

Portrait of a commuter.You're just a guy, standing at a train station and the person next to you coughs, and straight away it reminds you of the flu you had at Christmas time, right in the middle of all that glorious weather and there you are, wrapped up in the bedclothes at your old house, running the hot water tap cold just for the feeling of it across your hands, back when you were someone else and you were sure as hell happier being someone else because they at least knew themselves, they were never slowed, not by transition nor indifference nor by deceit or a lack of mercy or remorse or even fear, they were never slowed until you came into the picture, with biPortrait of a commuter.


ElsieIt starts quietly, the soft surgical clatter of steel on steel muffled by the door you already know is too thick to break down. Your bruised knuckles remember trying. It starts quietly, but to you, all alone now, the absence of other sound makes it deafening. Still it seems like insufficient outcry. Behind that door, the other girl is about to get murdered. You think her name was Claire. Is Claire. In the past you'd entertained vague notions of what you might do if you were ever abducted. You'd try talking to them, you thought. If you knew them maybe it wouldn't be so frightening, maybe they wouldn't hurt yElsie


Pantoum attemptI think maybe I knew her, once Before there were bones in her smile Something passed between us People fall in love with ideas of peoplePantoum attempt
Before there were bones in her smile Maybe I could have done something People fall in love with ideas of people At night, when the walls are dark
Maybe I could have done something She became an abstract occurring At night, when the walls are dark Not now as she was then
She became an abstract occurring Somewhere in between sleep Not now as she was then It was an ideal we never met
Somew


CouchHe sleeps on the couch almost every night now. She is gone, barely comes back here, but the room has long stopped being theirs, and remains hers. He remembers the night she left, the way her words hung in the air, sank into the walls. Left their scent.Couch
In between the static glow of the television and the feel of lukewarm ceramic mug against his fingers, he wonders if he'd always had this...in-between within him. He remembers vaguely similar sensations, but only ever as transitory things, a quiet between moments. Never before has it held any permanence.
Really he doesn't even miss her. Her reasons were good ones, and
Devious Comments
FIRST COMMENT!!
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-Angelus Mortis Sum Nunc Morieris-
"Wrapped in a most humorous sadness"
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