Aloha

Watching the moonrise gave her no joy. Each day ended with the same sense of failure. No highlight had occurred during the course of the preceding twenty-three hours to uplift her, except for the knowledge that finally and thankfully, the last hour of it was coming and would quickly die.

She closed her eyes embracing the darkness of her eyelids with no one around to antagonize her causing angry outbursts to bloom and blossom into pulsing vein-covered flowers. Reality floated in, carried by a hovercraft across a sea of perennial grasses and evergreen leaves. After stepping onboard and through the womb-like hatch, she sat down and was greeted by a waitress who took her order for peace with a side of tranquility.

Below lay the world, her world, with all of its garbage, disputes and yokes of unbudgeable burdens. Forward, forward, forward they glided until even the idea of trouble faded into the landscape. Whoosh! Her mind melted away the lexicon of negative words she had spent a lifetime collecting, until there was nothing left but calm.

She smiled and for the first time her smiling wasn’t veiled by cynicism or the thought that happiness is fleeting. It was a real thing and she could grasp it freely, tightly, with the knowledge that it was finally and perfectly hers.

Traveling down the corridors of the hovercraft, she saw other passengers with outstretched arms. Were they embracing happiness too or had they come seeking other things? She didn’t know and didn’t ask, but observed their joy at whatever they were finding knowing that its value equaled her own precious awakening.

“I love you.”

She heard, felt, savored-said the words in response to some newly discovered country buried deep within herself.

“I love you too,” followed by another smile and a deeper sense of fulfillment than the first.

Life lurched forward and finally, she had reached her destination. Ignorance comingled with bliss bringing forth the knowledge that this was where she belonged. There was no one to escort her or greet her as she stepped down onto the landing and felt the outside air prickle her skin.

“Aloha” was written on the side of the hovercraft and she remembered that it meant “I love you,” as well as “hello” and “goodbye.”

She was back home and the moon had found its place in the sky. The day was dead with no one to mark the event with tears or grief. Even so, the happiness she had grasped remained fixed in her hand. She would not file it away for safekeeping. Instead, she would wear it like a jewel about her throat.

This is the secondary road of your journey; a bot’s voice said evaporating silence. It didn’t matter that her journey had taken her back to where she’d begun, and she would have to find some way of maintaining what she’d found. This day had not ended in failure as she had assumed it would. Now, walking down this secondary road, which resembled the same road she’d walked everyday of her life, she realized that it was OK to make return trips to various aspects of herself. Some lessons must be repeatedly learned, just as some roads must be repeatedly walked. She wasn’t infallible after all.

This Morning There Was Hope

For three-word Wednesday

buckle, evade, wedge

He was trying to wedge himself next to her, but the subway was full and there wasn’t even room enough for that. A nearby drunk belched fouled air, momentarily polluting the mood. She coughed, trying to evade the kindness of his smile, before returning one of her own. He would stand next to her tomorrow and perhaps find the courage to finally say “hello.” For now, there was nothing in the world but the hope that his knees wouldn’t buckle when he saw her again, and that she would say “hello” back to him before the doors of the subway opened up to rush her away.

Snakeskin

Snakes are cool creatures. They do not betray what they feel. Other animals, you can see their joy or sorrow on their faces or in their body language. Snakes do not have the tenderness of apes that patiently pick flea-after-flea from a comrade to show affection. Snakes have no comrades. They are solitary creatures who move about their worlds with seeming indifference seeking warmth or the coolness of the dark, depending on the needs of body temperature. Mother snakes do not comfort their young and their young slither way without a goodbye or a returning thought to her care. They are indifferent to fear and unaware of their beauty. Snakes do not study their markings or seek ways to improve their design. They are not vain nor do they have a concept of what vanity is. They do not look at nature with admiration. They accept it as it is and use it to survive. Snakes do not shrink back from killing nor do they show fear at the imminence of their own deaths. Their eyes do not narrow or widen as they breathe their last breaths. They are what they have always been since before Eden and onward to eternity.

