Withdrawal Prayer

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Would You please...................be

.

The arms now empty

.

Of me?

.

There aren't any others

.

Near by.

.

Would You replace...................my

.

Every vice; be my

.

Addiction?

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Please, be my

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Obsession; be the fix

.

For which I sell.......................everything.



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It had Something to do with the Rain.

I think I am slowly coming back from the horrible limbo that is to be neither living nor dying. The race with no finish line, rest with no relief; a zombie with a soul still awake to mourn the functioning decay of a corpse whose spasmodic rigor mortis just happens to look like walking.

Do you know what it’s like to be resurrected? Do you know what it’s like to feel the way it happens; the way forgotten vitality begins to trickle back into your bones and seep into and out of your pours so you aren’t stagnant anymore?



Maybe it had something to do with the rain, that storm last time I was home.



The trees shook their bowed heads in violent pleas for mercy from the wind that propelled the clashing of titanic clouds above. Fickle gusts caused the clouds to churn like a lumbering vortex, so alien and determined that I felt uneasy in my place on the hammock directly beneath the steely spiral. The clouds around that vortex were constantly moving; every three seconds they became something else. Shape-shifters, fighting a slow-motion battle in the sky, and soon raindrops began to fall; blood dripping from the edges of their gaping wind-wounds.

Thundering repercussions of the evanescent war finally reached the earth and I felt so, so small. The hammock cradled me, rocking in the wind and I knew I wasn't safe from lightning. I was stiff and afraid, but I made myself stay. The crashes were so enraged, it seemed like the storm was threatening me personally; making me feel as if I was damned for some reason I didn’t know, but also somehow understood.



My opportunities for excitement and unnecessary risk are rare, so when I saw the first flash of lightning I couldn’t help but think of it as a challenge. They were taunting me, the flashes and the crashes and the granite cloud-creatures, flaunting the storm’s power to strike me down. So I stood and walked out into the field, exposed to the heavy raindrops and vulnerable to the tempest’s whim. Grass clippings clung to my bare feet and in less than a minute I was thoroughly soaked, forced to remove my glasses. I jumped at a sudden thunderclap and had to keep myself from rushing inside. My fingernails bit into the palms of my hands. I hovered in the garden, feeling safer amongst the foliage.



I think everyone knows that colors are brighter when it rains. There’s less light, and sight is obstructed with the raindrops like static, but somehow the colors are brighter than usual. Pink stands out, I think, the most arresting. In my mother’s garden, I can see every shade and combination of hues in vibrant spatters. They are all rich, like God has spilled His supernatural paint, but it’s the pink ones that really glow--like neon signs in the fog.



They make me miss city rain. Wet streets in the dark, wavering street lamp reflections in gritty gutters and hotels feel like home; neon signs flickering through the slanting drops that soak my hair make me want to be on my own, living in a crappy apartment in Chicago or maybe Portland.



I know I’d be a little afraid of going there, though. Afraid of the thunder, of being alone, of bad people in the dark.



I am a little—or a lot—afraid of everything I want in life. I used to think it was the fear I wanted, before I realized the difference between thrill and fear. Thrill comes when you know the possible consequences, yet you proceed of your own will—not need or coercion, but pure personal choice—because to you the experience is worth the risk. Fear comes when there is no choice—not really.



I count, when I’m afraid. 96, 92, 88, 84, 80; I count backwards from one-hundred by fours. I’ve never been the best at any kind of math, but I tend to be afraid more than I should so I get to know that pattern too well. So sometimes I try it by sixes, and maybe back from some more random number, like 127.



Focusing on the numbers, I can talk myself down so that I don't dwell on the fears so much; spend all my time dreading them. So that I don't let them pool in my hands and stare at them, studying every detail, wondering why, and trying to find ways to avoid more.

But how can you dodge raindrops in a storm? Bad things can’t be avoided, so it’s useless to wallow in their puddles.

Maybe preoccupation is like thick socks to me, so that lately I don't know I'm wet at all until I'm drenched and waterlogged. Because of that, I'm not sure if I'm getting better from heartsickness, or if I'm just learning to ignore it. Most of the time I am alright, but sometimes I still feel like a hunted thing. I'm not even always sure why. I know everyone feels it. Empty, as if there’s nothing else to say; nothing left to do but feel the heaviness and sigh, pondering in post-tears peace all these pieces of yourself as you lay them to rest and mourn.



