Walking on Thin Ice

HOW WE HOOKED UP (PART IV)

HOW WE HOOKED UP (PART II)

HOW WE HOOKED UP (PART I)

TO BE CONTINUED…

I’M JUST A BIRD WHO BURNS FROM WITHIN

The carefully calibrated Kathy needs caffeine.

I’d been two months off coffee, and this morning I remembered that coffee used to be the high point of my morning. It makes me smarter, more enthusiastic, bright eyed, less numb, all in all a better person– save for the nervousness.

So I drank a strong cup this morning. Within two sips the yellow kitchen wall had a new depth, a vibrancy. A gray layer, a film, lifted from my eyes. It’s like I’ve photoshopped reality, made everything clean, interesting.

All my life my personality, the core of my being, has been enhanced by this evil wonder drug. Grampa started me when I was four years old. I got up with him before the sun rose, at five in the morning. This was our special time.

“What do you want, little girl? A treat?” He filled a glass with half coffee, half milk. He made me a soft boiled egg. Then he sat with his paper and his potbelly and smoked and moaned about the news, and the room filled up with blue smoke, and I sucked on my coffee and dipped toast in the egg in the bright kitchen light, waiting for Gramma to creak out in her blue robe.

I was wondering why I hadn’t been writing lately, why I felt dumb and numb. It’s because I’ve been high all my life! I’m a speed freak. The majority of my poems came from two vente Starbucks lattes a day. There’s a brown syrupy synergy between me and my monkey, a fine divine wine.

“You’re writing a new blog?” Smith asks. “Again? Two days in a row?”

“Mmm hmm.”

He puts his hand to my head. “You’re warm, you know that? You’re just a bird that burns from within.”

I do have everything I want.

Have you ever seen the movie, “Conan the Barbarian?” It’s also kinda like that. At one point in the story, Conan has fame, money, and is in love, and he doesn’t know how to handle it. He gets so drunk his face falls into his food. Then he gets in trouble again & has to resume adventure.

I have too much time on my hands and I’m still not used to being my own boss. My mind falls to a low set point unless others are making my reality. But it’s my responsibility to make my reality.

“Choose your own adventure” is the name of the game…

OH, NO, LADY, PANTIES GO TOO

Lady, Summer 2006

“You are lucky. You know that?”

I know I’m lucky to got YOU in my life. I was used to seeing you around the poetry readings, especially Cafe Noir, out back, et cetera. You were always with the Silent One. Michael. He didn’t speak much.

But one time when you weren’t with him, you mentioned something about my art. I told you you could come over and look at the art. And that was outside, when Cafe Noir was still open. I have no idea when that was. Because you came over after Mom died.

I know I saw you a couple times at the 25th Street Book Store. And I know you were part of the Norman Rockwell Lawn Poets’ reading at Mom’s closing. Cuz I was on the ground and I took a picture of you over my right shoulder. You had a very serious, stern, unhappy look on your face.

Bulemic, unhappy, heavier Lady, Spring, 2005

“I think on that day I vomited in the basement of the gallery.”

Oh, that’s nice to know. You coulda kept little baggies of it and we could have sold them online to those kinda folk.

Anyway, let’s see. Oh, I took *extra* notice of you when you asked to publish my “Dear Occupants” poem in the City.

“Aha. So it worked!”

I figured you showed good taste. Oh, yeah, that’s always good bait.

Somehow through the emails you took me up on my offer to see the art, to see the studio. And I said, ‘Fine.’ And you said, basically, “What food do you like? I’ll come over and cook things.”

I essentially said, “Don’t bother cooking. Food doesn’t matter.”

And you essentially said, “Fine. I’m not coming over.”

So I wrote back, “That’s a shame.”

And then, you emailed asking for a ride down to the Strongsville Borders Reading, where I read a condensed version of the Lab Rat / Dead Mom pieces.

