Stupid Rocks

by Reynard Seifert

Neither much of a drinker, either agreed it would be best to start small and work our way up to failure.  Scotch.  Vodka.  Somewhere there was grass.  A hill, a tree, some ducks in a pond.  Rocks.  We went there.  There is where I found her more actually than before.  There is what it is and was, when and where we began to fail in love.  Somewhere there is rain.

I went to the roof one evening, lay in a corner where the sun waned reading a book looking more like arithmetic than poetry.  It was prose.  The stretch of limbs woke me from dreaming.  Hers.  We rose together.  Noting the bend of her legs the curve of her part of me stretched part of me waxed.  Once my name was Wayne in the middle.  Cut it off.  My name is Bob now.  I'm a bitch.  Part of the seduction was taking that section of sky obscured by sun screaming down about the depth of my not for her eyes for the shadow I was to her I went away. 

She went into and out of the building her building what building that building the next building over from my building.  With a certain sense of integrity she went into and out of it with definite irregulary.  She was integral though and she went away.  Stacks of books in the library lucky enough to know her touch were prideful things.  Lucky bastards, I whispered walking by and eyeing them.  Her fingernails a peculiar kind of perfection juggling the smell of old pages and dust as they did and they were there and there was dust.  The general sense of knowledge for time if you have time to trade for knowledge filled her with.  Her nostrils waxed and waned.  Angel dust.  The library and the angels they listen there.  I asked someone a friend of mine I asked him is she too hot for me because I need to know and he said she's too not for you.  She's an angel. 

The tragedy of literature: too few babes want to read too much.

Walking past her desk at the information station, I pry into her conversation as if peeling back a piece of wood.  The librarian at the desk what desk that desk the next desk over from her desk the one desk the librarian a guy making one of those faces I hate that kind of face the kind of face that knows he is winning at life to be there with her where he is then and now as he was.  Lucky bastard, I whisper walking by.  He notes this. 

He is a pile of books to me.

He was malignant with me and left me much maligned forcing me to face the world with a dull face as I was, jaded as he was and supine-seeming the way a cat is more like a woman than a dog is a man, in this case I am the man depending of course as is the case on a number of things: mostly the woman and man, the cat and the dog.

If you don't think of yourself as a genius, there's something wrong with the way you're approaching life.  It may be your landing.  Consider it less a form of dine and dash and more a sort of win-win situation for all tomorrow's parties.  Essentially: Kill yourself.

Good.

Bye.

This scrawled on the back of a postcard from Lisbon, Portugal.  Portugal, Lisbon, looked exactly like San Francisco, where were then as we are now being.  In both places, Lisbon and San Francisco, the houses beveled slightly in irregular, slanting patterns no less patterned for their slant nor want of slanting for their definite irregularity.  It felt for a moment as though existing in both places at once.  California.  I had worked my way into her daily routine years ago.  Portugal.  Beginning with hello we stood on the steps.  The postcard fell from the sky most apparently, my hand on her belly with the thing inside.  Caught with the other.  My pinky flipped to.  I read her the note with the thing within theoretical earshot.  Bad omen, she proclaimed.  So I sighed, Omens are something I put on my bread.  It's pizza to me this bread this bread is a pizza to me, to me this bread is pizza bread it is life.  Break it.  It is life and death it is bread of pizza.  I rubbed her shoulders a little too hard. 

Children came and went.  Hospitals, colleges, bars.  Places with names and places with faces.  Ha.  Stupid rhyming what.  Stupid.  Where is the biblio is something I know how to say in ten different languages I think.  I travel.  I work a lot a lot.  Some day soon I will die.  Insurance is why.  I'm stupid.  There is a grave for every member of my household.  I've got 401(k)s for my 401(k)s.  Pieces of land are pie to me.  Death bonds, they don't even talk.  On dinner dates, they don't die.  Or try.  They drink a lot.  Trains run by, it's no secret.  Every question is a question I answer with a dull yes, round about the edges and soft mostly.  Everyone knows people come and go.  Someday soon I'll get on one of those trains and be going somewhere.  Like clichés, questions come and go, and she will answer every one with a dull yes.  I will have went away.

I remember when it was just she and I and it mattered a lot.  Our feelings.  Ha.  Don't know feelings.  Her feelings?  Could do anything.  Seen her with that pan.  Surprised is not something I would be if she killed me herself.  Or herself.  Or if she wrote the postcard and dropped it, took the elevator down into my arms into my lap into my mouth into herself she is greedy greedy dresses hair stuff for fun.

But I will say, that was a time oh boy what a time that was a time there on the hill the tree the grass the grass the rain the ducks the stupid ducks the rocks stupid rocks the trash there was trash there was trash in the trash and don't forget the words there were words there were words like words and I wish there were more of them but we talked and we walked of words for forever which I forget which ones were twos or Todds and remember forever was something we definitely said was forever was something we wouldn't forget how could we forget would be something that would definitely last and I remember distinctly saying there's no insurance policy we shouldn't get that we don't already have in our hearts.  I said that.  Fool as I was to think there was an insurance policy for the heart.  Can't wait for things to be ending. 

Because I failed in love I think ducks don't know they are stupid but rocks know they know things because of stupidity and I know how they feel because I feel what a rock feels inside when it remains a rock instead of falling from the sky because she pried a stupid from the dirt with her peculiar, perfect fucking fingernails throwing it high from a hill whispering, Lucky bastard(s).