Quiet despair stain my cheeks with black drops of vain crayon smeared across the lids of my eyes for the sake of my self-esteem.

I am stuck in purgatory, surely, for I have always been a blasphemous insect creeping and crawling in darkness and hidden nooks in fear of living in the shame that coat my hands in layers of scarlet plasma. That of my own veins. It oozes and drips over the cotton material that clothe my mutilated body.

My sins can only be expiated by sacrifice, so I carve holy symbols into the canvas that envelopes the structure that contains my being. The imperfect architecture that serves as a capsule for my diffidence.

The sun is meek on this day. He avoids my isolated gathering with introspection's torment and turbulence. We join in a ritualistic dance to the beating of war drums that echo through my empty chest chamber. In that space that one calls upon a spirit; an essence of thought.

I am as much nothing as I am physically insignificant to the entirety of creation. I am negligible in the continuous and everlasting expansion of all there is and all that is to become.

I start to dissolve into the soup of existence. I evanesce and am forgotten, lost to a peripheral, poisoned civilization in which disabled minds frolic in littered fields and worship judges that compete for the throne that rules the morality of humanity.

I wish for my own cessation in order to be liberated from the web that cuff my limbs to an adhesive trap that would lead to my inevitable consumption. Just so I can end up where everyone ends up anyway. In the stomach acid of the Lord, slowly digesting and feeding that which needs no sustenance.

The direction is always down: through the intestines, into the ground or from the top of the cliff, yet there is no lower than this. This forsaken mind that sounds the call of my voice; that fabricates the words I utter. I am creation itself, in action, in the immediate coordinates of the act of living and warp into the fabric of spacetime, but I am vacant of it's meaning. Where the miracles are anticipated, it is barren and lifeless.

Perhaps I am just without the specific matter that stimulates our brains into feeling anything above a mediocre sense of belonging to something that is bigger than my desolation.

I watch the palms of my hands catch fire, illuminating the bloody runes smeared onto the walls that encapsulates my overbearing consciousness. I watch the flames burn up my arms, as if the corner of a paper is set alight and now grows as it is fed towards the middle. I watch my fingers turn into ash and fall to the ground in flakes that glide against the friction of the cold air that envelopes me.

The fire has run it's way to my chest, the capitol of my being, the location of that which continuously creates me and of where my abstract existence is formulated. I have forfeited my obligation to indulge in the terror. I have succumbed to the hysteria of the uncertain void that follows the loss of my mind's sight. I finally am not.

She is a piano solo. Quiet, but moving meaningfully.

She doesn't say much, but accommodates my constant moving soundlessly.

I roll over her like an idiot. I lay awkwardly, in a way painful to her.

She just wraps an arm around me and kisses me where she can reach.

She never complains. Never huffs for breath like I weigh a ton.

I nestle closer, and feel her heart beat against my ear- a symphony I wish to record.

She moves purposefully to touch me in any capacity if we're apart for longer than a minute. Her silent verse, to a chorus of loving.

I joke she only looks at me from a side glance, and oh.

She gives me the fraction of the sweetest smile, and flips fully to her side to gaze at me.

Her pupils are blown- iris' glaringly black from her affection.

She offers me the other fraction to that smile- what is this?

I studied music. She did too.

Is she a riff? A melody? What is this moment? A bridge?

I cannot place it.

Her usual laugh is sweet- her guttural laugh is that of the first woman I had imagined a future with.

She had been wrong, and mean.

But she cackles like her.

Grins like my favourite actress, speaks like her own favourite.

She is the soliloquy of those I've loved, and known.

It hurts, soothes, builds all at once.

I believe it was the summer of '78, or possibly '79. Please humor my looseness around such details, as I think we can all agree that either one of those summers would have been a long, long time ago.

Anyways, when I pulled in from work that day there was a girl sitting on the curb in front of my building; a melancholy looking girl with her chin cupped in her palms, her elbows propped up on her closed knees, and her toes pointed disjointedly inwards. I’d seen the girl a couple of times in the past week or so, coming or going from the apartment across the hall from mine, an apartment where at least three rowdy young guys lived along with their mean-assed Pit Bull dog, although truthfully it was hard to say exactly how many lived there, as there were generally a slew of kids hanging around that apartment, to recently include this girl who was currently perched on the curb right where I liked to park. Having just turned twenty-two and trying to be beyond all of the kid-crap drama that was forever going on over there I did my best not to pay these punk neighbors of mine any mind, though most times that was hard, as they were so loud and destructive on the nights they stayed home that it had crossed my mind more than once to go over and teach them some manners, but like I said… there were three of them and a Pit Bull dog. So while I intentionally ignored the guys living over there, I had (as any guy without attachments is prone to do) noticed the girl.

