SPEED DATING.

or, an incomprehensive list of every type of unexpected love i have

encountered.

ELEANOR HAZARD.

i wish someone had warned me but not rly

◾ obvious. i met Red at night, when we both became a subway car, heading toward the sea. by became, i mean began to think about, and ultimately cease to disagree with. it was summer, and the water was outside of us. a lithe derange, that rocked at door and window cracks. made you think that everyone was off somewhere, in places. being beautiful without you. so you had to go outside. you had to go places. you had to float on tiptoes, barely safe, a little at a time away from it, until you found yrself in subway cars with businesswomen, and faulty mannequins. and Red, who i noticed for being a deep monsoon who knew exactly why she was lonely. i saw smoke spin counter-clockwise in a glass bottle, which i treated with a sort of cocky reverence. i saw every star that could be picked apart outside the subway car ignoring it, and all of us inside the subway car, ignoring the collapse into homesickness that we already felt. something broke off in the distance, a waiter howled. and the businesswoman sitting next to Red was flooded sick by the sight of her, and her terrifying owl head. looked away and turned quietly to stone. something shattered just in front of us, where our eyes refused to focus, and every one of us felt a little bit more homesick at the same time. Red met my eyes for no reason at all, and i laughed.

◾ bear cub. everything i know about fire, i learned from Red. i’m very fond of the ash in her down, the smell that it spat. smelling of unanswered questions, and the mystery of needled fur beneath the skin she wore. i fell in love with how the wolves would hate that smell. but i think in its direction and remember that i know how hot my breath can get. that i can feel the want to burn from anywhere, and know when it is time. know the purest way to hope for moths, and how to talk them out of catching fire. i know how to find the flame in every house. as a child, i’d climb inside the oven when we both were lonesome, and read fortunes to it, until i lost my grip and fell down through the black, and back to bed. and once, i asked if she would come inside the oven with me, like i’d never done again after the first time waking up and feeling wrong, feeling bony and adult. only when it’s over, she said. the day she showed me the color of the fire that would inevitably kill me. her terrifying owl head would never smile, but Red made her own smiles out of cardboard and light, and smiled so much that day, and i couldn’t help being pleasantly useless. even just remembering. night came on. the things that died outside and out of sight. the smell i love. but i guess it’s unfair of me to say she taught me everything. i like to think i learned a lot from spending time in kitchens.

◾ beast i was with Wolf Jack in a stable, or a waiting room, or a car lobby filled with nonsense. someplace that acted as a pocket. i always liked the violence in his teeth. and October where the clouds came down around us, drunk off cider and running everywhere. thunder in the streets. traffic as the largest unsolved equation. the city shook with laughter on the fringes, and everybody ran. nobody had anything better to do. and we came outside like we owned it. Wolf Jack always had the long bones, he was just out of reach, and wolves were there in his footsteps, not hurting anybody but just knowing something about it all. i was giddy in the headrush of being hopelessly weird in the presence of strangers, sightless in the middle of the road, running with my knives out, loving myself and my ocean hair and everything that kept me separate, being selfish in the presence of a natural occurrence. the fog raked itself around like it could see exactly what i wanted. and Wolf Jack stopped ahead of me, he turned and waited, laughed at my surprise. he showed me what he liked about himself. when i took his hand there were wolves in it. not hurting anybody, just wanting to run and show violence and howling. selfish together. narcissistic in the swelling of the clouds. it reminded me that nothing ever stops.

◾ placid.

around the time the discrepancy appeared in soft park. no one had seen a thing, but there it was. sunspot just above the grass. silent movie in an oyster pearl. as mothers crowded round in slow circles of worry, biting their bits. what if the children could see. what would they think if they found out that none of us know anything at all. the discrepancy invited little dogs, and that bothered them. of course we loved to talk about it then. Wolf Jack called it kindling on his mischief. said that he could make it talk. Red would say a name i’d never heard before whenever we walked past it. she’d hold her terrifying owl head a little higher. Librarian said nothing of it, but i sat with them beside it several times, and made lists. the whole time there was a thought around the city. no towering thing above us all, but little bees that’d fly around and singe yr earlobes. get you guessing, about love and mtntops and the economy, and the discrepancy in soft park. the mothers spoke in different shapes amongst each other. most of us just wanted something new. that’s why i never cared for news. you can taste it in yr throat when everyone’s whispering. a clear sweetly gelatin that quivers when yr curious.