She didn’t know why she felt the need to display her blood for the world to see. She hadn’t loved him and had only allowed him to touch her to see what it was like. It hurt, but beyond that it was nothing but an experiment.

There was no passion, only the grunting indifference of his pleasure quickly sapped. She thought her crossing from the tiny mesh that separates girls from women, would be momentous, but it wasn’t. When it was over, there was nothing left to say, but “thank you,” as she turned away dismissing him into darkness. It didn’t matter if he cared or if he left or did anything at all. She was asleep before he closed the door.

Before it had just been the two of them, she and her father so far out in the country that they had to generate their own electricity, with no one else save the mailman ever stopping by. Now that she was older, and others had come in hopes of tempting her to take bite-after-bite of forbidden fruit until everything that was joyous suddenly turned foul. She had refused them all until now.

Why him? No reason. He was there. He was interested. He was a means to an end; a cat-killing curiosity. She had killed something too, but it was deeper than a question or a crossroad.

Daddy hadn’t told her the truth. He hadn’t prepared her for the fact that their life wouldn’t last forever. That’s all she wanted. Now he had invited others to their door in hopes of forcing her to grow-up, even as he clung to his “little girl.” She spent more and more time walking through the woods collecting treasures from the forest floor. Her father had taught her the names of all the flora and fauna that gathered and grew on shadow spilt darkened green, but he was dying; something was dying and there was nothing to do but wait and watch.

Now she watched her father crying as he stood in front the bloodstained sheet. Emotion had overtaken him until it bent him forward like a marionette with freshly cut strings. He was not himself. This was not daddy. Daddy never cried and now he looked like he would never completely stop. A puddle of teary snot ooze saturated the place where he stood. He picked up a falling branch and began wildly swinging at the air.

He didn’t see her, but she didn’t care if he did, at least that’s what she told herself as she walked away. Instead, question upon question formed, rose and fell as her father’s odd actions comingled with her own. There were no answers, at least not now. Perhaps they would come later.

She thought about going into the garden to see if any her father’s tomato plants were big enough to squish, but instead released the snake she had caught just the day before and watched it slither away until it was gone.

Grist for the Mill

He hadn’t meant to belittle her, but it would have been cruel to allow her to believe she had a chance of dancing in the ballet.

“There is no hope for you, I’m afraid.” The words stung even now, as he remembered them and the way her face looked red and swollen as if he’d slapped her. He knew he was foolish to obsess about it, but her face floated like a phantom in the slate-grey sky as he traveled through the outskirts of the city. The road swelled with a human zoo dripping with discord, Twinkie wrappers and bicycle messengers guzzling energy drinks between stops. He feared it would take nothing less than a séance to rid him of the memory of her, them and the world in general.

“So much for sleep tonight.”

Perhaps, he wondered, he could go back to that awful little theater and help her improve so that she could become the bright light he’d been looking for to feature in his company. He knew it wasn’t possible. She wasn’t good enough to stand on the stage besides the men and women he’d carefully selected like perfect porcelain puppets.

Now he sat in his luxury sedan that was built not only by the will of his own particular genius, but also the blood and sweat of generations of dancers and began to wonder what would happen to her now. She’d spent her life taking lessons. She’d told him that while pleading for mercy, a second chance, anything, as he strode away after dramatically putting on his tam. He remembered thinking it was all just grist for the mill and not worthy of his time.

What happens to those who’d built their lives living up to the moment when they’d audition for him with nothing but raw talent and hope only to fall short of achieving their dreams? He’d never considered them until now. Instead, he had hidden himself behind the self-righteousness of indifferent genius and art.

Truth be told, his life could be chronicled in moments like this. He rejected some one-on-one and others in groups of tens, fifties and hundreds. Open calls were always a nightmare. If he could find one or two good dancers, he was lucky. Most were as bad as that nervy young woman had been or worse. Awful lines and non-existent arches without a clue of what it takes to become a dancer.

