by Kirsty Logan
#1: He Says
It's blues, bars and boots since you went away. You were wiferustled like sheep, like cattle. You must have been. I owned you and someone stole you. No other reason for you to be there and then not; your restless head and then the only sound across the pillow the stutter of passing trains. Come on home. Carmencita, come on home.
When I first brought you here I left all your tapes on the dashboard, and the sun loved them even more than you did. You never forgave me for letting the tapes ruin, and I never forgave you for busting up my car stereo with your shitty melted tapes. Bodies burned, triggers slipped, and we argued over goddamn tapes. Goddamn fucking tapes. Because crazy is easy and there's no passion between a comb's teeth. Come on home to my heels.
Still got that noseline on the kitchen floor, the tiles deep in colour. It's a path from back door to bedroom door. You still got that bump in your nose, Carmencita? Come on home.
#2: She Says
Mary and me, we were both fucked by God. Quelle dia, quelle dia. My man kicked shit out of a guy in a mask and it wasn't even Halloween, wasn't even a weekend. We all should have stuck to robbing kids' candy bags.
The transistor only played disco lousy with crackle but that was enough to keep my toe tapping against the linoleum. I wore a hole in my house-shoes like that, my needle into the tablecloth to the rhythm. Your mother never liked my roses: too fat, too pink. My figure was a trigger and the Lord is always watching. Why were you picked to be Jesus? It should have been me up on that cross. The way you held my wrists down. I burn.
I know what they will say: you have certainly burned some bridges, babygirl. You, child, have turned down lustful paths. And my path is winding, oh yes, and I love what I find at the crossroads.
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NaPoWriMo, Day 1. More of a prose-poem, I suppose.
This story has no tags.
This certainly has rhythm.
I don't say this lightly, and it is not just lip service (because it's going to sound like) but there is not one sentence in this that didn't amaze me. This is good, fine, real work, Kirsty.
"...the sun loved them even more than you did." This is Ondaatje good. We aspire to moments in prose like this.