The Fall of a Kite

When I was nineteen years old, I wrote a letter to the idea of a person. I thought I would give the letter to them if we ever met, if they ever existed. I was tired, I think, and I’m always more sentimental when I’m tired.
In the letter I felt compelled to tell this person about my earliest memory.

I was sitting on my dad’s lap in our old glider rocking chair, the one with the blue cushions all snagged and lumpy with age. I used to pick the little balls of lint absent-mindedly from the fabric. Dad was reading a book to me, an old vintage-looking book with pictures and names of animals—four per page against a forest-green background. At least, forest-green is the color of the page I remember; the other pages could have been different colors. He would say each animal’s name in a funny voice. For example: “pink flamingoooooooo” with a high-pitched lilt at the end of the drawn out sound. I don’t know how old I was; whatever age children are when they first start saying real words, words besides “mamma” and “dada”. That day, I pointed at the illustration of the long-necked pink bird and said, “Pink flamingooooo!”

I’ve never told anyone that before.
I was afraid no one would believe I actually remembered it.

I wrote about other early memories, too. A crystal bowl of oranges; scraping my face in a fall on my aunt’s steep driveway.

I remember a beach; I think it was in Seattle. It was too cold to swim, but I could taste salt anyway. Our bright Ninja Turtle kite stabbed neon green into the gray flesh of the sky, a diamond-shaped wound bleeding ribbons.

Months later that kite hung in our garage, covered in little baby spiders. I liked spiders back then; I don’t know what happened.

We threw the kite away eventually, and I mourned both deeply and briefly, as children do.

Strange how I can remember things from so long ago, yet yesterdays sometimes seem fragmented. These days my brain feels like a box with both ends open; things are put in just to drop out through the bottom. I deposited the information, but it isn’t there anymore. Recall is requested and I grasp desperately around my memory but so often I find only space, previously occupied.

I’m still waiting for someone to write my perfect song, an anthem for the people-pleasers and the not-enoughs; for we passionate, pining people, prone to both debilitating caution and mistakes. Those of us who feel the constant weight of debt, like we owe something to everyone. I guess the would-be writers are too busy desperately avoiding being burdensome, or maybe poring over their self-help books that they clutch like paperback bibles.

I’ve been busy too lately, in my brain. It’s been cold so I’ve been stuck between walls, and it’s cozy but I feel restless too. My thoughts have nothing to do but be popcorn in my skull, springing about with no rhyme or reason. I’ve been paralyzed by the random nature of their fleeting appearances.

I need to focus in that special way that I can only achieve on a horse. The popcorn settles, the urgencies fade, distracting excitement recedes and worry is forgotten. I am finally grounded, focused on the animal beneath me. On aligning our thoughts and movements until we are meshed; until we are no longer two shapes but one, no longer horse and woman but centaur. I haven’t ridden in over two weeks, and I miss my painted palfrey. It was nighttime when I sat astride him last. Darkness pressed up against us like a solid thing, broken here and there by a thin sheen of moonlight that drained the color from whatever it touched; the whole world in black and white. Together we were stars of the silver-screened night, for a little while.

And then it was just a memory, too; another kite to fly above the chilly beach where the past laps at the present shore.

Winter in My Heart

I like October. I love autumn, of course, but I enjoy Halloween specifically. I like the otherworldliness that seems to descend upon the atmosphere. I like the thrill of unfounded fear, the things that make your heart pound but you know they won’t really hurt you. The dark unknown that prickles the back of your neck when there’s nothing behind you and the twisted faces of some primal fear contrived into physical forms that can be escaped if you run fast enough or if you stay very, very still and if they catch you…nothing happens. For one day a year I like looking into the painted face of play-pretend darkness, all dressed up with bright colors and sugar; a twenty-four-hour-long parade making a mockery of evil. It’s a day made from the vibrant scraps of everything in the world that people have vomited back up on themselves. There’s an intensity to it that I appreciate, an intensity like the post-apocalyptic dreams I’ve been having lately. I suppose you could call them nightmares.

When it was still September I dreamed peacefully. I dreamed that we walked by the sea, and that’s all that really happened. We walked in the blue cast of dusk, but the sand was still warm from the sun. The tide was low in my dream, the waves calm and lapping. They slid up on the shore like so many layers of frost-edged glass. We were supposed to have met earlier, but I spent too much time looking for a certain blouse.

I dreamed we walked by the sea, and that’s all that really happened.

But November’s coming, and December after that. Almost time for wasteful winter, tiny ice crystals brilliant glinting intricate artistry and oh so soon turned to sludge. God, why do You waste the snowflakes? Each masterpiece tossed to the ground to melt away. Melt like everything that was before; like time dripping from the hands of our clocks as the seasons change. They say that the tracking of time was man’s invention and yet the universe goes on marking it all the same no matter whose idea it was, with weather patterns and the aging of the things of earth.

You say you’re excited for the cold to come, and you really must be; you haven’t seen winter for a while now. But it’s only been a few months for me, and I can’t say I miss it yet. It must be winter in my heart though; it’s barely autumn and already I can feel a chill in the bones of my fingers and toes. A chill that creeps and stays and all the socks and gloves in the world won’t help because it is inside, in the deepest parts, in the marrow. In the core.

Like the core of the earth all safe and protected, all crusted with lithosphere and asthenosphere. If I touched that core, would the earth flinch? Would the entire world recoil from my prodding finger with a steaming hiss of pain? Or would it bite back, crushing my hand between two tectonic plates? Because that’s always where it hurts the most: the center, the heart of things. All soft and red and raw, nerve endings exposed and delicate veins just beneath the fleshy membrane, vulnerable and so ready to bleed.

I do like having my heart wrenched in little ways, though: books, movies, songs. I like being made to feel things, and abstract heartbreak is just so deliciously haunting I can’t help but love it even as tears fill my eyes.

I like being made to feel things; just not cold. Anything but cold.


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Candy Conversation

Silence with you
Is like a smooth vanilla milkshake,
And your words
Are chunks of chocolate.
Every component is sweet
In it’s own way,
With it’s own texture and compliments
To the moments that come
Before and after.

Side Effects

I'm trying out a new sleeping pill, and it puts me in such a strange state. I seem to float; like gravity has become half-hearted in its efforts to keep me grounded. The world is in slow motion but I am sharp and clear. Like I know something the rest of the world forgot. How is one supposed to fall asleep when there are so many thoughts to think? So much to tell the world? This medicine may not work.

I flicker in and out of existence and memory.

I remember the passenger seat; the wind blows away my sigh but I hope my expression is visible. I can feel it, my look of catlike contentment as the night air softly brushes my hair across my face. The glow of neon lights ebbs and swells as we drive; I can see the colors through my closed eyelids. We’ll be there in minutes but I’ll be bucket-seat-dreaming for hours, half awake. I feel I am here, I am near but I am unattainable; I am the thing you forgot on the tip of your tongue that you can’t find to say when the moment finally comes. I am Almost. I am continually arriving but never quite in the door. I am the brief flicker in your peripheral vision that you just missed recognizing. I am the end of your favorite song when you turn on the radio; I am your eyes without prescription lenses.

I am not sleeping tonight.

Have you ever sung a song to someone that wasn’t there? Have you ever talked to God through the ceiling? Have you ever been sad to outgrow a favorite toy; have you ever been homesick in your room.

When I was a child I would put some of my allowance into my coat pocket before it was put away for spring and summer. I always hoped that I would forget, and have a pleasant surprise when winter came again. Sometimes I remembered. One year I dug the coat out of storage so I could spend the money on a giant stuffed whale.

Maybe I should start doing that again; I need a pleasant surprise when the weather gets cold.

I’m cold now, even on a night during a summer swell. But then again, I could possibly be dreaming. Maybe the medicine is working after all; with these clouds in my head I'd never know. I guess that's why the bottle says not to operate heavy machinery.

A Quartet of Unrelated Thoughts, Poetically

I hate the word “disease”.
It’s like spiders,
Or worms;
Something rotten,
Moldy cheese.
A defective specimen,
Like God said “oops!”
As something melted
In the oven.

I like the concept
Of mushrooms,
The way they thrive
On neglect.
Their elegant forms
And fairy rings;
The magical properties
Of decay.

Sometimes I wonder
If bugs feel pain,
And then I am overwhelmed
With guilt
For every crushed spider.
After all, they eat the flies;
What did they ever do
To me?
How very violent
The sole of my shoe.

Often I wish
That I could fly,
If only because then
I might not be so very bad
With directions.


.

Falling Objects

My words, like falling objects,
Are subjected to gravity
And hit the ground between us,
Never quite reaching
Their intended point.
My silence is like a vacuum,
Like a black hole;
Everything falls in
And even when I once again
Hear the sound of words,
I never quite escape
The void I left behind.
My thoughts are like shoelaces:
Not one of them makes sense
Without another,
And so I feel an endless need
To explain myself.
I am paradoxical;
I exist in mutually exclusive states
Simultaneously,
And for this I feel a constant urge
To apologize,
Because I have no answer
To what the hell is up with me.



.

The Painted Horse

For days when my mind is restless, and for days when I’m feeling low, I know well my tonic. I know a wonderful world of dirt and sweat and manure, of fresh pine shavings and huge, soft brown eyes. It’s medicinal, this place, and what lives here.

When he sees me his head pops up from grazing and he eagerly starts in my direction, ears forward and eyes bright. As we walk briskly to each other, meeting mid-pasture, it is impossible not to smile. I don’t know why my horse is always so happy to see me; I suppose he loves me and I suppose you don’t question a gift like that.
As we prepare to ride I often stop what I’m doing to stroke his silk fur. He likes that, especially when I scratch under his mane.
Before I mount, Spirit presses his velvet nose to my chest; he loves to cuddle. I kiss the bridge of his bony face. With one hand I caress his cheek, and with the other my fingers trace the edges of his spots; the curve of the brown around his ears, the shape of the white wishbone on his jaw.