I wasn’t dating much back then, not seriously anyways, as I was no catch. I fully understood that I needed a year or two of polishing before any potential value could ever shine through the cheap, pawn shop veneer I was wearing. I’d just broken away from my own rowdy “friends” and was doing (strictly by my own standards) pretty well on my own; by that I mean that work was going well enough to keep the lights and water running, there was a little something in the fridge besides beer, and the truck started most mornings. Not to say that everything was great, as the complex I was living in was shit, my job was still lower level (although I was working hard at displaying the proper behaviors required to change that), and that damned truck still only ran some of the time. But the thing was, I had realized at this stage in life that I was different than my old buddies, and I had decided to do something about it. I was in the process of civilizing myself. I’d been instinctually aware through my party years that I was different, though I'd admittedly put in extra effort in trying to fit in. My “friends” had sensed it too I think, and had shielded me from any really bad trouble, understanding that I would "go good" someday and that I might be of some value to them when I did. So there at the end, while the rowdies I’d hung around since high school were still rebelling against the system, that is to say they were pushing back against a traditional life and it’s values, I had become more of a reluctant observer to their underworld schemes and dealings then I was a bona fide participant, a Jane Goodall if you will; an outsider who was accepted amongst the beasts so long as I stayed on my rock and didn’t make any unexpected motions… so long as I didn’t rock their boats, so to speak.

The girl stood up from the curb as my truck veered into it's spot, but she didn’t move away, forcing me into a short and sudden pull-up, revealing my monetary failings as well as the danger of her chosen seat through a nasty squeal from over-worn brake pads. Jamming the shifter into park and rolling up the window I gathered my things together and climbed out, eager to find out what her “deal” was, though I half-ways expected to find a drugged out glaze to her eyes along with a dim-witted expression. But surprisingly, upon closer inspection she appeared to be sober and bright enough, if unemotional.

"You all right?” I asked her.

She nodded in the affirmative, her bored expression unchanging. Still, this was a pretty shit neighborhood we were in, what with low-income housing directly across one street and an Air Force base, runway and all, on the opposite side, so it rubbed against my grain to leave her out here alone. It was no place for a young woman, and by young I mean that she looked to be seventeen, or maybe even sixteen (if not younger), it's always so hard to tell with girls that age. Regardless she was far too young to be hanging around outside in this neighborhood with darkness approaching. ”You got someplace to go?”

I took her frown as a “no.”

"Those punks ditch you?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

Stupid kid. Of course they had, once they’d had their fun with her and she became nothing but a drain on their slim resources.

"Can I take you somewhere? Home, maybe?”

She only shrugged. Again, I had to accept her unhappy expression as a “no.”

“All right, then.” I resigned. “But listen, if you need anything I’m right up there.” I pointed to my apartment, though I suspected she knew which one was mine, just as I suspected she’d known which parking spot was mine. While it is true that a guy will generally notice a girl, I wasn’t so naive as to think that a girl doesn’t notice things, too.

She sat back down on the curb when I reluctantly headed up, the gentleman in me feeling sufficiently rotten about leaving her there. I figured maybe those clowns across the hall would come back soon? But after changing my shirt and popping a cold one, a quick glance out the window revealed that she was still there.

"Shit!" Now you see, don’t you? This type of situation was exactly why I never could pull-off the “low-life scoundrel bit” that my rougher friends played-off of so well. It was such an easy thing for them to do, as they truly didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything. But me? I was cursed with a fucking heart, so against my better judgement I grabbed the truck keys and headed back down… the dumbass cavalry to the fucking rescue.

"I’m going for a burger. You hungry?” Her eyes widened at that. She pushed herself up from the curb and headed wordlessly towards the passenger-side door, leaving me to suppose that she was hungry. In any case she was thin enough that she should be hungry, even if she wasn’t.

The place the truck squealed to a stop in front of wasn’t much, an old beer joint two blocks off the beach with sandy floors, few customers, and an old-timey jukebox. While it wasn’t much to look at, what the place did have was a wonderful deep-water, driftwood smell that I loved, plus the food was cheap and the beers were cold, making it my kind of place. I worried about her age when I ordered two, but the guy didn’t ask her, and I didn’t either. She scarfed her food down before I was half done with mine.

“I guess you were hungry, huh?” I said it jokingly and was rewarded with a smile, so I slid the rest of my fries over for her to start in on, scowling as she dipped out grotesque amounts of ketchup to lube them up with before swallowing them down whole.

”Not a beer drinker?” She hadn’t touched hers. She shrugged again in the negative, still not offering up a single word despite my having bought her dinner and given her half of mine. In fact, she’d been so quiet I was beginning to wonder if there was something wrong with her… you know, upstairs I mean?

Reaching for her beer, I waited a short second for an objection which never came before tipping it back myself.

When I came out of the restroom a bit later she was standing at the jukebox reading through the song list, so I pulled what little change there was from my pocket for her as I passed. The cold beer I’d ordered was waiting on the table, so I sat down to give her a more critical examination while she agonized over the unfamiliar musical selections the old-timeu jukebox offered her. She was somewhat tall as girls go, her height flexing her into a seductive, back-arching forward lean over the machine as she worked out the smallish print. Long, black hair framed high cheeks which squinted her eyes, cat-like. The feet and ankles beneath the long, blue skirt she wore were bare, dirt stained, and were currently hiked up onto their tip-toes, accentuating well-toned muscles in her calves. Above the skirt she wore a lacy white tube top which wrapped itself tightly around her torso at tit level, leaving her midriff and shoulders bare, which while tanned with sun were not the blistery dark hue that most of the beach girls around here strove to acquire. She was pretty though, if obviously young… much too young to risk it, unfortunately. Unfortunately, that is, if a guy considered himself half-ways wise. My old buddies now, they wouldn't have given her age a thought, nor would those guys in the apartment across the hall, but fuck me if I didn't consider it. Yet, even as I watched she began swaying along to her first chosen tune; Tommy James’ “Crimson and Clover,” a song I knew to be the very first, original power ballad. “How is it,” I contemplated as I watched her, “that every girl knows how best to move to any and every song?”

