Tag Archives: memories

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23 June, 2013

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fiction, prose, writing

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Crumbs of Caffeine

Black coffee by Erik Witsoe (www.facebook.com/ErikWitsoePhotography)

Black, cinnamon flavored
JCD Kerwin

I imagine I’m drinking you, as if you’re made of the magic I find in bottomless cups of bitter black at six a.m. when I’m in Zombieland. I remember you as every bold drop plays against my tongue. I remember the way your eyes looked like saucers; dark brown, brown-black, blackish black: eight o’clock irises. I drink you in the mornings when birds want me to smile; I drink you late at night when moonlight begs me to dream.

I will make memories of you crumble like coffee cake.

(June, 2013)

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22 June, 2013

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fiction, prose, writing

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Cracked Teapots from Paris

Broken teacup by oxecotton (deviantART)

Chipped China
JCD Kerwin

She sighs in the darkness, speaks breathless, makes promises she cannot keep. He stares at ceiling fan blades and watches his thoughts disappear within the summer air. She says forever; he knows she will not stay.

Clinking tea cups at a small Paris café: memories of a Parisian rendezvous where he fell, captivated, and became lost in her. They are yesterday’s ghost. She has forgotten; he tries to throw the photographs away.

Her lips are dry. They don’t taste the same. She replaces lace to cold skin and whispers promises of tomorrows that will never come. He listens to the door shut and tries to forget cafés.

(June, 2013)

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11 June, 2013

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fiction, prose, writing

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It’s Raining Likely and my Batman Clock is Broken

What? It is. Needs a new battery. I digress.

Phony
JCD Kerwin

He quotes passages from Catcher in the Rye and calls himself Holden at midnights when he’s drunk his head too full of bourbon. He acts tough to hide his self-inflicted wounds, but he’s afraid the world sees right through him. His zealousness convinces him to hit on the older girls, but then he thinks of her and all the ways he hurt her. Sometimes he curses to himself because he doesn’t like remembering the mistakes he made.

He goes to the bar to find reasons for all the things he never did or shouldn’t have done. But the only things he finds are empty beer bottles and girls that will never be her.

He can’t smile when he spies himself in the mirror behind the bar; he can’t face his own reflection without cringing. He wants to gouge out his eyes so he doesn’t have to see, because the face in the mirror just can’t be his.
What he’d give to rewind time.

He’d take it all back and throw himself in the fire he started between them. He’d give up giving into the world and disappear with her. Now he tries to find that place to hide because he doesn’t want to be anywhere now that she’s gone. He can’t remember what it feels like to belong.

He scoffs as he wonders why he cares so much. No one cares this much. He’s not supposed to care. But he does, and it’s why he plays the same songs ten times in a row, hoping the eleventh is when he’ll have an epiphany. It’s why he drinks coffee in the park, wondering if drinking her favorite pick-me-up will call her back.

He tried to get her back, but he’s not a valiant knight; he’s just like the other ego-driven anti-heroes who call themselves “Caulfield” when they’re too full of self-pity to realize they’ve lost.

He might never find the answers he needs, and probably won’t find a way to be with or without her. If she came back, though, he knows they’d be all right. He’d say sorry and she’d forgive him. There’d be no more pretending and no more drinking in bars. There’d be no more Holden at midnights; she’d call him Brian at noon again.

(Dec., 2011)

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18 November, 2012

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poetry, writing

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Jungle Eyes

Even my poems sometimes turn into fiction stories…

Goodbye Saigon
JCD Kerwin

I see Saigon in her tea cup;
the soggy leaves turn red and
make explosions in my sight.

When I exhale,
I remember how hot it was
in summer when
mosquito nets
couldn’t keep me from
the sweat upon her skin.

Olive thighs
made me smile at stars
through windows while
bombs blew in
the night.

I’m alone in the quiet—
ceiling fan blades and cigarettes
become
my lament for her.
I see Saigon in silver droplets;
she was blood in the water.
Is this love?
(Was it love?)

I exhale jungle fire
from scorched memories.

Sigh, Saigon, sigh.

Nov., 2012

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1 November, 2012

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Bloodshot Detours

Bloodshot Detours
JCD Kerwin

She gets bloodshot eyes and follows railroad tracks from her head. She follows them to memories he laid for her when he left her cold, forgotten and skin and bones when he said she wasn’t worth the warmth of a lesser man. She blinks dead, glazed eyes and sees black birds on the tracks, pulling off the flesh of all the friends she left behind. [She pulls at her own skin, hanging loose against her ribs, sticking puncture-like from her body while she wonders when the birds will come to claim her for their final meal.] She follows tracks to the town she remembers, but doesn’t, because all she wants is the life she never had, the life she almost had before he kissed her lips and drove the blade into her heart. (Her salty tears across the metal: tarnished silver made it rust the faster.) She walks at Dawn to find someone who can keep the train away for one more day; someone who can keep it away until she finds the way home.

Nov., 2012

Broken Bells made me do it. That’s my excuse.
[End]