Voices in Space

Even the bathroom is labeled for merchandising. The Toilet is self-composting, because Swedes are responsible. I bet they shit more efficiently, in space-saving modules which require less fuel to transport.

Let's go Phuk, I suggest. On the Loeding Dokk. Because Ikea gives drawer-pulls a memorable name, and I've heard six mothers holler Braedon over countless bins of shrink-wrapped nothingness.

With an allen key we can assemble a bed and a fetus in under ten minutes. If the cops come we'll call it advertising, and the royalties will pay for college.

I'm wearing red under the coveralls you unzip with your teeth, down to my clitoris slowly, where you let the dongle dangle, licking it.

The syllables I come sound like a book case. I check the label on the box we've just defiled, and make note of this possible conception date.

I'm not calling anybaby Hemnes. Tomorrow we're fucking in Barnes and Noble.

 If I could see through your eyes, even for a moment, what would I see?

If I could be inside your mind, if I could hear your thoughts, how would my world be changed?

If your ears could be mine, and I could hear my “accent” through yours, how would I sound?

If I could taste food the way you do, know your preferences, what you crave, what you abhor, would I understand you better?

What if I really understood your sense of humor?  Knew what you find truly beautiful, and what you fear in the back of your secret mind?

Is what I call red the same color you see when you name it red?  Can you identify all the greens in a forest by name?

I have had this wish, this burning need to see, to experience, to know, for such a long time, but the best I can do is “put myself in your place”, and only in my mind. 

I can only guess.

Still, I know of no better way to understand you, or that person from another land I met today, or even my brother.  Imagination must be the stand-in for true knowledge, because even if I sit with you and ask, you will respond to your version of my questions, with your version of the answers, and, not being able to share my eyes, my ears, my mind, you will answer as best you can, but your answer will be in a tongue I will never truly understand.

[Reprinted from Uphill Writing: November 29, 2010]

The keys are everywhere

Strewn about like leaves after a storm

Lying, waiting to be found

But hoping to not, as a lover forlorn

Half buried beneath the surface

Digging themselves still deeper down

Away from the hand trying to grab them back

Slipping as frustrations abound

While in a back pocket oft forgotten

Recalling in a moment its power

To open a box once dormant

Brings always a tempestuous shower

Though this cloud hovers over just one

It can be escaped with some guile

As anguish lines the exit route

Patience is required for the last mile

Finally a brutal sun beats down

Eroding the shield that insulates the pain

Jagged metal edges melting with time

Wishing for calm on this abyssal plain

I am Lilith WillowDragon of the Tribe of the Dark Witch…

I am Priestess of Ishtar-Aphrodite…

I am Priestess of Dummuzi-Adonis…

I am devotee of my Divine Companion, Ereshkigal-Hekate…

Tiamat and Epona are my Spirit Sisters…

This is my life…

This is my song…

I am the Midwife who welcomes the Sun

I am the Sacred Whore who revels beneath the Moon

I am the Sorceress of Deep Yearning

I am the Dark Enchantress of the Carnal Gateway

I am the Muse of Self-Revelation…

I am the Acolyte of the Twilight Crossroads

I am the Mistress of Lost Souls

I am Priestess of the Yoni and the Lingham

I am Qadishtu of the Goddess, She who washes away sorrow

And opens new gateways to ecstasy…

Heed my call!

I am the erotic cry of wilderness…

I am the perpetually shifting sands in morning’s first light…

I am the rains that shimmer in the wastelands…

I am the whispering of warm desert breezes on the twilight dunes

I am the stars whirling overhead

I am the witching hour’s silhouette before the horizon

I am the rushing flow of the rivers

I am the darkening indigo of the moody autumn heavens

I am the solitude of the oasis…

I stand between the river and the desert and lift my arms in honor to Mother Earth’s diversity…

Enter my Lady’s temple…

I am the Singer of Songs of the Compassionate Heart

I am the Sentinel of Mysteries

I am the Web-weaver of Poetry and I am the Scribe of Spirit Stories

I tell the tales of the Ancient Mother and Her Daughters

I soar with the spirits of the Blessed Ancestors

I glow with the eternal fire of the Qadishtu

I immerse myself in the Nectar of the Gods

I purify myself in the lightning fire of the Queen of Heaven

I balance all aspects of my life, light and shadow, and weave them together

to create the web that is my being.

Know thyself and prepare…

I am the Lover of Unwavering Heart and I am the Untamable One

I am Beloved of my Chosen and I am Pandemos to All

I am the sensual one of luscious thighs and I am the savage lust of Kunti,

succulent and hot

I am the hedonistic softness of feminine essence       and I am the hard fury of feminine rage…

I am the yielding flesh of Creation and I am the rigid coldness of Death…

I am the Unearthly Beauty and I am the Dangerous Sorceress…

I am the passion in a lover’s kiss and I am the terror in a lover’s parting…

I am the pulse of ancient rhythms…

I am the ecstasy of the primal dance…

I am the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone.

Bury your existence within my depths…

I am Destiny’s Mystic and I am Justice’s Fierce Huntress…

I am Child of the Ancient Ones, the Horse Clan and I am Mother of She Who Knows No Equal…

I am the farsighted night vision of Owl…

I am the healing venom and sensuality of Serpent…

I am the playful joy of Dolphin…

I am the strength and fierceness of Lioness…

I am the grace and beauty of Swan…

My taste is that of sweet cakes dipped in honey and cream…

My scent is a shadowy perfume, the spicy fragrance of late Autumn Harvests…

My will is my own, my Lady’s and my Lord’s and no other.

