Yesteryear Fiction

An Album of Facts and Fallacies
by F.J. Auk


I found her album

two years after.

Deep within her crawlspace.

Past all the clutter, where there was

only dark, dirt and exposed nails in the wood,

waiting to poke your

eyes and ears.



Nine Polaroids per page.

Flipping them, numbness.

Recall something she said when we first met,

About butterflies

once being called Flutter Byes,

and frightened furry beasts

in the Woods

Called Hidebehinds.



“Like me and you.”



I start again, at the first page.

Her in each square,

with a stranger in a strange setting

caught forever

in a frozen moment of confusion over her motives.



All of these new to me.



The camera person a mystery.



All of them captioned, her messy handwriting in black marker.



A homeless Mexican man, next to dumpster,

trying to fight her off,

her beaming

with arms wrapped tightly around him.

“Me and Antonio Banderas!!!”



On the shoulder of a freeway,

posed by a short haired, bleach-blond lady cop.

“With Ellen Degeneres!!!”



She

and a fat, bearded trucker at a diner’s counter.

Her arm vanished, in his lap.

Still beaming.

“KENNY ROGERS”.



With an incensed elderly black woman,

in a laundromat.

“w/ Marilyn McCoo!!!”



Turn the page.

Flinch

She’s naked in a hotel bed

with a wiry little man

shoe polish black comb-over.

Coke bottle glasses.

“A night w/ Russell Crow”



I don’t want to look.

Flip ahead several pages.



Her hand

down a haggard prostitute’s spandex shorts.

“Partying w/ Drew Barrymore!!!”



She

And a homeless Rasta Man

Her hugs her back.

I expect a Bob Marley caption.

Instead it’s something about Seal.



Page after page.



Arm-in-arm

with a soot covered steel worker.

“I love Denzel Washington!”



I’m about to give up.



But then the celebs stop,

And the black squares begin.

Overdeveloped.

Undeveloped.

Exposed.

“Us @ the mall.”

“Us @ The Ground Round.”

“On our roadtrip!”



All the things she’s asked me to do.



“An Italian Restaurant.”

Black squares.

“Us on my birthday.”



We’d spent her birthday in bed.



“Me and you.”

Black boxes.

“You and Me.”



We’d done none of it.

Not been there.

There, or there.

I done none of it

Wasn’t doing any of it,

let’s go back to bed.

No wonder they call this girl crazy!



I couldn’t read the final captions.

The Hidebehind.

She was gone,

Fluttered by.

And her album became all I had.


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F.J. Auk writes poetry and short stories from his home in Brooklyn, New York. His Rumble and Rise was featured in Mine Falls Press 2010 Print Anthology, Best Stories On the Shelf. He has also been featured at the New Verse News.