◾ warm. i’ve been thinking a lot about stones. pits that open underneath us out of nowhere. the middle of freezing, after the wolves, and i’d climbed on the roof of the other house. sitting and staring at the hidden birds i knew were watching. my guts turned black with the cold, my fingers became precious things, but i didn’t care. i cared, but i told the world i didn’t care. i hoped they would spiral and wail when i fell. the ribbing in my shoulder, oh i hated everything because it wouldn’t let me just destroy him. eradicate with mental pepper spray. i didn’t even want to try to light another fire, and right then i knew i was going away from it all. the cars colliding in circles below looked so easy. the muck and the sludge sounded ill from up high. i flickered in and out of everything. but it didn’t stop the winter getting in. i don’t know how long until Librarian came up. i saw them but i didn’t look. they brought me my coat and they drowned me in its fat and i didn’t look. they sat beside me and i didn’t look. they asked about me in their crystal voice, i didn’t look. i stared at the moon until i sunk to the bottom of the ocean. where aphids crawled around, in deaf and dumb and blind obliteration. consensual apathy eroding the wood in the dark. i stayed there and prayed to all my bitterness, my horns. give me power. give me craving and dusk and clay memories. and the earthen jars in which to boil my blood. the only things i ever wanted when i sank. i clenched my fists around bubbles of hell and made noises. i stayed for weeks and nothing happened. absolutely nothing. it gave me

time to breathe. it gave me time to feel myself retracting on the frozen rooftop. where nothing could hurt me until i stopped digging around in the flesh. i looked and Librarian was there. offering me a mint. felt a laugh in my chest catch a lump. i shook a cracking smile. i took the mint. the flavor of it pressed me down into the snow. i got out of my head and i flew and looked down at my body all covered in frost water, and there i was in the city feeling horrible like everybody else. and then i rly did laugh. coughed up hunks of dirty ice. i just wish i could cry

about it, you know. Librarian didn’t reply. but they knew. they stayed there with me. we froze to death an hour longer just to spite December.

◾ ghost. Red would never sleep. i’d read the things she told into the ceiling with her pointing pen above my bed. in my dreams i’d see her digging boxes in her bedroom, or standing on the street in all obscurity, waiting for the animals to brush against her. it made me comfortable to think of all the cats that saw her there without her knowing. once, i remember very clearly, i was ending. in the morning dull, i remembered seeing nothing of the night. i walked on grassy limbs across the floor and never stuck. sitting on the kitchen ledge, considering the canyon, i discovered in my coffee cup a dark forest, with tufts of hair and faceless faces there inside. with gray yarn in the lower branches. i kept looking down into my coffee cup a thousand miles away. i spied it through the peephole in my door, even as my feet were bare and sinking into loam. i started to be everywhere that didn’t matter, but Red was there with me inside the dark forest, and gently held my head in both her hands before it could drift away. she wore a sweater that i’d never seen her wear before, and somehow that was relevant to everything that i had ever. her enormous eyes inside the kitchen were infinity, and

when we said good morning to each other, we knew that we were nowhere else. so we just sat. she made me better coffee. when i asked about her night, she merely slept, and didn’t answer.

