--I DON’T KNOW HOW TO SAVE ANYONE FROM THIS

 

…Friday, they said you were going to be a sunny one, but all you’re doing is crying rain.  Maybe you’ll feel differently tomorrow.  I hope so.

…Here are some things I like for the weekend:

“I really think everything is achievable in life.” Novak Djokovic

"There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them. No one should want to." Jean Toomer

“Somebody once said to me if you want to be understood, don’t write fiction.”
–Mary Gaitskill

“Allow yourself to go and do it wrong.  Don’t always expect to do it right.  It will prevent you from doing anything.” Darren Hardy

"Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist anymore. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything." Haruki Murakami

“If we think we see the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s the light of an oncoming train.” Robert Lowell
 

…And here’s one of my favorite stories of the 1,400 I’ve written up at Jellyfish Review today:

 

July 22, 2016July 22, 2016

The Resiliency of Epidermis by Len Kuntz

The Resiliency of Epidermis

We don’t touch, we never do anymore.

The mattress might as well be an island, a continent, a sea where it’s only safe to float, because the air — spiced and hot — is what holds us in place, what condenses us.

After the accident and so many surgeries, we can still breathe, but the fire left our skin too tender. Even the slightest breeze against our flesh can feel threatening. Doctors said, “The epidermis is only so resilient.” They said, “The healing process will take some time.”

And now, look — your eyes flutter open, pupils the color of hot coffee — and it’s as if each of our irises is threaded together with invisible yarn, unable to look away, to disengage.

“Good morning, Peach Pie,” I say.

“Morning.”

Your face is the color of raw hamburger, yet you’ve never looked more beautiful, and so I tell you this.

“I feel like a bag of wax,” you say.

“Not even close. You’re stunning.”

Your lips try twisting into a smile. “Stop with your lies. I look hideous.”

“We look the same.”

“You weren’t burnt as badly.”

“Ah, but you were, and so I was doubly.”

When you swallow air, I can see how difficult such a simple act is for you, how the air burns going down.

“I can’t even touch you,” you say.

“Sure you can.”

“The doctors said —“

“Shhh.”

Our eyes are what matters. I tell you this without speaking and so we set aside words.

Our eyes become hands, fingertips, lips, and curious tongues. It’s a clumsy, blind man’s game, a search party in utter darkness, yet we work past what reality tells us.

When I enter you, there’s a gasp of foul morning air.

“Oh my god.”

“You can feel me?”

You nod. You say my name. You tell me not to stop. You say, “It’s been such a very long time.”

 

Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State, an editor at the online magazine Literary Orphans, and the author of I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE AND NEITHER ARE YOU out now from Unknown Press. You can also find him at lenkuntz.blogspot.com