“Ah... now I don’t hardly know her

But I think I could love her

Crimson and Clover”

I was pleasantly surprised by the selection. It was not the song I expected from an underaged beach girl just escaped from a hell house full of freaky-haired, drugged-up punk rockers.

So it was with mixed emotions that I drove back from the burger joint that night. The devil on the one shoulder was hoping the lights were still out next door and the wild boys remained away, while a wiser devil silently prayed on my other shoulder for the loud music and fairy-dust smoke that typically poured out from their opened window when they were home, so that I might be rid of my new, underaged charge. And while I do generally listen to my better devil, I must admit that this time I was quite thrilled to see that the tell-tale window was agreeably dark and quiet, leaving the evening vastly more interesting. I mean, who really likes going in for the night alone?

Neither of us made a move to exit the truck when the harsh squeal of worn brakes finally brought us to a lilting stop in its usual, oil stained spot. Both of us sat staring instead, our faces tilted upwards at my neighbors’ blackened window, the silence between us becoming more awkward the longer we sat.

“They aren’t back.” The words were a feeler more than anything else, sent out to test her waters.

"Good.” It was the first word she’d spoken, and it gave me confidence.

"You want to come up, then?”

Without a word she opened the door and climbed out, slamming it to behind her. I had to suppose that she did.

When I flipped on the light switch there wasn’t much for her to see; an old, cloth upholstered sofa, a scratch-and-dent coffee table, a sagging Lazy-Boy, the walls themselves bare but for a dart board on the far one and a framed print of James Dean on another... you know the photo, that shot of him in the red jacket with the “devil-may-care” smile? When I emerged from the tiny kitchen with a cold beer I noticed that her eyes were rested hopefully on the guitar in the far corner.

“Do you play?” She asked me.

“Not very well.”

“Play something? For me?” She took on an even more youthful, wide-eyed expression as she clapped her hands in a cute, kid-like gesture as she said it. “Please?”

Any modesty in me being false I did play after knocking it free of dust and giving it a necessary tuning, beginning with Tommy James’, “Crimson and Clover,” a song I believed she would appreciate.

“Hey!” She leaned in enthusiastically after the first line. “The song from the jukebox?”

"You don’t know it?” I asked her.

"No!" The girl who had hardly spoken the entire evening actually laughed aloud at that, her whole demeanor seeming to change at the prospects offered by the guitar, her face and eyes lighting up brightly at my puzzled expression. And I should probably have expected the confession which followed, though I somehow didn’t. “I didn’t know any of the songs on that old machine. I chose that one because of the title. It made me think of destiny.” Her cheeks blushed pink as she said it. The “Crimson” part felt like love, and the "Clover" part like luck.”

"Yep,” I kept the thought to myself, the intelligence in her snap interpretation surprising me. “This girl is definitely going lead me into trouble.”

But sensing that her fascination stemmed from the guitar itself rather than from my playing and singing I offered it over to her, resting it properly across her thighs. Guiding her one hand to the proper fret I molded a “G” out of her fingers and then showed her a simple strum pattern with the other. After some expected fumblings a clear enough chord soon rang out, producing an excited and surprised smile along with it, so we copied the same procedure with a “C” chord, and then a “D”. After an hour she was, if rather slowly and with some difficulty, managing to change the fingerings from G, to C, to D on her own. As she did so, I ever so slowly worded along, hardly what you’d even call singing:

“Ahhh, now I don’t hardly know her…”

I waited patiently through the long pause as she fumbled with the fingerings.

“But I think I could love her.”

Another pause, followed by a careful strum.

“Crimson and clover.”

Pause... and strum.

“Ahhh, when she comes walkin' over….”

Wanting to get the rhythm right she tried going faster, both of us giggling along to her many mistakes, but that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? When learning to play? Trying to go faster, to make the notes happen in tempo, the song itself forcing practice, and improvement? Satisfied at seeing her face scrunched in concentration as she practiced I retrieved still another beer from the refrigerator, staggering a bit as I went, the day’s long hours telling on me. I started back into the little living room, but changed my mind when I saw her in there so hard at her work.

"Hey, I’m gonna crash. Make yourself at home. You can play as long as you like. It won't bother me.” I stopped myself short of offering the other side of the bed when she was ready, figuring that she would return across the hall when, and if, her friends came home. So beer in hand I headed to the back bedroom, where I kicked off my boots before dropping across the bed, jeans and all. Yet from somewhere in my addled dreams the sounds of slow-changing and mis-fingered chords drifted into my consciousness, producing upon my inebriated countenance a lazy, lingering smile.

