To Know I Was Beautiful In His

I Almost Said, You're Not Broken, You're Just Going Through Something. But I Couldn't. She Knew. There Was Something Terribly Wrong With Her, All The Way Inside. She Was Like A Big Diamond With A Dead Spot In The Middle. I Was Supposed To Breathe Life Into That Dead Spot, But It Hadn't Worked.

Memory Is The Fourth Dimension To Any Landscape.

I Wondered Why It Had To Be So Poisonous. Oleanders Could Live Through Anything, They Could Stand Heat, Drought, Neglect, And Put Out Thousands Of Waxy Blooms. So What Did They Need Poison For? Couldn't They Just Be Bitter? They Weren't Like Rattlesnakes, They Didn't Even Eat What They Killed. The Way She Boiled It Down, Distilled It, Like Her Hatred. Maybe It Was A Poison In The Soil, Something About L.a., The Hatred, The Callousness, Something We Didn't Want To Think About, That The Plant Concentrated In Its Tissues. Maybe It Wasn't A Source Of Poison, But Just Another Victim.

I'm Always Looking For Something New And Interesting To Say. And It Can't Be Something I'm Directly Experiencing.

How Could Anybody Confuse Truth With Beauty, I Thought As I Looked At Him. Truth Came With Sunken Eyes, Bony Or Scarred, Decayed. Its Teeth Were Bad, Its Hair Gray And Unkempt. While Beauty Was Empty As A Gourd, Vain As A Parakeet. But It Had Power. It Smelled Of Musk And Oranges And Made You Close Your Eyes In A Prayer.