Spirit’s markings are special, you know. In long-ago days, Native Americans held the Painted Horse to be sacred, and ones with Spirit’s particular pattern more sacred still. Spirit is what they would have called a Medicine Cap Paint, and only a chief or a medicine man would have been allowed to ride him. Large brown blotches cover both ears, throat, chest, and back: a medicinal headdress (or war bonnet), a shield over neck and breast, and a spot of safety and protection where the rider sits. It was said that these horses would protect their riders, even block the path of arrows and bullets. Painted horses were spirits, it was believed, and Medicine Cap Paints were the most powerful of them. When I was a young girl part of me believed in that magic, though the rest of me knew it was silly. I would play at legends and lore, pretending that Spirit and I were the reincarnated souls of horse and rider from those Before days. Maybe we had died in battle; perhaps we perished together on some long, lone journey. But all these years later the Creator had reunited our spirits and we could rest together, safe and happy.

Don’t make fun. I am nothing if not a romantic, and all the more so when I was twelve years old.

Nearly eleven years later our bond is second-nature, and he feels like home to me. He and the atmosphere in which he lives. There’s a satisfaction in the grit and grime, the fine coating of dust on my skin and the dirt under my fingernails. There’s something in the use of the whole body, the labor-induced physical exhaustion. The silent communication between me and this powerful creature that man one day decided to partner with.

Untamed to the last, Spirit tosses his head hops with his front legs. No, I tell him with a bump of the rein and some pressure from my outer heel. He settles and we go on. My thighs squeeze tight against the shifting muscles of his back. He is warm, and I can feel his fur rubbing against my jeans. My hips sway to the rhythm of his movement and we are in sync. For a moment as we move together we are one being. Those are my hooves striking the earth, thundering over the ground. My artfully-jointed legs, fluidly bending and straightening and bending again. For a moment that is my muscled neck, curved in a rebellious yet graceful arch, my mane whipping back in the wind. For a moment we are fused and I feel like we could do anything; go anywhere and conquer everything. Why not, as I sit astride my charger with no saddle to separate us, looming large and all the world before me? Why might I not rise up from this subdued posture and say what needs to be said, with Spirit’s striking hoof to punctuate my words? We are the Centaur, human and horse as one, and we go forth to conquer the terrain before us. Beyond the moor is a road and beyond that road there are endless pastures, rolling forward for miles to be devoured by the horizon. Why should we not follow? I want to see what lies down the horizon’s sunset throat. Why should we be confined to any certain space? Spirit trumpets a defiant snort. We are the Centaur, and we roam free.

I lose myself in my dramatic flare for a few more moments before slowing Spirit to a walk. As we crest a soft hill I feel him move and bump and tilt beneath me. Absently I twist my fingers into his mane and feel it pull a bit with each step. I am tired now, my body exhausted from the jarring and the muscles in my thighs sore from the grip. We are the Centaur no more, for now. For now we are the horse and his girl, and he carries me gently back to the barn.


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Oh My God, It's All Around

Some of us are old souls; we live with the caution of the ancients. We’ve a reverence for ritual and a soft spot for tradition. Had we robes of some order we would wear them; had we old Latin chants, they would herald our coming. Hum with me your dirges, your requiems; perform with me your sacraments. Ecstatic with the choir we lead the congregation in the harmonies of the hymns of time and space; religiously we practice the liturgy of this tiny sphere. The breath of the wind is incense to us, and all the world an altar.

The stars are the candles, of course, but as I lie beneath them they look more like glinting diamonds hung from fishing lines of different lengths. Some closer, some further away, the sparkles above me look like the lines could be cut and they’d rain down on me, little jewels bouncing off of my skin and settling in the dips of my body. The shallow curve where my hip meets my stomach as I lie on my back, the well of my navel, the crease of my eyelids, the meeting of my lips, the palms of my hands, the hollow just beneath my throat; all full and crusted with the diamonds that broke their strings. Or maybe God cut them, because He knows I like sparkly things.

Occasionally I see one of the Perseids fall horizontally across the sky, but so far none have fallen on me. I am quiet; I listen for them, though I know I won’t hear a thing. If I did, though, I imagine they would sound like a single string of a violin being played with tenebrous vibrato. I wish it would really make those sounds. I wish nature made music. But I guess God meant music to be special for us. Nothing in nature by itself makes true music. You could say the wind in the trees, the rustle of the grass or a chorus of crickets, but none of those provide the melodies and harmonies that move the soul in the same way that our music does. Nature doesn’t really make music. Only we do. It is not a mimic, like most man-made things. It is not a copy of something that was already there. God put the music in us special, at least it seems so to me. And it is as beautiful in its own way as the silent stars.

I once painted stars. My professor told me to surround them with hints of color so that they came to life; so that they vibrated from the canvass. He told me never to paint them pure white, because pure white is flat. It doesn’t invite the eye to go deeper the way colors do, the way even a quality black does. God must have known that when He was making the stars, because if you look closely, the edges of some are haloed with reds and greens. And He made them different distances from the earth, giving depth to the sky. Artists are always looking for depth; always looking for an invitation to explore another dimension.

I think it’s the old in their souls searching for the ingredients of God. Little do they know they are all around them, for they are standing in the chapel that is the entire universe.

The Rise of the Paper Dolls

It is a strange thing, to realize you are alive. That you have a muscle pumping blood through a body and to a mind and you are alive, and you can do things and be things and be so deliciously stricken by emotion that saltwater comes out of those eyes through which you can see the entire world around you. It is a strange thing to realize that you are really and truly alive, yet you continue to stand there, complacent. Should I not be sobbing on my knees, in awe at the wonder of what it is to be alive?
And yet here I stand, or I shuffle about only when nudged because for just a moment I almost realized that I was alive, but then I forgot again.

It is a strange thing and sometimes I feel like a sentient toy. I stand with my arms straight out to either side and I crinkle as I move, when I move at all; I am bent and folded as I’m dressed to suit random fancies that are rarely my own, the paper doll of some cosmic child. Snip snip I am the shape that I am and I didn’t ask to be this way. Snip snip I exist where there was once just white blank space and I didn’t ask to be at all, but now that I am it is good to feel the breeze on my magic-marker face. To meet paper friends and speak of paper-things, like whether the pencil hurts when they color in your skin. To have a two-dimensional heart capable of only such simple things as can be easily understood; none of this arteries and veins business, this bittersweet and melancholy confusion that plagues a body with sinew and bone, with the all complexities of blood and gut and heart, all the weaknesses and risks of a mind.

I can smell the cherry-scented magic marker that was used to draw on this mouth that speaks only the words that are given to it; no more, no less, no words of its own and thus no blame to fall upon that little cherry mouth.

So easily we can be crushed by an ill-tempered whim of the universe, and so easily we can be recreated; it hardly matters that we dolls exist at all. But we are dolls and we go on playing at our little paper lives, rushing about by the demands of our little paper timepieces. Our little paper fears and our little paper joys, the little paper children with their little paper toys.

We are little paper children playing with matches. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. We are little paper children caught on fire.

I can feel the smolder, a slow crawling sting, and I don’t even know it as it eats me up because there is laundry to do anyway, little paper shirts and little paper pants to fold.
We do the little paper things in our little paper lives and none of us see the burning. Or we don’t want to see, or we think we have time.

Why not more urgency? Why won’t somebody do something?! Someone should do something, someone should scream why isn’t someone screaming?! Someone do something call someone; oh dear God help us, we are burning and we don’t even care. We will soon be dust and we don’t even care.

I want to care. I want to care and panic and scream because I am alive and because I can and because I am the paper doll becoming real. How did I not see it before, the angles and the planes and the curves, right there for the eyes to gorge on? I want to be alive in ecstatic wonder at the concepts and the depth and volume of everything and everyone, and the third dimension that we paper people have been ignoring for so long. It’s a strange thing to realize that there is so much more to do than slowly burn up; slowly burn out.

There should be a celebration; why isn’t someone singing? We don’t have to be this way. Why aren’t we dancing all the time? We can join the third dimension, leave our paper skin behind. Why aren’t we running? We have to hurry.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Dear God help us, our paper skin is burning and even I am beginning to care.



.

Better Dreams

In some of my better dreams,
I am the monster.
I am the disease.
I am the one with sharp teeth and lethal speed.
I am the thing that is toxic;
I am the mutation they cannot eradicate.
I am the strangling weed that steals the sunlight.
I am the fear monger;
I am the bright red power of a nightmare.
I am no longer the one in the corner;
I am what chases me there.
In some of my better dreams,
I find safety in being the very thing
That brings me to my knees.


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Letters Never Sent

The space in the car around me feels hallow, as if not even I exist to fill it up. Maybe it’s the darkness, or the glow of the dashboard lights. The radio breathes thin tendrils of music into the empty air, where they dissolve somewhere between the speakers and my ears. Song lyrics always remind me of some person or other. Sometimes several people, sometimes ones from years ago who in some way left their own little wrinkle in my brain, people phased in and out of my life. There is no one else on the road so my mind wanders, and in my head I write letters. Letters I will never send because it’s been too long, but things I’d like to say nonetheless.

Dear Whom-It-May-Concern,
Goodness, I’d forgotten about you until this song played. I guess that line just had the ring of ’97, crawling through sheep pens at the county fair. That’s where we met, two little children wallowing gleefully in the dirt, hiding from the searching eyes of our parents. I just wanted to pet the animals, but I think you were making trouble, the way you beckoned me to follow you through fences and into the arena. I hadn’t planned to go that far but you had whetted my appetite for adventure and there was no going back. Did we get in trouble for that? I don’t remember. But I know you watered a seed of mischief in me that never quite died, even after all of life’s attempts to eradicate it. Looking at me now I don’t know who would guess it, but it’s still there, that itch for a little innocent trouble. I’m glad you were there to help it along when you did.
Nostalgically,
Elise.

Dear Anonymous,
I don’t remember your last name; after all, we only knew each other through similar confessions. But through what you had the courage to admit, you helped to let me know that I wasn’t the only one. And at the end you had such kind words for me; I think I still have your note in a box somewhere. The box painted black with moons and stars, and words from magazines pasted on with diluted Elmer’s glue. We made them together and yours turned out prettier, but I’m not supposed to say that. I’m supposed to say it’s not “better”, just “different”. But we all knew a good craftswoman when we saw one, and I think you knew too; you were just too nice to agree. That was sweet of you, and for some reason your subtle gestures stuck with me.
Fondly,
Elise.