When I woke it was to morning's soft, gray light through the window slats, and to those same, tentatively changing chord progressions which had drifted in from the other room the night before, G to C to D and back, along with the hazy recollection of a heaviness in the bed beside me, and of what some might consider to be a chastisement coming to me through my alcoholic fog, “you drink too much.”

“Yea.”

And that was all.

But today was Sunday, my one day off, and I wasn’t one to waste it lying around, so after a short stint in the bathroom I made a grandiose entrance in knee-length, Hawaiian-print trunks and a clean, white t-shirt. She did not stop practicing, nor did she smile at my attire. It seemed rude, but it also seemed like her regular disposition, so I let it slide.

"It's sounding better." I said, and meant it. With that, I continued on down to my truck, where I pulled the refurbished pads I'd bought from behind the seat and started removing tires to change them out. Without bothering to come down the girl raised the window and called down from above.

"Hey? What are you doing?”

"I’m adjusting the brakes.” I called back without looking up.

"Duh! I can see that. Why?”

"So the truck will stop.”

"That’s not what I meant. Why now? It’s barely light outside on Sunday morning! Who does something like that at this hour?”

"We can’t hardly go to the beach and to breakfast unless I get them changed out, can we?”

"Ugh…I don’t really wanna go to the beach.”

"You can bring the guitar.”

"Oh, cool! Ok then!”

”Get yourself a shower while I finish here.”

”I don’t need a shower. I’ll hop in the ocean.”

”It wasn’t a question. If you want breakfast, take a shower.”

“You don’t have to be mean.” She sniffed her armpit as she said it. “I’m not that bad… yet." She started to slide the window down, but stopped herself. "Say!" Her curiosity finally getting the best of her. "What’s your name, anyways?”

”It's Huck.”

”Alrighty then, Huck! I’m Joanie. Let's have a breakfast date!“

It was still early yet for tourists when we got there. The waterfront was thankfully quiet but for breaking waves and shrieking gulls. Her skin had lost its flush from the shower, but her hair remained damp. I propped the tailgate down for a seat, which we did, and with the guitar positioned across her lap we watched as the red-trunked life guards pried row upon row of tourist umbrellas into the soft sand. I felt a bit sorry for her in her thin clothes, as the breeze was cool enough off the water yet to pimple her arms and quiver her bottom lip.

“How long will you be?” She asked.

”About an hour. I’ll run down the beach a couple of miles, and then swim back.”

”Why?”

”Because it feels good.”

“Ugh.” Her expression showed that she wasn’t buying it. Her eyes rolled skeptically away from me before dropping back down to the strings where they could once again assist in her uncoordinated fingerings; G-to-C-to-D. But before I left her I took time to show her the A and G minor chords. She was progressing quickly, and if she could get the new chords down by the time I got back I would begin her on that old Roger Miller tune:

“Trailer for sale or rent.

Rooms to let, fifty cents.

No phone, no pool, no pets…

I ain’t got no cigarettes.”

She would like that one, “King of the Road,” It was another 60’s oldie, but it was a fun one that was easy to play.

The sun was doing good work by the time I got back. Joanie’s shivering had stopped, and she had her new chords down, just as I‘d thought she would. ”But my fingertips are starting to hurt.” She complained.

”Yea. That happens at first. They’ll callous up pretty quick, though.”

Stopping at a McDonald’s Joanie wolfed down an Egg McMuffin as quickly as she had last night’s burger.

”Do you have some more things somewhere? Clothes, and what not?” I asked her as she ate.

She shook her head no.

”Not even shoes?”

She didn’t bother responding.

Here was a problem. I certainly couldn’t afford to outfit her. Hell, I could barely take care of myself. "If you're going to hang around with me we’re going to have to find you a job.”

She scowled at that, grabbing at the half-a sausage biscuit I’d left lying on it’s wrapper.

”Where do you live, then? Where’s home?” To which she only shrugged her shoulders.

Not knowing what else to do, I supposed I had no choice but to keep her around, which was secretly ok by me.

There was no one else in the laundromat this early, and so to add her few clothes to my weekly load Joanie pulled an oversized t-shirt of mine overtop of her own clothes before sliding the skirt, and then her top down over hips lean enough to offer little impediment, managing to remove them from under the t-shirt without giving miscreant me even a single little peek of forbidden skin. When I mentioned my disappointment she turned playfully around and, with her back arching her buttocks towards me she used both hands to flip the bottom of the t-shirt up, rewarding me with a shapely half-moon before plopping down in one of the plastic chairs, naked but for my t-shirt. And then, as usual, she turned her attention from me and picked up the guitar, resting it atop her lanky and naked legs.

“That washing machine is pounding out a pretty steady beat,” I offered helpfully. “Why don’t you try to keep time to it, like it‘s a bass drum.” So she did, keeping up with the tempo pretty well for just her second day playing. Thinking back, I tried to remember how well I was playing on my second day? The recollections were fuzzy, but I knew my improvements had not come this quickly, and I had been nearly as obsessed with the guitar back then as she was now… nearly.

Leaving her and the guitar to guard the laundry for a moment I crossed the street to a quick mart and returned with a six pack in hand, earning myself one of those curled-nose side looks that a girl will give when something metaphorically smells bad around them. But hey, my thirst was none of her concern.

