August 26, 2017

Crushing

By Polypsyches

SEANA: Do you have a crush on me?

JORDAN: Yes.

SEANA: Oh.

JORDAN: Does that surprise you?

SEANA: No… I mean, just that you’re so… I mean, I didn’t expect you to just…

JORDAN: Why should I hide it?

SEANA: Well, I mean, you’ve been hiding it.

JORDAN: Well, I mean, but you obviously know. Now. So.

SEANA: But why were you hiding it before?

JORDAN: I mean, why does anyone hide anything? Embarrassment?

SEANA: You were embarrassed to like me?

JORDAN: I was embarrassed to have a crush on you.

SEANA: Why?

JORDAN: Crushes are embarrassing!

SEANA: OK…

JORDAN: You like someone, they don’t like you…

SEANA: How do you know I don’t like you?

JORDAN: Well, you don’t exactly shower me with… anything. Most of the time, you act like I’m not even there. You hardly even look at me, let alone…

SEANA: And it never occurred to you that maybe that had something to do with me having a crush on you?

JORDAN: … No. Wait, do you have a crush on me?

SEANA: No.

JORDAN: Then why would you even say that?

SEANA: I don’t know!

JORDAN: Why are you even bringing this up?

SEANA: I don’t know. There’s just… there’s a lot of stuff going on and I’m just trying to figure it all out, you know, put the pieces together. It’s like everyone I know, no one’s really…

JORDAN: What?

SEANA: I don’t know. Why didn’t you tell me?

JORDAN: I didn’t want to get in the way.

SEANA: Doesn’t being around your crush kind of get in your way?

JORDAN: I didn’t want to get in your way. People act different around people who like them, even and maybe especially if they don’t like them back. It makes them uncomfortable. Aren’t you uncomfortable?

SEANA: I guess. But how can you know someone likes you if you don’t ask them?

JORDAN: You know. Well, theoretically. You don’t like me, though. Right?

SEANA: I mean, I like you…

JORDAN: Even knowing what you know?

SEANA: You’re the one with a crush.

JORDAN: Crushes are annoying, though. You’re not annoyed?

SEANA: I don’t know. You’re not really doing anything.

JORDAN: But then how did you know?

SEANA: Keisha told me.

JORDAN: Keisha told you? Oh my God!

SEANA: Don’t be mad!

JORDAN: Why the hell did Keisha tell you?

SEANA: How do I know? We all know she’s a backstabbing bitch.

JORDAN: She’s not a backstabbing—well…

SEANA: See? The more you know. What’s it like for you, though?

JORDAN: What do you mean?

SEANA: Isn’t it hard to be around me? Isn’t that what… what a crush is? Isn’t that why they call it a crush?

JORDAN: I guess so. I don’t know. I guess it’s more a matter of, I know that I like you and I know that you’re not interested, but because I like you, I don’t know. I want you to be happy.

SEANA: You just said I always ignore you.

JORDAN: You don’t always ignore me. Sometimes you smile. Just not…

SEANA: Right.

JORDAN: Yeah.

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August 24, 2017

“Lightning Crashes”

By Polypsyches

Childbirth can be dangerous. I feel like people forget that sometimes, you know? Someone says “I’m pregnant,” you tend to think one of two things: best case, “Congratulations! You’re going to have a baby!” Worst case, “Man, that sucks. How are you gonna take care of it? What are you gonna do?”

It’s like we’ve forgotten childbirth is a battlefield.

We remember the pain. Right? They keep playing it for comedy in movies and TV. But it’s all right, right? Get through the pain, there’s a brand new life on the other side of it.

Unless there’s not.

Most miscarriages happen in the first trimester. That’s why there’s starting to be this convention, I guess, that you don’t even announce until you’re two or three months in. Just in case, you know. That’s why my mom waited three weeks to tell Robert even after she was sure, and another two to tell me and my brother. Not that I didn’t know already. I am who I am, right?

But even finding out when I did, knowing even before she did, I was terrified. I was looking after baby Karen when I found out. I saw the act, then I saw the blood. Then I saw my brother, small, fragile, eyes closed, as the nurses washed him off.

I didn’t see my mother.