Dear So-and-So,
You threw me for a loop, you know that? You were once royalty to me, but now I seem to have forgotten how to bend my knees at all. I’m not saying it’s your fault; I don’t know how it happened, really. But of you I will say that it’s strange to have once been so sure of something so utterly phantasmal. Don’t worry, though; I don’t blame you. You had no idea who you’d grow up to be. Clearly, neither did I. I think what I saw in you was squelched by the time we were eighteen, cut up like your favorite pair of jeans. That was never very fair, was it? I was sorry for you then; I still am. When we were children I thought we’d always “keep in touch”—isn’t that what you said? We mimicked the grown-up phrases of our parents, as if we had some control over our little lives. We never anticipated being swept away by such different currents, and such foreign ones. What an interesting phenomenon to analyze beneath the microscope of what I know now. I’ve studied it a thousand times but I don’t think you ever bothered to look. That’s alright; it matters far less than I once thought.
Apathetically,
Elise.
P.S. I’m sorry I made fun of your glasses that one time. I didn’t mean it; in truth I liked them. I wear glasses now, too.

Dear Such-and-Such,
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that night I showed up at your door, sobbing, shaking, tears and nose running; I thought Satan himself was at my heels. We barely knew each other's names but you took me in like an injured puppy and read to me verses of God’s courage, and thus you ushered me through my first panic attack. Of course at the time I didn’t know what it was; I only knew that, at that moment, I was a terrified nineteen-year-old infant. And in that moment of complete helplessness, you took care of me.
Gratefully,
Elise.

Dear Recipient,
You always made me laugh; you always made everyone laugh. Granted, your jokes were at times inappropriate for the child I was at the time, but I thought they were funny anyway. A parent’s nightmare of a babysitter, you encouraged my brother and I to jump on the bed and make prank phone calls. It’s probably been seven years since I heard from you, even after I wrote you that twelve-page-long letter. I still have the one you sent to me before that. I don’t take it personally; I know you have your spells, your pains and anxieties. I know it’s been a long time, but I hope you know it’s never too long. You could always come back; you could come jump on the guest bed and eat all the pizza, sing parody versions of Christmas carols and my parents would tell you what a bad influence you are. They’d be smiling, though; they miss you too. Maybe even more than I do. I don’t know what it was this time that made you disappear, but I wonder how you’re doing now and if whatever demons are still haunting you. I hope not. I hope you’re alright.
Pensively,
Elise.

It would be strange to say all these things now, after so many years. And maybe it’s better that way, though I’ve always been a fan of open communication. So many things left unsaid and the road stretches out in front of me; there are still several exits until I’m close to home. My wistfulness remains. The music continues to unearth memories and on and on they go, these letters-never-sent.

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Passenger Seat

I try to read as the truck rumbles along the highway on the eight-hour drive from Louisburg to Dallas. My inability to concentrate frustrates me; it is a particular problem at the moment. I read a page but cannot remember a word I’ve read, let alone process the information. Lupus picks at my brain and makes me forget things; makes it hard for me to keep track. Facts and phrases flit futilely in and out of my head. Little thought-mice scurrying around inside my mind, their little thought-claws struggling for a purchase in my brain. But lupus makes the surface slick; they just slide right off again. And I forget. I forget things from years ago, from last year, from yesterday. Little things—things someone told me; things I learned in class or on the radio. I sigh and rest my forehead on the cool glass of the car window and wish there was a way to explain to everyone that I am not really as air-headed as I can appear at times. I just have a rebel-brain, tossing back things that have been thrown at it. I shake my head, shake off the discouragement, and look out the window.

The steady motion lulls me into a sort of trance. Random thoughts begin to play just behind my forehead, vaguely spurred by the scenery.

“Janet’s”, reads the sign of a bakery we pass in a sad little town. My hazy thoughts begin to wander. The name “Janet” has always sounded crass to me, and sharp, like the sting of a yellow jacket on a hot July day, or when you’re chewing something crunchy and bite your tongue. A name you’d expect to find, I think, in this flat little town of Savannah, Oklahoma. This town with patched-up roads and ragged lawns, full of houses with peeling paint and blankets tacked up inside the windows with their air-conditioning units hanging lopsided from the sills. Little houses surrounded by chain link that separates the dogs from the bitches, the pit-bulls from the children. The children playing with their broken trucks in their cat-soiled sandboxes, passed over by the vacant eyes of adults in stained tank tops with cigarettes dangling from their slack, jaded lips.

Janet.

The name—the town—has a rusty bite that makes me morose. I see a girl in booty-shorts sitting on a weathered, sun-beaten wooden porch and I think of the splinters she will get beneath the skin that was meant to be covered, defeating the very purpose of clothing.

I’m glad we are only passing through, though the way I judge sends my gaze to the floorboards.

Small towns swell into big cities, which eventually give way to acres of empty pasture. We drive through them all, like moving through a timeline of the rhythm of my life. I seem to live in a series of ebbs and flows; mentally, emotionally, physically. The swelling and abating of everything, and whatever it is, I know its only a matter of time before it comes and goes again. I think I’m almost to a point of giving up forced structure; of letting myself live in a way that comes naturally to me. It takes a letting go of conscious control. It takes trusting oneself, and remaining impervious to the unspoken instructions of society. I am terrible at all of the above, but I don’t know how much longer I can fight against my natural bends, struggling to align with a predetermined grid pattern.

I know what needs to be done, in a way. I need to keep deepening the shadows of my life and brightening highlights, increasing the contrast with hints of color and line. I could make something of my own, I think, something lacking a particular pattern but still somehow, inexplicably, making sense to me.

But, like most of my art projects, that will take time. Much longer than this drive from Louisburg to Dallas.

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To the Spider that Lives where the Cupboard meets the Wall

Why you live in the bathroom
Where cupboard meets wall
Instead of the kitchen,
My bedroom or hall
I’m sure I can’t guess,
Because, I assume,
You still are not safe
From rags and vacuum.

Why not a corner
Or crevasse or crease
Where your web could last
For more than a week?

Out here in the open
The strands get torn down,
But there’s never a day
When you’re not around.

Whether over and over
You spin the same silk
Or are replaced by friends
Of similar ilk,
Still eight eyes watch me every day
Brush my teeth
And wash my face.

Fortuitous indeed
You should end up with me,
Who will not crush you
Or swat you or scream.
But don’t forget your place and all;
Please stay in the corner
Where cupboard meets wall.


.

Some Challenges of the Spoken Word

People say things, right? Isn’t that how people are supposed to interact, by speaking mouth-words? That’s the impression I get, anyway. And apparently one is expected to respond relatively quickly, without taking too much time to process. Conversations should be slower things, I think. Is it alright to say things that don’t necessarily need saying?

When I’m quiet, I do have things in my mind. Things I could say, I suppose; things I could make into words and push off of my tongue for other people to hear. But I ask certain questions of myself before saying things. Like Who Cares? Is what I am about to say genuinely relevant to the conversation and its participants? Will it make someone think? Will it make someone laugh? If the answer to all of those questions is “no”, my lips often refuse to move. But I’m never quite sure if that is the right decision, because I tend to experience many awkward silences and I can’t help but think that it’s my fault for not filling up the space with words.

On lugubrious days
I get the impression
That others may notice
My verbal recession.

Sometimes on desperate impulse I will regurgitate some vaguely-related phrase from my mind, whatever is floating closest to my mouth. How very spastic I must seem, stretches of silence awkwardly punctuated with puzzling interjections and broken responses. Then sometimes there is nothing floating nearby and I feel a solid white space behind my eyes, a catch in my throat.

I need to make
More words with my mouth,
Build them on my tongue
And then push them out.

I suppose it doesn’t matter very much anyway; everything I have to say has been said before, if not by me then by someone else. Any concept my little brain could possibly conceive has surely already been thoroughly wrung out by minds brighter than my own. Why bother saying what has been heard before? I’m only twenty-three; I don’t think I’ve lived long enough to say new things, or even to know very much about old things. Why bother saying something that is not new, or that is essentially unproductive?

Sometimes I feel like a ineffectual robot: inexpressive due to lack of data, then randomly activating in sudden bursts of short-circuiting gibberish.

I think I am better at the letter-format of communication, when I am able to contemplate my words. To edit them, to see them somewhere other than my head-space before they are announced. I make more sense that way. Why do you think I write so much?

I pronounce to the world
Some stuttering sounds.
They look at me strangely;
I’ll just write it down.


.

Young Woman, Old Things

Lately I’ve been making new things out of old things. Re-twisting bobby pins, cutting up my brother’s old t-shirts. I can’t say they are turning out very well, but I’m making them nonetheless. I’m a resourceful person, I think. My end product might have bare joints and exposed seams and duct tape showing through cracks in the surface. It may appear a slovenly structure, but the things I make are as stubborn as I am and they will hold unless deliberately disassembled. They will be sturdy. Impractical, perhaps, and maybe there was an easier way, but this was my way and it worked, despite all the detours. You can’t tell me it didn’t; disheveled as I am you can’t tell me I didn’t show up on time. You can’t tell me it didn’t turn out ok.
I know, it was supposed to turn out so much better than "ok". It was supposed to do so much more than simply “function”, a mere meeting of requirements. But I have such a hard time letting go of the messes I’ve created because, in their own ways, they work for me. Maybe not as well as something else might, but my clunky old things seem so much safer than all these new things, gleaming with the lustrous chrome of possibility. How very intimidating.

There is a new break in the fence around my neighbor’s pasture. It’s a good place to look for old things; the house there was built before the first world war. When I find reels of rusty wire or old pots and pans all corroded and full of holes in the woods a ways from the house, I like to think they were left behind by the farmer that was called to fight, or by his grieving wife who could no longer bear to remain in the home she shared with her only love now passed.

Today is a surreal day here in the woods; strange things balancing precariously on the tips of the branches. I reach up to pull my head back onto my shoulders but it is so light it cleverly evades my grasp and continues its floating about, wandering aimlessly. It is looking for the Strange Things. Then we see one, my head and I. It has leapt down from its branch and scattered itself all over the ground in the form of white, hard things. We move closer and my heart leaves my body to join my head above. They are bones. I wonder if they are human and I venture closer. They are rib bones; humans have ribs. There are vertebrae; humans have those, too. My heart flutters in my throat, imagining excitedly the crime scene tape and uniforms that will cover the area once I have made sure of my discovery and called someone. 911? City Hall? My dad? I don’t know, and vaguely it occurs to me that perhaps I have been watching too much Criminal Minds.