◾ brief. Young Hollywood would always say, i want you to come with me. we sat in the theater in the deep dark, watching. sitting in the feeling that our lower halves were soaking in something. the movie screen was us, and everything around us. playing back the lives we’d lead minutes before. alone with other ppl in the shadows of an indoor space. no sound. we all already knew what we were going to say. on the movie screen i find confidence in the lean of a comfortable chair. on the movie screen i don’t see the furry things behind my head. Young Hollywood took popcorn from my hand and ate it. he was watching but he wasn’t paying attention. a jungle was growing inside him, the tendrils in his legs. he was always growing things. i liked to pay attention to the things he grew inside. he was moving or the jungle was moving him from the inside or the jungle was moving along with him. he worshipped the glow with his face as he stood. there were predatory cats in the jungle in his body, and they looked out through his eyes as he was looking at me. i want you to come with

me. on the movie screen everyone around us is a faulty mannequin, wearing 3d glasses. on the movie screen Young Hollywood is sitting down as i am saying, i think yr a bit too young for me. the ceiling disappeared into a pit as i stood up, but neither of us felt afraid of falling. it wasn’t that we didn’t think we would, but exactly the opposite. Young Hollywood walking on the treetops of the jungle in his body, and i became the moon. he didn’t know how to stop growing things. we left our seats and crept down

aisles on gentle paws, stealing all the empty bottles. the light stayed off and i was glad because i didn’t want to see what was in front of me. on the movie screen i’m sitting down and chiseled from a mtnside as Young Hollywood turns and says to me, i know.

◾ specific.

it was winter, and Librarian and i were skipping stones inside the subway. listening to yawning tunnels, and the dog packs in the distance. the last trailing bits of snow had died on our boots already. we hadn’t anticipated the tide at all, and when the train came in it was swole. doors dripped a canvas of imperative businesswomen in scarves and cloaks and jagged blades, sloshing together into titanic mob, roaring down at us, sucking us around. the crowd had brought with them the weight of the planet. not even our thick winter coats could save us. i couldn’t hear Librarian, their mouth was moving even as their limbs were seizing up. a creeping blurriness was over them. they hardened their skin with wine, they struggled to breathe. they shrank and shrank in size, and fell into a tiny crack that no one else could see. despite everything i tried to reach for. i felt the cold rush in from the nowhere it was always hiding under, and the mob thundering up out of the valley, but i wasn’t lost. i crouched down and told myself that i was a deep swimming stone. i became a deep swimming stone. the businesswomen rode around in all their hurry, the subway train was galloping and there i sat. the moon was looking at me from the other side of the world and there i sat. lighting a small fire i had found. i heard baby birds slumbering close to my face. i heard elephants abandoned in trash. i heard barking in the underground. long after the mob had died, i sat, watching the littlest crack that no one else could see. i sat and neither poked nor bit my bottom lip. until a miniature shredding of

Librarian was showing. growing upward, lankier. more italicized. Librarian unfolded from the prism of a paper rib cage, slowly and in silence. when they started rocking, i knew that they were coming back. i can’t, they said. again and over again until the tile ached beneath their feet. i felt like punctuation, but still i said, you will. i cursed my body for wanting to hug them. i don’t know if they believed me but they smiled. they ate a mint. the shaking stopped eventually, and no one cared how long it took. we stood up, and Librarian made a joke, but i can’t remember what. it was probably about taxes. we laughed in any case, and watched the echoes flit about. we kept our distance. then the growling started getting closer so we had to run. but we still were laughing then. we had to keep warm somehow.

◾ uphill.

Red was always going first. sometimes i would use her to be brave for me. something about her, doors would back away. become uncountable. the way the room would part around her tower. but it wasn’t until we went dancing that i realized just how many fragile nesting dolls she held inside her chest. that night, strung-up lights all along the wires overhead, and a sense of celebrating out of desperation. you could hear the very second when a deer made up its mind to go out into the street despite everything. we walked by house after chapel after furious bar where ppl would drink anything, whatever they had left, and intoxicate themselves on the sensation of something entirely other sliding whole down their cool throats. voices collided and melded together above us in magnificent desire to fuck themselves and become god. i don’t know if part of me could see behind the curtains on the windows, but i found it difficult to be a person then. i held myself together with mantras and tape. told myself i looked nice because i didn’t think i had a choice. and of course Red was a river of honey lightning, untouchable and obvious. or maybe she was frighteningly touchable regardless. neither of us knew how to feel. one of those nights where the house gets so heavy. so we went out, and wandered past the ppl and their parties, the staircases of jazz. music seeped in under our eyes and through tunnels, until it swarmed all through our blood on little legs. we might have been inside a wooden horse or standing on a buried house or right out in