If enthusiasm was all it took to make it, she would have been a star. Instead, she would probably end up working at a beauty salon amongst a throng of mature sweeties and sluts who all wanted to look like fashion magazine covers.

Perhaps this was why she haunted him and why he’d spent so much of the ride home lost in introspection. With one word, he had destroyed not only her dreams, but any chance of her getting out of that rancid little town. He knew what theater-life meant to small town kids. He’d been one himself once. If he’d told any of the people in his current inner circle that his first job had not been – as he told had them – working as an assistant to a choreographer of note, but instead shoveling cattle cadavers at a processing plant, they would have been theatrically shocked.

Yet in truth, there would be no real emotion from any of them. They didn’t care about him and the feeling was mutual. They only wanted to be “in” with him so that they could feel powerful or popular. When the time came for him to step down from the stage, they would disappear like a bunch of street whores escaping police sirens.

He turned on his car radio and was momentarily shocked to hear ukulele music coming from it, and looked away from the road before him. It happened that quickly. Crash. The leather seat of his car was covered with blood, his blood or the blood of the woman he hit, he did not know. Was it her? That sad creature he’d rejected. No that was impossible. Obviously it was someone else. It couldn’t be her; she was not only miles away from him, but also a lifetime away from him now.

Sirens, hadn’t he just been thinking of sirens, he thought as he heard them coming closer until they came to a screeching halt where he lay. He heard one of the EMTs say the woman was dead, but he’d known that before they’d come. He’d seen her in that last moment before the impact, and then afterwards when he’d struck her and all the life drained from her face.

That’s two lives I’ve destroyed today.

Then a realization struck him as they cut him from his car. No, I’ve destroyed three. No, more than that. I don’t know the number. I don’t know their names. Then through the haze of the ambulance window there they were; all of the nameless faces of the rejected pressing against the glass. She was there too, her face still red and swollen. He was taking them all with him as he slipped from consciousness to unconsciousness to knock on oblivion’s door.

The Secret Language of Horses

This is how it feels, she said in words that only she understood, while standing between the promise of a cadmium sunny day and the oblivion of shady breezes. This is how it feels to be alleviated from the snarls and whines of the old man’s blazing rationale. He’d lay traps for her in hopes that she’d bend over and reveal the grassy moistness of unplowed fields. She knew his games and refused to budge as he dropped objects on the floor in a maelstrom of geriatric angst.

His son had hired her as a companion and cook to care for the needs of his ailing father. It had seemed like an easy gig at the time, but it didn’t take long for the old man to reveal his true nature. But she’d found ways to cope. When she wasn’t avoiding his constant barrage of requests to bend over him so that her breasts were close enough to clasp, she prepared nutritious meals, ladled with saliva.

Revenge was not only sweet, but it slurped.

Learning to put up with him and make-do in order to keep the free room and board that was part of her pay, meant more to her than the pocketful of cash she was paid on a monthly basis. The room wasn’t fancy, but it was hers and thankfully it rested on the top of a steep staircase, which the old man was unable to climb. She loved to walk around naked on the landing knowing he was below slithering along like a slug, leaving trails of decay.

“Hush-hush,” she murmured, in her own secret language in the silence of her room. These words were hers alone. She’d been making them up since childhood. No one must know what she said or that she and the old man existed on the fringe of the tangibly awful. She’d say it in her words, but no one else’s. This is how she remained sane. This is how she was able to pretend that everything was fine and that the horses that galloped on the wallpaper of her room, were free. Sometimes at night she could hear their hoof beats and snorts of exhaustion. She would speak to them and they would gentle until morning light sent them galloping away once again.

When she had to take him out, she’d roll him around in his wheelchair pretending that all was well. Now she could end her ruse because he had disappeared one afternoon when she’d not quite so accidentally left the backdoor open, and they’d found him half-dead and clinging to an old oak tree. It didn’t take long for eternity to finish what her forgetfulness had begun and he had been assigned to a place beside family pets, critters and dead relatives in the family plot.

“Strong enough to kill a horse,” she whispered in her secret, beautiful words. “Strong enough to kill the whole world if I want to,” she said when the son came to her some days later and said that he loved her.