I pick my way around the bones and finally see The Skull, half-hidden in the grass. Pretty purple, yellow, and white flowers are springing through the eye sockets and out from between the grinning teeth, life and death careening into one another, the wreckage cumulating in this eerily cheerful display. My heart settles back into my body, though, as I approach and see an ivory snout poking out into the grass. They are cow bones, probably a calf dragged here by the current resident to be disposed of by coyotes. Poor little calf. No more crime scene tape fantasies or intrigue; just something dead. Do the bones smell strange, or is it just the lofty imagination of my hovering mind? It must be my imagination, because these bones are clearly Old Things, half-buried and sun-bleached. When I realize the age of the bones suddenly they seem more peaceful, as if quietly laid to rest in this sun-dappled forest by the brook; as if the little calf has long-since forgiven the coyotes for desecrating its remains. Death is coexisting serenely with the life around it, and I sit nearby to listen to the water and watch the skull-flowers rustle in the subtle breeze.

Old Things are safe things, my floating head tells me.

But New Things are exciting, in a frightening sort of way. I just wish I didn’t have to let go of the safety of the Old Things in order to experience the adventure of the New.

Because I do so love adventures.

Take me on adventures but make me feel safe, too. That’s probably too much to ask of you, but I figured it was worth a try.

.

Another Year I Claim

Today is my birthday. I love my birthday, chiefly because it is a wonderful excuse to go to the zoo. I love my birthday, but I hate getting older. With every year the expectations rise, and sometimes I’m just not sure I can do it. Time forces me to change when I don’t feel ready, and it changes other people and I’m not ready for them to change either.
Can everybody just freeze, just stay the same for a second? Just let me stay the same? Just let me stay the same, and stay the same with me. My heart is tired, and yours must be too; you’ve told me how heavy it is. Why do you want to lay upon it yet another burden? Let’s just stay the same. Or at least don’t look at me like that, when you change and I don’t. Please don’t expect me to keep promises I never made.

It’s difficult to live passionately without bumping into anyone else. At times I seem to careen from wall to wall, crashing into everything in my spastic path. Other times I seem to be paralyzed, existing directly in the way of the rest of the world but unable to move. I seem to be incapable of feeling anything halfway; full motion or dead stop.

For all my passion, sometimes I feel like I’ve already said everything I have to say. I’m a glass bottle poured out of fresh words, every one dribbled out and absorbed into an earth thirsty to suck up everything I have to give. Leaving me, at times, an empty vessel. I very much like having things to say, even if no one hears them.

I think Jesus likes passionate people. People who are passionate in stoic, quiet ways, and in ways that are loud and full of bright colors and mistakes. I think even passion misdirected might make Him smile somehow, because therein lies potential. At least, I hope.

I think Jesus would get a drink with me, and I don’t think He minds too much when I curse. I think Jesus would sneak the dogs scraps under the table and be snarky and get pissed at mean people, and show it. After all, Jesus is a passionate person Himself.
Jesus’ ministry didn’t start until He was thirty; maybe it’s ok that at twenty-three I haven’t done very much with my life yet, despite being a passionate person. But every birthday, I feel like the clock is ticking.

Tick-tock, Grad-u-ate. Tick-tock, start-ca-reer. Tick-toc, a-part-ment. Tick-tock…oops-too-slow.

But tomorrow I will wake twenty-three-and-one-day, unable to live any more quickly than I do; tomorrow I will wake just the same. Tomorrow I will wake and my socks will not match any more than they do today, and my hair will be only marginally longer. Change seems to take so long, yet it is so hard to keep up with.

But for the moment I’ll just try to keep up with the animals at the zoo; with the first fireflies of the season. I’ll keep up with a book, with a conversation, with some chocolates, with an art project and a glass of wine.
After all, it’s my birthday. I can do what I want.


.

Just Saying.

I’m not saying

I’m perfect,

Or even good at this

At all.

I’m just saying

That when I write a name

In a heart

In the steam

On my bathroom mirror,

It’s Yours.



.

I Like

The light breeze stirs my hair, the ends of the wispy strands lightly probing my face like the feelers of a hundred curious insects. I put down my book. It’s too hot out for Faulkner today; the weight of his words combined with the weight of the heat makes me tired. The brightness is too intense for such dark philosophies of the world, though I must admit I believe them even when the sun is shining. Still, just because something is true does not mean one must be constantly aware of it, right? Some things should be forgotten if they cannot be immediately resolved.
But then I suppose there are times when something must be thought about constantly until a resolution occurs. They might as well all be those times, though, because I can’t seem to stop thinking about anything that could be perceived as a problem.

Happythoughts. I try to have happythoughts.

I like it when I paint or draw all day, without realizing the day has passed. Upstairs as natural light fades to lamplight, my skin being continually smudged by acrylics or watercolors or charcoal.

I like it when I finish something.

I like to hear small things and listen to the silence around the sound, the big soft blank that is the vessel for the floating bits of audio.

I like octopi. I really do; they are adorable and amazing creatures.

I like things I should probably have grown out of by now; things like glitter nail polish, stuffed animals and rainbow things. They are in my Secret Stash of Things I Like, though, things I don’t generally like to admit. They keep company with Lady Gaga and Bud Light and getting pretty new things. Don’t tell anyone I told you that, though; it'll be Our Little Secret.

I like art. I aspire to be an artist one day, and enjoy most things that could be put in the category of “art”. Artists can be a lot of things. Artists can be flaky, artists can be mentally and emotionally troubled, artists can blur lines others might not—in life and on paper. My brother aspires to be a lawyer, and is well on his way. He tends to enjoy things of a more political or scientific nature, and I tend to enjoy things of edgy creativity in the arts. However, art and science often overlap, I’ve realized, as do my interests and my brother’s. We both enjoy music, and the making of it; we both feel a need for facts and logic in order to be persuaded of anything. However, he is a serene pool of rational waters, rippling occasionally, splashing briefly at the deliberate throw of a stone, while I am an icy river: a crust of cold, hard logic, with sensitivities and emotions and romance rushing wildly—dangerously—right beneath. The river leaks through the inevitable cracks in the crust, and if the crust is broken the flood will come rushing forth, refusing to be contained. But always, always the crust of rationalism seeks to contain the use of emotions as motive.

I like reading and writing; I like poetry and ceremonies.

I like new pens, sharp shadows, and textures. But not all textures; some make my skin crawl for no particular reason.

I like love stories, though I generally don’t believe them. At least not as commonplace. Logically it is just not likely that most people will experience an absolutely wonderful one, no matter what all the romantic comedies say. Though I do enjoy those with a bowl of ice cream on an exasperated evening.

And I like William Faulkner, even on hot days.

Inside Voices

(Though this story can be read on its own, you will enjoy it more if you first read my short story "The Mushroom Life", here: http://piecesofel.blogspot.com/2011/10/mushroom-life-revised.html )

~*~

Colin’s head snapped up as the bushes by the sidewalk shook. The sudden movement augmented his headache and he winced as two young squirrels darted out, chattering angrily at one another. Stupid dog. Why isn’t it ever him? He thought, and immediately regretted the adjective he’d used. Margaret loved that dog, and he did too, if only because of her. He wouldn’t be so eager to jump at every sound if not for the fading hope of finding his best friend’s dog, who ran away over a month ago. Margie hasn’t been the same since. Colin thought, as he often did, about what might bring Margaret out of her depression. He’d tried bringing puppies and kittens from the local animal shelter in attempt to begin filling the void left by Casper, but Margaret would only begin to cry and close the door. She was listless always when he came over now. He knew she was fragile. It’s not even really because of the damn dog. He gritted his teeth in frustration. Agoraphobia. She already had this glitch in her brain, this defective sparking of neurons that caused her to be terrified of places she could not easily escape. Terrified to be away from her safe, snug apartment; to be in the company of any person she felt she could not control. No wonder I’m the only person she ever sees. They fought sometimes, and Colin could be stubborn, but not nearly as stubborn as Margaret. They both knew, in unspoken consent, that no matter what words were said, in the end it would always end up to be Margaret’s way. Whatever makes her feel safe. Colin thought. If letting her win battles against him would make her feel strong and safe for just a moment, the submission was worth it to him. She didn’t used to be this way.

He remembered their years in college together. They met on the campus mall. A big black Labrador Retriever trotted to him expectantly, eyes full of that elated confusion that can only be seen in the eyes of kind dogs.

“Casper!” She had called as she ran to him. She hooked his leash to his leather collar. “I’m sorry, normally he’s really good but I guess he just liked you a lot.” She smiled and offered her hand. “I’m Margaret.”

“Colin”

“Ah, like the Secret Garden!”

Colin had resisted rolling his eyes. “Yeah, the Secret Garden.”

“That was my favorite book when I was a kid.” She said, ruffling Casper’s ears. For some reason that pleased Colin.

“They don’t allow pets on campus, you know.” Colin warned her.

“Oh I know, my mom just brings him to visit me sometimes, when she goes out of town for work.” She lowered her voice. “Don’t tell anyone. Casper usually spends the night in my dorm when he comes, and my mom takes him home the next morning.” Colin had to smile.

“Your secret’s safe.”

“Thanks!” She said and bounded off toward the parking lot, Casper in tow. Colin watched her leave, smiling.

They passed each other in the cafeteria at lunch, they went with mutual friends to the college’s sporting events. Margaret only went once in a while, but Colin came every time, hoping she would be there. He didn’t know what it was about her. Of course he considered her beautiful. But there was something else, too. Maybe the way her eyes alternated between bright with excitement for what might come next, and dark with righteous anger when faced with the concept of some injustice.

She looks so different now, Colin thought. She was of average size for a girl of twenty-two, but these days the way she carried herself made her look depleted and small. Vulnerable. He still thought she was beautiful, but he couldn’t deny that her beauty had changed from the color of boisterous life to the melancholy, awkward elegance of a Gothic-era stained glass. Her tragedy and his salvation, that’s what he saw in her now.

Colin looked at his watch. He had been out for two hours, looking. Sometimes he stayed out longer, but the notion that Margaret might be up for company tonight drew him away from the sidewalks of downtown. He hadn’t seen her in almost a week. He missed her so much, he barely even felt like he needed a drink before going to see her. Just real quick. And it was; he was proud of himself. He was just a little bit tipsy—easy to conceal—when he knocked on her door.

