Flannelwood

by Raymond Luczak

  I am pure scent. I am the weight of smoke sinking into each fiber of fabric and seeping into your skin.

  Each inhalation and exhalation is a confession of love and lust.

  You make me confess so easily.

  I am a puff, a poem.

  You would never see me as a poem, but I am one. It’s a question of mastering each puff for the most intense release. I will hold off as long as I can until the last line will make you erupt so many times you’ve lost count.

  Our first night together was the most sublime poetry reading ever, and no one was there to hear us. How so beautiful is that, and how that is so beautiful.

  I don’t write poetry anymore. That stuff feels so juvenile now, but each time we kissed and made love, I felt as if I was writing a new poem, only to have it disappear, and to find it rewritten in startling ways. Then they all evaporated into thin air. No recordings, no applause.

  You didn’t just make a man out of me.

  You made a dream poet out of me.

  Of you I shall sing in my dreams, and only you will hear my songs when I play the lyre of your cock. Your sweat is honey, and your cum is milk. On both I shall subsist, for they are the stuff of nicotine most sublime.

  Come inhale me while I’m still alive. I am that flame flickering in your breath before I touch the tip of your cigarette. Let me light up the dark recesses of your soul. Let me cast aside shadows to find the most brilliant coals and free yourself of darkness. Let me blow songs into your lungs so you can find the power of wind coursing through your veins.

  Come exhale me when I’m dead, and you would know that you have been loved. You would know that each night when you sleep, and each morning when you jack off, someone has loved you. You would know all this without knowing why.

  I am both ash and wind, but I’m still here. Come blow me away in that polar vortex of your tentative affections, and I will return in the spring with my dandelion whiskers. I will sow my seed everywhere, and when my children burst forth in yellow, you would know that I have never forgotten you.

  FOOTPRINTS TURNED EMBER IN SNOW

  The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.

  —Willa Cather

  I’ve thought many times of renting a car and coming north to your house and knocking on your door for an explanation, but I thought that would make me too creepy-stalkerish.

  Instead, in dreams I remain an ether floating through your kitchen. I’m made of transparent ice, a sheet of glass that never reflects anything even in broad daylight.

  It hurts that you don’t even notice me.

  You sit alone in the kitchen, eating a microwaved dinner. You look out the window and see the road. Very few cars pass by at this time of evening.

  It’s the kind of country where everyone goes to bed early. The darkness is that powerful.

  The radio by the stove is on. It’s not loud, but it’s enough. News about politics and entertainment scratch the air.

  You like the silences. Very comforting.

  It’s a fur coat on your shoulders. It weighs heavily on you, but it gives you that semblance of surefootedness. You wear it well.

  You scrape the plastic box for the last of mashed potatoes and gravy.

  You let out a deep sigh of satisfaction.

  I want to come closer to you and kiss your head, but you are too hot like the sun. If I came closer, the fire of you would melt the ice of me.

  This is why ghosts don’t like to stay long when they visit.

  The way you and I rolled on top of each other, over each other, laughing when we felt each other’s fingers tickling our sides, our feet, rolling across the carpet in front of your TV, our laughs turning hoarse from too much, we couldn’t give enough tickles, we had to stop laughing, it was way too much really, then we stopped. You lay on your back and looked at me; you looked different, almost childlike. The afternoon sun glowed in the boyishness of your face. I saw the white roots of your beard about to gleam. I kissed you on the lips, and you kissed me back. We’d fallen off the sofa quite by accident after a movie—Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert—had finished. You said that it was a real shame that Carole Lombard had turned down Ms. Colbert’s part, especially when Mr. Gable could’ve fallen in love with her sooner and married her just as quickly, and I jabbed you on the elbow. “Carole Lombard is not the goddess you think she is.” I’d jabbed you so hard that you nearly fell off the sofa. “Sorry!”

