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S—

Hey Amy. This is S—, Darlene's cousin. We met at the dinner rehearsal for the wedding. Remember — I commented about how we should have rehearsals for everything if we're doing weddings? Why not rehearsals for births? For retirement? For death even? You found that pretty funny as we looked for the utensils at the buffet, which were all the way at the end, tucked away under some napkins and next to the caviar that spilled.

Hi Amy! S— again! I just loved the way you smiled at me; it was like you knew me for such a long time, the way your eyes didn't have to search mine to figure out what I was thinking. I'll tell you exactly what I was thinking: I was thinking that you could have been born a thousand years ago under the Cyprus when the wind from the east signaled an early spring, or that, more simply, I was so lucky to have finally found you — you, the only person who could make me forget about what it takes to be normal. It was like when you nodded and giggled just that little bit I didn't have to pretend for everybody anymore. You were the  one to bring me out if my shell. To wake me up as I rubbed my eyes and met the morning. It was just a really rad moment, don't you think. Oh yeah, I really do hate those moments when you're waiting there for your food but people are in the way, but we're all going to the same place, which is the eating place, the place where we rest. Speaking of, it's been a long weekend. Hope that car ride wasn't too annoying!

Hey! What's up? Just thought I'd check in, see what you're up to. What have you been doing this last week?

I was just thinking about you. It’s weird how that happens. I guess you are sending me vibes or something. Sorry, but I lurked your page a little bit! I know, what a creep, right? Anyway, you’re more than welcome to look through my stuff. I’m an open book. Sometimes I’m too open. Besides, if we’re gonna be friends, we should start visually. I remember that we saw each other from across the room as New Order played and you gave me a knowing look, as if I were the only one there besides you who would know who that is. We both bounced our heads to Age of Consent, and you looked at me the whole time. That song united us. Listen to what I’m saying! Just ignore me. And by the way, before you left and you asked me if I had a good time, yes I did. I did indeed.

I just looked at your pictures from your vacation in Vegas. Looks like an awesome time! I didn’t know you have kids! Do I count two: a boy and a girl? How lucky they are! They look so happy, staring up at you on the strip, you in sunglasses and short white shorts and sandals. You’re quite an attractive mom, if I do say so myself. Anyway, just wanted to say hi. Get at me when you feel like it.

Hey! I was just talking about you to Charlene. She says you are starting grad school. That’s awesome. I hope she said good things about me! Hey, I was thinking about going with some friends to that new DJ set sometime tonight. Have you heard of it? Charlene said she was going, so I thought you would. If so, see you there!

I saw that post with you and your friends. I guess that was the night of the DJ set. Your hair looked so pretty. Were those extensions? That look on your face said it all: I am here, you are there, I live above you in a realm unknown to humankind. The kissface you made almost brought me to tears, because it was my lips that I imagined you were searching for. What was in your cup? Some elixir of love or poison of the sado sort. I would drink both from the River that sluices your insides and runs out of your pores. To much? Hahaha. Did you know I write poetry?

I was wondering: what kind of music do you like? I bet you’re into Taylor Swift. I can just see you now, doing all the moves with your friends or alone in your room. Like somebody isn’t watching. Sometimes I like to imagine what it would be like to watch somebody when they received bad news, like really bad, if one of their parents died or something. That look of abject despair, the emptiness of faces slack of all muscle movements, could be beautiful in the most profound way.

Sometimes I just sit here and scroll and scroll and scroll. All the people I have yet to meet. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I feel exhausted socially because I have felt the wonderful presence of people around me, but then I realize that I was home alone and nobody ever came by.

One time Charlene and I kissed and then she jerked off my cock while we waited for our flight at the Dallas airport. It was for Thanksgiving, and all the family was either coming or already there. I was both.

Can you do any impressions? I can. I can do Goebbels in a bathtub, waiting for the fall of Berlin.

What do you dream about at night after looking at the fire? Do you see your father at the end of despair? What does he hold in his hand for you? A bottomless hole through which you were born.

Listen to the rain course through your bubble. That’s eternity. That’s regret.

What up??? Darlene says she’s having a party on Saturday. Hope you can make it! Can’t wait to talk in person!

I saw you from across the lawn. You were drinking a four Loko and holding hands with some guy, so I didn’t approach. That’s okay. As long as you’re happy, that’s all I care about. When you kissed I could taste him from my lips into my throat. He has a hard body. What does he look like with his shirt off? I want to dress in you. I want to taste his cock. I want to feel your rumble of warmth push through my genitals and into my face when he enters me. I never want to see you in the distance but up close, always, like a manifold projection of some desert somewhere.

When you receive the new mind, do you shudder? Is God yours?

I asked Charlene to put in a good word for me, despite your relationship. Did she say anything? Your silence is so fragrant that I think I’m falling in love with the asphyxiation.

Pain does not exist without the obsession we have with pleasure. Without the mind, everything is lost. I look at you and I feel the promise of new sensation, of possibility and renewal. Your body is an object of the mind’s eye, of satisfaction of perpetual desire. I want to take off all your clothes, one piece at a time, and feel what you feel when they rub against your skin. I want to gaze upon your naked body, not touching but listening for that moment in which silence becomes elemental.

Did you orgasm when either of your children were expelled from your vagina? It isn’t as uncommon an occurrence as you might think.

On second thought, when you read these, don’t tell Charlene, because I made her mad the other day and I don’t want her to mess anything up that could develop here.