There's a name for it, the psychological attachment to something that has to be severed.



God knows we all have this horrible disease, the one that causes us to need these kinds of amputations. We contracted it ourselves, by eating after a snake. Apparently no one told Eve that they carry diseases and now we have a horrible, hereditary epidemic that rots us from the inside out, making the whole earth this vast leper colony. This place where we all walk hunched over, trying to turn inside-out so we can lick the festering wounds on our souls.



I know you have them, too; I see how they make you limp. I know I'm not the only one who has been slowed down.



I'm not the only one who misses highway speeds.



I’m moving again though, at least, and that feels good. I’m nervous, because I can’t see very far ahead and there’s an awful lot of traffic. It's going both ways and it’s disorienting. But far better than staying still. Headlights, taillights, whatever; I can’t really tell where I’m going, but I’m going to make damn sure it’s different from where I’ve been.



And so far, I think I like the horizon line.

Hurry Up and Fulfill My Unrealistic Expectations, Please.

(This isn't directed at anyone in particular; just some things my inner brat has been wanting to pout about lately).


I’m so tired of giving answers;
Why can’t you just read my mind?
Or watch these last five years in pictures
Rolling there behind my eyes?

Maybe you could read a stanza
Or two to learn how I got by,
Instead of asking all these questions
That take up so much precious time.

Maybe you don’t like that picture,
Or this new corner that I’ve turned.
And you’ve probably decided
That I’m more trouble than I’m worth.

Maybe you forget I’m right here;
Forget that I am close at hand.
You’re so easily distracted.
Whatever; I don’t understand.

The Blistering of Sunburns

I am glad summer is over; it was long and the heat did nothing but burn the edges of my mind's open wounds. Autumn so far has been like a salve for them--cool on those spots rubbed raw from many things--after their midsummer rupture in June when my dog Chance died.

Maybe it wouldn’t have been quite so searing if summer had been kinder in general; I don’t know.


His heart was swollen, the vet said. It was crowding his lungs and stomach. He could barely breathe, he couldn't eat. We had to put him down. He was in a horse stall, something we insisted on because we knew how he hated small spaces, like the tiny metal kennels they used there. Mom, Dad and I entered the stall and he ran to greet us, enthusiastic even in his sickly state. I'd already been crying for a while when I sat down on the dirty floor .He crammed himself onto my lap, his tail wagging and my arms were tight around him. I sniffed loudly and he turned to look at me, as if wondering what the matter was. He licked my cheek, then went back to wagging his tail and looking from face to face, so happy to get so much attention all at once. I rested my head on his silky black fur. He leaped off my lap when the doctor entered, excited to see a new person. He was still cheerful, unsure yet trusting, when the vet began injecting his leg. I held his face in my hands as he lay down.



And suddenly I wished he would bite me, so that it wasn’t just this loving, happy, trusting dog being poisoned before my eyes. My Chance. My sweet puppy for eleven years and I am holding him in my arms as he dies. My head is bowed, resting on his, and I whisper to him though sobs that I love him; that I’m sorry for ever yelling at him; that he was a good dog and I love him and I don’t want him to leave me and I love him. I am on the floor with him, my face buried by his ear and I haven’t cried so hard since I was a child. I feel his fur, wet and spiky from my tears, as my face presses into the warmth and I sob. His head is growing limp and heavy on my arm and I’ve lost circulation in it but I don’t care I don’t care I just want to hold him and I don’t want him to go. Please don’t go. At some point, his heart stops beating and he is dead, but I am not quite sure when that point is and I keep holding my Chance and crying long after it is past.



Three days later. It was a white paper bag, the kind usually containing Blue Chip cookies when Dad brings them home, left over from his accounts at the hospitals. I wanted a cookie. The bag crinkled stiffly as I pulled it open, revealing an envelope and a large, rectangular white box. The box was heavy. I removed the envelope, hoping it contained a clue regarding why the cookies were in a box, and whether I could eat one. There was something written on it. I turned it right-side up.

CHANCE JOHNSON.

