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.

A Sampling of Dreams

Friday night’s dream is a girl in a tomb. She sits on the edge of the stone slab meant for her resting place, swinging her long legs. She is wrapped in a green silk cloth. When she sees me she jumps down from the slab and brushes her wispy blond hair back from her sallow face. She stops and stares at me with slow, intense deliberation. Her eyes are sunken, two round shadows in the cold paleness of her face, like two footprints in the fresh snowdrifts of her high cheekbones. Her mouth was red, a splash of blood in that snow; beautiful, and blind. I look into her snow-cave eyes and she gazes back at me-—through me-—with a sort of absent-minded hardness.

“Spirit cooking.” She says to me, her voice so dark and low it seems as if my ears are submerged in deep water.

“But we have no pots,” I say, feeling dazed and lightheaded. There is something in the air here.
~*~

On a Wednesday night it snows in my mind as I sleep. A stark snow of isolation and cold gasps; of brute survival and fear and you could scream scream scream your lungs out and your voice would fall dead on the ground, absorbed instantly by this fearful snow, and silence would rein again. Absolute silence, and tense; the silence that edges every hidden terror. Not a sound to be heard, but you know that at any moment something could be behind you. Look now, make sure, look the other way, find yourself spinning in circles till you fall in that sinister snow and lie there shivering. You stay because at least now your back is covered. Now watch the sky and wait. In my dream I waited for the twisted face and milky eyes, the waxy skin sporadically interrupted by shocks of course hair, the long spindled fingers like vices that crush my ankle as I am dragged, and uneven stumpy legs that somehow still moved swift and quietly through the thin woods. Bound and gagged in the warehouse I pray it won’t hurt when I am crucified.
~*~

On Thursday night, I dream I am a child. I am peering nervously out from underneath a clothing rack, lost amid the bright, cheap hues of Walmart. Mommy had left me and somehow I know she isn’t coming back. I cry; I wake up crying.
~*~

Another night, I dream that I am miraculously, inexplicably pregnant with a puppy. I am in a soft pink hospital suite, closely monitored considering the curiousness of my particular case. There is a treadmill in my room; the doctors want me to walk a little every day. A television mounted in an upper corner plays an old black-and-white movie. I am excited; I have never liked babies very much but I love puppies. Somewhere deep down I always wondered if I would really like my own baby very much, if I ever had one. But I have no doubt I will love a puppy. Sonogram pictures taped to the wall by my bed depict the fuzzy image of a tiny canine, curled and sleeping with eyes shut tight. As is typical with dreams, the gravity of the dream's absurdity does not occur to me until the morning.
~*~

A few nights ago, I dream of a serpent-like demon. She sparkles blue, so bright in my eyes, and possesses pretty little things; lovely little trinkets. Golden eggs, lipstick and feathers, pieces of glass, chandelier baubles and empty bottles of wine, polished stones and wind chimes. Things that catch the light; things I like to touch. I am drawn to the mysterious beauty of these things, like a moth into the deeper darkness behind a deadly flame. My gaze lingers for too long, and I reach my fingers slowly out to touch the shining surfaces. Through the sparkles my demon mistress pulls me into her world; her black labyrinth. I wander through black marble hallways, occasionally passing doors set deep into the walls. There are many doors, each leading into stark, foggy white rooms. One door leads to safety; somehow I know it. I know the search for this room is perilous, though; I know that behind one of the doors the demon waits, and she will pull me into the white to sit stiffly on a cold wrought-iron bench. She will float before me, three times my size. She speaks evil things to me in whispers that are soft yet sharp, filling my ears like razor blades hidden in folds of velvet. She curses my family and blasphemes my God; she asks me if I agree with this bile. I tell her no. She takes my shoulder in her mouth and crushes it with her white-hot teeth. She asks me again if I agree. Again I tell her no. Again she bites, my other shoulder this time. This happens four more times. Body and soul I am wracked with pain and terror and burning guilt for wanting oh so wanting to just give in and damn everything I love, just to escape; just for relief.
~*~

