The Accident

She had been miserable, but the days had passed and now her elbows bent and her knees bent and her skin was healing over. There were patches of scabs still that she tried to resist picking at, and she watched the skin change colors as the bruises deepened and then faded. She got out of bed for the first time aside from brief trips to the bathroom in about a week and her legs felt weak and shook a little as she stood. But the tremor disappeared as she walked around the room. She was tired of her view from the bed and she stood by the window for several moments looking out over the trees. She could just see the ocean through the branches since the leaves had started to fall. She loved winter because it changed her view entirely and she almost had a full view of the beach a few blocks away. But in the spring when the trees leafed out she lost her view and could hardly even see the sky as it was sheltered by the maple tree right outside of her window. Standing wasn’t comfortable so she went into the kitchen to make tea.

Her friend had been coming over every day to cook and help her to the bathroom. But she had rung her friend this morning and said she could take care of herself now. She didn’t like to ask for help, but it had been necessary. She had ignored the mail in hopes of not thinking about the legal ramifications of the previous week, but she could pretend no longer. Denial had served her throughout the week though, except in her dreams where she relived the accident over and over again. She hardly remembered what had happened now though. She remembered a man with a full beard and piercing olive green eyes. She remembered metal scraping and the flicker of flames out of the corner of her eye. And she remembered the view of the trees from upside down, and the surprise at how foreign the world looked from a different angle.

She had made the front page of the newspaper and had received cards and flowers and small gifts that remained unwrapped on the kitchen table. Her car had been totaled and the bearded man’s truck had burst into flames, but he had remained miraculously unscathed. But the caged bird in his backseat that was on the way to the vet had gone up in flames with the truck and the man had repeated over and over again the last caw he had heard from the colorful toucan. He cried about his bird, but not about his truck. He said a deer had leapt into the road and his brakes had screamed into the pavement. She didn’t remember a deer. He had sent her a gift but it was with the others. She didn’t want to open it. She had lost nothing important in her car, but her palms were shredded and the bruise around her eye looked like the result of an abusive relationship. She thought of the toucan and wondered whether the colors of its feathers looked like dancing flames. She hoped it had died quickly, instead of smoldering slowly trapped behind bars.

The bearded man was supposed to visit her today. She knew he felt guilty that she had been so beat up and he hadn’t. But she was glad that he hadn’t gone up in flames as well, a man and his bird burning together, skin and feathers melting into oblivion. She wondered what burning feathers smelled like, and if it was anything like burning hair which she had discovered the smell of when she tried to straighten her hair with an iron when she was about seven years old. That had been a failed experiment. Her mom had screamed at her, and then took scissors to her head and cut off all of her hair until there was only an inch left. She had kept her hair short ever since to spite her mother since she knew her mother envisioned having a beautiful daughter with long curly hair and graceful hands that stroked the pearly white piano keys. She never learned to play the piano and her hands were not graceful.

Her knees buckled and she hobbled over to the kitchen table and sat down. The room was cold and she hugged herself with her arms wrapped around her shoulders for a moment. She looked at the gifts on the table and moved them aside. She lay her head down on her arms and fingered the bristle of her hair that was growing long enough to flop over instead of standing straight up. The kitchen looked larger from her horizontal perspective and the fridge seemed so far away. But with the grumble of her stomach she rose and looked for the peanut butter. She made a sandwich with honey and raisins and brought it back to her bed to eat. Her bed felt safe and familiar whereas the rest of her apartment felt oddly distant and cold. Her bedroom was bright and sunny compared to the dark kitchen, and felt warmer as she climbed into bed. She could feel the stretch of new skin across her knees and elbows and she gently fingered the bruises to see if they still hurt. They did, but less than they had before.

Her phone rang and it was the bearded man whose name she couldn’t remember, even after he said it again over the phone. He asked when a good time to visit would be, and she couldn’t think of any good time, but said early afternoon would work. She gave him directions and hung up. She finished her sandwich and lay back against the pillows watching the leaves flutter in the late fall breeze. She pulled the covers up to her chin and dosed off. She dreamt of a camel with pearls around his neck and water flowing out of his mouth. She was drinking the water and splashing it over her face. She could feel the salt crystals of her sweat flow off of her chin and into the sand that was hot from the sun. When she awoke her hair and shirt were damp from sweat. She smoothed her hair back and thought about the view of trees from upside down. She heard a crow outside but by the time she got to the window it had flown away.

She slowly dressed and rinsed her face in preparation for the bearded man’s visit. He had seemed nice over the phone, but she was nervous about having company, especially since she still looked so battered. He arrived with flowers in his hand, and she accepted them with slightly raised eyebrows. She offered him a chair and a cup of tea which he accepted, tilting the chair at an angle to the table so he could rest an ankle on his knee. His eyes were smiling and kind, but also full of sympathy. He asked how she was doing. She was momentarily distracted by trying to remember his name, and then answered that she was fine. She sat down across the table from him and leaned on her elbows with her mug of mint tea in her hands. The sharp scent filled her nostrils as she breathed in deeply, and her face felt damp from the steam. She apologized for the loss of his bird. He looked down at his lap for a moment and then back at her face and said thank you. His smiling eyes faded into sadness and remembrance. They talked about the accident, and he filled her in on the details that she didn’t remember. But their conversation was factual and lacked emotion as if they were already too distanced from it to even remember that they were both there. It was as if they were talking about an accident that they had read about in the newspaper, something that had happened to someone else. It felt easier that way. When she asked him about his interest in birds he became animated and spoke with gestures, and leaning in towards her, she could smell mint on his breath from the tea. His eyes were smiling again.

He left a little while later. She was glad he had come by after all. After he left she put the flowers he had brought, pansies that looked freshly cut from his garden, into a small ceramic vase and brought them into her bedroom where they fit nicely on her bedside table. She leaned over the smell them, but they hardly had a scent. She thought about the bearded man’s smiling eyes, and wondered if her eyes ever looked like that, so shiny and sparkling, as if they knew something that no one else knew, a hidden well of happiness.

She lay down on her bed facing the bouquet of pansies and studied their dark centers that flared out into brilliant color. She closed her eyes and quickly fell asleep. She dreamt of the crow that had cawed outside of her window. It was sitting on a branch watching over her. But after a moment it dipped into the air and as it flew away its inky black feathers turned to shocking reds and oranges and blues and it cawed like the toucan had in the burning truck, but with less desperation. It circled several times through the sky above her bedroom and then flew off into the distance until it was nothing but a black dot against the graying horizon.

Flying far far away.....

Today a slacker...tomorrow a slacker...next week, back in business, so don't give up on me!

Old

Unfortunately, the flight of stairs was far too steep and far too tall fading off into the nether reaches of the house, for the old woman to climb. She stood at the bottom of the staircase looking up, one hand resting on the banister, a shiny carved piece of cherry wood that the old woman could see her reflection in when she looked closely and over the rims of her glasses. She sighed. She did so want to be able to climb the staircase, one step then another, to see her brand new granddaughter who lay asleep in her crib upstairs. The old woman had entered through the front door without being let in. She hadn’t knocked or rung the doorbell. She had quietly turned the polished brass knob and entered, stepping lightly on the plush Indian rug of reds and oranges. She had peered into the parlor and saw nothing but an abandoned silver tea set and mostly empty china mugs. She heard rustlings upstairs, but no footsteps. She thought she could make out coos from the baby, and the old woman wondered what her granddaughter looked like. She hadn’t seen her daughter in over twenty years, and only new about the birth from the daily paper that always posted the comings and goings of the townspeople. She longed to see her estranged daughter, to see the crinkles around her eyes, and the softness of her cheek. She longed to see if her granddaughter had the same brilliant blue eyes, and dimple in her chin. As she looked up the staircase, she wondered how she had become so old, so decrepit. She turned and sat herself down slowly on the third step up, knees bent and cracking, a steady hand on the banister to help her down. She would just wait. And she wondered if, when her daughter saw her back leaning against the banister, he silver hair pulled tight into a bun, whether she would just decide to stay upstairs forever.