I didn’t freeze or anything as the realization hit me; I just slipped the envelope back into the bag with the box containing Chance’s ashes. I sat back down on the sofa and pretended the burned remains of my sweet puppy weren’t sitting on the counter top in my kitchen. I knew Dad would be bringing them eventually. It was me who told the vet that, yes, we would like to have the ashes. And I did want them. I wanted to scatter them in the shade by the chimney where he liked to sleep, by the tree where I carved his name, in the tall grass he loved to run in.

I had been reading, but I couldn’t any more. I didn't want to leave the box there, on the cold counter top, left like any random mail.

The weight of his ashes as I climbed the stairs... I didn’t know where to put him. I didn’t want to leave him all alone, up on the dresser, but bringing him over to my nightstand seemed too close for me...I looked at his pictures strewn across my room. I got up. I pulled the box of ashes from the paper sack. I sat on my bed, read the tag attached: “Our deepest sympathies for the loss of your beloved pet. Pet Cremation Services.” I looked at my pictures again, then back at the box. At Chance. I curled up around him and cry and cry and cry, falling asleep with his ashes in my arms.


The next day, I couldn’t just sit and go through pictures like I had been the past few afternoons. This death of my one and only Chance was the awful last straw in a collection of trials that had been piling, piling, piling, and I was just too tired so finally I began to buckle under the weight of it all.


For weeks I’d been writhing inside; needing to run or scream or both or crack or shave my head. I had long dreadlocks at that time, and they seemed to mock me as I looked in the mirror--a physical representation of my heart’s knotted state. Other things were in them too; bad things, caught up in the tangles: memories, feelings, conversations, regrets. They whispered in my ear when I turned my head, reminding me; they were heavy and everywhere.


I found a pair of scissors, started some music. At first I was careful, making sure to cut only what I needed to. But soon my cuts grew faster, choppy and approximate. Seven Swans, snip snip, Come on, Feel the Illinoise, snip, Castaways and Cutouts, snip snip snip; then working ripping teasing out the tangles singing Oh, the Hazards of Love.


I lost myself in the music, keeping time with that sssclk sound that the scissors make, slicing through my hair. Ssssclk, sssclk, ssssssssclk....it was soothing; it was hypnotizing. I thought of nothing. There was only ssssssssclk and the music, and then the fft fft fft of the comb and the occasional snap of a hair breaking as I worked the remainder of the dreads apart.


I don’t know how many numb, methodic hours passed. Enough to play through eight full albums: two Sufjan Stevens, four Decemberists, two Iron and Wine. I think the sun set about halfway through Castaways and Cutouts. But finally, my hair was short again, the dreadlocks combed out. My head throbbed, balanced on neck muscles so tired they could barely hold it up anymore. The muscles in my back were burning, too, and my hands twitched, cramping painfully. Three fingernails were broken. My thumb bleed from a scissor-wound. The dark circles under my red-rimmed eyes were deep. My hair stuck out unevenly in all directions, its texture a strange combination of smooth and frizzy.


I looked how I felt: tired, wrung-out, bitter, and slightly manic.


I looked like Raggedy Ann with a harrowing meth addiction--complete with flat, plastic eyes.


I stared at my reflection, indifferent, then curled up on the floor and fell asleep. 

A Note from Mind to Body

Look at what you've done;
Just watch our hands shake--
I think you revel in the way
This weakness shames me.

Our clumsy feet trip because
You shuffle like a corpse;
Dead weight, nothing more.

You hold hostage
My thoughts from our tongue;
You just love to taunt me,
Don't you?

Everything I try to do,
You drag me down;
Why won't you cooperate?

You parasite--
You crippled foreigner--
I can hear you laughing.

I hate the way
You tell me "sit" and "stay",
Knowing I have no choice
But to consent,
And be disgusted
By my own submission.

I wish I could punish you--
Oh, to exact revenge--
But, as everything I do to you
I also do to me,
I'm expected to treat you well;
Because apparently I am God's
And not my own.

I guess He likes to collect
Broken things.

For all the Starving Eyes to See

I can't think straight lately. I've been losing my shoes and taking my dog for walks and cutting my hair with Mom's scrap-booking scissors, and I've been doing other things, too; I just don't remember what they are. I try to write things down, but words seem so insufficient.

