Prose 2022

If the umbrella does not shelter me from rain, should I become the umbrella? Or deny that rain exists? It is in my nature to test the droplets landing against the street and walkways, covering tracks not yet planted. There is no divide between the sky and ground. Whatever symmetry we might arrange in mind deflects the drive to divide simply in two. I have seen double and in recovery have learned to seek a truer path. A way of thought driven instead to act, that I might reflect differently again.

Please don't anybody offer me a ride. I want to climb the wide stairs of the bus, be on my own to watch the mauve persimmon hysteria of beads in braids and hear the way you can pronounce things that would otherwise sound flat. There is wisteria (Who knew they were legumes?) to soften impact of the otherwise small spring air. I see I am a color, only one, mild by comparison to the more amazing jets of vibrant blends. I like to look out of the near-clear windows patched with gray and hand smudge at the micro-worlds like mine in passing. Can I learn to possibly remember anything from all this wealth of difference? Any day now, summer will pronounce itself and we may feel protected by long leafy arms that cover all. 

Experience is prerequisite to beginner's mind. Watch me dissolve all that I believe has occurred. 

He asks for a word, any word. From there, in front of everyone and God, begins the quest for a thousand flowers. Lacing vowels and consonants to yield forsythia, foxglove, hibiscus, mallow. How we hear we see his tall self open faced admiring what has not yet come. The room fills with fragrance as yet unnamed and a closeness we will only know when we look back on this night. He smiles as though he will live forever. What color are his stanzas beyond their steadfast and miraculous surprise?

Given living in the garden, I cannot explain you, and yet here you are. Is there a clinic or an adage that would help me mine elastic settled matter? I prompt, you prompt, she pre-empts mercy from the cowlick nudging lintel versus challenge cup. Prescience conks me on the head. I Warsaw through. I shield my net with ivy. Promise me a body of knowledge you'll deliver uncontested while on call. 

We were here before we started being here amid the stilts and shuttlecocks and celadon. How mild real bravery feels once seated in our psyches. Mildew melts away from thought. The thought of ivory nests beside a lone wild integer that's meant to settle nerves. Abductive reasoning is all the rage, given uncertainty that might delight the wandering mind. Formalities be damned, say the curious who cringe when presented with a glaucous sky. Our baseline, once our bromide, levels constancy where causal feelings wrap. 

They make maculate friends, the very kind I hold dear at suitable distance. Invisible wealth secures degrees of freedom. One of the two breaks rules; the other cannot spell them. No one violates anything worth preserving. The contagion of a roving eye is marked. I revere the glistening sense of adventure and good will among trusting friends who speak out at all points. Vehicular shine calms all our nerves. 

"I'm not tired of you, I'm tired of me," he declared from his half glasses. She winced because she always winces. "Let me ask you something," she began. "When was the last time we had caviar?" "You've heard the news," he said. "There won't be vodka for a long time, either." 

I called a big time plumbing company to install a new water heater. They sent an apprentice who at first appeared to do all right, but missed a step with pressure release, requiring me to call back in three weeks to report the lake rising on my patio and the constant burbling of the machine. On his return visit, the young apprentice who was otherwise polite informed me that the water pressure here is excessive. He announced that my warranty would no longer be good. By now I've done all the things a proactive being would do, including scheduling an inspection visit from the manager. Last night I decided I deserved a good long sleep, so set my phone to a recording; waking at night, I freaked to hear the sound of running water, ran all over the house to check, and discovered it was my phone raining. 

He speaks into video microphone as though it were a nest of mirrors. Throughout his engineering presentation, he drops names, while whining that he cannot make his way through the bureaucracy.  At some point midway through this keynote he says, "standard of deviation" as though this phrase existed. I think he may have absorbed some concepts that morphed into misnomers from a colleague enrolled in statistics classes. A pale male, our keynoter might have passed these classes, but his insecurity keeps showing. He declares he wants to make change. Clearly no one has handed him a bill. 