”What?” I asked in response to her obvious displeasure.

”It’s not even nine o’clock yet.” She scolded me.

”No?” Pretending to be wearing a watch, I looked down at my wrist. “No, it surely isn’t,” I confirmed before ripping a frosty can from its plastic holder. I held the can out spitefully for her to witness as I popped the tab and took a long pull from it whilst simultaneously pulling my other purchase from the back of my shorts where I’d hidden it. I held my "surprise" out to her as a peace offering… a pair of cheap, pink flip-flops. While these did not exactly earn me a pass, they did melt away the tenseness that had appeared in her strumming. Bingo… chalk a point up for the beer guy.

But more importantly she was gaining confidence in her playing, singing along now as she played, and I liked hearing it. She had a good voice, one that managed to hit its pitches even though they emerged a bit blustery and poorly shaped, her voice being untrained and unrefined. “When we get home,” I thought to myself, “I will teach her how to push the air up from her abdomen, rather than singing strictly through her throat.”

“… when we get home?” Funny, that. It was the first time since moving into that shitty apartment that I’d thought of it as “home”.

After our many errands were done she was holding the stairwell door for me and my two-handed load when one of those neighbor kids ran into us on his way out, one of those guys from that apartment across the hall. The half-starved, spiked-hair punk was almost comical in his fake leather pants and worn combat boots. He laughed when he saw us, but it was not a happy laugh.

“Joanie! I see you’ve found a new landing spot already! You didn’t have to go far to find one either, did you? Huh? Right across the fucking hallway?” He turned his eyes to me. “Hey dude? Did she give you the crabs yet? She gave me the fucking crabs! Ha, ha!” His eyes returned to her. “Fucking bitch!” Pushing between us the asshole was gone before I could even set the laundry basket down.

I’ll give her kudos for not crying. Most girls would have cried in that situation, I think. I set a goal to help her shake it off, but I didn’t have a lot of experience with helping girls cycle through their emotions. “Fuck that guy.“ I said. “I shouldn’t have let that happen.”

"No. He’s right. I did give him the crabs. Something was wrong down there, but I didn’t know what. Everything he said was true.”

"Yea? Well, fuck him anyways. He still didn’t have to be such an asshole.”

"I thought I loved him.”

"That guy?”

"I know. Funny, right?” Only now she was crying. “I hate myself for it, but I did. I don’t even know how I got the fucking crabs. There wasn’t anyone else.”

"If you climbed into that guy’s bed, then that’s probably where you got them.”

"Ugh… you think?”

"Yea, I think.”

I thought then about the weight I’d felt in the bed beside me the previous night. I understood the obvious danger in the moment, but the question on my mind needed to be asked. “You don’t still have them, do you?”

"No. I swiped some shit from the drugstore.”

“Oh?”

"Yea. And I shaved it.”

Shrugging the unsavory comment off, I headed up the stairs. Guitar in tow Joanie followed me up, her new flip-flops echoing loudly through the stairwell as they slapped against the souls of feet which were at least less dirty today than they had been yesterday, though they were still not altogether clean.

I woke up much later sprawled within the arms of the Lazy Boy, empty beer cans piled on the floor beside me. The room was dark but for an incandescent glow through the doorway from the kitchen stove light. She was on the edge of the couch, Joanie was, quietly humming along to a new chord pattern, one of her own, a hauntingly melodic tune, though Joanie occasionally stopped her humming in time to mouth some indistinguishable words, piecing in the lyrics to her own song.

Too drunk to listen, I got up and staggered down the hallway to bed, though I was not yet asleep when I felt her climb in behind me, her hand settling on my arm in the darkness as she whispered, “Thank you, Huck… for everything.”

We slept there together, her smaller frame spooned warmly and softly against mine despite the thin layers of clothing which along with my gentlemanly disposition separated us sexually as effectually as any olden day “bundling bag” could have. And she was still there in the morning, beside me. I awoke before the alarm, lying there a good while so that I could enjoy the comfort of her body snuggled-up to mine. These moments were rare for me these days... but someday? Yes, perhaps someday I would have someone beside me like this every morning to give purpose to the coming day?

But not now.

Even still, I could allow myself this innocent moment, could I not? Though this particular girl could not be mine? It was cruel, wasn’t it? How propriety had long since declared her too young for the likes of me, even though she was plenty old enough for some other, more rotten scoundrel?

And so, instead of rolling over and taking her suggestively offered comforts, I rolled the other way; away from pleasure and into the lot of the “good man”… his lot being another cold, hard work week.

And though I hadn’t taken her during the night before, she was surprisingly still there in the apartment at Monday’s end, perched on the edge of the sofa as always. Only she wasn’t playing the familiar chords I had taught her. She was playing something new, a two stringed, stretched-finger blues riff on the lower-toned strings that I had not yet taught her. And if I had not shown her that, then it was left to wonder who had?

Fuck, I needed a beer. I hadn’t wanted to love her. I hadn’t intended to make love to her. But sometimes things happen to a man that he doesn’t intend, and sometimes it is the woman who makes the man’s mind. That is how it went with young Joanie and me. that last night together.

