Sometimes to Me

Sometimes to me—like the bones of birds—
We seemed so fragile, as though
If touched by anything but the air we share,
We would fracture.
As per my prediction, here we were rift
By the uninvited grit and gravity
Of circumstance.
Now—cold cold cold—curled in frigid limbo,
I deliberate.
And sometimes when I think of you,
I find a second of enveloping warmth,
As if your ghost blocked a freezing wind
For just a moment.

.

A Day, a Night, a Week, a Month

It is very blue here; blue paintings on blue walls, blue cushions on the chairs, cheap, blue-flecked carpet. Even the young man next to me is wearing a blue t-shirt. He is fat and his hair is oily. He looks at me too long; I want to change seats. I chew my lip distractedly, pausing when the metallic taste of blood washes over my tongue. For maybe ten minutes I try to make myself stop, but before I realize it I am biting again, about to make the other side bleed, too.

I don’t want to be in the doctor’s office again, to explain and answer questions; to ask them as well, when I am so tired. It is a tedious process to begin with, and I don’t have the patience for it now. I am preoccupied; I’m supposed to find out today. I tap my foot; remember to breathe you have to breathe just breathe. I do. I breathe. I don’t want an answer, and yet I don’t want to walk away without one.

“Elsie?” The nurse mispronounces my name, like they all do. I barely notice; I just stand and follow her. Following nurses is second nature to me now. Anyone wearing scrubs could questioningly call out any name beginning with “El”, and I would probably follow them into a windowless van before I realized what was happening.

The doctor meets my mother and me in his office. It’s so white in here, I observe. I miss the pediatrics offices. My headache sprouts fifteen minutes into the appointment. I need to pee. The faux-leather chair is sticky, and I want to go home.
Dr. Jones settles into his rolling chair. I keep breathing, on the edge of the conversation I have been waiting for. Hand shakes, hi-how-are-you’s, How-are-your-symptoms-They’re-the-same-Well-we-need-to-talk-about-that. It all ran together in my mind, only certain phrases catching in the wrinkles of my brain. Chronic autoimmune disease, potential risk of organ damage, So-she’ll-always-be-sick-Yes-she’ll-always-be-sick-but-we-caught-it-earlysowithmedicationandlifestylechangesweshouldbeabletocontrolthe…lupus.

A heavy curtain is falling over my mind; it is thick and cold and all I can hear is a voice, the processed, perfectly-shaped tone of a spokesman from a commercial I heard as a child: “Lupus ruined my daughter’s life. Get information. Get in the loop. Visit the Lupus Foundation of America website and get the facts.” I see the TV screen, too; the young woman is frozen in time, scrambling for apples she has dropped. I drop things, too.

“Lupus ruined my daughter’s life.”

Yesterday I dropped my hairbrush. I couldn’t finish; my hair is still knotted in the back. This morning I fell down, walking from my bedroom to the bathroom. Last week I passed out, briefly, stepping out of the shower. These things have happened; they have been happening. They will continue? Chronic auto-immune disease. Apparently. “Lupus ruined my daughter’s life.” Yes. The curtain is heavy over my mind; it is cold and thick and white.

Dialogue continued. Information, questions, answers, brochures, prescriptions. Arthritis, fatigue, cognitive degeneration, sunlight sensitivity, thinning hair, poor circulation, chronic pain, etcetera, etcetera, whatever. I know.

I tune in and out of the conversation happening mostly between my mother and Dr. Jones, interjecting mechanically when it seems like I should. Soon I lose myself in the white of the walls, white of sterile gauze and cotton balls, the doctor’s white lab coat, the floor and the ceiling and the cupboards all white white white; so white I can almost hear it.

“Have you read that book?” Dr. Jones’ question makes its way through the static. Mom puts the brochures in her purse; her keys jingle. We’re nearly done here.

“Oh, um, what was the title again?” I mumble. When was the last time I used my tongue? Last week? Last month? Only minutes ago, though it doesn’t feel like it. He repeats the title.

“You’re interested in criminal psychology?” He asks. Apparently this had been discussed while I was lost in the white. I nod. “You might like that book, then. It’s all the rage now.”

“Oh, I haven’t heard of it.” I say. “I’ll look it up.”

“It’s Swedish.”

“Ah.”

Silence.

“But I don’t remember the author’s name.” Dr. Jones considers this with a deep frown.

“Oh. Well. I bet I can find it if I Google the title.” I assure him, because he seems genuinely concerned that this lack of information may devastate me.

“I’ll write it down.” My mother says, and does so.

More silence.

“Yes, you should look it up.” The doctor nods, as if deciding for sure that this would be a good and proper course of action.

“I will.” I lie.

Silence again, brief but long enough to make me feel awkward.

“I’m sorry.” Dr. Jones says. “If you like, we have resources for counseling and chronic illness support groups in the area.”

“Um. No thanks; maybe later.” My reply is tentative as I glance back and forth between my mother and the doctor.

“Well, alright.” He reaches for his clipboard. “Now that we know what we’re dealing with, there are a few prescription treatment options…”

I leave the office with two refill scripts, two new prescriptions, some samples, and a follow-up appointment. And The Diagnosis. An answer, but no cure.

“How do you feel?” Mom asks quietly. Her hand is poised to start the van but she waits intently for me to speak.

“Well, we knew it was a possibility.” I know that isn’t an answer to her question, but I’m not sure I have one anyway. I’m officially diagnosed; so what? I have a specific target for blame, but it is not as satisfying as I’d hoped it would be. I feel blank; a heavy, sort of gray indifference that leaves my mind clear. Not ‘clear’ as in ‘clean’, or as if it has been de-cluttered. More like a wide space from which everything has been emptied out, leaving me only with a vague sense of awareness that anything was ever there at all; like the faint cutouts left behind by boxes moved from a dusty floor.

I am not dying, I think to myself. I’m just sixteen and past my prime. That’s all. I think of wheelchairs and poverty and loved ones dying. There are worse things. I’m fine.

~*~

Tonight there is crying. Maybe the TV; maybe not. I can hear it echoing, some faceless mourning thrumming in the air. Maybe Mom on the phone with Aunt Janice, telling her about the Diagnosis. Maybe not. I know she wishes I would come downstairs.

When I went to sleep last night, my room was my own cozy nook in the hall. But not now, as I perch on the corner of my bed in the darkness. Now the room is part of a heavy beast, heaving great breaths through windowpane teeth. I can hear the whole house—the beast—creaking. I don’t like this sound, it’s old bones readjusting. I am in its belly and I can feel it roiling, threatening to expel me; to vomit me up, exposed into the city to be assaulted by great chunks of sight and sound and light and smells and the shadows with the lurking things. I wish it would. Those things I could run from.

I see the night outside my open window. The sky wears the Milky Way like a flimsy blouse, insufficient to completely obscure its velvet-blue breast. Stars peek out from between the gauzy folds and I don’t care. It’s not like it’s going anywhere; it’s not like it will change. I’ve marveled before; do I have to do that every time I look up? Still I feel obligated, and try to muster up some wonder. Not tonight. I try not to feel guilty.

~*~

It has been a week since The Diagnosis. I feel so dirty; so cluttered and like my insides are crusted with some sort of grime. I have been thinking this, knowing for the last seven days it is only my imagination, but I am so tired and stiff that I can’t help feeling like a rusty machine. Maybe if I drank bleach. I think. Maybe if I turned inside-out and scrubbed my veins out with soap, drained and then replaced the blood inside; put my liver in the wash on “delicates”. Surely after all sanitation measures, the disease would be eradicated.
But they tell me that bleach would do more harm than good, and that bloodletting is a primitive and medically flawed procedure. So I continue to swallow the pills they give me, knowing that they will never wash it all away.
It’s the weirdest thing, I observe, to feel claustrophobic because of something inside of you instead of because you are inside something. There must be something I can do. There is always something to be done. Doing fixes things, right? Three action-steps, or five, or twelve?

A hot shower has to suffice for now; has to leave me clean enough to function another day. Not just warm water; not just steaming. Hot, to a degree just before the point of unbearable.
I stand in the tub, directly beneath the showerhead, fifty thin jets of water stabbing into my scalp. I can almost feel blood rushing in to flush my cheeks as I scrunch my eyelids shut tight. Focus. The lava spreads through my hair, fills up every tangle until it spills down my forehead and my neck and over my ears, burning burning burning and I can feel every place it touches as it rushes down my length from head to toe.

Streams run continually down through my bangs. They grow heavy, feathered smooth against my face from the water pulling them down. I cringe as I wait for my sensitive skin to grow numb to the heat engraving rivers around my eyes, dripping from the tip of my nose, rolling over my cheek bones and between my swollen, parted lips.

I imagine the water burning every germ from the surface of my skin as it flows down, then the steam penetrating through pores to flush out the impurities inside, purging. I imagine being all clean.

Snatches of Mother Goose songs are stuck in my head. I don’t know why they are there, but I don’t fight them; they are a distracting contrast. I play the music forcefully in my mind, filling it up until there is room for nothing but all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, sewing Humpty-Dumpty’s wounds shut again.

Why does everyone assume that Humpty Dumpty is an egg? I wonder for the thousandth time, running through the lyrics in my mind. The rhyme never specifies. I know that even the seemingly innocent assumptions of childhood were never actually simple; I was just too young to question them. A child isn’t capable of theorizing; of tracing the origins of Humpty Dumpty back to the bloody dismemberment of King Richard III, or the destructive fall of a massive European cannon.
All these false assumptions-—the unanticipated complexity of every little thing-—makes me feel as if everything is wearing a disguise and I can’t even trust myself anymore, with how distorted everything seems. Every unidentifiable emotion feels inexplicably fraudulent.

Of course he wasn’t an egg. My lip rises in a cynical smirk. And he was probably pushed.

I lose all sense of time in my nursery-rhyme hypnosis. I am hoping that by the time the hot water runs out and Humpty’s bleeding has stopped, I’ll feel like I can step out again, leaving my demons to run down the drain.

This time it isn’t enough, though. This time something in me needs to scream; alarm bells need to sound and say Do something Anything just Do something.
I plug up the drain, lie down in the tub and submerge myself. The showerhead continues to spray down and liquid fills every hollow-—air is pushed from my ears and nostrils; water weaves itself between my eyelashes and threatens to sting. There is a rush as it fills my ears, but then…

Hush.