The Game

The game began innocently enough, three girls and three boys playing tag on the playground at recess, desperately needing to race around dodging reaching arms, a longed-for break from sitting tall in wooden seats attached to wooden desks where the tops open and inside lie pencils sharpened and notebooks blank and wanting. It was only a game, one girl explained later. She didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. The teacher who watched them didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, at first. The other girls and boys were happy to be stretching their legs and breathing deeply, gasping for air and dodging enemies. Staying mobile was all they were thinking about, the girls and boys on the playground. The other children were sitting reading, or in small groups giggling, or watching the tag game from the sidelines. But when one girl swatted her mile-long pigtail at another girl, hands clasping momentarily, one boy watching from across the blacktop at the flirting laughing girls, clinging to each other, he yelled. All eyes were on him. His body shook and he raced toward them. The girls ran in opposite directions, hands tearing from each other, fingers still wanting. He chose one and followed and around and around they went dodging the basketball poles and potholes in the pavement edges. He caught her and threw her down. Another boy joined, for it was only a game. Soon all three boys were piled on top and the other two girls stood watching, braid ends in mouths sucking nervously. The teacher was reading; even the yell hardly brought her eyes up, it was only a game. Moments later, the game was over. The girl on the bottom of the pile of three boys had smashed her head to the pavement and disappeared from the game, from the schoolyard, from this life.

Bed Ridden

And so the days passed, one after another never ceasing, never changing. Well, actually this wasn’t completely true; it only felt true to Susan who lay in her hospital bed surrounded by four white walls, white sheets, and a single window to mark the turn from day to night, and night to day. She lay on her side most of the day looking out the window. The tree right outside shaded her room for the first few months, but then it turned cold and the leaves turned yellow then brown and then fell to the ground leaving her with a new view. She could see across the road now, she could see the stone steps of the library, and the kids sitting on them after school waiting for their parents to come pick them up. She could see the old man who came every day around noontime to smoke his pipe, puff puff, and walk inside. He would reappear about an hour later, book in hand, reaching for his pipe, puff puff. And away he walked. She could see her sister, who stopped by the library before coming to visit her. She always brought Susan a new book to read; since this was about all she could do besides watch the people come and go up and down the stone library steps. She remembered how the stone turned to ice in the cold, and then soaked up the sun in the summer, changing with the seasons just the way her tree seemed to do. She watched.

Large

This is her standing. She doesn’t stand often; she is too large to heft her body out of the easy chair she sits in all day long. But once and a while she finds deep within herself a hidden strength that motivates her just enough to lift her body from the chair, which is worn, the flowered pattern in oranges and browns mostly rubbed into nothingness and bare threads stick this way and that prickling her arms. But she doesn’t seem to feel them; she doesn’t seem to feel anything anymore. Watch her stand. Her ankles wobble and I always think she is going to fall forward, flat onto her face. But she surprises me every time by maintaining her stance. Sometimes she walks a few feet; sometimes she turns in a circle. Other times she doesn’t move her feet, just stands a moment and then sits back down, shaking the ground with her weight, the chair creaking beneath her. I can’t imagine how the little wooden legs of the chair support her weight, and have for so many years now. But they withstand her body, and maybe even miss her body during the scarce moments that she stands. As soon as she falls back into her chair, her arms coming to rest on the threads that hold her arms, she falls fast asleep and I almost think she has died from the exertion.

The Fall

In a way I wanted her to fall. I watched her standing on top of the jungle gym, her skirt blowing in the breeze behind her. Her shiny black Mary Jane shoes reflected the sunlight and made me blink and squint and turn away. She leaned into the wind until her body was held up only by the anchoring of her shoes to the wooden slats. The tire swing swung back and forth making a creaking sound. She looked over at me and laughed, as if daring me to want her to fall, or to test how anxious I was about her being so high up and held to the ground by so little. She waved and I waved back. Look at me she called down. No one else was around. The playground was silent except for the creaking swing and her calling voice. It started to snow and flakes caught my lashes and I could hardly see her anymore through the wet crystals forming before my eyes. She threw her head back to face the sky full on and laughed as loud as she knew how to. Then she jumped.

One Page #21

I do not know which of us did it, but maybe it doesn’t matter anymore. I still think about it though, and feel the stabbing pang of guilt. We both stood side by side watching it fall, pausing a moment in mid air as if trying to decide whether it wanted to go all the way down or maybe bounce back upright. It fell. It shattered. We watched. Our hands were trembling a little bit, and the hairs on my arm stood up straight. But the fire burned in the hearth and the yellow-orange light flickered in our eyes and warmed our cheeks to a blush. I heard you make a noise and when I looked over at your face I saw you were laughing. You tried to hide it for a moment, but that moment passed and you were throwing shrieks at the ceiling, howling into the rafters that were so far above our heads that it was nighttime dark up there. I expected the stars to be shining, but there was nothing there. I thought I saw a bat fly from one beam to another, but I could have imagined that. I looked back at your laughing that was waning slightly now, and smiled at the twinkle in your eyes. They shone like the stars that were absent from above and looking into them I fell weightless into the distance over treetops and oceans tumbling and continents adrift. You pulled me higher and higher and you held my hand tightly promising never to let go. You laughter echoed into the heavens now and I thought I saw angels blowing horns that raised your laughter into song and the melody still plays in my ears now as I lie in bed looking at the ceiling under comforters and quilts and orange flannel sheets that have been washed over and over and feel like the softness of your cheek against mine in the early morning sunshine when our eyes are still fresh to the dawn and the rooster is cackling outside with the chickens clucking around him and we throw corn and seed from our bedroom window in arcs across the lawn. But I think back to why you were laughing and I feel the guilt again like a rock tumbling around in my stomach and I cringe at the memory of the awful shattering that echoed throughout the room as shards jumped into the fire and sizzled with a hiss into smoke that coiled up through the chimney and was released out into the night sky scenting the air and pervading the noses of passers by who looked into our lit windows with envy of the warmth and safety that we endured, not hearing the cackling and not seeing the scattered shards and not peering into the rafters at the elusive bat who tumbled around in the darkness. I looked out at their faces peering in and I held your hand in the shadows where no one could see and I smiled towards your dancing eyes that blinked away tears.

One Page #20

She wanted to savor the last moment they spent together. And she would remember this moment until her memory faded with old age. As her hair turned white and her teeth grayed and her fingers started shaking like leaves on a windy day she began writing down her memories. Her pen quivered on the page making scribbles in circles as she sat and looked out the window at the forest and the ducks that were flying overhead. She remembered yesterday and the day before, but everything else was fading away. She kept trying to hold on to it, but you can’t hold on to memory because the more you try the more elusive it is. Memory plays games, and every second that goes by alters your memories until soon they are nothing like what really happened, but you don’t know that because you can’t remember what really happened. And what really happened doesn’t matter anymore, what matters is that it did happen, and you wouldn’t be here today, pen in hand, if it hadn’t happened. So you can rest assured knowing that something happened, even if you can’t remember it. But she did remember that last moment pretty well. She remembered the smell of the new spring day, and the lilacs were just opening their petals and the hills were bursting green. They had stood before each other, looking, memorizing, and then disappearing. She remembered the last thing that happened, a finger to the tip of her nose so smooth with a perfectly rounded nail. There was a wink and a touch to the shoulder and then a turn of the head toward the sun. She caught the glimmer of gold in her ear and the long stretch of her neck angled impossibly, straining veins popping. They had looked at each other one last time, and the air felt velvet. The last moment was long as if the trees around them stopped rustling for just a moment and the birds paused in mid-flight. And then it was over and all she saw was a back and heels click clacking on the gravel road, bag bouncing against hip and hair flipping in the wind towards heaven. If a tree fell on her that very moment she would have died a happy woman. But now she couldn’t decide now whether she was happy or not. And maybe it didn’t matter. She looked at the paper and pen in front of her and wrote every detail that she could remember, but all she knew for sure was that her shirt was red and the sky was a brilliant blue and a hawk had flown through the trees with a caw caw shrieking. And the rest has been changed by many years of experience adding layers upon layers over the memory. She thought of the long, outstretched neck and how smooth the skin was under the chin when it was pulled taut, and she wrote that down too. Her hand shook.

A Little Bit of Weirdness

Nick had considered himself a lucky guy, until now. Today he was Meredith complete with curves, high heels and a bitch of a backache. This hadn’t happened in years, and he thought he had solved his problem way back when with thousands of dollars to an infamous psychiatrist. But today there was no denying it; he was Meredith. His luck had run out. He had won at scratch cards a few times, and raffles, door prizes, and concert tickets off the radio. That was luck. This was not luck, this was the opposite of luck, this was negative luck.

He knew as soon as he woke up that something was off, but it was a familiar off-ness. The feeling flooded back, and he felt different in his body, in his mind. He reached first for his face, which was the safest place to start. His cheeks were smooth, his lips full, and his eyes still sticky from makeup remover. He felt his neck, also silky smooth, and a hollow where his Adam’s apple usually protruded. He gulped. He could feel the gulp with his hand at his throat. Slowly, with dread and fear, he worked his hand down toward his chest. His touch was light, he could feel the drag of his long curved nails run along his upper chest and then move outward with the curve of a breast. When he came to the nipple, hard beneath his camisole, he stopped. He circled around the nipple, slowly, and felt damp all over his body. He stopped and withdrew his hand to above the covers. His heart raced. He was an unlucky man today. Or, should he say an unlucky woman today?

