Heavy Hearts

The explosion tears us apart, sending us pirouetting into the rubble and dregs of the building. The world is ablaze in a sunset of black and orange. I can feel the flames underneath my skin, pulling away from beneath the surface. The sound is like an applause; a standing ovation of fire and debris. The flames reach out for me; they yearn and pine for me, and in these radiant dreams I submit to their embrace and welcome the searing glow as the flames enshrine and envelope me like a lover. I see their contorted faces over and over, like a broken circuit; like torture they scream and scream and scream. I watch as they twist and shrivel in the warmth of the flames. I hold you in my arms as you sob. “My baby! My baby. mybaabbby.” You weep until there is no room to breathe and you pull the air in like a
gagging fish. I hug you close and pull and pull at you, but it is empty, and we are alone. In the reflection of those gleaming eyes I see your face, empty and cool in the brilliance of the fire. When I wake the sheets are tangled around my legs, sweat dripping from me and I’m chilled to the bone. You lie next to me, still as a ghost.


Howdy Mrs Hamilton,
It’s Alex. I meander past your house on my way to school every day. I have golden hair and extra-ordinarily blue eyes. I also possess a Billabong bag which makes everybody at school so envious. Sometimes I see you pruning your roses. Or checking your empty letter box. Or talking to your cats like a crazy person. Your house looks like a face. But not a happy face. But also not a very unhappy face. An ambivalent face. I am writing you this letter because we are all lonely. We all have heavy hearts which we try and pretend are light so that we are not shunned from society. This means two things: 1) that we are all lonely. And 2) that none of us are alone in our loneliness. (This makes my heart not so heavy). You are exceptionally lonely in your ambivalent house with your many cats. I wish now that I would’ve waved. Or said ‘howdy ma’am’ and tipped my cowboy’s hat, which is an extremely cool thing to do. Or told you a fact about roses, of which I possess numerous. That is one of my regrets. For this I will always be sorry. This letter can be like the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which I can see from my window. If you don’t want to be lonely alone anymore you can write to me and we can be lonely together.
Factually yours
Jesse James

We were 19 then. You had an easy smile which I couldn’t comprehend as I stood there, fighting for every word and hearing them ricochet from my throat like pebbles through a drain. You were having fun, surveying me with that wanning gaze, those lighthouse eyes; as I stood there squirming.
You’d said “cool jacket,” I was unsure, and you’d said “where did you get it?” And then I was lost.


Howdy Mr. Hamilton,
I am moved to hear that your wife has gone, but glad that you found my letter potent. In truth I did not expect a response so swiftly. It is pleasurable to hear that she died peacefully, although I do not think it possible for someone to die whilst asleep. Perhaps she awoke just before she carked it? I will ensue by telling you a portion of my character. I have golden hair and extra-ordinarily blue eyes, as I have previously conveyed. My mother proclaims that I am of Aryan decent, which means I am a child of Hitler. I also possess exceptional drumming skills. Everybody is enormously envious of my drum sticks which I carry with me everywhere so I can practise by hitting objects. Sometimes my skills annoy people which only encourages me to hit them harder. This makes me an amused person because they grow vocal about their intolerance toward the hitting. I will tell you about my home. Boxy houses line my street like school kids on the first day of summer. And my letter box smiles always. My house is an enormous house because it contains a pool. I possess a mother and a father. My brother Michael is affable. However it annoys me when I am forced to poleaxe him. I am forced to poleaxe him when he inconveniences me by using the Xbox when I wish to use the Xbox. And I usually wish to use the Xbox when he wishes to also, so there is much poleaxing. My dog is named Clint Eastwood following the famous cowboy. Clint Eastwood is continuously trailing his anus along the carpet. I have many questions to ask of you. Like where were you when your wife died? And what does a dead person look like, because I imagine they would look gross and sickly? And do you know what the weight of a human heart is? And what was your wife’s name? But first I must request a description of yourself so that we are both within the same boat. Also, are you a sad or a relieved person now that your wife has expired?
Affirmatively yours,
Jesse James

P.S
I do not relish the name James. Please dub me Jesse James which is the name of a movie about a suave cowboy.


