Six Stories, Six Voices

January 27, 2014

Six Stories, Six Voices

One.

We’re having drinks at a pub in town, all sharing stories about whatever comes to mind. He tugs on the sleeve of his oatmeal-colored sweater, giving a snorting chuckle at someone else’s comment.

Yeah, when I got my wisdom teeth out,

we found out I have this really weird heart disease

or something, because I actually died right on the table.

They hooked me up to a heart monitor out of routine,

you know, cause of the anesthesia,

but I don’t think anyone expected it

when I just flatlined

for about fifteen seconds.

They probably just looked at each other, like

“What just...?

What do we...?

Aaaaand he’s back.”

But yeah, apparently my heart stops

every night in my sleep.

I’m guessing it’s not for fifteen seconds

all the time, but... I mean, I always wake up.

He takes a sip of his ale as the rest of us laugh a little in shocked awe. “Wow, uhh... you should really get that checked out or something!”

Oh, I did. Yeah, I went to U-Mass General,

and they gave me this huge heart monitor

I had wear strapped to my chest for a week.

It looked like a bomb, all wires poking out.

We had to call and tell the high school

I wasn’t a terrorist or anything.

That’s how we know it happens every night.

Took it back to the doctors, and they said “Yeah,

we...have no idea what this is.”

And this is U-Mass General.

So like, a pretty big deal. But they couldn’t do anything about it.

So I just

die every night in my sleep.

I guess I’m so relaxed that I just

pass on to another life.

Two.

We’re all discussing school, the future, and the scary reality of graduate study, when someone asks her, “Don’t you have that weird post-doc in your lab?”

tears

July 13, 2010

tears

if you lay your arm across my ribcage, you can feel these desiccated birdbones; perhaps you will wonder, like me, why they were just never light enough to fly.

maybe we were only chasing dragons, but if we keep trying, i think we can still catch one.  

i want you to look past these tears in my clothing and touch the skin of who i was, who i could be, and who i really am, but sometimes i become so pale that even i don’t know what part of me could be this cold.

if i asked you to, would you pinch me to make sure i’m not dreaming? 

these enigmatic eyes that i try so hard to hide are mostly filled with juggling clubs and picture frames, but maybe you’re the one who will understand what i mean when i think about how my life would be different if my irises were brown instead of blue. 

if you write your lyrics on my heart with indelible ink, i promise i’ll never forget the song.

maybe these stitches that were holding me together so nicely need to come out until i’m as tattered as queen-anne’s lace, and as pieces of me fall away like some beautiful anorexia, maybe, when it’s all done, you’re the one that i should ask to look inside me and see if there’s enough left to repair.

these yellow dandelions are my bouquet of white-elephant memories. 

this is me hoping that you don’t think they’re weeds. 

Skyes, Blu

April 14, 2010

Skyes, Blu

Blu Skyes never cared to be known. 

My name should be Icarus, she said, tripping her pen onto the sidewalk below.  She leapt down from the tree at a height that would have made most people’s bones rattle in their skin. 

I stepped lightly to the ground from the bottommost branch.  “What do you mean?” 

He was such a failure, she replied. 

I wanted to tell her, “You’re no failure,” but all I said was, “I have to go.” 

Blu would have drowned the kittens of the Cheshire cat not because they would’ve died anyway, but because she would have been jealous. 

She and I were in some garden when she said, Reach me a rose, will you?  Their stems remind me of love and The Great Gatsby. 

“We all live in somebody’s future, Blu,” I told her. 

But I worry about the ones whose pasts we have already abused.   

If you were glass or if you were stone, Blu would rub you smooth, and you would shine.  Me, she never touched. 

The train lumbered along like some subterranean beast as we waited to cross the tracks. 

False face must hide what the false heart doth know, she quoted.  That’s Shakespeare.

I wanted to ask, “What have you done that you need to hide?” but I could only nod and add, “Macbeth.” 

What happened to those blueberry eyes, Blu Skyes?  That raspberry smile?  Did your faith take them with her when she left?  Or was it just a matter of time?

She skipped stones in the brook as I sat and watched.  Far too similar are kites and cranes.  Far too different are birds and planes. 

If I had had the courage, I would have demanded, “Tell me what you mean!  I may not understand, but at least I can try.”  Instead, “Who came up with that one?”

For once, her eyes were not wasps, but water. Her voice was not ruthless, but soft, soft, soft. I did.  

It was a sea that threatened her.  I had always stood with her, always ankle deep, but always behind her, and she would never know. 

I pictured us tightrope-walking along the thin line of our hopes in the dying sunlight.  If I ever glanced down, Blu would whisper, Don’t look at it too long, or you’ll realize it doesn’t exist.

If I were brave, I would have dared those spider-web dreams to disappear.  If I were brave, I would have pieced us back together if we fell.  If I were brave, I would have spoken up whenever I had had something to say.  If I were brave, I would have done what Daedalus never could.

I would have saved us both.