July 2008
23 posts
after the war
When he first stepped into his bedroom, the most peculiar feeling came over him. There was the bed he’d knelt by as a child and the shelves full of books he’d lived in. Here in his mottled combat boots, he felt like a time traveler, old and tired and wise.
hop
He was a rich boy from North Side, she was a rich girl from South. They played hopscotch across the railroad tracks that divided the wealthy from the wealthier. He leapt in a double-breasted suit, she jumped in a Dolce summer dress. Sometimes a long train would whistle between them.
roses
She’s heard him angry this way more than their first year together, after the roses she had kept in her scrapbook from the reception had long been squeezed to death. They are still there; she had traced the stems just the other night, afraid to touch the crusted petals without breaking them.
road trip
They were a flying reflection, a tube of light, a pod of faint music. The cities looked like distant spray paint on the walls of night. The spot of streetlights followed them off the endless stages of highways while the curtains of dusk drew behind. They’d never stop.
Well, gas.
god of clouds
We descended through valley after valley of cotton clouds. No one had the window seat I did, surely. Behind the naked, snaking wires of the airplane wing was a panorama of heaven. Was that all that separated us? The metal, the glass, the suitcase of worldly cares at my feet?
to catch a fairy
She slapped breathtakingly miniature hands against the glass of his mother’s jam jar while he ate baby carrots on his bed and watched. In the morning she was curled still as a mouse, her pinhole-sized green eyes forever shut.
He heard myriad wings at the window and knew they’d come.
why'd you have to be so cute
The last time I went to a concert I saw this girl in green (and her boyfriend) and she was dancing, she was waving her arms to the beat oh so slow and I saw the laser beams from the stage through her fingertips but her boyfriend, he just sat.
that voice
From his 23rd row, she was a silhouette that could have been anyone, but for that voice. From the center of those hot stage lights it spilled over the red theater seats like golden syrup and filled him right up.
Who is that, he asked.
That’s the understudy, they said.
mother nature
Wherever she walked, the leaves whirled off their branches after her, the water ran eagerly to head her off, and the damp earth stamped footprints out to catch her bare feet before they fell. Trust me, you do not want to be building a house in front of this lady.
life in technicolor
She had been his silver lady as long as he’d known her, his grainy ghost of projected light. Tonight the screen was painting her cheeks a soft white, her eyes a shy brown, her lips faint pink.
The audience gasped in pleasure while he longed for the muted tones of yesterday.
in the attic
These were the pictures in the attic he’d meant to throw away. His old self had bet on his future self being brave enough to look again at those frozen moments of time without feeling them again, pressing.
He steadied himself at the window. It was a long way down.
christmas in july
As agreed, we met at the bridge. He told me the snowflakes in my hair looked like glitter. He kissed the freckles on my nose and wrapped his arms around me inside my jacket. Catch one with me, he said, and I did, pretending the sun wasn’t in my eyes.
twilight drivers
We were a caravan of twilight drivers, sharing the road, sharing the light, counting the staccato white lines under the hazy yellow streetlights like sheep. Don’t fall asleep, she had said to me in that lovely worried way. Don’t fall asleep, she had said, and I thought of telling her—
the divorce
He took the dark skies, rain drops, snow flurries. She got spring flowers and sunrises. He took the British music, she took the Swedish electronica. He got Polaris and Sirius, she got Arcturus and Vega. He got her bare feet and green eyes, she got his hands and his heart.
pennsylvania
She was riding across a postcard but she’d never know it. The trot of the carriage had always been a comforting lullaby and she began to sleep, her head framed in the corner of her grandfather’s lattice work. Not even the strange metal beetles whipping past could wake her now.
blue ridge mountains
Somewhere in these mountains is a breeze that carries the translucent cherry blossoms in its mouth, like the tigress with her cub, seeking the whispering rills to rest at before pressing forward. The city lights are distant twinkling stars, a galaxy of chaos and trouble far beyond these grassy borders.
the price of light bulbs
Our song came on in Home Depot yesterday. I was caught in the light bulb aisle, caught between those glowing expansive rows without any defense. I remembered wiping tears from your eyes in my backseat just before that first Christmas.
Light bulbs are cheaper than ever now, by the way.
guitar lesson
What would you give up to learn guitar? he asked. How about the sensitivity of your fingertips? To feel the silk of a flower petal, the hand of someone you love, the pages of a favorite book? Is that enough?
A hand in back went up. You okay, Mr. Fuller?
the secret
It wasn’t her warm breath in my ear, or her dark hair tickling my face, or her cold hand pulling at my arm, pulling me to her whisper almost desperately. No, it was the thing itself, the three words walking into my brain like they owned the place, changing everything.
musings of a blue angel
From up here, things didn’t look so bad.
The stadiums held a kaleidoscope of dots. Every city shone like a distant kindgom. Have you ever seen fireworks from this high up? They look just like the dots in the stadiums, flying up to meet us in the rich blue twilight.
sightings
First time: walking down Freedom Boulevard in gold heels and oversized sunglasses. Second time: bowling at Gerry Lanes in a lavender summer dress. Last time: on the back of a Vespa, hair glowing under the streetlights, eyes closed, profile pressed into his back, riding away from me into the darkness.
breakup
There would be no more speaking.
Instead, they looked out the window and watched the flurry of snowflakes turn into spring, then fall foliage, then sunlight, then back again. The wallpaper turned gray from dust. Sometimes, in the moonlight, they saw ghostly reflections stare back at them from the glass.
mouse
No one could remember if the nickname came first or the small ears, the big brown eyes, the button nose that twitched when laughing or suspicious. It didn’t matter. Watching your face, turning three-quarters with hands on his hips, rolling his comically large lookers at you—you always gave in.