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Twice fifteen*

April 16, 2012

As dawn broke on my 30th birthday, I sat on a balcony chair, my belly torn apart by food poisoning, my then-boyfriend asleep in the other room, even though I’d told him how important this ritual was. The waking city below me sounded slow that Sunday summer’s day.

Sometimes twice fifteen feels like one hundred when it stumbles in. But that makes the next decade the one when we heal, become stronger than we knew we could, and finally leave the broken behind and shout out with more sure voices.

* For Dottie, at 30.

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Your kind of cool

April 14, 2012

But you’re cool, said the guy in the navy blazer. I’m not cool. I’m not even close to your kind of cool. I’m not even cool enough to compete with your cool.

He took a long drag off his cigarette and looked out from under the overhang at the rain falling on the street.

At least I can hang, he said.

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Good day’s work

April 12, 2012

She had drawn his name in the places downtown where most people would never think to look. She didn’t care, much, if he ever noticed; it just pleased her to know his name was out there, exposed, wearing away ink molecule by ink molecule as rain fell and wind rushed by.

How did your day go? he asked when she got home, but it was clear he didn’t care to hear the answer.

Fine, she said, rubbing her fingertips against her thumbs as if she could feel the stains left behind by her good day’s work.

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Please understand

April 10, 2012

The girls on the bus had spent the morning working with their hands, learning words in a silent language. But one seemed not to have absorbed the lesson, and the other kept asking her to re-form words with her fingers, to understand what was passing between their seats.

That’s not how you say please, said the girl with greater understanding. You have to keep your hand above your heart.

She demonstrated the sign, then, to her friend, her right hand circling, the word cutting through the engine’s rumble and the conversation of other passengers. Please. Please. Please.

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The pretty one

February 28, 2012

She learned to braid her hair tightly, to keep it wrapped close down her spine, something no one would touch. She learned to scrub her face clean and to keep it unadorned, to wear only the clothes that hid the outline of her body rather than those that followed it closely. He kept his anger at redline pressure at all times, and these were the ways she kept herself out of its hot and angry blast zone radius.

She had been the pretty one, once. Once, she’d been the one who smiled.

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Escaping thoughts

February 26, 2012

She had heard it said so many times: Keep a notebook by the bed to capture the thoughts that fade at dawn like so many stars. She had never adopted the practice, which meant she spent most days trying to remember the ideas forgotten, the words that spilled over from her dreams, the stories she had meant to tell upon waking. The act of trying to remember distracted her from asking why she so feared capturing those communications from the recesses of her brain.

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How coups begin

February 24, 2012

He became King due to an epidemic of bad information. There he was, atop his throne, and no one felt comfortable to say, Hey. Sir. Get out of that chair.

No one said a straight word until the Real King returned from his business trip. Please go, the Real King said. This is a grievous misunderstanding.

This is how coups begin, said the accidental King. He had grown to like the soft fabrics and beautiful women of the court, and the thick carpet of quite comfortable untruths.

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