“Hey, Colin.” She was listless, he could see already. Her eyes flitted about the hallway, around him but never alighting on him. One finger twisted her hair, the other twisted the knob of the open door.

“Hey, Margie. Can I come in?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” She stepped aside, then closed the door behind him.

“What’s up? Missing Casper? I looked for him for two hours today but—“

“My mom’s dead.”

Colin stared at her, stunned. “What? What happened? Margie I’m so sorry! How are you? Talk to me!” He took her gently by the shoulders.

“They found her in her car in the garage.” She said, unresponsive to his touch.

“Oh, Margie.” Colin murmured with a sympathetic sob in his voice, and wrapped his arms around her. She hugged him back, limply though she was leaning into him. They stood for a moment before she stepped back.

“It’s ok. Thanks.”

“Are you sure? No, no of course it’s not ok. Here, sit down.” He pulled a chair out from her small kitchen table. She sat absently, hardly seeming to notice the chair.

“Really, it’s ok. The funeral’s tomorrow. You’ll come with me, right?”

“Of course! Of course; anything you need.” He knelt by her chair. “Will you be able to…you know…leave?” He asked.

“I think so. I don’t know. I’ll wait and see. I think so.” She seemed so stale he almost believed her. “I’m giving the eulogy, so I have to be there.” This baffled Colin, but he tried not to show it.

“Where is the funeral?” He asked, deciding to leave the agoraphobia concerns alone for now. “How much gas will we need? Plane tickets? If you tell me now I can—“

“Oh, no, she just lived three blocks away.” Margaret waved away his questions. He stared at her in disbelief.

“What? When?”

“A couple years ago.”

“Your mother has been living three blocks away for the last two years and you didn’t tell me?

“It didn’t come up.”

“Margie…is that…is that why you got so much worse that spring?”

“I don’t know; maybe.”

“Margie why didn’t you tell me? I could have at least helped you feel, you know, safe.”

“I do feel safe.”

“Emotionally, I mean.”

“Oh. Well that’s not really your thing anyway.”

Colin sat the rest of the way down on the floor and sighed. “No, it’s not, is it.” Margaret climbed out of the chair to sit next to him, her chin resting on her knees. Silence settled for a while.

“You don’t have to go to the funeral, you know.” Colin said.

“Of course I do.”

“Margie, you have no obligation.” Colin began. “After everything she did to you—“

“I still have to go to her funeral, Colin.”

“But do you have to give the eulogy?” Colin was growing agitated. “How can you stand up and say a bunch of shit about what a great person she was?”

“She tried.” Margaret’s voice was small.

“Pelting you with frying pans is not trying.” Said Colin, growing angrier as he spoke. “Pushing you down the stairs is not trying. Yanking out patches of your hair is not—“

“Colin stop! She had problems after my father died and she was bipolar, she’s crazy like me—“

“Whoa, Margie, you don’t really think you’re anything like your mother, do you?”

“We’re both crazy. She hurts people. She wrecks people’s lives then retreats back into her own inner chaos…I have the same inner chaos…I just try not to hurt other people the way she did.”

Colin let silence linger for a while before he said, “Your mother was bad at her core. You are good. That’s why she hurt people and you don’t. You are nothing like your mother. You may feel some of the same things, but that doesn’t mean you are the same things.”

Margaret gave Colin a sad smile. “Thanks. I hope you’re right. But either way,” She sighed. “I have to do the eulogy.”

“But why?”

“No one else really knew her that well, and I’m her only child. Everyone’s expecting it.”

“Fuck their expectations. You need to do what—“

“Colin shut up!” Margaret rose to her feet, exasperated, brushing floor-dust from the back of her jeans. “Letting them all down will stress me out more than just doing the damn eulogy. Besides, I can’t dump it on anyone else on this late notice.”

Colin rose as well. “Sorry. I’ll support whatever you want to do. That’s what people say, right? I’ll support you.”

Margaret sighed, closing her eyes for a few seconds. “Yes, that’s what people say. Thank you.”

Colin sighed. “You’re welcome.”

~*~

No one felt comfortable at funerals, and Margaret least of all. The flat, numb bravery that had allowed her to leave her apartment earlier in the day was wearing off, and Colin could see the pinched look growing on her face, the one that often precluded a dash back to the safety of her apartment.

“I’m so sorry for your loss.” They all said that, great aunt, a cousin, her mother’s accountant, many others she did not recognize, a few whose faces seemed vaguely familiar but not enough to speak any further to them. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” She said in automated response.

“I’m not sad.” She said to Colin flatly in a quiet corner of the sanctuary. “I’m not glad, but I’m not sad either.” When she had moved to the dorms her freshman year of college and began to observe other people and their functional family relationships—and realized how abnormal her own relationship with her mother was—she’d had a meltdown and met often with a counselor from the school’s psychology program. They talked about her mother, the Instances, how they were before her father’s death, how they were after, what it meant to have a healthy relationship. How her mother had hurt her in so many ways, ways she hadn’t realized and ways that would be hurting her for the rest of her life. The dysfunction—the unfairness—of it all, after the despair and anger had passed, ultimately left her with nothing more than a vague disgust for her mother. And that was all she felt today, walking to the podium to give the eulogy.

“My mother was five foot four and weighed a hundred and forty pounds. She had brown hair, and freckles; she liked Friends and ate too many trans fats.” Margaret felt stiff and rehearsed, because she was. “My mother was an average woman in most ways, but exceptional in a few as well. She was afraid of many things, more than most people. But that means that every day when she got out of bed, she braved many more things than most people, too. She cried more than most, but that just means that she dried and moved on from that many more tears. Mom may have seemed weaker than all of you, but that also means that each night when she went to bed, she had worked twice as hard. Mom tried hard, and failed hard. Better both of those things than just the last one.”
Margaret stood there for a moment. She looked down at the podium, tapping her finger on it slowly as she processed the end of her own speech.

“Bye, Mom.” She said in a tone that was perhaps inappropriately unceremonious, and sat down. Those gathered in the pews sat awkwardly, waiting for the somewhat baffled priest to resume the proceedings. Margaret was unaware of the general reaction.

“That was good.” Colin said softly, staring at his hands clasped in his lap. “You didn’t lie. You respected her but you didn’t lie.”

“Of course I didn’t lie.” Margaret replied. “I loved her, once,” she said, even more softly, “but I would never lie for her.”

“Good.” Colin whispered, more to himself than to Margaret. “Good.”

~*~

Margaret and Colin lounged next to each other on her bed in relative silence. Margaret spoke when she heard the slosh of Colin’s bottle of Goldschlager as he raised it to his lips. “You know I don’t like it when you do that.” She said in a tired voice.

“I know. Sorry.” But he didn’t put the schnapps away. “I think you should join me.” He said as he waved the bottle under her nose, already slurring his words. “I can’t imagine how hard today must’ve been for you.”

“I’m fine.” She sighed. “I’m just really tired.” She sat up and looked absently out the window at the strange shadows cast by the outdoor lights. Colin lay beside her, swirling around what liquid was left in the bottom of his bottle.

“You’re pretty, you know.” He said suddenly, after a long silence.

“What?” Margaret looked surprised, as if the notion were preposterous. Colin’s unsteady hand reached up to brush her collarbone with his fingertips. His arm shook. To steady it he wound his fingers into the shoulder of her blouse.

“You heard me. You’re pretty. I like you. You’re a pretty girl. Like…a picture.” He giggled. “Pretty as a picture. You know what?”

“What?”

“I want to kiss you, Picture Girl.”

Margaret blushed visibly, bringing her hand to her face to brush away nonexistent strands of hair. “Colin, you’re drunk.” She said.

“Ugh.” Colin dropped his arm. “Stop saying that! I’m trying to tell you something here and you won’t shut up about—“

“No, no.” Margaret stopped him. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just…you don’t know what you’re saying and if you even remember later you’ll wish you hadn’t said it. I’ll pretend you didn’t, but it’ll still be weird cause we’ll both know that you did…you should just go back to sleep.” She began to untwist Colin’s fingers from her blouse, but he snatched his hand away and grabbed her wrist.

“No. No, Margie. You blew me off like that last year, so I waited to see if time would make you come to your senses, but I’m done waiting for you to take me seriously.”

“Colin, stop—“

“No, listen. Just cause I’m drunk when I say it doesn’t mean it isn’t true, and you know it. You’re always hiding from things. You’re hiding from the entire world outside and you’re hiding from me—“

“Colin, you’re hurting me.”

“No I’m not. You won’t let me close enough to hurt—“

Margaret tried to pry his hand from her wrist. “Ow! Colin, you’re hurting me! Colin, let go!”

Colin let go and yanked his hand back as if he’d been burned. In the same motion he sat up. “Margie! Margie I’m so sorry!” He reached for the offended wrist. “I didn’t mean to—“

Margaret pulled her arm away instinctively. “It’s ok. It’s fine.” Colin paused, then dropped his hand. He sat up in shameful silence, cracking the knuckles of his fingers. Margaret looked at his pure, unadulterated guilt and softened slightly.
“Colin, it’s fine, really. See?” She held out her wrist to him like an olive branch. Colin took it gently, staring wide-eyed at the reddening finger marks growing from underneath her skin.

“Shit. Oh, shit…” His voice was choked with tears.

“Colin, it’s ok.”

“I can’t believe I did that—“

Margaret took her arm away from him. “Shut up already.” She said, exasperated. “I said it’s fine. Stop being so dramatic. God, Colin, you’re a little bitch when you’re drunk, you know that?”

“Yeah I know.” The tension seemed to soften as silence ruminated. “I think,” Colin began after a while.

“What?” Margaret asked, deciphering the look in his eyes.

“I think…” Slowly he reached toward her again, and this time she didn’t pull away. He cupped her chin in his hand and leaned in to kiss her right cheek, then her left. Vaguely he hoped she wouldn’t notice the roughness of his lips on her breeze-soft skin. When he drew back she looked at him like a fawn at a butterfly, so innocent and quizzical. He loved that look, though it made him feel all the dirtier himself. Then she blinked slowly and when her eyes opened again, they appeared shy but knowing, as if the brief blindness had reordered the world inside her head.

