I figured I really should write, even though I am not in any classes over break. Before it gets intensely Christmas-y and I start getting gifts for anything that breathe and I "can't find time" I wrote a quick scene.

MUTT

Breathtaking and fresh. The rain tickles my nose as it drips from the café awnings above my head. Toes of my boots sodden and bleak. A little past one and I walk down the cobbled street to the market in the square.  Vendors produce covered with large red veranda umbrellas, harbored from the rain. Wanderers walk slowly, softly in the rain like me. Others dart, quick steps, navy umbrellas over heads.  Gusts of wind cup umbrellas, tossing hair.

The market closes at four on Sundays, but some vendors already close shop as the gale tosses apples from carts. I look up, tenting my eyes from the rain with one hand. Clouds, grey when I left my flat, now swirl purple. Knitting together, clouds are a tangled mess, knotted and ugly. Water comes in sheets, wind throwing it sideways, howling like a dying mutt.

I pick up speed, sliding into a seat at an outdoor café, and hide under the awning. A blast of wind assaults the furniture, bleating at potted trees. It takes less than fifteen minutes for the square to clear of all people. March, bitterly cold. Hands blotted and blue. I sit and watch as buildings, lost dogs, left over market apples take a beating from the storm. Mesmerized, memory of some teacher eons ago comes to the front of my mind, “We find beauty in the loneliest of places.”

Love from home,

The Blonde and the Bullshit

Well, I finished my portfolio Monday and turned it in. I did manage to lengthen my short story but I don't really like it...probably because I really don't like writing love stories. However, that's kind of the road this one took sooo here it is anyways.

FORGET ME NOT

I left the house, a quarter to five and the sun was just setting. Grasped the old Ford pick-up’s peeling dusk blue handle and swung one leg inside the truck. Using the steering wheel as a balance, I hoisted my other leg into the cab and just sat for a moment, eyes closed, air leaving my lungs heavy. I could remember her sitting next to me. Pale yellow sundress, red bow in her hair, a supple smile turned towards me. Her glittering laugh touched me as if raindrops were kissing my balding head. The cab shuddered in harsh wind. Tired eyes opening slow, without rush. Sighing deeply, I turned the key in the ignition.

The sun had just begun to set. No longer summer, not yet fall. I could feel her long hair tickling my neck as it swirled around her face, strewn about by the wind pouring through the open windows. The radio hummed a few lines of Sinatra. Pretending as if she was with me in the cab, my arm hung over the back. The familiarity of the drive kept my hands turning the wheel robotically. Air still thick with flowery scents of heat and summer.

The transition from empty farmland to suburbia and townhouses was sudden. Houses all the same sat like dollhouses side by side. Each wearing a different shade of blue and boasting white fences. The truck’s engine too loud as I passed Prius after Prius. Gone as quick as they appeared, replaced with trees. Drove like that for some time, trees lining the road. Still wishing her head was on my shoulder. The sun bounced reds and oranges off the sky as the sun set. City buildings, each taller than the other begin to appear. I swung the truck into staff parking lot behind a white building, with hundreds of windows.

Still buckled, I looked to the empty seat next to me. I took out the keys and set my hands in my lap. Three deep breaths, eyes closed. Time seemed to drift between wanderlust and fantasy as I felt her soft lips graze my cheek. Eyes still closed I whispered, “Miss you, Ev.” One of her small fingers traced my jaw line and I sighed, my breath fluttering her out the open window.

            Hand still resting on the door handle, I pushed it open and stepped outside. Heavy air, evening heat clinging to skin. The day’s heat rose from the pavement in steam. I walked up the short path; different colors of greenery decorated the sides. The automatic sliding glass doors of the hospital lobby rushed open when I approached. The blast of air-conditioned sickness stung my nose.  My body went through the paces of finding the elevator, my mind in a different realm. I joined the morning shift cue that waited for the large metal doors to open. Most of us got off on the third floor, heading for the locker room. I nodded a ‘good morning’ to the few other doctors already changing from their street clothes into blue scrubs. I took off my regular clothes and replaced them with the periwinkle scrubs. I felt my motions quickening, it was now almost 6:45, I had a few minutes before I needed to do inventory. By the time my leathery, nobbled knuckles had finished a sloppy job of tying my black tennis shoes I could feel my breath quickening. Quick to the sink, water bathed my hands. Soap foaming between fingers, rinsed and dried.

            I slipped out the locker room door, with the agility of a younger man and headed for the elevators. Alone this time I reached for the wall of buttons, my fingers finding the familiar number 5.  The doors slid open and I was greeted by the nurse’s station. Next to the desk, in bold, red print, ALZHIMER’S WARD. Slipping down the hallway to the left, steps quick.

            I reached room 526 where a small plate below the room number read EVELYN MARLOW in chicken scratch doctors writing. The nurse was just setting breakfast down on the table. Doctor Vlist, checking Evelyn’s vitals looked up at me. She was roughly my age, somewhere in her seventies, with close-cropped grey hair, “Hey Charlie,” she says softly. Neither of us says it but I look at Evelyn pointedly. The nurse leaves the room while I stare at the sad, wispy smile on the doctor’s face.  Hand on my arm and we go into the hallway.

