byakuchi

 "Want me to wake you up when you're finished eating?" Radar lifts another forkful of liver, eyes closed, and nearly misses his mouth. "I just didn't get any sleep last night. Gee, I dreamt I was dancing with Major Houlihan, and Betty Grabel woke me up." He half-opens his eyes, crossing them as he thinks. "Or something like that." Hawkeye is too accustomed to the boy's strange anecdotes to ask, and too worried about BJ to care. (No. Hawkeye knows where BJ was. Hawkeye knows and he doesn't know what he feels, so worried is as good a word as any.) As if reading Hawkeye's thoughts, the man in question arrives carrying a tray laden with food

John McIntyre leaves Korea without looking back. There are no drawn out goodbyes. Nothing to keep him from running to his wife and girls with his hair on end and his tail between his legs. (the one thing that could have kept him was miles away on R & R. he would come back to nothing but an empty martini glass and reluctant kiss on the cheek.) John McIntyre leaves Hawkeye Pierce without looking back. In stories told over antifreeze aged more than a day, he speaks of an enigma. Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce. A name sans connotation. (he tells himself it is because the title would annoy hawkeye. he tells himself it has nothing to do with t

i wanna take you to canada and learn your toes & elbows & tongue. you so china doll perfect and i miss playing solitaire with you. you fever eyes & korea without a cause. you chocolate chips outta the bag, sugar spice cyanide and drink up babydoll. ave maria hallelujah, but you don't taste like jesus. we used to be this thing. this thing that was kisses at night & your little sister walking down in the middle of an earthquake. we used to be this thing like winter & summer came we melted but we didn't really. you a teenage metaphor, freckles with hair dyed black & we th-th-thawed. your mama didn't tell you that real life china dolls got s

five every hour, carry the relapse, subtract the amputations, but you don't think numbers. you think boys too soft and men demented. lying to your draft board only works backwards. this man's army swallowed too many bullets. rehearsed & malpracticed,you red bathrobe worn out & hand me a clamp. bleed for the bleeding and you mental anesthesia made a wrong turn. (meatball surgery leaves ugly scars &) you a martini two parts crazy one part hiding. you magic hands & legs like forever. you insanity. post traumatic metaphor come true with a vengeance, so why bother loving? too far gone, and the mess tent don't keep you alive. olives in the marti

i'm crazy from the skin out but  you're tearing up napkins under lock & key. you're a train-wreck gone  right in the worst possible way while i'm off  playing doctor with a man who ain't got a degree. (meatball surgery leaves ugly scars &)  you paint an x on the tip of your nose & want it chopped off & i live past the lies & ten steps backward.  i think numbers and speak mazes,  but you make no sense in binary. i almost  had a daughter once & you  live like winter. secrets are like flowers  'cause the red ones show up in the  snow.

you ribs are dynamite & my middle finger matches yours standing naked in the window & fuck the world. we wait for the oven to ding & tell us that leaving tastes like gingerbread on a bad day.

& you squishy lovely bones with him & you and him love beautiful nonsense words make sense in my head but you like 'em handwritten sloppy asymmetric. your hair tastes like coffee & avacado & 1992 & it's soft like rabbits when i miss you

& that annoying as fuck tin foil stretchy paper wrap. when i look inside they squishy & dark & commercials lied to us but that's okay. heart attacks taste good when you close your eyes.

It is in the late or early hours when July fourth bleeds into July fifth that I wake up to you tugging on the sleeve of my sweatshirt. I had fallen asleep on your couch to the tune of Chris snoring on the carpet, and we now step silently over him on our way out the back door. You hold the handle down as the door clicks shut, ever so quietly. We are frozen for the moment it takes us to decide we're not going to get caught, deer in the headlights, and then we run. Your hand finds mine through the night air that cuts through my bones like a knife, cool and crisp and holding every secret I've ever told it. It takes less than a minute to reach t