He thought she was being flirtatious as she slowly formed each syllable of each mysterious word she spoke.

“Perhaps someday you’ll teach me your language,” he coaxed drawing her to him, “My father swore that he almost understood you at times.”

“Is that so, she said, finally in English. “No one understands me, but horses.”

Pegasus Awakes

Moonlight lit the darkness forcing purple shadows to rise, glowing the sky like angels in flight. Coyote watched the Pegasus constellation gallop across the night sky. It could not follow its ancient hoof beats nor dream of what life was like in the stars. A lonely howl rose and was momentarily caught in water vapor before descending into silence in the bitter air. Then another howl followed until coyote songovertook every other sound except the drum of heartbeats pounding.

That is how the day began, with the world feeling a world away from itself. As if everything had gone back to a distant time and place, without a reckoning of anything but the midnight sky and the howling of a lonely coyote.

In the morning, the old scarecrow stood in a field of wheat, on the very spot where long dead Indians had once stood, fought and died. Jenny stood in the kitchen doorway, where several generations of other women had stood listening to the call of mourning doves before beginning another day caught between old dreams and the constant unfulfilled expectations of life as a wife and mother.

Looking down the drive she studied the rusting remains of the Cadillac that had sealed her destiny and tied her to the man who had taken her for a ride and brought her back home carrying the first of their children. She hadn’t loved him then and wasn’t sure if she ever had or could. The void between them had multiplied with each child, each unhappy night and each bill due that couldn’t be paid.

“This is the price you pay for being easy,” her self-hatred bellowed to her even after all these years when forgiveness for youthful foolishness should have already occurred. But it hadn’t come and Jenny wondered if it ever would.

Her husband sloped up the steps and came into the kitchen to get a drink of water.

“It’s a scorcher out there again today. No clue how much I’ll be able to do,” he said between hearty gulps.

“I thought I’d make us a cold supper tonight, what do you think?” she asked.

“Whatever you like, you know I always leave those things up to you…”

“But I was just ask…OK.”

The stillness of the air exaggerated the stillness between them.

“Lots of nonsense on the news this morning,” he said, “Newsman called it ‘social unrest.’ Sometimes it seems like the whole world is unraveling.”

“Really, what’s going on? You didn’t wake me to make your breakfast…”

“I think you had a bad night, so I let you sleep,” he said, walking over to her.

“Dang coyote was howling so loud I’m surprised anyone got any rest,” she said.

“That wasn’t it,” he interrupted. “You can’t hide much from me, yet you always try…”

“So do you want an early supper tonight?” she replied as she turned away. “I’m just asking because I wanted to polish the brass and get some other things done this afternoon.”

He didn’t respond but walked out of the kitchen and back out into the summer sun.

In the sky, a lone hawk slowly circled and glided indifferent to the struggles of those below. Jenny watched it, feeling fully awake for the first time that day. She didn’t hear her husband reenter the kitchen and jumped when he addressed her.

“Sorry,” he said noticing her shock. “Got a call from up the road, Hank wants me to help him lift some bags of cement and work on the radiator of his old Lincoln. It doesn’t seem like I’m going to get much done here today, so I thought I’d go over there and help him out for a while.”

Jenny pursed her lips and nodded.

There was nothing to say as they stood together beneath the electric hum of the old ceiling fan. It was a given that this was how it would be between them until one of them died or finally gave up and left. Youthful eagerness to explore every aspect of themselves had been lost and replaced by a need to overlook what remained.

Jenny spent the rest of the afternoon polishing the stained brass and making potato salad.

That night in bed, beneath an orchestration of stars, they lay silently side-by-side as the world around them darkened into oblivion. They did not know that great things were being born or dying in the universe or that just around the corner both blessings and troubles were coming in a series of leaps and bounces. There was nothing but the stillness of sleep upon troubled pillows and coyotesong begging Pegasus to linger.