They only catch so much, and so many real feelings and concepts fall through the cracks undefined that how can we know anything about ourselves, let alone each other? Give something a name and it is real, solid. But the inexplicable is dismissed just because there are no words to anchor it and so it floats away.

Balloons.

No, at least balloons are something; have some substance.

Warm air, maybe. Puffs of warm wind. Brief, invisible, insubstantial but you still feel it and for a moment it engulfs you completely. Then it is gone, as if it had never been. Language is so limiting.

I'm tired, and I think I'm over-thinking, putting so many words—or trying to—to whatever is in me that I lose it; lose what it really is until I don't know anything anymore.

Can't anything just be what it is? Why does everything seem to require such analysis and subsequent documentation?


Like the meteor shower the other night; the annual fiery Tears of St.Lawrence, hurled across the sky by Perseus. I saw twenty-seven of them, those brightly-broken chunks of Swift-Tuttle. It was surreal, almost cartoon-like,the way a point of light would sail straight across a section of sky. A few left burning trails across the black, but the lines behind some of the smaller ones were so faint that I can't be completely sure I didn't imagine them.


Sometimes the intervals between meteors were long, and my eyes grew tired and sore in all my probing amongst the stars. They went still and unfocused as my mind wandered, and vaguely I forgot why I couldn't just close my eyes and rest.

But then, No. Swiftly, like a sudden convulsion, I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. No, I can't forget what I'm looking for. Not now...and not ever.


I might be weary and stiff; sore and losing focus and even starting to lose hope that I might ever see another streak of light, but until my ragged consciousness can no longer cling to wakefulness...I can't forget what I'm looking for.

And besides, there was beauty to be seen between meteors; infinite glittering, suspended stars and Venus in the south-eastern sky.


And I talked to God some, feebly tossing my tired voice into the atmosphere, where it mingled with the distant sounds of coyotes' primitive songs in strange harmony with the arrogant barks of farmers' dogs.

I told Him that I think I spend too much time looking at little things, at simple things like TV when two steps out my door there is a vast scope for intrigue and beauty.

I said, I think I do that because I know I can't grasp the full grandeur of the starry sky or silk-square pastures or thick-thatched woods full of little creatures, and so I'm afraid to even try to see them.

I comprehend them just enough to know that they are wonderfully complex and majestic and pull from me some primitive feeling of reverence and ceremony; and I comprehend them just enough to know that they are far more beautiful and far more grand than I could ever understand.

And that if I did, I would fall weeping in the dirt in sheer wonder, run through the fields and swim in the lake and climb the trees; jump off the edge of the Grand Canyon or or drown myself in the ocean just to be enveloped. Just to be submerged in the heartbreaking loveliness of it all.



I look at the TV instead, because I'm ashamed to gaze in what awe I may when I know that if I only understood, I would see and it would change my life completely. But I don't understand and it makes me so sad, to know something's missing in me.



I look at the cheap instead of the priceless; I look at me instead of You.

And I'm so, so sorry.



Two of the larger meteors I saw came at perfect times, punctuating certain thoughts, as if in tangible answer. I won't write them, those thoughts; they're just for me. Not because they were at all scandalous—really they were very mundane—but because I need to keep some things sacred and secret, whether or not they are of that nature.

Maybe it was coincidence, the way the meteors fell when they did, but I need to believe it was my God. I do believe it.

It may be stereotypical—everyone in the world has been stirred by the stars—but the tears felt good in my eyes as I smiled.

I counted the little lights as they fell and for once tried to revel in the simplicity of what is, now. Nothing had changed in my life; no problems were solved, nothing was magically "better". But, how could I not be happy when it is raining stars?

Besides, it was now and I was here and so was the grass and the sky and gravity, and I figured that had to count for something—even if my mind could not wrap itself around the reality.

For a moment I thought maybe having someone there to share it with would help make it real; make it true, prove to myself that this isn't a dream and that it really is. But, no, I don't think another human wouldn't have helped. I think nothing can reinforce things like this. My words can't; I've just been writing and writing and still this is just another star-story penned by just another hopeless romantic. But oh, it felt like so much more.

I think that these moments—these sights—are not meant to be held over or saved. Paint a picture of this, try to describe, and it is cheapened some. Like fireflies, put them in a jar and soon they'll dry up.

But as a child, that didn't stop me from catching as many fireflies as I could. And as a young adult, it won't keep me from desperately grasping to capture these things in words. And failing.


