vacate

“You’re uncomfortable with happiness. You keep looking for things because you crave drama,” he is looking at me when he says this, perfectly calm.
We lay in his bed, with the lamp on. It feels nice to be wrapped up in one another. I hate when people tell me these things, but I’m egging him on because I like to hear his analyses of me.
Although it feels like he is belittling me, it closes some doors and leaves me standing in a dark closet. I always feel like I’m standing there in this dark, unfamiliar closet, wondering whether or not to stay there or turn on the light and leave. I get the feeling if I do so it will be his idea of joining the rest of the realistic, rational adults.
Whenever I’m with him, I’m the closest to flipping the switch, shrugging my shoulders and swallowing logic. Times when I’m alone or talking to someone whom I relate to about this devoid-of-diction type of nothingness, I feel like I could never leave the closet because the mystery of the darkness is so much more beautiful than everything you see in the light.
“Reality is just as interesting as fantasy,” he’s saying. “There’s no need to go around making up fillers. Once you realize that life is logical, everything makes more sense. Religious fanatics or pseudo-science devotees or people that go around looking for things to believe in are just looking for things that aren’t there… ignoring all of the things that are there through science and just…” his voice softens and I nod.
Sometimes I get in patient moods where I really want to hear him talk about all of this, even though I feel like I know what he’s going to say. I like these times, when we lay together and talk about things on a larger level, rather than talking about a specific band or movie or news event or person or story.
“I know.” I begin to dismiss, but don’t know where to go, so he picks it back up.
“I know, I know. I used to be just like you. I used to sit in my room and lay on my bed and listen to the Cure, staring at the ceiling, listening and singing,” he smiles real big and he knows he’s belittling my irrationality. To him, it makes sense. He thinks it’s funny because it is a passing phase of everybody at some point, it’s the coming of age moments he had thinking of thinking of things that were deep and profound. I scowl.
“I’ve been looking so long at these pictures of you… looking so long at these pictures of you! But I never hold on to your heart looking so long for the words to be true but always just breaking apart my pictures-of-you…” he keeps singing his old sixteen year old anthems and I’m flustered because I want to be serious right now and he’s being irresistible. Whenever I want to be somber and he knows it and still laughs and plays I try hard to be annoyed, but I usually can’t.
I wish I had had the Cure CDs around when I was graduating high school. I wouldn’t have been so torn between being loyal to all the friendships that weren’t real and connected, to the whole big farce of high school fashion shows and attention-starved teens. I could have lay in my bed watching the fan spinning around listening to the hollow beauty of the piano and the mind-jerking stories.
“Oh come on. I know, and it’s not like that, I know about that-”
“I love your teen angst!”
I look away and we keep talking but I’m not really there. I’m thinking of somebody else. I’m thinking of how he knows what I’m talking about feels it, too. I’m thinking about how I only want to be here where I am now, but am thinking about somebody else and feeling a longing that’s contradictive to what’s real – us laying here, and it being the best thing in the world. Thinking the name feels dumb and embarrasing and repulsive.
We talk and talk and talk and fall asleep.

Sharp images of violets swinging from vines overtop Brazilian verandas, of empty dance floors and the women singing in Arabic over down tempo beats dissolve like the ice cubes in my stale Vodka.
I’m sitting down at the bar and talking to the bartender, only nothing comes out when I try to talk. I hear Evan shouting and he’s fighting with somebody. My first reaction is confusion and I can’t watch his eyes wild and tone of voice get hotter. I walk through the path, the trees hanging blanketing me like a canopy. I walk slowly and I hear excited voices towards the shoreline, sounds like kids.
The sand speckles over the branched pathway and it’s deserted. I hear children talking, frantically but it sounds farther away. The water looks black and the residue sticks to the sand like tar. I sit down on and it is probably getting on my dress, but it doesn’t matter.
Adam and his girlfriend walk up. Her hair keeps changing from short to long; every time I look back and forth between them, her hair changes. I’m confused and he’s laughing and her eyebrows are bent towards her temple like she’s concerned. I look back down at the sand and gut my fingers into the sand.
“What’s wrong?” she asks and I bury my hands deeper. The sand grinds against the webs between my fingers. Cuticles coughing up their last breathe as the grain attack the skin under each fingernail.
I shrug and watch the sand, distorting its color and the night sky in my mind.
They walk away because I’m alone, staring at the sand with sickness in my eyes.
I lay on my back, on the sand, and my hands are sandy and gritty. I look at them and my fingers twirl loosely into thick, black spider legs; my palms are pits of spider bodies, two dirty, malicious looking black knobs of poison and death. I place them on my stomach and the legs flutter around and I’m growing lightheaded. I open my eyes but all I can see is black fuzz. The outline of my body is a shaky red static that traces around my legs and arms. I can’t see my hands, but I feel them scratching into my stomach, fists of spider bodies juicing into my flesh, my head’s shaking up and down. My head bashes the dampened sand. I can hear the children crying out again, but this time it’s wicked and creepy, deliriously excited. The sand shakes with the vibrations of their feet stamping the ground, running. The sniggers and maniacal laughter suffocates my air and steals my breath until I can feel my head being gripped and pulled down, deep into the sand. Dark and chalky and swirling bitterness snapping at my skin, my stomach an empty chaste of devoured insides.
I can hear too many voices and I’m biting down on my tongue to keep from swallowing it. Chunks of vomit swishes around my tonsils and seeps through my cheeks. The spiders my hands have become dart up my chest and start shaking-shaking-shaking me, ripping at me.