I knew what holes looked like, how to trace their contours, but I still didn’t know what they meant. Not seeing my mother—Well, maybe she’s ot that important, I tried reassuring myself. And maybe I could have convinced myself of that in any other context. But here now, washing my niece, reminding myself why I was the one in a position to ever need to wash her…

I looked into her eyes. She smiled. She knew nothing of my plight. She didn’t even know she was a motherless child.

I wasn’t in the room when Ellen Portnoy died in childbirth. She was seventeen. I saw it from the waiting room in pretty much real time and I was livid. Why show me this? Why show me now? I saw the light go out of her eyes and by the time Jasper came out of the room and brought the news, I was already in tears.

These things are not supposed to happen. Not anymore.

But they do.

So here I am, looking at this baby I’m supposed to be cleaning, not knowing if my mother is going to make it to my high school graduation. At least I’ll have a brother—but what will we do with him? One more mouth to feed, and with what?

I watch my mother grow. I watch her feed the danger inside her. I catch glimpses of what he’ll look like over the next few years. One time, I think I even see him at fifteen or something, playing fetch with my dad.

I see myself, too, by the way. Sometimes real far out—forty or fifty. I think I might’ve caught a glimpse of my retirement party. I don’t know. And I ask myself “Have I ever actually seen my mother? That far out? Anywhere near it?

“What’s got you down?” Declan asks me in the waiting room. On the whole, we’ve never had a lot of conversations and they’re awkward when we do.

I tell him my misgivings, not the visions themselves, but how “Nobody ever talks about the dangers.”

If this were a love story or a soapy costume show, this would be the part where he put his hand on me. My hand, my shoulder, my back, maybe even my face. Sometimes I get shots and I don’t know if they’re fantasies or what, of this friend of my brother’s and the things that I want him to do to me and it takes me a minute to remember “Oh, right, that’s Raven, that’s not me at all,” ‘cause it’s so easy to get us mixed up, and then I’m not confused anymore.

But he doesn’t put his hand on me, anywhere. Not now. His affection doesn’t require such physicalization.

Finally, about nine hours into my mother’s third labor, it comes to me. Not a single image or scene, but an avalanching montage of my mother and her new son. It crashes into me, a wave of sickening schmaltz lifting the doom off my shoulders and tossing it casually into the wind behind me. Like the Fatal Guide who sends me this shot only just made up his mind or realized he was running out of time to fuck with me on this.

My stepdad came out with a smile. “You want to be there, Kassie? When the baby comes out? Come on! You don’t have to look.”

I couldn’t help but remember the “being there” feeling of what happened to Ellen Portnoy. But I knew now there wasn’t anything to fear. Not here. Not now.
Not yet.

Leave a comment | posted in Angst

August 24, 2017

Having to Choose

By Polypsyches

TAYLOR: Having fun down here?

JARED: Fuck off, Taylor.

TAYLOR: We need to talk.

JARED: I got nothing to say to you.

TAYLOR: Oh, I’m sure you got plenty to say to me right now.

JARED: Look, just fuck off, okay? You won, don’t know why the fuck you’d be here to begin with. Huh? Shouldn’t you be off celebrating or something? With her?

TAYLOR: Is that how you think of this? Like it’s some kind of competition? I never wanted to fight you for her.

JARED: All right, what the fuck do you want? Huh? You gloating?

TAYLOR: Hell, no. I’m not that guy. Least I try not to be.

JARED: Then what?

TAYLOR: I had a… proposition. I know you… well, I know how you feel—at least, I have some idea. And I know how much Kylie… struggled trying to decide, well, which of us… I just thought maybe there might be a way to make things easier on everyone.

JARED: The fuck are you talking about?

TAYLOR: Why make her choose?

JARED: The fuck?

TAYLOR: Look… I’m not the jealous type. I know jealousy is paradoxically this trait that we value in our society, much as we bad-mouth and pooh-pooh it in our rhetoric, we still have this assumption… I’ve never felt it. I know how Kylie feels about me, I know how Kylie feels about you… And I gotta say, I don’t hate you for it. I actually think you’re pretty decent. Most of the time, anyway.

JARED: Why are you doing this?

TAYLOR: Because I want her to be happy.

JARED: Uh-huh—why are you really doing this?

TAYLOR: God’s honest?

JARED: If you don’t mind.

TAYLOR: I like you. I don’t want us to be enemies.

JARED: What exactly do you expect us to be? Us both being in love with the same girl?

