Monday, December 9, 2013

Clangs and Bangs by Kristie Bringhurst on Grooveshark

Part I.

To see blue in deeper and deeper saturation is eventually to move toward darkness.


You screwed it all up. The second his hand slipped under your shirt again, you knew. And in that moment you didn’t care. You’d care later.


Lend me your ear. Conscience is a man’s compass.


This wasn’t your first indiscretion. There had been roving palms and heaving sighs before. You’d been told to be careful. You were a good kid all your life. All A’s and B’s and Friday night dates with your parents.  They never thought you were the type to commit such a crime.


Your tragic face in my black and white dreams whispers “Noli me tangere.”


You were at the grocery store when you saw him picking out the best ground beef with ease and confidence. Like that’s a thing. You were grabbing some chicken, the only meat you knew how to cook, when you gave one of your self-conscious sideways glances and noticed him, a tall hazy blur of blue.


Years later all you remember was the ground beef hitting the floor with a deaf smack.


Is there a good kind of hustler?


You had just started school at RISD. Out on your own taking the classes you’d dreamt of your whole life. You thought figure drawing would make you blush. It didn’t.


He found the world drab, and was upset by flaking paint and other blemishes; he liked bright colours, but became depressed when they faded.


What I feel is mercurial.


You lived in a 3-story green house with shutters and a creaking metal gate out front. You shared a room with two other girls. They were bitches, but you liked them all the same. They took you out to parties. You stood with a Smirnoff Ice in the corner of the room watching their legs clicking and tapping and gently rubbing other legs. You were going home alone tonight.


After all the green apple bitterness swishing back and forth in your stomach you walked to Stop and Shop to get stuff for dinner. Chicken again? Okay.


You wonder if sleep is in fact torture for the subconscious. What if pain is intensified in sleep? You became afraid to drift away. Sleep greeted you like a wind chime, slowly, then all at once. You woke up crying.

Clangs and bangs. Bruises.

Part II.


You got back to business and put the stick in the trash, like discarding a rotten apple. He asked you, “What’s for dinner?” With a stale face you said, “liver.


You saw his daughter at the mall. You and the Blur of Blue were walking, his sure hand in your back pocket. He swiftly pulled you into a small store and you hid behind a clothing rack as she walked by. Lebanese Blonde was playing and you were laughing, flushed. You wanted him right there.


Yelling and more yelling. Threats.
Clangs and bangs.
Threats. Threats.

Tears and blood smears.

You bury your face in his shoulder, almost certain that there would only be one line, but hoping desperately for two.

Your softness lulls me to melancholia.

You took a walk together once. You picked out a magpie and said, “I wish I could be like that bird there, all black and white with a shine of blue on the wings. Beautiful.” He paused for a minute, and then responded, “They’re smart… and vicious. Magpies will kill a cat if no one’s around.” Vicious beauty was always the best kind. You just didn’t know it yet.

Naturally, my dreams would convert everything to blue.

It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one’s solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem. Can blue solve the problem, or can it at least keep you company within it? –No, not exactly. It cannot love you that way; it has no arms. But sometimes you do feel its presence to be a sort of wink−Here you are again, it says, and so am I.

Cool blue sunlight cast a glow on his white sheets like December morning. The shower was running. You lay there, naked, skin covered in small bumps, the hair standing up as you smoothed it slowly in one direction. 

A floret, white blades outstretched.

Pushing aside the guilt. At least he took off his ring, though he made no pretense of leaving Her. He was never to blame. It was you.

You.

You and the Blur of Blue slowly dancing in his red kitchen. You got dizzy from the spinning red. Better sit down. You watched Lost in Translation together. You probably should have realized how that meant something, but you were still dizzy.

I am intoxicated with potential, but disquieted by pleasure.

Your roommates ask who this new guy you’re seeing is. You force a casual tone, shrug, and say “Just some guy.” They go back to talking about their one-night stands with devious grins on their faces. It’s not that you don’t trust them…

You think like a surgeon. If you only had a knife, you could cut it right off.

Suck the living breath out of your bloated lungs.

Mom and Dad are worried about you. You never come home anymore. “How are your roommates?” They ask. “Fine,” you say as you stare blankly at the Applebee’s menu, eyes darting to each blue word.

Clangs and Bangs. Slaughter is a strong word.

Part III.


Your face hits the velvet cushion. You feel the vessels cracking like glow sticks.


“I’ll be your Antony,” he said.


“I’ll be your Achilles."


It was Friday afternoon and you were walking down the street, taking note of the crackling of the leaves beneath your feet and the smell of fall. You had a small grin at the corner of your mouth. You approached his house, bottle of wine in hand when you noticed Her car in the driveway again. You turned around muttering to yourself.


Leonardo da Vinci once said, “Love is something so ugly that the human race would die out if lovers could see what they were doing.”


You go to Mason Field to write. Sitting beneath the red plastic shroud that protects the slides like tongues. You’ve never been a poet. You’ve never been what you needed to be.


Administer your being unto me.

Clangs and Bangs. All your fault.

"Hey come on, you know I love you” He kissed you deeply and you let the anger fall like a deflating balloon. This was how it was, all kisses and apologies and roving palms.

Quiet whimpers fall like smoke out of your mouth.


No man ever steps into the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

You began to retreat. You stopped going to class. You stopped making small talk with your roommates and you ignored calls from your parents. It was all about you and your Blur of Blue, like the end of the world. He was a narcissist, so he was good with it.

Are you sure−one would like to ask−that it cannot love you back?

After the sixth month you began to fight, first with words, then with palms and clenched teeth.

 Clangs and Bangs. Words were always too much.

You never aimed to give him a talisman, an empty vessel to flood with whatever longing, dread, or sorrow happened to be the day's mood.

That last night was the worst, full of screaming and crying. You wanted him to leave Her. To leave Them. He put his arms around you and started with his lines. You turned around in a flash and threw him against the counter. You remember the look of shock on his face. He came back toward you and the plan that you didn’t know was a plan unfolded.

Devoid of any semblance of human emotion

Part IV.


Your teeth, larger than normal, float around the black sea of your mouth, rolling with the sweeping tides and lacking formal structure. You reach your hand into the cavern to retrieve one, but just as you pinch the ivory tenant between two fingers, it slips away noiselessly. Once you remove your hand, you observe that it is covered in viscous blue oil, dripping into your lap. As you motion your other hand toward your mouth in terror, you hear voices:
“Vincent, why should you not be saved?”
                                                “The sadness will last forever.”
                                                                                    You imagine he was right.

You came out of the slumber gasping. Without taking a moment to recover, you pulled yourself out of the dream, coughing and spewing recycled thoughts all over the cracked tile floor.

My essence is tectonic. Vincent always knew

To wish to forget how much you loved someone- and then, to actually forget-can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird. You have heard that this pain can be converted, as it were, by accepting "the fundamental impermanence of all things." This acceptance bewilders you: Sometimes it seems an act of will; at others, of surrender. Often you feel yourself to be rocking between them.

Blue can be the coldest color.