please let there be water underneath my feet

8/14/2019 please let there be water underneath my feet

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Please let there be water underneath my FeetStories and Poems by:

Lucas McEuen



I would like to dedicate this book

To two important people in my (short) writing “career”Thank you very much

Mr. Charles “Cliff” Greenwood and Mrs. Christine Mani



Table of Contents

Page One, I was there when the world collapsed

Page Two-Four, Photograph

Page Five-Ten, Hugo

Page Eleven-Fourteen, Deer

Page Fifteen, Wild Youth

Page Sixteen-Nineteen, The Dear Letter

Page Twenty, Please let there be water underneath my Feet

Page Twenty One, Author’s note



1.

I was there when the world collapsed

She had an eye

For details of men she knew she wantedIdeas that could never quite be perfect

She, while finding clichés

Was a ball of them in herselfShe never quite understood that.



2.

Photograph

I was walking under the red glow from the streetlights that loosely outlined the

curbs edge. The night had come in good timing and I was ready for it to begin expiring.

A woman passed me on the street. I looked back and called. When she turned

around I raised my camera and snapped her picture.

I was trying to capture moments in time. I was trying to show something.

Unfiltered parts of life that somewhere get lost among things we worry about.

Once it was taken I looked at her. I recognized her from somewhere. I smiled at

her and waved and she turned around and went on. I knew I would never see her again. I

also knew that I had a memory of her that would never disappear.

Later I sat on a bench with my back to buildings. I was looking through the

several photos I had taken in the day. It was going through my head that I knew that

woman but it was still unclear. A low bang against the concrete wall behind me

interrupted my thoughts. I turned around and faced a sea of windows. In one of them, two

boys were looking out into the dark, trying to see beyond the city; in another a man was

watching television, illuminated by flashing blue lights. Two floors up from the boys a

woman was standing and looking on past everything. She had one hand on her neck and

the other was wrapped around her waist. I thought that she was looking at me but I

couldn’t tell. The light in her room was behind her and left a shadow for her front. I

raised my camera and clicked. As I did she disappeared. I sat back down and looked at

the camera. Her picture was interesting.



3.

On all edges of the photo grey and white lines darted in every direction. I sat staring at it,

thinking about it. I heard the creak of a door opening and closing. I looked up and a

woman was coming towards me wrapping herself in a sweater. I looked up to the window

and back to her. It was dark.

“Who are you?” she asked, sitting beside me.

“I’m sorry. I’m a photographer. I like to take pictures.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

I looked down to my feet nervously.

“It’s nice that you take pictures. But maybe some people don’t want to be seen.”

She said. I sat for a moment with my head still down.

“Look at this.” I said laying the camera in her lap.

I continued. “ I’m seeing things that I don’t think are seen enough. Everyone is

too caught up with everything else to realize what beauty is around them.”

She looked at the camera for a long time. “These are nice.”

She paused. “What made you do it?”

I looked at her.

“Take my picture.”

I didn’t know how to respond. The moment just happened it would never be seen

again. I would never see this woman the same. I had never met her.

“Did you see it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”



4.

“Some people don’t want to be seen.”

“Why? You are here living and breathing now. What’s the point in hiding? If you

explore around you, you will see new things. Being sheltered doesn’t help anything.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“You’re right. I don’t. You know. Come with me.” I said and took her hand.

We ran down the street and through several blocks of cars and lights. She did not

say anything, instead she just allowed me to drag her along.

We ended up downtown in the city. Big bright billboards and lighted buildings

surrounded us. She looked in awe.

“This is what you’re missing.” I said.

“Everything.”

She looked at me and smiled. It was written on her face. It was then that I knew a

picture was truly worth something. I raised my camera and clicked.

A portrait was formed that night. It was around her body, glowing. You could see

it through the photograph; you could feel it through the photograph. I let the work speak

for itself to everyone. When asked the title I would re address the question to them.

“What is the title?”



5.

Hugo

Hugo was where he did not want to be, a party. He was taken by friends who

vanished as soon as the A/C rushed into their faces. He never saw them but his glass

remained full.