Surrender to this moment in time…

I am Daughter of the Golden-Crimson-Ebony Goddess and I am the consort of the Horned Lord of Nature…

I am Priestess of Ishtar-Aphrodite…

I am Priestess of Dummuzi-Adonis…

I am devotee of my Divine Companion, Ereshkigal-Hekate…

Tiamat and Epona are my Spirit Sisters…

I am Lilith WillowDragon of the Tribe of the Dark Witch…

This is my song…

This is my life.

We are One!

Autumn arrived while I kissed Alphonse on the loading dock. We couldn't see past the allotments, so gazed instead at one another, and it was like we'd never shook to keep from freezing. His kiss was a gift to unwrap remembering, in harsher future moments.

Sebastian wore overalls, and stuck wet brushes in their bib pocket. By the end of every class his torso was a rainbow. I loved these masterpieces he’d composed without meaning to. When he smiled at me I felt like one. I kissed him to wear his colours.

The health department shaved the group home residents. They doused us for body lice, and we stood shuddering in smocks while our effects were borne away. Workers arrived, to transport us to hasty interim destinations, where we'd remain displaced. Colum kissed me when his summons came: hard, as though to defy impermanence by leaving a violent stain.

I bought Pam a coat last week with the last of my funds. We walked to the diner, two thin shadows sketched on concrete, and she talked alongside me to someone I couldn't see. I watched her being warm and filling in a space of dignity, and cared less that I was destitute. I cared more that I wasn't alone. I told her she had given this to me, and she was quiet. I knew she'd heard this above her internal cacophony because she rose then, and kissed me. She left and I could not afford to wonder if I'd see her again.

Three identities merge forsaken in fire, stretch one arson shadow down tracks. She speaks dark, extinguishes the starter scarved in smoke, dissolves black into their past withdrawing this, the only light.

The usurping majesty of silence is immediate and autocratic. Rumour is her fleeting shape and substance since, where she assumes the shifting area of exile.

A ghost of unspoken words materialized is the host flesh of a secret.

The wormhole on the scan becomes her vacuum centre, an erasure of tenses past from future until all reference within time is gone, a neural sun burned black.

Perhaps there was no gypsy triad smoking in the cold. If she invented selves to shed, she survived unencumbered by Shari, who couldn't count past the age she was, when. Luna, whose scar was his initial. Rita, who despite surgeries would always bleed, as though torn new each time.

She is the comatic enigma beyond whom these vital selves can flourish as more than progressions of a terminal disease.

North of Quebec low hills roll and roll on:

Not like prowling arctic animals,

Not like a snowfall’s undulating plain,

Not like hills:

But worn of movement’s immense imprint

Expanding across the time-wrenched shield.

A car motors around the hills, past towns,

Similar devoutly-christened relics

Of close impassioned times:

Not like unnamed roads,

Not like the pretense of a forgotten science,

Not like prayer:

But unraveled remnants of distant history,

Recalling the driver’s primeval doubt.

The driver, reluctant, turns the car,

And returns by the same impassive road,

Around similar hills, whose swift changes mimic

The car’s sudden motions, the turn, the stutter,

And then roll on:

Not like the startle of a distant animal,

Not like a car’s measured progress,

Not like presence:

But form of a silence that is

And yet is itself no more.

A carriage return, squeezebox keys similar in shape and size to his fingernails reel them down and up the dusty barn where rigged in dusty beams a hackwork of stringlight and oddment hangs. In hexagonal, lunglike expansion the instrument breathes swooning the room, a churning air imbued with quaint vibrations.

They step their dirndls up in line, a long, lurching doll-up costumed as one concerted action. They cohese beneath the disco bawl conspiring by tradition against assimilation in the modern elseworld.

Heel to toe he surveys lordly an arrangement of crowns tipped to monitor their own steps as prescribed at their partners' elbows.

They occupy their squares of time, their multiples of notes. Even their buckles and buttons align, a symmetry speaking music or answering sound with gesture.

Under halos of descant lighting they pirouette, then are the long, slow sawing of a song upon a swirl of skirts, beneath which untold is an unparalleled consciousness of footwork.

The silverman presents his dame, pincurls and embroidered roses seeming worked in the same silk thread. His gnarlboned hand is palsied, and her lips tremble as it finds its tender rest at her waist. A lapse in bars is made for her to speak of this and the bond that keeps them dancing in their twilight. But then another medley unchains down the furling rows, and these partnered now separate, a golden discourse untarnished by utterance and time.

She has a spare limb. She keeps it by the door in case of home invasion.

She peels a stocking off the carbide upgrade, a robot reproduction of its living mate. Maintaining flesh to fabricated standards, she articulates nerveless through diligent remastery.

She drafts unending retrofits. Embracing android novelty, she withdraws steadily from touch. I encounter wastes of data when I fumble post-traumatically to reconnect.

The metal leg, a palm to cup a stump of hip, is fit perfectly to absence. Clumsy, prosthetic with disuse, I nudge remaining flesh, a porpoise at a vessel's flank for discard skin and bones.

She keeps horizontal vigil with it laid out on the dresser like a casualty. I’d drape a sheet over her or it, but can’t choose which, so am banished to the sofa. I lay wakeful, poised myself to defend, another symbolic amputation.

It now defines her, this object tailored to her loss, but what of the limb she was born with? Is it interred someplace, waiting for the rest? Engineering renders haunted questions faithlessly irrelevant.

Why should an object not answer them? Why can’t a representation of wholeness transcend loss? And what would the legged know about the lost of limb? Have I not retained all my original attachments?

She winds a string around a finger. It limits circulation and the tip swells, purpling. She considers constriction and expansion, then allows blood to flow again, imagining sewage in her meatworx.