  You then pulled me off the sofa, and I nearly crashed onto your chest, but you were too quick for me. You tickled me, and without thinking, I tickled you right back. We whooped with laughs, it was as if we were free to let go; we gasped, guffawed when we felt an unexpected tickle.

  Then it was all over. Another movie on the Turner Classic Movies channel had begun, but we didn’t look up at the TV. Our eyes, full of light—wasn’t it sunlight? It had to be. Somehow we’d captured a beam of light, unfiltered yet tender, into the cavern of our souls, shining us from within, and we cocooned into each other. We snuggled, two puzzle pieces fitting perfectly, there on the carpet. I placed my head on your chest and listened to your heart, a drum banging softly in search of a song. I closed my eyes and hummed a song I didn’t know; a made-up tune much like how a child would spout scales of silly sounds out of a happy boredom. We melted into silence, and then without preamble, you lifted my chin and kissed me, tasting me all over again. We fell into our blissfully familiar rhythms right there on the carpet, and we shuddered over and over again. Your body quaked so violently that you nearly collapsed on top of me, but you caught yourself in time. Your hands on the carpet held you up as you stared into my eyes as your hips thrust uncontrollably.

  Do you remember any of that, James? You made me believe; gave me hope that we could make a Hollywood movie of our own, only that it would be called It Happened One Afternoon.

  A week or so after you hung up on me, Mom’s ghost came to visit me in my bedroom. I was on my side, trying to sleep; this was before I had to ask my doctor for some Ambien. She sat opposite me. I couldn’t quite pinpoint her features, but at least she wasn’t coughing like she did when she was alive. She stared at me and said nothing. I couldn’t figure out why she’d bothered to come. I wanted to ask her questions, but there was nothing I could ask her. She was never comfortable with talking about sex, let alone heartbreak.

  For a time we stared at each other.

  Then she crossed her arms.

  I crossed mine.

  Her face softened.

  I whispered, “Mom?”

  She evaporated.

  The room felt filled up with ice. A moment later, it felt as if on fire. I was confused. I got up and went to the bathroom. I had gotten a fever. I took my temperature. I was 101 degrees. I soaked a washcloth under cold water and put it on my forehead. I tried to sleep. I took my temperature again. Still 101 degrees. I heated up some chicken noodle soup and filled it with oyster crackers. Sleep. Nothing.

  You rose above me like Michelangelo’s God from the Sistine Chapel.

  You didn’t wear the white robe that many painters of yore always used to depict the white-bearded God. You were naked, and your cock and balls floated as if in zero gravity. You darted from one end of my bedroom to another, all the while keeping your eyes on me. You lifted your arms and put your hands behind your head. You knew how much this display of mass and muscle had turned me on. You winked at me and floated right down to me.

  Together we’d rise up to the heavens and fuck all of the night and the day too. Everyone would hear us, but we wouldn’t care. We were gods, reborn with a new strength. Holding hands, we’d never let each other go.

  My alarm clock suddenly buzzed.

  I didn’t know where I was for a moment.

  I thought I was floating, but instead I was dead weight on the limp raft of a bed. I was floating nowhere. The stars of your eyes vanished into the black.

  I took my tem
perature. My fever had broken. I called in sick, and I slept a perfect death.

  It was night when I did at last awaken. My room shone like the cosmos. There were no walls; just stars breathing everywhere. It was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. I felt I mattered, even if I were much smaller than an atom and far more inconsequential in the larger scheme of the universe.

  I wept.

  It’s such a long, long voyage home, and I’ve no compass but my heart to guide my way. You are my true north.

  One night I’d felt again like a somnambulist, traversing between dusk and dawn, in a city that looked suspiciously like Paris but wasn’t. The streets were cobblestoned, the streetlamps gas-lit and the fog heavy. I walked slowly, afraid to bump into strangers, all wearing long black coats and shiny shoes, dragging their feet past me out of the fog. Still, as gray as the air was, I searched their eyes. They were disinterested in me. I didn’t know where I should be going; I was simply lost. My feet felt like concrete, yet wings were anchored to my back. I could feel the muscles in my back flexing my wings. I could fly at any time I wanted to, but in order for that to happen, I would have to cut off my feet.

