(no subject)
Title: One Great City!
Rating: R.
Pairing: Ray Toro/Gerard Way.
Summary: Ray is an enigmatic but devoted housewife.
One Great City
Late afternoon, another day is nearly done
A darker grey is breaking through a lighter one
A thousand sharpened elbows in the underground
Gerard’s pet name for me is Sugar. We live at Twenty Second Circle Square (I am not even kidding you), and one day we’ll have children. The curtains that we hung on barred windows when we moved into our (almost) Victorian split-level are Cheerio-colored and clean, because I wash them every Sunday and I will until they fray. He works at a firm that deals with confidential matters. He carries a slim briefcase.
That hollow hurried sound, feet on polished floor
And in the dollar store, the clerk is closing up
And counting loonies trying not to say
Even weeks before we were married, I would open the window above my old beach on the Riviera and sing into the night. Songs I have never, will know how to write, about block cities built over necropoli. Gerard comes from a place like that.
I hate Winnipeg
Our wedding day was silent, or deafening with drowsy, unsaid speculation. We were the first male marriage in this town, and no one knew quite what to say. No one past the parking lot of hell-inspired fanatics could muster enough gall to question my bouquet (paper lilies, Italian made) or Gerard’s heart-shaped lapel, so we drove away in our chiffon-yellow Cadillac from a morgue of confused activists. The wind whipped the sunset like cream and made his cheeks pinker than lemonade, and I, at least, was happy.
The driver checks the mirror seven minutes late
The crowded rider’s restlessness enunciates
My father calls on Saturdays to remind us that he hates me. I can taste tobacco in the spit that spews from the receiver. Gerard holds my waist and shakes his head into my neck as I cry (just) out of habit, and then helps me clear the dishes. Saturday is meatloaf night. We spoon-feed each other watermelon Jello before he lifts me into city-boy arms and lays me down on potpurri-stained sheets, to fuck and sob and laugh away my old inheritance.
The Guess Who sucked, the Jets were lousy anyway
The same route everyday
He’s always singing to the radio in keys that I could never fathom. He’s always singing in my head. I want to write him down into a perfect sonnet, but cannot measure meter, and am too ashamed of my stripped white barren hips to create anything new. He smiles like the bodegas in Croatia; his clavicle heaves like its sea. Like Midwestern thunder and tornado warnings. When I am sitting on the back porch sipping gin and juice or knitting French into green sweaters, I am always thanking God.
Someone’s stalled again
He’s talking to himself
And here’s the price of gas, repeat his phrase
The women in the neighborhood think I’m crazy for marrying so early, and for marrying a man. I just pretend I don’t speak English. They tempt me with Avon perfume and get me to try on their cotton housedresses, cackling, smearing my lips with cherry polish. Our grey-walled bedroom swells sadly with their wholesome weight. They slip condoms into my pockets and try to teach me simple phrases, yes, hello, my name is Mrs. Gerard Way. I guess it’s really funny.
I hate Winnipeg
My mother calls every Wednesday night and holds the phone up to the ocean. She drips the tears that fall from the receiver into the warm tide, while Gerard watches T.V. in the other room. When I’ve done closing my ears to the click of hanging up, mascara streaming down my cheeks, I devour a slice of caramel flan alone and then crawl up to bed. Blue pills for the evening, lavender for morning. Make your headaches go away.
And up above us all
Leaning into sky
The Cheerio-colored curtains are replaced with mint cream beads, and the cross-bow of my soul somehow gets restrung. Foreign voices fill the (almost) Victorian split-level with Slavic prayers and reprimands; with Greek sex and philosophy. The water of my bath is crystal sweet. Two small drops of cyanide, mixed with blue food coloring (for atmosphere, for drama), and one sharpened razor rosary.
Our golden business boy
Will watch the North End die
Gerard is never stupid. He won’t take me to the hospital if he finds me in two hours (twelve thirty, Thursday lunch break), my Southern curls pulled back, my noble eyes slit and writhing in their sockets. He’ll just kneel down by my lifeless hand. Count invisible stars with my index finger, try to remember the words to a requiem, any requiem. To the Ave Maria. He will call me the Ave Maria, not knowing what it means; he’ll have it engraved on my headstone because I would whisper it when I knew he was almost asleep, my hand across the small of his soft back.
And sing, “I love this town”
Then let his arcing wrecking ball proclaim
Ave Maria, gratia plena:/ Hail, Mary, full of grace:
Dominus tecum,/ the Lord is with you,
benedicta tu in mulieribus/ blessed are you among women
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus./ blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei/ Holy Mary, Mother of God
ora pronobis peccatoribus/ pray for us sinners
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen./ now and at that hour of our death. Amen.