He was sitting on the couch, one that was beginning to rot, the threads were

coming undone and the washed out stains were faded but visible. Sitting next to him was

a man and women who both had drinks in their hands and who talked loudly about

something he didn’t know. Hugo couldn’t talk to them. He didn’t really know how. In

rooms filled with people he could never really speak. His tongue dried inside of his

mouth making words impossible. The sounds that came out were always mute.

Hugo stood up and walked outside for air, they didn’t notice. He sat on the

cement driveway in between two cars and looked down at his hands. He traced the veins

with his eyes and he opened and closed his hand and watched them fade out and come

back. All of the people who were outside smoking looked at him. Some began

whispering about him. He didn’t have to hear what they were saying, he already knew.

Finally one of them spoke up.

“What are you doing?” she said.

Her words startled him and he felt his tongue with the bottom of his teeth. It was

no longer dry.

“I don’t know.”



6.

She smiled and walked over to him. She positioned herself next to him on the

cement. He looked at her. Through the thin haze that surrounded them he saw her eyes

piercing through. Even in the dark they stood out, bold green. She was wearing a black

and white floral dress that cut off at her knees. She was sitting with her legs to the side,

her dress draped across her knees.

“ What’s your name?” She asked.

“ Hugo.”

“ Hello Hugo. I’m Elizabeth.”

Hugo smiled at her and then looked around. Everyone outside was looking at the

two of them.

She saw his eyes darting around from person to person. She saw that his hands

were beginning to shake.

“Come here.” She said.

She took his hand and they stood up and walked down the street. He looked back

towards the house and all the people watched him walk away. She didn’t let go of his

hand.

They walked to an empty park. They were lit by the far away moon. It outlined

her and he followed. She led him to the grass and lay down. He watched her dress as it

wrinkled beneath her. It reminded him of when his mother would lay next to him on

evenings while his father worked. He shook those thoughts. He lay next to her. It was

quiet and there was no wind. The only sounds came from their soft breaths.



7.

Hugo couldn’t think of what to say, instead, they both just lay there looking up

into the night. The stars held up an image that Hugo was not willing to shape. He tried to

think about what she was thinking about. He couldn’t place it. His mother was the one

who drove things when they talked. Now he was with Elizabeth, a woman he barely

knew, who took his hand and ran away with him. He could feel himself tense up at the

thoughts.

She spoke first. “Why are you here?”

He was relieved to hear her voice.

“I’m not sure.”

“Someone brought you.”

“Well yeah…” His voice trailed off. “ I was brought here. I didn’t come here.”

She didn’t respond. He looked at her. She was looking up into the sky. They lay

in silence and looked up into the sky for a long time. After a long silence he sat up and

looked at her. He caught her eyes. She smiled at him and moved over and laid her head

on his lap and looked up. The moon hung just in front of his nose. She watched it as it

began to pass through him.

She sat up and then stood up and held out her hand. Hugo was staring off into

somewhere. After a while he looked at her hand.

“ Are you okay?” She said.

“Yeah, fine.”

“ You know… you’re interesting.”



8.

“Oh?”

“You don’t talk much.”

He shrugged. “ I don’t need too.”

“Don’t you need to talk?”

“I don’t see why. What is there to say all the time?”

She fell silent. He took her hand and pulled himself up. She began walking away

and she let her hand fall behind her, still connected to his. He followed.

She took a turn down a narrow stone road. Her shoes made loud clashes against

the stones. He did not know where she was taking him although he had seen that road

before. He couldn’t place it. They passed by cars that were abandoned and houses that

looked the same. Hugo thought something was wrong. He could feel that there was.

She turned her head and looked at him. He smiled at her. She smiled back. After

the road ended there was a clearing. She let go of his hand and turned around to face him.

“ It’s beautiful isn’t it?”

Hugo looked around and smiled again. She walked backwards across a part of the

clearing and then turned around and stopped. He tried to peek around her to see what she

was staring at. She was blocking it. He thought to let it go. Slowly she turned to face him,

her eyes were in the dirt.

In an instant she snapped.

“Lets go back to the party.”