I'm not sure if prayer is what she did, but I agreed with it. Her intention rinsed the outerwear that unified the makeshift conversation. Plentiful arrangements of cloud and shell laced territory no one had claimed. It felt reasonable to waive the depths while retracting comments that almost lit the premises. How many scientists would soon arrive while captions met their prompts? A cataract of thought ascended toward the mountain dressed with light. Improvisation countered the status quo replete with intervals that needed to be tied together minus various stray grace notes littering the yard. 

"Here is where I want to be," he told her in his own words. She was startled by the lack of noise in his pronouncement, wondered whether his being on location might also include her. It was a terrible as usual Monday, the dog had gotten out, and they'd spent hours weaving in and out of driveways belonging to neighbors not especially neighborly. And where was the dog? Even if they found her, what would happen next? All this small talk intended to keep things feeling usual, as they never were. 

Call me a minimalist. I like my walls pure of distraction. Having shuttled photographs away, I find new ones as shapes and colors come to me. Blankness especially entertains me. Fridays as a rule require no plushness. Merely clean geometry that bounds an inner truth. Metaphoric rocks protect the area outside. 

But I read your eyes. On the page, the swirls of blue ink differ from the cold blue gray of your eyes. I listen to your eyes not speak. Your "hand" shows rounded forms that might complement my angular stems along the page. When I sign something on the screen, I let my finger splash across the mild gray blue, a declaration I agree. I'm telling you, I want to learn you. 

She twiddled her decades old injury and continued to become it. One did not need to look hard to discern the mark, but what it meant to her was more profound. She had been a pretty little girl who got her way, and the horror of the accident made people crowd around her to protect. She earned her harshness and replayed it in a spree of anger that refueled itself with little urgencies that would erupt. She believed she had a lifelong pass to rage if she felt so inclined. On many days she spat language toward unsuspecting people who felt innocent and retreated into their homes. She had an uncanny way of forgetting what she'd said or muffling its effect inside her head. 

Rudimentary ring toss spurred the boys to insulate themselves from war and other malfeasance.  They engaged in homemade tries at making life a fraction wonderful despite the bloat of common practice. The boys would leave their homes for a few steps and find ways to score 15 points to break inevitable monotony. Their actions went unnoticed by their families and friends. The elephant in the room remained the cancellation of the circus that put a damper on hope, one of three theological virtues. The boys made rings for each, in case of need. It became easier to forget the cancellation of the circus as a spree of unknown playthings for the dull duration.

They spoke mainly to each other; there was no room for others to intrude. When anyone was issued an invitation to the residence, the invited individual served as a member of an audience for the couple's banter. The opinions expressed heightened their unity. The invited individual was like an extra on the set who would not be remembered except perhaps as a mild diversion. The home was insulated from particular learning. Bars on the windows and arcadia door reinforced the message, "Look at us, look at us" as the underlying reality. The two spoke mirror language to each other as they tolerated half intruders to their home.

The idea of seeing through them did not occur to her. She saw herself in them and learned how prevalent she was. They were made more beautiful by the theme and variations of her face, her hair, her dress, as though a rudimentary form of social media reflecting back. She loved what she saw, and what she saw kindled a sense of temperature that directed what she wore. On warm days there was more of her to see; on cold days she thought about how fresh her face appeared to her own eyes. She walked ahead to see new versions and considered how resplendent she was. The windows became lovely frames that centered how she looked which equaled who she was within her mind where she would remain. 

He fell in love with his dissertation. The foreplay that led to its conception remained titillating as he crafted five chapters over a period of other people's children growing beards, war breaking out, and germs. Germs everywhere. He had never met a woman so exotic, never met a man so dignified, never found a peer until this dissertation. When at last it met its black jacket with gold lettering, he wanted a ceremony of their own. At various points of the day, he found himself touching it, holding it to himself, and speaking soft words into its pages. He began to hear it whisper back and stroke his mind, his infatuated heart, his very skin, a leather not unlike his own. 

"Marry me yesterday," she cried to the only love she'd ever known. Who did not listen, who could not hear, whose blood was blind, whose heart was full of history. The conversation like a teeter-totter had the speaker sitting near the dirt and the would-be listener stuck up at an elevation out of control A sitting duck. An attractive nuisance. A one-sided conversation meant to be received but not.