            “Evelyn’s been here awhile, Charlie,” She starts in, no preamble. “When she first came in she was at Stage 4, which is moderate decline. We ran tests her memory tests again this morning.”

            Opened my mouth to speak when she cut me off, hand raised, “The same tests as normal, Charlie. We just added to them a bit.”

            “Meaning?” I said, feeling nervous.

            “Charlie, Evelyn is now in Stage 6: severe decline. Her bodily health is also a concern to me. Last week’s test results came in. Her heart is failing, Charlie.”

I breathed slowly, in and out. Memories rushed through my brain as my body went numb. As if I had my personal slide show playing in my mind of the life, that Ev and I had before all this. She had been spry and beautiful when we met. We met at Shelton High School, and dated for two years. Ev wanted to get married right after school but her parents put her in the nursing academy. We tried long distance for years, though every time we saw each other something new was different between us. I thought that was it, nothing left to be salvaged.

Evelyn graduated nursing academy in the spring of 1932. We didn’t see each other for over a decade. I had been married once already and divorced, she had been sent to England during the second world war to help the Red Cross.

It wasn’t until 1952 that we saw each other again. I sat in the Blackbird Café three blocks over and two up from my small apartment in lower Manhattan. Meeting a friend who was frequently late, hopelessly forgetful. Evelyn walked in the door, bundled in more layers than an Eskimo, whisking in flakes of snow with her. She was with two other similarly clad women, who babbled about stitch work patterns.

They three ordered and sat at a table three away from me. The two women left after a small cup of tea, each kissing her on the cheek as they left. I could not help but to stare at her, it had been more than two decades since I last saw her. She looked older, red hair now dabbled with silver.

Lost in my past life, I couldn’t pin point when things had gone so sideways. Evelyn had always been the healthy one, strong. When the Alzheimer’s first crept in, I denied it. Now looking into Doctor Vlist’s pitying eyes I realized, I was losing her again. The doctor looked at me expectantly, waiting for some kind of response. I let my breath seep out trying to find the appropriate words. All I managed was a curt nod, a check of my watch and I turned away.

            I stood in the elevator for a few moments, without pushing buttons brain fuzzy, mind numb. Finally, I pushed for level A, where my rounds were to take place. When the elevator doors opened into the morgue, the rush of loneliness and death greeted me as I began my night shift of tagging the freshly dead bodies.

We are on Christmas break now so maybe I will do some non-school writing (I know I should...). 

Love from home,

The Blonde and the Bullshit

This is my final creative non fiction essay for my English 251 portfolio. I'm still struggling with the short story one. But I think this essay turned out pretty sick. Make your own judgment:

WHEN THE HOUSE CALLS HOME

We lived in a yellow house that sat on a little hill in a neighborhood full of people we liked. Our driveway was cut into blocks, each separated by a large crack, running the width. I used to walk the lines of the driveway on my tip-toes, a container of water on my head, testing how far I could get without spilling. We moved in a week before Thanksgiving. On the second move in day, the rain was lashing the windows. Wind slinking in through the fireplace.

Rain dripped onto the cement from the edge of the gutter outside my window, sounding like a metronome. I counted the seconds between each drip, as if it was thunder. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi…,” until the next droplet fell and I started over. Rain gushed from the clouds quicker, pelting the roof. Water was coming from the gutter’s drain spout so fast, I could hardly get out the first syllable.

The cold glass window pushed against my forehead as I looked down. A small puddle was pushing outward as the enlarged drops continued to fall into the center. The water in the puddle began to slouch south, pointing towards the storm drain at the bottom of our driveway. The drops no longer distinguishable in the family of rain. They gained speed as they rushed down the hill, rolling on top of one another. The family jerked to a halt, caught in a driveway crack. They lie paralyzed and separated, grandmas over here, nephews and mothers over there.

__

When I was six, I won a goldfish at a carnival and took her home, in the plastic bag where all goldfish first live. On the drive home, I cupped her bag in one hand and prodded the plastic with the other. Her eyes darted around; as she looked everywhere she could all at once. I stared into them as she flicked around her transparent house, they didn’t blink, like they were scared they were going to miss something. I don’t think I’d want a home like that, one where everyone could see me all the time. I kind of felt bad then. My eyes followed as she danced around her plastic bag making loops and spirals with her fins. I didn’t know what to do with her; didn’t have a home for her that wasn’t clear.

Home, she and I sat on the porch swing. Back and forth, we flew. Looking through the slats in the swing, there grew a pool of water on the wooden deck. Next to me, my fish clung to the bottom of the plastic, breathing the last of the water as it drained from the bag to the porch. Plastic in hand, foot falls quick. We reached the drain spout of the gutter, water slipping into the plastic bag as I held it under the mouth of the spout. Water swirled with gold as she danced in new waters.

We sat on the porch steps, with her in her plastic home and me in my sandals. Later that afternoon I poured her down the storm drain, giving her back.