She is waiting for the clock to quit ticking, the sun to stop rising, cells to cease growing flesh. She knows for every cell that’s made one rots in her, dead. She doesn’t want to be its grave.

She sleeps little. She wakes with pain inside her, an embryo. She rises and it digs acid talons in her cardiac canary cage. Her stomach has a fetid, stinking manhole, and down it her life drains.

The doctor will say Mary Ann. It is simple. Eat. And so she will not see him.

Hungry days slide inside each other, glove upon glove upon glove. Once a few pass she feels nothing through them, except Numb, and she names it, because nameless it assumes her shape.

She despises assumption. She despises shape.

He placed a palm beneath her ribs, quietly as sinking. He sounded the fathoms of that concave space, and she loved the way he fit there, how he seemed buried between banks of jutting bones. His fingers encircled her biceps, overlapping. She adored that he contained her shape, how she could shelter in his breadth like a skin shield.

She withdraws, growing monstrous again, with sharp, dark bits like shattered obsidian. Soon nothing will be left to dismiss with indifference or burden with disapproval, no room in her frame for give and take. Pain and pleasure/hungry and fed will no more be bitter bile transactions.

He lies along her, poised wooden, hinged on metal joints, so as not to be punctured by shards. The seizures unbuttoned them and buckled her out of his embrace, across the bed to where his body was no longer protection.

He will say Mary Ann. It is simple. Eat. And so she will not see him.

He fed her with his fingers. He tried to trick her with touch.

She took a gloved fist so scraped knuckles would not betray her, and forced it behind the horseshoe nodule of gagging release. She forced it past the void that served no purpose as a vessel, being broken, beyond the ache in that cement weight of absence.

His nurturance was exorcised, no longer alien inside her. She denied having anticipated anything worth expanding to incorporate.

But he was not like being altered for bearing the residue of another’s brief passage. He was not ingesting on faith words in betrayal to later regurgitate, wondering what progress that hope might have made in the entrails of her twisted turning away.

We are but remnants of what we recall; no more

Than that can we be sure of.  So thinking, I hop

Onto a bus that has lumbered to the stop,

And drag my feet across its brutish floor.

Consoled by this truth, I can restore

Purpose to casual events that form, as they drop

About me, into a gritty film atop

Those disordered memories.

                                                At the bus's door

I taste nights sweating in your estranged arms,

And hear once more your sure tears by telephone.

How can I live this unfashioned process at all,

But by bridling the blood and dreams a bus ride warms,

Conjuring fragile passion and nights all but alone?

As I get off I brush by you; you are not what I recall.

That you are dying is sure.

As the blood that warms the hands lying before you,

As the light that slants across the cloud-scarred sky.

You are hollow as the stick of wood

That crackles into embers dying with the fire,

Lying in the hot grate, gray amid the fire.

Nothing can quench the desire.

But you know already that no one will care

When it comes time to forget to pay

That last bill, or water those forgotten flowers

Dying in the warm bed, already dead

To your desire.  Or if something isn’t said

When you fall dizzy in the shower,

Or when the doctor enters the cramped room

Where you sit scared, and frowns and shakes her head. 

No one will share, when you confront the empty sky.

All else will live or die that day, other people

Will clean the cold grate, watch rain fill the flowers,

Cancel the bill.  The doctor will spend those hours

With others, not recalling where you once sat,

Bearing in warm hands the warmth of a slanted fire,

Crackling with the hope of unshared desire.

"I don't want to do this."

"I don't care. Get into the chair."

"But you don't understand, I can't take it any more. The pain..."

"You volunteered. You said you were willing to do this. You can't back out now."

"But... but it hurts."

"Lots of things hurt."

"You don't understand."

"Give me your arm."

"I... I...."

"There. Now the other one."

"It isn't fair."

"I'm all broken up."

"I shouldn't have to do this any more."

"Do we need to go over the volunteer thing again?"

"I uh... what are you doing?"

"Just pushing up your sleeve. Come on, you know about this."

"But it hurts!"

"Shut up and take one for the team."

"Why? Why the drugs?"

"You telling me you think you can do this without them?"

"I uh..."

"Yeah. Didn't think so. OK, I'm sliding the pads under your hands. Fingers down."

"But I..."

"Fingers down, dammit. Don't make me get nasty."

"I want to quit."

"You should have thought of that before. Power on in three, two, one."

"NO! Damn you, no!"

"Give it a second. You know it's worse at first."

"But I... but I..."

"There. There you are. Now get to it."

"You are evil. You are just plain evil."

"Yeah, don't I know it. You gonna get started? ...or do I have to..."

"NO! I mean Yes. I'm going to... I .... dammit. Where was I?"

"That's better. Rewrite, chapter three, page 2."

Why am I here

year after year

I ask myself in between each tear

that falls into the bathroom sink.

I should be somewhere else.

I should be sitting on your lap

and laughing at your jokes.

I should be telling you 

to please take care of yourself.

I should be trying to blow life

into your body.

But, I'm one hundred feet away

watching strangers surround you -

not knowing what to do -

waiting for the ambulance

to whisk you away 

to a place that you never even knew

you went to.

I am here

seeing you appear before me

encased in swirls of smoke.

I awoke

remembering that you used to have a body

made of flesh and blood.

If I could dig you up

I'd see your bones

and still wonder where you were.

If I could know for sure

that you were able to be summoned 

from a universe

as yet unknown to me,

I would be completely at peace.

But, until I can know for sure,

I will continue to wonder,

why am I here?

Imagine a universe

of only one voice

of only one world

of only one choice.

A cosmic compiling

of unified nations

of similar states

of binding relations.

A galactic explosion

of integration of race

of connection to faith

of one entity in space.

