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Litter
Really, the only reason I wear four-inch heels? It’s the kitty litter. On the floor. All crunchy. You know what I’m talking about, right? Okay. True story. Once I had this thing on my foot. A mole. It was there for, like, ever. And then something happened to it. Maybe it was all the tanning beds, I don’t know. But the damn thing changed! Grew a face! Okay, I knew you wouldn’t believe me. Look at you. You have your I-don’t-believe-it-face on. I can tell what you’re thinking. But listen. This happened, right? So the mole. The face. Remember? Well, the thing got bigger. And bigger. Pretty soon I couldn’t…
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Hand Of God
I’ve often idly wondered what would happen if a gigantic hand reached down out of the clouds above Seattle and pulled the Space Needle up from its roots. Sometimes when we’re standing overlooking I-5 and Lake Union below, Queen Anne across the lake spread out like a tawdry wench, I think about giant hands. “There would be mass chaos,” my soulmate says. “Anarchy. Screaming. Martial law.” I can’t really imagine the aftermath of a giant hand reaching down out of the clouds. I think of it as a mystical thing. Magic. Like the boom-boom-boom sound I heard from my front yard when I was 3, convinced there was a giant…
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Pillowcase
I should have known it was over when I began marking the sheets. My side and his side. Sleep never came on a pillowcase impregnated with his odor; I could feel his essence creeping into my pores, into my psyche, turning me into him in some awful alchemy. Forgetting whose pillowcase was whose after laundering, I’d lay awake all night trying not to breathe him into me, swearing to find a way out, hating myself for my oversensitivity. After the third year you could see how his mothball smell had crystallized into a dark smear on the pillowcase. When I left, I let him keep the sheets.
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Blind
Hot sand crunched underfoot. Hotfoot shrieky tiptoes onto cool blankets and beach towels. Warm salty water, buoyant waves. Somewhere there’s a fire, a smoky-warm cloud wafting across the sand. Maybe the lottery wasn’t real, wasn’t going to happen, wasn’t going to take its tithing tenth in just over an hour. The war machine waited, waited with hungry mouth and tail, waited for its food, waited just off shore while the food played at being unconcerned, unnoticing, festive beachgoers playing and sunning at the seaside. Mothers slathered sunscreen onto reddening shoulders. Kids dug sandy trowels deeper into cool wet holes. Fathers dug quarters out of pockets for sweet cold treats.
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Blue Balloon
Some things are fleeting. Her voice was ragged from the lack of oxygen. Her thoughts flew, rising until they too thinned like the wisps of cloud above her. The crowd in the square far below dwindled into dots of color. The moving dots arranged and rearranged, tiny puzzles pixelating. Pointillism, she thought, and arranged the dots again to suit her. Now they were a giraffe. Now a house with comforting smoke rising from its brick chimney. Now a giant mouth reaching towards her. She shuddered and rose higher, looking now over the cathedral’s roof. Below, the dots shifted again and a cry rose from the crowd, a thin piercing wail…
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Crystal Ball
The things I saw and heard in my head just about 18 months ago have all come true except one. That last foretold possibility may take years and years to see fully through. I am okay with that. Last night there was an eclipse. It was cloudy and we couldn’t see anything, but the quality of the light changed. Later, Soulmate and I sat on his bed, wine glasses nearly empty, a DVD paused in mid-flight, and we talked about the eclipse. I remember the last time this happened, I said. 1994. I was in Pittsburgh. I was driving to my office and hurried when the light in the sky…
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Scared
I am desperately trying to come to terms with the unfortunate fact that I have been in a place of fear pretty much all my life. Let me put it another way. All my life, I have been afraid. Sometimes I feel snarling and wild, an animal backed into a corner. Fight or be eaten. My claws come out. I hate this. Rage hurts. It burns like fire. Sometimes I feel like hurling myself down a deep dark hole, never to be seen again. I think this would feel peaceful. At least, I think, the pain would stop. Sometimes — most of the time — I just push most of…
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Dear Universe
Dear Universe, Let me start right off by fully owning that what I am about to write is not fair. I know this. In fact, let me just step into my Petulant Whiny Little Girl persona, okay? Because that is where I am right now. I hate you. I am angry at you. I wish I was never born, never had to go through all the shit that my life has been about. But you know what I am most angry at? That I can’t seem to step through the fog in front of my face in order to get to where the good stuff is. Because I believe…
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Ghost
24 years ago a ghost roamed the rooms of a newly-purchased newly-built house, walking, walking, as there was something lost and the walking would help with the remembering. A ghost pacing miles of grey carpeting that stretched in every direction. A ghost that sat silently under white walls that loomed overhead. A ghost that looked out with blank eyes upon a bare yard, pre-landscaping. The ghost had dreams and longings but they thinned impossibly gossamer, invisible in the hot desert sun. Six months later the ghost escaped into the bright sun. The bare walls could no longer contain the ghost and she no longer swallowed handfuls of pills hoping to…
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Convergence
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,