TAYLOR: All right. I get it. You’re not open to that, and that’s fine.

JARED: What exactly did you expect me to be open to?

TAYLOR: Forget it. Forget it. I apologize. I’ll fuck off now—

JARED: Are you gay?

TAYLOR: Not exactly.

JARED: Are you wanting to… Like, with me?

TAYLOR: The thought had crossed my mind. But I’ll understand if…

JARED: If I don’t want to fuck you while I’m fucking her. If I don’t want you there.

TAYLOR: She’s the one you’re in love with. Right?

JARED: I don’t fucking get you, man.

TAYLOR: It’s OK. Little off the beaten path. I dig. Just… let me know if you ever change your mind. I’ll make you dinner or someting.

JARED: Just fuck off.

Leave a comment | posted in The Essence of Longing

August 23, 2017

“Going Away to College”

By Polypsyches

Declan was never not going to go to college.

Raven was. Not going to go, that is. It was something that hadn’t even occurred to her as an option. She didn’t think she had it in her, didn’t think it was worth it, didn’t bring it up until her guidance counselor did.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

It was Declan who turned her around. Was he doing it for selfish reasons? Was he doing it because he knew that he liked her and he wanted her to be smart like him because it would make him feel better? Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not here to judge (that part).

But I do know that he was good for her. Even when she was with Blake, Blake might have respected her, and if she gave her opinion, he respected that, but he never asked for it. Declan asked her opinion and advice every step of the way, treated future decisions like they were mutual and inclusive, even before they started dating, her being part of the band and all.

Am I sticking up for Declan because I have a crush on him? I don’t know, but I really can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t. Stick up for him, that is. Or have a crush.

The surprising one was Jasper. Jasper was going to go to college. His parents had gone to college. Our older sister had gone off to college three years earlier. But here Jasper was, saddled with a kid.

“You need to go to college because you have to be able to give your kid a good life,” Mom kept trying to tell him.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jasper shot back. “That’s four years I won’t be able to care for my kid at all—“

“You’ll have a support system—“

“And then what? What kind of job would I have? With a college degree? Fucking everyone has one of those, and hiring managers don’t care anymore. You know what they want? They want job experience.”

Jasper had been listening to other prospective dads at his dad-classes.

Looking back on his life, it should have been obvious to everyone—and I’m really not sure why it wasn’t—that college was never Jasper’s thing. I don’t know why they even thought he would get in. Academics never interested him. He was kind of a bum—no, that’s not true. When he did get into something, he really worked hard at it. Like, he might never have been the best musician, but he was really into actually being in a band, like the promotional side.

“You could do that for a business,” Mom suggested once. “But you’d probably have to go to business school.”

“I’ll take night classes.”

“And quit the band?”

Quit the band? Quit Angst?

It wasn’t something that Jasper had ever actually considered.

Declan hadn’t really considered it, either. Part of that was because he knew he was going to be going to college pretty close to home, and so was Raven, once she got all that straightened out. Trinity’s Field is a college town, so why not, right? Everyone did it.

And they’d hit a pretty good stride. They were playing some pretty decent gigs—not to mention winning that same aforementioned opening for SchadowFreud moment. So when it came time to really make decisions and Jasper came out with that part, Declan and Raven just looked at each other.

They had actually thought about it. No, that’s not quite true. They had talked about it, in bedroom fantasy terms, what would be like to hook up as musicians, just the two of them, strike out on their own, Raven and Declan. Declan and Raven? I always kind of resent it when the boy’s name automatically goes first, but you know…

They hadn’t really ever thought they would do it, though. They were lovers in a bubble and the bubble isn’t real, until it is.

“We should talk about this,” they agreed.

“Is this the end of Angst?” they all thought.

College is supposed to be a time of tectonic shift. You’re expected to take all your clothes off, all the way down, and try on new ones, and it’s surprising how many people find out they’ve been wearing the wrong bra. It’s a time we have for those people who go to set aside childish things and turn their dreams into magic or dust.

By the time Jasper would have gone to college, he had lost all his childish things on a bullshit gamble that hadn’t paid out. His dreams were deferred.

Leave a comment | posted in Angst

August 22, 2017

But Did You Have Fun?

By Polypsyches

ELLIOTT: Some night, huh?

JOHN: It was okay.

ELLIOTT: Oh, come on. I saw you. You catch his name or the two of you get too tongue-tied?

