3 Minute Fiction Challenge

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally decided to walk through the door. Taking one last look around the small Manhattan apartment, Nadia thought about how she wouldn’t miss the clutter. Michael had so many books stuffed on the mahogany shelves that they looked like lobsters crawling over each other in a supermarket tank. All those books lay there, but somehow she had managed to pull out this photo album, probably the one thing he didn’t want her to look at. The sunlight coming in gave the little place a warm buttery feeling, but it also hit the multitudes of dust swarming the air. He never dusts, she thought. She laughed. After seeing the photo, not dusting was the least of Michael’s offenses. Well, she wasn’t going to be made victim by two men in a row.

The noise of the shower stopped. Uh-oh. Nadia had to move quickly. She couldn’t leave with him watching. She was sure of that but she was having trouble getting off the couch. It was one of those big puffy couches, the kind that swallows you when you sit and once you’re in it you never want to get out. Counting to three in her head, she pushed up from the couch, but only gathered enough momentum to get halfway up from the marshmallow cushions. Her rump technically didn’t even leave the seat before she plopped back down.

“Hey Nadia, can you remind me later that I need more shampoo?” Michael’s call echoed from the bathroom. Nadia froze. “Nadia?” He wandered to the bedroom door and looked at her. His hair was still dripping and he wore only his towel. She looked at the floor and cursed to herself. Go, go, go. She finally pushed herself up. “What’s wrong?” he asked. Nadia couldn’t look at him so she chucked the photo album at him and bolted. She descended the stairs, flew out the door, onto the street, down the subway entrance, and, swiping her metro card, put everything behind her. She stopped only when she reached the platform. For just a moment, she let her heavy breaths catch up with her. A teenage girl pointed at a man sprinting towards them, clinging to his towel so it wouldn’t fly from his waist, spraying those he passed with water.

“No,” Nadia moaned.

“Ew, gross.” The girl scrunched her nose.

Nadia covered her eyes. The train couldn’t come fast enough. Michael reached her and grabbed her arm with his free hand.

“Don’t touch me.” She slipped out of his wet grip.

“Nadia, what’s the matter with you?” More people were pointing and staring at Michael but he looked only at her.
“What’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with you? I saw the photo of you and cat woman on Halloween. What were you doing with another woman?”

Michael slapped his forehead. “That was two years ago. Before I even met you.”

Nadia shook her head. “You were dressed as the pirate king. That was this year.”

“I repeated the costume. I’m sorry Nadia. I wear the same costume every year. I’m not very clever, but I am faithful. I promise I did not cheat on you.”

Nadia looked at him dripping in the subway. A train arrived and all the passengers unloading stared at them. The wind rustled through the tunnel and he shivered but stayed looking at her. “Nadia?”

“Well, I feel silly,” she said.

A look of relief washed over Michael. He looked down at himself, then at her. “You feel silly?” he asked with a smile.

Saliva

When I saw the boy for the first time, I tripped so sharply that my organs lost their place. My heart took the place of my head, pumping constantly.
I told it to stop, but it wouldn't.
My head took the place of my stomach, digesting only thoughts of him.
I told it to stop, but it wouldn't.

I was dying.

The one who shook me up would be the one save me.
I needed a transfusion and I stole a kiss to get it.
A bite of the lip and the lifeblood pulsed from him to me.

But with the blood came a bug –
An illness of obsession, unshakable disease.
The sickness of needing to tell him how he made me feel.
I tried to make it stop, but I couldn’t.

I frothed at the mouth with words I had to say to him.
The sentences dripped and rolled down my chin.
Subject and predicate saliva.
He wiped my mouth with his sheet music, barely noticing.
I continued to foam as he played on and on, my requiem.

I tried to wash my face in the Raritan River,
Hoping its currents would carry away my illness.
But the current was not strong enough.
I stayed silently by his piano bench,
My chin nestled on his thigh as if I were a dog
I stained him with my drooling sentences
Maybe he would stop playing and notice?

I told the summer not to end
But the fall winds chopped at the season
The summer, the boy, my stomach and heart, we were all alike
We did not know how to obey

Nobody Too

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
by Emily Dickinson

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

Nobody Too
By Dana Eckstein

You're nobody?
What a relief!
All these somebody's running around
Like I'm someone to be found
Are making me loose sleep!

I'm nobody, you say?
I wonder how you knew?
I hide disguised
so I am most surprised
but I am sure glad there are two!

A pair, a pair!
There is nothing better!
Like a sock with a companion
A mountain with a canyon
A creditor and a debtor!

The somebodies, my dear
I don't know how they do
With the dreariness and publicity
The feigned charm and felicity
All to impress the likes of me and you

The frogs, the frogs!
They ribbited and they jumped
How they stand not to die
Before the public eye
Leaves me just quite stumped

Now that we've two of us
We'll never have to part
Unless of course you know
You're sombodiness comes to show
Because then I'd have to dart!

