Liars on the Run by Christian Fennell & Stella Del Mar

Liars on the Run
co-written with Stella Del Mar

   He wanted to put into words all the things they might be. If they could. And it began like that. In his mind, it began like that.
  On the shore, rhythms receding. Forever. Once again. Words like sand, persistent, unobserved until shards formed fully blown beneath skin. Because Lou Reed died, because yours were blue and I'm tangled up in it.
   Liars on the run.
   When you said you couldn’t leave, when human voices woke and I . . . well, where else do drowned girls go? 
   Walking away with bloodied feet. I tried to write you out. Rethread the narrative with different lies, yet ours persist, this hurtling without headlights toward an impossible dawn. 
   One day. I want to. 
   In bodies or in words? 
   Both. 
   Bodies, body, my body, your body, and all these words again—words that are never not us again.
   On the radio. Lou Reed. 
   Or a siren? 
   We could run. 
   All these questions surfacing. And won’t be submerged. Won’t be sifted out. Only denied. But I won’t--
   Falling towards me? Lips touch. Just once. 
   Once and always.
   And you’ll tell me how it happened, where we fell between the spasm and desire, between our shadow selves tangled up in lies, these limbs, of this impossible wanting.
   Darkness catching us stumbled on bloodied feet along passages not followed, doors not opened, exits not taken, ending where?
   A rose garden.
   In the moonlight?
   Because darkness isn't forever.
   No. Or time. 
   Of time. Our time. This urgency of ghost light illuminating intuition. The movements of tides. You with me.
   Here and breaking chains. Trying and smashing. 
   Spiraling? 
   Yes.
   Urgency never receding. How does he mean that? 
   Next to me, and does it matter? Timeless and not moving, does it matter. All this fear and falling away, to your scent, this touch of you, seen and unseen, as it does, every time, in this garden. These lies in headlights, wild and not caring, are never lies, not really—running to me, and you say, where are you? 
   Tell it to me.
   How? 
   In the mirror. Golden and not moving. Still, and always, and where are you? 
   In the falling of light—and of course it is, over and over. Words that are us. Not us. 
   All this damage. And mine too. 
   Our flaws? 
   Yes. Together. Our flaws. How it could it not be?
   Cresting a hill, harder and faster, and we’ll outrun it all. I promise. 
   The road dropping. Ivy and open fields. And you say, show me. Real and here and show me. 
   In this wanting show me. 
   And I’ll tell you, let’s just take it all. 
  Baby, she wasn’t just a part of me. I loved her too. Sometimes. And then I— took it all away and I see her gone. So young. Beautiful in her defaults.
   Was she? 
   Reliving it next to me in a glory. So much of it that I didn’t want to be gone. But it is now, isn’t it?
  Liars’ lips and liars’ lovers exorcising ghosts, no matter how many letters you burn, no matter what you sacrifice to the flames then smudge away with sage. 
   I’ve seen the scars. 
   I look at you driving. Saying nothing more. Knowing you won’t be denied. And I ask. Can I outrun you?
   No.
   I’ve tried. Forgive me. Forgive me for wanting you when you go, and yet, here we are—reckless, still. And I can’t run blind forever. 
   In the dark?
   Hands clean, bloodied feet.
   Not always. No.
   You pull over to the side of the gravel road. And we move across a wide open space beneath an uncaring sky. A sky on which our choices scream from bodies of dying stars. 
   Walking. Fixed and fatal. And here we are again. Watching.
  You’re a dominant fire sign, and I want you—want you to try. Your warmth, your light. An undeniable truth before this reckoning; this coming of light only.
   Is that what they say? Where is it? Show me. We stand and look.   
   Tall trees looming we must pass beneath in this urgency. Once again, together. 
   The ground wet, your hands tangle in my hair, you push me down. Capture my lips beneath yours, the hard truth of you above me, on me, grounding me and keeping me here. 
   These lies that sear. This pain I bring to you. 
   Eyes I see. Innocence crying needing.
   Witness it, I whisper. Be part of it. In all the things we do, that we must leave here, under this dark unforgiving sky of better days ahead. Of once again—one day. 
   The trees above us, a witness now, as the wind to them. And I take it all from you, an unimaginable opening. My hand finding you, my other hand moving hair from your forehead, these streaks of what it must be, an opening made wider, cauterizing, there and more coming, trapped, held, your screaming—to the trees—to the birds—flying, in these days now that never will be again. My hands releasing you, and there’s a scar, outside of you, long and hard and running: our always. Shall I tell you?
   Yes. A single word hardly spoken, drifting from you by these things unseen, that we do, you and I, we witness. But not now, worlds away in our sleep. Finally. Worlds without ending, these forever worlds of infinite webs. Gossamer strands that bind. Wide open spaces falling through to darkness. A darkness well beyond any ghost light. Beyond dawn itself.
   She looks for you, in the dark, pull her to you, down, down—far beneath this falling. And you whisper, in this rhythm, lie, baby, lie.
   We walk again, and you ask me, how did we get here?
  I’m looking around, in the cold hard morning light. 
  There was a car? 
   Yes.
   We drove?
   The last exit. 
   You take off your leather jacket and hand it to me. I’m alone. 
   No baby, I’m right here—the wind picking up, through the leaves, and now silent. In my arms silent. In this never not knowing: where we’ve been, where we are, where we’re going. 
   Where you go. 
   Does it matter?
   Kiss me.
   Liars’ lips and liars lie more, and once more.
   This land us, barren and holding on—just, small scrubs and the growth of it. Trying. Rising. Broken missing pieces. 
   The one long road, empty and giving, somewhere. Is it?
   We’ll find our way back yet.
   Will we?
   Nothing in remorse in a line to anywhere, and you put your head to my shoulder and take my arm. Lou Reed on the radio somewhere.
   Yes, not a siren.
   No.
   Let’s just go. 
  Where?
   Liars on the run. 
   In this place--
   No. Never not again.
   Liars’ lips bodies in words again.    

​


​Christian is currently working his second novel, Isidore. His short stories have appeared in a number of literary magazines and collected works, including: Chaleur Magazine, Litro Magazine, XRAY Literary Magazine, Liars' League London, and .Cent Magazine, among others. Christian was a columnist and the fiction editor at the Prague Revue. christianfennell.com


Stella Del Mar contains multitudes. Dreamer, writer, editor, introvert. Trying her best not to become Anaïs Nin. www.stellaromance.com