And that is pretty much the end, but for the memories of it all, and the "Afterwards."

Afterwords

She stayed that last night, Joanie did, though there was little beer drinking done, and no sleeping. We broke every statutory law there is, committing our crimes on her terms, rather than mine. She pleasured me over and over again in what I can only assume was some sort of raunchy “thank you” for the lessons, the meals, the place to crash and the guitar (which, like her, walked out of my life forever that next morning, although I later saw them both together on an album cover). It seems that she’d set a goal to keep me awake and sober that night, and one thing about Joanie Jettbaum, that kid was relentless once she’d set her mind on a goal, as every time I reached for a beer that night she reached for me (or I should say she reached for a specific part of me), setting lascivious things in motion all over again. I also think it’s safe to say that, being young as she was, she sure knew what to do with it too, once she’d grabbed hold, but then, the little Joanie I knew never did care much about her bad reputation. It shames me somewhat to say that the lessons learned that night were mostly learned by me, though I was appreciative of the knowledge. It had been years since I’d remained as sober as I did through that night, and it would be more years until I would be so again.

It seemed that those punks across the hall had heard her practicing through our paper thin walls, and had liked what they heard, even though I still hadn’t had time to work with her on her voice. So they sent her old boyfriend Thommy, their drummer, over to knock on the door while I was away at work, inviting her to come out on the road with them. Thommy was an asshole, sure enough, and he treated her like shit, but while poor Joanie (who later made some ever-so slight adjustments to her name) hated herself for loving him, she still, for whatever reason, chose his rock-n-roll fantasy over the “wife and family” ambitions of mine. Looked back on, I cannot blame her for it. It is the nature of her gender, after all. A woman always will go with the sleaze bag given a choice, proving true the old adage that, “women respect gentlemen, but sleep with cads.” And besides, her youthful inexperience with life at that time must be kept in mind. Whatever her reasoning was, it worked out well for us both, proving that we were not meant to be, however well our fit.

Amazingly, they made it to some small degree of success in the tough world of music, that little band of black hearts across the hall. I actually bought their first album when it came out on cassette tape, for nostalgia’s sake only mind you, as by that time I was already a happily married man, married to a good woman who did care about her reputation, though she was still, in all her goodness, able to teach me some things that Joanie hadn’t.

But sometimes when I’m alone in my fancy new truck I’ll submit to those guilty pleasures and forbidden memories of yesterday, popping the old tape into the player and cranking it up loud, eagerly fast-forwarding ahead to my favorite song:

”Yea… well I’m not such a sweet thing

And I’d do everything

Such a beautiful feeling

Crimson and Clover

Over and over…”

... and over, and over.

I stare at this blank page, as I would dissociate on paint drying. The letters blur into what feels exactly like the nonsense I spit up on the colorless white spaces I fill with the dark ink that stain my hands.

Today I feel empty. I feel faceless. I exist purely as a concept conceived in the mind of another, or perceived by eyes that are not my own. I am as tangible as a whisper or as concrete as a thought.

If someone would try to touch me, their hand would move right through, as if I am a digital projection mathematically calculated by computer code. Just a reflection sourced by primary colored LED's that undergo the current of a sea of delocalized ions running around a race track of electric circuits. An automaton incapable of performing the spectrum of human emotion that it was programmed to. Inoperative and malfunctioning.

Perhaps I am just a departed soul that lives in the slightest detachment to the scenes of my material life. The life that feels just beyond my reach, as if the tips of my fingers are grazing the solid surface of the plane of physical reality.

I am absorbed by the dark and vast vacuum in which emptiness does not exist. There is no concept of the expansion of three-dimensionally measured mass. There is no gravitational pull towards a direction that cannot be observed, because all units of measurement are negligible in the state of oblivion.

I wish to buy into the concept of existing as a hologram in a simulation created by some apathetic entity that wanted to walk around with a feather in its hat. Some rudimentary being fed by adulation in an extraterrestrial society of competitive intellectuals. So we exist as an experiment to be observed by a panel of judges within a competition of keen innovation.

Would that not change my perspective on the savagery of this existence? Living in a world governed by overly controlling primates that have experienced the pleasure of testosterone secretion when put in positions of power which allow them to exert authority. Neurochemically, that doesn't seem very evolved of us, but if it's just a result of a prompt designed by some advanced creature that plays with our universe, as one would play with puppets, it does not seem so animalistic after all.

I choose to refrain from further entertaining these thoughts of non-existence.

I would like to live as a leaf, that drinks the sunshine and exhales over the sweet seeking lips of life. How beautiful it can be to live in such magnificent and thoughtless simplicity, yet be more valuable than anything desire can fathom. A leaf that just flutters and sways into the embrace of the waltzing breeze, before it takes gentle flight, tumbling, spinning and meandering it's way to the surface of the earth. The leaf now peacefully rests as its edges curl and color fades, without an anxious demand to outlive inevitable expiration. It just humbly ceases its claim to space in this domain.

By now the paint has dried, but I have failed to notice. The color is identical to the previous shade and there was no sincere reason for it, other than creating an illusion of rehabilitation.