Items Lost

I never intended to lose so many things.
Buttons, jackets, mittens, oh the many mittens.
Glasses. The ultimate paradox of losing glasses.
If only I had my glasses, maybe I could look for them.
I never meant to lose the trust of my best friend in junior high school.
I can’t decide if I meant to lose my innocence.
One the one hand, it made me sophisticated, intelligent, cool, cynical.
But then there are the days when I wonder why I was so eager to throw it away.
Cynicism makes you lonely, no matter how many cynics you are surrounded by.

Then there are the things I lost intentionally
That homework sheet – Oh sure Mrs. Peterson, I never got that homework sheet
And how could you hold me accountable for the homework I didn’t do when it wasn’t assigned?
Of course not.
There was my sister’s blue satin dress – so shiny and soft
I lost it, but then I helped it find itself in my closet.

My first kiss. All my life I dreamed of giving it away.
I used to walk by myself down the sandy shores of New Jersey
And fling my kisses into the ocean, who for all his roaring
Never did anything more than lap my feet.

Then all of the sudden it was gone.
I was fourteen. It was my birthday.
We were behind my daddy’s rose bushes.
And this boy, who chased me for months
Sprayed me more than that grouchy old ocean ever did
And then only several months later,
Lost memory of who I was.

I lost my first kiss. Intentionally, unintentionally. Either way, it is gone.

Tangled

Tangled,

you are tangled

in your own thoughts

in your own words

you play yourself

like piano chords

hammer each string

until they've crossed their lines

I'll forge each note

to fit my own designs

and each time you don't kiss me

I'll go home and brush my hair

no tangles, no tangles

no tangling there

Tangled,

I am tangled

crossed by your thoughts

bored with your words

I've played myself

by moving towards

a line without a guide

that finds itself over again

knotting and twisting

never to reach the end

each time you don't kiss me

I'll go home and brush my hair

no tangles, no tangles

no tangling there

stroke by stroke

brushing my hair

removing each stroke

of your hand caressing there

stroke by stroke by stroke

I'm struck and stuck 

these knots are just not fair

each time you don't kiss me

I'll go home and brush my hair

no tangles, no tangles

no tangling there

If You Want Me To

There's no shelter in my home
More thoughts than there is rain
She lays in bed wishing you were here
Though she's far away
And she thinks she's wrong, about everything
and she can't hear you
she wishes to
but she can't hear you now

There's no shelter in the rain
if it separates you two
as she wonders if you wonder if
you think about her too

And neither of you can foresee if there will ever be a day
When she will turn to you
Oh she wonders what you'll say

She wonders, she wonders, has she done bad?
Like you, she's learning from you
I could fill your hollow hole and hold you
but only if you want me to

And neither of you can foresee if there will ever be a day
When she will turn to you
Oh she wonders what you'll say

She wonders, she wonders, has she done bad?
Like you, she's learning from you
I could fill your hollow hole and hold you
but only if you want me to

You're fortune's fool, to be punished for this
the badness could end and start with a kiss
I could fill your hollow hole and hold you
but only if you want me to

Fairydust

The dusty light filters in through the one high window in the door frame
The light lands on the stage floor just before the piano where you and I sit
The piano is what they call a grand piano. I call it a grandmother piano.
She is old and elegant, deeply resonant, with many scratches glimmering on her weathered black polish,
creasing her surface like inky elephant skin
Her ivory keys are slightly chipped but as you gently press her, she sings

I am curled up on the hard stage floor. I breathe in the smell of dust

It is bad for me but I love the sweet resin musk.
The vibrations of the piano travel through the floor and come up through the side of my ribcage and the hands upon which I rest my cheek

You keep plunking away, singing softly. Your voice pours like molasses. I am trying not to listen to you. You're singing out the air, to nobody, the love songs wash away, wasted. Instead, I focus on the words of the grandmother piano

Don't worry about the boy, she murmurs
Let me sing you to sleep, to dreams of love requited

But I can't believe her, I can't quite take her in.
As long as the dust fairies fly in circles, in the cyclone of light, I will coil myself around my wounded heart

I stand up quickly, my skirt falling in folds around my knees and I pad over to your bench. I try to sit gently as to not disturb your playing

Your eyes dart towards me then back at the air to which you sing

I watch your pale fingers skipping from note to note, almost as white as the old keys

Your hair smells like the dust that falls from the theater's vault above us
I breathe it in.

I know better. The dust will swirl in, the suspended particles will line my lungs, collect in my tissues. It will run in my blood. But I can't stop - I just breathe it all in.
The piano says, "Be sharp. Be careful"

But. I've already breathed you in.