9.

Hugo paused. He didn’t know what to say.

“Okay.”

As they walked away he turned around to see what she was looking at. He saw a

headstone. From far away he could just read what it said.

“We all are, without.”

“What does it mean?” He asked.

“It was what my uncle said to me growing up.”

They walked in silence back down the street. Her shoes clashed against the street

and the lights were beginning to turn off as the sun was just coming up. They stopped

down the road. He looked at her. “Why did you do this?”

“I saw you alone.”

“And that means you talk to me? Many people are left alone. That doesn’t mean

they don’t want to be.”

“Okay. Are you okay?”

As she spoke a tear fell from Hugo’s eyes. He knelt down.

“What were you trying to do?”

“I’m not understanding you.”

“You remind me of someone.”

She looked down at the back of his head. Slowly she began to understand. When

he looked up she was gone. He walked back to the party. Some of the same people were

out front.

“Where is she?” Hugo asked.



10.

“Who?”



11.

Deer

Rain sat on an old tree stump; one from which the tree had fallen down several

years ago and no one had the need to pick up. He came down here often. It was his place

to think and explore the forests, as he wanted to. The first day his family moved in he was

off in the woods exploring. He liked looking at the trees and feeling the coarse texture of

the bark. It made him feel wanted; he liked being surrounded by the comfort of the trees.

For years he was in the woods.

He would stay all day long, tracking birds and squirrels, trying to distinguish the

different tracks. Once when he was stumbling through he found a deer lying on the

ground, dead. Its body was decaying and melting into the dirt, a thickness was added to it,

a thickness that melded into the dirt and formed clumps. It’s head was untouched, it’s

eyes open and looking out into an open plain where flowers were beginning to grow. The

rib bones were piercing, sharp, through the skin and leaving a white powder on the dull

brown skin. He stared at it for a long time; something about the deer interested him.

Next to the body was a knife, left by the hunter who took the deer’s life. He

picked it up and held it in his hands, rotating it and feeling the tip of the blade. It was a

soft blade, the crisp metal felt strange. Specks of blood had dried onto the blade at which

he stared and picked at with his fingernail. He sat by the deer and watched as the sun set

below the tree’s.

He came back with the knife in his hand and showed it to his father, trying to

show what he could do in the woods. His parent took the knife from him and walked



12.

out of the room. Instinctively he ran back to the woods and sat in a mass of trees where

he looked up at the moon. He cried, sitting in the plain with the flowers; he did not

understand why. The moon cast a shadow down upon him.

When he came back the door was open, he walked in. He heard no voices and no

noises. He walked through the house into his parent’s room. He found his father lying on

the ground with the knife next to him. His father was dead. His mother had fled.

He sat with his father for two days, holding onto him as his hands slowly faded to

a dull red. He left them that way as he carried his father to the woods and buried him near

the deer that was lying on the ground.

Now, there were four plots of discolored dirt all around the deer that was almost

just bone, tufts of skin still remained but besides that it was just skeleton.

Months later, Rain moved to New York. He didn’t want to, but he knew he

couldn’t stay. The thoughts were too much. New York was a change, a good one. He let

everything go. He gained weight, grew a beard and his hair got a little longer. He slept

whenever he could, most nights he would just wander through the town, never talking to

anyone. The lights and sounds of the city itself did that for him. It was his escape, a new

vitality.

The first time he didn’t speak, it all happened in swift movements. The man was

much bigger than he was but that didn’t change anything. It still happened just the same.

The same as the other wild life out in the forest. He sat in the alley with the man, just

watching him as he bled out. The red stained the broken clay and brick ground, filling in

the grout lines and pooling in the uneven bricks.



13.

It took him days but he traveled back to the woods with the body, to where the

deer lay, and his father. He buried the man’s body next to his father, the discolored dirt

now becoming more uniform in color, next to the newly shaken plot.

He took the train on his way back to New York. He was sitting alone and looking

out the window and thinking about what he had done, how it had felt sitting in the alley

with the man. Across the car was a girl, about ten. She was staring at him. He caught a

glimpse of her and she looked away. She looked back and smiled at him. He waved and

then looked down at his hand. The red was still slightly stained on the palm of his hand.