Being dead isn't nearly as boring as you might think.

I discovered this on my third day of non-existence, when I finally stopped trying to open doors and learned to simply pass through them instead. The trick, I found, is to forget you were ever solid to begin with. Forget the weight of bones and blood, the constant pull of gravity, the way air once caught in your lungs. Remember instead that you are now made of the same stuff as moonlight and memory.

My name was – is? – Thomas Webb, and I've been dead for approximately eight months, two weeks, and five days. Not that time means much anymore. When you're dead, moments can stretch like taffy or snap past like rubber bands. Sometimes I watch the sun rise and set so quickly it looks like someone's flicking a light switch. Other times, I spend what feels like hours watching a single dewdrop slide down a blade of grass.

I haunt (though I prefer the term "reside in") a small town in New England called Millbrook. Not because I'm bound here by unfinished business or ancient curses – at least, I don't think so. I simply never felt the pull to go elsewhere. Even when I was alive, I rarely left town. Why start traveling now?

Besides, there's more than enough to keep me occupied here. Take Mrs. Henderson at number forty-two, for instance. She's been stealing her neighbor's newspapers for three years, but only on Wednesdays, and only if it's raining. I spent two months following her around before I figured out why: she lines her parakeet's cage with newspaper, and she's convinced that newspaper stolen in the rain brings good luck to pets. I can't argue with her results – that parakeet is seventeen years old and still singing.

Then there's the teenage boy who sits in the park every Tuesday afternoon, writing poetry in a battered notebook. He thinks no one can see him behind the big oak tree, but I float by sometimes and read over his shoulder. His metaphors need work, but his heart's in the right place. Last week he wrote a sonnet comparing his crush's eyes to "pools of Mountain Dew," which was both terrible and oddly touching.

The living can be endlessly entertaining when they don't know they're being watched. It's not creepy if you're dead – it's anthropology.

But I'm not always a passive observer. Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly solid, I can manage small interactions with the physical world. Nothing dramatic like moving furniture or writing messages in blood on the walls (though I'll admit I tried once, out of curiosity – turns out being dead doesn't automatically make you good at horror movie effects).

Instead, I specialize in tiny interventions: nudging dropped keys into view, generating the perfect cool breeze on a sweltering day, ensuring that the last cookie in the box is chocolate chip instead of oatmeal raisin. Small kindnesses, barely noticeable but precisely timed.

My finest work happens at The Dusty Tome, the bookstore where I used to work when I was alive. My former colleague, Sarah, still runs the place. She never knew that I harbored a decade-long crush on her, and now she never will. But I can still help her in my own way.

I've become quite good at guiding customers to exactly the book they need, even if they don't know they need it. A gentle cold spot near the self-help section, a subtle illumination of a particular spine, a barely perceptible whisper that draws their attention to just the right page. Last week, I helped a grieving widower find a cookbook that contained his late wife's secret cookie recipe. He cried right there in the aisle, clutching the book like a life preserver. Sarah gave him a free bookmark and a cup of tea.

The other ghosts (yes, there are others) think I'm too involved with the living. "You need to learn to let go," says Eleanor, who's been dead since 1847 and spends most of her time rearranging flowers in the cemetery. "The living have their world, and we have ours."

But I've never been good at letting go. Even when I was alive, I held onto things too long – old tickets stubs, expired coupons, unrequited feelings. Death hasn't changed that aspect of my personality. If anything, it's given me more time to cultivate my attachments.

Take my cat, for instance. Mr. Whiskers (I didn't name him – he came with that regrettable moniker from the shelter) is still alive and living with my sister. He can see me, as most animals can, but he's remarkably unfazed by my transparent state. Sometimes I lie on the floor next to him while he sleeps, pretending I can feel his warmth. He purrs anyway, the sound vibrating through whatever passes for my soul these days.

The hardest part about being dead isn't the lack of physical sensation or the inability to enjoy coffee (though I do miss that). It's watching the people you love cope with your absence. My sister still sets an extra place at Christmas dinner. My mother keeps "forgetting" to delete my number from her phone. My father pretends he's okay but visits my grave every Sunday with fresh flowers and updates about the Patriots' latest games, as if I might be keeping score in the afterlife.

I want to tell them I'm still here, that death isn't an ending but a change in perspective. I want to tell my sister that I saw her ace her dissertation defense, that I was there in the back of the room, cheering silently as she fielded every question with brilliant precision. I want to tell my mother that yes, I did get her messages, all of them, and that the cardinal that visits her bird feeder every morning is not me, but I appreciate the thought.

But the rules of death are strict about direct communication. The best I can do is send signs they probably don't recognize: a favorite song on the radio at just the right moment, a unexpected whiff of my cologne in an empty room, the feeling of being hugged when they're alone at night.

Sometimes I wonder if this is hell – not fire and brimstone, but the eternal frustration of being able to observe but never truly connect. Other times, usually when I'm watching Sarah shelve books or listening to my father's one-sided conversations at my grave, I think this might be heaven. The ability to witness life without the messy complications of living it, to love without the fear of loss, to exist in the spaces between moments.

