SHORT STORIES

A LIFETIME

There’s an easiness to the dream we exist in. Unencumbered and rich with life and spice. Where do I begin to tell you our story? It exists in the marley, the reflection of the mirror, the striped windows of the studio, and the rushed moments as the elevator door closed. Like a comic strip we exist in quick quips and dramatic reactions that usually only exist on the faces of cartoons.

We are children running through a sprinkler during summer time and adults fighting over the bills when the winter chill sets in. It’s a shit show and gladly so. When the winter sets in I wrap into the soft glow of the fire and curl into the arms of love. Waiting for day to break over me like a soft yolk, breakfast in bed and a drive to the beach entangle my toes in the seaweed and imprint in the sand that only we walk upon.

On his sleeve is a small snail, eyes protruding like a submarine peering from the water after many months lost in the darkness. Lifting me up into the sky, feet point, back body bending like a bow up into the wind, fingers light and feeling every shift and breath trickling off the edge of the sea cliffs. He tosses me up and catches me like a new born. Run away. Run far far away and don’t stop until all energy and breath leaves you. Don’t repeat don’t repeat don’t repeat the music falling into our ears with joy and carefree swings rippling through our spine. Fling your arms to the air as the mast travels upward.

Ring the gong and bring the children in for dinner. The pumpkin patch providing us with Halloween nights and torment and glee. Curly hair. Tendrils. Cheeks and an apple apron with a black base. White spots shine. Oh the jazz the jazz the jazz how it swings in me. My youth and upbringing. The cushy carpet beneath my feet. A runway during the fall and a dance party at midnight. Everything in place. Caramel out of the cupboard when grandpa and grandma have fallen asleep hours ago. Us girls up past midnight watching movies and telling stores in the Blarney house. To kiss stone one must bend backward, hair cascading towards the emerald green earth. The lips of many join in one place, different times, different stories spilling from those lips prior, now all share that one story. To go back to children and share the familiar tale we think we know.

The swan drifted by in the lake as I drifted off to sleep and the willow brushed my hair until I dozed off, drifting in a blue lagoon. Singing to me sweetly and softly how to be a lady and how to love. How to ask for the juice of life and hear the fire of a heart and know everything will be all right long as you let go and relinquish control for all the ages to come, for no matter how old you live to be, each year is the same length with the same amount of possibility and the fact that you decide to keep showing up to the event, smile broad and heart intact, though it may be torn, but still beating, is proof enough that humanity was not wasted on your soul.

A child on the horse riding into the sunset of adulthood until it falls off in the sand dune of time. Here we go yet again wondering what our parents did and how to say what we were always thinking but scared out of our minds that we were wrong and misplaced on this earth in every possible way. Feeling like if we were just able to sail off or fly up and or dive down and run into the arms of something new and fresh that all would be better. What we forget is that we take ourselves, all we are, with us. Everything we are really trying to run away from resides in the lines of the palm of our hands. The sleepless nights when even the allure of a good dream isn’t enough to take us out of the neurotic spinning we concoct in our overactive minds. When too much coffee or green tea has been consumed for anything but solving the problem at hand to really matter.

It is all a show until we say cut and even then I’m certain the camera continues to roll and the awards are still given and only the wisest among us never take the costume off. They keep evolving and putting on new hats and feeling for what is more and where the juice is and what is tempting and real and in that moment where life is at its most precarious and red. When the blood flows through the body with such energy and urgency that everything seems to buzz with a hyper awareness of mortality.

Spring 2014

FROM THE MIGHTY OAK

For Rachael Lincoln

Suspended underneath the oak tree she watched the clock tick by underneath her belly. Swinging from the branch with her legs curled around the bark like the ivy climbing up the trunk, she gazed upside down out upon the lagoon. Azul in the morning fog that would soon burn off and give way to an afternoon beam of golden rays. She could feel her hair tickle against her ear, softly whispering on the cartilage. It all seemed like a Monet painting. The brush strokes put down years ago in the roots of the mighty oak and the bottom of the lagoon, a repository for storms, life, and sunken memories of young pirates clumsily dangling things over the sides of dingy boats. Floating, waiting for reality to catch up with the fantasy that ruled their days.