The few other times this had happened he had never been anything other than a man. He had awoken with different names, different homes, and even different bodies. He thought with relish about the bodybuilder’s body, he had never known such strength! Oh, how the ladies loved him then. But he had never been a woman. He couldn’t move, his body was immobilized in bed. The sheets felt suddenly cold, then hot. He was sweating. The names always came to him, as if they were ingrained in him. Meredith just felt right. As he said the name a few times in his head a slow smile crept across his face. I am a woman, he thought. This was like Gregory Samsa waking up as a bug, but a million times better. Maybe I am actually the luckiest man alive.

His sense of manliness slowly ebbed. This always happened. He lost himself, and everything he knew about himself, as he became someone else. He knew, or hoped, that he would return to this same sense of self at some point, usually a day or two later. But he never really knew that this would happen. He always worried that he would lose himself completely, and never return to the self that he knew. As the last inklings of memory and identity disappeared he looked around at his room with desperation. Already the baseball posters were fading, replaced with blue and white striped wallpaper. He saw his sneakers fade into black high heels, discarded after a long night of dancing. He surrendered his terrycloth bathrobe that hung on the back of the door for a silk slip. And then everything was fuzzy.

When she awoke, Meredith looked at the ceiling. Last night had been amazing, dancing and margaritas until four and a meandering cab ride home with her three girlfriends, looking at the moon reflected in the river and calling out to the prostitutes who lined the streets, telling them how gorgeous they looked. She didn’t remember coming home, or falling asleep. She didn’t remember her dreams very well either, but she thought she might have been a man in one and could almost feel the folds of a terry cloth bathrobe and the sweaty smile of Babe Ruth, bat in hand, striped baseball cap at a jaunty angle. But then it was gone. She rolled onto her side and looked at her clock. She had ten minutes to catch her train to work. She sighed, and then moved the covers aside, kicked her high heels under the bed, and went to the closet. She pulled on jeans and a Black Sabbath t-shirt. She pulled sneakers from the floor and tied the laces quickly. She had just enough time to brush her teeth before running down the stairs to the train station a block away. A man in an orange plaid coat at the station looked her way and smiled. She frowned and looked away, eager for the train to come.

She tried to remember back to a few days ago when her boss had yelled at her for being late. He was on old friend, and the yelling was only for show. But she couldn’t seem to remember the conversation. It was an almost-memory, the kind where the more you think about it the less real it seems. She tried to think about something else, hoping that the conversation would come back if she pretended not to care. She thought about the groceries she needed and the funny old lady with blue hair who worked at the corner market where she shopped. No luck, she couldn’t remember. The train was late. She moved toward to the track and realized she had stepped in gum. The pink strings between the wad and her foot elongated as she lifted her shoe. She scraped her foot against the ground, hoping the concrete was rough enough to get the gum off. As she moved away she could feel her sole was still sticky. This was not a lucky day.

The train came and Meredith boarded. The seats were full so she held onto a vertical metal pole as the train bounced into darkness. People were reading newspapers and drinking coffee, eyes half closed, still partially lost in the trundles of sleep. Meredith looked at the floor, wary of more gum wads, and then glanced up and met the gaze of a man who was staring at her. She thought of Babe Ruth. She saw the man swallow and his Adams’ apple bounce twice in quick succession. He looked away. His scruffy cheeks seemed familiar. She looked back and he was gone. People swarmed around her, clamoring for the exit as the doors snapped open. A moment later they closed; the train was quieter and she was carried off into the darkness once again. She reached up and rubbed her tired eyes. As her hand fell back down to her side, she caught the scruff of her cheek against her thumb. She reached back up and fingered the coarse hairs. They felt familiar.

At the next stop, a girl with a Black Sabbath t-shirt got on the train. He admired the image of bright lights and painted faces silk screened on the front with jagged letters underneath announcing tour dates. He had been at that show. The woman sneered at him and he realized she must have thought he was looking at her chest. He blushed. This was not a lucky day.

One Page #19

Before I saw them coming I turned several circles in the yard with my arms outstretched and my face raised toward the sunshine that filtered in through my mostly closed lashes. As I passed around and around I saw the sun fly by between my lashes that stood like bars between my self and the sky and blurred the tree branches and the crows that were flying around first one way and then another as if they couldn’t make up their minds about which direction they were headed. I don’t blame them. Finding direction, choosing direction, is nearly impossible. You are always going one way or another way, but changing course is inevitable and sometimes the most exciting part, but it is the long stretches of moving only forward, not to the right or left, just straight on, that is easy but boring and makes my eye lids droop low and my eyes cast downwards toward the grass where I nearly miss a branch that would have caught on my pant legs and held on tight like it’s life depended on my forward motion but just then I decided to swerve and I missed the branch and instead flew off to the left where the lawn slopped down towards the pond and as I neared it, still spinning slowly in circles, I saw the ripples on the surface of the water coming towards me like the wind and they passed in and out of my view as I spun around and I thought that maybe I would fall in. But I didn’t. I stopped instead because I was getting dizzy and the ripples were catching the sunlight in just the right way so that with each ripple I could see just for a second the glint of the sun and then it disappeared and rolled into the next ripple where I saw the same glint of the sun, except it wasn’t exactly the same because no ripple is exactly alike, even though they look awfully similar. I wonder if the sun is the same sun, maybe with each ripple a new sun is reflected until there are so many suns and so many ripples that I am drowning, and I am nearly halfway drowned when I see them coming. And I stop and watch them come across the lawn towards me. They are holding hands and I wonder whether her skin is still as smooth as the rock that is warm in my pocket and has two parallel lines that run in circles around the surface of the rock. The lines are white and the rock is a dark green-gray and the white lines divide the green-gray into three sections that are all different sizes, but the middle one is the smallest because the two white lines are close together, almost like they want to be touching but are scared to because touch is scary, so I don’t blame them for keeping to themselves. The hands that are clutching each other arrive, with two bodies, and two grinning faces that meet mine. But I am not smiling, not just yet anyway.

One Page #18

I heard a scraping behind me that hurts my ears and caused my head to spin faster in circles that were so great I could feel the pull of the tides and the race of the waves and the reverberations of the crashing waters in my ears that were full from the cold that filled my head with a weight that caused my chin to sag and my eyes to droop and the skin around my nostrils was red and sore like my lungs that could only manage a slow shallow breath because my thoughts were trembling on the fear of whether I would make it through the day since it is only mid afternoon and already the day feels lengthened and stretched into a taut rope (that is ready to snap) that spans the then with the almost but leaves out the middle of the now where I am and I feel like I have been passed over and ignored because I was too vague to be seen and as I sit and watch my fingers trembling I wonder how much longer I will be able to manage the distance that separates me from the only other thing that makes sense to me right now, but then I remember the now doesn’t exist because it is already then and I feel better because I am not stuck in this second I am only stuck in the second that has passed along behind me and since I managed that second and the one that has just passed me by again I can manage whatever other ones come along soon and I will just concentrate on the steam that rises from my mug in front of me as I look into that deepening red that is interfered only by the tea bag that is losing while the water around it is gaining and there is a constant exchange but the levels stay the same and that doesn’t quite make enough sense to me and so I take a sip and forget about that (ex)change and think instead about the sweetness that is warming all the way down to a place that I carry with me always but will never see and I begin to think that maybe it doesn’t even exist and really my tea is pooling in different sections of my body like my toes and the crevice around my bent knees and maybe even in the recesses of my back where it aches from sitting too long and I hope that the warm will sooth the ache and I will be able to stand and walk away and think about nothing that has just happened because I only want to move forward and forget about that which is behind me because it keeps poking me in the back where it hurts and reminding me and making my cheeks prick with embarrassment that I was fool enough to fall into your trap and since you have walked away and disappeared now I can think about it without your continual reaching out then pushing away and why didn’t you just admit that you needed someone and I was the only one and so I saved you and was left empty because I gave it all away.

