Shams' Muse

The announcer says the train’s late. Figures. I knew we shouldn’t have come early. Now we’re here for... what? another hour? maybe two? Becka says, “I’m getting some more smokes, you want?” “I haven’t smoked in three years,” I say. “Well,” she huffs, “I was just asking. Given the circumstances and all.” I wave her off. I want the cigarette, but the craving will pass. I shift my position on the bench, sink lower until my back hurts, watch the German couple respond to the announcement. I hate them on sight. She sits on her luggage, her long limbs stretched out, head resting on her hands. He drapes his arm around her shoulders, stares out with his chiseled jaw. They look so healthy, blonde, and young. Becka comes back, a lit cigarette between her fingers. “This sucks,” she says. “You got that right,” I say. We look down the track, as if staring will make the train come faster. Then, as if tied together, we both turn to the German couple. “I hate them,” she says. “Fucking cute c...

If there’s one thing you hate about romance novels, it’s that the characters never have yeast infections. He ripped her bodice from her trembling form, her breasts still round and eager, her stomach taught from two hundred sit-ups each day, beads of dew just above her bellybutton and felt the tingle between her legs. The sight of his shirtless, muscular body, his work hat lain atop the pneumatic drill. His manhood pressed against his pants and he took her in his arms. “Wait,” she said. “I can’t wait any longer,” he said. “You must,” she said, “I have a yeast infection.”

It’s a first date. You hear the conversation, or parts of it. He’s just been promoted at work. She’s still a student. He’s older, maybe by five or ten years. It’s hard to tell in his industry, they all dress like they’re 19 and too cool for new clothes. She’s not someone you would sleep with. Nice body, too bad about the face. Mainly the eyebrows, but also the forehead and chin. He’ll wake up and say, “I never should have broken up with Molly. I should have tried harder.” Molly is with a kayak instructor now and is learning to climb cliff faces. He stays late at work on Thursdays and Fridays and is learning how to tweet discretely in meetings. You wonder how they met. On-line, probably.

Mammoth, Horse, and Feline sculpted in mammoth ivory. 35,000 BC.  She puckers to the camera, holding up the Leaning tower of Pisa.  A garbage can in Montmartre. Fra Angelico with his finger to his lips. Quiet. We’re in a monastery. A library, actually, and I am watching her laptop. The screensaver flashes for a minute at a time. She has been to Germany and Thailand, Montreal and San Francisco. “Can you watch this?” she asks me. She takes only her wallet, Louis Vuitton. Could be fake, what do I know? Standing atop an anonymous mountain with a crowd, crooked smile, sunglasses, wearing someone else’s jacket judging from the size. Sculptures of Saint Thomas on a Florentine church.  Graffiti in Amsterdam. Holding up an enormous plastic mug in a Biergarten. On her desk, her sunglasses, large, tortoise-shell, Gucchi logo rest atop a stack. The Art of Vase Painting in Greece. Phintias. Red Figure Vase Painting in the Archaic Period. I eat Ramen noodles. When she describes me, “As...

Shams, we are a writer now, You and I, I and you, Someone out there is laughing at our manu (script). And we are happy Shams because we give only beauty, only positive light, and this is what we want most.

stacks o'grading,  unmoved and waiting, begging for eyes and A pluses,  but few give so much as  that.

the seamstress and the song maker are drinking cinnamon tea on lace tablettes. The seamstress pulls a thread that never ends and the song maker sings an epic.

Once upon a time, I wrote a rhyme, I thought way back and hit delete, erasing forever clever and sweet sentiments.

two years in my house more, now. when i want to remember how to be happy i remember the day i got my house.