  I turned to look at myself in the glass of yet another sad café. No one was sitting in there; it was all lit but completely empty. It’s as if ghosts, invisible to the human eye, had taken up residence in the café, and only I knew this fact. Then I noticed in my reflection that the color of my clothes was black. I couldn’t discern the contours of my heavy fabrics, the drape of my long coat. I dragged closer to the window-glass and peered into the great emptiness inside. An utter chill tiptoed up and down my spine. I noticed a few more black-suited men and black-dressed women straggling past behind me. I realized with a startle that I was a mourner like them. I had come to mourn the death of us. I turned and followed these people into a large cathedral where a choir was singing a dirge. Up in the air were coffins, floating like balloons full of helium without bumping into each other. We mourners gazed upon the fantastic sight, and it was then I noticed that we each had a pair of wings, shimmering like a raven’s.

  The singing soon stopped.

  In the distance a somber-voiced priest, decked out in red, spoke quietly, yet with an iron authority, from the bare altar. He swung a censer filled with incense and walked up and down the aisles around our pews. The coffins rose higher and higher until they touched the stone-carved beams holding up the roof. The priest did not seem perturbed by this. We mourners turned to each other, our faces asking the same question: would these coffins push up against the roof and let it tumble to the earth, shattering into fatal chunks?

  The priest returned to the altar.

  The singing resumed.

  The sunbeams, colored by stained glass in the windows, coasted to our faces until the wrinkles of worry fell away. It was as if the sharp edges of our years had been smoothened out with an inch of freshly fallen snow.

  The coffins dropped slowly. They did not dance or sway. They were pulleyed down by invisible ropes.

  The singing stopped.

  The coffins in that precise moment opened, exploding not into splinters of wood or corpses falling out, but into a mad flurry of doves. They spun around each other for a moment before they headed toward the back entrance and out into the air.

  Also in that same moment we felt the savage ripping of our wings from our backs. It happened so quickly we didn’t have a chance to cry out. The wings, blackened with blood, floated upward like tiny feathers into the mist of the coffin remains. We heard the distinct sound of coffin lids clamping shut.

  The singing resumed, but not with a lamentation.

  We discovered that our feet were indeed light, no longer stiff from dragging for so long. The black wings which had marked us into the purgatory of grief had been linked to our feet. The sun outside turned stronger, so strong that our black clothes grew into the color of flowers blooming. We burst forth into peals of laughter, and we began dancing in the aisles. The singers by then had begun their rhythmic clapping as they sang of joy. No more darkness, they reminded us.

  I am still awaiting that moment of utter exhilaration, the freedom of never thinking about you again, but I just can’t. You have coffined my heart, and I have no idea where you’ve buried me.

  Three weeks before Christmas, you said you’d pick me up at work after Happy Hour at the Eagle. But after a truly exhausting day, I didn’t want to wait around at work. The monotonous smell of coffee was getting to me. I called you, but you didn’t pick up the phone. I left a voicemail, and I walked over to the Eagle with my weekend bag. I thought I’d have a ginger ale and pretend not to know you while you hung out with your buddies. I figured I’d see you leave, and I’d follow you. Or I’d step outside on the smoking patio and call you if you weren’t there.

  I tried not to watch you.

  I saw your buddies gathered around by the counter. You weren’t drinking beer like your buddies were. I thought that was strange. Didn’t Happy Hour mean cheap drinks?

  Then you caught sight of me. No flicker of recognition.

  Off to the side was a huge cardboard box piling up with teddy bears donated for charity. They wanted all sorts of toy donations for the tots, but it seemed that everyone had only teddy bears to give away. I wanted to dive into the box and drown and scream where no one could hear me. Hadn’t I deserved better treatment after two months together?