the middle of the intersection, but all i remember is that Red started dancing. she danced with her doors open, wherever she happened to be. unopened letters in her orbit, fire in her clothes, and the dry skin of her hands. she heard the kind of songs that the rain heard and no one else did. i watched her, the moths harped around her. i felt myself, all my moving parts. she made me want to try, even though i knew that there were birds watching. eventually i felt like i was climbing, like for some indestructible reason i had to touch the crown of the tallest building in the city. carrying this cornerstone, this television on my back. the tiny wings i had made for myself and kept away. with everyone i knew out of sight, yelling harmonies to me. i felt like i was dying, but also getting higher and higher. more and more blood on my hands. more and more oil in my hair. at the time i thought something was about to give way. foundation shuddering to breathe. but no. i think that’s just how i dance. it meant something to me and it hurt, and i don’t know why either of those things, but i was glad. and when we finally came down we were surrounded by these faceless faces. the ruins of the ppl who had stiffened and turned quietly to stone at the mention of Red, and her terrifying owl head. there were dozens. Red saw them all, and she didn’t speak at all, but i’d never seen her drag so many anchors as she left. i followed her home and i couldn’t help her carry even one. i was a thing made of plastic and tin cans and i couldn’t stand up on my own. i wanted to tell myself i would’ve

danced even if Red hadn’t been there. i rly wanted to. after that night the weight of the house didn’t seem quite as bad.

◾ vicious. Wolf Jack was a writer once. he hid it well, but his apartment smelled of pine. he told me he could make the pages talk, but lost all composure when confronted with facts about the moon. said the wolves would never wait for him to finish. but he’d hidden all his answers under piles. other questions about how he lived at such an eerie angle, or the TV drooling technicolor into carpet. but i kept them for my lists. i looked inside his cabinets and wolves were in them. i don’t even know what we did there. a lot of sighing, probably. marking all the dirt roads we discovered. he was always so predictable, i stopped holding my breath. but there was a time we fed the TV an old VHS tape, watched it foaming at the mouth. and Wolf Jack leaned across and told me how he sometimes couldn’t stand to picture Red. how her giant owl eyes would light him up with fever, she was always so assured of everything. he hated how she smelled. it reminded him of farms, and how his father used to take his coffee. that night i remember. as we sat for hours, staring out, widening our eyes by slow degrees, and i became a different type of small stone every time he looked away. he told me that i smelled like her sometimes. i told him he should write down how that made him feel. i marked the way his tiny hairs stood up along his skin, and i felt warm.

◾ self. i think we only went up to black factory because no one went there. i don’t think any of us ever wanted to. it’s just that someone had to. and we were young, and almost always molting. the kind of thoughts you find around a place you’d rather leave are important. especially in long grass, or when feeling spots of choking. Librarian and i took pictures after dark. you rly got the sense that the building had been born, never built. raised up out of the soot and tinder and rut and drawn-out ruckus of the hilltop. a silent creaking in the shadows of its walls. no birds, but signs of birds. and looking down over the blink of the city, little rushes, and wind coming onto you, something stuck. little things, but bothersome. i always felt an itch. i heard shutter clicks as i watched the evening traffic make a monster and wondered what would happen to the pictures of me after i died, and became a small house, or whatever it is that happens when you leave yrself. i didn’t want anyone to keep them. i wanted them to pass them out to strangers. i wanted them to write on them and put them in envelopes. trade them for witch trinkets on the side of the highway. i didn’t want to sit around forever. we hung around the rotten fence and pretended we were going to climb it. i noticed how Librarian would always shine so hard in these desolate places. smiling in bubbles, and flowers in their crystal voice. or maybe it was just because the moon was full, but i don’t think so. Librarian would only vibrate out of sight. there was a tree, and we posed for each other and we posed for the tree, and

there might have been birds in hidden places but it was ok. we just wanted to be able to say we looked good where no one else could see. i think that was our mission that night. bold print on tops of clouds and reddish sky: i have a secret face. we told each other we liked our secret faces. we told ourselves we liked our secret faces. sometimes in our mouth shapes, sometimes in the way we took a breath. we proved we could be weather patterns, even with the spite of ancient smokestacks hovering so close. when we went down we were not afraid to turn our backs. we told the others how weird it was to be an empty thing. there were deer in all the pictures that we took that night.

