He turns seven. He is not alone in this. The weekend is endless pinball flash and spinning light. Too many parties. Cookie dough ice cream. Pokemon legends raining down on a tumid Chima lego metropolis. Deforestation at the borders. A relentless hunger for more and more.
For three nights, sleep is drawn and quartered. Whole symphonies of yelling smash their percussive chords against each distended limit. Love is squeezed down in its most elemental form: the exigency of coexistence in the absence of affection.
Finally, Sunday carries night over and drops it at our feet. Everything is half-done but somehow complete. He falls away from me during the third book and I recall the shape of ease for the first time in days.
Now I must find my own way under perseveration’s cruel echo. In bed, I kick and kick against the spooling film, all blooper reel and captured sin, the worst lines caught on repeat in the projector’s teeth. Eventually the bulb burns through and cuts me loose. I dive with one last surge and I am under, finally confined to sleep if not by peace at least by the simple pressure of submersion.
Wailing wrenches me back to the surface. I choke on my own breath. He is silhouetted in the door, wracked with sobs.
“Oh, baby, what’s the matter?”
He careens over the carpet and plows into the bed. “My back. My back!” Then his voice shatters. I open my arms. He climbs up and folds fetal into me, quaking with a fear made corporal. He is no longer a baffling, windburnt stretch of leg and scar and huff. He sheds all seven of his years. He is the night following the day he was born, completely undone by something for which he has no name, completely trusting me to make him safe.
I touch his spine seeking warmth or blood or bumps. A stingray? A troll? There it is. A flat plate, stiff and certainly not skin. I lift his shirt and peel off the alien invader.
“Sweetie, look.” I hold it up in whatever line of sight the dim night allows.
“What is it?” he says.
“A Pokemon card.”
He reaches up for it. A soon as it is in his grip, he shivers down to stillness. “Oh.” He pulls the card in like a baby blanket and curls his arms around it.
“I think your back was a little sweaty and you rolled over on it.”
“No,” he says with a drooping sigh. “I wasn’t hot. He was the one who was sweaty.”
“He who?”
“The Pokemon,” he tells me. “From fighting all night long.”
“That could do it.” I nudge him up and we plod back to his room. He asks me to cuddle there. His mattress is a candy-floss cloud compared to mine and so I agree. “Yes, but just for a few minutes.”
“A few long minutes,” He says. “As many minutes as you can.” We pull up the tinkerbell blanket and he tucks my hand in under his side. I settle in close to him. I stay until he drifts off and then linger a few minutes more, at least until turning, turning the way he does, he turns back into his years and there is no room for me.
Tag: night
T for the Tillerman
Under the mast of sleep, night breathes
through weave, teasing down
in spots and whispers
on heel, bow, on back of knee. His agile hands
press lids and lash
the barrel stays, these ribs
a sturdy frame
that hasn’t buckled yet. Just above
the place my spine
draws across ocean’s verge
a horizon line, the cumulus parts. Stars consolidate
and then disperse making constellations
of text we feign to understand
as we flounder in the dark.
He fixes our place with sextant and connects
the dots. Contours on the map
of me begin to align, his fingertips
hinting at sentience. Order. At something more.
He marks the way
in code and my skin stirs
as it recognizes an R
or perhaps a D.
Where did I drift? Is that a V?
I missed a passage, I want to say. Go back.
The tide is strong. It drowns
out speech and weighs down my cheek
with sand. I don’t yet trust his touch
to chart our course and so in hush I try
to decipher the braille he makes
on me. That shape feels
like an eel trace. A silent S?
Eight? Infinity? He could tip us
over the edge of a forever
Mobius strip
yet I give way
because sleep ties its rigging
to my eyes and draws the knots
in tight. He writes on
the starboard side as I list
roughly north. Strokes across
a restive sea
shape incantation in argot I may have known
before the paired mitochondria
we were
parted ways. 43 million years we have skimmed
the planet’s skin seeking
a lost shape and song, seeking
the only tongue
matched
to the task of whispering tattered lyrics
back together. An erasure
now, a rumble like mirth. From my lumbus
he wipes away
a what? Mistake? A risk
reconsidered? Still, he writes on.
Rough beams of me
soft from so long in salt
air give way to the press of his stylus
and bear the name
he carves
as if it has always been
mine and I
his. His spelling
casts me off into current. I unfurl
and ferry the rare cargo
over fathoms
and night.
Lunar Equinox
It is frost now, still
faltering between
chill blue knife and furred limb.