One Page #17

Her hair is longer now. She shaved her head with a rusty razor last summer down to her scalp until it bled in spots. Her pale white skin looked funny with little red droplets that oozed and then fell running in rivulets down her neck and face and into the collar of her shirt. But she let it grow after that until it was several inches long. It stood in clumps that looked like cacti because she had dyed it a brilliant green. The other girls at school looked at her with wide eyes, but said nothing. Then her parents sent her away to boarding school for a year. When she came back the following year her hair was even longer and fell into her eyes. It was no longer green, but was a dull brown again. Her three lip rings had been removed as well, but you could still see the holes if you looked closely. I was the only one who looked closely. She looked like a ferret. When she arrived back at school she said nothing to anyone. There was an invisible barrier between her and everyone else. Rumors flew around the school about her being paddled by nuns on her behind and sent to solitary confinement for a week when she brought a flask of whiskey to math class. The girls no longer looked at her with wide eyes, they didn’t look at her at all anymore. She had faded into the wallpaper that lined the school hallways. Even her shoes matched the brown carpeting and her sweater was the same color as the peeling beige lockers. When her name was called at role call she raised her hand timidly, only as high as her head, and said nothing. One day I looked over at her desk and couldn’t tell whether she was still there or not. I thought I saw her brown shoes sitting square with the edge of her desk, but I wasn’t quite sure. Her hair obscured my view of the poster on the wall behind her, but her shoulders didn’t seem to be in the right place and her brown sweater seemed faded. I saw her pencil moving, but no hand holding it. Her sweater didn’t hold steady but wavered as if it were filled by a ghost rather than solid flesh. I got up to go to the bathroom and passed by her desk on my way to the door. I waved my hand gently through her hair but it was only a mirage. My hand met with nothing solid. I walked on, out the door, feeling a shiver run up my arm and into my chest. When I stood in the bathroom looking in the mirror I thought I saw her behind me. Her hair wasn’t brown anymore, but shaved to the scalp and her sweater was red with black pinstripes. She smiled at me and winked and then walked out the door. No one knows what happened to her. Everyone thought she was sent back to boarding school since they hadn’t seen her for days. Only I still felt the blood on my fingers.

One Page #16

The mill was on the other side of the river from the town. It stood alone, slightly above the town and overlooked the valley where the houses spread out and dispersed towards the cornfields, which then bled into the woods and eventually low mountains. The mill was abandoned now. The windows were mostly broken and the walls were spray painted and urinated on. Nomads stayed there overnight once and a while and when we went exploring we found cigarette butts and empty beer bottles. We thought the mill was haunted. Sometimes we sat on the other side of the river from the mill and strained to peer into the windows, hoping to catch sight of a ghost rat-tat-tatting on the few window panes that hadn’t been broken yet. When we were feeling brave we would cross the bridge downstream a ways and walk back up the road to the mill. We would stand around outside for a while, daring our friends to go in. Sometimes we ran away, scared off by a branch scraping against the window shards. Other times we would creep through the door, silent and stealthy. But years later, when we were in high school, we went there all the time after school. We smoked pot in the upstairs room that used to be an office. There was still an old filing cabinet that was rusted and the green paint was peeling off. We hid out stash in the top drawer. The chairs had disintegrated and cracked so we sat on the floor. Jan once found an old statue in the bottom desk drawer and we polished it with our t-shirts and put it on the desktop. It was our masthead. We paid homage to the lonely golden figure, bowing down and chanting it’s worth. When Sally found a nest of rats in a closet corner one day, we stopped going and moved our stash to a new location in the woods. But RJ and I went there one day, about a year later, and lay on the floor of the upstairs office and stared at our masthead that had collected dust and was slightly less shiny, but still dominated the room. We lay side by side, but did not touch. RJ had cut her hair off the day before and it lay floppy in front across her forehead and into her eyes. She had also pierced her lip with a safety pin. It still bled when she touched it. I wanted to touch it. The safety pin was shiny silver and gleamed in the sunlight that fell across our bodies so lonesome on the floor. I reached out my hand, sliding it slowly along the peeling boards, and put it on top of RJ’s hand. We lay like that for several moments, me reaching out to her, clasping her hand as if it were the only thing holding me down. I felt the floor tip and sway and thought we would slide down the floor and crash into the wall. But we didn’t. RJ squeezed my hand and then lifted our hands together into the air.

One Page #15

When I came out dad was watching TV. When I came out it was storming outside and the trees were bending at impossible angles. When I came out I was dressed all in corduroy. When I came out I was thirteen years old. I never told anyone I just pinned a rainbow button to my lapel and let people guess. No one asked. I wore it every day for seven years. It was as much a part of me as my spiky hair and the dimple in my chin. When I came out I wore a bow tie that was blue with red polka dots. When I came out there was a twinge of anger in my eye that never went away. The skin along my arm is pale and crinkles where my elbow bends. The veins stick out blue. My eyes glimmer blue. The ocean waves drown blue. When I came out I painted my nails black. I wore a black shirt with silver cuff links that had been my grandfathers. I found them when he died and kept them hidden in a box. When my grandmother asked if anyone had seen them I didn’t say anything. I looked at her wide-eyed. Now she is dead and no one remembers that they were missing and so I wear them every day. They don’t match my bowtie but I don’t care. When I came out both of my grandparents were dead, and it is a good thing because they would have died if they found out. They were so patriotic that their house was decorated entirely in red and blue. I was surprised the cuff links weren’t red and blue too. My bow tie was, but that was only a coincidence. I wasn’t patriotic. I wanted to move to Australia where I could paint the koala bears’ nails in rainbow colors. My first girlfriend was Asian and my parents didn’t like that. They never said so. But as soon as we started going out my parents stuck a flag in our front lawn like a beacon sending warning signals in flashes of red and blue. This wasn’t a coincidence. They didn’t know she was my girlfriend, even when I kissed her so long in the living room right in front of them. She had a lip ring and it felt so good against my teeth. She liked my bow tie and I liked the red scar that she had on her wrist. I never asked about it though, but I thought about how it would be funny if she wore a blue bracelet right next to her red scar, and then she would be patriotic too. That wouldn’t be a coincidence. When I came out I bought black army boots because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. But they gave me blisters and my heels turned red and scabbed over. I kept picking at the scabs and they would bleed red and soak into my blue socks. This was a coincidence. I don’t wear the boots anymore. I wear sneakers, and now my feet don’t hurt. But other things hurt. And the day is blue.

One Page #14

It so captures my emotional state that I am riveted at the edge of my seat. My hands are clasped on my lap, and sweating because the auditorium is so incredible hot with stinky bodies soaked from the million degree weather outside. But I am not thinking about my hands right now, or the heat outside. I am thinking about the woman that is standing at the podium about a mile away down a cascading series of blue seats, mostly filled. There are a few people next to me who are all asleep, and I can’t believe they aren’t interested. At least we are far away and the woman down below probably can’t see them sleeping, especially with the bright lights in her eyes that catch the silver of her necklace and sending dancing spirals into the auditorium and she looks like she is dancing. I imagine myself dancing up next to her, gently placing a hand on her hip, and my other hand in hers. We slowly move toward one another and my hand slides around to the small of her back where it is damp just like her neck with beads of perspiration that sends her sweet smell into my nose and hair and clothes. I breathe in deeply, and remember as I breathe in the pungent odor of those near me that I am sitting miles away from her, and she is talking still. I refocus. I straighten my back and fix my collar to make sure it is lying flat. I think about what I will say when I get to shake her hand. I wonder if I can make her fall in love with me with two sentences. I think about what those sentences will be. And then I wonder whether I can do it in one. But I can’t come up with the perfect sentence so I go back to two sentences. She concludes, with her hands resting on either side of the podium. I imagine her as the domineering sort, the kind to push you against a wall with her leg in between yours, her hands chaining yours to the wall. She nods in thanks to the audience as the clapping goes on. The lights brighten and she moves to a room behind the podium. I watch her disappear through the door, and try to perfect my two sentences. I follow the crowd down the aisles and outside into the mezzanine that is brightly lit and not air conditioned. I worry that she will see the stains at my arm pits. I lean against the wall, having no one to talk to, and wait for her to appear. When she does the crowd thrusts toward her and I am in the back. I was waiting in the wrong side, damn. Slowly people disperse. As I work my way towards her I can see her glittering eyes and warm smile. She is shaking everyone’s hands. Some hand her business cards. She turns to go back into the door from which she came and I jump at her. The two sentences are gone, and all I can say is thank you. She smiles, looks at my pit stains, and disappears.