Imagine a place

of harmony

of bliss

of equity

of integrity

imagine something such as this.

There once was a pretty girl
Who always left her hair to curl
While others focused solely on their looks
She focused solely on her books
All she wished for was for uninterrupted reading
And to be left to the happy life she was leading
But the years passed, their beauty lost
Whereas her gift came with no cost
Years later, she spied their lost beauty and she understood
That it is not beauty, rather knowledge that will do you good.
Looks fade, people get older
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Yet knowledge will serve you well, indeed
For those who learn are the ones who succeed

It was moving day, and one of the last things to load onto the borrowed truck was the full length mirror that had lived upon a door for so many years.

We pried it from its ancient perch, and two of us carried it through the house, stepping with light feet over boxes and the odd item waiting to be loaded.

Once outside, and for a reason I cannot remember, we turned it parallel to the ground so it faced the sky above.

To look into the depths of that glassy, glossy surface was to astound the mind, as the sky above was now captured, in its entirety, and held in our hands.

I wondered then, what would happen if I released the old mirror and allowed myself to fall into it. Would I fall down into the sky?

The question took me, and I found myself letting go and watching as that sky-filled surface fell toward the ground with impossible slowness.

There was a crash of light, a shattering of the sky, and less important, the sound of a mirror as it went to pieces.

It was a thing of beauty, the breaking of the mirror, no author of ill fortune, I was sure.

And when I looked at what had happened. When I knelt down and peered into the ragged, jagged pieces of leftover mirror...

I saw that each remaining bit, no matter how large or small, yes, each one, held in it, the entirety of the sky.

There is a coffin in my living room.

Literally.

It is blue and shiny and

covered in flowers.

I can’t tell if

anyone can see it

but it’s kind of hard

to miss, I think,

being that it is blue

and shiny

and covered in flowers.

People walk by it and I wonder

if they even notice it

or if they’re too shy to ask

or if they think it may be rude to inquire

if someone is in it,

especially over coffee,

so instead

we’ll talk about china patterns

or what it is that makes

my lawn so green.

“We all let go of our love

to survive,” he said,

and I knew I could never

lie naked beside him again –

even with the lights shut,

even just to say goodbye,

even though he kissed like clouds

or angels with feather-lips.

So I brained him with his eight-iron.

And there he is, in this               coffin

in the middle of my living room

and there I am and there

they are and I wonder:

Does it even matter,

the coffin 

in the middle

of my living room?

“Over-seeding with perennial rye,”

I admit.

I don't think there's much in the world that should surprise anyone, really. Not the murder of that six-year-old in Palisades Park, not the huge inheritance that nurse in Sayreville got from some rich-as-a-pharaoh patient of hers, certainly not me doing what I did with Jay Wiederman. Beneath this cute white tee from Malice in Wonderland and these butt-loving Diesels, I’m a girl who believes in possibilities. A girl who believes anything can happen. This is what I told Nikki Rhodes in the dressing room at Macy’s when she asked me how could I have.

"With Fatso, of all people," she said. "He must be the grossest guy in Jersey." Bra off, she was pulling a light blue Arden B. tank over her head. With the shirt covering her eyes, I could tell she’d been tanning topless in her backyard while slow-reading the books Mrs. Wacker had assigned us over the summer: Moby Dick, This Side of Paradise, The Turn of the Screw. She worked the blue tank over her belly button and gave herself a frown in the mirror. 

      "Sometimes things just happen," I said. I was taking off the Diesels, about to try on a pair of faded Blue Tattoos. I told her you just never know. That one day she might get run over by her very own mother, the life knocked out of her by that massive Land Rover as it runs a red light at Terrill and Cooper. That Mrs. Wacker might show up to class one Monday with swollen eyes and tell us she’s cancelled our comprehension test because her husband just up and left her. That she didn’t have it in her to write up all those questions. She might even tell us all about the other woman too. Not some pretty blond thing, but a midget who sat beside Mr. Wacker on a flight to LA. A midget off to audition for a remake of The Wizard of Oz. A midget who hated books and had a cute smile. It’s all possible, I said.