I
Hate
Winnipeg
Rating: R.
Pairing: Ray Toro/Gerard Way.
Summary: Ray is an enigmatic but devoted housewife.
One Great City
Late afternoon, another day is nearly done
A darker grey is breaking through a lighter one
A thousand sharpened elbows in the underground
Gerard’s pet name for me is Sugar. We live at Twenty Second Circle Square (I am not even kidding you), and one day we’ll have children. The curtains that we hung on barred windows when we moved into our (almost) Victorian split-level are Cheerio-colored and clean, because I wash them every Sunday and I will until they fray. He works at a firm that deals with confidential matters. He carries a slim briefcase.
That hollow hurried sound, feet on polished floor
And in the dollar store, the clerk is closing up
And counting loonies trying not to say
Even weeks before we were married, I would open the window above my old beach on the Riviera and sing into the night. Songs I have never, will know how to write, about block cities built over necropoli. Gerard comes from a place like that.
I hate Winnipeg
Our wedding day was silent, or deafening with drowsy, unsaid speculation. We were the first male marriage in this town, and no one knew quite what to say. No one past the parking lot of hell-inspired fanatics could muster enough gall to question my bouquet (paper lilies, Italian made) or Gerard’s heart-shaped lapel, so we drove away in our chiffon-yellow Cadillac from a morgue of confused activists. The wind whipped the sunset like cream and made his cheeks pinker than lemonade, and I, at least, was happy.
The driver checks the mirror seven minutes late
The crowded rider’s restlessness enunciates
My father calls on Saturdays to remind us that he hates me. I can taste tobacco in the spit that spews from the receiver. Gerard holds my waist and shakes his head into my neck as I cry (just) out of habit, and then helps me clear the dishes. Saturday is meatloaf night. We spoon-feed each other watermelon Jello before he lifts me into city-boy arms and lays me down on potpurri-stained sheets, to fuck and sob and laugh away my old inheritance.
The Guess Who sucked, the Jets were lousy anyway
The same route everyday
He’s always singing to the radio in keys that I could never fathom. He’s always singing in my head. I want to write him down into a perfect sonnet, but cannot measure meter, and am too ashamed of my stripped white barren hips to create anything new. He smiles like the bodegas in Croatia; his clavicle heaves like its sea. Like Midwestern thunder and tornado warnings. When I am sitting on the back porch sipping gin and juice or knitting French into green sweaters, I am always thanking God.
Someone’s stalled again
He’s talking to himself
And here’s the price of gas, repeat his phrase
The women in the neighborhood think I’m crazy for marrying so early, and for marrying a man. I just pretend I don’t speak English. They tempt me with Avon perfume and get me to try on their cotton housedresses, cackling, smearing my lips with cherry polish. Our grey-walled bedroom swells sadly with their wholesome weight. They slip condoms into my pockets and try to teach me simple phrases, yes, hello, my name is Mrs. Gerard Way. I guess it’s really funny.
I hate Winnipeg
My mother calls every Wednesday night and holds the phone up to the ocean. She drips the tears that fall from the receiver into the warm tide, while Gerard watches T.V. in the other room. When I’ve done closing my ears to the click of hanging up, mascara streaming down my cheeks, I devour a slice of caramel flan alone and then crawl up to bed. Blue pills for the evening, lavender for morning. Make your headaches go away.
And up above us all
Leaning into sky
The Cheerio-colored curtains are replaced with mint cream beads, and the cross-bow of my soul somehow gets restrung. Foreign voices fill the (almost) Victorian split-level with Slavic prayers and reprimands; with Greek sex and philosophy. The water of my bath is crystal sweet. Two small drops of cyanide, mixed with blue food coloring (for atmosphere, for drama), and one sharpened razor rosary.
Our golden business boy
Will watch the North End die
Gerard is never stupid. He won’t take me to the hospital if he finds me in two hours (twelve thirty, Thursday lunch break), my Southern curls pulled back, my noble eyes slit and writhing in their sockets. He’ll just kneel down by my lifeless hand. Count invisible stars with my index finger, try to remember the words to a requiem, any requiem. To the Ave Maria. He will call me the Ave Maria, not knowing what it means; he’ll have it engraved on my headstone because I would whisper it when I knew he was almost asleep, my hand across the small of his soft back.
And sing, “I love this town”
Then let his arcing wrecking ball proclaim
Ave Maria, gratia plena:/ Hail, Mary, full of grace:
Dominus tecum,/ the Lord is with you,
benedicta tu in mulieribus/ blessed are you among women
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus./ blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei/ Holy Mary, Mother of God
ora pronobis peccatoribus/ pray for us sinners
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen./ now and at that hour of our death. Amen.
I
Hate
Winnipeg