JOHN: Gee. You think that one up all by yourself?

ELLIOTT: I know you like him.

JOHN: Pretty observant for a straight guy, aren’t you?

ELLIOTT: I know your type.

JOHN: Oh my God! My type? Are you serious?

ELLIOTT: You’re real quiet, so you’re attracted to loud men—

JOHN: Oh my God!

ELLIOTT: There’s nothing wrong with that!

JOHN: Stop it! What about you, though?

ELLIOTT: What about me?

JOHN: I saw you talking to his friend. Darcy?

ELLIOTT: Who? The stuffy one with the glasses?

JOHN: She’s not stuffy! Not the way Bing tells it.

ELLIOTT: Well, she was pretty damn stuffy with me.

JOHN: Are you upset she wouldn’t dance with you?

ELLIOTT: I’m not upset she wouldn’t dance with me, no. After the way she turned her nose up at me when I asked her, I’m actually kinda relieved she said no.

JOHN: Are you serious?

ELLIOTT: Look, she’s just not my type, OK?

JOHN: You and your types! Bullshit! She is exactly your type!

ELLIOTT: Did you just say “bullshit”?

JOHN: Don’t change the subject, Elliott! She was exactly your type! She’s tall—

ELLIOTT: When have I ever dated a tall—OK, yeah, fine—

JOHN: She’s a brunette—

ELLIOTT: I’ve dated blondes! I have very dated redheads.

JOHN: Not like you’ve dated brunettes, honey. Plus, she’s smart.

ELLIOTT: You forgot funny. Funny is also my type.

JOHN: Not always. Sarah wasn’t funny.

ELLIOTT: No, but at least she was able to take a joke—

JOHN: Until she wasn’t.

ELLIOTT: Which is why it didn’t work out! Sense of humor is important to me, Johnny!

JOHN: Hey! What have talked about.

ELLIOTT: John. Sorry.

JOHN: Accepted. And I still think you two would be really cute together.

ELLIOTT: Ew.

JOHN: You could be her henchman—

ELLIOTT: Oh, shove it.

JOHN: What! Our spouses could be each other’s best men! It’d be perfect!

ELLIOTT: Mom was right about you, wasn’t she?

Leave a comment | posted in The Essence of Longing

August 19, 2017

I Know What You Are (part 2)

By Polypsyches

NICK: Hey.

HARLEY: Hey.

NICK: What’s this? You uh… you working on a new drag thing?

HARLEY: Not exactly.

NICK: No? Then why’re you wearing a dress? Is it like a… like some kinky “let’s pretend to be a straight couple”… Is that even a thing?

HARLEY: Do you want it to be?

NICK: I mean… if that’s what you’re going for… Maybe a little role-play? I don’t know. It’s not really my—

HARLEY: Well, what if it’s not just roleplay.

NICK: Are you serious? Harvey—

HARLEY: No! No. I’m sorry. My name is Harley now.

NICK: OK, now you’re really starting to freak me out.

HARLEY: This is who I am. Nick. Nicky. This is the real me.

NICK: No. Nuh-uh. This is not—this?

HARLEY: This is me.

NICK: This is not you. OK? I know you, this is not even—that’s not even how you move! You’re all… What is this?

HARLEY: I’m a woman. Nick. I am a woman. I always have been.

NICK: I am not straight!

HARLEY: Are you in love with me? Do you remember what you told me when we first met? Do you remember what you told me when we first met? I said I didn’t get it. The whole gay thing. Do you remember what you said to me? You said if you love someone, what does it matter what’s between their legs?

NICK: How can that not matter?

HARLEY: Wow, Nick. Just… wow.

NICK: I’m sorry, but I like your body. OK? I like your penis. Are you gonna get the operation?

HARLEY: Not right away. It takes years.

NICK: You’ve really thought about this, haven’t you? When were you gonna tell me?

HARLEY: Well, I’m telling you now! OK? First. You are the first person I’m telling. Because that’s how I feel about you.

NICK: How long have you been planning this?

HARLEY: Planning this?

NICK: Yeah.

HARLEY: What, like it’s some, like, betrayal? Like, I’m getting all the senators together and making sure Mark Antony’s somewhere else?

NICK: I am trying very hard to take this seriously.

