Three Passages of Women

Wounded Woman
A wounded woman lays beside me,
my bed a station on a journey
through joy and despair
to seek something better.
She believes she is ruined,
but I adore her the way she is;
a blend of humane imperfection
and startling beauty.
She is depressed, as I am,
and I believe I understand
her melancholy in a way
I am aware of from seeing her,
but simply cannot explain in words.
She is in love with another
and this is okay.
It was enough for me
to lay beside her for awhile
and know, for a moment,
she was alright.

A Paragraph
 A very beautiful woman rests on her stomach on the floor next to her bed. She is copying passages from The Diary of Anais Nin. I do not know what volume it is, but she is writing very quickly in a state of rapturous lucidity. I stare at her from the couch, envious of her clearly focused joy. Her legs are crossed; they are mostly bare, toned, with a very natural tan. We are listening to electronic music that I understand, but do not recognize. The one thing I know is I will not go to bed with her tonight. This is probably the best choice for both of us, but I still want to. I want it enough to end a sentence in a preposition. She is going to bed and I am going to ride my bike home and write this down instead of only thinking about it, then letting it go. It seems significant considering the time and place and situation: well past two in the morning, in her bedroom, drinking and smoking and reading poetry to one another. She asks me if I want to smoke before I go. Marijuana. I tell her not tonight, not again. She sleeps with another man. I tell her good night and to sleep tight. When I get home, I am overcome with a moment of emptiness, utter loneliness; the natural progression of such things. It always eventually passes.

The Morning After
Stay with me in this bed
so free of adornment and conceit.
I do not know why you chose me.
I can only cherish it;
your skin so soft,
your hair so messy;
smelling of lilacs
and cigarette smoke.
The sunlight shines upon you
through a single window
in my second story apartment bedroom.
There is no reason to leave this bed;
we have covers,
we are both semi nude and the breeze
blows a fresh spring gale through the screen.
Meet me under the sleeping bag
I use as a comforter and kiss me,
our lips meeting yet another time.
And when you have tired
of such moments I will long for
until they are true again,
let's get breakfast.

Aaron C. Molden





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Memory Cues in Times of Dissolution

You are laughing, lips stretched, plump cheeks
defining the curves of your mouth;
your pale blue eyes bashful and glinting.
You are crying, knees akimbo,
leaning against a building; your face swollen and red,
displaying a grief I could not halt
no matter what I said or did.
You are smoking a cigarette you do not want,
trying to think of something to say.
You are taking a picture with your phone.
You are filtering water from a mountain stream
that I would likely drink unfiltered; so cold
on that mild December day on the trail.
You are dancing with me; we hold each other closely.
You are dancing with someone else,
hands and fingers bent and wiggling
in a charming and naive way.
You are telling me to sit down next to you
when we were stopped by police officers;
I was trying to get you back to your room
so I could lay you down in your bed,
kiss you goodnight, go home and sleep well,
knowing you were safely home for the night;
you had drank too much that night
and your mind was full of desperate
and justifiable sorrow.
You are walking in lovely hiking boots
that stick out like a sore thumb
in juxtaposition to your jean shorts
and leggings and baggy tan sweater.
You are drawing, writing, reading,
because you are bored or you are with others
doing the same.
You are considering the menu
at a restaurant, biting your upper lip,
eyes down on the entrees on the page.
You are rolling your eyes at the things I am saying.
You are kissing my cheek as I talk to a friend.
You are ignoring me, though I am desperate
for your attention;
I would never say it, but I certainly wanted it.
You are choosing the song
you would like to hear on the jukebox.
You are watching a movie you love;
your facial expression changing
for a sad scene coming up
that you love and remember.
You are looking up at me, sitting
on the ground, on the wood floor
of the second story apartment
in a run down Victorian house on Ninth street,
at the party on the night I first laid eyes on you:
I feel, at least a little, the same way
I did when I first saw you,
every time I see you again.
You are saying goodbye again
at six in the morning; the sun is not yet
above the horizon.
Your eyes are sleepy and you are wearing
the shorts and loose tank top you wear as pajamas.
You are hugging me and I am squeezing you firmly,
holding onto you for as long as I could bear,
until I finally know I have to let go again.
You are walking towards me.
I see you, walk up to you, and pick you up
with my arms embraced under yours
and I spin you around in circles;
your legs are elevated from the ground
and stretched out by concentric velocity;
your leather boots the tips of a pinwheel
whirling around and around.
You are in my presence,
but most of the time you are somewhere else.

Aaron C. Molden    

8 Quotes, Both Real and Imagined

"The Pseudo-Modernist communicates constantly with the other side of the planet, yet needs to be told to eat his or her vegetables to be healthy, a fact self evident in the Bronze age. He or she can direct the course of national television programmes, but does not know how to make him or her something to eat -a characteristic fusion of the childish and the advanced, the powerful and the helpless."
-Dr. Allen King, PhD

"The psychological effects of literary anything that can happen to someone, be it traumatic or mundane, seem able to incite adverse results on nearly anyone, given they are in a specific state of mind at the time."
-Chet Brentman, Psychology Undergrad

"Humans, at their core, are fuckers, killers, liars, and assholes who trust the latter three, so long as they can live more comfortably because of them.
   What's messed up is that they're still capable of feats and feelings of love, devotion, and occasionally, self-sacrifice.
    Beyond that, depending on where they are in life, they are also capable of defeating their established bids of nobility with the temptations of fucking, killing, lying to, or trusting those who willfully lie to them, so long as the willful liar (or liars) make them feel comfortable enough not to react.
    It also helps if they are not quite comfortable enough to completely relax. Their fear and anxiety is abstract and possibly unknown within their conscious mind-frame. They imagine a vague threat when they are not otherwise preoccupied and try to imagine how to destroy that fear if it remains persistent."
-Stan the drunk, reaching lucidity at the bar

"I need the ecstasy of seeing your smiling face to maintain my day to day life."
-A person in love

"A pretentious person is an individual who judges another persons character based on their taste. It doesn't mean there isn't an ideal aesthetic. It means that the person does not know or care about aesthetics. And I assure you they will most likely know something to an extent beyond your knowledge, despite whether you care or not. You will care sometimes."
-An art history professor who bought you a drink

"A tile on my bathroom floor looks like Nebraska, but could that matter in the broad scope of things?"
-A person taking a shit without a smartphone

"I start tomorrow on the Paris book: first person, uncensored, formless -fuck everything!"
-Henry Miller

I grieve for all animal life I have killed. The scale ranges from 1 to 10, and these grievances have not stopped me from eating meat."
-Me

Aaron C. Molden