Flipping off the branch she landed softly on her feet, picked an apple up from the basket she brought from the front yard, and sunk her teeth into the skin. She was met with a rush of crisp water; equal parts sour and sweet. One hand on her hip, she ate away at the apple until she got to the core, all the while looking out at the lagoon with the stone way arch to her left. The clock ticking underneath her belly. Seconds passing by and filing up the space around her. A light breeze forced her to close her eyes. Thin eyelids covered pupils that could see and feel everything. Where did he go? Her brother was supposed to meet her by the oak tree and together they would create bows and arrows fashioned from the mighty tree’s resources, but he was nearly an hour late. She picked a pebble up and skipped it several times across the water. Creating a perfect linear path from her bare feet to the opposite side of the bank. She could see Laura Ingall’s home in her imagination. The sod rooftop the only thing separating the family from the sun and then the river flowing right outside the door. A funny existence, she thought. To be between sky and water. Liquid and gas. She became aware of the damp grass beneath her feet. Slightly cool given that it was still morning, but she was hoping that the left over soup she had for breakfast would work its magic and find its way to the tips of her toes. Eventually Marcus, her brother, arrived. He came with crayons, she was not sure why, and an eraser.

“What ever would you need an eraser for if all you have are crayons to draw with?” she asked.

“Draw whatever you want onto the eraser. That way once you go to erase something, you can leave behind remnants of something that you enjoy.”

Marcus had also brought along string for the bows. Making knock-knock jokes against the tree the whole time, the siblings fashioned their bows and arrows and soon set off into the woods. They never had much of a plan for what they wanted their excursions to be about. Sometimes it was an elaborate game in which they were both woodland elves, defending the forest and shooting at grizzly looking trees. Other times they took joy in aiming at flying birds and still there were other times when not a single arrow was shot and the two of them just mused about card games and character traits they recognized in each other. The two were hyper aware human beings. It was like their skin didn’t have any sort of separation from the rest of the universe. Everything they came into contact with, they might as well have lived it because it felt so incredibly real to them. Their parents could not say for sure how far apart their birthdays were. (What led to the memory loss in their parents cannot be described in these pages for it would be far too sad a story to offer you right now. Relish in the frivolity of running around with bows and arrows in the woods.)

Not twins, but so incredibly close that no one would assume anything else. When Marcus had turned ten years old, she showed up to his room wearing an eagle mask, which he immensely enjoyed.

“I can’t stay much longer,” she had said before she rolled out of bed, onto the floor, and wrapped a towel around her soon to be damp head, all before murmuring a few reminders to herself under her breath as she walked out his door.

The rise of the mid-morning sun reminded her that their time outside was not infinite, and at some point the ticking clock would reach midnight and the two of them would have to go inside and find a new game to play. She knew this time was coming. All day, in fact, the thought absorbed some part of her mind. Quite badly, she wanted for gambling to be involved. Back in the woods, she rubbed mud off of her heel before following her brother deeper into the thicket. Birds rustled in the trees overhead and if they paused for just a moment, they could hear the worms unearthing themselves from the stones, their slime echoing their departure. She picked one up between her thumb and forefinger. She examined the different shades of pink and brown that undulated before her. Placing the long worm around her wrist she offered her hand to Marcus. He took it as any gentleman would and together they danced a minuet. Right there, with the worm slowly dripping off her wrist, amongst the blueberry bushes and ferns, right there in the woods, dancing. Looking up she saw the sky traveling with her. The silhouettes of pine mountains met at the axis that the brightening blue turned on and she kept spinning and spinning until Marcus clapped his hands ever so pompously. And with his nose turned up in the air, profile towards her, he declared,

“We must move on. Tis nearing the midday hour and if we do not have our wits about us, we will miss the finest the forest has to offer for the day. Onward!”

She smiled at his theatricality and tried to regain her balance all while falling into a character of her own.

“Today I am Georgia,” she said to Marcus while pretending to dub him a knight with a stick she had picked up from the forest floor. She was walking backwards in front of him.

“Why Georgia? That seems rather southern, does it not? Since I took on an old English way of being, don’t you think you should do the same? This way we can communicate with ease.”

“But my darling Marcus,” the girl currently going as Georgia said, “Where is the fun in that? Now show a little respect for this southern lady and fetch me some water for I am parched thanks to this heat beating down on us. I do declare! It is as if the sun is in my skin!”

“You miss, are something of a mystery.”

At that, she cartwheeled over a nursing log and began sprinting through a clearing, bow bouncing against her back and arrows clutched tightly in her calloused hands.

“An English gentleman does not partake in such activity, and neither does a southern lady!” Marcus yelled after her.

Without looking over her shoulder she replied, “Well thank god we actually aren’t either of those people! Come on! Run! There’s a land shark chasing you!”