Except maybe to say that I thought, I want to be here until I die; until I am dust and no longer have any eyes at all to see these things.

INSIDE VOICES (rough draft)

INSIDE VOICES (rough draft. Feedback would be appreciated; I've never written a script-type-thing before)

Scene opens with Margaret seated on her bed, irritably scribbling in her sketchbook. The Beatles’ “I’m So Tired” plays as camera pans around her room, showing her artwork, her stuffed tiger, her dog.

COLIN: Calling from downstairs Margie? Margie, where are you? Margaret, come on; you know I know you’re in here.

Colin enters Margaret’s room to find her sitting on the bed, facing the door and glaring at him.

MARGARET: Welcome back, jackwad.

COLIN: What’s wrong with you?

MARGARET: Aren’t you going to apologize for the other night?

COLIN: Why? What’d I do?

MARGARET: …You didn’t have to bring her here.

COLIN: You said I could always come here.

MARGARET: I said YOU could always come here, not your friends.

COLIN: She wasn—

MARGARET: Or your girlfriend, or whatever.

COLIN: She wasn’t my friend or my girlfriend. I was really drunk—

MARGARET: You’re drunk right now.

COLIN: I’m not drunk, I’m hung over. There’s a big difference. Anyway, Trent ditched me to chase tail. A barista gave me a lift.

MARGARET: A lift and a—

COLIN: Yeah, she came in. I know. I was drunk. I’m sorry, ok? It’ll never happen again.

MARGARET: No, it won’t. Give me back my apartment key.

COLIN: Margie, come on; you don’t really want it. Besides, you know I really need a place to stay tonight and I shouldn’t be driving. And just because you’re a prude doesn’t mean everyone else should be.

MARGARET: I am not a prude. Having some kind of moral standard doesn’t make me a prude.

COLIN: Of course it’s easy for you. You’re not any better than me; you just don’t have the opportunity to do stuff. No life, no temptation. It’s pretty simple to maintain standards when you’re locked up here alone in your room all day, day after day after day after day—

MARGARET: Stop it, Colin! Agoraphobia is a real and debilitating psychological condition. Which you’d know if you even cracked the cover of that book I gave you.

COLIN: I didn’t have to read it. “Psychological condition”; you know that means it’s all in your head, right?

MARGARET: Yes, but it doesn’t mean I can control it.

COLIN: Maybe you could, if you weren’t too proud for therapy. Or is it just because you’re too scared to leave your house? Sorry, I get confused trying to figure out what’s just a personality flaw and what’s some weird tick in your brain.

MARGARET: I’m too proud to go to therapy? Have you ever been to an AA meeting?

COLIN: Of course not. I’m not an alcoholic.

MARGARET: Pause. You really think you’re not an alcoholic?

COLIN: You really think I am?

MARGARET: What?! I haven’t seen you completely sober almost two years! And for the past six months you’ve been hanging around here all the time. When was the last time you held onto a job for more than three days? You drank yourself broke, got evicted from your apartment, and now I have to tuck you into my guest bed almost every night. Why do you think I stopped keeping booze around? I didn’t want to enable you.

COLIN: “Enable me”? Fine, I’ll stop cleaning your dog’s crap out of the lawn. Maybe once I quit enabling you, you’ll get evicted too.

MARGARET: …You clean up after Casper?

COLIN: Yeah; why do you think you haven’t heard from your landlord?

MARGARET: Why didn’t you tell me before?

COLIN: Cause you never threw a fit about me crashing here before.

MARGARET: Oh. Well. Thanks. Sorry.

COLIN: Whatever. I’m keeping the key.

MARGARET: Yeah, ok.

Silence. Colin sits on the edge of Margaret’s bed.

COLIN: You really should try to get over that agora-thing.

MARGARET: Phobia.

COLIN: Whatever. You should try to get it fixed; you’re missing a lot of life, festering in here 24/7.

MARGARET: I’m not festering.

COLIN: Studies Margaret for a moment, his face grimly contemplative. Ok…I’m going to walk down to Casey’s…do you need anything?

MARGARET: I’m not an invalid.

COLIN: Rolls eyes. I know, that’s not—Sighs Bye, Margie.