HARLEY: Oh? Oh! Wow, Nick. It really shouldn’t be that hard.

NICK: How do you expect me to react? Come home from work and my… my boyfriend’s decided he wants to be a girl?

HARLEY: No, Nick, your girlfriend has decided she wants to stop pretending to be a boy.

NICK: I don’t have girlfriends.

HARLEY: Well, thank you for your honesty, Nick. Give me a call if you decide to get over your cisprivilege.

Leave a comment | posted in The Essence of Longing

August 18, 2017

The Geography of Cheating

By Polypsyches

GALATEA: Omar? Omar! Omar Bingen!

OMAR: Galatea al’Rachid, as I live and breathe. How have you been? How long has it—

GALATEA: I think we saw each other four years ago, didn’t we?

OMAR: That’s right! You were at my going-away party.

GALATEA: Where are you off to now?

OMAR: Oh, I uh, I have a conference. In Dubai. Very important meeting. What about you? How have you been?

GALATEA: Well, I’m just getting back from vacation.

OMAR: Are you traveling alone?

GALATEA: Perpetually.

OMAR: Oh! I’m so sorry.

GALATEA: Well, aren’t you traveling alone?

OMAR: Well, I’m on business. Don’t you have a… I thought I’d heard you were engaged or something?

GALATEA: A little bit. I was a little bit engaged. For a moment.

OMAR: Oh, dear. Are you trying to decide whether to ask about him?

GALATEA: Should I?

OMAR: You can always ask. I probably do have all of the information you could ever possibly need about him. If you really want to know. Do you?

GALATEA: You’re still friends with him, then?

OMAR: I don’t think I’ll ever stop being friends with him.

GALATEA: Even knowing what he is? How he treats people?

OMAR: You and I have very different perspectives on how he treats people. You of course know him as a man whom you loved who cheated on you. I, on the other hand, know him as the man—the only man whom I trusted—who did not judge me or ridicule me when I was at my most vulnerable. So yes, I will remain his friend.

GALATEA: No matter what he does to women?

OMAR: Were you entirely blameless in that situation?

GALATEA: How can you possibly ask me that!

OMAR: How can you ask me to turn against my friend?

GALATEA: What did he tell you?

OMAR: He told me from the start that he never really loved you. I told him from the start that if he didn’t love you, he shouldn’t be committed to what was doomed to be a long-distance relationship.

GALATEA: Was he ever faithful to me?

OMAR: He tried. A few times.

GALATEA: Did he love any of those other girls?

OMAR: I think you know the answer to that. I think you’ve always known. He only ever loved one woman. And she… well…

GALATEA: You mentioned the distance. Do you think it would have mattered?

OMAR: Do you want me to be frank?

GALATEA: This is the place for it, isn’t it?

OMAR: Oh! Right. The Fort. Yes, of course.

GALATEA: Please just tell me.

OMAR: If you two had managed to live in the same city, I doubt very much that he would have slept with anyone else. I think he would have considered that it would have made his life that much easier, being close to you all the time. So if you are asking me if I think he would have cheated, no, I don’t.

GALATEA: So it was my fault.

OMAR: Your mistake wasn’t staying here when he left. If you’d left with him, you’d have been the woman who left everything behind for a man, and he’d have never allowed that. He knew better. Your mistake wasn’t staying, it was loving him in the first place. Because while he might not have cheated if you had been there, that is not the same as being faithful.

GALATEA: He could have grown to love me.

OMAR: Not like her. No, he’s always been a man of adventure. You have always been an open book with your heart on your sleeve. You made a good sidekick and companion on his adventures, but you never could have been his goal. You never had enough mystery. He never had to unwrap you.

GALATEA: So you do know. You do know what he is.

OMAR: A great deal more than you do. That’s my flight. I should be going. I do hope you find what you’re looking for.

GALATEA: Omar. Is he happy?

OMAR: I do not believe he ever will be. Does that comfort you?

GALATEA: No.

Leave a comment | posted in The Essence of Longing

August 17, 2017

“Glory Box”

By Polypsyches

It’s not that I never wanted to fall in love.

Going into high school, and even in middle school, I didn’t really have a lot of really good role-models for being in love, for love that lasts. It’s one of the few things that I had in common with Isabella Millar. One of the many things that set me apart, attitude-wise, from Lucy.