Marcus took off, shooting several arrows at the imaginary land shark as he went. Oil paintings and watercolors of green moss and minty lichen swam past them on either side, but the horizon remained a clear photograph. Then all at once, and without warning, they both tumbled and rolled to the ground and lying face down upon the earth, they found themselves looking through a window. At first it was a beautiful mosaic of blood orange hues, but as that melted away, a perfectly clear glass took its place, revealing something extraordinary. Neither of them said a thing. As they exhaled, spots of moisture appeared on the glass, temporarily blurring the edges of their site. To the touch, the glass was like firm water. It was relatively cool, but in a way that it invited your own body heat to make it perfect. Soon enough the two of them began poking at the glass. Each prick sent streams of gold lava up into their fingertips, scorching their fingerprints off, but never causing any pain. Brother and sister looked at each other in quiet and bewildered astonishment. Below the glass they looked down upon their dreams, but everything was made of ice. These were their dreams and since these are your characters, they were looking down upon your dreams. Every fantastical thing or place or sensation you have come into contact with during the witching hour, there it was. Solidified in ice.

She took Marcus’s hand and examined his fingers. She knew the prints wouldn’t be there, but it was even more alien to see the blankness on someone else. Looking into each other’s eyes, lying on the glass that hovered over their dreams, soft and quiet tears escaped the corners of their eyes. They put their heads down upon the glass. No golden lava seared off their hair or the lines of their skin. The glass seemed to lap around them like the shore of the ocean. And there they cried without excess. With the sun beating down upon them and their dreams beneath them, they lulled into an afternoon rest and when they finally awoke, the hour hand on the clock beneath her belly had made several visits to the 12. Marcus stood up from the glass immediately after opening his eyes and proceeded to climb the nearest tree. It was a maple that they had struck last year for the syrup. She continued to gaze down into the glass. Everything seemed to be moving slower though. The longer she remained, the less life like it all was until the world below became as still as a chess set without players. With no mind behind them, they were incapable of movement. So there they remained, frozen in time.

“Marcus, do you ever think we will get our fingerprints back? Or is this permanent?”

Midway up the tree he paused. “That’s difficult to say. My guess is no. We won’t see them again.”

“But without them, how will anyone know who we are?”

“Maybe we will develop new prints.”

“I will miss them. My thumbprint had that long thin scar running diagonally down the middle. I got it from that sword fight we got into when we were five. Remember?”

“How you managed to cut your own thumb, I will never understand.”

“You’re missing the point, Marcus. That scar was a story, a reminder. Now how will I remember? How will I remember any of it? Everything we every laughed about, fought over, discovered, how will I remember any of it if I don’t have my fingerprints? The scars, the callouses? My fingerprints were my childhood and now they are gone. My childhood is gone.” She became rather quiet with this last statement.

“Marcus, do you ever think we will get our fingerprints back? Or is this permanent?”

Midway up the tree he paused. “That’s difficult to say. My guess is no. We won’t see them again.”

“But without them, how will anyone know who we are?”

“Maybe we will develop new prints.”

“I will miss them. My thumbprint had that long thin scar running diagonally down the middle. I got it from that sword fight we got into when we were five. Remember?”

“How you managed to cut your own thumb, I will never understand.”

From the top of the maple tree Marcus looked down upon her, amused. “Come here,” he said with a laugh. She obliged and made her way quickly up the tree. “Now, look at your fingertips. What do you see?”

Looking down, her eyes landed upon several roughed up patches of skin from the ascent she just made. “New scratches.”

“Yes. New scratches. A new memory. Now, look at me.” She looked. “Well….???”

“I see my brother being difficult.”

“Listen, Miss Georgia, you may no longer have your fingerprints, but you do have me. If you really need a physical link to your childhood, I’m your guy. In fact, I’m better than your fingerprints because I can talk back and remind you of facts you might have otherwise forgotten. I can also give you a whole other angle on stories. I’m your link Georgia. I’m your link.”

She focused in on the clock ticking beneath her belly. Slowly ticking away the past. But she no longer felt as if her youth was leaving her with the perpetual circling of time. Each moment, each look at her brother, her inner child was reborn. The ticking was turning into a heartbeat. A subtle shift from a mechanical click to a muffled drum.

For the next several hours, the two of them built hammocks within the strong and mutually supportive branches of the maple. The cool mist was returning from morning. The blue sky began to fade into purple and then a soft amber glow cast took over the woods as the sun parted with this side of the earth. As they rested, suspended nearly 60 feet over the forest floor, the brother and sister told each other stories. Marcus had a flare for comedic dramas and she could give him nightmares with the details of her murder mysteries. Their audible reactions to the tales filled the night. They knew they wouldn’t be going home tonight. There wasn’t much of a point so long as they didn’t have their fingerprints. Their parents would not recognize them and to be completely honest, they wouldn’t recognize themselves within those childhood walls. The butter yellow stucco their mom had painted the kitchen was marked with attempts at bouillabaisse and beds that hardly held their feet in… These would always belong to the two siblings, but it was time for them to live inside the dreams and fantasies that reality had kept at bay for so long. Stars blinked down upon them now. The heartbeat of the clock synching up with her own.

