Hell Hound

Hello All!
I ventured over to another blog to join in some Halloween antics. I wrote a truly gruesome story that I have no idea what part of my mind that thing has been hiding in — it was fun to just let go and be gory!

Please, go give it a read and leave a comment.
I’ll be back to my normal Zen self soon — have been taking some time off blogging (notice I didn’t say writing 🙂 ) to get paperwork and college visits and all those senior things in order for my oldest daughter.
Here’s the link ~~~> go take a look, please:
Hell Hound

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When You Were In My Heart

I watch you approach me in the produce section, it seems all good stories begin in the produce section. Your eyes are on a pineapple and I’m baffled as I try to look away — your clothes are dirty, shorts and a t-shirt so faded I can’t make out the picture on the front. Your feet are sticking out over the edges of a pair of flip-flops and I’m immediately repulsed. Your gray beard is matted and unkempt as it hangs almost to your stomach, yellow stains around your mouth from years of smoking I assume.

For a second, I imagine cleaning you up and putting a red coat and hat on you and hiring you to entertain the kids at my Christmas party… and so in that second that has passed I give you a name… Dirty Santa. Still, you peruse the pineapple and I am dumbfounded. I look in your cart and all I see is mouthwash — twenty bottles of mouthwash and I think of about three very inappropriate jokes associated with the mouthwash in Dirty Santa’s cart in that next second and I laugh deep within my thoughts so that no one knows until I realize why you have all that mouthwash — you drink it.

You come to this store on Sunday morning when the liquor stores are all closed and you know you must have something, soon — I see the trembling in your hands, I see the sweat beading on your brow, I see the confusion within your eyes. Your gaze doesn’t leave those pineapple and mine doesn’t leave you — all of you. You put the pineapple in your cart and you head in the direction of the checkout. I follow you for a bit but you have no idea, the trembling has gotten worse with each passing second and I watch you will your legs to remain steady and forward — left foot, right foot.

You turn to take your place in line and I keep going — past you and I don’t look again… I don’t wonder about you anymore. I stop myself from thinking about the mouthwash and the quivering hands and the dirty clothes and the kids whose father is now the dirty Santa who buys a cart full of mouthwash on Sunday morning and the wife who finally followed through with her ultimatum and the boss who had to let you go and the grandchildren you’ll never know — I stop myself from thinking about all of that and turn to go down the dairy aisle. You were in my heart for a few seconds on a Sunday morning.

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The Open Window

The field next door is perfectly mowed, I look at it because to me it is the world… my world. The world that keeps me company every summer. In the middle we’ve carved out a baseball field where we play every day. I never worry about being the last one chosen… they all want me on their team. I run fast. I hit hard. I throw far. I never give up. I am wild.

There’s a dirt track that circles the boundary, worn down from the motorcycle that the boys next door own. I sneak on it, out of the sight of my grandmother. My legs are too short to crank the kick-starter so the boys do it for me. I ride around the track, my sweaty brown hair flapping uncontrollably in the summer heat as I beg the bike to go faster as I approach the bump that will send me into the air for a brief second. I am wild.

The boys are waiting as I round the corner, screaming at me over the roar of engine to stop because it’s their turn. I keep going — they’re twice as old and twice as big as me but I laugh wildly as I tear past them for another time around the track and over that bump. They curse at me, laughing, when I finally stop and call me punk and squirt and pat my head and none of them go as fast I did — none of them. I am wild.

The sun disappears and we say our goodbyes for the night, I’m the last one to leave at the end of every day and the first one to arrive in the mornings. The boys walk to sit with the adults gathered in the backyard of their house. I turn and give the field a final look before I wind my way through the opening in the bushes that separates the field and the serene perfection of my grandmother’s immaculately groomed back yard.

She sits by the open window, the warm breeze blows the curtains back just a bit, the family next door laughs and screams and curses. She can smell the spilled beer and the unfiltered cigarettes as if she were standing in the middle of them… instead of where she is, on the edge of the footstool peering through the open window. I join her.

We watch together and listen together and we are silent, together. I wonder if she wishes she were sitting in the backyard with them… unencumbered by the foul smells and prickly words thrashing through the summer air all around them. I look at her. I see the want in her eyes… briefly. I stand up, tired of watching, and walk away, leaving her there… still staring.

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Melancholia

Who do you think you are?

Sneaking in here in the brightness of a beautiful day. The breeze blows so gently that the leaves dangling from their perch in the trees look like they are waving at me in slow motion. The birds are so content singing from the hidden recesses of the branches, the remaining butterflies of summer are flitting around, just above the grass, the smell in the air is a mixture of pumpkin pie, candy corn, and over-chlorinated pool — it’s perfect. I stand in the open window looking at the kids in the street playing catch and drawing with chalk in their shorts and t-shirts… squeezing out the last bit of wear from their summer attire before they are forced to put them away for the next several months — and you decide to show up now?