***

The way things happened with Jay Wiederman is pretty simple if you look at the big picture. People don’t like to admit it, but things that happen to you today or tomorrow have as much to do with the here and now as things that happened long ago, to you or even to somebody else, things you might not even remember, things you might know nothing about. This is what most people will never admit. This is what Nikki Rhodes will never admit. That she twirls that baton of hers the way she does because of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade four years ago, when her older brother said he thought the left-most baton-twirler in the front line was the finest specimen of our species he’d ever seen. Nikki claims he never said this, not according to her ears, but I know he did, because I was there. I also know I saw Nikki looking hard at that girl, taking it all in: the tiny green skirt, the white cap with a chinstrap, the baton whirling high above her head as if it were light as a pencil. But like most people, Nikki likes to think the past can’t explain a thing about her. She likes to think she was struck one fine morning with a sudden talent, a gift having to do with a metal stick with two rubber ends. And who am I to tell her otherwise? 
      But the issue at hand is Jay Wiederman. And me. How I allowed it. How I allowed it even though he could wrestle a whale. Even though his hair sticks to his head like it’s been painted on and he wears corduroy and wool when it’s eighty degrees out. 
      It all started with my Uncle Walter dropping dead. He was in the hospital getting his ticker worked on. Something minor, supposedly. Maybe not minor, but definitely no emergency. A scheduled thing. Something he was supposed to be able to walk into and out of, no problem. But when it came time to give him a blood transfusion, which they knew he’d be needing ahead of time, they accidentally gave him the wrong kind of blood. The wrong blood type. One his body didn’t recognize and didn’t much want to get to know either. And after everything began shutting down – his liver, his kidneys, his lungs, even the ticker he came in to have serviced in the first place – those doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong. They just kept pumping that blood into him, until all of him shut down for good. And then one of them finally figured out that the blood was supposed to have gone to the guy in the room next door. That was a Tuesday. I got to skip school the rest of the week on account of the mayhem. The funeral happened on Friday.
      I knew the funeral was wacky because practically all of the women there were wearing red. Some wore red dresses, some red skirts. Some had little red scarves tied around their necks and one had on red shoes and a matching red bag. Almost every one of them had at least something red on, which definitely seemed very unfuneral-like to me. Meanwhile, my uncle was lying in his casket looking more serious than ever, wearing a white shirt and a little red bow tie, an outfit my aunt had picked out for him like she’d done on all their special occasions. 
      Anyway, in the middle of all this, I recognized Mrs. Wiederman, Jay Wiederman’s mom. She was by herself, the only woman I could spot without a stitch of red. She had on a black dress, pointy black high heels, and a black hat with one of those mesh things covering her face, which I have to admit I don’t really get the purpose of, and she was dabbing at her eyes under the net with this small off-white handkerchief. She was a lot more dressed up than I had ever seen her at any school function including the talent show. But, recognizing her as I did, I walked up to her and said hi and asked her how Jay was, figuring I’d be polite. She got all uncomfortable, though, glancing over her shoulder, eyes peeled for something, sticking her handkerchief in her purse, telling me Jay was fine and that she’d read about my uncle in the newspaper and thought she’d stop by and pay her respects. 
      Then she bolted. I didn’t think much of it except that she was just weird, which at the time made perfect sense to me since I knew she was Jay’s mom and Jay was at least as weird as he was fat, with the little shivers he always let out in class and the way he sat alone at lunch reading comic books no one ever heard of. Then I even thought about the whole nature-nurture thing we talked about in Bio, wondering if Jay was weird because he had his mother’s weird genes or if being raised by a weirdo mom was enough to make even someone with regular genes a weirdo. 
      I finally got the low-down about all that red from my dad. My mom had gone off with my aunt in her car to console her since they’re sisters, so it was just my dad and me together in the car, and he’s the kind who’s pretty good about answering my questions without telling me everything interesting is none of my business, like my mom usually does. 
      Bottom line: my aunt pulled a Sherlock Holmes on my dead Uncle Walter. She’d suspected for a long time that he’d had someone on the side –a lover, my dad called it – but she never knew for sure and was determined to find out once and for all. So she told everyone she invited to the funeral that the women should come wearing something red. She said it was my uncle’s favorite color and that he would have wanted it that way, would have wanted his funeral not to be a somber occasion, but a celebration of his life. Then she put an obituary in the paper giving the details about my uncle dying and the location of the funeral. She figured she’d be able to trap my uncle’s lover that way, assuming if my uncle really did have one, the woman would be distraught enough to come dressed in black. 
      "So did it work?" I asked my dad.
      "Seems like it did," he said, sounding tired and sad.
      "Way to go, Aunt Netty," I said, but my dad gave me his look that said this was no time to be kidding around.
      "Sorry," I said, and I was. "So it was Jay Wiederman’s mom?"
      "Yeah," my dad said. "Mrs. Wiederman." 
      "For sure?"
      "Walter had been calling Coldwell Banker a lot. That’s where Mrs. Wiederman works."
      "Oh," I said. "I guess Aunt Netty must be pretty upset." 
      My dad let a silence gather, and for a while I thought he was done wanting to explain things. Then, at a red light, he pulled the car lighter out of its socket, looked at the burning hot rings of it, and put it back.
      "Courts award millions of dollars for the sort of mistake that happened in that hospital," he finally said. "Your Aunt Netty’s going to be a very wealthy woman. So I think she’s feeling a lot of things all at once right now, you know?"
      "Yeah," I said. But I wasn’t sure if I knew or not. I was just imagining my Aunt Netty wearing a mink coat and flying a private jet to some mansion in Aspen while my Uncle Walter decomposed underground. I tried to think of everything in the world I ever wanted and then multiplied that by two and imagined Aunt Netty having it all.