MARGARET: Bye. Then, a little too late, Thanks.

*When Colin returns*:

MARGARET: Very distressed. Casper ran away.

COLIN: What? How?

MARGARET: I let him outside just like always but he saw another dog and ran off after it. I tried to go after him but…it smelled like exhaust and I couldn’t make myself go so I just called and called but he didn’t come back…

COLIN: How long ago?

MARGARET: Ah hour and twelve minutes.

COLIN: I’ll go find him.

MARGARET: Are you sure? I could call someone—

COLIN: No, chill. I’ll go and be back asap. He couldn’t have gotten that far.

MARGARET: Thank you.

COLIN: Sure. Don’t worry. I’ll call you later. Bye.

MARGARET: Bye…


Three hours pass, phone rings.

MARGARET: Anything?

COLIN: No. I’m sorry, Margie. I’ve looked everywhere…

MARGARET: It’s not your fault. Go flirt with a waitress; I’ll look into putting an ad in the paper.

COLIN: Dry chuckle You know me well. See ya.

“Something Vague” (Bright Eyes) fades in

MARGARET: Yeah, see ya. And thank you. Very much.

COLIN: Pause Sure.

Colin goes to the liquor store and gets smashed sitting on the floor outside Margaret’s apartment.

*Later that night*:

MARGARET: Humming. Gazing out a window at the city lights, sitting Indian-style by Colin, who is passed out.

COLIN: Groans and shifts.

“Naked as a Window” (Josh Ritter) plays

MARGARET: What if this is it?

COLIN: Hmm? What?

MARGARET: What if this is all there is for us?

COLIN: It might be.

MARGARET: That would suck.

COLIN: It would.

MARGARET: Thanks.

COLIN: Hmm? For what?

MARGARET: For not trying to convince me that things will get better. I hate that; people pretending there are guarantees that don’t exist and making predictions they know nothing about. I mean, no one can make promises like that. Why do they keep saying it?

COLIN: I dunno; I’ve always thought that was just a band-aid myself...Rolls over onto his back, looking up at Margaret. You’re pretty.

MARGARET: What?

COLIN: Reaches up to touch her collarbone. Margaret flinches; Colin doesn’t notice. His fingers wind into the sleeve of her blouse. You heard me. You’re pretty. I like you. You’re a pretty girl. Like…a picture. Haha, pretty as a picture...You know what?

MARGARET:…What…?

COLIN: I want to kiss you, Picture Girl.

MARGARET: Blushing and awkward. …Colin…um, you’re drunk…

COLIN: Ugh! Drops arm. Stop saying that! I’m trying to tell you something here and you won’t shut up about—

MARGARET: No, no; that’s not what I meant. It’s just…you don’t know what you’re saying and if you even remember you’ll wish you hadn’t said it. I’ll pretend you didn’t, but it’ll still be all weird cause we’ll both know that you did…you should just go back to sleep.

COLIN: Grabs Margaret’s wrist. No. No, Margie. You blew me off like that last year, so I waited to see if time would make you think any more, but I’m done waiting for you to take me seriously.

MARGARET: Colin, stop—

COLIN: No, listen. Just cause I’m drunk doesn’t mean it isn’t true, and you know it. You’re always hiding from things. You’re hiding from the entire world outside and you’re hiding from me—

MARGARET: You’re hurting me.

COLIN: No I’m not; I can’t. You won’t let me close enough to hurt—

MARGARET: Tries to pry his hand from her wrist. Ow! No, Colin, you’re hurting me. Colin, let go!

COLIN: Sits up, horrified. Margie! Margie I’m so sorry! Reaches for her arm. I didn’t mean to—

MARGARET: Instinctively pulls her arm away. It’s ok; it’s fine.

COLIN: pulls his hand back and sits in shameful silence for a moment, his hands folded in his lap. Did it—I mean—did I—

MARGARET: Looks at him and softens. No, it’s fine, really. See? Holds her arm out to him.

COLIN: Takes Margaret’s arm extremely gently, traces reddening finger-marks. Shit. Oh, shit…

MARGARET: Colin, it’s ok.

COLIN: I can’t believe I did that—

MARGARET: Leans in so that her face is close to his. Shut up already. I said it’s ok; stop being so dramatic.