Towards a Poisoned Canal

A pigeon sits on a lonely stoop watching a traffic of geese fly overhead. This street smart bird that races after busboys who discard perverse amounts of barely touched food in garbage cans and curbs, knows that speed means a meal and waiting is death, as lingering gulls circle overhead. It coos to its lover who sweetly coos back, before she springs and wings towards poisoned canal. Dead fish float in the autumn breeze between hovering ducks and sewage pulp. This was how the day began; a seamless comingling of beautiful ugliness with sparks of sunlight teasing through pollution flame clouds. Hillary thought she’d heard a cricket the night before — between the humming of the air conditioner and the snoring of her husband, but cancelled the thought; dismissing it as fantasy.

Sighing herself up and out of the unpleasant warmth of her bed, she admonished herself for sleeping so late. 

“Well, looky here, Sleeping Beauty has finally awoken,” said her husband Glen.

“I was waiting for Prince Charming, but he didn’t show up. Guess that means I have to settle for you,” she replied, narrowing the space between them until they were close enough to kiss. The moment passed without affection and they continued their morning routines talking endlessly about nothing in particular.

Later, after they’d given each other a perfunctory kiss and walked in separate directions down the same street, Hillary saw a dead pigeon and her mate cooing beside her. The scene stopped her cold, even as other city workers plowed past without cognizance that there was more to life than rushing to the next meeting or catching the next train. Some admonished her for standing there, but she was beyond them; lost in the sight and sound of a truly broken heart.

She heard so many things in that lonely coo, such as “Why,” “Please don’t leave me,” “I want to die” and “I love you.” She couldn’t move; didn’t want to move, it was all too much to absorb until a garbage truck drove by and crushed the dead bird flat. 

The horror of the moment forced her to remember herself and the time, even as she watched the other bird fly away.

I suppose I should congratulate myself for never allowing myself to love someone that much, she thought after finally arriving at work where she spent her day finagling deals that would be forgotten before five.

On the way home, she contemplated taking another route to avoid seeing what was there, but remembering that she and Glen had a function to attend that evening, she took her regular route instead. She tried to avoid it, not wanting to see what she assumed was there, but curiosity forced her to look. By now the bird had been run over so many times that all that remained were some crushed bones, feathers and a single talon reaching out to something that wasn’t there. But Hillary’s focus was elsewhere. She looked around for the other bird; even tried to pick it out of group of birds nearby, but it was gone.

“I knew it! I knew you’d abandon her!” said Hillary forgetting herself as tears welled up in her eyes. “It’s all pointless. This whole existence is pointless. We’re born, we live and we die, and for what? We’ll be extinct with no one left to remember us, and for what?”

By the time she got home, her tears had dried enough to conceal her emotions from Glen, who rushed her in and out of her dressing room to put on just the right dress, so that they could make an appearance at a party neither one of them wanted to attend. Even though time had passed, and she’d washed her face before applying another mask of make-up, Hillary could still feel the salt trails of her tears on her face.

“I want to go home,” she whispered in Glen’s ear.”

“Not yet, babe. You know how the boss likes me to give the hands-on approach to new clients.”

Hours later after they’d returned home feeling beaten down and triumphant, Hillary pushed Glen’s hand away after he tried to syphon some lingering residue of the image she’d created for that evening’s festivities, and fondle her.

“Still waiting for Prince Charming?” he grumbled turning over and away.

She sat in silence through the night, listening for crickets.

*****

On her way home from work the next day, Hillary passed by the spot where the bird had been. Now there was nothing left at all. It was as if everything she had seen and been moved by, hadn’t occurred. Then she heard it, the same sad coo she’d heard before. She circled around trying to see where it perched until as if wanting to make itself known, the bird flew down to the very spot where his mate had been.

*****

“I love you,” Hillary said to Glen during dinner that evening.

“What brought this on?” he asked.

“I just wanted you to know, that’s all,” said Hillary until a long silent lapse imbued the moment with something dark. “Do you love me?”

