Author S. K. Nicholas

Walking back from work, a dog runs into the road and dives beneath a parked car. Then another, he too darting through traffic as if wishing for the end. The frantic owner approaches me a few minutes later. Yelling at someone on her phone, she asks if I’ve seen her two dogs. I tell her I have; that they’ve just run into the cemetery, one after the other. She says something else, but I’m too busy wondering if the horsehead nebula still looks the same as it does in photographs to hear her. Heading off towards the direction of the cemetery, I admire the shape of her hips as she disappears from view and imagine how big her areolas are. Did Bukowski ever look at the stars? I’m sure he did, but I’ve never read about it. Did Jackson Pollock ever make love beneath a full moon with a bellyful of whisky and still-wet oil paints smeared over his cigarette-stained fingers? It’s more than possible. Sometimes, when I’m walking the streets to clear my mind, the taste of her sex makes me salivate. It makes my fingers shake until I have to stop and catch my breath. I can feel the shapes of her thighs beneath my aching hands. When my guard is down, the sensation of being in love with her makes me not want to write, but it never lasts long. I wish it did, but this is my curse, and so it remains. Lazarus for her sins, and Lazarus for my struggles with the bottle. Picking up stones from the gutter, they feel warm within my palm. Placing them in my pocket, they rattle as rain gently falls like messages from the sky above.