I write some smut, a momentary distraction. I look up and wonder if the middle aged woman standing behind me at the cash register has been reading over my shoulder. She doesn’t meet my gaze, but she doesn’t look away either.
Author Archives: The Mark
Bus
I will sit on the bus next to the guy with the cut up face, our knees now touching, despite how wide he has his legs spread. His phone rings and he gives someone instructions on how to reset some breakers having to explain the process many times, over and over again. “The box next to the sign up computer…no, don’t do anything with the box outside…no there’s three, 38, 48 and 49.”
The New World
They lived in the new world. Sometimes, they would stare at each other across the room. Arriving here hadn’t been easy, but here they were, in a place where they could sometimes feel the miracle. Holding hands, walking down the beach, sometimes just staring.
All the love we could desire
Vengeance did build him hastily. He sits and that chorus washes over him and he feels the lack.
The Palace at 4 a.m
“I want to be rich,” you proclaim, “I want to be famous,” but it’s 4 a.m. and I don’t properly weight the significance of what you’re about to propose.
A point of no return
She always chooses rock and I always choose paper. I explained this to her as we walked up the stairs to the Cambie bridge and then I saw you with your brown raincoat. You were walking with a red haired women and I couldn’t see your eyes behind your dark glasses. I wondered if you had seen me and I worried that you were stuck.
These are complicated gifts we bear
Tell me again, old lover, how you left your boy, how it’s just you and your dog: lonely nights in your parent’s house down the street from my old house. I still feel the pull of a million bad ideas. I am tempted. I feel the ripeness of the moment.
Complicated gifts we bear
There is magic here behind the curtain and these are complicated gifts we bear.
Wooden Postcard
Right there, in that moment, in a flash, you saw a way to survive, and that, was everything.
Brunch
A delicious brunch and you can almost see the strands of her body unwinding themselves.