German Chocolate Cake

I'm incomplete. Fragmented. I'm a mixed message. No good.


I'm 1 cup short on flour.


½ cup too much brown sugar and ¾ cup too little granulated.


2 eggs too many.


3 teaspoons of salt?!?


You haven't been paying attention. Distracted by this and by that.


Yet all the while I've been looking at you. With my Hershey kiss eyes.


Waiting for you to fix me. Finish me. Make me yours again.


With my Hershey kiss eyes. Pointed angry. Left alone and concealed.


Under this large Rubbermaid lid. Misshapen and melting in my own emotions.


This chocolate frosting over me undermines my coconut pecan filling.


Feeling still nuts for you though you drive me nuts. Make me yours again.


I'm going stale mate.

Fourth Meal

Work. Play. Sleep: the consumptions of the day. To dream and to be cognizant of doing so is excess. Some dream with gluttonous regularity while others suffer from anorexia.


I lay in bed half naked, fully sweaty, ribs visible. A smell of carne y amor came into my room like some perverse union of Taco Bell and a heart-shaped box of Godiva chocolate.


In the darkness I fondled an envelope. It had a letter from her. Two, actually, as if she was attempting to make up for lost time. Lost questions. Lost answers. Lost time. Lost paradise.


I glanced at the back of the first letter. Saw words that are meant to be meant. Words that have meaning to me. Heart-shape was almost in my mouth. The perversion was almost overwhelming.


Instinctively, I put the letter back in the envelope, folded it like a Burrito Supreme, and ran for the border of my dream like a skeletal lost soul during El Día de los Muertos.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

I walked the silent cement strip aptly lit by the marigold-bulbed lights that were just budding in the wake of the last ray-shower of the sun. The lights, which dominated the right side of the sidewalk, were superseded only by the endless alignment of hotels, which resembled the last stretch of a classic Monopoly board—starting at Pacific Avenue and ending at Boardwalk. The left side of the sidewalk offered nothing but railing and the boardwalk itself—a useless commodity, especially at night, when the elongated wooden expanse serves only as a plank over the abyss of the sea.

The ocean is cryptic enough during the day, but by night the depths of its fathoms cannot be fathomed by the mind's eye alone. This is where other senses take precedent: the subtle white noise crashing of the tide; the recurring refreshing smell jettisoning thereof, despite the historical stench of the Atlantic; the goosebump-inducing gale that reminds of mid-spring—all orchestrated by the moon, which, upon the night of my arrival, was full of herself.

She rose red. The red of a rose. The red of a heart logo that strengthens the claim that Virginia is for Lovers. She was a sunken red beacon, and as she rose to the top of her invisible lighthouse, all were gravitated to her: waves. Seagulls. People. Even the facades of the hotels had a slight blush to them.

***

She rose red. The color of my ire the next night when I came prepared with my camera to capture the awe of the previous evening. I waited and waited, past an hour whence the moon seduced me the night before. Dejected and exasperated, I scuffled back to my hotel room, only to look out the window to find that the moon had risen behind my back—for another man who had more patience than I. The moon isn't my mistress. She's more like an ex-wife.