Last night I dreamed the world ended, so I came back to you.
In the aftermath you buttoned my jacket against the ash and cold, and helped me put things into the torn paper shopping bag that was all I’d held on to when the city went bang. Sparkles in the crumbled sidewalks winked up at us through grimy rubble as we wandered. No one in the streets, no one else anywhere. We were so isolated, you and I, walking together without a thought of whatever had separated us before. What did yesterday’s conflicts matter now that our only bed was a burnt-up limousine, half-smashed in the gutter? There was a certain peace in the lack of choice, in the way the apocalypse rendered every previous concern irrelevant. How we were forced together in pure survival because suddenly there was nothing, no one else alive on the bare smoldering planet. No one else to help me tie my shoes when my fingers were cold and numb.
Last night I dreamed the world ended,so I came back to you.


.

A Stream of Her Consciousness

She would read a book and be in the mood of it for days, the mood of whatever was happening in the story. Lovers’ quarrels were the worst, especially when the man was to blame, but she liked it when they made up again, tender and sweet. Only this does not always happen in books, especially the ones she reads. Most of them make her sad, and she knows that but reads them anyway, because she will settle for nothing less than the nit and grit and bittersweet and ugly, and shocking maybe, or illustrations of the dull, gray monotony of the everyday; the rock in every stomach and the dryness of every tongue and the enigmatic question undefined in every mind.

So she takes on the mood of what she read and often it is a sort of melancholy introspection. Sometimes she’ll read something more optimistic—about what she considers to be happiness of substance; the “comes-after-something-hard” appreciation for continued life in which the sun rises and sleep feels nice. The sun is pretty, and sleep is something you have to do anyway. So continued life with still some beauty in it, and guiltless rest when you are tired.

Her fuse is shorter in the summertime—or at least she’d like to believe so, quietly hoping she isn’t this way all year long; that it really is just this heat. This swelter, these temperatures so high she can hear the buzz and drone, sun so bright it beats her eyes blind. White noise always in her ears and white light always in her eyes and sweat trickling down, tickling her back and making her clothes stick to her and her hair flat.

It didn’t used to bother her so much, being out in the heat. She remembers the high temperatures picking apples in Weston as a child: small apples, apples of red and yellow, of dusty worm holes and red and tart and juicy still and so red next to the yellow, and it was fine because she never found a single worm in any of the apples. She consumed them under those old-lady cedars across the street from the orchard. Their trunks and branches that bent toward the ground in an arch above her, and when she sat in the tangle of its roots she would be pulled into a sweet nostalgia, reminding her of the lap of her grandmother. Grandmother used to curl around her like that, like the tree did, when she sat in her lap as a baby. She doesn’t actually remember that, but she has seen so many pictures and knows her grandmother’s scent so well that it is almost like remembering.

It is summer now, but damp these last few days and hummingbirds swarm like locusts around the feeders, stabbing manically at the sugar water inside. They never come to her favorite feeder—the expensive one, the pretty glass one with copper accents—instead flocking to the cheap red plastic flowers glued to a transparent cylinder that hangs from the roof of the porch by a rusty hook. She leaves the glass one out though, just in case. They are such delicate little creatures; certainly sooner or later they will realize they belong among the finer things.

She thinks quite frequently. She thinks of things more often than she does them, and when she does do things she thinks so much about the doing of them that she forgets to experience the things she does.