Glen didn’t reply, he wasn’t the sort to reply to a question like that; which was the excuse she had fed herself on from their first “hello” until now. She changed the subject to something she didn’t care about and smiled as if nothing mattered, while remembering the simplicity of a perfect love lost on a cold city street.

Little Piggies

The storm rolled past, rushing the scent of stockyard butchery and the misery of dying swine through the air like Superman chasing a villain. No one harkened to the reverberating howl of frightened animals finally realizing that their long journey from sow’s teat to crowded transport trucks, had come to its end. Everything had been fixed so that they couldn’t flee the agony of being gutted with nothing to veil the pain. There was no iconoclastic army of socialist hogs to save them, and then rewrite the rules of who governed whom. There was only blood, death and a new existence bound by shrink-wrap with the steady drone of music designed to lure shoppers into purchasing what they couldn’t afford.

Maryann stared at the plate of pork ribs before her and smiled. “Best sauce ever,” she told the waitress. “If that recipe doesn’t make you famous, nothing will.”

After paying her bill, she walked down the footpath that took her from the diner back towards the heartbreak of her empty home. Going out had become her way of escaping the ghosts of old arguments and pleadings for love that still echoed from the walls and floorboards. Even though she had felt trapped in her marriage to Derek, she was now caught in the dilemma of mourning its end. She hadn’t felt equal to his feelings from the moment he’d first shared them. Instead, she’s settled for a dollhouse existence of masked feelings and static smiles, until finally, the fear of spending the rest of her life like a frozen pillar of a retired saint, had overtaken her, leaving her thunderstruck and hungry for something else.

The hush of the early evening tide gentled James to sleep, even as the faint echo of a cabaret singer from a nearby bar danced across the ancient timbers of his room. It had been a good day and he had earned his rest. He did not dream about money or fields of wheat, but of a myriad dancing cleavers all chopping off the heads of his more demanding customers at the butcher shop. He woke smiling and ready to face them again like a lion on the prowl.

Penny put on her waitress apron, though both mind and body begged her to go home. It had been a long day at the mill and now she was here serving plates of grease and wilted lettuce to the hungry and cheerless. She had gone outside during one of her allotted breaks to escape the grease pit and the constant needs, burps and complaints of the faceless throng who came and left without retreat. The extra money of her second job beckoned her back inside, even though her feet throbbed with every step. Between orders of prune Danish and shredded pork, came the images from the night before when her children had delighted to the fake-cockney strains of Dick Van Dyke in “Mary Poppins.” Those cherished moments thrust her to the next table, the next order and hopefully a good tip for her efforts.

The sea rushed in, wildly attacking the shore as another herd of swine was transported on another truck on their journey to oblivion. 

Maryann turned off the light; finally ready to succumb to the quiet mastery of sleep. Perhaps she would call Derek tomorrow and perhaps not. The past clung to her with needy hands and the future was still too new and uncertain to rely on. James trekked down the early morning streets to the stockyard, past the booths of those he had added to an imaginary blacklist because of their unwillingness to cut him deals, to inspect a shipment of fresh meat. He would butcher the carcasses of hogs, count his money and smile at old women he would later butcher and count one-by-one like sheep before falling to sleep. Penny peeked into the bedroom of her sleeping children, almost too tired to walk the few steps to her bedroom. For some reason the childhood jingle of “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” repeated in her mind as she undressed and readied herself for bed. A flash of moonlight lit her room as she stood in front of the mirror. A youthful smile crept across her face as tiny feet journeyed across the carpet to stand beside her. She patted the tousled head of her youngest, and they stood together in silence. All was not right with the world, but it would have to be good enough for now, she thought. 

“What are you doing up so late?” she whispered, breaking the silence, “its time for all little girls and boys to be asleep.

“But I’m a little piggie momma. Oink.”

So another day began and ended as the storm rushed in and rushed out.

Stingray

Sam hadn’t left his room in days. The real world and the World Wide Web had pooled into a horrific throbbing soup and there was no escape from the thrill of exploring the snap-crackle scenery of broadband land amid the thumping grunge of suicidal genius gone wrong.