  After I finished my drink, I knew what I had to do. I wouldn’t spend that weekend with you. I waited for you to glance my way again, and when you finally did, I gave you a look of disgust that startled you.

  I smiled to myself when I saw you recomposing your stoic face.

  I didn’t look back when I went to the coat check and picked up my bag. I was going to go home, go online, and go out for a hookup. I wanted to have the sleaziest sex with anybody and forget all about you, what a prick you were, what the fuck was I thinking?

  It was snowing outside the bar when I adjusted my backpack.

  I didn’t think you were going to call me, but you did.

  “So you think you can give me attitude?” I didn’t even say hello. “Fuck you.”

  “Hey,” you said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t buy that. You wanna apologize?”

  You said nothing.

  “I come back in there, and you’re going to give me the longest kiss of your life in front of everybody.”

  You hung up.

  I stared at the phone for a long moment, and I put it away.

  Fine. Be that way. Whatever.

  It was going to be a long walk home. I pulled out my hat and started walking south to my neighborhood.

  “Hey.”

  I turned around. “I got a name, you know.”

  “Bill, come back here.”

  “No. You come right here.”

  You looked furious when you walked close to me. You weren’t wearing a jacket! “You want a fucking kiss? Okay.” You kissed me on the lips right there as cars passed us by.

  I was so surprised. It took me a moment before I could say, “Apology accepted.”

  “Good. I’ll be right back.”

  I stood outside the Eagle, waiting for you. It seemed like forever, but it was probably five minutes. You returned with your leather jacket. There was something lost in your eyes. I wanted to say something to make you feel better, but I realized I had no words to describe what I’d seen. I wasn’t sure if I was able to translate that language of loss.

  Instead we stayed silent on our way to your house.

  There was no passion between us when we made love that night.

  I had become a duty.

  I felt worse than shit.

  A duty was the last thing I wanted to be.

  When you finally fell asleep, I got up and sat on the sofa. I couldn’t sleep next to you. I had hurt you. But I knew that for our relationship—if that was what we had—to work, there needed to be more give-and-take, more yin and yang. Everything had been all about you, an
d you had been taking from me all along.

  Yet I felt so guilty and torn up about wanting to take from you.

  I wanted to apologize, but how?

  I had seen the disgust on your face when I kissed your body as before. Had I become a sexual bore? Or had the party ended already?

  When you finally ejaculated, there was no deep-gutted grunt. It was a perfunctory orgasm, the kind that you have on some mornings when you’re not exactly super horny but you jack off as something to do before you get out of bed.

  I didn’t know what I should do. I didn’t have a car, and I knew I couldn’t very well ask you to take me back to the city that same night.

  You walked around the bed and lifted the window a little.

  You sat down on the bed; didn’t look at me. You took off your prosthetic foot and pulled the blanket over us.

  I was so afraid of looking at you that I had to get out of the bedroom.

  I felt like such a little shit. What the hell had I done wrong?

  Time felt like nothing. I felt as if I was floating in your living room, only that there wasn’t any way for me to get out of the house. I felt as if I was tripping, but I wasn’t on drugs. I wanted to say how sorry I was, and leave. I sat down on the sofa and wrapped the afghan blanket around my shoulders. I was starting to shiver.

  Then you stood naked in the doorway. “Hey.”

  “What?”

  “It’ll be okay.” You beckoned me to my feet. “Let’s get some sleep.”

  When I slipped beside you, I hesitated. Was there something I should say?

  Then you patted my arm and turned onto your side as was your habit.

  I cried.

  I don’t think you ever heard me. It was the quietest cry of my life. I didn’t want to wake you up; didn’t want to worry you; I didn’t want you to be angry at me anymore.

  It was then I thought of Craig, and I hadn’t thought of him in a long time. I felt his presence, but I couldn’t pinpoint him like I usually did.