Apple of Eden

  Apple of Eden

Mark Coleman

  He crawls legless through this boneyard we call a battlefield. Screaming for the lord to take him home. A home where no fists are brandished in rage. A home where perhaps there is a pretty young wife to pity him as other soldiers have. Someone who would cherish all his letters. 

  Pack them away in a chest that was once reserved for family heirlooms. Smell them on occasion in an attempt to detect the cologne and the eucalyptus sweet breath that graced the back of her neck in the dance hall that evening so many years ago. As it is, he doesn’t even have a dog who would lick his hand in joyful recognition.

  No one deems him worthy of a mercy killing. If he had feet that he could throw socks and shoes on, they would have strapped him in a chair or stood him in front of a firing squad long ago. His life has no purpose. This bleeding out was all he was meant for.

  Biting the inside of your lip at the methadone clinic. Standing in line at the needle exchange so you can put something clean in your arm, or between your toes, or in a throbbing vein in your dick as the case may be. The girl in front of you has frayed cut-off jeans that show off half of her ass cheeks. She must be wearing a thong. You want to tear it out with your teeth, bend her over the service counter, and fuck her until she bleeds.

  The grocery clerk is watching the clock. The time is not sped up due to her watchfulness. Diligence is overrated. It actually slows to the point of near nonexistence. Ringing up food that she can’t afford. Sentences and paragraphs mock her novel of starvation and dereliction. Deserted as ancient ruins that housed dead monarchs or paintings that no one bothered to restore.

  You don't know the definition of the word but you can feel it. Like a dream that tints the day. Not necessarily rosy but of some wistful color that is seldom, if ever, painted. Whether that be by nature, god, or man. 

  It sits there insulting your intelligence in a book when the dictionary has gone AWOL. Or, maybe, it stands accusing on the back flap. A word you've looked up a thousand times, but for the life of you, you can't smash together a string of its peers that would reveal its meaning.

  You hear the sullen tread up the stairs that presages the arrival of the landlady for whom you have no money. You open the cupboard and take out the bottle that was paid the rent instead. You doubt that she will be tempted by this peace offering, but it’s the best you can come up with. 

  Outside the window, a man who lost his son-in-law a week ago to the sea stops on the sidewalk to look at a poster for a missing cat on a lamppost. It frolics there. Ears perked. A ball of string between its forepaws. The untrimmed claws. The abundance of fur.

  He thinks he might look into the pet store. Find some young creature who might cheer his daughter slightly, or else, bathe itself at the foot of her misery. Being that she’s barren, all the lovemaking brought her nothing with which she could transfer the love she gave to her husband. A dumb brute is a poor substitute but he like you is at a loss for what he should do. It’s the best he can come up with.

  His eldest daughter has an attic room in his house. She sits there sewing. Slowly becoming an old maid. She envied her sister’s nights. She still does, though now, there will be no more. 

  The blue dragonflies of summer hover about the overflowing ashtray on the deck. They are not deterred by the fact that a cigarette still smokes there. They almost seem attracted to the plume it sends forth. 

  Your neighbors are chattering over their cocktails and beers. Spouting inanities that are better suited to special ed children. Peppered with obscenities that are fresh upon their lips, and which anyone with class abstains from using. Shirked as a drunken vet lying face first on the pavement. The buses passing him by. The cops sure to be called.

   There’s a girl who sits alone until midnight, every night, in the gazebo. Perhaps, this was an agreed upon rendezvous spot, and she is being perpetually jilted. Abandoned out there amongst the tired flowers. She won’t allow herself to give up because she has nothing left to hang her hopes on.

  The creek bubbles its nonsense to a bored sky in the dark of the moon. The pebbles we skipped are buried somewhere at the bottom of the lake, where as children, we fancied there laid buried treasure. We know better now when we could use it the most.

  Scraping together a little change that we will convert into liquor. Dulling ourselves in the face of adversity. The minute hand makes no more revolutions. The pictures in the locket have faded. Recollections rarely come. When they do, they come shredded as sensitive documents sometimes do.

  We try to find something to toast to. Look around the room. There’s not a single possession we like or need. This feeling extends to ourselves. All the dreams I wrapped up in you have disappeared upon waking. I know you feel the same way as you avoid my gaze. Averting your eyes in what amounts to shame. I’m ashamed at this realization too. Even though, it seems so obvious that whatever we had was bound to die. Something about this particular night seems perfect for it.

  It’s that time of night when all artificial light is imbued with some sort of mystical sagacity. Everything is pleasantly blurred in contrast to the melancholy that renders us immovable. There are no sharp edges. No rough contours. Everything has been smoothed out.

  The way that you used to smooth out your dress upon standing. I’d run a hand through my hair. Yours if it was preliminary to coition. In the doorway there with the kiss lingering on my lips. I was the one who gave it. And I was the one who took it home with me when I couldn’t sleep. The ceiling fan scattering the street lights. 

  A bar down there below this unpaid for room. The liberal pours and the loose women. Naked beneath their slickers. Something sad always on the jukebox. The seasoned barflies look intently at the mirror behind the bar. They think it must be playing funhouse tricks on them. But no, that is who they truly are. With all their accumulated years. All their lost hands. All their rotten luck. Of course, some kid who just turned 21 is sinking all the balls on the pool table. Pointing to the pockets as he does so.

  It seems so effortless for some people. It’s as though the world is at their command. You and I never really had a chance when the odds were stacked against us like this. Still there were those days when no one could see us, and we acted foolish in the most inappropriate places. Even the graveyards were transformed into playgrounds when visited by honeymooners like us. 

  You playfully pouted when I beat you to the punchline. Everyone could see it coming from a mile away. Still, I should have let you have that small victory. I understand now how important these seemingly insignificant things can be. 

  You never acted as though you were entitled to their laughter. If the joke did not land, you would simply try another. Something about a farmer’s daughter. Blinking at the tractor’s lights. Waiting for the till.

  Standing on the side of the road. Waiting for someone to take pity on a penniless hitchhiker. A fair amount of dirt under the nail of the pointing thumb. No sharpie and no cardboard to make a sign that would catch the eye with a pithy beg. The cornfields seem so grand in their simplicity. Desire has eaten its way into your soul. A worm that chewed its way in and died in the apple of Eden.