Laminated Heart

February 12, 2018April 5, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

introspection

Waves lapped against the ferry. Alli stood at the railing, taking in the spray, watching the silver ocean. The island in the distance, loomed like a turtle’s shell, materializing out of the mist.

The ferry was unusually packed this Sunday. Most people were inside the cabin, enduring the swaying boat. The boat reached the docks of the island. Main Street stretched into the distance, but most of the land was shrouded in thick, black forest, ancient pines.

Alli stepped off the boat and headed down the metal ramp. It was a cloudy day in Maine. Around the Main Street was the usual assortment of shops: ice cream parlor, Starbucks, arts and crafts cubby hole, record store. Alli walked down the sidewalk, toward the woods and the mountains.

Once on the trail, she could breathe in the scent of the trees. Early morning frost still hung in the air. Fog still circled the peaks. Mushrooms were everywhere in the soggy soil.

Alli hiked the path. Pine needles dusted the dirt. Squirrels ran through the nettles. She finally looked up and saw where she was headed: a nondescript cabin, with a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney.

Climbing the stone steps, Alli found herself at the oaken door. She lifted the iron knocker, only to let go of it as Kaan yanked open the door. Kaan wore a cashmere sweater and jeans; she ushered Alli in.

Kaan had made scrambled eggs and toast. She took Alli’s coat. They sat at the table, replete with spindly legs, in the breakfast nook facing the valley. Everything was still; even the birds were quiet.

They sipped the coffee, inhaling the flowery scent of fresh logs burning in the wood stove.

“Will you ever move back?” Alli asked.

“No,” Kaan said.

Alli looked out the bay window, “You could find a lot of inspiration out here.”

“I’ve tried to write a novel many times,” Kaan said, “I keep rewriting it.”

“It’s OK to revise. I imagine the scene here is pretty small though, right?”

“It is,” Kaan answered, “They do some poetry readings at the arts and crafts store. There is a community college a couple of miles inland.”

They put on heavy overalls and rubber boots. Kaan drove them out to the small lake, not far from the log cabin. They stood in the water, fly fishing. The clouds hung over the treetops. There were no bites.

“Do you miss Aspen?” Alli wondered.

“Do you miss Dallas?” Kaan responded.

They lapsed back into silence. Kaan reeled in a trout, glimmering in the pale daylight.

Kaan pulled out a cast-iron pan and a grill from her truck. They made a fire and sat around it, watching the fish roast, nudging it silently with sticks. Beyond the clouds, the sun began its journey to the other side of the earth.

“One day, you’re going to have to go back,” Alli said.

Kaan said nothing. They sat there, into the night, watching the dance of the flames.

healing

Songs:

“floating” – badsummer

“When We Were Young” – Adele

“Our Real is Real” – Typical Girls

“California Dreamin’ – The Mamas and the Papas

Gravitational Sounds

February 8, 2018April 6, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

Gym Leader Agatha

Alli walked barefoot by the sea. The sand was cold in the morning air. The waves were rolling back and forth, crossing oceans to get here. Alli turned and faced the east; the sun looked like it was rising out of the water. The golden rays hit the rocks, the forgotten shrubbery, shrewn around, and the window panes of the beach house behind her.

Constant undulations. Water that came halfway across the world, to this shore, hidden in some corner of the Keys, a silent island chain. Alli watched a wave bring in some limp plants.

Sitting down on the beach, Alli picked up handfuls of sand and let them run through her fingers.

“What would you have me do?!” Alli had yelled, months ago.

“Offer me a future!” Jan had yelled back, the night they had broken up.

And Alli had moved up north with Dallas, the debonair esper of Pennsylvania, self-assured, confident, and devastatingly beautiful.

“I would have given the world for you,” Alli had said.

“But you didn’t,” Jan had replied.

“You didn’t, and you won’t,” the words resonated from that time, ping ponging off old memories. The perennial swirl of New York and Florida.

“You don’t have to give up on me,” Alli had said, lying on the couch. Dallas held a rag full of ice up to her forehead.

“That’s the fever talking,” Dallas had responded. Alli had been working through some bug she had caught in Melbourne. “It must have been the crayfish in your bibimbap,” Dallas said.

They had both gone to several restaurants, including the offending Asian fusion joint. Dallas had said she was going to look at various Okinawan karate dojos, to see if she could buy one. But the premise had been running a little thin, even then. As Alli would soon see, Melbourne was only a foreshadowing.

“I want to be there for you,” Alli had mumbled from the couch. Dallas had dabbed away some sweat with a handkerchief, “You’re here for me, right now.”

The New York loft was receding from view. “Tell me I am right for you,” Alli had said, hovering in the darkness.

The spring buds were falling to the earth and the trees were unfurling their newborn leaves. “You’re not giving yourself any room to maneuver,” Nealy had said.

They were sitting in the park during the afternoon; the sun was gaining strength and beating down on them and the other chess players.

“I had a bad start,” Alli laughed.

“Yes, that was a horrible opening,” Nealy had said, “What were you thinking moving your knight way over there?”

“I was going to bring it in and position it in between your queen and your bishop. A knight fork.”

“An ambitious plan, in the best of times,” Nealy sighed, taking another one of Ally’s pawns, “Checkmate.”

“Tell me I am the one for you,” Alli had said, standing in between worlds.

“If I write you out of the will, what will you feel about that?” Jan had asked, turning around in her chair.

“Nothing,” Alli had sneered. When she left, she left for good, closing the screen door, walking out into the night, the endless crashing of waves and the peerless moon.

On the beach, in the increasingly hot morning, Alli let another handful of sand run through her fingers. “Are you going to do that all day?” a voice behind her said.

Alli spun around, still sitting on the surf; Nealy stood behind her, surrounded by the tall beach grass, “Are you going to come in for some crêpes, or what?”

Somewhere in the bottomless pit of space, echoed a thought, reaching back across time, splitting into pieces, stretching the distance traveled, in a second, by a photon careening at the speed of light: “Tell me I’m your one and only.”

not afraid of the darkness