Muffled vibrations from water pounding water engulf my head and pulse rapidly over the surface of my skin. Quiet reigns for moments, the silence working with the feeling of floating suspension and it is timeless. I am timeless.

Grandpa had a swimming pool in the back yard, and as a child I spent most summer afternoons there. It was so blue and clear and clean--it even smelled clean and I liked the way the scent of chlorine would linger in my hair all day, if Mom didn't make me shower right after a swim. I loved the feeling of myself in the water; it was suspension, the only time I felt graceful. Like I was covered in cool glass, the old-fashioned kind--the hand-blown glass with ripples and dimples that they show you on field trips in second grade--but better because it was so pure and bright. Nothing makes a little girl feel beautiful like being covered in things that glint in the sunlight, and nothing made me feel beautiful like watching my limbs glide under that liquid crystal. They were distorted though, and strange, so it was easy to pretend that I was no longer human. That I was something else; anything else. I'd be Something Else underwater for a while, then run inside to be a little girl again, dripping water on the carpet and getting chocolate everywhere after Grandpa gave me Butterfingers.

My lungs scream for air—air and there are the bells in my brain screeching and after a few seconds of endurance the water rolls back in a single wave from my face and down through my hair and with a gasp of oxygen I am satisfied.

I step out and my skin is bright red. Red and raw, as if I’ve passed through fire and left my old skin behind, blistered and melted away so I can feel fresh and be clean again. The red makes scars stand out. A few are darker but mostly they are pale lines and once again I wonder fleetingly if they’ll fade as the years pass; how much have they already faded since I sustained them? Some of them still sting when I’m cold. Those are the ones I know will still stand out too red red red after a hot shower when I’m forty.

Three square cages, each about five by five inches, stuck out from the gallery wall. The bars formed from frosted glass, and a strange smell hung about them. Should art have an odor? It is subjective, I supposed. I came closer to see what the frosty cages held, and when I saw it the feeling never quite left me; it stuck in the back of my mind for years, like a barbed fishhook in my brain. I could not stop wondering, who’s dried blood crusted the pieces of gauze behind the bars and how were they hurt, and what became of them? Had they died? Was that real flesh, those red chunks stuck between the folds and please please take the bloody red red red and rust and the smell away because it stirs some primal instinct of wrongness inside me; a disturbed and filthy sense of dread.

A reminder of burning submersion remains with me: the sting in my eyes, red-rimmed and blood-shot. It gives me the feeling of having had a good cry, the kind I crave but cannot seem to accomplish.

I’m full of so many screams, but I’ve forgotten how to go about releasing them.
I want so much to feel clean and fresh again—without blemish.

Purification. Refinement by fire.

I haven’t achieved it yet.

~*~

For a month I’ve been writhing inside; needing to run or scream or both and crack somehow, or shave my head. It’s time to give my hands a break. They hurt, my hands do, and my wrists—they crackle when I move them—but I can’t stop twisting my hair. I just keep curling sections round and round my fingers until they’re wound tight up against my scalp. It’s time to give my hands a break but the second my hands have nothing else to do they’re up there again, wrapped in the long dreadlocks that hang to my shoulders.

The locks are woven through with mismatched strings of colored thread, yarn, and ribbons. The colors don’t go very well together; there are too many and they don’t go with any of my clothes. I used to love it, the whimsy of those colors peeking through one another. I used to appreciate the obscurity of the compact, nappy texture of the back-combed sections of hair that hold a rainbow so tightly. But now, it is just disorganized; cluttered. Red blue brown yellow pink green black orange andeveryeveryeveryothercolorthereis. It makes me dizzy; it hurts my eyes. And the tangles; suddenly I cannot stand them.

The dreadlocks seem to mock me as I look in the mirror—a physical representation of my heart’s knotted state—and so full of the cluttering color. Other things are in them too; bad things, caught up in the tangles: memories, feelings, conversations, regrets. They whisper in my ear when I turn my head, reminding me; they are heavy and everywhere. I hate them.

I fumble for a pair of scissors, start some music. At first I am careful, making sure to cut only what I need to, to make those long ropes go away. But soon my fingers are stiff and sore, and my cuts grow faster, choppy and approximate. Sad songs mostly—snip snip—upbeat makes me angry—snip—but I can’t stand silence—snip snip snip—so I am working ripping teasing out the tangles singing hoarsely along. I am pulling out the yarn and strings, dropping the rainbow on the floor where it seems to belong. With gradual relief I unravel the psychedelic mess.

I lose myself in the music, keeping time with that sssclk sound that the scissors make, slicing through my hair. Ssssclk, sssclk, ssssssssclk....it is soothing, it is hypnotizing; it is a smooth sort of destruction. I think of nothing. There is only ssssssssclk and the music, and then the fft fft fft of the comb and the occasional snap of a hair breaking as I work the remainder of the dreads apart.

I don’t know how many numb, methodic hours passed. Enough to play through eight full albums: two Sufjan Stevens, four Decemberists, two Iron and Wine. I think the sun set about halfway through Castaways and Cutouts. But finally my hair is short, the dreadlocks combed out and all of it is once again brown, all brown with comforting consistency.

My head throbs, balanced on neck muscles so tired they can barely hold it up anymore. The muscles in my back burn, too, and my hands twitch, cramping painfully. The repetitive action was too much for them. Three fingernails are broken, left thumb bleeding from a scissor-wound. The dark circles under my eyes are deep—deeper than usual. My hair sticks out unevenly in all directions, its texture a strange combination of stick-straight and frizzy.

I look how I feel: tired, wrung-out, bitter, and slightly manic. Diseased.

I look like Raggedy Ann with a harrowing meth addiction--complete with flat, plastic eyes. Broken.

I look how I will feel for the rest of my life. Sick.

There are worse things.

I stare at my reflection, for the moment indifferent, then curl up on my bedroom floor and fall asleep.

.

Nothing New

I’ve always loved autumn, the way it smells and how the air feels. So lightly sweet my skin seems to taste it, all clear and bright. The season feels dusted with a layer of sugar or something; or that sparkle powder that thirteen-year-olds are so fond of.
I’m still fond of it, actually. I admit I really would wear it if it weren’t so widely considered to be juvenile and tacky. Though maybe it would hardly matter; who am I fooling, pretending to no longer be either one of those things?

I like to glimpse in my mind the day when we’re all grown up together, when it’s really just “us against the world”. Could we handle it? Cause I feel like a child still; sheepish guilty face and hiding the frogs I caught behind my back, an impish grin that makes real grown-ups feel the need to supervise.

It reminds me of those panicked childhood nights when Mom would catch Abby and I awake, talking past midnight. The fear in the pit of my stomach—the palpable fear of one caught in a crime—as we whispered desperate prayers that we wouldn’t “get in trouble” the next day. We seemed to get ourselves in those situations quite frequently—elementary adrenaline-junkies.

As a child, somewhere around six or eight, when I felt adventurous, I would follow the leaves in the gutter and decide to just keep walking—to follow that curb wherever it went. I imagined it wound all around Rolland Park, through downtown Kansas City and far away. I wouldn’t get lost; all I needed to do was turn around when I wished and it would lead me right back home. I was never brave enough to make it too far around the first corner, though, so I never discovered that following the same curb would only lead me around the block. I suppose I was right about one thing, though: it would lead me back home, whatever the case.

I’m rarely right about what I think something is going to be like, or where it will take me. It’s never what you thought it was going to be and you never quite know for sure if it’s supposed to be this way or not. At least I don’t. Not until it has already been, and faded away.

Did you know beauty marks literally fade away? I thought it was just an expression, beauty marks fading; the abstract concept of growing old. It’s true though; they dissolve with time. Those perfect little moles—just glorified freckles, really—settled in exactly the right place to heighten your cheekbones; to give your eyes a little more glint in certain lights. I had one when I was a child. I’d always liked it, the saucy character I thought it gave my face, even before my grandpa told me was it was called. I was privileged to wear it until around five years ago, when I noticed it had spread out from itself, leaving nothing but a vaguely pigmented spot on my cheek.

A shape undefined is nothing.

Lately I’ve had the worst case of writer’s block, as if I’ve already said everything I have to say. I just can’t force out any more fresh ideas, or recapture the flow I had going there for a few months. With no desire to be the author of tawdry thrills and no confidence that my efforts will amount to more than this, most of what worms its way from the wrinkles of my brain never makes it’s way to paper. Surely if it is mine it’s inadequate?
I’ve had artist’s block too, whatever the name for that is. I haven’t created a new piece in months. I seem to have other blocks as well, in my thoughts and disciplines and even my emotions. Like I had this reservoir of all of it, and it’s dried up. Or like I’m treading water, moving and moving and expending my efforts and stretching, pressing myself all the time yet I don’t get anywhere; I merely stay afloat. Which I suppose is more than can be said for some people out there, so I shouldn’t be complaining.
My frustrated fingers beg to blurt that even all of the above is no newborn brain-child, just old thoughts mashed up and hammered out again like recycled paper.

There is nothing new under the sun.

There is nothing new.

There is nothing.

My hair is brushing my shoulders again for the first time in years, and I only let it because I don’t know what else to do. It’s mattering less and less as my age increases, along with the standards expected of me. Months ago I speculated on how I might be different by the time my split ends tickled my collarbone. I didn’t consider that the only changes might be the length of my life and the length of my hair.

You try to get those experiences back, the ones that seemed so exciting two, five, ten years ago. But the veil over your eyes dissipates with the passage of time and eventually the tunnel-vision is gone; that short sight that only saw the magic in Christmas and blocked from your peripheral vision the expense and stress and pine needles stuck with sap to the carpet—it will have to be cleaned up later; just try not to step in it for now.

I think there’s potential for a little less cynicism in my future, though; I see myself being rather optimistic at around fifty years old. I think every girl has a tacky old lady inside of her, just waiting to get out; just waiting to grow a size or three for the sake of seconds on home-made macaroni & cheese, just waiting to wear snowman earrings and kitty sweaters, to laugh too loudly and just not care. Until the corners of my eyes sport crows’ feet, I will feel no right to such a relaxed state of mind.