Moon meets sun in a garden of stars,
all visible in half-night. A red-tailed fox
skies across gunmetal dawn
feet never touching
the ground. Babies begin
in groaning belly
of robin, raccoon. A squirrel
squatting on the wrist of a high vine
scratches at the shell of last year’s seed. The bare end
of provisions before the next harvest means lean times
for a merciless brood.
The yield may suffice.
It may not.
The way to survive is to live as if both are true
at all times.
Remember: the equinox lasts
a single night. Each of us is on one side or the other
even if the lifting foot is only just clearing the line
even if the bottomless blue still saps any recollection
of fertility. By a hair each day, darkness falls away.
The crack in the ellipse
narrows, the coin tilts on its axis and slips
through. The first moon
of spring is a fat dubloon winging
across the frosted miles, casting off
as it turns the full gleam from the sun. It is only when you stand
just so and gaze just there that you can gauge its trajectory
and lift out your shirt
to collect what spills
over, such riches
only last through twilight and by dawn
you will be blind
again.
Happy 100 Days: 19
He kneels before me and lets rain wet
his head. The fire is cold. Candles remain.
Three flames. A ribbon of smoke
tucked into his cheek. I do not need
to look for it. He says I’m learning.
The sheets are the red of damp
brick dust, I lay stiff there, safe, no distance
greater, no sinking
either. Place
my hands on curls and scalp,
three flames coil into locks, eyes
reflect the blue-red chili pepper
balcony lights, trees caught
halfway through their undressing.
It will never be winter here
again, no snow will blanket the gully,
no deluge to scour clean
the skin. We live packed in
tins three flights up, no place
for monsters here so we find them squatting
in the drywall, squirreled between
ribs, under the tongue,
the brimstone there, the ember
still alive. He takes me
for food. Sits next to me in the booth.
Orders salt on the rim. It is the last
drink of my life. The lime
sinks. The paper black bottom
of the jalapeno glistens as he lifts
it to me. Crisp skin and grease,
I wait for the burn, refuse to ice
the heat as it sears wet flesh. He presses
his mouth to my forehead, my oiled lips. We are not
in love but we swallow it
whole, barely chewing anymore. He kneels
before me without moving
one inch. Supplication
in the angle of his cheek, prostration
in his kiss. He scoops up brown beans
glistening with bacon fat. Holds the spoon
to my mouth. Somewhere
outside, stars burn the summer
December sky. Ducks still dip
and split the ponds. The creek still gushes.
We stop on a bridge and cast
shadows over stone. It will never be winter
here. He holds my waist.
We are not in love.
We are lit by a half
cold moon.
Happy 100 Days: 24
Train platform, new friends (hello! hello!), young boys not much older than my son approach me to shake my hand and say, “Nice to meet you.” I am so stunned I almost forget how to respond. Metro cards, turnstiles, find a car. Kids spin around the metal poles, “Sit down! Sit still!” It does not work, they are all maps and windows and new new new. The littlest ones cry, both wanting the window seat and the seat next to daddy. Once we are zipping along, tears dry and the traffic, tracks, sky, tunnel mesmerize.
Then, up onto city streets. Dusk. Lights, crosswalks, thousands of cars. “Stay close! Stop at the curb! Don’t run ahead!” The boys slam into each other, their bodies pin-balls pinging between Pennsylvania Avenue office buildings. The caravan growths thin as it stretches down a city block. Two boys race ahead and we lose sight of them between the looming wall of strangers. The dad carries his young son far back, his daughter in the bubble-gum pink coat bringing up the rear.
Then, it is giant tree. White House in a golden glow. Crowds, bustle, tiny trains, throwing coins into open freight cars. We lose one another, gain an additional mother and daughter, lose her, re-group. The little ones and the big ones all press into the fence, sharing snacks, all learning and then forgetting names. The girls ask their mother for pennies. Another round of coins until we all stop digging into our wallets. The kids throw clumps of grass. The state trees arc behind us and we find the ones we know. Rhode Island, where one went to culinary school. Texas, where one will spend Christmas. Then we see Virginia and we all crowd around for a moment, squeezing our way in.
We break free of the crowd’s tight grip and weave our way down the streets again. Up the stairs and onto Freedom Plaza’s deep breath of open space. Up past the marquee lights of National Theater. No one remembers what is here anymore, no one spends time in the city. Where will we eat? All around us, hotels, glimmering brass. The Willard. The Washington Marriott. Lights, doormen, black hired cars. We gamble on distant memory and hoof up 14th street. The Shops at National Place offer up a bakery with a kids’ menu. Sandwiches, fruit cups, chocolate milk. Slump, hydrate, chat, color, wait wait wait and then eat.
