Read Crush for Free Online

spills in
    from the adjoining bathroom. The bathroom is covered in mint green
    tile and someone is in there, singing very softly. Is he singing to you?
    For you? Black cherries in chocolate, the ring around the moon, a bee-
    tle underneath a glass—you cannot make out all the words, but you're
    sure he knows you're in there, and he's singing to you, even though you
    don't know who he is.

    10
    You see it as a room, a tabernacle, the dark hotel. You're in the hallway
    again, and you open the door, and if you're ready you'll see it, but
    maybe one part of your mind decides that the other parts aren't ready,
    and then you don't remember where you've been, and you find yourself
    down the hall again, the lights gone dim as the left hand sings the right
    hand back to sleep. It's a puzzle: each piece, each room, each time you
    put your hand to the knob, your mouth to the hand, your ear to the
    wound that whispers.
    You're in the hallway again. The radio is playing your favorite song.
    You're in the hallway. Open the door again. Open the door.

    11
    Suppose for a moment that the heart has two heads, that the heart has
    been chained and dunked in a glass booth filled with river water. The
    heart is monologing about hesitation and fulfillment while behind the
    red brocade the heart is drowning. Can the heart escape? Does love
    even care? Snow falls as we dump the booth in the bay.
    Suppose for a moment we are crowded around a pier, waiting for something
    to ripple the water. We believe in you. There is no danger. It is not
    getting dark , we want to say.

    12
    Consider the hairpin turn. It is waiting for you like a red door or the
    broken leg of a dog. The sun is shining, O how the sun shines down!
    Your speedometer and your handgrips and the feel of the road below
    you, how it knows you, the black ribbon spread out on the greens be-
    tween these lines that suddenly don't reach to the horizon. It is waiting,
    like a broken door, like the red dog that chases its tail and eats your rose-
    bushes and then must be forgiven. Who do you love, Jeff? Who do you
    love? You were driving toward something and then, well, then you
    found yourself driving the other way. The dog is asleep. The road is be-
    hind you. O how the sun shines down.

    13
    This time everyone has the best intentions. You have cancer. Let's say
    you have cancer. Let's say you've swallowed a bad thing and now it's
    got its hands inside you. This is the essence of love and failure. You see
    what I mean but you're happy anyway, and that's okay, it's a love story
    after all, a lasting love, a wonderful adventure with lots of action,
    where the mirror says mirror and the hand says hand and the front
    door never says Sorry Charlie. So the doctor says you need more
    stitches and the bruise cream isn't working. So much for the facts. Let's
    say you're still completely in the dark but we love you anyway. We
    love you. We really do.

    14
    After work you go to the grocery store to get some milk and a carton of
    cigarettes. Where did you get those bruises? You don't remember.
    Work was boring. You find a jar of bruise cream and a can of stewed
    tomatoes. Maybe a salad? Spinach, walnuts, blue cheese, apples, and
    you can't decide between the Extra Large or Jumbo black olives. Which
    is bigger anyway? Extra Large has a blue label, Jumbo has a purple
    label. Both cans cost $1.29. While you're deciding, the afternoon light
    is streaming through the windows behind the bank of checkout coun-
    ters. Take the light inside you like a blessing, like a knee in the chest,
    holding onto it and not letting it go. Now let it go.

    15
    Like sandpaper, the light, or a blessing, or a bruise. Blood everywhere,
    he said, the red light hemorrhaging from everywhere at once. The train
    station blue, your lips blue, hands cold and the blue wind. Or a horse,
    your favorite horse now raised up again out of the mud and galloping
    galloping always toward you. In your ruined shirt, on the last day, while
    the bruise