It was a warm night, that night. Summer had charged at us with arrogance and bravado. Sand barked under my feet and the breeze danced through your hair. Your face was illuminated by the gentle glow of the fire. You payed no attention to the guys wrestling in the dunes or diving through the waves, arses likes headlights in the night. I wore that jacket and you smelt of cherries. Our tongues were like eels dancing to the rhythm of the ocean. My chest was so tight when you guided my hand up to the humidity of you pussy; it felt like I was drowning. I traversed your soft, fleshy genitals with the caution and bewilderment of an explorer. It was a new beginning and we had discovered the new world. Your hand fished and grabbed at my dick, and your hips melted away into mine. I felt like I couldn’t fill the voids of your moans.
But as I came you pulled me close and whispered “hold me” in my ear. And I did.



Dear Mr. Adam Hamilton,
I will don you Mr, even though you implored me not because you are indeed old. It pleases me to be informed that you are a librarian for I am an exceedingly prolific author. I have attached a tale which I have scripted, but I implore you not to publish it without my knowing because it will make me rich one day. Or if you do publish it, make sure to endow me the fortune which it generates. Your appearance is very bequeathing of a librarian. But I find it hard to vision you as being young once, with a ‘scrappy’ visual. Evelyn sounds like an extremely fertile female, ripe for sex. Please, if it does not pain you to activate, describe me more readily her breasts. Now that I know you did indeed take pleasure in your female, I feel terribly evil to have propositioned you would be a relieved person to have unburdened yourself of a wife. Please include a list of your hobbies among your proximate letter. Also a synopsis of your affair with your woman. Oh, and it intrigues me, do you have very many children? Do they also enjoy to muse with the Xbox?
Thankingly yours,
Jesse James.

The dog and the seal

One day, as most dogs were sprawled out in their master’s laundries, licking the moist tiles on account of the extreme heat, Clint Eastwood walked along the beach cooling his paws in the shallows. Clint Eastwood didn’t have tiles to lick because Clint Eastwood didn’t have a master and was exceedingly lonely. He came to the beach to play with other dogs, but today there were no other dogs, on account of the extreme heat. So Clint Eastwood walked along the beach cooling his paws in the shallows. But then he heard a bark. Clint Eastwood searched along the beach but found nothing more than the mountainous dunes and exhausted bushes. But still the barking persisted. Finally, Clint Eastwood apprehended that the barking was coming from the ocean, so he swam out into the waves. He saw a seal gliding through the waves, although he didn’t know that it was a seal and thought it was a dog. Clint Eastwood watched the seal twist and flip and spin and bark happily. And so they played. Clint Eastwood and the seal. They played and played until Clint Eastwood was extremely tired and had to swim to shore. The seal followed him and there they continued to play and bark happily. Clint Eastwood and the seal became exceptional friends, and they would play every day. They’d play in the water, the seal spinning while Clint Eastwood barked away. Then on the shore Clint Eastwood would bound about as the seal swayed and wobbled in the sand. But one day the seal didn’t turn up and Clint Eastwood became inordinately upset. He waited for the seal’s bark all day. And the next day. And the next day. On the fourth day the waves were wild and the wind was angry. But Clint Eastwood was sure he could hear the seal’s bark on the wind. So he swam out into the waves. He swam out into the fierce ocean, calling out to the seal. Clint Eastwood heard her on the wind, but she always seemed to be just ahead of him. But he swam and called, swam and called, until he had no energy left. Waves crashed into him until his face was soaked and he couldn’t taste the difference between his tears and the ocean. He swam and called, swam and called, but with each wave that cascaded into him, Clint Eastwood’s heart grew heavier. Until it dragged him to the bottom of the ocean like an anchor.


We walked among those bow-legged buildings, hand-in-hand. Not a symbol of our love, but of our strength, of our virtue to survive and overcome and change the world around us. We possessed something they didn’t. Something they couldn’t take from us. We’d sit on the wharf and watch the ships slide in on the icy water, the moon lost up there in the empty blue, and know that we were indestructible.
I remember that first love and the violence of it. Changing my world completely. I remember that feeling of optimism and the toxicity of it. The world, so changed, and changing, and changeable. We felt we couldn’t breathe without each other. But we were asphyxiating each other. We’d fight and kiss and fuck sporadically and uncontrollably.