Though I often tend to be high-strung, I seem lately to be exceptionally on edge. I washed a sizable moth down the drain a few nights ago, and ten minutes later watched it crawl back up into the sink while I brushed my teeth. I’ve never minded bugs, but for some reason my skin prickled when I saw those spindly legs wriggling up from the metal-rimmed hole, as if millions of those legs were creeping all over me. It’s antennae came next, reaching toward me like fumbling, hostile arms and my fingernails bit into my palms as I clenched my fists with a shudder. In a desperate panic I snatched up my deodorant and whacked the insect back down into the plumbing. I turned the faucet on and could have provided for a thirsty third-world village with the water I wasted in attempt to drown the moth. I eyed the sink in a skittish way as I completed my bedtime routine and saw no further sign of the creature. I plugged the drain before I went to sleep though, just in case.

What is the matter with me?

Maybe it was Ambien, maybe just the interrupted feeling of winding down and being all locked up and safe in the light while the wide world is dark outside—a void to swallow those brave enough to venture off of their front porches. I love being so embedded in my home at night. I love driving at night too, though when I drive at night home feels so much further away than it does when the sun has opened up the world for me. How I enjoy the unfamiliar look of my repetitive trek, as if I were driving across the country, or winding down through it, or anywhere farfarfar away.

My dorm room here can be distressing limbo sometimes; not “home” enough to comfort me yet too consistent—too fixed and stable and here—to rally my sense of adventure. There are some nights when this in-between seems more frightening than a free-fall.

Tonight in the dorms there is crying. Maybe someone’s TV; maybe not. I can hear it echoing, some faceless anguish thrumming in the air. When I went to sleep last night my room was my own cozy nook in the hall, but now? Now it is a heavy beast, breathing as windowpane teeth suck the night air greedily from outside. The building—the beast—creaks, its old bones readjusting. I am in its belly and I can feel it roiling, threatening to expel me; to vomit me up, exposed into the city to be assaulted by great chunks of sight and sound and light and smells and the shadows with lurking things. I love the idea of the city at night, but when actually faced with it—and all alone—I’m forced to ponder the differences between adventure under streetlamps and danger in the gutter.

.

The Mushroom Life (revised)

The morning was naked and shivered with the cold of itself, in the same way it made Margaret shiver as she dressed and forgot which colors match. Blue isn’t like black or white, she thought. It isn’t a color that they say matches everything. But then they say that everything goes with blue jeans… Then she remembered that it didn’t matter. She didn’t care to impress the one person she would see today. She made a face and donned camouflage lounge pants under the tie-dye shirt she was already wearing. She looked at the clock. Nine AM. There’s no way he’s awake yet. She thought. Why should I be? She could find no motivating answer to her own question, but felt unable to fall asleep again. So she shuffled about the apartment, absentmindedly poking at menial tasks in attempt to feel productive.

She peeked in the doorway of the kitchen and thought it seemed darker beyond the threshold, though she’d flipped the light switch. Breakfast—yes, that’s what she came for. Her hand brushed over her stomach, a bit flatter with emptiness. Well, I might as well not. She wasn’t really hungry anyway. At least she didn’t want to be. What a paradox. She walked to the coffee pot. She didn’t really need breakfast. She didn’t feel like she needed much of anything these days. Food, conversation, new things or even some of the old ones. Of course, she didn’t realize that until she noticed that lately she hadn’t had any of those very often and yet she was still alive, still waking up every morning. And I only miss them a little bit. She thought. Sleep. She realized, forming in her mind a list to sum up her minimalist survival, I still need sleep. She seemed to sleep an awful lot these days. As she pondered why this could be, she forgot that time existed.

Suddenly it was noon and she was still standing by the coffee pot, staring into the neon numbers on its clock as if hypnotized.
Shaking herself from her stupor, Margaret completed her morning routine and returned to her bedroom. She sat on her bed amidst rumpled sheets, rallying her anger so she could have a good stew before he arrived. But he was late, of course, and after she decided on a properly self-righteous speech her mind began to wander again as she stared at the splintered wooden floor. The grain drew her eyes into its flow, interrupted occasionally by discolored patches left behind by previous tenants. The pattern is kind of pretty, she thought, trying not to think of exactly what might have caused the stains. Swirls and colors, like Picasso on the floor. Picasso on the floor, she thought, but Warhol in the pantry: everything organized in patches of sameness; neat lines of consistency and soup. Alpo, too, which she had micro-waved and eaten for dinner last night, too consumed with angry distraction to notice that the Campbell’s beef stew ended up in the dog’s bowl instead of her own. Oh well. She thought when she went to wash the dishes, realizing her mistake. Casper’s food is more expensive than mine anyway.

The Labrador lay curled beside her on the bed now, heat radiating from his black fur that always carried a bit of summer with it when he came in from the sunshine. Margaret felt overheated, with the dog’s warmth by her side and the sun pounding in through the window beside the bed, but she enjoyed Casper’s company too much to change the seating arrangement. She smiled, running her hand over the velvety fur of his face. She had often been teased about her close attachment to the dog, and she knew it was her own fault that the Labrador had been her only constant companion during the last few years; her only devoted source of the loyalty and unconditional love so well mimicked in the famous connection between master and beast. “He’s the Lassie to your Timmy.” Her friend Colin had once said. “The irresistible Old Yeller to your cranky, brooding hermit.”

Her hand was knocked away as Casper suddenly sat up, ears perked. The bed shook as he leapt to the floor, barks accompanying the clicks and scrapes of his claws as he skidded around the corner.

“Margie? It’s Colin. Margie, where are you?” The call came from across the apartment in a low but smooth masculine tone. Margaret stiffened, a fresh scowl puckering her pale face. This time it took no effort to rally anger. “Margaret, come on.” Uneven footsteps clunked down the hallway. “You know I know you’re in here.” Margaret didn’t answer; she knew he would appear in her bedroom doorway in a moment no matter what she said.

“Welcome back, asshole.” She ground the words from her throat the second she spied his scruffy form, Casper snuffling eagerly at his heels.

“What’s wrong with you?” Colin replied as he shrugged his threadbare jacket from his shoulders and began picking at the rough brown stitching near the collar.

“Aren’t you going to apologize for the other night?” Margaret asked with a glare befitting some heated juvenile rivalry.

“Why? What’d I do?” He tossed his jacket on the bed. Margaret kicked it onto the floor.

“You shouldn’t have brought her here.” She said flatly.

“You said I could always come here.”

“I said you could always come here, not your friends, or your girlfriends, or whatever.”

“She wasn’t my friend or my girlfriend.” Colin’s face was a mixture of defense and apology. “I was really drunk—“

“You’re drunk right now.”

“I’m not drunk. I’m hung over. There’s a big difference. Anyway, my DD ditched me so a barista gave me a lift.”

Margaret scoffed. “Yeah, a lift and a—“

Colin tossed his hand up, as if to wave away Margaret’s verbal darts. “Yeah, she came in. I know. I was drunk. I’m sorry, ok? It’ll never happen again.”

“No, it won’t. Give me my key back.” Margaret demanded.

“Margie, come on; you don’t really want that. Besides, you don’t want me driving all the way into the city when I’m hammered, do you? You know I need a place to crash. You’ve always been ok with that; why are you so pissy now?” The apology was disappearing from his face.

“Because now you’re bringing skanks into my home.”

Colin rolled his bloodshot eyes. “Just cause you’re a prude doesn’t mean everyone else has to be.”

“Having some kind of moral standard doesn’t make me a prude!” Margaret said smugly.

“Of course it’s easy for you.” The nastiness of Colin’s tone began to measure up to that of Margaret’s. “You’re not any better than me, you just never have the opportunity to show it. It’s pretty simple to maintain standards when you’re locked up here alone in your room all day, day after day after day after day—“

“Stop it, Colin!” Angry hurt registered itself on her face. “Agoraphobia is a real and debilitating psychological condition. Which you’d know if you cared enough to crack the cover of that book I gave you.”

“I didn’t have to read it.” Colin countered. “Psychological condition. You know that means its all in your head, right?”

“That doesn’t mean I can control it!”

“Maybe you could if you weren’t too proud to ask for help. Or is it just because you’re too scared to leave your apartment? Sorry, I get confused trying to figure out what’s just a personality flaw and what’s some weird tick in your brain.”

“I’m too proud? Have you ever set foot in an AA meeting?” Margaret asked as if she already knew the answer.

Colin’s head drew up in indignation. “Of course not. I’m not an alcoholic.”

A pause followed, thick with Margaret’s astonishment. “You really think you’re not an alcoholic?” She finally asked, now more concerned than sarcastic.

Colin’s eyebrows crawled toward his uneven hairline. “You really think I am?”

Margaret’s concern turned back into anger as memories of evidence supporting her accusation flooded her mind. “What?!” Her eyes narrowed. “I haven’t seen you completely sober since before we broke up junior year! You know that’s what ruined our relationship; you're always drunk or hung over!”

Colin winced.

Margaret continued without skipping a beat. “And for the past year you’ve been sulking around here all the time. When was the last time you held onto a job for more than a week? You dropped out of college, drank yourself broke, got evicted from your apartment, and now I have to tuck you into my couch almost every night! Why do you think I don’t have any booze around? I didn’t want to enable you!”

“’Enable’ me? Fine.” Colin spat. “I’ll stop cleaning your dog’s shit out of the lawn. Maybe once I quit enabling you, you’ll get evicted too!”

A moment of silence passed. “…You clean up after Casper?” Margaret’s voice was suddenly small.

“Well someone has to, and you won’t go outside. Why do you think you haven’t heard complaints from your landlord?” Colin replied, his voice still sharp.

“Why didn’t you tell me about it before?”

“Cause you never threw a fit about me crashing here before.”

Margaret looked down at folds of the off-white cotton sheets she’d wound her fingers in, her long dark hair making a curtain that blocked her profile. “Oh. Well. Thanks. Sorry.”

“Whatever.” Colin sighed. “I’m keeping the key.”

“Yeah, ok.”

In the silence that followed, Colin shuffled across the room to sit on the edge of Margaret’s bed. They sat together for several minutes in the awkward way of two shamefully prideful people who realize everything, but will admit to nothing. Margaret’s gaze got lost in the sheet’s tiny, cream-colored weave. Her gaze followed one thread in particular as it made its way through the others and out, into the rest of the fabric.

Colin broke the silence. “You really should try to get over that agora-thing.”

“Phobia.” Margaret clarified without looking up from the sheets.