He looked back up and the girl was gone; she wasn’t in the car anymore. He looked back

out the window and then back down at his hand. Had she seen the stain? Is that why she

was not there? Was his mind trying to tell him something?

After only a day back in New York it happened again, another man made him

angry and he snapped and had to make his way back to the deer. It was harder this time.

Rain’s body was weaker, his mind was weaker. He would fall down and succumb to

dreams that were all too real. He would see his mother standing over his father with the

knife; he would watch the whole thing.

He had to go back, into the house where everything had taken place. Where his

father had left. When this one was in the ground adding to the discolored dirt, he walked

away, toward the house. Nothing had moved since that night. Everything was older, more

beaten up from the years with no care and the harsh elements. The stain from where his

father lay was sunken into the ground, a sight that brought everything back.



14.

Sunlight shone in through the window and reflected off of something that lay

under the bed. Rain reached under and pulled out the knife, blood was still stained onto

the blade. He sat there staring at it and thinking. Another dream came to life, he was

watching his mother leaning over his father. Closing his eyes did not help; no matter what

he did he saw it happening. Then something hit the window, broke his thought. He

looked out the window and saw the girl standing there. He walked outside and she spoke.

“ You shouldn’t do that you know, it wasn’t your fault.” She walked closer to him. “ She

wanted to do it, you were too young to see it coming.” She came even closer. He saw her

blue eyes and the blondeness of her hair.

And with that she was gone, disappeared. A hopeless loss to the wind that howled

through the trees. Nothing remained of her but a memory and a sensation impossible to

describe.

He continued on as best as he could for the remainder of his years. Eventually he

ended up lying down in the woods next to the deer. The lights faded out and he passed

through everything. His body slowly decayed next to the deer, and his father. Soon the

resemblance would be undistinguishable.



15.

Wild youth

I can hear the buzzing

See grass ripping out of the ground from your stepThey lead us off trackI lost count of them long ago

Tiny wings make tiny wind gusts

You tell yourself you feelThey are far too fast

We’ve been at this all day

Over us the overseeing eye standsWatching

Prepared to pretend to protect usIf we end up too close

We have them where we want

Trapped in clear glass jarsThe buzz grows louder

Now it echoes

From adulthood, as a childI see all he wanted

Lavender, a deep purple scentWe stole from him

We were just kids

We didn’t know better

He buzzes in lifeSuffocating in glass

As we watch himWe were just kids



16.

The Dear Letter

I sat in the apartment all day, wasting the light that seeped through the worn out

shutters. I was waiting for something that I knew would never come. I thought before I

left I should write you, a letter to show you how I felt about everything. Once I finished I

would fold it and set it on the coffee table, next to the discolored wood. It would match

the small Vignettes you told me about your life that constantly remained in the back of

my mind.

Dear,

I paused at the comma, looking at it, at the paper. I found it odd that

anything in the world could be written on that paper. Everything that ever was written

was written in that same way. I knew that comma was everything, a start.

In my own mind I knew I was unaware of how to pick up the pieces in

relationships. Nothing worked. I was always stuck on the edge between the gray area and

the lights that would never come on. I would come home after days away and find myself

alone. You were always gone; it seemed, at least to me. Maybe you were there and I just

couldn’t notice.

I had to set the typewriter aside. I had to get away. Something. In the lobby at the

bottom of the stairs, a woman was sitting in a chair. She was looking down at her hands

that were folded in her lap. Calmly next to her a dog was sitting, panting. I walked by her

and the dog, which whined when I passed, and out into the street. Parked cars and

construction work littered the streets outside.



17.

Down the street I stopped under a tree that lay on top of a parking roof overhang.

Tree branches grew through the gaps in between the wood frame and hung down. The

streetlight across the street emitted light through the spaces between the branches. I stared

up through the tree for a while.

I stood in the bitter cold. I stood until my feet got numb and the brim of my hat

became cold to the touch. I repositioned my hat and then continued down the street.