***

Saturday, the day after the funeral, at around five o’clock, I got a call from Jay Wiederman. Totally out of the blue considering we hadn’t said more than five words to each other all year. He told me he noticed I’d been out of school the whole week and offered to come over to my house to bring me all the notes and homework assignments I’d missed. Even though we only live three blocks away, I’d never been to his house and he’d never been to mine and the whole idea of him coming over felt too strange. Then I figured his wanting to come over probably had something to do with his mom getting caught being my Uncle Walter’s lover and all, and it’s not my way to make people uncomfortable, so I said okay, that it would be nice if he’d stop by with the notes. Jay’s at least as smart as he is weird, I thought, so his notes had to be at least three times as good as Nikki’s, and I couldn’t be that bad off having him over.
      I took out the trash and washed the two dishes in the sink and wiped the dust off the TV screen in the living room even though I didn’t know why. I remembered a story Jay wrote in English class the year before that our teacher had made him read aloud. It was about a boy on the football team with lots of friends who spent his whole life certain he was his father’s favorite kid until the old man was about to die. In the hospital, his father could only muster enough energy to pay attention to the boy’s older sister, though, a girl who didn’t talk much and had a boyfriend named "Bad John," and who refused to use the word love because she said the word meant nothing to her. The boy kept cleaning out his father’s mouth with Q-tips and getting him tissues, but the father still focused completely on his older sister, saying goodbye only to her, telling her he’d miss her. The teacher had thought it was a great story and I remembered thinking it was too, even though I hadn’t said so in class.
      "Hey," I said, after I opened the door to let Jay in. His jeans looked big and stiff and too blue and his sneakers were cheap, like something his mother had picked up on sale. 
      "Hey," he said back, his shoulders kind of hunched over, and I showed him up to my room.
      Jay was real quiet, busy taking all the stuff out of his backpack, all his different-colored notebooks, placing them on my bed and explaining all of the different assignments while I was copying as much as I could down. Every time I asked a question about his handwriting or the handouts, I looked at his face, saw how freckles covered it almost completely and how his big nose had these wide, long nostrils, and then I began thinking about my Uncle Walter, who had been a plastic surgeon, and what he would have done with nostrils like that. How he would have turned them into something smaller and more oval and nice. Then I imagined a whole bunch of Jays and female equivalents of Jay walking into my uncle’s office the following week only to learn that he was dead. I imagined them holding on to these pictures of models and actors they’d torn out of magazines, people they’d hoped to look like one day, and then I began to feel sorry for everyone involved, the male Jays and the female Jays and my dead uncle and the models and actors whose pictures were no longer in those magazines and this Jay who was sitting on the chair next to my bed, still as a houseplant.
      "Sorry about what happened to your uncle," Jay finally said, breaking the school-only talk we’d been having. "I know what happened with the blood and all."
      "Yeah," I said. "I’m still trying to sort it all out."
      "Kind of a hard thing to make sense of," Jay said. "A mistake like that, I mean."
      "No," I said. "I mean for real trying to figure it out." 
      "I’m not sure I understand," Jay said. His voice was quiet and polite, as if I were explaining myself perfectly and he was the stupid one even though his IQ is probably twice that of my whole family’s combined.
      "I don’t get why the other guy in the hospital isn’t dead also," I said. "He got the blood that was supposed to go to my uncle and his surgery went fine. He’s walking around in house slippers right now while my uncle’s underground wearing that stupid red tie." I felt this pain between my throat and stomach just thinking about it. I’d liked my Uncle Walter. He’d brought over stacks of movies for me to watch whenever I’d been home pretending to be sick with a virus or the flu. Whenever my parents had gotten upset about my report cards, he’d list off names of famous people who’d flunked out of school.
      "Walter must’ve had type O blood," Jay said, and we both kind of froze that he’d said my uncle’s name even though I hadn’t mentioned it once during our conversation. 
      "What do you mean?" I said after a mini-pause, after I’d regained my calm.
      "O is the universal donor," he said softly, probably embarrassed about having let my uncle’s name slip. "Type O blood can go to anybody, even to someone with type A or type B, but people with type O can only get blood from their own kind." 
      "Oh," I said. "How do you know that?"
      He shrugged. "I just do."
      I went back to looking at Jay’s math notebook and asked him some questions about the problems we had due. If there was any extra credit for Monday. If the test on Friday included the stuff in Thursday’s homework. He said no and no.
      "So how long did you know my Uncle Walter?" I finally asked. Jay’s parents were divorced. That much I knew. 
      "About two years," he said. "But I didn’t know he was married or related to you until just yesterday." He ran his hand over the feathery collar of a sweater I’d left on my desk.
      "Did you get along? You and my uncle?" I was trying to imagine my uncle and Jay together. I wondered what they’d talked about, if they ever hung out together. I wondered what my uncle had liked about Mrs. Wiederman that he didn’t like about my aunt.
      "Yeah," Jay said. "I liked him a lot. I think he liked me, too." He picked up the sweater and looked closely into the collar before putting it down.
      "These look like little white tarantulas," he said quietly, as if he were talking to a ghost. Then he stood up, took the latest school yearbook from my bookshelf, and flipped through it at my desk.
      When I was done copying all his notes, I asked him if he wanted anything to eat or drink. I ran a finger under each of my eyes to make sure none of my eyeliner had smeared.
      "Sure," he said. "What do you have?"
      "Lots of stuff," I said. "Pretzels and potato chips and chocolate chip cookies and Coke and Sprite and lemonade. Come down with me to the kitchen. Have a look for yourself." 
      When we got downstairs, I opened the fridge and then the cupboards one by one to show him everything. 
      "Where are your parents?" he asked. We weren’t facing each other. We were looking into the cupboard with the cereal and Pop-tarts and these sick-delish three-layer lemon bars my mom buys from some bakery in Fanwood.
      "At my Aunt Netty’s," I said. 
      "I was wondering if I could ask you a favor," he said, his voice a little shaky.
      "Yeah?" 
      I didn’t look at him. I looked inside the Pop-tart box instead, pretending to check how many were left.
      "I wanted to ask you to please not say anything to anyone at school about my mom. About my mom and Walter."
      "No problem," I said.
      "Thanks," he said, and then he pointed to a green apple sitting on the countertop and asked if it were okay if he had it. I wondered if he really wanted it or if he were just embarrassed to let me see him eating real food on account of his weight. 
      "Sure," I said, and I took the apple from the counter and handed it to him.
      "Can I borrow a knife?" he said. "I like to remove the skin." By then he was looking at me and I was looking at him. His eyes were the same color green as my uncle’s, and his lips were cracked, like someone with a fever. 
      I got him a knife and a paper towel, and we both sat at the kitchen table while I thought about my Uncle Walter. How just two weekends earlier he and my aunt and me and my mom and dad had smushed into my uncle’s red Saab convertible and gone to New York for dinner. How my uncle didn’t seem all that happy with my aunt; how she kept pestering him about the timing of his turn signals.
      I looked at Jay knife-peeling the apple. How a perfect single coil curled off and slid onto the paper towel. And I don’t really know what it was about that coil; maybe it was the perfectness of it, but watching it made me remember something that had happened a long time ago. Something my parents had told me about, had joked about for years, but that I hadn’t remembered myself until just then. How at my seventh birthday party, my father asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and how I said, without any drama, that I wanted to be God. As if that were a choice, like being an architect or a dentist or a librarian. Of course everyone laughed and laughed. My father and my mother and my aunt and uncle and my grandparents. And I remembered laughing too even though I hadn’t known what was so funny. And in the middle of all the laughter, my Uncle Walter waved a finger at me, telling me that if I did grow up and become God, that I’d better be kind to all my fellow creatures; that I’d better find beauty in every one of them.
      "Jay?" I said then, and he just looked at me as if he knew something was different. As if he knew I was thinking of something important.
      "Yes?" he said, and he put the apple on his plate and wiped his hands on his jeans.
      "Do you think I’m nice? I mean, in school, would you consider me a nice person?" 
      Eyes on the apple, he inhaled and sighed. "I think you’re nice enough for a pretty girl," he said. "I think you’re nicer than Nikki Rhodes."
      And that’s when it started. I put my hand over his, and after a few seconds, he laced his fingers through mine. Then he leaned into me and we kissed, first with him in his chair and me in mine, then with me pressing up against him on the fridge, then up in my room where he took off my clothes as if his hands were so light you could barely feel them. As if water were taking everything off me – my shirt, my bra, my white miniskirt, my purple cotton panties. 
      "You’re gorgeous," Jay said to me when we were finally both naked on my bed, after we’d pushed all our notebooks onto the floor, and he sounded as if he were about to cry. 
      And for a second we both stopped to catch our breaths, lying on our sides and looking at each other’s bodies. At my white breasts and my tan stomach and the small mound of hair I’d shaved into the shape of a Dorito. At his ruddy arms and his pudgy chest that had a strip of hair across it, and at the doughnut of flesh around his waist. I ran my hand down the center of his chest, then over his belly button, a large gaping thing that reminded me of a swimming pool, and then I moved it lower until he closed his eyes. 
      "I just can’t believe how gorgeous you are," he whispered.
      And then I climbed on top of him and took him inside of me, and I felt a wave come over me, of wonder and craving, something extraordinary and unforgettable. A feeling that told me if a ten-car collision happened right outside my window, that it wouldn’t have distracted me even one bit.
      "You’re gorgeous too, Jay Wiederman," I said. "You’re gorgeous too."