Helene Cixous

“At first I really wrote to bar death…I write the encore. Still here I write life…We always live without reason…once thought is introduced, one reason is brought into proximity with life, you have the makings of madness…I’m afraid that life will become foreign. That it will no longer be this nothing that makes immediate sense in my body, but instead, outside me…But who is the woman spared by questioning? Don’t you, you too, ask yourself: who am I, who will I have been, why-me, why-not-me? Don’t you tremble with uncertainty? Aren’t you, like me, constantly struggling not to fall into the trap? Which means you’re in the trap already, because fear of doubting is already the doubt that you fear. And why can’t the question of why-am-I just leave me in peace? Why does it through me off balance?” --Cixous

One Page #13

The ocean is two hours away now. When I met Sam the ocean was dour hours away. I met her at a rest stop. She was sitting on the roof of her car with her head in her hands. There was on one else around. Cars sped my on the freeway but no one was stopping. It had just started to rain as I pulled of the road. When I saw the girl on the roof of her car I pulled into the spot next to her. I had been driving for about nine hours and hadn’t spoken to anyone since the day before when I stopped for coffee and said all of hi and thank you to the girl at the counter. She hadn’t even looked at me. I was lonely. I got out of my car and tentatively asked the girl if she was all right. She lifted her head and looked at me. She had been crying; her eyes were dry now, but still red. She nodded vaguely. Do you need some help, I asked. She shook her head. Do you want a soda, and I nodded toward the vending machine that stood next to the building with the bathrooms. She nodded. I smiled at her, and told her I would be right back. I climbed the short hill to the bathroom building, got to cokes, and went back to our cars. I handed her one after popping the top, and the popped my own soda top and we guzzled together. We had both been thirsty apparently. I asked her where she was going and she said Boston. I said that I was too. She looked slightly hopeful. Finally she opened her mouth and told me her whole story in one long breath, the words ran together so quickly I had to really concentrate to get it all. Her car had broken down and she was on the way to her sister’s wedding the following day, but now she was stuck here at the rest stop and had been here for about three hours and no one had even looked at her when they pulled up. I held out my hand and introduced myself, and she told me her name was Sam. I pulled her hand and she stood up from the roof of her car. I told her to get her things and I would drive her to Boston. I said it with so much force that I think we were both surprised. And she had no choice but to follow my instructions. She lifted out a bag from the back seat, locked her car, and got into the passengers seat. I pulled back onto the highway and joined the flow of traffic that was heavy now in the waning light. She thanked me over and over and I told her to shut up, so she did. Then we laughed and I asked her about herself. She spoke for a while and then looked out the window. We were no one hour from the ocean. As the city came into sight she told me that her sister was forcing her to wear a dress to the wedding, and that she hadn’t work a dress since her graduation from the fifth grade. I smiled, and told her that she would look terrible in a dress.

Aging

Unfortunately, the flight of stairs was far too steep and far too tall fading off into the nether reaches of the house, for the old woman to climb. She stood at the bottom of the staircase looking up, one hand resting on the banister, a shiny carved piece of cherry wood that the old woman could see her reflection in when she looked closely and over the rims of her glasses. She sighed. She did so want to be able to climb the staircase, one step then another, to see her brand new granddaughter who lay asleep in her crib upstairs. The old woman had entered through the front door without being let in. She hadn’t knocked or rung the doorbell. She had quietly turned the polished brass knob and entered, stepping lightly on the plush Indian rug of reds and oranges. She had peered into the parlor and saw nothing but an abandoned silver tea set and mostly empty china mugs. She heard rustlings upstairs, but no footsteps. She thought she could make out coos from the baby, and the old woman wondered what her granddaughter looked like. She hadn’t seen her daughter in over twenty years, and only new about the birth from the daily paper that always posted the comings and goings of the townspeople. She longed to see her estranged daughter, to see the crinkles around her eyes, and the softness of her cheek. She longed to see if her granddaughter had the same brilliant blue eyes, and dimple in her chin. As she looked up the staircase, she wondered how she had become so old, so decrepit. She turned and sat herself down slowly on the third step up, knees bent and cracking, a steady hand on the banister to help her down. She would just wait. And she wondered if, when her daughter saw her back leaning against the banister, he silver hair pulled tight into a bun, whether she would just decide to stay upstairs forever.

Playground

In a way I wanted her to fall. I watched her standing on top of the jungle gym, her skirt blowing in the breeze behind her. Her shiny black Mary Jane shoes reflected the sunlight and made me blink and squint and turn away. She leaned into the wind until her body was held up only by the anchoring of her shoes to the wooden slats. The tire swing swung back and forth making a creaking sound. She looked over at me and laughed, as if daring me to want her to fall, or to test how anxious I was about her being so high up and held to the ground by so little. She waved and I waved back. Look at me she called down. No one else was around. The playground was silent except for the creaking swing and her calling voice. It started to snow and flakes caught my lashes and I could hardly see her anymore through the wet crystals forming before my eyes. She threw her head back to face the sky full on and laughed as loud as she knew how to. Then she jumped.

Polka Dot Bag

The bag he picked was orange with green polka dots. His mother scoffed. No way am I buying that for you she said, sounding as if she expected him to be ashamed of his choices, and not just in this one bag but in every choice he had ever made. He put it back on the rack without a word and walked out of the door, leaving his mother behind in the wake of the swinging store door, reflecting her image, back and forth, until the door stopped swinging. She picked up a black bag instead and walked to the register, assuming her son would be waiting for her outside. But when she walked through the swinging door he was no where to be found. She looked both ways down the sidewalk, and across the street, moving only her head; her feet remained planted firmly on the concrete as steady as if she had roots reaching far into the earth. She wasn’t panicking yet. She didn’t even seem to mind that he had disappeared. Maybe ha had gone into another shop and would be out momentarily. She walked to the nearest bench a few feet down the sidewalk and sat down, facing the rows of shops. Next to her was a trash can and she could smell the fermentation of leftover food scraps and mostly empty cans of soda. She caught a whiff of Thai food intermingling ginger and soy sauce. She crossed her legs, folded her hands in her lap, and settled back to let the sun shine on her face. She thought about the prospect of a tan, and lowered her head when thoughts of skin cancer crept into her mind. She waited. He did not appear. She was not to know that she would never see her son again until weeks later, when the final police report came back. She hid the black bag in the farthest reaches of her closet and it wasn’t found until her death seventeen years later, covered in dust and half eaten by moths. Who knew that moths ate canvas bags?

One Page #12

Cole had grown to be a good looking boy. His mother, Marta, patted him on the head and ruffled his hair. The boy stood there and grinned. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he stood with his feet spread apart and his shoulders squared. Marta beamed down at him. The guests admired the boy and pinched his cheek. When the guests had retired to the living room, Marta brought his son upstairs for bed. Her husband would entertain until Cole had gone to bed. She watched him brush his teeth and put his pajamas with trains on. As he buttoned the shirt up the front she thanked him for being so good downstairs. He nodded and climbed into bed. Cole pulled the covers up to his chin and turned on his side, away from his mother. She sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned over his body to give the boy a kiss on the cheek. She ruffled his hair again and stood to leave. She left the door open a crack and went back downstairs to her guests. John was telling stories from the police department and keeping everyone amused. She joined him at his side and he automatically put his arm around her waist. His other hand held a glass of white wine. He raised it to a toast. Upstairs, Cole got out of bed and went to the head of the stairs. He peered through the banister rungs on his hands and knees and watched his father toast his mother. She stood there with a smile on her face, arms crossed over her chest. The guests drank and Cole’s father got his mother a glass of wine. They moved out of view. Cole watched the guests, but all they did was talk and drink and he quickly lost interest. He walked back to his room and shut the door all the way. The noise from downstairs was muffled. He turned the light off and went to the window. He looked outside and saw a couple arriving to the party late. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders and they were looking at each other and laughing. The woman tripped on one of the cobblestones, but her husband caught her. They disappeared under the porch roof. The street was quiet and the street lamps hummed in their orange glow. The stars were mostly hidden by the city lights, but Cole could see the moon through the trees. He climbed back into bed and stared at his glow-in-the-dark stars that dotted his ceiling. He had formed a few of them into the shape of Orion, his favorite constellation. He heard his mother laughing downstairs, a distinctive piercing shriek. A moment later he heard glass shatter on the kitchen floor. The tiles were unforgiving. This was the beginning of the end of all of his parent’s parties, and he wondered why they did it. Every night they lost several glasses and sometimes even a full bottle to the floor.

