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Enemy in my own encampment

October 8, 2009

On occasion, sparely written words aren’t nearly enough. They can’t capture the breadth of the betrayal, what it means to run across someone trusted in an untrustworthy space. They don’t tell the story behind months of recon, years of recovery. They glance off truth, then spin away like misfired bullets.

I have spent years battling my instincts, but not now, not this time. They have never been wrong before. But I was wrong every time I chose not to protect myself from the enemy in my own encampment.

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Fly when ready

October 6, 2009

He has felt, for days, as if she were a small bird resting in his clasped hands, light as air, heart beating wildly. Sometimes she opens one wary eye, and her gaze darts around the room before landing on him.

When he lifts her arm to apply lotion, her bones seem to have grown hollow. The nurses say they’ve seen this lingering before—it won’t be long now.

“Fly when ready,” he whispers to her before he turns down the light. His fingers uncurl as he sleeps on the pullout chair beside her.

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Music box

October 4, 2009

No matter how solid she appeared, he knew there was music there, if only he could find his way in. He could tell from the way she looked at him—behind those wary eyes, there was a small, spinning ballerina of a girl.

He held his ear as close as he could without discovery. He listened for the beginning of a phrase, the small clicking that indicated he had uncovered the solution. He was determined to find the latch, the way into the velvet-lined heart of her.

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Bus stop, Telegraph and Grand

September 30, 2009

“Where’s your shoes, sister? You’re going to get gangrene on your feet.”

“Don’t even start with me,” the old woman groused. “I don’t want to get upset.”

“I’m just looking out for you, sister,” he said.

“I don’t have no money for the hormone pills,” she said, pushing her shopping cart back and forth from her spot on the bus shelter bench. “I don’t want to wear my shoes because I’m too hot because I don’t have my hormone pills.”

He stopped chiding her then. He just nodded in time with the rocking of the cart.

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Whirl

September 28, 2009

She compelled herself to sit alone in the dark awhile afterward, the city lights twinkling outside her window, reminding her of the people doing their evening business. She forced herself to keep her hands still at her sides.

The whirl in her head frightened her more than ever, its perpetual motion grazing the inside of her skull. Would you recognize the right thing if you saw it? the voices whispered. If you did, wouldn’t you just run away?

Night is halcyon and lingering, and she vowed to sit, eyes on those lights, as long as it took.

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Loss tastes worse on certain days

September 24, 2009

I hold the dates at the tip of my tongue: April 8. December 18. August 13. March 31. And, though it wasn’t a birthday, August 14. Always August 14.

None of these dates taste as bitter they used to. They were hardest to swallow the first year without celebration. Then they became more bland, year by year, like old chewing gum.

But I remember the loss’ grit between my tongue and teeth. I remember how I, too, had to retreat from table, pull myself into a ball until my mouth was ready to eat again.

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Where he’s from

September 22, 2009

At the base of The Man, the Ranger imparted information in an accent spiked with flatness and a hint of the colonial, his hands clasped behind him, his open smile friendly and warm, even though he was behind a caution-tape barrier.

“Where are you from?” she asked. After all, it seemed we had already run into so many Canadians, as if the borders had opened up all at the same time, flooding Nevada with our Northern neighbors.

“My mother,” he said, straight-faced just long enough to see our mouths drop open before bursting into loud, warm, staccato laughter.

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