Passed empty cars.

At the end of the street a car sat with its lights on. They reflected off the sides of

the car in front of it, casting shadows upon the passing people. Two people sat inside that

car, talking. They looked peaceful. As I passed them they looked up. I watched their eyes

curiously watch me. Then they went back to talking. I thought of you, when I saw them. I

saw us reflected in the glass of the car window. Suddenly you were there next to me as I

continued down the street.

I miss the artwork everywhere, scattered around the room. All the papers that

covered the coffee table. Simple sketches. I miss the charcoal marks that were left on my

hands from when I moved your hair.

I walked past one of your pieces in a store window. I knew it would remember me.

The eyes stared at me. It reminded me of when you drew it. I saw that piece come

together. I saw those eyes. The last one that I remember. I looked into the eyes, the only

hint of color. A vast, warm grey lake. Those were my eyes, to you.

I still remember every detail of you. I will never forget you. You changed me as a

person, into a person I did not know I could be. When you left, it left a hole. A hole that



18.

will never be filled but one that will be lived with. I know it was not your fault; nothing

was ever your fault. I still don’t blame you for anything. I knew, in time, you would

forget.

I looked and you were no longer at my side. I continued down the street, passed

buildings abandoned so long ago they forgot their names. The worn down skeletons that

remained stood waiting to fall. The grout lines were beginning to decay, the chipped clay

bricks, old memories.

The first time we were together we ventured inside. The grieving walls invited us

in. We slept on the concrete, wrapped around each other with the sounds of the city

behind us. It was the nicest thing that I remember we did.

Now that is gone.

I knew I would never go back to that place. I would simply float onward into

some new place. A place that I could never call home.

I walked through the park, bent down and felt the grass. I made my way, slowly,

to the beach. The waves lightly crashed against the sand and left white foam residue. I

looked at the ripples the moving tides made. It made no difference.

I walked back through the park. Passed the swing set. The night had fully

developed. The streets were beginning to fill with late night patrons. I filtered my way

through them and sat on the front steps, watching. They all stumbled passed me. I would

be one of them if not for you. I stood up and walked into the building. The woman was

no longer there but the dog remained next to the chair, he was now lying down, he looked



19.

to be asleep. My feet were heavy now and my eyes drooped. I could feel the blue in them

fading.

I never would have known you to come back. I guess that’s all I have to say.

I shut the door behind me. Something was off, a smudge next to the knob.

Could it be? Was I seeing ghosts?

In the typewriter sat one short sentence.

I know I left.

Nothing was moved or touched. The bed was still unmade. Draped in the sheet I

saw the rise and fall.



20.

Please let there be water underneath my feet

I didn’t mean to but I left the keys to my house on the dashboard of your carIn between two cigarettes I realizedThere was no going back

If I could tell you in anyway in the first week then things might have changedBut now we’re stuck

The loss of passion standing on your porch underneath the lightsWas enough for me to realize that where I was, was not where I wanted to be

I know that it was where I needed to beBut it was not where I wanted to be

I was forcing myself to be there

Through lives physical marks and mental scars make appearancesThese things are okay

That’s what I’m beginning to learnThat’s why I leaned in on that night

Even though my heart was saying no

“The beauty in things never lasting is that they end.”I never thought that you would believe

In the hope and the pain of the phraseAnd when you said your grandfather had told you

That was everything I needed to walk out the doorBut it was closed

I hope for the future that you keep the door openSo me, and others like me don’t stay when were supposed to leave

We’ve all got things in our lives that need to be straightened out

In different methods and rituals our behavior of these events changeIts how you deal with things that make you want to die

It’s also what makes you want to liveIt’s not really a cycle

Just a passing of something

When you look down at your feetWhatever may be there

Just say“Please let there be water underneath my feet.”

So at least there is a hope to survive



21.

Note

Thank you very much for taking time out of whatever spectacular life you are leading to

read my book. This is my first ever self-published work and I am very proud of the worksthat I have compiled over the course of the last two years.I hope you enjoyed the stories.

Sincerely,

Lucas McEuen

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please let there be water underneath my feet