Here we have society and culture and narrative myths shoved down our throats telling us women are there to be loved, to find love, to find happiness. How could I not want that?

When my mom met Robert Eastwood, I was suspicious. We all were. Why wouldn’t we be? This was just some guy who wasn’t our dad. Not just a stranger—an intruder.

By then we’d already had some missteps. Imagine being thirteen years old in your underwear going into the kitchen in the early morning to find some stranger already there sneaking out the door. Imagine him looking at you. Imagine where on you he might look, and whether your mom would believe you. Her telling you why are you walking around in your underwear to begin with, and not responding when you ask in return why the guy was there at all.

Mom wasn’t perfect, but somewhere deep down we knew she deserved happiness. That was why the bar was so high, high enough that just buying us ice cream and smiling at our teenage achievements wasn’t going to cut it, and that was where Rob started off.

Turned out Mom had known him for a hot minute, longer than she’d even known Dad. Not well. I guess they went to high school together, whatever that means, but I do know more. I know he did something for her, something she appreciated, once. I can’t make out what. Maybe it’s too long ago, too far away for me to be able to make it out clearly, and maybe she doesn’t even remember herself. But she doesn’t have to. From memory, it’s slipped into myth and built palaces in her dreams, on her soul, so it really didn’t take long for her to fall (back) in love with him, once he realized she wasn’t really married anymore.

Getting us, her son and daughter, to fall in love with him, in our own way, was harder work, but seeing how it made her feel, how it made her move, how it changed her, helped, I guess. In a way. To an extent. I guess we were still pretty harsh towards him.

I think part of my suspicion, honestly, had to do with my ability, and the fact that for the longest time, he never really factored into any of my visions.

Was it because his future was uncertain? Looking back on it, that just doesn’t seem likely at all. He’s actually one of the most stable people I’ve ever known, let alone that anyone close to me has ever dated.

Another possibility is that what happened to him and my mother just wasn’t important enough for whatever power sends me these visions to care about. I don’t want to think that. Especially since my new baby brother came into the world, I don’t want to think that. But what else is there?

That “what else” is this: it’s possible that I am getting these visions for a reason. That I’m meant to know the future, in order to make it happen, or maybe in order to prevent it. I can’t imagine preventing some of the things I’ve seen, or even wanting to—or even wanting to have anything to do with them, some of them. But what if I’m being… what if I’m being prepared for something?

And what if, when I don’t get a vision, what if that means something, too? What if that means I was meant not to intervene, or to feel uncomfortable with not having seen it coming? I can’t help but wonder how my relationship with Rob would have progressed there at the beginning if I had known how things would turn out. More to the point, though, I have to question how our relationship would have been if I’d never had visions, if not having visions of him hadn’t made me suspicious.

Was there any reason why I had to be suspicious? Is it possible that my resistence, added to my brother’s, had some effect on the situation? Would things have been different for him? Would he have acted differently? Or would it have all been the same?

Whatever else is true, it made it clear to me I’m being used. It wasn’t something I’d ever really thought about before. But now I have to think. Now I have to dwell. Now I have to be a teenager and do what teenagers do best.

I have to brood.

*sigh*

Leave a comment | posted in Angst

August 16, 2017

Safe

By Polypsyches

The enemy had invaded. It was the one they had always been taught to fear and hate. “It is because they fear and hate us,” the older generations had always said. “It is because they are powerful and they take what they want and they control our rulers so that we cannot grow as a nation.”

And now, the enemy had finally gotten tired of them fighting back. “They are coming,” was the whisper. It was everywhere, like the buzzing of planes drowning out the birdsong. They were dropping bombs.

“Don’t worry,” says one, “They’re only aiming for military targets.” Maybe they often miss, or maybe they’ve started to realize every one of these people is a threat because every one of these people hates them.

“I just want to be safe,” says the child, and the mother doesn’t know how to answer.

The child grows into a boy and the boy to a young man.

“We need to fight back,” they tell him. “We are a proud nation and we are under attack. The enemy? They don’t share our values.”

“Remember who you are,” the young man’s mother tells him, “Remember what I taught you, how I raised you.” But everything is so different now, here.

“Your mother was not a true patriot,” the other young men tell him, and the older men, the men who are in control, who have been fighting this war the longest, the most effectively. “She never truly knew our ways—she has been corrupted by the enemy. The things she has taught you will not keep us safe. They will not even make you safe.” They beat the corruption out of him.