__

            Burnt rubber. Metal shimmering with heat. Broken glass and broken bones. Laying on the concrete, face down, my breath coming sharp in my lungs as they grasp for oxygen. Fingers, singed and raw, I run them down my left forearm: not broken. Part of me tries to make sense of what just happened. My legs feel whole too and I think about rolling over and trying to sit up. My ribs crunched together even as a memory jumps to the front of my mind. The firefighter who came to fourth grade, “If you cannot remember how you got where you are, do not move.” I tried to retrace how I got from singing in the car to crumbling cement. Instead, his words circled my mind like a broken record.

            I can hear the taillight rapping against the bumper. Clinging to thin, striped wire as it knocks against the car, like a metronome ticking for a choir. Eyes squeezed shut I listen hard. The hissing of the car, the taillight’s taps, a gasping breath to my left. I roll my head a fractional amount. My left eye shows me a body lying on its back, head pointed at me. A raised arm and I could have touched her hair. Bones where they shouldn’t be, too much blood. Dead pan stare at the girl who had just cranked the music, minutes ago. I can’t stop staring.

            A siren bites into the air, silence ripped. Let the sound drip into my ear like a lullaby, as I drift.

__

            Plastic, lavender turrets poked through the sparkly pink roof of my princess castle. Yellow and beribboned the castle door stood open in the backyard. Forced into snow boots by dad, followed into the yard by mom. The snow had been cleared inside, replaced with sand from our broken sandbox.  Glittering in silver, the words The Princess Is In bedazzled the back wall.  Squeals erupted from me as my mom snapped blurry picture after another.

            Christmas memories bunch together. No recollection of other presents that year. I remember begging to have a castle sleepover with mom. Remember building sandcastles in March. Remember letting sand slip through slim fingers as I sat in time-out.

            “It’s time for the palace to go,” mom said to dad, sometime in summer. I sat in mom’s office, windows open, as they talked on the porch about the removal of my castle. I was too old for it, summer before seventh grade.

I retraced my four year old self’s Christmas morning steps from the living room to the turreted castle. Door shut, sounds of summer blocked out, I sat. Dug my fingers into the cool sand, collecting small rocks under my nails. Sandy fingers skimmed my cheek as a tear escaped my eye. Embarrassment swept over me, even though no one was there to see me cry in my childhood haunt.

            A soft knock on the door, rapid blinking, and the door opened before words could process in my brain. Mom walked in, sat in sand, and looked at me. Sucked in my breath as I waited for her to tell me what to feel. Sad smile on her lips, she said, “Sometimes it’s just time for things to go.”

__

Whitney sat with her legs crossed on the kitchen counter, eating honey-nut Cheerios out of the box. I sat on the carpet in front of the sink staring up at her as she talked all about the rights and wrongs of eye shadow colors. She seemed so big, sitting on the counter, far above me. She created this perfect man in thin air and made me promise that I would be a bridesmaid. I remember when Whitney graduated high school and we all stuck our hands in wet cement. She leaned down and whispered to me, squeezing my pinky with hers.

Now all I can do is stare at the gold urn sitting in the middle of the oak altar, as it peers down at me.  Flowers, shockingly alive in their vases. They spill onto the stairs, dripping with petals. I look around at the mass of people clad in black and try to spot the ones I know. Grammy and Poppop sit behind us, sad smiles fixed on their frozen faces. Josh’s body tremors in the first row, cheeks, patchy and pink. We are sitting in the second pew. My dad on the right, eyes unblinking, thin lips white. A shaking voice comes through the borrowed sound system, sounding tinny.

“We had this sandbox in the backyard for years. Whitney would sit picking up handfuls of sand in her fists, then drizzle it back into the box,” my mom paused, voice quivering, a small gasp. “Sometimes the wind would push the sand back at her, clinging to her shirt, and she would get angry at the sand, saying, ‘That is not your home sand, you live in the box’.” My breath caught. That’s a church thing, right? “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Love from Pullman

The Blonde and the Bullshit

Edited poems for my English 251 portfolio. I have to make a creative non fiction and short story into 4-5 pages so I'll post those once I figure out how in the hell to do that.

YOU, ME AND THE MOON

                   

I remember Jack Elliot, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,

talking about what should be and what is.

I spun across the hardwood floor,

and the music was bitchin’ 

and his toes were tapping,

and the chandelier was quivering.

The somber air outside locked out.

Our steps were perfect;

my feet and yours.

Annie twisted her hips 

as she riffled through records

and our smiles shattered against

the cement outside.

The record was singing before

the needle touched and

we danced until the moon cried,

and she wept until we fell asleep.

 WE MET IN THE DARK

We met on a country lane.

The air was honeysuckle.

I stared at him from the end of the road,

His face dark.

The stars drowned in the sky painted black.

The moon had gone to a single smudge.

My heart skittered along the crumbling dirt road.

A bounce and a low gasp and

His arms hugged me into the densest dark.

Love from Pullman,

The Blonde and the Bullshit