Living Fossil

He tried not to remember. Which was harder than forgetting.

But music was the devil on his shoulder, fanning old flames until they licked his ear with the urgency of heated breath. Anna’s music. Her cello.

He heard the ghost of the instrument now, cloaked in the low vibration of the museum office refrigerator. A bow agitating its string with indefinite equations. The beginning note of a Bach Sarabande, dragged to infinity.

He tugged on his eyelids and wiped his face. The wearying madness of it all. Too many years of sustained strangulation, without time’s loosening indifference. If she were dead, it might be easier, his brain sometimes rattled. Before he squeezed the thought out.

Grabbing the bones from the protective plastic bags, he started to inventory them for the museum’s new Homo erectus exhibit.

Ulna.

Check.

Left metacarpal.

Check.

Clavicle.

Clavicle . . .

Her neck.

Latex fingers traced the bone’s curving ridges. Palms sweated inside the gloves. His eyelids closed and fluttered.

But opened again.

Anna wasn’t there. She never was, except in the sleight-of-hand that dreams tricked up. Her music might linger like perfume, but his understanding of her face had muted into a finger-smudged memory of soft skin, without the hard lines defining it. His mind would not permit him the small pleasure of looking into her eyes. Of seeing her lips stretch into a smile. Of rediscovering the many soft hairs on the nape of her neck.

Only this music of the mind, continuously looping the loss. Like a shape-shifting tombstone. With pretty flowers pouring from its mouth.

Death masquerading as life.

So as the refrigerator’s motor kicked off and bones hoped for some kind of resurrection by his hands, Galen tried. He tried very hard not to remember. What living felt like.

Until the cell phone vibrated in his pocket with the prelude to their song.

His heart lunged. The vibrations dug deep and spread high. For this moment, he would not check the caller ID. On this day only—the anniversary of his injury, and their meeting—he would let himself believe that it was her.

Somewhere, on the other side.

“Hello?”

Giant

I hear
the jingle-jangle of
guitar chords strumming
a clean and simple tune,
Your cracked voice plowing
the dark lands of
knuckled earth,
Where wonder is the
crop, and bewilderment
the field

How strange it is
to be anything at all

If I could
swallow that truth
from your lantern lips
while belching its
cosmic uncertainty,
It might
(or might notly)
lift into a beanstalk
for the Jack-of-all-doubts
who flip-flops
within a mouth
of mirrors
I guess I’ll call

My soul




-----

The song is from Jeff Magnum,
when he was with Neutral Milk Hotel.
It's titled "In the Aeroplane Over The Sea."
The lyric in the poem's middle is taken from it.

Supply and Demand

“No way she can go to camp this year,” her dad said. “Not until I find work.”

“What about canceling the fishing trip with your brother?” asked her mom. “Or at least postponing it for now.”

“Christ, Shel. One weekend a year. One fucking weekend where I own my life. That’s all I ask anymore.”

Melanie watched the vein in her dad's forearm bulge as his fist squeezed atop the kitchen table. Grass tickled her calves.

“She’s been looking forward to it all spring. It will crush her not to go.”

“Great. I’m the ogre again,” her dad said. “Can’t do anything right.”

“I would do it in a heartbeat,” her mom mumbled a moment before throwing the garbage disposal switch. “And I’m the one who actually—”

The racket chewed up the rest.

“What’d you say?”

“Nothing,” her mom said, flicking the switch back off.

The long silence grounded Melanie’s insides like the banana under the blade. She picked a paint chip off the windowsill, and touched it with her tongue.

“All right, Shelly. All right.”

She saw her mom’s mouth pick up a smile before she moved to hug Melanie's dad. His fist slackened back into a hand, before falling to his side.

Melanie dragged her knuckles along the house’s wood siding, and ran for the field. She stumbled, snatching some wildflowers on the way back up. Her nose dipped into their velvety fragrance as a bee buzzed her ear.

Melanie smoothed her shorts. And then the hair.

Her shoulders pulled back an inch.

“Yes, Prince Phillip, I will do you the honor of becoming your wife,” she said, and curtseyed to the air. Her eyes spotted the floral archway and widened. “It’s perfect!”

She ducked under the blossoms and sighed.

“No, no. Mummy and Daddy will just have to understand, that’s all.” She put on her best approximation of an English accent. “It’s simply out of the question now.”

Melanie sank to her knees and started to twist the stems of a flower crown. She twisted, and twisted again. When she placed the crown upon her head, she forced her mouth to pick up a smile. A princess bride's smile.

“Camp is for babies,” she said, folding her hands demurely in her lap.

Her jaw tightened.

“Not me.”

Bit o' News

I just wanted to let you guys know that my story, Jackpot, was a Runner-Up in the Winter flash-fiction contest sponsored by WOW! (Women on Writing). The winner's announcement is here, while my piece and pearly whites are featured here (with a couple of typos, including my name!). Literary Agent Janet Reid was the distinguished guest judge for this season, which fielded 300 entries.

I'm pleased!

I'm also sorry for not getting around as much as usual lately, and for posting less here. The other side of that coin is that my new novel has really taken root, which also has me very pleased. :)

Now to find more hours in the day...or to use them more efficiently! But I look forward to catching up on your blogs very soon.

