Concluded Space

EVERYTHING THAT WASN'T FOR ME I HAD TO CHASE

by AE Paulino

She was older and smelled really good. I was still asleep when she woke and brushed up her hair and got half-dressed. My roommate was still away so she used his towel, she made herself coffee and answered a few texts by the living room window. When I woke up I assumed she had left but that's where I found her, on the window sill, she smiled up with her wide mouth and dark lips. I pretended I wasn't just talking to myself, maybe she heard me. I said hello, so did she. Her chin indicated a cup of coffee she made me; it sat on the stove, heat, like an apparition, hovered out from it like an exorcism. I nodded and expected her to understand it meant thanks. I brushed my teeth and she was fully dressed when by the time I was finished, she was ready to go. This was disappointing because I was hoping to join her at the window sill and talk a little more. 

"I'll call you later if I can." She said, her hand petting my abdomen and her words, tracing my ears. 

I wanted to kiss her but she had already began to walk away and I felt silly holding her or calling her back for something as little as a kiss. I went out to the fire escape to smoke a cigarette, blowing the smoke into the breezy Sunday afternoon. I wish my window was to the front of the building so I could watch her walk away. I'm sure my pillow still smells like her scent. A mixture of shampoo, cigarettes, sweat, and I swear there is something else--something only detected by the nose when attracted to someone, when stimulated by them in such a way that an awareness opens the nerves and vacuums in all sorts of information usually kept from entering by both parties. if estrogen had a scent, maybe it was that but I think its something else. Maybe her soul, aura or her DNA. 

The Compromised Purging Flame of Consciousness

I had a dream. it was a collective exhibition, that took unedited grazings of events and from the shadows of their memories built a carousel of mirrors that mocked my reflection as it spun, and made the riders nauseous. A singing rogue with his ears perched on deaf musings seemed ignited alight by the velocity--he in fact, controlled the dials. I watched as down fell the motions of night's alumni, returning yet again to be seated amongst themselves as the valid audience of murder. I could do falsehood no greater disservice than by right this moment admitting to you that I believed myself a man, wrapped heavily in the permanent hands of Death. My lungs, once diving freely into the silken tapestries of air, now burrowed in the sketch of frantic; as they debated with retired reserve for the nerve to crawl the sharpness of chalky smoke. It burned the ions of sight, it froze the neon neurons of voice. A gasp funneled into my throat and there a knot of pain curled into a fetus before trembling into stone. It was in this nature that I withdrew from consciousness, omitted myself, sensibly, from the portions of space and time. Gently was I greeted by the crumbling void. Finally was it so that I washed away from the waking senses and found myself bound to the heat of the groaning dirt. Ablaze, became the dry cracks that drew thickening branches on the pavement. And as the fire stretched high, vividly and overzealously to the sky, with it went my flesh easily removed like wet posters. I awoke here and passing my hands over my skin, quickly confirmed the encasing flesh that dressed my naked soul had not been stripped. Disappointedly confirmed.