“I think so, too.” She murmured.

She fell asleep in Colin’s lap, and Colin lost himself in stroking her hair until the morning came. He had already realized that he did not know what to say; what would come next. He didn’t care, though. He rose slowly from the bed, placing Margie’s head gently on a pillow and kissing her cheek once more as she slept on.

She thinks so too. He tried and failed to suppress the smile pulling at his lips. She thinks so too. He didn’t know what she thought, or what exactly he thought, but whatever it was she thought it too and had let him kiss her cheek. When he got back they would talk, and they would finally be together. No commitments right away, Margie would insist. She would also insist that Colin attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He would do that, for her. If it meant being with her. Over time she would grow to love and trust him and maybe even have a picnic outside with him. Nowhere far—he wouldn’t be so cruel as to force her far away from her sanctuary—but maybe just on the lawn in front of her apartment complex.
I’ll start today. He thought ambitiously. When I come back I’ll be one day sober. He declared to himself, and left the building to walk in the downtown streets once again.

~*~

He’d had such high hopes for sobriety when he’d left Margaret’s apartment. He was almost skipping with resolve, thinking of how he’d change her mind, starting right now.

But then something amazing happened. He heard a snuffling around the corner of the convenience store and followed it, as a force of habit. He saw a big black smudge against the echo of neon lights, and ventured closer with disbelief.

“Casper?” The smudge stopped moving. “Casper? Casper, come!” The smudge trotted unsteadily toward him. “Oh my god, Casper!” Colin reached down enthusiastically toward the dog, who shrunk from his hands. “Aw boy it’s ok.” Colin knelt and softened his voice. “It’s alright. I won’t hurt you. It’s Colin; remember me? Come on, boy, you know me.” He put his hand out, palm up. The smudge that was Casper crept toward him. “It’s ok, boy, it’s ok.” Colin crooned. “Margaret will be so happy to see you.” Casper sniffed his hands, the tentatively licked at them. “Good boy!” Casper wagged his tail and allowed Colin to scratch him behind the ears, growing visibly more comfortable as he seemed to realize that Colin meant him no harm. Whether he remembered him or not, Colin couldn’t say. “Good boy, good boy!” Slowly Colin unbuckled his belt, slid it off, and buckled it around the dog’s neck for a makeshift collar and leash. “God I’m so glad you turned up!” He patted the dog’s head as he rose to his feet.

Colin was an instinctive person, and his first instinct was to celebrate. And to celebrate, his first instinct was to get a drink. Not anymore, was his first thought. But as he walked, he thought about a bit of a burn in his throat, a warmth in his stomach. The back of his throat began to tingle, to tighten. One more night wouldn’t hurt. He knew it was a stupid, stupid justification, but that didn’t keep his mind from using it. The pathways in his brain had been entrenched so deeply by dopamine, they were flooded with just the thought of alcohol. And the convenience store was right there, his fix so close. The temptation alone made him euphoric. Unable to resist, he shuffled hesitantly into the parking lot. The glow of the florescent lights through the big glass windows made him less hesitant with every step. Casper. There was a bike rack right there.

“I’ll be right back, boy. Be good.” The big dog sat obediently, the opposite end of the belt twisted around the metal bars. Colin went in, not knowing exactly what he would find, but knowing that, whatever it was, it would be just fine.

~*~

He loved this feeling, as if he were the water sloshing back and forth in the hull of a sinking boat, this lightness of brain and numbness over the surface of his skin. No, I don’t love it. He corrected his thoughts. I “lust” it. He loved Margaret; he lusted for this. The first, he would die for. The second, he lived for. Fuck. He knew it was true. But he also knew that denial would come with sobriety, and that this was not the time to start caring. He’d start caring tomorrow, or next week. Margie would be proud of him, once he went a couple weeks dry. He waved the bag under Casper’s nose. “Thirsty? I won’t tell.” Casper whined and licked the rim of the enclosed bottle. “Shit, I wasn’t serious. That’s disgusting.” Colin wiped the rim with the bottom of his shirt. “Stupid dog.” And he felt incredibly guilty. He knelt on the sidewalk and took Casper’s face in his hands. “I’m so sorry.” His eyes filled with tears. “You’re not stupid. Margaret loves you. I love you. I love you.” He sniffed loudly. Casper’s eyes rolled around nervously. He tried to pull his head from Colin’s grasp, but Colin kept his hold and pulled Casper towards him, planting a sloppy kiss on his forehead. Casper sneezed when Colin let go. “I’m sorry.” Colin said again before wobbling back to his feet. “We can’t go back yet, Casper.” Colin informed the dog. “I have to sober up first. We can crash at my friend Red’s place. How does that sound?” Casper gave no indication one way or the other, so Colin began walking in the direction of Red’s apartment. Momentarily he regretted keeping Margaret’s precious pet away from her for even a moment more than necessary. She’ll never know. He thought, his heart twisting a bit with guilt and shame. It’s been over a month; it can wait a few more hours. Besides, after the stress of the funeral, Margaret should get some rest. Colin knocked on a green door, in hideous need of a paint job. “Red! Red, it’s me, Colin!” His words slurred, but Red seemed to understand him.

“Hey man, what’s up? Come on in” A tall figure dressed in black answered the door, bright shocks of unnaturally red hair on his head and face. “Dude, what’s up with the dog?”

“He’s my friend Margaret’s dog, I’m watching him for a few days.”

“That’s one skinny dog, man.”

“Yeah he was lost for like almost two months before I found him.”

“Your friend must be so happy.”

“She doesn’t know yet.” Colin said, ashamed.

“Man why haven’t you told her yet? Especially if you’re trying to hit that. Then you really don’t want to piss her off.”

“I just need a few hours man, to sober up. I don’t want her to see me like this when I give her dog back. Come on man.”

“Alright alright, come on let’s get you a drink.”

“I’m here to sober up, not drink.”

“What’s a few more? You’re already hammered, what difference does it make? Come on man, we haven’t partied together in forever. For me, bro!”

“Alright, alright!” Colin chuckled, his head so light it seemed to float on each syllable of his own laugh, which made him laugh more. Red, eyes already rimmed in his namesake color from a few joints, seemed to think that Colin’s laugh was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, and they collapsed chortling in the entry hall.

“Shut the fuck up!” A muffled voice shouted from the room next door, accompanied with a succession of sharp raps on the wall. They young men tried to suppress their laughter, sniggering and snorting.

“Sorry dude!” Red called to the angry tenant.

“Whatever, asshole!” The muffled shout replied.

“Come on man,” Red wiped tears of laughter from his eyes and motioned for Colin and Casper to come deeper into the apartment. “Let’s catch up; I got party favors.”

“Hell yeah.” Colin agreed enthusiastically and followed behind Red.

~*~

Sunlight stabbed through Colin’s closed eyelids and into his tender brain. He groaned and rolled over, spilling from the stained couch onto the even further-stained carpet. “Red?” He grunted, feeling around for something to pull himself up with. “Red, man, you awake?” He found the edge of the coffee table and hoisted himself into a sitting position on the edge of the sofa. No answer from Red. Colin forced his eyes open, offensive light glaring at him from every surface in the apartment. He groaned again and rubbed his temples. His arms felt like they were filled with lead. Finally he made out the figure of his friend amidst a pile of blankets on the floor nearby, dead to the world.

“Never could sleep as long as you.” Colin muttered, then rose stiffly. “Casper?” He called quietly. “Casper, here boy.” He heard the clicking sound of the dog’s nails on cheap linoleum and found Casper in the kitchen, surrounded by a pile of excrement and two puddles of urine. “Damn, dog, now I have to clean this up.” Then he sighed. “Sorry. I should’ve let you out. You must be hungry too, huh? We’ll get you something at Margie’s. What time is it anyway?” He looked at the clock over the stove. “Oh, shit.” It was three in the afternoon. “I gotta get you back to Margie.” Colin stumbled around the kitchen until he found Casper’s belt-leash. “Let’s go boy.” He said, forgetting the mess on the floor.

It wasn’t a very long walk to Margaret’s building, but Colin took it slow, doing his best to compose himself. He thought this may have been the worst hangover he’d ever had, but then he thought that after every big night. He took slow, deep breaths as he rode the elevator up to Margaret’s floor, as he walked down the hallway, as he raised his fist to knock. “Margie?” He called, flinching with every bang his fist made on the door. “Margie, I have a surprise for you. Seriously, you’re going to love this. Margie? Margie?” She wasn’t answering. Maybe she was asleep; she tended to sleep a lot. In spite of his headache he banged louder. “Margie! Margie wake up! Margie!”

“Keep it down, mister.” The superintendant poked his head around the corner at the end of the hall. “I’m gonna get complaints.” Colin approached him.

“Where’s Margaret? The girl who lives there? Margaret O’Leary?"

“I haven’t seen her since the other day.” The super said, relatively indifferent. “I thought it was odd; she left the place. Looked awfully nervous. I know how that girl can be; yeah, it was real odd.”

“Are you sure?” Colin asked anxiously. There was no way Margaret left her apartment alone. “You sure we’re talking about the same person?”

“That her dog? The one that ran off a while back?” The super nodded at Casper. “And she’s the one you’re always comin’ around to see?”

“Yeah, this is him and that’s her, but…are you sure?”

“Yeah I’m sure. What do ya want me to say, kid? She left. Figured she went to see you.”

“She never comes to see me.”

“Well I wouldn’t know about that. All I know is she hardly ever leaves and it’s real odd, but I figured she had her reasons. Figured one was you. Maybe not. Rent’s not due for a few days; didn’t think I’d say anything ‘nless she missed it.”

“Why wouldn’t you report her missing?” Colin was growing extremely agitated. “Which way did she go? Was there a car? What—“

“Hey kid, I wasn’t paying attention; it wasn’t none of my business. You know ‘er bettern’ I do.”

“Well yeah, but…but I don’t know where she went!”

“Well where do you live?”

Colin closed his eyes and pressed the heel of his hand to his aching forehead. “I..I don’t have a place; I crash with different people. Usually her. I…I don’t know where she would be.”

“Well, sorry, kid; neither do I.” The super shrugged, looking honestly sorry he couldn’t tell Colin where to look. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help to ya, but I just don’t know either.”