◾ dead.

teeth marks. i made up all my locks in pretty dirt. wrote a hundred letters and they all began with blood. i made another me out of oak and insistence. i didn’t realize that’s what ppl did in ancient times. i didn’t realize everything was ancient, until someone told me. but like, new ancient. sharper. clean of jaw. i wanted to keep pretending. the night before, i counted all my scars, and made a list. i bathed it in honey, i kissed it. i made myself accept that it was mine. did you know if you repeat yr name enough, you’ll stop feeling anything. defense mechanism i stole from the beasts in the wild. standing outside of his door, i held myself. my posture was sound. i whispered no so loud my belly burst. i yelled thank you in my quietest voice. i stopped. something broke, above my head. inside my heart fat. when i stuffed the list into the keyhole, there were wolves in it.

◾ hopeful. on the steps of city hall, Red let me have my first taste of her middle name. she always stood there when the weather wanted. waiting for the fire that she said she smelled inside. one day i’ll find it, she would tell me, and i’d nod into my cigarette. everything meant more when we were young. something in the air that cut us just where we needed it to. i went back home and wrote her middle name on all my locks, and on the pictures of the television. traced it on the attic floor in dusty footprints until the vents grew cold. and thoughts of city hall in reddish light, persistent cough, agreeing with everything we said. i made lists of everywhere we wanted. i waited up until she came so we could whisper them to candles. the day that i knew i would never be anyone else but a sunset. i wanted something to look forward to when i was king. never thinking of how everything i told her middle name to would eventually fall apart.

◾ reminder.

if i haven’t shown you yet, i never will. but i was hungry when i found the secret word. craving to be fat full with some kind of gas or a punishment. craving starlight on the brittle of my eyelashes. i was in the library and i wanted very much to be whole. i looked up castaway in the dictionary. looked up embittered and lascivious and fallopian. i brushed the crusting off the shelves of every aisle that was a vowel. i guess i can’t rly say why i stopped drinking water, other than i knew i shouldn’t stop. but i hid inside the stacks from every sloshing that i heard, every cup. the ocean was outside somewhere and i was inside, where all my courage was. i wanted to be full, but not with what already filled me. it just didn’t seem to be doing a very good job. i spent time touching little spines of little books and pretending i loved them. i picked up a dull green book that reminded me of absolutely nothing. i suppose i noticed it was very blunt. i only chose it because i did, and i wouldn’t have done it again. but the tatter of paper i picked from its teeth, i trusted immediately. it told me a secret word and i believed it, without hesitation, as far as i’d ever. i held it close to my mouth and listened with the part of my lungs that listens. a smell of something burning. i attempted to memorize the secret word, to hang onto it with hooks, to print it on my tongue in seven different languages at once. it stuck where it was sat, stubborn and embedded in the ground. without that piece of paper, i knew nothing. i promised myself i would keep it with me always. i’d have a sky lit with crows

on my person in the belly of a secret word. i’d have an impossible gender in my possible heart in the surrogate brain of a secret word. i held it in the pocket of my mouth, and tasted blood. i smiled and i swelled up with the knowing of my newfound drug. i remember when i showed it to Librarian as i was leaving. my hand a warm decision on their shoulder. it’s just that i knew the tides would drag me away if i didn’t. sometimes a secret is simply too much for one person to hold back the flood. i don’t think i was prepared for this, Librarian said in their crystal voice. i knew it was a question, and i didn’t have the answer. i don’t remember what the title of the dull green book had been.

to those of you who are reading to those of you who have always been reading to those of you who help me feel a little less crazy to those of you who help me feel a little more crazy to those of you who are still here

thank you

lnrhzrd@gmail.com theghostofeleanorhazard.tumblr.com