I'm going to dance on my own grave

[foxtongue]

A ghost slid into bed this morning and placed a little kiss on my lips. He was cocaine pale like a stone and as smooth as if water tumbled. I frowned and turned my head, the dead are not welcome in my bed, but he was persistent. My body began to hold the smell of suicide, of unhappy older women trapped in elevators. A long way to hell, I thought. The distance between his chilly hands and the last button of my shirt. The dead are clever, they orbit the lonely like satellites. They are a constant undertow trying to drag dreams too deep, close enough for them to touch. They promise success, but deliver only the cold light of the television. And this one was trying to take off my shirt.

The other side of time, I might have let him. The static song of his seduction was soothing, calming as a technocratic lullabye. Instead I opened my eyes, reached out my hands, and tangled his wings with the wire and string of my hair. Ghosts are small, collections of mental bacteria built up over uninteresting lives. They are usually as romantic to the eye as a plain white t-shirt. Capturing them is only difficult if you believe in angels and I am too old now. All my bridges with mystery were burned a long time ago. Sitting up, I examined the glow I caught. His eyes were a building tumbling down, a video clip on constant repeat, surrounded by a halo of jasper. A city creature then, sailing his ship through history. I wonder if he regrets how he survives. The lives he must have crept into as a memory, the ambitions and aspirations he'd cruelly siphoned off paper hearts to live off. I swear they have intelligence. Some inbred understanding of language, built layer by layer as they accumulate.

Romance lasts little over a year, Italian scientists believe.

she is so pretty, so pretty, yes, like I remember, oh milk, they gave me milk, like pixies, a thousand names, pale like I am now, but to live, oh pretty, fire, flame, smoulder, a lamp dying, oh to touch, rain, blood, she burns, a spoken word, glimmering, pale like crystal, her skin, give me, please, her skin like milk

Kiss may have been fatal.

There are small silver scissors next to the bed. I take them and cut the ghost from my body. It's still whispering, wrapped in my hair, waiting to wreck the party, but quieter now. I'm beginning to be awake enough to think. I lie back in the bed and watch the steel gray dawn coming in. Last night's phonecall was me drunkenly walking a crooked line. I remember every word he said, how he's busy lately, how the world is spinning too fast for a visit. His absence must have been broadcasting as loudly as teenagers flirting at a check-out counter for the ghost to have found me so recklessly easy. It's either merciful or frightening to think that the slippery sound of my heart is so enticing. Maybe I should use some of those orange pills in the cupboard.

In the kitchen I find a jar the size of a fishbowl to put my new pet into. I spit into it and punch holes into the lid with a fishing knife before dropping him in with a crumpled page from one of my favourite books. The words reverberate and the paper begins to decay softly around him as he makes a little bed. Another happy ending ruined. The idea scrapes at the embers of my ruined evening and fuels my inner annoyance at how easily I push over. If I were a better person, I would stand up for myself, pound on the stubborn shore at the ugly sea that's been drowning me. This is what I tell myself as I pour myself a glass of water. I pop the pills and notice the ghost is glowing brighter. Feeding him with my saliva was a good idea. Keeping him around will force me to resist the urge to burn this place down.

Comments

[uminthecoil.livejournal.com]

Mmmm...always beautiful...always a time well spent.
I may never have the proper powers of pen and time to illustrate these posts, but I picture them that way, little inset panels carpeted all over a brilliant establishing shot...you give good fragments...:)

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I double dog dare you.

[uminthecoil.livejournal.com]

now that’s hardly fair is it...call’n a guy out with the double-dog-dare...?
at least you showed some mercy on me...didn't skip ahead to the triple-dog-dare...heh

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I think out of anything I've written down lately, I'd like to see what you would do to this most. Your angel was so warm that I need to make something new for her, so maybe we could meet in the middle. You've given me an illustration that requires words, now I've given you words that require an ilustration.

[uminthecoil.livejournal.com]

deal..:)

[michel-lacombe.livejournal.com]

See, someone walked on the snow. Less lonely for the footprints, I hope, you.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

*nods* It is, though you two are usual suspects. Biased opinions, both.

[michel-lacombe.livejournal.com]

Oh stop that. Before I send you another spazzy picture.

[droops.livejournal.com]

I hope that the shadow stays away and doesn't bother anymore.

And I hope that angels (or whatever they are) eventually do get through.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Shadow? Angels? This is just writing, lovely, with only a bare mix of truths.

[droops.livejournal.com]

hmmm, okay. I'll admit to being lost then and shush up here. :)

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

There are forays into fiction here. Sort of border skirmishes that appear rarely and withuot any notice.

[michel-lacombe.livejournal.com]

Hey, no fair being proprietary with your metaphors.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Transparent as polluted rain, you.

[michel-lacombe.livejournal.com]

So thin you can see around?

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Right what yew no?

[michel-lacombe.livejournal.com]

Eep! Syntax breakdown!

[diosa-en-disfra.livejournal.com]

yea, right.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

*grins* I can't tell if that's sarcasm or not.

powrightinthekisserpowrightinthekisserpowrightinthekisserpowrightinthekisserpowrightinthekisser

[waylonmccann.livejournal.com]

The funniest thing about being dead is that it's not funny, not at all. The way you have to invisibly whisper words of warning, words of mercy, and words of justice. The dead are all that ballance the scales in life, we call it counting by numbers, some would say it's the writing of life, laid out in tombstone caligraphy accross the scarred bossom of our fine lady the Earth. The voiceless telling the in-exhaustably loud to listen, haunting, lurking in wait for something meant to be forgotten: Wisdom. When your dead the trees and snow speak things no one else seems to see, as if you were the one alive and everything else a shade, an apparition of something broken, and ultimatley terrifying. When you die, you can join the masses... or even move beyond, to a much more fullfilling call. "Pity the living. Envy the dead." Being dead means you never forget, and rarley forgive, but you can completley understand... Haunting dolls and painting life in the shades of your crimson-lantern-view.

[blackwell.livejournal.com]

Whoo! This is amazing.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you think so. I suspect it's going to be one of the very few things I wrote this year that will stand up to later scrutiny. I find it difficult to write such things.