Amy, give me your answer, true. I’m half crazy, all for the love of you. You know that song? From the carousel? It’s actually very sweet — the guy is poor but he thinks he still has a shot and a future with this rich, stuck up girl.

Someone said that the farther down you look, the more it seems you’re looking up at the sky. Or whoever said that was quoting somebody else — in which case, the quote has no meaning anymore anyway, because it’s second-hand information and everything is fake news. Two colors don’t make a right.

I have an idea for a film. Get this: A boy gets lost and returns two days later, but the dawn never comes.

I have an Idea for an Interpretive Dance. Get this: Everybody loves somebody and the ocean isn’t, in fact, an endless circular globe of blue but a signifier for everything we leave hidden from each other.

I have another  Idea for a Film. Get this: An enemy waits. I wait to put on the head because that part is the most unsettling and ominous — the light fading slowly, the breathing getting deeper, whatever world there is outside now filtered through a mesh only approximating a living space.

There, hanging up in the window where the only light comes in, are Sophia’s socks, and Jeanie’s socks, and also Margaret’s, too. Fifty dollars for each pair, except for Sophia, because she is kind of famous in the foot circuit. Online you can see bare feet after the specific socks are removed, digital evidence corresponding to a facial or full-body view of the woman. These feet are searchable, narrowed down according to specifications on height, weight, ethnicity, and background/hobbies. Everything is still done with PayPal. Ah, the good ol’ days. How much have I spent on socks? Maybe a grand or two, but who’s counting?

I have an Idea for an Album, Specifically an LP: We are old, we are dying.

As I walk in your house, I notice some music I’ve never heard before. How do you describe something that you’ve never previously experienced aurally? Like glass with tiny wings. Like it’s hot in this thing and I’m out in the desert again and the ground is swaying to the sounds of high powered daylight and to the side there is Peterson and he’s telling you something that you can’t hear and it’s like what I have to lean in closer and there’s dirt in my mouth like the dust made of skin particles a million million times over and I blink and a fine, red mist sprays through his helmet and I get some in my mouth, and with the dirt, it’s like I ingest every single part of you.

I have an idea for a portrait. Get this: A dream continues.

They are staring, they are casually glancing and looking away with punch drinks, and some kids run around outside on the grass. They say that Ring Around the Rosie was written about the black plague, but you can’t really read too much into things nowadays anyway. There’s a laundry in the woods. I jump and I jump and I hear the parents laughing but it’s not the same as when she left me in some motel out near the interstate after I came back and the sound waves still made my brain ripple and I woke up to an empty bed with the light illuminating more dust I breathed in. That time it was commingled with a certain type of love. I fought my first fight that day — my eye stayed shut for days.

I have an idea for a dish. Get this: Some derelict flies left the pantry.

I have an Idea for a Video Game: Compassion both does and does not make everything alright.

Idea for a Jingle: Hell never freezes over, it just lessens the boils in your skin. It’s like puppy breath in here. Little puppies. Sometimes I think about taking puppy after puppy and launching them over the railing at my apartment. Don’t tell me you’ve never thought once about hitting somebody’s head in with a hammer or poking out your own eye with the sweet release of the sharp end of a blade. I wonder if I can sneak a cigarette in here. Idea for a Ceiling Fan: go one way, and then the other, but never stop being yourself. And there’s the baby — all fat and jolly. There he is, in his mother’s arms.

Idea for a Rock Opera: A man plays a banjo and nobody loves him. There was a time when she said I was her biggest mistake, and it ruined my life from then on out, in that dark house for years without anybody else. There was a fireplace. I don’t know if it is the light or what, but soon I feel my arms go slack and the baby falls to the pavement and I look down only to find my suit is indeed still dry. People are yelling, people are shrieking.

Idea for a Superhero Movie: A man lights a candle and all the world can see. I try to lean down and check on the baby but the father already has taken off the head to my suit and starts berating me with punches to my eyes. I can’t see. Then I’m on the ground. Through the small slits in my eyes that let in the soft light, I think I can still see the sky.

Where will our conscious minds go when our heart stops beating? If consciousness is an amalgamation of chemical processes in the brain, and then these things stop all of a sudden, doesn't it rationally follow that we will enter a state of absolute nonexistence? Our minds won't even be around to remember whatever this is, this moment. Death won't even exist, because there will be no memory of dying. Our living thoughts are a collective momentary accident.

When I drive by your house and you're not there, it makes me think that this love is merely a paltry state of a trick of the mind. As humans, we show preference in the need to survive. I prefer to watch and wait, devour you from afar in a blanket of calm recognition.

I want you to take off your shoes and walk in the new mud after the first rain. I'll wait and wait until it falls again, filling up your footprints. I want to get on the ground prone and drink the water encased there — it's holy mana. A sacrament. You are divinity and will be resurrected.

I visit your son’s bedroom, under the covers, waiting for you to tuck me in at night.

I'm afraid of the dark.

When your children sleep, they remind me of blank innocence — all raw and quiet. They never wake to hear me. From your door, there's nothing but the TV.

This house now feels like my home. Before you come home, I take a shit in your toilet. I look through your drawers, but nothing perverted. Your boyfriend is handsome beyond belief.

I stand over you in the dark and possess everything you've ever been. Let's hope our love continues.

User No Longer Exists

Malcolm Graham Cooper holds an MFA from Concordia University, St. Paul. His work has been featured in Variant, Blue Lake Review, Chapter House, and others. He is currently an MA student in literature at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where he was born and raised.
Instagram: @mcoops1289