We never did change the world. I think that is part of the reason things turned out the way they did. We never say it, or showed it, but we both blame each other. We loved too hard, and too fast. And now, like that fire, like the wind through your hair our love is thinning.


Dear Mr Adam,
I have ceased dubbing you Mr Adam Hamilton because I am of the belief we are the highest of friends. It arouses happiness that you enjoyed my tale so. One day it shall acquire myself an enormous pile of money and I shall buy numerous Xboxs (perhaps even one for Michael so that I am not forced to poleaxe him continuously) And new carpet which does not possess remanent of Clint Eastwood’s anus throughout it. No. The moral is not that we all require love, but that we are all drowning. I will tell you a secret. One that causes me exceptional shame. I am sick. My heart is heavier than most and the doctor says that it is so enormously heavy that I need to get a new one. A lighter one. I wonder if I shall be able to taste the difference between the ocean and my tears with a new heart. Perhaps there is no difference. It intrigues me that you relish making radios, because I too enjoy meddling with electronics. However I specialise in dismantling them. I do not posses tools so I am forced to dismantle them using a brick. I was regretful to know that your daughter died and it unsettled me to know that she died in such an ugly manner. I adored when you said “I like to imagine that her eyes closed peacefully, like a butterfly as she lays herself down to die.” I find it hard to fathom why they explode themselves in order to murder themselves. There are much easier ways, no? I did not know that Bald-Headed Eagles sexed while plummeting to the earth because I do not know what a Bald-Headed Eagle is. I do not know what consummate means either, but I surmised that it is what happens when you stop fucking. Is this correct? Are you illustrating to me that you killed her? Is this the manner in which she was murdered?
Accurately yours,
Jesse James.

We never stopped loving each other with the violence of our youth, and this is what denied us love. When Emilie was born all our love went into that small child. To show you that I loved you I would kiss Emilie, I’d whisper in her ear that I still loved her as if it were that night on the beach, I’d tell her how I could still remember that first conversation as I stood there sweating in my biker jacket, I’d tell her that I still remember the way she smelt that first night we made love. I funnelled all my love for Eve into that small girl and slowly I forgot how to love you. I would stop kissing you in the morning and instead I would cradle Emilie. I forgot how to kiss you, I forgot how to whisper in your ear, I forgot how to make love to you. We’d lie in bed at night, skin crawling and yearning for that touch. Our love for each other became the barrier which separated us. Sometimes I’d notice you roll from the bed and wake our child so that you could touched. And when she died in that glowing building, we blamed ourselves and we blamed each other. How could we love the people who had murdered our child, murdered our love?


Dear Mr Adam,
I do not understand when you inform me that you loved each other too much. This to me sounds like a very sanguine thing. Not a painful item as you have communicated. I am very grateful and honest that you have informed me of how you feel. Do not apologise. This is very helpful to my understanding. I can not thank you too much for the radio you have delivered to me. I will dismantle it as soon as I am apt to leave the hospital. No I will not acquire my parents zip. It is my money and I deserve it all. Additionally you can never have enough money. I shall not speak in detail about my secret because these letters may be tapped and read by people who would make it not a secret and cause me tremendous shame. However I will tell you that I am waiting for someone to die so as I can live. Yes. I do believe in reincarnation. I believe I shall become a bird, a mollusc, a rock, a fish. I shall become sediment, then rock, and then sediment again. I shall become a plant, or part of a plant. I shall be eaten by an animal and become part of that animal. Parts of me shall become parts of many animals, and I shall be many things at simultaneous times. One day thousands of years from now I shall become part of a human. You and I shall become part of the same human, if you can imagine it?! And when the earth dies we shall all be part of the same star. When I die I shall be reincarnated and then perhaps we will meet again.
Entirely yours,
Jesse James



Dear Mr Hamilton,
I regret to inform you that there were complications during James’ surgery and he has passed away. I am enormously grateful for your correspondence with my son throughout the final months of his young life. He was constantly speaking of you and it caused him much joy to read your many letters. The radio you made him, he insisted on having switched on and turned up throughout the day and night. He talked frequently about his excitement to dismantle it when he left the hospital. Again I thank you for supporting my son over the past few months.
Yours sincerely,
Mr Brown