Eli Winter (otherwise untitled)

I remember walking Eli halfway down the street in the wintertime, my Birkenstock clogs crunching footprints into the snow that was a thickly packed layer of diamonds over the cement. The air smelled different in winter, and that smell alone made me think of my first love and sigh. At midnight the moon hung high and bright, the clouds only a few feet above my head. In the morning before school, I would walk down to meet Eli at her house for carpool, and I would smoke a cigarette on the way, my fingertips magenta and wizened when I could no longer feel them. I would stop before the evergreen at the corner of Eli’s lawn, lest her parents see me from their living room window, and I would stare up at the sky of seven-thirty in the morning. My mind would wander back to my first love, and I would exhale smoke along with my own breath. Those were the days when I still spoke of him in every word I said.

the warrior and the snake

There was a serpent that hissed and danced as the warrior struck him to the earth. Thumbs poised upon his weapon, his feet were parted and planted on the ground as he watched the asp trickle to the grass in fragments that were like droplets of dawn. He smirked as the sensation of victory and relief flooded over him, inhaling the stench of death suspended in the air.

The strands of gold fell cater-corner into the crabgrass blooming at the edge of the lot where litter decayed to dirt. The warrior did not qualm about the murder he was so carelessly committing; he did not think about those who may have watched him in the midst of battle -- he maintained his focus, watching this beast crumble with the majesty of all other myths that had transpired epochs ago.  In his awe, the warrior cocked his head to a slight angle as if to cogitate the meaning of his life and other such questions that asked more of him than knew he had to muster.

Then, in a display of sunset perhaps, the serpent released a final whisper of defeat and was gone, leaving behind only the stench of his demise. The warrior bucked his hips with finality, hands trembling over his weapon as he replaced it behind the button and zipper along the front of his jeans. He looked to her where she sat watching all of this occur, her legs sprawled in a drug-crash around her and her eyes gaping at where his sword of flesh once hung from his grip.

"Wanted to see the show?" he asked, perking just one eyebrow as his zipper whined into place. He smirked then turned and walked away, leaving her there to question the phenomenon she had just witnessed.