Back out into the night. The metro again, the front car now, kids take turns peering through the dark glass at the curving tunnel ahead. We peek our heads out at the station stops and wave at the conductor who grins and winks. Girls pour their tiny toy animals onto the vinyl seats. Boys wrestle. “Stop that! Gentle hands!” The parents talk more. Who is in school, who lived where, whose kids like which sports, instruments, books. Have you decorated yet? Where will they be for the holidays? With dad? With you? Half weeks, split Christmas, alternating years.
At the final stop, we all wait at the turnstile. No one in this crowd is left behind. We only just met, and already we are each other’s fierce protectors. For one sparkling night, we barely-friends are one tribe.
Happy 100 Days: 55
“I wish we could fast forward through the whole year,” Bug says. We are in bed and have just finished three books and our first song.
“Yeah? How would that work?”
“We would go all the way through fall, past winter.” He floats his hand through the air above our faces. “And come out after springtime.”
“What for?”
“We could fast forward to a vacation,” he says. “A summer vacation.”
How many of us long for the same thing? I smile and touch his palm suspended up there. “But then you might miss a lot of the good stuff.”
“Like what good stuff?”
“Like all the cool things you get to learn in school,” I say. “How you are just now starting to learn to read. And seeing your friends in class. And playing at recess.” I turn and slip my arm around his middle. “And all the cuddling you’d miss. Think about that.”
“But we could come back all the way around to the beginning,” he explains.
“And do kindergarten all over again?”
“Mmm hmm,” he murmurs. He is fading. “Some kids do it twice.”
I brush my lips over his cheek and begin the next song.
The wind is in from Africa
Last night, I couldn’t sleep. . .
As I walk through the night with the dog over the same quiet neighborhood streets, I notice my mind has retreated again. I have slipped back to the Colorado mountainside or into our Lake George cottage or alongside the San Andreas fault with Bug in my belly. The nostalgia is an open wound. It bites and aches. I miss those trees so much. The dry summer sage. The creek snaking right outside our door. I miss watching Tee drape the house in white twinkle lights as soon as the nights began to lengthen. He would split the logs himself, stack them in the garage and carry up just enough to last through bedtime. Bug always wanted to play with the matches and help bring the fire to life, and Tee always had the patience to let him. I miss walking back through the moonless pitch on those crisp winter evenings towards that glimmering beacon haloed in woodsmoke.
I had no concept of the perfect loveliness of everything right in my hands.
Then I remind my hands to unclench. I whisper to my mind, beckoning it back to me.
You know it sure is hard to leave you, Carey,
but it’s really not my home.
The wound is not real. It is only a series of thoughts. I call myself in from those faraway wilds, giving myself the gentle nudge to attend to this here and now, this quiet stroll through a neighborhood with my lop-eared pooch who stops every 36 inches to snuffle in the leaves.
The time will come when this is the sweetest memory. It might be ten years or it might be tomorrow, but it will come. I will call up this night, the bones of these bare trees, this sleeping boy breathing in the mist and leftover lullabies, and I will ache for the perfect loveliness of this.
Let’s have another round for the bright red devil
Who keeps me in this tourist town
There is no rush and nothing to be gained from hurtling past the winter and right out the other end of spring. Do-overs are not allowed in this game. Getting to the promised land faster means you have only failed to inhabit your footsteps as you are taking them. As ill-fitting, bothersome, and wrong as this chapter may be, this right here is the story of you being written.
But let’s not talk about fare-the-wells now,
The night is a starry dome
And they’re playing that scratchy rock and roll
Beneath the mantle of the moon.
The end of this act is already coming. Whether you recognize it or not, whether you hurtle yourself towards it or fight it every step of the way, you are already on your way to the next unrecognizable incarnation. Someday soon, this will be the hard candy you suck until your teeth hurt. This will be the nugget you cannot spit out. You might as well pause long enough now to place your lips on whatever is here before you. Foul, sweet, and anything in between. It does not matter. It is yours. Take a good, long taste.
I say, oh, you’re a mean old daddy,
but I like you.
—
Thanks and apologies to Joni Mitchell for “Carey” from the glimmering winter night of an album, Blue.