“Whatever.” Colin waved away the explanation. “You should try to get it fixed. You’re missing a lot of life, festering in here.”

“I’m not festering.” Margaret groaned in exasperation and threw her head back, eyes closed. “Look, can we please not talk about this anymore?”

Colin studied Margaret for a moment before answering, his face grimly contemplative. “Ok.” He said softly. “I’m going to walk down to the general store; do you need anything?”

“I’m not an invalid.” Margaret stated shortly.

“I know, that’s not—“ Colin stopped, then sighed and shoved his fingers through his shaggy brown hair. “I was just trying to help. Bye, Margie.” He said, rising from the bed to retrieve his jacket.

“Bye.” Margaret said. A moment later, in a quiet voice, she called, “Thanks.” But Colin didn’t hear her; he had already disappeared down the hallway.

After some minutes Margaret rose from her bed to open the window. She wasn’t afraid of the world through the window. The screen blocked what would otherwise have been a hole in the wall; it held at bay those wide-open spaces that threatened to swallow her. The only time the screen was removed was when Margaret tended the flowers in the window-box, but she hadn’t done that in quite a while. Mushrooms had pushed up through the wilted flowers, boasting their creamy caps and graceful stems. They made her feel guilty when she opened the window, this fungal evidence of her neglect. She left the window open, though; she liked the sounds and the feel of fresh air on her skin. She disliked, however, the smell of sweltering July that oozed through the mesh. Humidity and heat: a recipe for decay. It put a bad taste in her mouth, like stale salt and mistakes constructed by things she didn’t do. So many things. She sighed, then called Casper down from his blanket-den on the bed, to which he’d returned during the argument.

“Come on,” Margaret said wearily. “Let’s get you some fresh air.”

~*~

When Colin let himself into Margaret’s apartment later that day, he found her at her kitchen table, crying and scribbling frantically on sheets of white paper.

“Margie, what is it?” Colin asked, rushing to her. He picked up one of the papers she seemed to be finished with. “What’s this?”

“Casper ran away!” Margaret sobbed.

“What? How?”

“I let him outside just like always but he saw another dog and ran off after it.” Margaret took a breath. “I tried to go after him but…it smelled like exhaust and I couldn’t make myself go outside so I just called and called but he didn’t come back.” She sniffed and brushed her wrist across her eyes.

“How long ago?” Colin asked.

Margaret looked at her watch. “An hour and twelve minutes.”

“I’ll go find him.” Colin stated resolutely, snatching up the “Lost Dog” flyers and turning toward the door, staggering just a little. Margaret could see the buzz he’d acquired while he’d been out.

“No, Colin.” She protested. “I’ll make some calls. You shouldn’t be wandering the streets.”

“Chill, Margie. I’m fine. I’ll find him and be back asap, you’ll see.” He insisted. “I’ll call you later.” He gave her shoulder a quick squeeze and left her staring after him, unintentionally studying the tacky taupe paint peeling from the door which he’d slammed shut, the sound knocking back her feeble “Thank you.”

~*~

Through pacing and praying, Margaret managed to calm herself somewhat in the three hours that followed. She knew she was reacting rather severely to the flight of a pet, but it was her pet, her Casper. She thought of his black form bounding over ten years of memories. From his sharp puppy teeth to a frost of gray around his snuffling muzzle; from her awkward girlhood to reserved young adult life; from hours of fetch to arthritic hips; from walks in the woods to afternoons in easy chairs. From place to place, adventure to fear, one year to the next; from sorrow to song and back again. A warm black softness always at her feet; her puppy who trusted her unfailingly.

She remembered the day he became hers. “You watch this little guy, sweetie.” Her father had said the day the cancer finally took him. He winked, weakly bundling the clumsy puppy into Margaret’s chubby child arms. “That there’s my prize pup, from the best hunting stock in all the Midwest. I need you to take real good care of him for me, ok sugar? I might not be around to make sure he’s cuddled real good, or got a good bed to sleep on and a playmate, and plenty of biscuits. You’ll do that for me, won’t you Margie?”

Tears began to well up in Margaret’s eyes again as she thought of how she’d failed both of them now; where Casper was and what is he doing, and is he scared and why suddenly in his absence did she feel claustrophobic when normally small spaces were what she craved? If only she’d brought herself to run outside after him…

She jumped at the intrusive ring of the telephone.

“Margie…” Colin rasped over the line. She could hear traffic noise in the background; sirens and honking car horns. He must be calling from that old crusty payphone by the intersection, all the way downtown. “I’m sorry Margie, I’ve looked everywhere. I’m so sorry. I’ll keep looking but—“

“No,” Margaret cut him off, condensing her voice into a reasonably stable stream. “No, it’s ok. Don’t apologize; it’s not your fault. Go flirt with a waitress; I’ll look into putting an ad in the paper.”

The traffic babbled to her during Colin’s pause. Then he chuckled dryly. “You know me well.” He said, a head-shake in his voice. “See ya.” He hung up before Margaret could reply.

“Thank you.” She murmured to the now-deaf receiver, wondering why she was never quite quick enough with those two words.

~*~

The bump on the other side of the wall might not have woken Margaret if Casper had been there to fill the room with the comforting sound of his breathing, but in this new silence the noise jerked her from the depths of REM. She sat up in bed and then froze, listening. There it was again, like a tumbling against the wall just outside the apartment. Her heart pounding, Margaret rose from her bed and crept to her door. Closing one eye and standing on her tip-toes, Margaret pushed her open eye close to the peephole. There was Colin, his sprawled body warped by the fish-eye lens, his hand clasped around the neck of a bottle covered in a brown paper bag. A cough expelled itself, followed by shallow breaths.

Margaret’s jaw clenched. Frustration and disgust welled up in her chest and threatened to fill her, until she saw two more bottles and an empty sandwich wrapper on the ground. He’d been sitting out there for a while, she realized, waiting for her to wake with the morning. The anger seemed to seep out of her toes then, deflating her. She opened the door and looked at him, there against the wall in the corridor, and she ached. Her body ached, her heart ached; he looked so, so tired. He was only twenty-three and already worry-lines were beginning to settle themselves along his brow, just visible through the thatch of hair that had fallen over his face. Silently Margaret bent down and helped the semi-conscious Colin to his feet, and they stumbled inside where he fell forward across her bed.

“I didn’t flirt with any waitresses, Margie.” He slurred into the covers.

“Shh, I know.” Margaret said soothingly.

“I kept looking…then I bought some…some stuff…then I came here…” His mumbling was barely distinguishable. “Sorry, Margie…”

“Hush, it’s ok.” She said as the ache in her heart increased. She busied herself repositioning her friend’s limbs to fit his entire lanky form on the bed. “Thank you.” She tried to say it in time, but Colin was already snoring.

~*~

Moonlight spilled cool and white through the window, illuminating Colin as he finally began to wake up. He groaned and dragged himself up onto one elbow, disoriented. He glanced around trying to figure out where he was. He wasn’t too worried, though; he’d woken up in far worse places than a soft bed. He heard Margaret before he saw her, sitting on the floor, her back against the dresser next to the bed. She was humming quietly, some tune Colin didn’t recognize. She appeared to be staring out the window, but her gaze was absently focused on the space in between; some nothingness in the middle-distance.

“This sucks.” She said flatly, having heard him shifting on the bed. “And it’s going to keep sucking because I never change anything and nothing is changing around me.” Then she thought of her missing Casper. “Nothing good, at least.” She amended.

“Yeah, looks that way.” Colin grunted, pushing himself into a seated position. Margaret looked around at him, mildly surprised that he didn’t try to talk her out of this cynicism.

“Thanks.” She finally managed to say to him, looking back toward the window.

“For what?” Colin asked.

“For not trying to convince me that things will get better. I hate that; people making guarantees that don’t exist and making predictions they know nothing about. I mean, no one can make promises like that. Why do they keep saying it?”

“I dunno.” Colin shrugged. “I’ve always thought that was just a band-aid myself.” He rolled onto his stomach, propping his aching head up on his hands. “But I have to say Margie, you think this stuff is so big, and it doesn’t have to be. Not if you don’t make such a huge deal out of it. So I drink too much. So you stay inside. So what? We’re only hurting ourselves, so what does it matter, if that’s how we want to live? Besides, I’m too tired to change things up. It’s just not in me, Margie. This stuff is home, you know? Crappy as it may be, it’s home.”

“But this isn’t how I want to live.” Margaret sighed. “Well, it is I guess. But it’s not how I want to want to live. I need things, and I hate that. I wouldn’t mind having nothing, if I didn’t need things. I don’t want to live like that, needing so much and only having half.” She thought of all the things she hadn’t realized she truly needed until now, so much more than only sleep: Casper, small spaces, help…and Colin. “I don’t want that for me.” She took a breath. “And I don’t want it for you, either.” She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. “I know all we ever do is fight, but I don’t like seeing you like this.”

“You think I like seeing you how you are?” Colin chuckled dryly. “I bet it hurts me more than it hurts you, kid.”

“So we’re not just hurting ourselves?” Margaret asked with a wry smile.

“No.” Colin wasn’t smiling. “No, I guess not.”

Silence stretched for a long while then, and soon Colin’s snoring began to punctuate the air. Margaret’s thoughts unwound like kite string. The moon was high, it’s angle causing the silvery light from her window to stretch in warped rectangles across her floor. She sat for a while, just breathing. Her eyes followed the ribbon-like shadow of a pane, her focus dipping up and down with it as it trickled over the wrinkles in the dirty laundry she’d neglected to put in the hamper. It led her gaze to the base of the window, where she again spied the flowerbox just outside. She couldn’t decide if the dim lighting made dead flowers look better or worse. The mushrooms in the window box seemed to glow in the moonlight, though.

I never wanted this. She thought, glancing back toward Colin and then down at her own hands. Who would want this?

On sudden impulse, she rose and walked to the open window. She pressed her palm to the screen, feeling the night air through the mesh. Would it really be so bad to expose her hand—just her hand—to the outside? After all, she still had the walls all around and the ceiling above, the floor below. Margaret focused on these defenses, anchoring herself in the safety of the small space. She took a breath and wrestled the screen from the sill. Reaching her hand out into the still air, Margaret slowly spread her fingers, then let the moonlight slip between them as they curled into a fist then opened again.

