March 27, 2007
Posted in Story Scrapbook at 2:26 am by Kristiina
I am tied up on train tracks. Inevitability approaches, shaking the world until the vibration seeps into each of my bones. A wine bottle falls off the rail and shatters into pieces. Someone flips a coin and it lands into the broken glass, sending sparks of reflection my way. I am calm. Fate rushes towards me on shaky legs and unties me right before the train arrives. I miss the vibration.
Love’s choked the words out of me. They’re there and not-there, until thoughts become this morning’s fog, shrinking the world into a cocoon. Colours fade and the end of any road becomes invisible. I hold half-finished paintings, one line of two thousand poems, and scribbled ideas around, and they stay this way, unfinished, quivering in anticipation. Soon, I promise them and get distracted by a sound or a daydream.
I watch films about Africa and cry only to walk around with swollen eyes the next day. I worry about hurting him somehow, and not realising it, and make new resolutions each day. But even though my mornings begin in confusion (how is one supposed to switch between the dream-world and alarmclock-reality with ease?), I look forward to them. Maybe we die a little every night, and wake to another beginning. I feel lucky again. He makes me see new colours.
Permalink
November 14, 2006
Posted in Story Scrapbook at 11:02 pm by Kristiina
Jazz broke the reflection of a streetlamp in your livingroom, jumping above the levels of white noise, distant traffic and someone’s sleeping sounds.
Come, baby, you sang, and turned my necklace into chains.
You caught a song fraction with long, dark fingers; snatched it from the air and tasted alien syllables. Whiskey and water, you thought, and mixed in some drums for strength.
Sprawled on your bed, I asked for Spanish guitars, and you added that. The drinks remained untouched.
I became an aquatic robot, sliding down pipelines and merging decibels, clank! from one, keeeshhh! from the next turn; echoes everywhere. You played blackjack on my body, turning cards infuriatingly slowly. Down, down, down another pipe I went, and I made a savage out of you; an outlaw flooding streets with jazz and shooting lampposts with laser eyes.
Come, baby, you said, and then shot me down so I’d never surrender.
Permalink
July 2, 2006
Posted in Story Scrapbook at 11:04 pm by Kristiina
I dreamt of dragonfire thundering through the veins of the wind. Lightning struck the sand and rocks next to me, giving birth to crystals, liquid and languid as the face of the sea. Granite pulsed and coughed in the heat. Sweating silver, it was painted monochrome like a broken caleidoscope, a few chips at a time.
I walked on hot coals and they turned into a sunrise, swelling under my feet and above the clouds. Horizon tipped over and played catch with the skeleton of a half-sunken ship, as I picked molten sea shells from the sand, turned them into dice, and rolled sixes. One after another they fell, six after six after six, and they burst into flames as they landed. One after another, I rolled the dice and watched luck spark up.
Permalink
June 27, 2006
Posted in Story Scrapbook at 3:05 pm by Kristiina
The music in my head stretches through my hair, webs upward and I grow taller with it, trying to catch up. The beat of another tomorrow chokes me out of silence, humming in tune with the moving air. The sounds grow stronger, more insistent, and then they spread as a blanket, drowning the wind.
Time stops.
It freezes over its tracks, liquid no more; waiting, luring, silent. I stand in an immeasurable void with blue-printed footsteps.
A transparent path curls out from under Time, whirls around me; ruffling, it crawls around my feet in lazy swirls. I am surrounded by a thousand tentative vibrations.
The path snarls: Time stopped. Can you catch up now?
I cover my ears and hum my name, over and over. To remember. To stay. But the name gets caught in echo and I forget after all.
I am a half-empty guilt equation, pulling vision into parallel lines of choice and defeat, feeding on patience and the sound of your clenched teeth: I never… I draw lines on the subterranean surface of Time, file your shape into it, break chips off its edge and polish features with guarded fingertips.
I give you away. Here.
Time starts to move, begins to nudge my working fingers with its threads and soak my toes in a messy flow, melting shapes until they steam. It gets under my fingernails, beneath my hair and forms dewdrops on my lashes. I dance in puddles, dripping, soaked. It’s so hot. Time yanks my reason, steals the edge and your face, and roars upwards, pulling loose each safety valve. I am an explosion, born of someone else’s body and mine, and a little careless chemistry.
From clay to dust the moment goes.
Permalink
May 12, 2006
Posted in Story Scrapbook at 8:37 pm by Kristiina
This spring burrows into me, stretching its claws far, far under my ribs, and hisses: breeeeathe!