This story originally appeared in The Barcelona Review.

It isn't because of your beauty I love you
I'm not drawn to you because of your charm
Your intellect doesn't drive me mad
Laughter floating doesn't make me love you

Write all the poetry you want, I don't care
Caress the winds with your viola's vibrato 
Read all the classics and then once again
Smile that impish grin with its dimples plain

Press sticky hands on my clothes
Crying "Look at me, Mama, look at me!"
Curl your chubby fingers around my thumb
I don't love you for all of that

Swing at the park crying higher, more
Big girl holding back tears when it stopped
Smile down at me from atop the slide-impish grin
Screaming all the way down right into my arms

Scream your poetry in front of your classmates
Stand up for your beliefs, pride in your honor
I don't love you more for that sense of nobility
Tell the world that what you have to say means something

I don't love you because of quiet nights
Spent with you curled up by my side, talking about boys
Or, those nights when you make me laugh so hard 
It hurts my stomach just to breathe

I love you like air

I had not seen V. in the flesh for about eight years, nor in my dreams for at least three. Once in a while I would see him in a phone booth or at a corner hot dog stand, but whenever I’d get close enough he would inevitably turn into someone else.

He was that someone I think everyone in the world has a story woven around—the one who breaks you in such a way that when you heal, you heal as a different person; a person you don’t completely recognize but who you like just a little better. I have always thought that this is why people often hate those they once loved too much. They are embarrassed and humiliated by their old selves, the selves that used to do things and feel things for a person they have now convinced themselves wasn’t worth all the effort.

I have often considered it one of my greatest accomplishments that I have never hated anyone at all. So I’m boarding the L train at Sixth Avenue heading east, and as soon as I get on, V. is right there. Right in front of me. Too close to be a mistake. He’s wearing jeans and ratty sneakers and a T-shirt that depicts a faded Mona Lisa in a series of expressions starting from her usual smirk to one where she’s hysterical with laughter, tears flying everywhere.

Sitting to his right is a pleasant-looking, brown-haired girl wearing a short skirt and carrying a large artist’s portfolio. This must be the Artist-Who-Got-A-Great-Write-Up-in-Time-Out-New-York girlfriend, I figured. The one before, I had heard, was the African-American-New-York-Times-Journalist. He chose his women by occupation, distinction, education, birthright, sometimes beauty, though this was usually not the main appeal. I never imagined him being caught off-guard with longing for a sassy ER nurse with a charmingly crooked front tooth or a bartender whose hair was on fire and who ate maraschino cherries one after another as if they were sex on a stem.

No, there had to be something more tangibly impressive, either about you or some former version of you. And if he was impressed enough, he wanted you. It was that simple. I knew this from the beginning and didn’t particularly mind. I thought it would be fun to turn everything upside down on him and make him love me for reasons he hadn’t originally thought of.

            And he did.

            And it was.

And then it was over because that is what happens when you’re twenty-three and the world seems to be full of magnets pulling you in more directions than you can count. He had tried to call about once a year since, but I would never take his calls. He had been unfaithful, and while I didn’t necessarily think that was a cardinal offense (he hadn’t enjoyed it enough for it to be), I thought it was my duty to at least pretend it was. So I’m holding onto the pole in front of him and I take my backpack from my shoulder and place it on the floor between my legs, and am about to say hello, how are you, where are you living these days, when he gives me a strange panicked look and shakes his head in a movement that if made by a compass would draw only about an eighth of a circle. It is a pantomime of “No” that tells me that the brown-haired artist sitting next to him has issues with my existence and that I am not to speak if I have any respect at all for what we once had.