One Page #11

She lifted an embarrassed hand to her mouth. Pink spots appeared on her cheeks and she looked away. Everyone else laughed, but the laughter faded quickly and the group stood around looking at the floor or the ceiling with hands twisting in their pockets. She turned back to face them. Sorry, she said, I didn’t mean to do that. She and her friends were standing around the morning after their graduation party that had been held at the girl’s house. Her parents were out of town, and had graciously allowed their daughter to host a party. They had even bought white wine (no red, it might stain the while carpeting). Little did they know that their daughter was a slut, so her friends now called her, and that her friends would not be drinking the white wine. Instead they had a keg and several bottles of Jack, and half of their graduating class showed up. The crowd spilled out of the living room into every other room of the house and finally, as more people showed up, outside onto the lawn. A band had arrived unexpected and had set up in the living room and all of the furniture had been shoved to the side. They danced the night away. Eventually people drifted away or passed out on every surface of the house including the stairs and under the kitchen table. When she and her friends awoke they kicked everyone out and started to clean up, heads in hands from being hung over. Some of them were even still drunk. The girl’s closest friend started taking swigs from the last of the whiskey to keep him going. The house was mostly put together and they stood in an awkward circle near the front door. The girl’s parents would be home soon, and they wanted to be gone by then. But one girl had to bring up the host’s famous moment from the night before. She had been dancing on the dining room table and had stripped down to her thong as the entire crowd watched, still throbbing and pulsing to the beat of the music. The girl twisted her hips and arched her back and fell to her knees throwing her ass into the air. After dancing for a moment longer, she fell to the floor and passed out until the morning. People had clapped and stepped over her, resuming their good time. She had awoken the next morning, nearly naked, and remembered nothing. Her friends filled her in. She had never done anything like this before, and very few people had even seen her stomach, let alone her naked breasts. Outwardly, she was shocked at her behavior, but as her friends walked out the door and down the front steps, she smiled to herself. She liked her drunken self, the self that was invincible and beautiful, daring and seductive. She resolved to become this person every day, and she reached for the Jack.

One Page #10

The ballpark was empty as we passed by. The game had long since ended and I wondered whether my little brother’s team had won or not. My dad couldn’t make the game today, and I knew my brother was pissed at him for it. My mother would have been there, as always, hot dog in hand. I think she went more for the hot dogs than to see my brother play. My friend and I cut across the diamond on the way home. The light was waning and the white painted lines were scuffed on the gravel. The grass looked torn up. The sky was turning from a deep purple grey to an inky black and stars were starting to appear. The air was cool and I felt goose bumps on my arm. I felt my friend’s arm to see if she had them too. She did. We compared our small mounds, but it was hard to see them in the dark. On the other side of the field we crossed through the break in the chain link fence and leaned against it on the other side for a smoke before going home. We hadn’t smoked until last week when my friend found a pack in her sister’s room and stole it. I had found a lighter in my dad’s pocket and we agreed to try smoking together for the first time. We coughed a lot at first, but now felt like pros, breathing in and out evenly and watching smoke pour out into the air and dissipate into nothing. We loved that we could create something that disappeared so completely. We felt like God creating clouds that whirled and faded. The smoke tasted bad in my lungs, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to sound stupid somehow; I figured I was supposed to like the taste. Later, lying in bed, I could still feel a slight burning in my throat from the smoke and a little dizzy in my head. But I wouldn’t say anything. And I knew my friend wouldn’t say anything either, if she was feeling the same way. After we stomped out the butts on the gravel mixed with lawn we walked the two blocks toward home. We lived across the street from each other, and I wondered sometimes whether we were friends by default. I hoped not. We walked down the middle of the street, following the yellow lines, because there were no cars around. It was quiet. Everyone must be eating dinner. I knew my friend was going to be late for dinner and her mother would be angry. But I also knew that there was no dinner happening at my house right now. My mother would be full on hotdogs and most likely asleep on the couch, and my father would still be at work. My brother might be eating Cheerios in the kitchen, or a microwave burrito in his room. I didn’t want to go home. When it came to parting ways, I always wished I could go to my friend’s house instead. But I never asked. And she didn’t offer. She didn’t even think to. She didn’t know.

One Page #9

He took a step towards her and then stopped. They looked each other in the eyes. Really, he asked? Yes, she said. He looked at the ground and nodded vaguely. Then he turned and without looking at her again he walked away. She watched his back, soft in his worn flannel shirt. His feet scuffed on the ground and she could hear his footsteps after he had disappeared around the corner. She stood in the middle of the road. She wasn’t sure why they had had this conversation here, in the middle of nowhere, when they both had to walk the same road back towards home. She sat down on a rock and decided to wait a half hour before following him. The rock was hard, even though it was covered in moss, but she didn’t move. She folded her hands on her lap and tried to distract herself by looking around at the trees and watching the clouds pass slowly in the sky. They were in no hurry, and she shouldn’t be either. But she felt the beginnings of something stirring within her, and she couldn’t sit still as much as she tried. So she stood and paced back and forth across the road. The road was mostly deserted and the chances of a car coming were slim. She closed her eyes a moment and stood in the center of the road with her face tilted toward the sky. The sun fell on her skin and warmed her. Her heart beat a little faster. She couldn’t wait to get home. She wished that she had been the one to walk away first, but he had left before she could, and in that awkward moment she had to let him go first. She tapped her foot and listened to the sole of her shoe crunch rhythmically against the uneven gravel. She opened her eyes and looked at her watch. She could leave now, but couldn’t walk too fast or she would catch up with him. She didn’t want to see his flannel shirt again. She wouldn’t regret anything, but she would feel sorry for him, seeing his head bent low she would imagine his tears. She started walking towards home and thought about the girl who would be sitting on her couch when she got back. She thought about the girl’s short blond hair and deep olive eyes that stared so intently into her own. She thought about the curve of the girl’s breast as it caught the early morning sunlight and the way her teeth were impossibly white. And she thought about the curve of the girl’s jaw line running up to her ears and into her scalp. She shivered with anticipation. A car was coming down the road and she moved to the side. She couldn’t help but look in the car as it passed since she had seen so few that day, and in the passenger’s seat was her flannel-shirted ex. A girl sat next to him in the driver’s seat. She had blond hair and impossibly white teeth.

One Page #8

The crowd was nearly fooled until the sudden change in the liar’s demeanor. And liar is what he is, a magician who thinks he can actually pull rabbits out of hats and cut women in sequins in half and wave his wand around like fire and smoke are pouring out of it and swords are glittering down his throat and eggs are turning into chickens and people are smiling and the smiles are jumping off of their faces and wandering around the crowd picking wallets out of pockets and watches off of wrists and even cigarettes out of mouths and the magician watches it all and thinks while he pulls rabbits out of hats that once the show is over and the lights are off and he is far away in his caravan of colors and ribbons that he will have a stash of wallets and watches and the cigarettes will have been smoked and long gone into ash but he will be a rich man and he will know that the magic lies not in his rabbits emerging out of hats or his sequined women getting cut in half but the magical materialization of gold and silver and paper dollars and shining jewelry and he will splurge on a glass on chardonnay in crystal tonight and maybe even a touch of caviar. BUT there had been that change in his demeanor, just a simple lifting of the edge of his lips into a half smile, and one woman, one single woman noticed, and felt a small discomfort although she wasn’t sure where it had come from but it was enough of a tinge to put her hands into her fur coat pockets and to notice that her pocketbook was gone, and she remembered that she had about three thousand dollars in her pocketbook which had been bursting at the seams and barely fit into her fur coat pocket and when she reached in and discovered it wasn’t there she checked the other pocket to make sure she hadn’t been mistaken which she wasn’t, and she looked on the ground among the shuffle of feet to make sure it hadn’t fallen out which it hadn’t, and then she screamed one simple long scream that was almost like a moan and the crowd turned toward the woman wondering whether she had actually been cut in half while the sequined woman had only been fake cut in half and when they saw she was whole but was disconsolate, shoulders shuddering and great bellows of sobs ripping through her body shaking the fur of her coat so it looked like an animal shaking off water, and they all seemed to notice together that their own wallets were missing and their watches were missing because they suddenly realized that they couldn’t look at the time to see when the woman had started screaming, and the magician was discovered to be a fraud and would now be eating soggy food off of a tin plate rather than chardonnay from crystal, and he was a ruined man.

One Page #7

And anyway—you want a fresh slice of tomato? The man across the counter grinned at me showing a full set of gleaming teeth with silver caps on his molars and a piece of lettuce wedged in between two of his bottom teeth. No, no thanks. No tomato. I hate tomatoes. And, I thought silently to myself, I hate you. Your grin frightens the bejeezus out of me. Those shining eyes, my god, where did this man come from? Straight out of an evil cartoon with the devils horns hidden underneath his blue and white stripped train conductors hat, a replica, and a poor one at that. He moved along down the counter to help other customers. I thanked my god damn lucky stars that I was only a stranger around these parts, passing though, on to new sights after this breakfast that tastes like deep fried oil that had smoldered for a long while in a pot with a chicken leg and a ham bone and a few worn out pieces of celery in an excuse for god only knows what. I shoveled the remnants of food around on my plate, watching the trail of grease catching the glint of florescent lights above and looking like a trail that a slug had left behind, so green and gooey and solidifying right before my eyes. I swallowed. My stomach turned. The grinning man reappeared out of nowhere to refill my coffee. No, no thanks, I said and placed my hand over my cup. The brown water was not coffee and couldn’t even call itself coffee and I wondered how often the grinds were even changed for newly brewed pots and wondered whether I was really so far from anywhere that I wouldn’t be able to find a cup of coffee that even resembled coffee and wondered whether the people around here thought this brown slush water was actually. As soon as I moved my hand away from my coffee cup, the grinning man pounced on it and refilled it anyhow. At least it was free refills, after wasting a dollar and a quarter for brown water that I could have dished out of the sewer. The lettuce remnant had relocated and was now wedged in his top teeth and had disintegrated a bit. He must have swallowed the other little bit, and I wondered why I was thinking about the lettuce leaf when I was three hours from a funeral for my mother, and guessed that the grave was already dug, and was filling with water with the onset of rain, and the roses were already picked and were sitting in vases so that we could throw them on top of the shiny oak box that was polished so I could see my reflection and the reflection of the rose, and hoped that I wouldn’t look down and grin and see the reflection of a lettuce leaf in my own teeth, and guessed that wouldn’t happen since I wouldn’t be grinning and I hadn’t eaten lettuce today, or even yesterday.