I danced on the lawn in the back yard today, danced for the sprouting daisies and for starving ladybugs; danced for every teardrop I could not hold back and for walled up dreams. I laid out my heart on the pavement, whispered death spells over it and left it there for better days; danced under the trees, making leaves sprinkle wishes in my hair, sparkling and broken.
My longing stretched proudly under the stars, clumsy and loud; so loud that its grumbling should have reached your ears from far away, scratching, wailing sounds into your hearing and making you listen.
Thump-thump goes the heart, and spring kisses me on the nose, fiddling with the rain, laughing at loneliness, inviting me for a walk.
Sour-faced apples stare at me, as if it were my fault I could not eat anything else. I walk with the spring by my side with its greedy paws and too much passion, walk, knowing love is better at hide-and-seek than I ever will be, walk, feeling the dance in my tired, swelling blood, my reaching fingers, my wine-soaked tongue, my every fibre that cries for you.
Permalink
May 1, 2006
Posted in Story Scrapbook at 7:35 pm by Kristiina
God climbs out of the sock on the floor and chuckles, covering his mouth with a wrinkly hand.
- That was amusing. Now, what’s for dinner?
You stare at him and throw an orange his way.
- I created oranges purely for the texture, you know.
God munches on the orange, slurps, and spits out a seed.
- Forgot about those. There’s a purpose to them, though.
- What purpose? you ask.
- Forget it, too philosophical. You wouldn’t understand.
You cross your arms and frown at him.
- That’s the attitude. Did I ever tell you about the ducks?
- Yeah.
You nod.
- Well, then. It’s the same thing, in a quintessential sense.
You shrug and sit cross-legged on the floor. You’ve plans for the day and don’t feel like babysitting a deity.
- Wanna go to the park?
You shake your head.
- Why not?
- I’m busy. Seriously. Go bug someone else, old man.
God chuckles, showing two missing front teeth.
- I’m younger than you. And older. But what really matters is that as soon as you walk out the door, you’ll meet death.
- Is he as annoying as you?
- Right. I’ve had about enough of this. See you tomorrow.
God climbs back into the sock, leaving a trail of blue smoke in his path.
You pick up the orange peels, clean the ashtray, and put on a coat.
The doorbell rings.
You open the door, step outside, and punch death in the face.
Permalink
April 27, 2006
Posted in Story Scrapbook at 9:03 pm by Kristiina
Today, I am the rain. I am smashed against the window - clank - then roll down it; down, down, merging with the surface, then clank! against the glass again. Over and over, until this motion is all that I feel, everything I hear.
I am anticipation. That’s what rain is - its shape - my shape molds into the surface, hard landing being softened by the non-curves on the way. Fast breaks and slow motion affairs, I slide into new places, never reaching, always almost there.
The man in the white coat crossed his fingers and said that if all goes well, I’ll jump to the Moon soon. There and back, jumping all the way.
Rain doesn’t land light; it bangs down hard in a head-on collision. This is not my sky.
I roll down the glass slowly, drinking surfaces, and I cannot hold on to any of it. I can’t hold on to anything, and I am afraid.
This is just today, though. When you’re around, your skin polarises me, and I sink sharp claws into it, merging textures until they match. Or don’t match. But at the very least, they meet - they melt into each fiber, into each other, satiated until drunk of sunlight and the colours of heat.
Permalink
April 16, 2006
Posted in Story Scrapbook at 4:02 pm by Kristiina
I am an illusion with a sultry voice. Sometimes, you can catch me stealing your sushi or your 4×4, or getting drunk on your rooftop. I am everything you think I am on Sundays. I used to be friends with the gypsies but they left me alone when I ran out of booze and smokes. I first seduced a man at fourteen. I smoke like a chimney - in fact, more than this chimney here does. I haven’t quite figured out how my body works - that’s an ongoing, awkward process. I am convincing, but no more than what you’d expect. I cry without tears. I love, oh, how I love, but it’s wishful thinking, all of it. There is nothing but the rain, and that rain covers everything, the secrets, the hideouts, the nakedness. There’s a ghost in the attic that I tried to get to know, but he is too old and too comfortable rattling what is about, so I am alone in the house, making do. I cannot ever stop my heart from making crackled sounds when breaking. Shhh.
I’m down with all your unspent currency.
Crackle.
Permalink
« Previous entries ·