Pause

COLIN: I think…

“Of Angels and Angles” (The Decemberists) plays

MARGARET: What?

COLIN: Slowly cradles Margaret’s chin in his hand; kisses her on one cheek, looks into her eyes, then kisses the other.

MARGARET: Whispering, looking down shyly. I think so, too.

Goes dark, fades in again; Margaret is asleep on Colin’s lap. Colin is stroking her hair. She wakes up and smiles groggily at him.

COLIN: We’re fragile beings, you and I. Please, let’s try not to break each other.

MARGARET: How can we not? Neither of us can stand the way the other lives.

COLIN: That doesn’t change how much I want to hold you.

MARGARET: Sits up. And if you get to? What then? Feelings come and go, but we both know our vices are home to us.

COLIN: We couldn’t relocate? For this? For…us?


MARGARET: Colin…there is no “us”. You know it doesn’t work that way.

COLIN: Fine, but maybe it doesn’t have to. Our shit controls so much of our lives; does it have to control this, too?

MARGARET: What do you think? What do you think will happen when I never let you see me in the sunlight, or you get drunk and screw some random bar skank? Do you think we’ll be able to look at each other and say it doesn’t matter?

COLIN: I wouldn’t cheat on you—

“Haligh, Haligh, a Lie” (Bright Eyes) fades in

MARGARET: Don’t be naïve, Colin. You get drunk. You do stupid things you regret.

COLIN: Maybe if you’d come with me—

MARGARET: Stands up, exasperated. No! See? That might never happen so it’s stupid to just cross our fingers and hope things will magically work out! Neither of us can conquer our--

COLIN: Margie! Margie, you think this stuff is so big and it’s not. So I drink too much. So you stay inside. Don’t blow it out of proportion. It’s this simple: If you would just come out—no, Margie, listen—Its all in your head. The fear, it’s all in your head. If you would just come out with me—

MARGARET: getting worked up It isn’t that easy.

COLIN: You don’t think it’s that easy, but it is. The only thing keeping you in this apartment is you—

MARGARET: Indignant What? How could you think that? What the hell makes you think that’s all there is to it? If this stuff were that easy to fix, why the hell are we like this? How come—

COLIN: Violent shout Because you won’t let me help you!

Pause

MARGARET: I won’t let you…give me my key.

COLIN: Margie I—

MARGARET: Give me the damn key!

COLIN: Stares at Margaret for a moment, tosses her the key, and leaves the apartment.

Door slams; Margaret sits down on the floor and cries.

Something plays during a montage of Margaret standing at her door clutching a Lost Dog poster, and Colin staying sober on a three-day search for Casper. Song ends and Colin, with Casper on a makeshift leash, walks up to Margaret’s apartment building, which is burning and surrounded by a crowd of people, fire trucks, and ambulances. Colin drops Casper’s leash and runs toward the building. Firemen stop him, insisting that he get back. Someone is sitting on the curb; Colin approaches him.

COLIN: Do you know what happened?

MAN: No.

COLIN: Is everyone alright?

MAN: No.

COLIN: How do you know?

MAN: I’m the landlord. I was running up and down the halls on the last two floors that weren’t already crumbling, banging on doors to make sure people got out. When I got to room number 246b, she followed right behind me. When we got to the building’s exit, she just stood there, like she was scared to leave. Then she said she forgot something and ran back toward her room. I tried to go after her, but the smoke was so thick by then I couldn’t see or breathe so I panicked and ran back outside…the fireman said they’d go in after her…she was already gone by the time they brought her out. I can’t believe I let her go running off like that…I wish I could remember her name…Maybe it was Mary.

COLIN: hoarse whisper Margaret.

MAN: Oh, yeah, I remember now. Margaret. I thought she had a dog, but I didn’t see him anywhere…

Colin has already walked away by the time the man is finished speaking. He walks, sits on a bench and cries some, then walks into a dingy bar.

BARTENDER: No dogs.

COLIN: I’ll just be a minute—

BARTENDER: I said no dogs. Get him out of here.

COLIN: Can—

BARTENDER: Now, damn it!

Colin walks Casper to a clump of trees in the lawn of a business next to the bar. He ties Casper to a tree.

COLIN: Petting Casper Stay here, boy. I’ll be back in a little while.

Casper whimpers as Colin walks away.



THE END