There are many people in this nation who have been made weak by the enemy’s corruption, or so the young man finds. But isn’t there something wrong?

“We must stamp out the enemy’s corruption!” say his companions, so in the name of fighting the enemy, what do they do? They do worse to themselves.

Finally, the young man finds his way to the enemy. “I just want my family to be safe,” he tells them.

“They will be,” the enemy promises.

The road is long and the road is hard, but step by step, the young man and the people he cares for are brought out of their country and taken to a new one on the far side of the world. They find a home, find a job, try to put the past behind them.

“Papa,” says the young son, “why do the people here behave so differently? Why do they think differently? Why do they have different language?”

“People are just different,” says the father, “in different parts of the world. They don’t think like us.” But there are things the man does not say at that time.

“Daddy,” the son asks when he’s older, “are we bad people?” He has been told at school by the other children that he is the enemy (and even once, it seems, by a teacher).

“Of course not,” says the father, remembering the poeple he left behind, the things that they did, but also the bombs of the enemy. And he reminds himself he has not seen the kind of rampant outrage here that made him abandon his homeland.

Most days are good here. Most days, nothing actually happens. People are nice, respectful. They are different, which reminds him of how different he must seem to them, but most days, they do not attack him. Most days. However, now and then, often enough to keep him desperate, there are looks and there are words. They do not come to blows (yet) but they remind him why these people, where he grew up, were known as the enemy.

“Why do you hate us so much?” he asks a stranger one day. The stranger looks taken aback at first, but once the ice is broken, she says “A lot of terrible things have happened and I guess you just remind us of that. You make us feel unsafe.”

“So you make us feel unsafe, then,” he replies. “Because you feel unsafe? Wouldn’t it be better to help us feel safe again? Wouldn’t that make you feel safer?”

“I guess?” says the stranger, “But we don’t want you to feel unsafe or uncomfortable. We just want you to be, you know…” She wants to say “normal”. She doesn’t, but he can hear it from her heart.

“You want us to be like you,” he says, “because you don’t want to be yourselves corrupted by the enemy.”

Leave a comment | posted in Our Modern Pantheon

August 15, 2017

The Ring Cycle

By Polypsyches

DEXTER: Good morning.

GABRIELLE: Hey.

DEXTER: I don’t really spend a whole lot of time out here.

GABRIELLE: I can tell.

DEXTER: Yeah, I’m kind of a fuck-up.

GABRIELLE: I’m sorry.

DEXTER: It’s not you. You’re going back, aren’t you?

GABRIELLE: I’m sorry.

DEXTER: It’s okay. I always knew you were. Honestly, you being here at all, coming here, that was the surprise.

GABRIELLE: You didn’t want me to come?

DEXTER: Of course I wanted you to come, I just never thought you would.

GABRIELLE: I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel unwanted—

DEXTER: Hey, no. Don’t do that. You don’t owe me anything.

GABRIELLE: I do, though. For me. Because I… I don’t know, I’ve always…

DEXTER: Please don’t.

GABRIELLE: Just a little bit.

DEXTER: That’s not exactly what I want to hear.

GABRIELLE: Why not?

DEXTER: You just said. You’re leaving.

GABRIELLE: Isn’t it better to have loved and lost?

DEXTER: It’s better not to lose at all. Just to keep on loving. I mean, I get it. I’m a fuck-up.

GABRIELLE: Stop saying that, you’re not a fuck-up—

DEXTER: Well, then—I’m sorry, maybe you just don’t—I need to be a fuck-up. I need that. Because if I’m not…

GABRIELLE: What?

DEXTER: Being a fuck-up is my only excuse for not winning.

GABRIELLE: Don’t think of it as winning.

DEXTER: That is not up to you.

GABRIELLE: Here.

DEXTER: What’s this?

GABRIELLE: What’s it look like?

DEXTER: Why would you give me your engagement ring?

GABRIELLE: I lost it. I went away for the weekend, ‘cause I had to get away… and I lost it.

DEXTER: That makes no sense at all to me.

GABRIELLE: It doesn’t have to. I don’t care.

DEXTER: What do you expect me to do with it?

GABRIELLE: I better get going. Don’t wanna be late for my own wedding, right?

Leave a comment | posted in The Essence of Longing