There were no paparazzi at Stella’s door, but she liked to pretend they were there every time she navigated her way between rollerblading delivery boys, drunks and the rest of humanity’s carrion that littered rain-soaked Manhattan streets where bulls and bears wrestled above subway steam. She smiled at no one in particular trying to ignore the flash of non-existent light bulbs and journeyed on.

Somewhere deep in the ocean a male stingray bites the pectoral muscle of a female stingray to get her attention before inserting his two claspers into her valve. There is no love in dark waters. There is only salt, the slam of quick easy death or sex.

Between games of fantasy and war where he terrorized multitudes, caused riots and departed as a warrior king, Sam looked out of his window waiting for Stella to appear. He knew her schedule by heart, in the same that he knew every line and intricacy of his favorite retro sci-fi television show.

Stella eyed a bracelet in the window of shop she would have dared to enter if her fantasies were real, and she’d had the temerity to audition and win a televised talent show. She didn’t even sing in the shower but only silently mouthed words that no one but an audience of tile-covered eyes could hear.

Somewhere in the French Quarter, a shop sells stingray leather without awareness of the magnificence of underwater realms, and lost lovers who nibble and stab at each other before parting.

“How are you today,” says Sam, between bites of his Mars bar and a shuffle of his feet.

“I had a good day, I guess,” Stella answers, “American Idol is on tonight, do you wanna watch?”

And so it goes, while somewhere offshore a female stingray, long-abandoned by her lover gives birth to her brood and swims on.

Rabbit Ears

Mary didn’t regret anything she’d done in any aspect of her life. Dancing across memories wearing chrysanthemum shoes, she sidestepped the dead and dying with equal conspiracies of artificial tears. At least this is what she told herself as she walked from room to room tiptoeing across the grasping hands of sunlight burning color out of old carpet.

She felt no grief. There were only moments of fantastic jubilant doubt that brought everything into focus and then back out again, as if there were rabbit ears from an antiquated television set attached to her life. She didn’t make any adjustments, but instead accepted the view she was given without question. Sadness was not her enemy and happiness was not her friend, since neither could be trusted to remain for more than a brief stopover before retreating.

After picking up a discarded pizza box, she remembered how its arrival had rendered smiles and satisfaction just the night before. Now, with its contents consumed, it was destined to join the rest of the world’s discards where garbage grows in fields of wild, odd decaying weeds.

The photograph of a runaway child stared at her from an empty milk carton. It would join the pizza box on that forgotten bit of prairie where Natives once danced and died not so very long ago. She studied the child’s face; the ink grey smile didn’t betray an inkling of what was to come.

Mary closed the garbage bag as the whistle from the steel yard went off. Its shrill song momentarily shattering the stillness of agitated mental journeys. The cold frost of the morning air thrilled her. Hope was due for a visit. She could feel its approach from just over the horizon.

She put the garbage bag on the curb. The devil was in the details and sorrow would not be welcome at her door today. She would leave it where it was and run towards the first glimmerings of beckoning possibility.

Passage

Fading into wallpaper on a Friday afternoon with the sweet serenade of evening traffic roaring, she stood listening to Billie Holliday sing about lynching and lost love. The awful truth of low-hung branches weighed down with bodies that swayed back and forth above approving eyes made her want to disappear further into the world of faded paper flowers and stripes. She zombie-wandered through passionless landscapes attempting impossible escapes, and failing. Orchards of odd fruit followed forcing her to succumb to the inevitability that suffering occurs, was occurring, had occurred and there was no eluding it.

But she had forgotten something, love existed in Billie’s melody and it was not completely lost, because it loomed, just over there behind the torn corner where the cobwebs blossomed like hands. Some lover man who called every woman “baby” and some god-blessed child wearing a torn petticoat smile-giggled, as they waited discovery.