“It’s…it’s alright, I’ll look. I’ll…do something.” Colin muttered and wandered off, blinking tiredly. “I’ll do something.”
His head ached, and the sun was so, so bright, it’s reflection screaming up at him from the concrete. Damn hang over…I have to think…I have to think…He couldn’t think with this pounding in his head. Maybe a Bloody Mary, just to clear my head. Tomato juice was healthy right? You asshole. He thought to himself, his feet carrying him in the direction of the bar and grill not too far away from Margaret’s apartment complex. Just one. Casper followed him all the way there, trusting and unquestioning. Colin walked Casper through the parking lot, up to a spot with a “takeout-only” sign. Around the pole the belt went, and Colin twisted it into a flimsy knot like he had at the convenience store. He gave it an extra pull, just in case he ended up staying longer than he planned. I won’t, though. But he checked the knot again anyway. Casper’s claws scraped on the concrete as he tried to follow Colin in, but the belt-collar halted him sharply. “Stay, boy; be good. I’ll be back soon.” Colin said, disappearing through the big wooden doors. Casper sat, staring after him.

Hymnal Scraps

It’s the time of year again to take the screen off the window upstairs—to my father’s annoyance—and climb out onto the roof—to my mother’s dread. Apparently climbing on the roof is dangerous, and I know I might die, but I probably won’t.

I’ll fly away.

Anyway, today is not a day to care that much. If I do die I hope someone spreads my ashes on the ground somewhere, so someone else can come along and doodle with their fingers in my dust. Little hearts and stars, a crush’s name, whatever, some eloquent graffiti.

Glory, hallelujah.

Maybe kids will be doodling different things by then, if I die when I’m old. Older, anyway. When I was sixteen I became an old soul. And an old body, on the inside. I often wonder how I’ll feel when I am old in number of years. Damn kids, get off my lawn. Or come in for some cookies. Or just lying in bed, having grown a bit more tired with each year past thirty. I could see it going any of the three ways, and I could see a crucifix on my bedroom wall. And when the shadows of this life have gone, all the old will seep from my bones.

I will fly away, oh glory.

But I hope it doesn’t seep from my soul.

I doze on the roof and the scorching sun bakes fever-dreams into my frontal lobe.

I looked over Jordan, and what did I see? You running, legs flickering. You running, arms pumping. You running, running, running.

Coming forth to carry me home.

I looked over Jordan, and what did I see? A band of angels on the Cimarron, the grasslands rippling like an ocean with waves dry, dry, dry.

Coming forth to carry me home.

I looked over Jordan, and what did I see? Myself, spread with neglected crops of devotion and selflessness, so raw and vulnerable to the frequent plagues of arrogance.

Sinner, please don’t let this harvest pass.

Roused, I look out from my place on the roof, and what do I see? Rednecks on four-wheelers, crunching sharp gravel as the dogs herald their coming. I crouch on my gable among the muggy air and mayflies, smoke of a brush fire, salty asphalt in the sun, spiders in the shingles. I burn and I climb down, face stinging, muscles weak and sore from the strain of precarious balance.

Come ye sinners, weak and wounded, sick and sore.

I climb back in through the window, grimy, hot and thirsty.

Come ye sinners.

Come ye sinners for the refuge of watermelon mint iced tea and the sweat of a horse on the insides of your thighs, for my holy hippie Savior at Golgotha. Glory, hallelujah; the forgiven whores in the street invited to His party in the RV park where welcomed are all the well-intentioned and the strivers-to-be-kind, the humble and flawed. Come ye sinners for cold potato salad and the best whisky-cider for miles. He’s a citronella candle, shedding light and the bugs won’t bite you here. Come ye sinners in your sweat pants and flip-flops and barbecue stains, come ye sinners with your partners and your cigarettes. Come ye sinners dripping with diamonds, as long as you let the little girls borrow them to play princesses with their Prince in sandals and robe. Come ye sinners with your books, if you’ve brought them to share your wisdom instead of display it. Come ye sinners, it doesn’t matter. Bring your guitars and your voices, lovely and awful; either He is tone-deaf or He just enjoys your company too much to care. Come ye sinners with your wax wings and He’ll sew you up some real ones.

I will fly away, oh glory.

Come ye sinners, young and old. Lucky for me, I’m both.

Windows

Remember when we walked downtown, and I was so tired? We walked a ways, looking for a good place to sit. I made you walk faster with me through the dark spaces between the puddles of light from the street lamps, as if the light would keep us any safer from the muggers and rapists I imagined to be around every corner. I wished I could be more nonchalant, but I’d forgotten my pepper spray in the car and it made me nervous. The ledge we finally found was deliciously vandalized, wasn’t it? Some of the graffiti was tacky, sure, but most of it was mesmerizing. An incredible urban collage, vibrating with bright angst and talent. We liked the street musicians across the street too, didn’t we? I don’t remember what they sounded like, but I know we chatted a moment about how good they were as we sat there on the ledge over the sidewalk. I was feeling sentimental, I guess, when I mentioned that I wondered what must be going on behind the windows of those hotel rooms across the street. You must have been feeling sentimental too, because you started making up stories with me; a story for each lit window on the top floor. They were all so cliché, I think one of them had to be true.

~*~

We speculated about the impending divorce of the couple in the room on the far left. They’re entering the room, I imagined, after a fight at a forced dinner date. Maybe she saw him eyeing the waitress—again—or maybe his credit card bounced—again. Maybe she had too much wine—again—or maybe she was critical and cruel about a genuine effort he made—again.

“Nothing is different.” Her back makes a whispering sound against the wall as she sinks to the floor. “Not after counseling, not after this stupid second honeymoon. It’s sick, sticking us in the same room for a night after so long; after we’ve barely even spoken in months.” She’s quiet for a minute, cradling her head in her hands, her fingers locked in her hair. Her husband stands awkwardly by the door, looking down at her. He shifts his weight, licks his lips, waiting for her to speak again. “It’s like I never left.” She whispers finally, more a musing of her own rather than a statement to him. “It’s like I never left.”

“That’s cause you didn’t,” He says slowly, confused.

“It felt like I did, for a little while.”

“And now it doesn’t?”

“Not anymore.”

He sighs and pinches his forehead between his thumb and first two fingers, eyes shut tight as the feeling behind her words reaches him. “It still feels like it to me.” It’s quiet for a while before he speaks softly again. “Do you love me?” He asks.

“Not today.”

“You say that every day.”

“I know.”

~*~

The next story is sweeter, if even more cliché. I envision a young couple cuddling under the cool, detergent-smelling covers of the hotel bed, giggling. Her hair is long, spread like a million threads of umber silk over the overstuffed pillow. A mound of white silk and tulle is bundled on the floor.

“You tore my dress.” She teases him, tossing her hair from her forehead before resting her chin on his chest.

“Just a couple of stitches!” He feigns a look of hurt. “Besides, you’re never going to wear it again.”

“Oh? What if I want our daughter to have it for her wedding?

“What if we have a son?”

“His future wife, then!”

“What if she doesn’t like your style?”

“I’m her future mother-in-law; if she doesn’t, she at least has to pretend she does.”

“Eh, she wouldn’t have to pretend; it’s lovely. Sexy as hell on you. In fact, why don’t you put it back on so I can take it off again?”

“No!” She giggled and pushed away his wandering hands. “You have to tell me something about your songs!”

“My songs? Why?”

“You’ve written so many, and some of them sound…well, I thought maybe…I was wondering…” She ducks her head against his shoulder then looks up into his eyes with a shy smile. “Have you written any of them for me?”

“Baby, They’re all for you!”

“Even the ones from three years ago?”

“Yeah, those too. Silly girl; who else would they be for?”

She smiles. “I love you.” She kisses him with all the wedding-night happiness bubbling up inside her, threatening to burst.

He laughs. “I love you too, so much. Now go take a shower before we sleep; I know how you like the way the sheets feel against your skin after you’ve showered when you go to bed.”

“I like the feeling of you against my skin.” She says softly, curling up against his side in the crook of his arm. “And I don’t want to leave.”

“I like that feeling too.” He whispers, “And I pray you never leave.” He bends his head to kiss her hair.

“I won’t.” She mutters sleepily. He strokes her hair as she slumbers, and soon he yawns, curling his body around hers.
They fall asleep breathing peacefully, safe and happy, naked and entwined.

~*~

Something less peaceful, perhaps; someone alone. Not everything is so definite; a divorce, a marriage. Most of life is more ambiguous; utterly confusing.

She wakes in a cold sweat. Another nightmare about nothing. It isn’t that she can’t remember; she can. It’s that the dreams are truly about nothing. Just images of familiar things, still-lives of her dresser or the birdbath outside her window, her office building, her car. Yet she always wakes terrified, and for hours after her stomach will plunge at the memory. Her hands are shaking; she knocks over the little orange bottle of Xanax as she reaches for it. The bottle rattles, three fall out. Water sloshes, making the pills slimy in her hand. She stuffs them past her lips and gulps down the water, then licks the bit of dissolved residue from her skin. Ok. Ok ok ok. She stops halfway through the short walk to the bathroom, steadying herself with one hand on the wall. The bright floral wallpaper and dark linoleum make her dizzy. She looks up, eyes clawing for some neutral space, but they are met with a popcorn ceiling sprayed with silver sparkles instead of the smooth white sheetrock she had been hoping for. Damn ‘60s. Suddenly, violently, she begins to dry-heave, knocking her head against the wall as she doubles over, clutching her stomach. When it’s over she spits right there on the floor the bile retched up by her empty stomach. Shit. Shakily she completes her journey to the bathroom and thrust her entire head into a rush of cold water from the rusty showerhead. Hard water in her eyes, up her nose, the cold raising goose bumps over the entire surface of her skin. After a towel is wrapped around her wet hair she is still shaking; she still wants to cry. She swallows the lump in her throat again and again and again, in such quick succession it is difficult to breathe. The negative image of that terrifyingly ordinary birdbath is stamped on the backs of her eyelids every time she blinks, and her stomach throws fits. As usual at this point during an attack, it is the panic itself she fears the most. She orders room service, just to hear a human voice. She tips the waiter too much and makes a weak attempt to engage him in conversation before he escapes back to the kitchen. People. There are people in the lobby. Leaving her dinner uneaten on the desk, she goes to the door. They were all strangers in the hotel lobby, and she would call someone instead, if she still had anyone to call.

