She bent over, lit a Marlboro off the stove, inhaled a drag before the image of her mother came to mind. "Memories of home," she said, watching the ash glow red before she rested the cylinder on the lip of the saucer she'd been using as an ashtray. The cigarette burned low, scorched the ceramic, forced an amber ring that’d never come clean.

"It's funny, the things we remember," she smiled. He knew she wasn't really speaking to him. Talking to old ghosts, phantoms dogging her in the blossoming antemeridian. "Like the smell of a Marlboro lit off the burner of a stove, yeah?"

She picked up the cigarette, twirling it around between her thumb and forefinger, taking another hit before she set it back on the plate. "I remember... heat-lightning, and being afraid of the dark. Hiding under my parent's bed. Hoping, come morning, I wouldn’t be found. I remember the way everything clung, how I never felt like I could breathe."

Ice blue eyes absorbed her, from messy mascara to jeans undone. He loved her even more when she was coming apart. Sucker for a hard case, it came as no surprise to his friends when he fell so hard.

"Come on," he said in his quiet way, stretched out his hand to take hers, reached between them to snuff out the last few drags. In the bedroom, down the solitary hallway, he turned her in his arms and held her chin in the palm of his hand. "You can breathe with me. You never have to be afraid again. Most nights I never even close my eyes. Just watch you sleep. Keep you safe. You never know."

"How wrong you are," she whispered, leaning forward to kiss his lips, smoke sealing caustic around the edges. Darkness veiled her tears, narrow black tracks of liner smudged down her cheeks. “How wrong you are.”

When he looks, this is what he sees:
a girl,
in the body of a woman,
grown up too fast,
stuck between the age she is,
and the ones slipped away.

When she looks, this is what she sees:
a boy,
in the body of a man,
frightened by his shadow,
pretending nothing's wrong,
when he knows nothing's right.

It's quiet,
no one hears,
but they promise each other,
never to look very hard.

His mouth hung open, blue-grey smoke twisting between the slit, cigarette caught in the pinch of his thumb. The guitar sat comfortably in his lap, shoulders hunched to tighten strings. He held it with reverence, thumb stroking idly at the wood. Somewhere in the grain ventured sleepy absolution.

I sat close. Close, but far away. On the periphery of every margin. Tucked safe to watch, to listen, just to see the soft tilt of his mouth working wet against the filter. Baby-fine and gentle; mic a thief to trap each rasping breath. And from so close, so far, my fingers burned to grace his pulse. Nothing more. No other license offered except his beat. Strong, caged life harbored beneath muscle, vein, and skin.

Quiet, legs crossed, hands captured over knee, I shut my eyes and waited for the first whiskey stroke of his voice, gravel-rough, cavern-deep. To

touch
touch
touch
touch
touch me everywhere. The shiver-shock whispering. Mushroom-blossom passion ghosting over bone.

Then he started to sing. Savage-sweet, mellow-smooth. Drunk on it. On life. On love. The boundless proximal... energy. Veteran fingertips fathering a background lower than his voice. The two soldiering the onus of lights and stage, severed from the crowd.

He finished. To an audience wail. Sweat damp hair, eyes like sea-stone. Beautiful, tumultuous coldness. And I considered. For one concentrated second, I considered. Becoming all the things I abhor. Becoming, for pleasure’s sake, the Aphrodite. Lullable siren in the zero hour.

To feel breath and voice and body. Soft, angry, hard. I considered.

And still... I left the room with nothing but the smoke and sound.

I'm not a big one for the mall or large retail shopping. I don't like to choke in the sea of Christmas shoppers, ass to elbow in aisles way too thin, with overprice breakables and notions. But every year my mother-in-law insists on shopping and every year it's the same few stores - Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, then the mall.

The only thing that ever saves the trip is this strange type of Christmas miracle that happens every year in Barnes & Noble. Every time, without fail, I'll be strolling down the aisles when a book catches my eye. It's never anything I've heard of, never an author I'm familiar with; it's always something completely random. This year, like clockwork, edging myself down the aisle of tween-thrillers, I stumbled upon the simple title, crank.

Trust me, I didn't think this was it. I thought maybe the magic had faded, even when I picked it up off the shelf and sat myself clumsily into one of those overstuffed chairs. I cracked the book about halfway and started to read and I was blown away.

I suppose
she's always been
there, vague as a soft
copper pulse of moonlight
through blossoming seacoast
fog.

I wonder
when I first noticed
her, slipping in and out
of my pores, hide-and-seek
spider in fieldstone, red-bellied
phantom.

I summon
Bree when dreams
no longer satisfy, when
gentle clouds of monotony
smother thunder, when Kristina
cries.

I remember
the night I first
let her go, opened the
smeared glass, one thin pane,
cellophane between rules and sin,
freed.

The writing is beautiful, fluid, and haunting. The main character (Kristina/Bree) fucked-up, her treatment cruel. I think I'm going to really, really love this find.

The book is called crank by Ellen Hopkins. I'm sure I'll be back as I find more. I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday.

<3, Jen

I’m almost too drunk to know what’s really going on... almost. His hand’s around my waist and he’s laughing in my ear, but all I can hear is my balanced heartbeat. A liquefied rhythm that’s been with me throughout the ages...

There’s nothing quiet... nothing clandestine between us. It’s closer and closer to the groups, neither of us capable of melting into the shallow. And I realize I’m over my head, my cocky smile barely the safer save, his hands possessively drawing me away; dragging me towards the obvious void; the blue-black tranquility in “back.” He sings:

“Got a head full of one way rides...
that you won’t believe.
A giant leap from your heart to my arms
Before it’s time to leave”

The cold air makes its ways across my skin, slightly in advance of his play, blazing a scorching trail through my bloodstream with the alcohol adrenaline as he sings:

“Got a ticket on a Sunday drive
In the afternoon
There's nothing quite like your Indian smile
To relay my blues”

His kiss is slow, and I swear to fucking god I can feel his pulse against my lips. I open my mouth, twist my tongue around his, and it’s hot and fast and makes me think of anise and guarantees.

The world spins quick when I close my eyes....

Best to never shut them.

Oh inertia, carry me along.