After returning smile-for-smile to them, she floated on hand-painted bird wings to roam through royal climates without the limits of kings or pawns. Then the bird dipped down and she splashed through aquatic realms where one reality diffused into another. He was there. The one she loved. The one she had tried to escape by pushing herself away from him and his done with being a bachelor rose-colored promises. Her suspicion had ebbed enough to stand free of plaster fantasies. It was time to build something together and learn how to hope. She would take baby steps for now.

Friday

Hannah's hands shook as she read the newspaper. Bert Cummings was dead. She read and reread the obituary trying to find some solace in the lines, but soon closed her eyes too upset to read anymore. There wasn't a picture of him and no mention of survivors. She wondered if was there anyone who cared that he was gone as images of him—well at least her version of him— dying alone flooded her consciousness.

She scanned the page for something to distract her; to find another bit of news and another name.

Ophelia Maltese. At least this one had a face and hopefully, had lived a good, long life. She had left behind children and grandchildren, so perhaps happiness had been part of her daily landscape. Or perhaps her children and grandchildren had been ungrateful and never visited or she had been abusive and neglectful and pushed them all away.

What were her dreams? Had she been lucky enough to achieve some of them or had she been forced to let them go and settle for a diet of soulless starvation.

Another paragraph, another name, another face.

Maxwell Porter killed in a car accident. He was only seventeen.

Such waste, she thought, such terrible waste. Such promise lost.

What about his parents? Did they have other children or were all their hopes placed solely upon their now deceased child?

Unable to contain the weight of what she was reading Hannah let the newspaper drop from her hands.

It all ends here, she thought. A whole life contained in a tiny paragraph announcing that you are gone, whom you've left behind, how you've died and when those who wished to mourn you, if there were any, could come to say goodbye. A whole life ignored, even now, since most people didn’t take the time to read obituaries.

Hannah sighed while reaching for the cup of coffee she'd allowed to grow cold. Its bitter chill didn't upset her. No warmth to be had today, she thought while taking a sip and looking at the lists of names and faces.

The headlines would wait until later. It was the dead who woke her every morning, and forced her to rub the sleep from her eyes. Then she would walk down the stairs and find them, waiting. Every day there was a new set of introductions and farewells. Every day the realization that someday she would join them, and all this before dressing, eating or running to catch the bus.

Hannah was captivated by them and their constant endless march. There hadn’t been a time when this wasn’t part of her normal routine as the memory of her younger self sitting on her grandmother’s lap while she did the very same thing reflected back from her now empty coffee cup.

Grandma always said that this may have been the only time that some of these people ever got their name in the newspaper or received a kindness or even a flower. Hannah scanned her apartment saddened by the graveness of the room before returning to read and then rush out the door to face the bitter slap of morning air.

It wasn't until she found herself ensconced behind the same desk, in the same office that had become her little corner of obscurity for almost twenty years, that it became too much. Her life meant nothing to anyone except her. She, like so many others, was an easily replaceable thing. It would take no time for someone else to fill up the space she occupied consuming everything but her shadow. That she would take with her until even it dispersed into nothingness.

Hannah heard her heart beating and began to imagine what it would be like when she joined the list of names and dates of death. To comfort herself, she silently repeated some of the names of the morning dead into the air, Victor Newbury, Alice Randall, Stephanie Cress. They were real people, not abstract realities and now they were gone. She wondered if someday someone would see her name and wonder about her life, her dreams or only see her as a nameless face in an ongoing crowd.

She returned to the security of work until the time came to leave for the day. She knew that nothing awaited her at home but the certainty of sleep, and the knowledge that the morning paper would come. Even after she'd moved or died or simply faded out of sight, there would be an endless parade of names eternally marching across her doorstep on their way to oblivion.

On the way home she stopped at a florist shop and bought herself a bouquet of roses.

It didn’t matter what they cost, she told herself, as the clerk took her credit card. I want my flowers now when I can see them. She held the bouquet in her arms like a child and inhaled their scent as the petals brushed against her cheek. It felt good. This moment felt good. There was hope in it and it lingered with her even after she returned to the heat of the late summer day and the inevitability that another list of names was currently being filled and would await her tomorrow.