~*~

A thing about hotels that is both wonderful and tragic is that they shelter all different kinds of people. Not necessarily together or at the same time, but at some point in that hotel there have been women, and a rapist. Children, and pedophiles. Lovers and their lovers’ lovers, criminals and law officials. Wealthy people making a cheap stop between destinations, significantly less wealthy people on their grand vacation. People coming, people going, people wanting, people satisfied, people staying for a while, people passing through, people living, people dying. The following is a classic tale, is it not?

He sits on the edge of the crisp hotel bed, the interior-decorator professional in him cringing at the tacky green-and-orange bedspread. Should’ve picked a better place than this. But no, he doesn’t want to spend a penny more than necessary. His wife will need every solace after she reads the note, as will his lover, and his lover’s spouse. But there’s nothing I can do about that. He liked everything in order, and it was. He had met multiple times with his attorney, settling his last will and testament. He had taken care of life insurance, he had enclosed in an envelope a carefully-worded note, along with pictures meant to illustrate the equal and boundless love he felt for the people in each of his double-lives. I love so much, he had written in the note, but I knew none of you would love what I loved, or that I loved it. He was trying to explain. He’d heard that sometimes the people left behind were more apt to reach some sort of peace if they had a good explanation. Really, there were five notes in the envelope: one to his wife, one to each of his two children, one to his lover, and one to them all as a general audience.

He had spoken to God, asked forgiveness for everything past, and in advance for the last sin he was to commit. Everything is indeed in order. He doesn’t know for sure where his soul will end up, considering the manner of his impending death, and that bothers him, but everything that can be neatly squared away has been, and this comforts him. He only hopes that, as his soul is flung into eternity, God’s grace will overcome His judgment and He will reach down to grasp the mortal hand that is sure to be outstretched. From what he knew and loved of Jesus, he had some faith that the grasping would occur. This is certainly not the worst of my sins, he muses absently, referencing to himself his adultery with Robert. Surely, if He will forgive the others so willfully committed, He might forgive this one as well. Slowly he counts out the number of pills sure to contain the necessary dosage.

~*~

A child of eight bounces on the springy bed. She is never allowed to jump on the bed at home, but on vacation her parents said she could, a little. And pizza! They had pizza for lunch yesterday, and they are going to have pizza again tonight. Pizza by the pool, the exhilarating scent combination of salty grease and chlorine. Every year this is what she looks forward to the most, besides the zoo. Tomorrow they would see the fruit bats as big as foxes, flying free in the walk-through rainforest. She prays that one will come and land on her. Her mother says they have diseases, but surely the zookeepers wouldn’t let them near people if that was true. Usually she trusts her mother, but in this instance she prefers her own logic. She loves the art museum too, but mostly the parts with the mummy coffins or the ancient Chinese tea sets. The paintings were interesting for a little while, but she doesn’t understand them in the way her older brother seems to. Maybe he is just more patient, She consoles herself. Secretly she suspects that her brother is just as naughty a child as she is; he is just better at hiding it.

“Honey, time to stop jumping now.” He mother unzips a suitcase entirely filled with stuffed animals. “Here, show Peppy and Kovu the view.” She suggests, pulling out the two most time- and love-worn creatures.

“Can I bring them to the pool?”

“No, honey.”

“Why not?”

“They can’t swim.”

“I’ll help them.”

“The water might go in their noses, sweetie. They’re too young.”

“When will they be old enough?”

“When they’re eight years old, like you.”

Five, six, seven, eight. She counted silently. Four more years. She thought. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. I’ll be twelve years old. She is sad to leave them behind, but only for a moment. Her stomach jumps with excitement when her mother finally emerges from the bathroom in her bathing suit.

“Okay guys, let’s go! Dad will bring the pizza.”

“Come on, come on, let’s go!” She rushes to the door before her mother can think of something else that must be done before they head down to the pool.

~*~

We weren’t terribly creative with our stories, were we? But I suppose we are all ultimately clichés in some way. We certainly were that evening, two college sophomores enamored with the blooming nightlife of the Crossroads district, sipping free wine and trading opinions on contemporary art. I knew it at the time, and you probably did too, but I didn’t care. I still don’t. In fact, let’s go back sometime and do it all over again.

A Brief and Wandering Prologue to Summer

Though it’s early in the season, I am already beginning to feel the summer time. It has a sort of salt-smell, I think, but maybe it’s my imagination. I love it in a vague way, and the long days blurred together with heat and the smell of air conditioning and warm skin and apples in the morning, the barely-aware consciousness I adapt when Monday Tuesday Wednesday have no meaning. In the back of my mind I love these ambiguous months, all smeared with shades of long walks and itchy grass and hot gravel; of fireflies and sunburn and swimming. Of trail rides on my painted horse. He shies at the oil pumps sometimes, but after a moment of hesitation marches quickly towards them with an almost hostile determination, like Don Quixote toward his windmill-giants. He’ll put out his long square nose to touch one, and flare his nostrils as he makes contact with the corroded metal. He’ll swing his head down and trumpet an offended snort, then coldly ignore the steely creature and all the rest of its kind as we pass through them in the field. I let him walk where he likes; the summer mellows him and I can ride with a looser rein.

The summer mellows me too, a little, calms with steady heat the sparks and twitching in my panicky brain.

I was going to build a tree house. Every summer I said I would; every summer I thought I would. And every summer was one more tree still empty of a house, save the nests of birds and squirrels. One more season closer to now, when I am far too old for building tree houses.
Sometimes I think I’m going to build one—sometimes I think I’m going to do a lot of things—but the tiredness breaks on me like a wave, tumbling, swallowing me up and I sink into it, smothered by it. I sit beneath its weight and wish and wonder about things missed and things undone. Watch too much tv and just waiting for my body to loosen the bonds it’s placed on itself, to let me get on with my life.

I don’t feel very lovely when I’m tired. Hair unbrushed and limp, yesterday’s sweat pants, dark circles under my eyes, soft body curled up underneath an oversized t-shirt. It takes so much effort, the pursuit of “beauty”. It exhausts me. And for what? We try so hard to make it so that all can see our bones; pierce new holes in our flesh to hang sparkly things from. We smear colored dust on our faces, paint blood red lips, black rings around our eyes; the war paint of modern society. It seems even the most culturally accepted fashions are rather macabre. But then, so are we, so I suppose it makes sense. Either way we’re expected to join in the scramble, to pretend to care. Just pretend, though, because God help you if you care too much.

I’d like to think that we’re better than this, but sometimes I look around and think maybe we’re exactly where we belong. Though it hasn’t felt like home to me in quite some time, so maybe not. I don’t know about you, but I belong other places, at least sometimes. Though I never seem to be in those places at the times I feel like I belong in them.

I realize now that in my mind I’ve reduced us down to an idea, some memories and some songs, like dimly flickering scenes from a movie I saw once but I can’t remember how it ended. Maybe it didn’t end at all. Or maybe it was a dream.

Imaginary Numbers

I realize now
I’ve broken you down
To something abstract.
An idea,
A formula for anyone
Of your same name:
A song multiplied by
Some memories,
Divided by
Some books on shelves,
Plus a cherished word
Or two,
Minus the vital concept
Of rationality.
Like those numbers
I was loath to calculate,
You were
Imaginary.

Beautiful Things

When I was eight years old there was little that I desired more than a window seat. I had seen them at the big library in the city and something about them seemed so romantic; so wistful. I was a very wistful child in general, even if only for yesterday or last week.

In lieu of a window seat, after dark and if the sky was clear, I would remove the screens from my windows and perch on the sill, a folded blanket to cushion the awkward seat. Legs firmly pressed against the wall beneath the window for balance, I would lean out as far as I could. I would crank my head backward and up, satiating my ravenous eyes with as many stars as they could catch; as many as would fall in to the wide, rich pools of naivety that my pupils seemed to be. I’d look down and around, too, at the acres of pasture and woods soaked in dusk. The starlight did funny things to the tree line; if I squinted they could be mountains.
Even in the winter I’d sit there, layered in sweaters and blankets while my puppy lay at the foot of my bed, curled up tight against the cold. After replacing the screens I would wrap the little dog up in my discarded blankets to warm him up. He was very young then; I would lay next to him and whisper his name in his silky ear while he slept, to help him learn it.

I’d sing, too, to him or the cats or snakes or lizards or turtles or frogs or rats or fish or ferrets—to whatever pets I had at the time. I had one of my first pet snakes then—a fat, four-foot ball python named Lily. Knowing she couldn’t hear my voice, sometimes I’d gather her up in my arms and sing with her held close to my chest, hoping the mellow vibrations would have a sort of soothing, lullaby affect. I’d sing slow, sentimental songs that sometimes made me cry for no particular reason. Just because they were beautiful.

I have always marveled at the profound effects of music, and the power it gives to so many talented artists. Lyrics, compositions, harmonies; a single musician producing albums and albums of the enigmatic brilliance that is to twist or rouse a heart at will, song after song.

How can one person have so many beautiful things inside of them? It is God, pouring into and out of their souls, whether they know it or not.

I have some beautiful things inside me, too, but not so many as that. Not albums full like the musicians, or books full like the authors of great literature, or galleries full like real artists. I have made some beautiful things, just a few, and for them I worked so hard they were ground from my very bones. My bones are rather tired these days. Too tired to make any more beautiful things, at least for now.
I’ve heard that life is a series of rhythms, of ebbs and flows. I feel as if I am experiencing the former. Taking an unwilling sabbatical from production. Though I suspect that a large part of this current “ebb” comes from the paralyzing fear—or knowledge, even—that the things I try to make won’t turn out the way I’d envisioned. I think a “flow” will come again eventually, and until then I hope to absorb more of the beauty that already exists.

As a child in the window sill I was a black hole for all things beautiful, a vortex frantically sucking in more and more, stars and music and art, animals landscapes flowers and sparkly things, nature and glinting chandeliers, the sounds of violins and harmonies. I particularly liked the durable things, things that could keep their deepest beauty even in the rough. That was my favorite. Somehow I felt that the beauty wasn’t quite so genuine if it couldn’t survive a tumble or two; if it could be completely ruined by a bit of mud and mess.

I think maybe beauty shouldn’t be afraid to be ugly.