In the end, the only charge to her card is from the grocery store.

They find the car a week later, spoiled dairy in the trunk.

An old man, sweet, wrinkled face, holds the door, “Allow me, miss.”

Seventy-seven years, and no one's ever had to drag this river.

She lowers the music, rolls down her window. A warm, spring day, welcomed after too much winter. “Can I offer you a ride?”

The local media questions officials.

There are parts of the human body people rarely consider.

Wheel well patterns. Detectives think she might have thought about crashing the car.

It’s the femoral artery that does it.

Checkout line, twenty items or less, scan your own – she’s bagging plastic.

“I can’t believe I started this and we don’t have any milk.” He’s a little frantic, parents due in less than an hour. She’s nothing but amused, an arm around his waist, soft kiss to his cheek. “Don’t worry,” she says, “I’ve got it.”

Pieces.

This is how she disappears.

It’s been years and years now and I still remember where most of us met. Not really the how, but in my memory it plays out like some Warhol party from the seventies – bare brick walls swaged in purple linen, the clever (and too obvious to be obvious) overhead lighting, a constant wash of verbs and nouns rinsing into the lyrical tinkle of cocktail glasses – cabal of… well, I suppose I could say it. Cabal of the elite.

Like the urchin at the window glass, I was never a writer. Never, never-ever. I just got lucky and managed to trip my way into this fashion-press of creativity with all the style and panache of an elephant on rollerblades - careful for the knees. But as I’ve said, this is years ago now… back when it all felt so very think-tank. When it never occurred to me that what was happening was really… something. Like Socrates and Plato sitting under a murderous sun discussing life. Philosophizing until someone had to take a piss and probably even then! Aristotle easing something quippy into the dirt before the shake.

The other day, this gorgeous thing I met – once upon a time – well, she played this little game. She wanted all these sexy geniuses (geniusi?) on her flist to link to just one post, their best post of 2007. I admit, as probably many did when they saw it, I squealed out loud. Right into my fist. It had this feel to it, the same one I got about a hundred years ago now when we all first met. When, man, when everything out of someone’s mouth felt like soulful meta. I knew it was going to be amazing and it was.

I have changed so much since then. We all have. I am still shock-stunned, jaw-drop of crazy astonishment, when I think of how many years we’ve known each other, how none of us has ever met, how we all vanish and come back together like gravity’s at play. Never more reason to put faith in one’s karass than this.

I miss… I miss those days and I love you guys.

The first girl I kissed. Her named should have been Pepper or Tahoma, Indi or Kit. It wasn't. It wasn't.

And we sat on the floor, cold concrete, our legs dangling miles down. Stair well. In autumn. Harsh. The violent thump of bass.

Whiskey on my breath, I said, I can't feel my lips. I CAN NOT feel my lips. Now how's that for a line?

The last girl I kissed. Her name should have been Christy or Cathleen, Amanda or Jane. It wasn't. It wasn't.

And we sat beneath stained glass, wood slide under hip, our legs dangling miles down. Stair well. In autumn. Quiet. The tender beat of rain.

Whisper on my breath, I said, I can't feel my lips. I CAN NOT feel my lips. Now how's that for a line?

There are times when I am very this or that.

Mostly:

quiet. quiet. quiet.

Lots, nothing, anything

to say.

Today robbed me an hour,

stole my voice.

Maybe tomorrow will bring it back.

Today
I want to sit in a window seat
overlook the Chesapeake,
wrapped in cashmere and wool,
Jean Paul Sartre in one hand,
hot cocoa in the other.

I will have none of these things,
but wanting,
wishing,
and never obtaining,
have in no way dissuaded
my desire to dream.

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.