She plucked one of the fungi from the flower box, holding it up for her eyes to slide in and out of the feather-like grooves on the underside of the cap. Accidents. She thought, wondering at how anything at all could grow in that box she never touched. They’re accidents. They weren’t cared for, pruned or watered. They weren’t purposefully planted in tilled, nourished soil. They just grew; they are just growing. What do they need but a surface to stand on? She wondered. What helps them live except to be left alone? They grew in her pitiful excuse for a garden when nothing else would. How convenient. She thought. It’s when they’re neglected that they thrive. She popped the cap from the stem with her thumb and crushed it’s foamy flesh between her fingers. That’s what I need. Margaret sighed. A mushroom life.

She replaced the screen—-she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving that hole gaping in the wall—-and curled up on the foot of her bed, next to Colin but not touching him. He smelled like scotch and gasoline, and a little like wet dog. The latter scent made Margaret’s heart plunge, thinking of her Casper alone somewhere in the shadows of the city. Tears began to trickle from her eyes, increasing to a steady flow over the bridge of her nose and across her face to her temple. They dripped onto the sheets, wetly beating the guilty rhythm of her powerlessness.

.

Moonfire

I have many stories from ages three to fourteen that make me want to cover my face with my hands and groan, “What was wrong with me?”. The only comforting word in there is “was”, which I suppose is a perk of growing up. Not that I don’t have things wrong with me now, but at least they’re different things than when I was younger.

There are a lot of things I secretly wish I could have carried over from those days, though, such as the ability to be swept up in laughably romantic notions. For example, I was once convinced that there was a supernatural aura surrounding a stray cat that showed up in my yard. I thought he was magical, like the totem animals spoken of in ancient Native American legends; the Spirit Helpers. I was more than old enough to know better, but my head was so far up in the clouds I didn’t care what was logical or what was completely insane. I was thirteen years old, full of angst, unrequited infatuation, and silly trouble; grounded for six months and bursting with drama.

I named him Moonfire. The first time he came was on a winter night, so cold, cold, shivering cold but the ground was snowless. The stars seemed especially clear; I could see the silken folds of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, as if an angel had dropped her gauzy scarf and there it lay for me to take if I could just reach high enough.

I would wait on the porch for him every night, armed with a bowl of Fancy Feast to entice the feral tomcat. He was mostly black, with a white stripe down his nose like the trail of a meteor that continued down his chest and belly, all the way to his paws. I could always make out his eyes first—huge green eyes like emeralds set deep in jet. It was a full week of cold nights on the porch before he would let me stroke his back while he set hungrily upon the canned cat food. He had an exceptionally large bone structure for a cat, but he was too thin and I could see the slight shadows of his ribcage in the porch light. He wore a pink flee collar; he belonged to someone. Someone who wasn’t taking proper care of him, I decided, and was filled with righteous anger at the negligent owners.

I begged my parents to let me keep him—to make him an “official” pet—but my mother said, “No, he has a collar. He’s someone else’s cat.”

So one night as ran my hand softly over the back of Moonfire’s neck, I very slowly removed the collar. If it was absent and his owners didn’t get him a new one, I figured, I could talk Mom into letting him join the furry portion of our family. I hid the collar upstairs in my bag of treasures, where I kept knick-knacks I felt like I probably wasn’t supposed to have. Just harmless things, really: a list of current crushes, manga comic books that contained cusswords, a burned copy of an Evanescence album that my parents had told me not to buy.

And now the stolen flee collar of a maybe, somewhat “stolen” cat. This is a confession that I have, up until now, only made to two people. Eight years later I still feel quite guilty about it. He stayed around my house of his own accord though, so I suppose it wasn’t technically “theft”. And maybe the owners simply dumped him out here in the country and didn’t want him anymore anyway. (Please allow me these rationalizations to ease my shame).

A few weeks passed and he would curl up in my lap, but only if I stayed very still. Determined to make him adore me, I tirelessly continued porch-sitting.

Then one day, I saw bloody paw prints in the fresh snow. I followed them and found Moonfire huddled in a corner between two walls of the house, a pitiful bundle of fuzz, ears flat and tense with pain. Though I hated to scare him, and though I subjected my arms to a thatch of scratches, I caught him and convinced my parents to take him to the vet. The doctor said it appeared as if his paws—all four of them—had somehow been badly burned. After having the peeled-away skin stitched over the wounds, he was sent home with us, wrapped in bandages like little purple boots.

Every day for the following weeks, with my mother’s help, I bathed his paws in iodine and replaced the bandages. Moonfire struggled, complaining loudly and scratching, as if determined to make us bleed as much as he had.

I thought surely he would run away after this ordeal, but to my surprise he not only ventured more frequently near the house, but also he was no longer afraid of me. He would come running to the porch for his dinner and purr as I held him wrapped in my arms.

Eventually he grew to love my whole family and any guests that happened by, becoming our most annoyingly social cat. He was introduced to the inside of the house and became accustomed to sofas, pillows, and warm laps. I loved holding him when I lay on the couch, his big paws settled on my chest and his wide head pushing up under my chin. He purred like a motorboat, stole food from our forks, and stuck like glue to the nearest warm body.

My magic cat died about a month ago, a brain tumor that slowly paralyzed him. I held him in my lap as long as I could and cried into his soft black fur, though it made my nose itch. His big green eyes were as bright as ever, and his purr still rumbled when anyone petted him. But when he could no longer walk I had to let him go, and I whispered to him in the vet’s office as he was put to sleep.

That night I unzipped my dusty bag of mischief and retrieved the stolen flee collar. I held it for awhile, smiling just a little. Tucking the collar back into its pouch, I realized I now had another rather shameful confession: as I weighed in my mind the insane, criminal acquisition of my magic Moonfire against the years enriched by his endearing presence, I knew it was worth it to me.

.

To Feed a Snake

.
It's time to cry

About anything

At all.

About the dead rat

Resting

In my hands.

Once-bright eyes,

Once-twitching nose;

Now eerie stillness...

Poor little rat.


.

Lines, Diffused

I love the smell of mediocre hotels. The chlorine and second-hand smoke seeping from the carpet; cleaning solvent and cheap coffee. It’s limbo, it’s suspension. It’s nowhere-home. It makes you like a turtle: you are forced to be your own home.
I wonder if turtles get tired though, having to carry their shelter everywhere so predators can’t get at their soft underbellies; their long, fragile throats. Though I know it is ridiculous, it seems to me that they might also get claustrophobic, with that cumbersome defense mechanism always surrounding them. It keeps them safe, though, and I suppose that’s all that matters.

When you shake it down, isn’t that all that matters to anyone? Seeking protection from something. Even the daredevils, the show-offs, the adrenaline junkies—all those who appear to be looking for danger. Even they have something that drives them, something beyond desire. Whether they are conscious of it or not, they’re afraid of what it might be like if the fulfillment of that desire remained absent. Those far from their shell are running from a life trapped inside; those closed up between the walls have run from exposure to the wide world. I know—I’ve been both places.

No matter what you pursue, you must admit you’re fleeing the opposite.

Sometimes they feel like the same thing to me—the pursuit and its opposing force—or so nearly the same that I am running toward and away from both of them simultaneously. It’s hard not to lose myself in all the floating; all the in-between. Often it seems that someone extracted my brain and wrapped it in cotton before stuffing it back down into my skull. It’s hard to focus, to make decisions, to form coherent thought, to remember.

I crave clarity; a bright image, a sharp thought. I give myself headaches sometimes, because I unconsciously clench my jaw as I attempt to decipher the wrinkles in my brain. But my thoughts come like static shocks from a hot, heavy blanket just out of the dryer. My mind feels thick and overheated, while little random thoughts shoot off, there and gone again before I can identify them and they keep going from all directions until I can hardly tell the practical from the naïve.

I crave a moment like the crack of a gun: startling, indisputable and confident of some result. I want to slam into the destination along with the bullet discharged—the sure, hard-edged bullet that sparkles in the sun, so bright you’d hardly mind dying by it if it meant that that glittering shard could become part of you. Like it would shine out from inside you, and by it’s glory you too would become glorious.

But instead I feel spread out, like milk spilled on the living room floor. Just a thin layer soaking into the carpet, existing in a big, inconvenient space yet barely existing at all. And no longer full of the potential it once had to be useful; to nourish someone’s bones, to help make someone—anyone—a little stronger.

I feel as if I once had a shape, some detailed definition, and maybe I still vaguely resemble it but it’s bled out of and into itself, like ink on wet paper.

I feel like a series of lines, diffused.

When I don’t know what else to do-—directionless and dazed-—I go out by the pond, even now in this heat that pounds pounds pounds my head and sticks my clothes to me with sweat; even fogs my glasses. Still, I go, and on the way there are wildflowers. I pick them—-because I can’t seem to be able to simply leave beauty alone; I must capture it, be in it, do something with it—-and lay them beside me as I sit on the bank. I am thinking about God, I think, and His grace versus my unworthiness; the constant battle in my heart to come joyously into His presence when I know I don’t deserve to be there. It is a classic debate for me; ironically my pride will not let me shed the shame. I try for the millionth time to rearrange my thoughts or soul or heart or whatever needs to be reordered, and I slowly toss the flowers, one by one, into the pond. Most of them are the white and purple clover blooms, but some are dainty sprays of tiny yellow blossoms and occasionally one or two of those limp, lovely flowers—blue and white—that I find crawling across the ground sometimes. They land lightly on the water, seeming to both glide on and stick to the surface at the same time. Brief, swift little ripples thrum out from each sprig as it alights softly on the water. They’ve all gone voyaging now, and as the wind blows them slowly towards the opposite bank I expected them to look like a fleet of little petal-boats. But instead they seem more like a group of living creatures clustered close to one another for protection; floral herds gone to mingle with the cattails.

It isn’t quite elegant, the sight of this colored foliage-circle floating over the water. If they were all the same color-—white, maybe-—or if they made a different shape, perhaps then they could lend a graceful air to my common backyard pond. But something about their bright span of colors and varying shapes, all arranged in what is really more of an oval, they seem more ‘playful’ than ‘elegant’; more whimsical than beautiful.
But in the playful whimsy there is indeed beauty, just not the same kind as is usually labeled with the term. Then sun has begun set and the water beneath the blossoms is orange, pink and gold; it is all very surreal and it makes this feeling well up inside me; a feeling that if I were to call my dog and run away into the woods we could find Narnia, or someplace where the snow isn’t cold. The feeling—and the sight that gives me the feeling—is so overpowering, like magic is about to happen. I am mesmerized, just watching colors sailing over more colors, blue pushing orange out of its way, the orange turning from pink to red to yellow; green reflections from stems and leaves.

