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.