I've developed hobbies, as one does when faced with eternal existence. I collect overheard conversations, storing them like precious gems in whatever serves as my memory now. I've become an expert in the secret lives of squirrels (far more dramatic than you'd expect). I've learned to read upside-down books over people's shoulders on park benches, and I've mastered the art of predicting rain by watching the way cats clean their whiskers.

But my favorite pastime is what I call "emotion painting." I've discovered that strong feelings leave traces in the air, visible only to the dead – streaks of color and light that linger like aurora borealis. Love is usually gold or deep rose, anger burns red with black edges, and sadness flows in shades of blue and silver. I spend hours watching these colors swirl and blend, especially in places where emotions run high: the hospital waiting room, the high school during prom, the small chapel where weddings and funerals alike are held.

Today, I'm following a new pattern of colors I've never seen before – a strange mixture of green and purple that sparkles like static electricity. It's emanating from a young woman sitting alone in The Dusty Tome, reading a worn copy of "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir." She has dark circles under her eyes and a hospital bracelet on her wrist. The colors around her pulse and swirl with an intensity that draws me closer.

As I hover near her table, I realize she's not actually reading. She's crying silently, tears falling onto the open pages. But there's something else – she keeps looking up, scanning the bookstore as if searching for something. Or someone.

Then she speaks, so softly even I almost miss it: "Thomas? Are you here?"

I freeze (metaphorically speaking – I'm always technically frozen now). It's Lisa Chen, a regular customer from my living days. We used to chat about books, particularly ghost stories. She once told me she could sense spirits, but I had dismissed it as whimsy. Now, as I watch the colors dance around her, I wonder if perhaps she was telling the truth.

"I know you're probably here somewhere," she continues, still speaking barely above a whisper. "Sarah told me you used to help people find the right books. I could use some help now."

I drift closer, fascinated by the way the green and purple lights seem to reach out toward me.

"I'm dying," she says matter-of-factly. "Cancer. Stage four. The doctors say I have maybe three months." She laughs softly. "I'm not afraid of being dead, exactly. I just want to know... is it lonely?"

For the first time since my death, I wish desperately that I could speak. I want to tell her about the beauty of emotion paintings, about the secret lives of cats and squirrels, about the way love looks like golden light and how sadness can be as beautiful as stained glass.

Instead, I do what I do best. I create a gentle breeze that ruffles through the nearby shelves until a small, leather-bound book falls onto her table. It's a collection of Mary Oliver poems, opened to "When Death Comes."

Lisa picks up the book with trembling hands and reads aloud: "When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn... when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut... I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?"

The colors around her shift, the purple fading as the green grows brighter, more peaceful. She smiles, touching the page gently.

"Thank you, Thomas," she whispers.

I stay with her until she leaves, watching the colors trail behind her like a comet's tail. Then I do something I've never done before – I follow her. Not to her home or to the hospital, but to all the places in town that still hold beauty: the park where the teenage poet writes his awful, wonderful verses, the bench where the widower sits feeding pigeons, the small garden behind the library where Sarah takes her lunch breaks.

At each stop, I paint the air with every beautiful thing I've seen since dying, every moment of joy and wonder and connection I've witnessed. I don't know if she can see the colors, but I paint them anyway – gold for love, silver for hope, and a new color I've never used before, one that looks like sunlight through leaves, that means "you are not alone."

Being dead isn't what I expected. It's not an ending or a beginning, but a different way of being. A way of loving the world without being able to hold it. A way of touching lives without leaving fingerprints. A way of existing in the spaces between heartbeats, in the pause between words, in the moment before tears become laughter.

And sometimes, if you're very lucky, it's a way of showing someone else that the cottage of darkness isn't dark at all. It's full of colors only the dead can see, but the living can feel.

I think I'll stay in Millbrook a while longer. After all, there are still books to be found, cats to be comforted, and stories to be witnessed. Besides, I've heard there's a new ghost in town – a teacher who's been rearranging the letters on the high school announcement board to spell out poetry at midnight. I should probably introduce myself.

Being dead, I've learned, is just another way of being alive.

People love hearing the way rhyme rolls off of the tip of my tongue, just before I sensually purse a lit cigarette between my red smeared lips. One more blissful inhalation, allowing the toxic tar to creep through my bronchial tubes and into the abused tissue of my lungs, filling it with the unclean oxygen that feeds my blood.

The world slows down as I'm embraced by the sweet satisfaction of enabled addiction. I exhale with closed eyes whilst subtly swaying to the rhythm of the acoustic melody that entrances everyone listening to me describe the bloody, red roses of Hell.

This is a poem about saturating the forest floor with the blood of my enemies. How they hang in somber anticipation of a ritual knife gliding across the soft skin of their necks and drenching the soil with the contents of their souls.

The blood gravitationally flows through the dark depths of the earth until it reaches the Underworld, where the Goddess collects it in a golden goblet and carries it to the table for the feast to begin.

The gods rejoice as I smear the bloody mud across my cheeks and decorate my walls with Norse runes to awaken my magick in preparation for the waning moon ritual I'll do to feed my power over the wicked creatures in my shadow.

"They will never regain control," I whisper, killing my cigarette.