I wish I had my camera, or paints and a canvass, and I want to run inside and get them but I don’t want to stop watching. I feel vaguely panicked, knowing that these moments will end without me having captured them, but I make myself relax; let myself be drawn in. Right here, right now; nowhere else, and it’s ok that this won’t be preserved; that I didn’t get the perfect photograph.
Sometimes it needs to be enough just that it happened, just that it was.

In those moments, it doesn’t seem to matter that I am spread out and shapeless. I’m neither pursuing nor fleeing; I’m taken out of myself.

Thank God for that, because “I” can become an exhausting word.


.

Futile Defenses

We, barefooted little girls,
One with straight locks, one with curls,
Wandered gravel roads so long
Thinking it would make us strong.

We calloused soft skin of our feet
So nothing hurt from underneath,
As if the worst in store for us
Was rock and bramble, thorny brush.

Now pebbles stuck inside my shoe
Always make me think of you.
Perhaps we should have tried as hard
To toughen up our childish hearts.

.

Purple Prose of Horses

The literary greats have contended—-God Himself contends—-the exceptional combination of majestic grace, fire, and power that resides in the sinews of a horse; pulses through his veins and burns in his eyes. In Homer’s Iliad, they are said to be “immortal…of divine stock.” Indeed, the black stallion Bucephalus lives on in the city Alexander the Great named for him.

Muslims honor the equine species many times in the Qu’ran, once quoting Allah’s words, “When God created the horse, he said to the magnificent creature: ‘I have made thee as no other. All the treasures of the earth lie between thy eyes. Thou shalt carry my friends upon thy back. Thy saddle shall be the seat of prayers to me.’”

People of all histories and faiths can agree that there is something special-—almost sacred or mystical-—about these animals that have caused humans to honor them all throughout history, in reality and in myth.
The mighty Prince Hector of Troy was reverently referred to in The Iliad as “Tamer of Horses”, and only those who have spent enough years mingling with these magnificent creatures know how high such a title is; how rare and fierce and kingly.

“A man on a horse is spiritually as well as physically bigger than a man on foot.” Said John Steinback, trying to put into words the empowering ecstasy one instantly finds upon mounting one of these creatures. In another attempt to capture the feeling, William Faulkner wrote, “There is something about jumping a horse over a fence, something that makes you feel good. Perhaps it’s the risk, the gamble. In any event it’s a thing I need.”

It’s a thing I need.

You do not know a certain kind of “raw power” until you have ridden bareback on a partially-green horse as he thunders over the ground, rhythmically surging beneath you, lounging violently with every stride in rebellion against the bridle. He launches his hind hooves up into the air in a buck bursting forth from pent-up energy and you have to throw your body backwards while keeping your fingers tightly entwined in his mane, the locks of coarse hair constricting your fingers. You must lock your legs around his middle until your inner thighs burn; heels down, toes up and feel the jerk of his movements rack your body, threatening balance to the last.

You don’t know an enthralling meaning of the word “thrill” until you’ve barreled over a distance, thighs aching from their grip on a horse’s ribcage and muscles as they swell and retract, flexing and sliding beneath his thin skin and silky coat; the vibrations as each hoof pounds the ground. The speed whips back your hair; it makes your eyes water. Your fingers may grip reins, but it is only an illusion of control. Because, at any moment this powerful beast-—this 1500lbs of compact muscle—-could send you flying from his back if he chooses, in a single movement: a buck or a swift turn; a sudden spook at the way the light reflects on a piece of plastic, or shying at his own shadow like the untamed Bucephalus.

“Have you given the horse his strength? Have you clothed his neck with thunder? Can you frighten him like a locust? His majestic snorting strikes terror. He paws the valley, and rejoices in his strength. He gallops into the clash of arms. He mocks fear, and is not frightened; nor does he turn back from the sword. The quiver rattles against him, the glittering spear and the javelin. He devours the distance with fierceness and rage; nor does he come to a halt because the trumpet has sounded.” –Job 39:19-24

You are riding the static shock from God’s finger that crackles when He touches the earth. That is what it’s like to ride a horse; a huge animal with a wild nature and a mind of its own, allowing you to cling to its back as it runs.

“A gigantic beauty of a stallion,” Says Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, “fresh and responsive to my caresses, head high in the forehead, wide between the ears, limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground, eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving. His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him, his well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return.”

To ride a horse is to play with a loaded gun; to risk catching on the bullet that discharges. The beautiful, majestic bullet that sparkles in the sun, so bright you’d hardly mind dying by it if it meant that glittering shard could become part of you. Like it would shine out from inside you, and by it’s glory you too would become glorious. Herman Melville saw this and said, “Honor lies in the mane of a horse.”

You feel as if your heart might swell too large for your chest in those moments as you straddle Chaos itself. In fear—-there is some—-and in determination; in pride half borrowed from the creature, half provided by the courage you know it takes to even try wrestling the beast into submission. In admiration of the animal, and in love for the bond between you; the titanium comradery when your natures have finally synced and you find your jigsaw-fit. Like a puzzle, and every fiber of your being can tell this was what you were meant for. Anything could come and the two of you would face it unflinching—you emboldened by the horse’s strength, and him made confident by having learned to trust in your superior wisdom. And if nothing comes—if the ride goes as expected—there is such sweet harmony in bodies and in consciences, as if both your veins and his have poked through skin and entwined together; as if you share the same blood.

Astride such a comrade as this, how can all the world be anything but a vast, conquerable beauty, visible there between the ears of your friend? How can a breeze sound like anything but sweet whispers ghosting through his flowing mane and tail?

“When I bestride him, I soar; I am a hawk: he trots the air, the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.” –William Shakespeare.


.

Something About Airplanes...

I’ve said before that, if I were brave enough to be a stranger person, I would spend more time in airports. I would be content to just wander them, people-watching. The smell of cheap coffee, the bustle, and there's something about those automated loudspeaker announcements I find so industrial yet somehow comforting. I love to fly in the airplanes, too; I love the whole process of travel, as exhausting as it is. When I travel I wear my “alone-smile”, an expression so rare that no one has ever seen it but whatever passing stranger happens to glimpse me. Not even I have seen that smile; I’ve never been able to catch it in the mirror.


My dad had adamantly insisted that I choose an aisle seat, and usually I would follow his advice but this time I timidly rely on my own judgment: a window seat. Why doesn’t everyone stare rapt out their windows for the entire flight? I love the view below, no matter if it’s clouds or the camouflage-like patches of land viewed from above. Take-off is the best part, rushing rushing fasterfasterfaster and whoosh as resistance changes from cement to air and the upward tilt of the plane that pushes you to the back of your seat. Then, in a window seat, you can watch things get smaller and smaller; buildings, city blocks, interwoven highways. It goes from an engulfing, inhabited reality to a child’s model in the space of minutes, finally ending with nothing but flat shapes that make it seem as if the plane flies over some intricately painted floor only yards below. It’s funny, that trick on the vision. Even though I know the world down there is three-dimensional—with depth and volume and contents—from this high up all I see is a flat patchwork floor cluttered with clouds that seem to rest on it like celestial dust-bunnies. I try but I just can’t see the jagged lines of my earth from such great heights. I love it, the change in perception. I imagine myself walking on that flat floor, changing dimensions and becoming flat myself; a paper-girl whose heart is forced to beat sideways like A Wrinkle in Time. Why aren’t people fighting for window seats? I hope I never stop smiling like a child as I stare outside.

My lovely window seat is by an emergency exit. A stewardess approaches; apparently a little extra leg-room comes with a solemn responsibility. She starts explaining, then requiring a response; a promise. To sit here I must agree to assist passengers as they exit the plane in case of emergency. Am I willing and able to assist? I want to say, “I’m not sure; ask me when we’re plummeting from 50,000 feet,” but I just say “yes” along with the people near me and stare at the doors, trying to figure out how to open them. I wish I’d asked to be reseated; this is too much responsibility. It’s too late now, though; she’s a long way down the aisle.


In case of emergency. What would I do in the case of emergency? I can see it happening, the crash. I can see myself actually being rather calm. I’m alone, here on this plane bound from Kansas City to Dallas; no one I love is nearby. So I don’t think I’d scream. What would be the use of screaming? Of that sharp dread in my stomach? What would be the use in doing anything but letting the plane fall? In the rumbling tumbling turbulence I think the only thing I would do is stare at the gas masks falling from the ceiling, the beeping noises signaling emergency fading into the back of my dissociated mind.
It isn’t that I wouldn’t care; it would mean I am in the company of the dying. It isn’t only my life. And I do have many things I want to do before I die. But absent from the body is present with my Lord, and death-by-plane-crash would be quick so I suppose I’d be alright with it. Except for everyone else’s panic; their crying and screaming. I think my attitude would be, “Can’t you just be quiet and let me process this?” I would want quiet so that I could think. To give myself a chance to really know that I am in an airplane about to crash, and figure out how exactly that makes me feel. To mentally prepare myself for the impact. To exchange a few quick words with God. To appreciate the novelty of the event.


Soon, I’m distracted from these speculations by my fellow passengers. Planes are wonderful for people watching. Better than airports or malls even, because you have extended periods of time to make observations. There’s a bald man in front of me. I want to draw on his head. Somehow it vaguely annoys me, his shiny scalp beneath the artificial lighting. Skin shouldn’t be so shiny; it isn’t natural.

Next to me is a fat lady reading a drama novel. Her hair is short and curly, but the ringlets are too perfectly uniform—-she must have had a perm. Her pale skin is freckled, and the freckles match the brown scrubs she’s wearing. Wedding rings sit nestled in flesh around her chubby finger. Her double chin jiggles in the turbulence. The title of her book, “Poor Little Bitch Girl”, features the petite nose and florescent pink lips of a blond woman licking caviar from the tip of her long, perfectly manicured fingernail. The cover is all bright pink and green. One of those soap opera-esque drama novels, those books that are like cotton candy: insubstantially sweet and easy to finish, but ultimately unfulfilling.