Happy 100 Days: 62
My pirate boy races down the neighbor’s driveway with his ninja friend. Light from paper bag lanterns dances low against blacktop. The two disappear into a pool of ink oozing from hedges. For all we know, they have slipped into the underworld. Silence. Dark. After a beat, the knock and the sing-song “trick or treat” drift back up towards us. The door closes and a gauze ghost billows from clothesline. The boys cut behind the houses, gone into night. We call and call but they do not respond. A few moments later, we hear them again, chattering as they clomp back up the hill. “Mommy! I got a soda!” Comparing the heft of their booty and ogling their matching ring-pops, they wind dizzy circles around each other. Candy measured, they break to spar with foam swords before charging off towards another doorway ringed with bones.
Happy 100 Days: 96
Out there in the dark, the night creatures sing. The dog and I walk through them, deaf at first. The chatter in my head talks itself hoarse during the first mile. Finally, at the top of the hill where we turn back towards home, the soliloquy decides to pause for a sip of something cool. I take a breath of September sky. At last, I can hear song.
The music starts with a churning of chirps. Then, an aquatic bass groans, rising slowly at first, sweeping up to its white crest and then crashing. Into that half-beat of rest, the faint piccolo of some distant insect twitters into the fringes of the composition. High up lyrics in the trees thrum against a low insistent rhythm. Some of these things sound finned, some winged. Some may only be visitors here. Some are most certainly in heat.
I walk and walk, the noise echoing against my skin. I walk right through the plush center of memory, returning to the deep blue-black of his sheets where we spread ourselves on our backs next to each other. It was the end of summer. The sliding door was flung wide, opening out onto the balcony and the woods beyond. We held hands and gazed blind into the dark, listening.
With our torn net of words, we tried to capture the sweeping shape of the calls out there. Low, elastic frog calls, intermittent and long. A high whine, a chirrup-chirrup. We listened together, whispering our discoveries. We collected five varieties of song, teasing out the threads, each of us hearing an altogether new strain that the other had discerned first. Finally, finally, we stopped forcing names on impossible things. We lay together sharing nothing but one song as it changed without our consent into something different. We let go without letting go. We no longer remembered to count. At some point before morning, that fleeting chorus lulled us to sleep.
I remember nothing of this.
I remember everything.
Tonight, the thunder rolls in. The dog and I make it home before the rain begins.
Found Music
He says, “Tell me something you believe in.”
I stretch my neck and glare at the treetops. “I used to believe in the healing power of walks.”
He does not let me get away with this.
“Come on.”
After an interlude of mild hysteria, the insect chorus finds its pulse. The breath inside the night soothes the places in my belly where worry has left bruises.
“I believe,” I say, “in the wide open sky.” I cannot look at him.
I believe in hiding in plain sight.
Also, I believe in the mind’s resilience. I believe in speaking truths despite doubt and speaking questions when compliance would be more expedient. I believe in care. In tending to the body’s needs first. I believe that people are doing their best, even when the evidence suggests otherwise.
I believe in reincarnation.
Sometimes I believe the heart can take the lead.
I believe in language and its ability to re-write what is real. In releasing memory. In surrendering hope. I believe that inhabiting the here and now is the only path to serenity.
I believe in seeking out the beautiful. In moving towards conflict. In stepping away from the familiar, if only to know the wide-open terror of true limitlessness.
I believe in fasting.
In speaking to the future self when the present one comes up short.
I believe naps, hugs, and vegetables are better medicine than medicine. I believe that touch usually beats another conversation.
I believe that everything I believe is fleeting. That everything I hold dear matters far too much to me and not nearly enough to anyone else.
I believe in letting go.
I believe in belonging to the world but being owned by no one. I believe in claiming the world but possessing nothing.
I press my belly to his and listen to the trees. “I believe in cicadas,” I say.
“They couldn’t care less whether you believe in them or not,” he says.
For the moment, I believe in love.
The moment opens like wings.
Barton Cabin 22
The fire is coals now, gray
stone cooling. At the edge
of dusk, a dog yips
and moans, its echo against the wall
of hemlock boughs
brings down the night.
Everyone here had a mother
once, even the moth dying
with the embers. Even the yelping hound,
but would he recognize his
if she crept into camp sniffing
for scraps?
We are all orphans of one
sort or another. The ghosts
of the fathers we should have had lay
cool fingers on our necks and guide us
into the missing embrace. Murmurs
in a foreign tongue ride
the low howl and snag
on branch, needle, ash.
It is not the dog after all. It is something else
slipping away
before we even turn our heads.
Out beyond the dark,
some small curtain
lifting.
Shannon E. Williams 