“Marcus?”

“Yes?”

“Hand me the erasers.”

Digging into his pockets, he extracted the crayon-covered erasers and offered them to her in his palm. She could smell the wax and with the little light from the beaming planets, she could make out clumps of color they had put on them…. What seemed like ages ago. Grabbing the one Marcus had drawn on, she smeared the eraser against the tips of her left hand’s fingers. The color stained the smooth skin, the oils in her hand mixing with the blues and greens. She then grabbed the eraser she made and smeared it onto the right hand’s fingertips. After she put both erasers down, her right hand looked like fire and the left like the blue lagoon she looked out upon earlier in the day.

“Should I?” Marcus asked.

“No. One of us needs to remain bare. Something to remember it all by.”

He looked down the trunk of the tree into the glass window. The dreams had begun moving again, slowly regaining life. In barely a whisper he sang, “Georgia, oh Georgia. The whole day through. Just an old sweet song, keeps Georgia on my mind.” They hummed the song together until they faded into sleep, their minds dripping into the glass below. Tomorrow, with the next sunrise, she would find the heartbeat louder than ever and upon her belly, rings of color painted on from her fingers during sleep, which would continuously swirl over her smooth skin. Each day, she and Marcus would fashion a new bow and arrow from a new tree like they always had, but now they really were woodland elves. They really were the pirates looking for gold and defending one another on the open sea. From now on, the dreams that they once peered down upon, all the ice, it was forever melted by the sun in their skin, becoming their every day existence. The fantasy of childhood was now the miracle of life and on and on they would go. Procuring memories and fashioning stories. And for the girl who was for one day known as Georgia, the heartbeat inside her was always growing louder, stronger.

Spring 2014

IMANA

In her eyes there was a storm that sent her out to sea

With a giant cloud thundering overhead and the tentacles

Of a violent purple squid trailing in the heightened wind.

The suckers porous and thirsty.

Paper waves rocked back and forth and oil pastel lines

Smeared into one another

Creating the froth of a tumultuous liquid hell.

The dock

Just beyond reach and the mast high.

Overhead the gods fought and wrestled.

She cried for the moon and the stars to slip into the place

Where there is assured rescue and never the fear of it

Remaining the same.

Hair cascading down and lightening striking it off

In one fell swoop.

She leaned over the side of the ship

The grain rough against her bare hands

Pruned by the moist air.

Dangling herself over the side

No reflection was possible in that weather.

Only the echo of the fights.

Hell.

Slovenly silky smooth.

Everything began spinning

In a daze she was cast over board into the eye of it all

Drowning in the depths.

The green became calm and the translucent spectrum of light

Radiating down from above

Illuminated her bubbles of air.

The nightgown swam around her body

Dancing calmly

Tranquil.

One could roll down the hill

Cascading to the bottom

Ending in jubilant laughter and quickly picking oneself up

Sprint to the top

Rolling rolling rolling

The momentum of the sensation driving you to madness.

A wonderful madness.

Sinking into the blackness

A hand pushes her up.

Slowly.

All seems to calm and quiet.

The waters are still and the sky is black.

There is nothing to fear and really see.

The trail of bubbles she left behind enter through her lips

One by one

Back into her diminished lungs.

Up! Up! Up!

Filling her and raising her as if they were balloons.

The calm is unnerving and the sound of life is gone

Yet she reaches that magical place between liquid air and sky

Where we feel for sure we will never fully breach that thin layer

Between life and death.

It is that moment where all sense seeps back into the depths below us

Fear overtakes with the most extreme mixture of yearning and hope.

This place

That thin spot where we reengage with what we have always known.

How it feels.

How it presses against our skin and our ears.

The tips of our fingers bruised with an infusion of blood

And the pulsing of the excited heart.

Tender and alone beneath the nightgown.

There

Suspended

Heaven suddenly becomes earth and you are the god you’ve been looking for.

Quietly bobbing in the void

Waiting

Contemplating

Not rushing

Her eyes lightly closed.

Then her neck bends back

Face lifted towards the black sky and with not much more than her delicate fingers

Pushing past some water

Her face lifts past the curtain

Leaving behind the mercurial pressure her feet still dangle in.

The lips

Nose and eyes all are washed over by the wind

A gentle breeze.

Spring 2014