One Page #6

I thought the woman was dead. But she wasn’t. She was just sitting in her red pickup truck looking like she was dead. Her head was leaned against the window, her shiny silver barrette glittering in the sunlight. I watched her for a moment as I walked by. And then she moved. So I knew she wasn’t dead. But I wondered what I would have done if she was dead. Or if I would even have known whether she was dead. It is hard to tell through a car window whether someone is dead or not, head slumped over, hair falling in face. The glittering barrette seemed to have more life than the woman did. But the woman is fine, she isn’t dead, I think she was just writing a letter, or finished her radio program, or reading the last pages of a novel before she returned it to the library. I walked on. She was still dead in my mind, even though I had seen her move. Even now, hours later, she still looks dead in my mind. My initial thought of her left a lasting impression. I imagined her being discovered, dead in her truck, days later, the smell of rotting flesh that had been sitting in the sun for several days seeping out of the truck and into the air and causing much alarm to all of those who walked by. But the problem is that they did walk by, they didn’t stop to see if she was alive or not, and so she rotted away and was ignored by all who passed. She was even ignored by me, who passed along like the rest, all thinking about where we were going and what we were going to say when we met the person we were meeting, or wondering whether the bus had already come and gone and I would be late for work, and would have to work late to make up for it and I didn’t make coffee this morning and now it is far to late to stop and get some before I get on the bus unless I missed the bus and then I have plenty of time to get coffee before the next bus. But the woman still rots. And her body is prematurely decomposing because of the sun, and she is liquidating into her seat and the odor is seeping into the cushions and none of us walking by think long enough to feel sorry for whoever has to removed her from the truck, maybe have to use a spoon to scoop up her body that is falling to pieces and mushy like a sponge cake that has been sitting for too long and has soaked up to much liquid and simply turns to a puddle. Maybe all that will be left by the time she is removed is her clothing left in her slouched over position like a ghost had worn then and then left for another dimensional existence. Her shoes are still resting near the gas pedal filled only with nylons in a taupe color. Her barrette has fallen to the floor of the truck and rests no longer glittering in the sun because it is hidden in the shade.

One Page #5

The clouds whispered in my ears. They called to me silently, a voice so quiet but not so still, rather ever-changing. They told me to go, run away, feel the wind whistling in my ears. They told me to leave it all behind. The cloud in the shape of a train told me to charge forth. The cloud in the shape of an elm tree told me to bend and keep on bending, I would never break. The cloud in the shape of a river bend told me to flow, and I would never cease. I stood in the field and let the clouds whisper into my ears, taking in the words. They tickled the hairs at the base of my neck and stroked the folds of flesh. I closed my eyes and we all laughed together, a great belly laugh from deep below. They roared with me, sending laughter into the heavens. The clouds spread their arms, and I spread my arms and we shook the earth together. Then I lay down, exhausted from the laughter, and let the ants crawl over my arms and up around my ankles. I could feel them with my eyes closed like a tickle that ran this way and that into so many arcs and circles that I lost track of which ones were where. The long grasses that blew around my in the breeze tickled my forehead and I wondered whether there were ants on my forehead too, or if it was just the grass. The clouds looked down on me and watched, they too could see the ants running around in circles and then settling as if they too were exhausted from the laughter. Together, the clouds and the ants and the blowing grasses and I rested. As I fell asleep the clouds whispered words into my ears that formed into dreams. They picked me up and carried me with them on their backs, lifting me towards the stars. The great blackness of sky tumbled into my body, filling me with all the stars and moons of the universe, making my body feel so expansive and alive, a million beating hearts and million blinking stars reverberating inside of me. After many long minutes, the clouds brought me back down to the ground, back to the field with the blowing grasses and the sleeping ants. In my ears, the clouds whispered goodbye and floated away to look after other fields and other ants and other blowing grasses. I lay in the field, my eyes now open, watching the stars dance and feeling them inside of me blinking in and out with the beating of my heart. I reached out and took hold of the grasses that bumped against my forehead. I waved the ends of the grasses towards the stars, towards the rising moon, saying hello, calling out a welcome to the night. The air grew cooler and I stood up. I opened my mouth and let all of the stars and moons pour out with a silent roar and join their sisters and brothers and cousins in the sky.

One Page #4

I want to put into words how much I hate you. No, that isn’t quite right. I don’t actually hate you, I just rather loath you in this moment. And we laughed into the wind. We were standing hand in hand on the rooftop of a mile-high apartment building in the middle of the city. The traffic below was so far away we could barely make it out, so we pretended we were in the desert with sand blowing in our faces, our chins lifted up to the sky. We leaned over the edge, chests out, hands held high, and bellowed out our sorrows to ears that we only imagined were there but were in fact so consumed with the bustle of the city life that no a single one could hear us. We gave up shouting words and moved on to shouting sounds, playing with how we could move our mouths around, our lips and tongue around, to make different noises. And then we looked at each other and laughed and all of my self proclaimed hatred, or loathing, disappeared. It was just us now, two beings that felt each other. The blue of her eyes faded into the blue of the sky and I could almost imagine that her eyes were holes in her head leading all the way through so that I could see the sky and the inner workings of her brain in the dark tunnels that paved their way from one segment of sky to another segment of sky. Her hair flapped in the wind and I grabbed a fistful and twirled it around my hand and wrist and up to my elbow it was so long. It was so long I though maybe I could weave a rope ladder so I could climb down the side of the building and never have to go indoors again. I could walk and walk forever down the city streets and out to the desert holding her golden hair wrapped around my arm as if I were carrying a shield before me, protecting me from whatever came in my path. She would stand on the top of the building and watch as her hair drifted away from her, watch as I held her hair up before me like a shield, watch as I disappeared into the dunes blowing sand into my face.

Only then, just before I fell over the rise of the dunes, would I look back and squint through the glare to see her face, following the trail of hair all the way back to her figure standing still on the rooftop. I would wave, and she would wave and I would no longer hate or, loath her. Over this incredible distance, we are still linked together as two beings with the grasp of hair intertwined over, around and through my arm. I cannot hate or loathe someone who stays connected to me over such a distance. Even though we cannot speak to each other, we cannot hear each other, we can touch and we can know that we are interlocked in an embrace that crosses all distances.

In the Tumbleweeds

A lonely little store and gas pump stand as the only beacons of life in a deserted dessert of sand and tumbleweed. A woman sits out front on a metal folding lawn chair with plastic woven slats that leave red lines in her skin. The slats are disintegrating because of the sun and the shreds that stick up scratch the woman’s arms, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Her face is blank of any expression, either restful or with so few interactions with other people she has forgotten what it means to show expression. He eyes are pallid and gray, as if they too are bleached from the sun. The woman has owned the store for most of her life, taking it over at a young age from her grandfather who had passed away long ago from lung cancer, which was no surprise after sixty years of smoking. The woman thought she had learned her lesson from his death, but ten years later she too picked up smoking and now sat outside in the sun, skin wrinkled and dark, smoking one cigarette after another. The only event that marked that passing of time was when one cigarette burned down to the stub and she threw it in the bucket that sat enxt to the chair and lit another one.

Once and a while a truck would roll by. Sometimes they stopped for gas, or a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of water and a bag of chips. There was no other gas station for many miles around, so she got the unlucky drivers who rolled in on the last drop of gas, desperate from the heat, and grateful for another face that wasn’t made of sand. The cars and trucks that pulled in were always covered in dust, and the faces were covered in dust, and the children’s hands were covered in dust because they had been stuck out of the windows grabbing at the air and the blowing sand and occasionally a piece of tumbleweed that had blown up from under the tires.

