.
Okay. i believe you.