There is also an elderly Indian gentleman nearby, staring at me. I smile at him when I meet his gaze. I see that it isn’t a “creepy” sort of stare. It is soft and wistful, not fully present; as if I remind him of a granddaughter he hasn’t seen in a long time and he’s remembering her—missing her. Then the stewardess mistakes my coffee order for his, and we exchange drinks. I smile warmly at him—far more friendliness than a complete stranger usually gets from me—as we make a joke or two about cream, sugar or black.


Yes, I do love to people-watch on airplanes. There are other things too, though; things besides the people and the window seats. I love the knowledge of such swift motion, while it feels as though we are still. We are going somewhere; we have a purpose. A destination, albeit temporary. Flying into a different time zone—one that is an hour later—is even better. It’s as if we’ve flown through some portal in the atmosphere and suddenly, time has passed.


I like when time passes quickly, in general. I like forgetting time and then realizing much more of it is gone than I’d thought. There are times I wish that it would slow down or even stop, but those instances are few and far between. Mostly I want time to pass so that I can get on with it; get going so I can feel as though I’m moving on.

I like sleeping late because it makes the days go by faster. It’s not that I don’t want to live in the days—I do. There is so much to do and love and see and learn and feel; to say, to pray, and even to hate sometimes. It’s not that I don’t want to experience the richness each day has potential for. I just like the feeling of motion; of the passage of time toward something. I’ve not been fond of sitting still lately, nor am I fond of Time sitting still around me, growing fat and bloated with seconds and minutes and hours that keep coming but then stay just to hang stale in the air and it’s only Wednesday.

But, oh, it’s already Wednesday. I suppose I have mixed feelings about the passage of time. It passes though, no matter how I feel about it. None of us can help it that every second of our existence is a step toward the end of our time—our time passing through us. We hurry up and live, and do things, all the while knowing. Maybe that’s why weddings and funerals share a number of similarities. Both are so sacred, so final; and you aren’t supposed to wear white to either event.


No matter what time brings, at least it is moving. It is moving through me, and in it I live and breathe and move move move forward. Because as much as I hate it when time stands still around me, I also hate being still myself.

I was in this rich lady’s house once, and my mother told me that the woman who lived there only had a job because she was bored; that they already had all the money they needed and more. I wouldn’t want to live like that; I wouldn’t want to have reached the destination. I want to always be working towards something; always moving forward. For this reason…ultimately I’m not sure I want a place to call home.


I’m sure this is a prominent way of explaining my fondness for airports and airplanes. They are for going places; they are for forward motion and procedure. They are for flight at breakneck speeds. They are for leaving one place, and arriving at another. They are for journeys of purpose; they are the means to an end.

As of now, I hope to never reach that end. I hope to fly always, only alighting long enough get all I can out of one place. Then I would leave again, flying always to somewhere that is not where I will stay. I’m afraid that if I do reach somewhere to stay—if I do reach that end and cease to make use of the means that so intrigue me—I will just look around and think, “This is it, I guess.” Maybe after a silent spell I would stand there and say, “Now what?”

And hopefully, my answer to myself would be, “To the airport”.


.

My Two Hands, Insufficient

Had all been born but me
With arms and hands in threes,
Oh, how cheated would I seem
With only two?

Would I feel myself deprived
Of the limb I was denied,
When the two of mine combined
Yield nothing new?

Though they will suffice
For what must be done in life,
A sting is always in the bite
Of things undone.

Oh how hard it is to be
The one with two when most have three,
But two can sufficiently
Tend those with one.
.
.

Castaway

.


As a castaway on
A cold night at sea
Urinates
On himself,
Choosing
Momentary warmth
In spite of a
Burning, chafing
Future—
Whether in ignorance
Or
A lack of discipline—
So too do we choose
A luxurious today
Above
A fulfilling tomorrow.


.

Silly Little Girl

B.H. Fairchild wrote this poem called “Rave On”. It was about some teenage boys who fixed up these junky cars and sped them down the road and off the side, intentionally flipping the vehicles at maximum speed just to see if they’d come out alive.

I think I need to do something like that. Maybe not quite so dramatic—I’m not that mentally unstable (yet)—but something similar regarding broader concepts of life.

I used to think that I wanted to crash my metaphorical car without thinking; just do it on impulse. But I changed my mind. Now I think I want to fully understand the potential consequences—the possibility of shattered bones and twisted metal, of scorching flames and brassy blood and explosions spattering my shiny pinkish insides everywhere—and do it anyway.


Maybe it’s the way the summer air tastes, like mistakes and last year’s salt; maybe it’s how lately it seems the sun must run a gauntlet of clouds just to show its face to the day.

Still, I suppose it’s warmer than it was a few months ago and I’m glad of that. Of course, I knew this time would come again. I knew when the cold was so bitter as to draw tears from my eyes that someday I would walk with my face in the sun again. I knew spring would come, then summer. It was a secret, and I hardly believed it myself, but somewhere inside I just knew. It’s what made the cold bearable, knowing it would end.

Yes, things often end.

Sometimes to me, like the bones of birds, it feels so fragile.

That fact makes space for hope in the bad times.

As if, touched by anything except the air we share, it may fracture.

But it also makes space for fear when things are good.

Is it my fear or is it prophecy?

Maybe I’m too cynical.

Dear God, I pray it’s just me.

Silly little girl.

Could cynicism be sanity?


It’s not just me. It’s a dog-bite scar, it’s a bucket list; it’s blood on your guitar strings and a tin-bright day that puts spots in your eyes. It’s almost a year since my dog died; it’s dust gathering on things I had such big plans for. It’s time…it’s time for something.

It’s time to give my hands a break. They hurt, my hands do, and my wrists—they crackle when I move them—but I can’t stop twisting my hair. I just keep curling sections round and round my fingers until they’re wound tight up against my scalp. It’s time to give my hands a break but the second my hands have nothing else to do they’re up there again, tangled in the locks.


It’s time to cry a little, about anything at all, about the dead rat in my hands. Soft fur and brisk whiskers and eyes shut tight, as if fearfully resigned to its fate as snake-meal. Eerie stillness; poor little rat. Poor little nose that used to twitch at curious smells, poor little eyes that were bright once, poor little head that went bang bang bang on the edge of a pet store counter.

But poor little snake tummy, painfully empty; poor creature who didn’t choose to be carnivorous and cold. Poor little Gypsy who I love, Gypsy and her coiling hugs; her glass-smooth scales sliding against my skin; I love the way she hides her head beneath my chin when she’s frightened and tickles my ear with her flickering black tongue.

But to kill for her life; I don’t like that.

But what is one to do? How is one to choose? After all, Eve empathized with a snake. She made a choice, and then let nature take its course.

Did she cry a bit? Silly little girl.




.

C'est la Vie (Such is Life)

I wish it was as easy as ipecac syrup; that I could vomit it up from me, if it's there at all. I wish there was some effective way to purge myself—three times at least—just to make sure. Just in case. I’ve read some symptoms of your parasitic phenomenon and I'm watching for them in myself, praying that none present. The possibility of you—the very thought—left me curled up tight, freezing under layers and layers; I couldn’t stay on my feet from the shaking like withdrawal from I don’t know what. They’re like bad medicine, those thoughts; a steady drip of dread administered intravenously, slowly building until the knots in my stomach tear me apart.


I pray for a purge
And I must concede
That I hope you are not,
Or that you cease to be.


There are worse things.
But oh dear God, please not for me.


The bright baubles of easy solution dangle before me but it burns to look. It burns that they are there at all. I am like an ant under a magnifying glass, writhing in the light of their implications.

I realize now that I’m not as grown up as I thought I was. And that I don’t want to be. But I need to be.


It was stupid stupid stupid and I should have learned my lesson the first time, but no, this is me we're talking about here. Everyone who knows me well knows that I learn best from my own mistakes, but I thought I never made the same mistake twice. Apparently, I do. And I just cannot go through this same cycle all over again.


So I fall, skinning my knees on the ground before my God; I am Judas in the guise of a twenty-year-old girl. Because not one hour after a prayer for forgiveness was reverently dedicated, I took advantage of His precious grace. But unlike Judas, I’m praying praying praying that He will spare me the consequences, and that I will be able to go on without some kind of noose tight around my throat.


There is so much change happening now--or about to happen--change I didn’t expect, and yet the other day it was still so cold when the weather is supposed to be getting warmer. The things that are supposed to be changing aren’t, while chunks of my world’s crust begin to shift again in bittersweet earthquakes beneath my feet.

Some things make my heart absolutely ache with how much I’ll miss them; the gaping cracks they’ll leave in my foundation.


Since I was born I stumbled clumsily after you, my stuffed tiger in my arms most of the way. We were lucky then, you and I: shouting gibberish from the swing set, chasing the dogs to get our shoes back and that time you taught me the difference between praying and accepting Jesus Christ into my heart when I was four.

How we got so bored by the lack of color after we sneaked downstairs to watch “grown-up” movies, hidden behind the couch where our parents sat. We went back upstairs instead, listening to our “Your Story Hour” cassette tapes and I slept on your floor that night because one of the stories scared me; the one where the man on the iceberg kills his dog.

When we had tea parties, we never had to fight over the last chocolate-chip scone because Mom would always make an even number, splitting them up so everything was “fair”. I would drown mine in chocolate syrup, and then feel so childish when you were satisfied with just a drizzle.

When you learned to play guitar, you played all my favorite songs and I’d sing along. I loved our duets, and I know you enjoyed them too but I think I loved them more. I would have sung with you every day. I would still sing with you, if we were now as we once were, when almost every night you’d sit on the foot of my bed and we’d talk into the wee hours.

You were always what I hoped I’d measure up to in some way; you were always who I wish I’d gotten to spend more quality time with.

I know you’ll be happy; after all, you’re right on the path I predicted over a year ago. I see where you’re going and it looks fulfilling for you, and I'm glad. The only problem there is the word “going”. “Going” is the opposite of “staying”, and frankly I’m not cool with that.


And then there's me, going instead of staying; there’s this place and all the people in it. I wish I’d known much earlier that I wouldn’t be coming back here. I wish I’d known a month ago, when there was still time to make sure little pieces of me were firmly planted in as many places as possible, and in as many people. I know they’ve taken root in me and I wish I’d gotten to spend so much more time with each of them. I’m paralyzed by the passage of time, and I don’t think I’m quite the hermit I used to be. At first I was glad but now I wish I hadn’t changed at all.