The woman was pleasant to the people that stopped, but never said more than she needed to. She wasn’t looking for conversation, she was happier to exchange money and see people off. She was more at ease watching the backs of the cars or trucks drive away than the fronts of cars or trucks pulling in. But she always had a vague smile ready for her customers because she felt that they expected that after so many miles of seeing no one. She, too, was covered in dust from sitting outside and catching the sand and dirt and pieces of tumbleweed that blew by in the constant light wind. Sometimes the wind grew harsher and the sand bit her cheeks so her cheeks were always red both from the biting sand and the constant sun. Her teeth were browned from smoking and her hands and arms were wrinkled from the glare and deeply tanned. But her legs were pasty white underneath the jeans that she wore everyday. They hadn’t seen the sun in many years, they only felt the heat coming through. Her boots were dusty, and the hat that she wore sometimes was dusty, and her store windows were dusty, and the interior of her store had gradually collected dust as well so everything that was bought had a fine layer of sand on it that the customer would brush off. If the customer had found the layer of sand in a store in the city, they surely would have left and gone somewhere else for fresher goods. But here, after so many miles of nothing, no one seemed to notice because their eyes were covered in sand as well. Most people that drove through this way, except for the truck drivers, weren’t prepared for such a long stretch of nothing. They never brought enough food or water and were never prepared mentally to deal with endless sand dunes dotted by tumbleweed. They always walked into the store with a glazed look on their faces, with the feeling that they had been away from society for a very long time, even if it had only been a few hours. They almost forgot how to speak, or how to interact with other people. Conversations in the cars, if there were multiple people, had long since ceased because the endless landscape led to endless nothingness in their minds, even their brains were covered in dust.
The woman was used to this. She treated everyone with care because the customers were always a bit shocked and confused to be out of the sun’s glare and to see something with more color than sand. Once and a while, when there hadn’t been a customer for several hours, the woman pulled out her broom from the closet and swept the floor. When the sun wasn’t too bright, she even swept the stoop outside of the store; and on a rare cloudy day she would sweep around the gas pumps and polish the glass. Sometimes she even hosed down the sign.

The woman never waited for anyone to come, she didn’t sit on her plastic chair looking down the stretch of highway that ran to the right and the left. She just sat on her chair, smoking. Sometimes she did a crossword puzzle from a book she had found under her grandfather’s bed after he died. He had completed the first few in pencil that had faded and nearly disappeared. But the rest of the book was blank and she worked through each one with pen because she didn’t want her marks to disappear, she wanted her letters to last and last. She wondered who would find the crossword puzzle book under her bed.

One Page #3

The rain did not fall on her. All around her the rain fell, drops tumbling to the ground eager to find surface and rest. All around her the rain fell, but it did not fall on her. She stood under an awning on the bustling street, black umbrellas marching back and forth in front of her spraying water in arcs. Boots stomped by, splashing in puddles, disturbing the raindrops that had made it to the pavement. Pant legs sopped up the rain, soaking in puddles which were quickly replenished with new raindrops falling. The woman stood under the red awning and watched the people pass by, watched the umbrellas and boots and pant legs, watched the rain falling, but did not get a single drop on her. It was as if she were invisible, or waterproof, or the water simply did not want to be near her, on her, around her, soaking her pant legs which stood in easy reach of the puddles lengthening and broadening. The woman reached a hand out from under the awning, reached toward the raindrops falling, reached toward the umbrellas and boots. But her hand did not get wet. Her hand did not collect rain drops in her palm as she expected. She reached out her other hand, and now stood under the awning, both arms outstretched, reaching toward the falling rain. But neither hand got wet. People continued to walk by, umbrellas pulled low overhead, boots stomping, but not one person saw this woman under the awning, arms outstretched, reaching toward the rain that would not touch her. As everyone else scurried to get out of the rain, trying to stay as dry as possible, the woman under the awning could not get wet no matter how hard she tried. She stuck first one boot out, and then the other (unable to stick both boots out at the same time without moving her whole body), but neither boot got wet. The rain seemed to fall in every inch surrounding the woman under the awning, and she could see nothing but rain clouds releasing rain drops as far as she could see, over and around the buildings that held her in, but not a single rain drop would fall on her. Finally, she stood out from under the red awning, her whole body exposed to the weather, the falling rain. Her hair blew in the wind slapping across her face, and her coat hugged her tightly in the gusts, but she still did not get wet. She remained as dry as she had been inside the store with the red awning where she had been when the rain began. She became enraged. She wanted to be wet; she wanted to the rain to fall on her face, she wanted her boots to splash in puddles and her umbrella to deflect the water. But she remained dry, perfectly dry with not a single discoloration on her jacket from the rain.

One Page #2

I found her in just her boxer shorts. She wore them to bed, but later, when we were sleeping together, I found out that she wore them all the time. I had never slept with a girl who wore boxer shorts. Her favorites were green with yellow alligators. She did laundry often just so she could wear this pair more often. They were wearing thin along the waist and now, when we go shopping together, I always look to see if I can find a replacement pair. But I never have. I feel like I am disappointing her. I wonder how she would feel if I wore boxer shorts. I had a butch friend who refused to date a girl if she, too, wore boxers. I wondered if this butch was the same way. I looked into her eyes to see if she had the same hardness that my butch friend had, but she didn’t. She was all soft, all around her edges. I didn’t think she would mind. I had never worn boxers, and the next time she went out, I tried them on. Not the green ones with alligators, but a pair of blue ones with orange pinstripes. Those were my favorites. I liked the contrast between blue and orange, it reminded me of the color wheels I had to paint in art class back in high school since blue and orange are opposites on the color wheel. I took off all of my clothes, stripping myself of my white cotton panties, and I pulled on the boxers. The elastic waist snapped against my skin. The clung tighter to my waist and then fell lose around my thighs. They covered the birth mark on my upper right thigh that looked like a brown squiggle, like chocolate sauce that had been dropped on my leg. It had repulsed my first girlfriend. That is how I knew I didn’t love her. When she broke up with me, I told her that I hated her for hating my birth mark. She said it was the ugliest thing she had ever seen and walked out the door. I never saw her again, until geometry class the next day. She changed seats and sat on the other side of the room. We never spoke again. I wished we hadn’t been in high school, then I never would have seen her again. At prom she didn’t have a date, and I did, and I laughed at her and while dancing I thought about scraping the thorn of the rose I wore in my lapel all the way down her arm, leaving a mark that would last forever. I thought of all the blood and how it would stain her white tuxedo shirt that the boys made fun of her for. I back to the mirror where I could see my hairy white legs covered only by the lose cotton boxers. I liked them. I put my hands on my hips and held in the extra weight that I carried there, and I held in my stomach, and I almost felt like a boy. But not quite.

One Page #1

She told me that I couldn’t throw gravel. I ignored her. She was only a few inches taller than I was and I knew I could take her down if I needed to. So I kept throwing gravel. The only reason I was really throwing gravel was because I liked the word gravel. It had nothing to do with the actual rocks that I picked up from the driveway, handfuls at a time, and threw as far as I could. I had enough sense not to throw gravel towards cars or people walking by. I wasn’t malicious. I just liked the word, I liked to think the word, I liked to say the word, over and over again, as long as no one was around. If someone was around I would toss the gravel, underhand, gently and whisper the word in my head. I didn’t want anyone to think I was crazy. But as soon as they disappeared, I would throw the gravel overhand and try, with each handful, to throw farther than the last handful. It was a contest against me. I wouldn’t let anyone else play with me, this was a private game. It was a solitary game. I had started throwing gravel one summer day when I was standing in my bedroom looking out over the driveway trying to decide what to do. It was just hot enough upstairs that I figured I would be better off downstairs or outside. So, in front of my open window, the sash blowing ever so gently in the nearly non-existent breeze, I decided between downstairs and outside. I looked down at my driveway, so empty with both cars gone, and the rocks were catching the sunlight and they looked like they were dancing. I thought about dancing and then I thought about gravel, and started saying the word gravel over and over again in my head. And then I said the word gravel out loud a few times, softly at first, afraid someone might hear, and then louder because it sounded so good. It sounded so good that I couldn’t stop, and so I decided outside over downstairs, and went down the stairs to get outside. When I opened the front door and stood momentarily on the porch in the shade I saw the gravel was still dancing and seemed to be wiggling its hips as if enticing me off of the porch. So I walked down the porch steps and on to the gravel driveway and stomped around for a minute, listening to the crunch of gravel. Then I picked up a handful and spread my fingers, listening to the gravel fall onto more gravel. Soon I was picking up the gravel by the handful and throwing. Nothing had ever felt so good. The gravel was warm from the sun, and I watched it fly and dance in the air before falling into the grass and disappearing. I started a song about gravel and was dancing and singing until I fell down in exhaustion and lay on the gravel, so warm, and I could feel each individual piece in my back.