I hold my tongue.

In the meantime, to his left, a disheveled Ricki Lake look-a-like takes out a nail file and starts grooming herself. Not really knowing what to do, I take my book out of my bag, a copy of Walker Percy’s The Last Gentleman, and try to read. I am nearly at the end, on page 357: “Dark fell suddenly and the stars came out. They drew in and in half an hour hung as large and as low as yellow lamps at a garden party.”

That is pretty, I think. But I’m feeling self-conscious. I’m wishing I had put on mascara that morning and that I had worn a different outfit. As it stands, I’m in overalls.

Oh well, I think. He already knows what you look like underneath. And then I can’t help it, but I find myself wondering if it’s the same for them; if he admires the curve of her hip the way he did mine—like you’d admire a fine-looking tree; if he likes her noises as much as he did mine. He is still just the right amount of handsome, I think, despite the fact that his side burns are too long.

He’s shaking his left leg back and forth and staring at my shoes. I am tempted to leave the train even though it is not my stop, just to make the first exit, to be the one to leave, but I conclude that it would be childish and I stay put. I’m already late as it is. As First Avenue approaches, V. and his artist get up to leave. He tilts his body so that he is standing directly in front of me.

            “Excuse me,” he says, looking right into my eyes. “Do you happen to have the time?”

            I am wondering why. Does he want to hear my voice? Does he want to see my expression when I answer him? I decide I will never know and that is ok by me. I tell him it is 6:10 according to my watch but that my watch is generally a little fast as I tend to run late and this keeps me in check. I realize too late that this is probably more information than I would have given an ordinary stranger. But I am nervous. He lets his arm very gently touch mine, as if by accident. Then he thanks me and purses his lips in a way I imagine a teacher might do when watching his favorite student graduate. It’s something a little sad, but mostly fond, and it makes me hope that I never see him again just so things can stay this way.

When V. leaves the train, I take his empty seat next to disheveled Ricki and put my book away. She keeps sitting up straight and looking over at me as if she has something on her mind, but then rests her back against the chair again.

            I am a hundred miles away and not really paying much attention. And then finally, as if she’s been holding something in for hours, she looks at me and says in an exasperated, Brooklyn, sandpaper voice: “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

            “No,” I say, “go right ahead.” She raises one of her hands in the air as if she’s about to make a presentation on a whiteboard. “That guy who was sitting in your seat…” She pauses. “Did you know him?”

            “Yes,” I say, “I knew him a long time ago.”

            She nods dramatically and lets out a hum to show me she understands. 

This essay originally appeared in Before and After: Stories from New York

I sink

deeper, deeper, deeper

falling into a hole of darkness and regret

losing faith

my chances of resurfacing diminish as I fall lower

the water holds me there with a grip stronger than rope

I can feel the tendrils now

grasping at my soul as much as my body

not sure I will ever resurface

swallowed by the deep

pounding, pounding, pounding

the waters currant beats me with an endless rythmn

never stopping until I grow weaker

weaker but still alive

hanging on like a barnicle

never letting go

I won't let go

I will never let go

I watch it fall to cover tall evergreens, build

Soft and deep on drooped limbs; once it comforted

Me in a way nothing else could, made me

Feel warm even in a winter’s wind, turned my thoughts

Into an expensive greeting card.

Do you hear it?  It sounds like anger, betrayal, despair,

Uncertainty, a soft country song, a phone

That does not ring, a text unanswered, daily mail

That does not arrive, a lover who retreats into self.

It sounds like nothing at all.

I am slow to learn some things, sometimes, slow

To discern change where I expect none.  I write

Words that are useless; it has somehow become too late.  The muse

Is still there and now she laughs at my helplessness.

Snow-sounds evoke the past:  the time we wore the wet

Heat of a desert night on the Gulf of Oman, the time

You bought that veil, solely for my pleasure, the times

You surrendered, said “I am your toy.”

Now snow willfully deepens, drifts like old

Passions blown on winds of violent circumstance until

The road chokes, impassible.  I feel old, and cold.

I am waiting for The Need

to hatch and crawl out like

a foul abortion, out of nothing into

the sudden heaviness of being.

In this house I have known for too long,

everything is softer with the shutters closed

(in light the rooms are emptier).

To blink and wake to the same numbness,

no fear but that woven in air, and the darkness

here has colors only the mind sees,

shapes and seasons.

If earth were shattering, I’d be still.

No breath or scream or sudden gathering of things

— a straw hat, portraits smiling with

sunflowers, a string-starved violin —

I never want memory to leave behind

(though it will) could save me.

This is the silence I feel thinking you could leave.

But the vase of flowers is

half off the edge of the table,

hanging, a glass-petaled

Tower of Pisa, and I cannot move it,

knowing it could fall.

big yellow porcupine

cheese and macaroni

in box blue sky

fire engine crimson

colors inside the lines

define your friends

tickle your ribs—

sticky with oatmeal, not

smack (dab-in-the-middle) sugarkrispeepuffpops—

laughing, frowning

cause rubber ducky’s drowning

but ice cream frozen

solid whims

and dreams of him

and her and them

and him always again

staring eyes emerald

green grass mean gropes

at your toes

each cow chow blade

murders the sole souls of

violet sneakers that run (see like spot)

and run and jump

and skip and dance

and run always again

stubby fingers through

afro curls

massage your chicken and noodle

alphabet soup that spells

your name

in chalkdust swirls

blown into forever, but never

sunny wonderful