Who do you think you are?

Where were you when I needed you? When all I wanted was to hide in a cave of lonely despair. I begged you to come for me then but you stayed away, you never showed up, you kept your distance — waiting for the right time. You think you’re so clever. Showing up now when I wasn’t prepared. I see you trying to slip in under the door. I see you whispering my name from that lumpy old chair. I hear you whistling your song from the train tracks.

I see everything.

I hear everything.

I feel everything.

Who do you think you are?

Come and get me. I’m not going anywhere. I won’t fight you anymore. I don’t need to. You are so small and so weak, even the rabbits in the back yard hop around you without flinching.

I know who you are.

You are loneliness and despair and darkness and silence. You are fear and you are flight. You are wrong.

Who do you think you are?

I’m staying here, this time. I’m not following you onto the tracks. I’m not driving around in the dark. I’m staying here and breathing in the last bit of summer, I’m staying here and preparing for the changing colors of the leaves outside my window, I’m staying here… just long enough to watch you thud away — fuck off melancholia.

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I See…

I see you… standing there on the corner.

A cigarette hanging from your mouth, your fingertips are yellowed by the repulsive habit. Your hair is dirty, there is no color… just the color of alone, empty, left-over. You’re clothes are disheveled. I imagine you sifting through the pile of used clothes, strewn across a cold concrete floor –piece milling your outfit together, hurriedly before anyone else joins you. Then you pick out your mat and place it in a spot close to the bathroom, you think you have a better chance of sleep with the faint light creeping under the door — the complete dark of the large room scares you.

I know this about you… I can see it.

Once your mat is in place you sprint to the front of the line for food… you know you have a better chance at seconds if you’re at the front, you know this because you watched the others those first couple of times and the power of osmosis gave you the knowledge to survive these nights. When you have your food, you pick the table closest to the front… closest to the line. You can gauge the quantity of food left and when you need to get back in line. Your eyes dart back and forth between the line and your food only you can’t even see your food — you don’t care. It’s hot. You eat. You look right through your plate to the memories of a life you think must have been lived by someone else.

I know this about you… I can see it.

I can see the baby being held by a mother — love in her eyes, a smile on her face. Her hair falls gently past her shoulder and tickles your cheek as she sings Van Morrison and there you are… into the mystic. Dancing around in her arms, clinging to the warmth of her breath, inhaling the sweet scent of her dreams — the dreams she had for you. The report card she knew she would frame, the touchdown she knew you would catch, the college she knew you would attend… she knew you would have her gypsy soul. And she danced and she twirled and you closed your eyes and…

I know this about you… I can see it.

When the morning comes you gather your things… a backpack with clothes, a toothbrush, a marker, matches — your cigarettes. You stand in the line again, waiting for your breakfast and the sack lunch for later. You put it all in your backpack and you wait outside for the van to leave and carry you back to this corner — this corner where I pull up to everyday and I watch you put that cigarette to your mouth and I see your yellowed finger tips and I wonder if anyone ever held you in their arms. I wonder if you ever knew the hope of someone who believed in you. I wonder if anyone ever gazed down on you while you were sleeping and wished you dreams of unicorns and bunny rabbits and clouds shaped like hearts. I wonder if anyone ever stood up for you — I wonder if you remember.

I see you… standing there on the corner.

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Do you know me?

Do you know me?

Did you look around the grocery store and see me comparing prices and values and after much deliberation I put the store brand into my cart because it was nine cents cheaper?

Do you know me?

Did you see me sitting in the corner of the coffee shop surrounded by friends, laughing, drinking a much too hot latte on a cold October day as if I belonged there and not in the confines of my own lost mind worrying about how to pay the soon to come gas bill?

Do you know me?

Do you watch me jogging around the block in my designer shoes and my name brand running clothes because I fit into them perfectly and you’ll never know they came from the thrift store you never go in?

Do you know me?

Did you hear me cursing under my breath at the gas station when I realized I couldn’t fill up the tank because somewhere in the world men in suits are arguing over the price of my life?

Do you know me?

I’m the one screaming in the corner of my mind that’s reserved only for me and the voices that keep me sane. I’m the one smiling so big because if you knew how close I’ve come, how much it hurt, how long and steep this road has been… you would run away because you aren’t that strong.

I’m the one writing it all down.

Do you believe in me?

Did you know I believe in me more than you will, ever. I believe I can and I am. I believe the fire was burning so hot and all I wanted was to jump in with both feet… no hesitation. I believe I can move forward without looking back but I believe I need to know.

Do you believe in me?

Did you know I feel a rush of emotions, like I set myself on fire, each time I think about the time I spent thinking about all the things that are scattered across my mind?

Do you know you should believe in me?

Because I am taking a tiny light and I am setting myself on fire with it and you need to stick around when the flame starts to dwindle because I believe you can help me burn.