She has thoughts and she thinks them late at night, late at night when she can’t sleep. Round and round, the horses gallop, pounding, pulling carriages that bump roughly over every wrinkle in her brain. She’s rearranging her furniture hoping that it will make other changes easier; hoping it will fool her heart into thinking that the strange horizon is a fresh start rather than the ruins of what she painstakingly pieced together with her own two hands and blood, sweat, and tears. A model-future, the scaled-down structure of what she thought things might be. Hopeful ideas glued together with circumstantial facts, forming a skeleton that was the practical plan beneath the lovely Dream.
The Dream had been lovingly sculpted with tender—if shaky—hands, every bit of it. The airy hypostyle supported by a forest of twisting Solomonic columns with capitals carved to the very last ornate detail, the symbolic finials perfectly placed atop onion domes, the tracery artfully dispersed inside the arched and vaulted rooms, a custom-make of everything her own. She had even furnished it with the people and things she hoped would be included there if the model-future was ever realized.
It was perfect. Elaborate—even gaudy, perhaps—but hers. Specific enough for security and joyful anticipation, but left with enough unfinished parts to be exciting and mysterious.
But she knows the glue of facts pertains to the present and thus is subject to change. Years of planning and building and loving and laughing and crying and heartache and happiness and meticulous craftsmanship. She has almost forgotten that it is only a prototype, a rough draft; not necessarily a promise of how things may turn out to be. She dwelt there as if it were home and it has held up—-for the most part—-until now, when she begins to hear the creaking. It’s only settling, she is sure at first. But it is getting louder now, and she trips over cracks in the foundation. She knows the glue is beginning to break its hold, because circumstances are changing and if they continue she knows the glue will finally dissolve and it will fall apart—-all of it. She lingers by the doorway, reluctant to leave, but soon begins forcing herself a safe distance away.

She never played with dollhouses as a little girl, but as that Dream House crumbles and the little pretend-people jump from the windows, she realizes she’s been playing all this time.

It is a slow crumble and she watches it, scrutinizing as if that would make it easier; as if observing every gory detail would prepare her for the Dream’s complete destruction. As if that would make it easier to live without; would make easier the vast moor of nothing it will leave behind.

I will not be overwhelmed. Underwhelmed. Overwhelmed. Under, over; under, over… like the long shards of reflected light braiding themselves together on the floor beneath the window…

She keeps pretty glass bottles on the shelf by the window, where the sun glints off the many facets of so much ornate glass, and in so many colors. They are such elegant bottles, with many fine engravings weaving up their necks, one glass textured around a cut pattern of flowering vines spreading up from the bottom. The cut flowers and their stems curve through the frosted glass with such fluid grace they almost seem to be growing—ever so slowly—toward the sun. When the sun shines through the window, the rows of bottles—the light catching everything, their curves and facets and cut designs, the round rims and a chipped spot or two—light shatters on the floor.

So beautiful.

The bottles in the window…how often she had thought to break them.

These days it seems like every song she hears breaks her heart (You’ve got a fast car; is it fast enough that we can fly away?).
Especially if she knows them well enough to sing along, to release from her own mouth the words that bring back memories, (Some had crumbled you straight to your knees; did it cruel, did it tenderly) and the harmonies where the notes skate simultaneously over and under one another, making twists and figure-eights in her ears(I know that it is freezing, but I think we have to walk).

The ones that remind her of someone else (Now fighting’s a part of baby’s romance, I’m never gonna tell on you), the ones that remind her of herself (Tuesday night at the Bible study, we lift our hands and pray over your body, but nothing ever happens), of God (When you wear your clothes, I wear them too), of old friendships (Like stubborn boys with big green eyes, we’ll see everything); the ones she doesn’t want to hear (When your want from the day makes you to curse in your sleep at night), and the ones she wish would come true (Whatever differences our lives have been, we together make a limb). They squeezed her insides like a bad nurse with a blood pressure cuff—-not tight enough to bruise really, but enough for discomfort and a sore throbbing, throbbing; building and building with no place to go but you can’t complain because it is routine and it will be over soon anyway (Be brave, dear one; be changed or be undone). And indeed when the music fades out the cuff loosens, allowing the quiet rush of tired relief (Like grace from the earth when you’re all tuckered out and tame).

Another song plays, though, and another. She can’t stop listening no matter how they make her heart feel, fit to burst, in the same way you pick at a scab: as if you could just peel off the part that hurts (Shedding skin faster than skin could grow). Over and over, (We were sixteen, maybe less, maybe a little more), throbbing, throbbing, building pressure. They force her brow to draw together (Me I’m not a gamble, you can count on me to split), her eyes to close (It was something of an end to a lovely and a wild thing).

Because of this her heart breaks roughly eight times a day. In this inexplicable sadness she tells herself, “Don’t forget, this day is good.” And it is. They are only songs; they are only thoughts, or memories. Sticks and stones…
She turns the volume down, the songs murmuring hushed in her ears, and the sepia-toned whispers sing to sleep her wandering thoughts.