For the Birds

Come,

inside

Pick the lock of time
and slip into
the crevasse
where a mouth
of silence sups
from
music’s hand

There is nothing
I can tell you
that your mind
hasn't already
grasped

So let us drop
language like
bread crumbs
and never turn
back

The first words
to be lost--

You

and

I

I Lost Something In The Hills

“How are you holding up, Ellie?”

“I hardly know.”

“It’s understandable,” her friend said.

“I-I’m so ashamed.”

“Of what, dear?”

“That I feel such anger. That if he were still here, I’d want to hurt him for leaving me. For not asking me if he could die.” She strangled on a laugh. “Pretty messed up, huh?”

“That’s normal, though. Remember the stages of grief—”

“Yeah, I can’t listen to that shit now."

“Sorry.”

“I know, in my head, that it wasn’t anyone's fault. But this pain . . . this pain . . . ”

“It’s possessing you. Filling the hole he left behind.”

“Pretty fucking big hole.”

“Listen to me,” her friend said.

“I’m so tired . . . ”

“I know, but just listen.”

She grew still.

“If you could go back to the beginning, to the concert where you two first met. Would you sit somewhere different today?”

Her hand shook as she brushed the hair from her eyes. “I might.”

Her friend sat back. “Really.”

“You said, “today.” In this moment, I might, yes.”

“And one month from now? One year?”

“Ask me then.”

Her friend squeezed her hand. “I think you’ll answer differently.”

“Okay.”

“And yet . . . ?”

“And yet I’ll mourn that, too. Because if the pain is lessened, then the hole is getting shallower. He’ll have started to slip away from me in a very dear and precious way, in spite of it all.” She paused. “Just like I’ve slipped from him.”

“Maybe that’s a mercy,” her friend said.

She looked out the window, toward the hills.

And squinted against the brutal blue of a sky with no shields.

“Maybe.”

---

My husband, knowing my penchant for
moodier music, turned me onto Sibylle Baier,
a German folk singer whose haunting songs from
the 1970s have only recently been recognized.
Her song, I Lost Something In The Hills,
inspired this piece.

A Mother's Day

Often, I look at you and my eyes well, but I have to hide it lest you think I’m sad.

You’re not yet aware that emotions can be as vast and complex as a country, or as small and specific as the freckle on your leg. That each tear has a different DNA.

I wish, like all mothers, that I were a better one. More patient and giving. Selfless. That I didn’t have to fight so to give you all of my attention, my time. That I enjoyed cooking dinner, taking care of the house. Those aren’t empty words. I know I could do more.

I sometimes think I’d be more that way if I hadn’t discovered writing. Or if it hadn’t found me. Then I remember my own mom, and wish she’d taken a little more for herself when I was your age.

I’m still searching for the right balance of you and me.

But here’s the thing: I know you love me. And you know I love you. We say it, we buy cards that brocade it, and we give big bouquets of sunflower hugs and forget-me-not kisses that require no spring or holiday.

You are more than me, more than your Dad. You are the baby I nursed, the toddler he swung, the child asking, “But why?”

You are the breeze in my heart, the anchors to my legs, and the ocean of love that is the source of those tears.

I love you both. And thank you for letting me by your Mom.

Seized

Everything is more
dramatic when looking up,
or so film class taught me,
so maybe that’s why
this horse and rider strike
me as the bravest thing
two could hope to be—
one charged beast
pressed to the gremlin
of a nightly fortune,
with the doves of clouds
kissing its shanks

Tulips

We will stand
as tall as tulips
on sun-lathered days
when clouds are
children’s toes
testing baths of
blue naiveté

But when showers
blur a higher vision
and wind peels back
your tenderest fingers,
sink against a
grounded shoulder
and feel these colors
marble

Maestro

She stood naked before him. Fingers grazing her thighs. Chin level. Strong eyes.

“What are you doing?” he said, the acoustics of the stage sharpening his footfalls.

She would not answer. She would not make a sound. Even when he walked behind her, and brushed the small of her back with the silk of his tie.

“What. Are you. Doing?”

His breath trapped the heat on her neck. His body a lightning rod for her dark electricity. Energies pulsed, nerves begged. She felt neither liquid, nor solid.

But still she stood.

“We can’t here,” he said, his eyes flicking to the wings. “You know this. We’d both be sacked.”

Yet his fingers traced the curve of a harp on her hip, as her skin softened a conductor’s spine.

“What is your game?” he murmured into her hair, while his arms slipped around. Her belly fell soft, but she didn’t suck in. His touch sank deeper.

The truth of those fingers thickened her senses and squeezed her thoughts, until she was a single, tuned string, demanding to be played upon. She leaned into the hard line of him, and they fell between the infinite folds of stage left's curtain.

She turned in the velvet darkness, and moved to kiss him. His lips parted for their prize.

Instead, her mouth slid to his ear.

“There,” she whispered.

He pulled away.

“There, what?”

“Hold this. The desire. This need,” she said, looking long into his eyes. “Every time you’re up there, pressured to inspire us with that magic wand of yours. I want you to look at me, really look at me.”

She touched the air above his cheek. He shuddered.

“And be full of this almost thing.”

---

("Symphony Painting" by Valerie Vescovi)