I believe in you.

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Many thanks to the poets at dverse for all their support!

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Reflections

She stares in the mirror trying to see it,

… reflections of the girl they all know.

Trying to see what they all say they can see.

She looks deep into her own eyes, nothing.

Just brown… there, in the reflection.

As if there were any more ordinary unassuming color than “just brown”.

She sees nothing.

Her reflection is clouded.

She slowly scans upward to her brow, nothing… still.

She lowers her gaze to her left cheek, just below her eye, nothing… still.

A reflection she can’t see,

A beauty she doesn’t know.

A life she can’t feel.

A small beauty mark, that’s not it, she’s sure of that. Her mouth, maybe her mouth. She looks intently at it in the mirror, her smile… she has a nice smile. She sees it, but it’s not what makes her special. It’s not what they all say they see in her.

What they see is beyond her skin,

beyond her “just brown” eyes,

beyond her obscured beauty mark.

Still, she can’t see it.

She panics, a little.

She squints.

She wants to see her reflection.

 She questions the realness of it… of her.

She blurs her gaze, looking straight through the mirror, keeping her eyes just out of focus — maybe now she can see it. She sees what she always sees — a little girl running away but from nothing to nothing. The same thing every time.

A chase, but she’s never caught.

An enemy, but she never see’s.

The safety, but she never reaches it.

But it’s there… in her reflection.

They all can see it…

and for now, that’s enough.

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Priorities

Her brakes squeak loudly as she continually pushes them in the halting traffic. She turns the radio up just a bit so she can pretend she doesn’t hear them as she rests her arm on the rolled down window. It’s hot out. Too hot for the window to be open but running the air conditioner will use up more gas and she already put her allotted money in the tank this week. She knows she needs new brakes but it isn’t to the point of emergency yet.

She looks in the rearview mirror at her daughter sitting behind her, she smiles as her daughter pushes her tongue through the empty spot in her gums where her tooth used to be. Yesterday her daughter was crying because the cavity had gotten so big it hurt almost continually. But today, the hole is there where the pain used to be. She used the emergency fund to take away her daughters painful tooth.

She moves her glance back towards the halted traffic and starts thinking about her brakes again — they’re the next emergency. That’s how she categorizes all the things that need her attention, the things that will cause her to re-do the budget for the month… again. The emergencies get taken care of first and today her daughter’s cavity is the emergency, not the squeaking brakes.

The traffic stops again, the same spot every morning, she thinks. Right under the billboard that changes every few days to announce that someone else has just become a millionaire. Someone she doesn’t know and someone who doesn’t deserve the money as much as her and someone who will never need to categorize the expenses by emergencies.

She stares at the sign. Her eyes fixed to the amount, $56 million today. She thinks of that cavity, the tennis shoes she needs to buy for her son so he continues to not suspect anything is wrong, the name brand laundry detergent she wants to splurge on… just once. She sits there in the stopped traffic and thinks of all the things she wishes she could afford — all at once, not needing to space it out in between paychecks. She wants to be that mom that just goes and gets the materials for the class project without adding up the amount in her head at the cash register and hoping it’s less than the amount in her bank account. She wants to place her items on the conveyor belt and talk nonchalantly with the cashier about the weather and the shrimp that are on sale instead of holding her breath hoping to get the “transaction approved” sign from the debit card reader.

She lets her gaze stay on the sign just a bit too long as the traffic moves a few feet ahead. She knows she isn’t going to win the jackpot that’s flashing on the sign above her head because she never plays… and she laughs at the thought of it, for a moment. She knows the five dollars she would spend on her “winning numbers” will pay for her daughter’s lunches that week at school. She thinks someone with fewer priorities will win, she knows it’s not her.

She breathes in deep, her lungs slowly filling with the stale air of this stagnant life, the life where priorities take over — the struggles, the empty bank account, the loss of laughter, the facade. She knows that winning the lottery would screw up the alignment of this life. She struggles to convince herself that she isn’t deserving of this sad but she knows that anything making it better wouldn’t feel right.

She looks around at the other cars stopped in traffic with her. She can pick out the people who think they don’t deserve anything better, who think the lottery will be won by someone else — they look like her… pretty hair, discount clothes, a fake smile — those are the people who think they deserve to be sad.

Still, she looks at the billboard and she wonders. She plans her budget in her head — millions for the kids, a million here and there for relatives, new furniture, a carpet for her dining room, a vacation. She smiles and allows herself to let out a small laugh, then she remembers her daughter’s cavity, her son’s sneakers, the school lunches. She curses the billboard as she finally passes it by because she knows it made her forget about her priorities.

She glances at her now sleeping daughter once again in the rearview. The traffic breaks apart and she continues home. She places a call to the bank to check her account. This months emergency fund will take care of her daughter’s cavity, maybe next month she’ll get a rug for the kitchen. Maybe next month her priorities will change.

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