There are so many things I'll miss as these next couple of months pass. And "missing", to me, feels terribly similar to "regret".

I’m not sure how I’ll brave these alien horizons.


But…


C’est la vie.




.

Grace's Paradox

Time to confess
.
The sins of the day:
.
One two three or four,
.
Every second I waste.
.

He knows it all;
.
Why bother with lies?
.
After all, I had reasons;
.
Each one justified.
.

Now cavalier,
.
I cut myself loose,
.
As if admitting the truth
.
Makes it an excuse.

.

My Empire of Dirt

They say it’s the little things, and that is such a cliché, but maybe it’s true. It’s like how I don’t like the cold, hard, crunchy days of February. They’re abrasive, scraping up against my skin to leave burns. Like freezer burns or rug burns. But life is just better when the weather’s nice, or during a steady rain. It doesn’t really change anything, yet somehow it matters. Even when the weather’s cold and gray, there are little things that can make it alright.

I went on a walk a couple of weeks ago, when the drifts of snow were so high, and on my way back to my equally-cold dorm room I felt I had to do something about this freezing phenomenon. I’m not sure why; I guess because the day brought something uncommon for the state of Kansas, I felt I had to do something uncommon of my own. I like to match the days like that, the way most people match their clothes.

So I went on the little hill in the middle of campus to make a snow angel. I looked around quickly before I plopped on my back in the snow, a shy smile on my face like a child about to make a new friend. For a second I was afraid I’d forgotten how—being a child isn’t like riding a bike, you know—but back and forth, back and forth, arms and legs, legs and arms and I remembered. It made me so happy. I don’t know why. Just something about that solitary, messy, childish act of spontaneity cheered me up. I wanted to skip and laugh and tell the whole world that I made a snow angel. That I got snow down the back of my shirt and all in my hair and soaking through my jeans, but I made a snow angel, just cause I had the impulse. Just me, all alone in the muffled white; a random gesture executed in complete silence.

It’s something I would’ve done Before without a second thought. I guess it reminded me of who I was then; who I still am that’s been buried.

The next week I found the feeling again, in the vacant volleyball court on a day warm enough to go out in short sleeves. The sand crunched softly as I knelt down and I felt it’s roughness in the scrapes on my knuckles as I leaned forward to inspect its consistency. Dig a hole, wet-dry, pile it up, wet-dry, pat it here and there and lean back on dirty knees to admire my sandcastle. Honestly I made far better ones when I was eight, but back then I didn’t understand the luxury it was to grip such simplicity—the elusive pleasure in constructing one’s own Empire of Dirt.

There is such power in the context of a sandbox. Shall I knock down the fortress I built with my own bare hands—a tyrant exerting control by display of easy destruction—or let it stand and become the benevolent ruler of the ants? Either way it is mine, and just for me. I’m not sure why it was so satisfying. Maybe lingering wisps of childhood; maybe the pleasure I take in having innocent secrets.

Or maybe I just like to play in the mud.

.

Sandcastle

I pack each wall

Constructed by hand;

My own to destroy

Or let stand.

Back I lean

On dirty knees,

Benevolent ruler

Of the ants.


.

Coping in Three Not-So-Easy Steps...

Hey, what if I changed everything? What if I shook my life like a snow globe and just hung around to watch where things might settle? Though, knowing me, shaking up my life might turn out more like shaking up a soda can: an explosion triggered by the slightest hint of release. Instead of watching where things settle down, I might be watching to see them hit the ceiling; to see what the hissing spray will stain. And how very, very sticky it would make things.

It might be worth it, though, because this isn’t working for me. I don’t like who I am here. Everything I say and do just seems to be wrong. Not wrong in the moral sense. Wrong in the sense of being an inaccurate representation of my nature. I think it’s because most of my soul is made up of things that really can’t be demonstrated behaviorally. Things that have to be heard in the pauses between the words I speak—the quiet ones, when my gaze wanders and rides on invisible currents of warm air towards the ceiling.

Sometimes I wish people knew me only from my writing. Then they would know my true essence instead of this character they are forced to create for themselves by patching together a few random patterns. What I write is really much more accurate—my pulsing, writhing, bleeding, laughing, crying, skipping, sinning, loving, doubting, living, breathing soul—and here it is, represented in a truer way than could ever be expressed in person. I don’t speak or act in ways that express the truth that my written words do.

I think I need to hang out with some artsy, slightly emo hipsters. We’d listen to The Decemberists or the latest Paste sampler, draw weird things depicting words that end with “ism”, discuss the autobiographies of Augusten Burroughs, wear serious expressions and experiment with beat-poetry. There would be a guitar in there somewhere, too. I would probably even wear plaid and skinny jeans, to be honest. Or a black turtleneck. I can’t help it; I just like that stuff.

Is it possible that it could really be all about location, location, location? Lately I’ve been feeling like where I am doesn’t cultivate my natural self very well. Like something about my environment is keeping me from thriving in the ways God intended me to. Do I need to find a new habitat? Or simply alter my current one?

I don’t know; I’m so tired and just the thought of change is exhausting. But then, so is the thought of things staying the same.

I don’t have the energy for much more than damage control. Damage caused by my lack of energy and the presence of pain. Do you see the vicious cycle here? It makes me dizzy; makes my heart nauseous and I suppose this is the emotional vomit. Maybe I’m choking on it.

Sometimes I want to try to explain it all—every physical, emotional, psychological, relational thing that it significantly, negatively affected by lupus. But then I remember how, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter. Being sick sucks, just like a lot of things that a lot of people go through in life. It sucks more than some things and less than others, just like everything else. I remember that a lot can be solved by following one or more of the instructions in the following sentence: Trust God, Grow Up, and Deal With It.

But gosh darn it, sometimes that can be hard to do.

The Vain Pursuit of Origins

I tried to draw roots, once. Intertwining and coiling down and tangling around each other. I couldn’t do it; couldn’t hold in my mind the complexity of just one section long enough to transfer it to paper.
God wove the roots. The sections that curl and push and squirm down under the earth. The loam on top of the ground—that alone is an advanced multimedia art piece. But beneath the ground, the roots go—the tendons, veins and nervous system of the planet. They web out while growing in the dirt, some silken and delicate, some giant, twisted pillars of strength.
A pencil can’t conquer that. Not mine, anyway. My pencil can’t truly conquer anything. It compromises. Sometimes I so dread the inevitable compromise that I’m actually afraid to begin a drawing. I procrastinate. Maybe I write instead sometimes.

I want to go walking at night, in the city. On one of those desperate nights, you know? Not when you’re desperate for anything in particular; just when you feel like crying for no new reason and it’s cold out but you leave your coat behind anyway, just because it’s satisfying to do stupid things when you feel like that.
I want to walk until my feet blister, until my hair is stringy, then stumble into a stranger I can trust. One who needs help; maybe an old lady with a cane and a big box to carry.

I’d help her carry it up the stairs to her little apartment, where she’s lived all alone since her husband died in 1975. She’d show me pictures of him, and he’d be handsome, but in that old-fashioned way that isn’t really considered attractive anymore. She’d have a cat, and it would rub up against my legs. “Oh, he likes you.” She’d say as he purrs and I reach down to pet him. He’s an orange tabby, maybe, with long legs and a high, keening meow like my cat Milo who passed away last fall.

I’d say I have to go; it was nice to meet you but I have to go. Then maybe my stomach would growl and she’d insist that I have some toast or something, and a glass of milk. I would stay, and I would drink the milk even though I hate milk. She’d tell me all sorts of stories from her childhood years, before her family came over from England to America.

She would ask me why I was out alone at this time of night, and in this weather, and I don’t know her at all so I’d just tell her the truth. I’d just tell her that I was troubled and restless and lonely and sad. She would ask why and I’d tell her I really don’t know. She’d say it’s alright; she’d say I’d feel better once I had some tea.

It is cold outside, and empty, but the apartment is warmly lit and full of soft, faded old-lady things, in including the old lady herself—a stranger. So I’d stay for tea and we’d talk more about why I’m feeling this way, and she’d tell me it’s going to be alright and I’d believe her.

Because sometimes I can feel alone in a group of wonderful friends, but feel cozy and connected in the presence of a stranger. Sometimes I feel homesick even when I’m at home.

That mostly happens when I’m over-analyzing things, as I tend to do the vast majority of the time. Even during the last Chiefs game. I don’t even really care about football, and that simple fact got me thinking. Watching all the Chiefs fans on TV, the sea of red and the painted faces, I admit I thought, “Don’t these people have anything better to care about?” And as soon as I thought that, I realized: yes; yes, they do. Maybe the reason I pour myself into art no one sees and writing no one reads and songs no one hears is the very same reason why they pour themselves into the red and yellow and freezing cold stadium.

They are hiding from the nothingness that threatens to consume them if they don’t care—passionately—about something. Anything. The threat of a great void if they don’t chase some kind of faux-fulfillment. They are filling their lives with pleasurable distractions to avoid being left alone in the emptiness with all of life’s inevitable monsters.

Or maybe some people just really like football. I don’t know; who am I to say?

Why do I have to assign a deeper meaning to everything? Can anything ever just be? Freud, when was a cigar just a cigar? Was it ever, really? I don’t believe you. Maybe that sounds arrogant; after all, what do I know? But if I can’t wear a certain pair of socks without analyzing all the possible reasons why I might have picked it on this particular day, how could you, with your famous fixation theories and revolutionary notions regarding the subconscious, possibly believe that anything is ever “just” what it is?

Even the seemingly innocent things of childhood were never really simple; we were just too young to question them. Why did we all assume that Humpty Dumpty was an egg? The rhyme never specifies. I read somewhere that the rhyme came from an incident in which a massive cannon that was supposed to revolutionize European weaponry—nicknamed “Humpty Dumpty”—fell from a tower and was demolished before true progress could be made. I also read that it could be about King Richard III, who fell from his high horse and was hacked to pieces.

But who knows if any of that is true? It is nothing more than speculation. All the false information—the unanticipated complexity of every little thing—makes me feel as if everything is wearing a disguise and I can’t even trust myself anymore, with how distorted everything seems. Every unidentifiable emotion feels inexplicably fraudulent.

But of all the vague speculation, this is fact, not fiction: for the first time in years, I think I may throw myself to the wind.