Monogamy kissed her goodnight twice, and she reciprocated. "Am I seeing double," she asked herself. How did I miss division and subtraction in my schooling but only learn to add and multiply? She noted that she felt unsafe from herself. There was more here in the room that was her head than she could handle. She handled her head in her two hands. It almost fit, but seemed somehow twice as large as she first thought. 

If you love me, buy me a xylophone, that I may limber through percussion to find melody. I do not mind tin tones, do you? The colors of the strips mean less than their length I memorize to help expect what will arrive post-touch. I have dreamed of a performance, a quiet one the opposite of Carnegie Hall, pitched to match accordion perhaps without the glutted sway and schmaltz. I hear simplicity in one tone at a time beneath the thought that works my hands. If you love me, buy a ticket to my program only you will be invited to attend, and plan a sitting ovation following the opus named for you. Remember to save the program, an original I've dedicated to your oversight and sense of hearing. 

People who are twenty, eighty, fifty, and fourteen adore her rich dark red hair and her kind blue eyes. She mirrors the mock orange blossoms in her yard, alongside tulips and roses and petunias. Much to be discussed about what prompts their growth. She whispers that it's difficult to kneel now, but she manages. Around the house she gradually evolves to what is possible. She thinks about the child next door and how he learns and how he glows with change as he is reading. She listens to an ostinato of his breathing as she learns his thoughts and finds in them her own. 

"Craig is gone," someone conveys to the old man who always made it clear he failed to value Craig. The old man wants an audience so he can claim he's said something. He begins to tell a group of friends he felt he'd failed to help Craig. He tells a story that reveals Craig had struggled, and the old man could not see what could be changed. Nothing did change especially, but the old man enjoys telling the tale of a failed man with whom he was acquainted. Those who mourn Craig share the story of how he went out of his way to do a task despite his broken arm to help a friend who needed what he knew to do. They picture something deeper and more lasting than mistakes that help them picture an unlikely sainthood they decide is real to honor and to cherish their friend Craig. 

Barbara used to be beautiful and remains that way, but can't remember what she looks like. Her visitor holds a mirror to Barbara's face, and both agree that Barbara will always be this beautiful. It matters very much, because the legend that is Barbara requires this to remember who she is. She slightly knows where she is from, and she believes she is still there. Riding on the float in a parade where she is Queen of something the community reveres. Barbara can rattle off names from different decades in her life and mix them like some elegant puree that promises to nourish. Her visitor asks lame questions of Barbara, who always rises to the occasion and provides a theme and variations story meant to entertain that surely lands where she intends. 

Dusk belongs to football games after the fact. You must go home pretending to have feelings for the game the team you chose has won or lost. There are dried leaves everywhere, the kind you used to rake. "We should be celebrating something," you say to yourself, for you are walking alone and thinking of how you don't belong. Maybe you could invite someone or join some others and invent something in common. You hold out hope for some thread of belonging. Emphasis on longing. 

She says my name too many times for it to count. I think it's her geography and home life that prompts this, so I go along and listen and respond. Since there are just the two of us speaking to each other's images on screen, I don't need to be reminded which is which. I am interested in what she says, but I would rather not have my name intersected into each point. I won't bother mentioning her name to you, but will leave you with a guess. Take your pick; I will not use her name, at least not much. Marianna, Letitia, Goldie, Ramona, Shanequa, Isabel, Tillie, Evelyn, Olivia, Zoe, Elena.

She knew everything about everything and nothing else.  She lectured on how to treat succulents and keep them alive. She did not train for marathons but knew all that runners should do. She preferred to stand back and reveal her expertise over taking action. She wanted a promotion and had supporters who saw in her a kindred mediocrity that made them feel safe. She had her windows done, her nails, and she bought shoes because she weighed too much to be stylish. She routinely cheered for dictators, feeling very much in common with their lonely lanes as people undeserving expected help and would not get it.

After luxuriating in the spread of peacock feathers wider than my arm span I suddenly noticed the large oval peahen preparing for days of warming and protecting eggs. She was the color of earth brown and blended with the land beneath the tree. We did not take her photograph. We watched the peacock and she nearly beak together as the sunlight framed their oneness.