It was ArtWalk night, so you came over early. And we walked from Jean Brandt’s gallery to the Raw gallery to Asterisk to Doubting Thomas. Literary Cafe could have been on there. Then we went down to the reading. I drove down to the reading. Had a good one.

Drove you back. And you came in, to visit, and essentially sat down in a wall of marijuana smoke.

“Yes.”

We kept smoking, kept talking, and after a while I realized that if I didn’t want things to get complicated, I was just going to have to wait you out.

“And things got very complicated.”

After that, you pretty much covered it in what you wrote. No sense doing it again. You did it very well. Your “off with the panties” piece.

“Yes.”

Summer 2006

OH, NO, LADY, PANTIES GO TOO

I left my husband in 2 oh oh 2 for poetry. A month later, I was laid off and a firefighter poet moved in with me. I never got back into an engineering job. I resorted to web development for a couple years at less than half my former salary. In March ‘05, I became suicidal from the pointlessness of what I was doing at the office and the futility of my lukewarm relationship. I decided to try bulimia, hoping that if I got thin enough that someone would find me attractive and rescue me or that I’d die bent over a toilet, heart attack from electrolyte imbalance. The firefighter got sick of my sickness, dumped me in June ‘05.

I met Smith at the start of my activities in the poetry community. He had a croaking whisper of a voice. He often came to readings smelling like grass. I was jealous of his irreverent poetry, the compelling stories from his past, his outlaw art and his 20 year ArtCrimes publication. I read and re-read the last issue of ArtCrimes, thought it the epitomy of cool. Though jealous of his edge, it didn’t keep me from thinking highly of him, wondering about his life.

I commuted with him to a poetry reading in September 2005. After the reading, we talked past midnight. I asked, “Don’t you want to hold me?” Smith reluctantly agreed, knowing this would complicate things.

We did a full body press. It felt good, right, for both of us. We started hugging, kissing, touching. It’d been at least fifteen years since Smith’d touched a woman. He said, “You can sleep over if you are too stoned to go home.”

I said, “Only if we don’t have sex. I’m involved with several other men.”

So we went to bed in our clothes. I said, “It’s too hot.” I took off my pants, my top and my brassiere.

Smith said, “Oh, no, Lady. Panties go too.”

And that was that. I dumped the other men. Two weeks later, Smith gave me the keys. He said, “It’s not fair for you to wait for me to answer the door.”

And two weeks after that, I moved in.

Smith’s skills as a mainframe programmer were becoming obsolete, and he hated the work. He retired in December 2005. He planned to “fake it” until March 2007, living off his savings until he was eligible for early social security. He convinced me to drop out of the office world, “retire” with him, become his artistic collaborator.

A week after I moved in, we decided to move to Europe. Smith proposed October 16.

Right before retirement, he casually mentioned that he had nodules on his larynx. I freaked out, had him get a biopsy. He was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx. No health insurance.

There were two months of radiation treatments in January and February. At the same time, I was cleaning Smith’s condo and painting and repairing the walls and floor, which were damaged from twenty years of his rough art practices. We’d decided to sell the condo in order to travel, but now we had to sell it because now most of his savings were gone from medical expenses. (I’ve since read that people without insurance pay on average 3 times more than what the treatment costs insurers. This makes me severely angry.)

We were going to get married in January, but couldn’t because I couldn’t dispose of my previous husband. So we married March 18.

During this period we had three art shows, the release of the final issue of ArtCrimes, and bunches of readings… and we created art and wrote about a quarter of his memoir.

I’d never been so happy and sad at the same time. Sad because of the painfulness of dealing with Smith’s illness, and happy because I’d finally found the partner I dreamed of, someone who was a companion, someone with whom I could do art and writing and conversation.

We closed the sale of the condo in June 2006. We had to wait ’til July to see if the radiation treatments worked, getting another biopsy. Regardless, Smith decided we were going to go to Europe whether or not he was cured. As soon as we had the money, we bought our flight tickets to London. In the back of our minds, we weren’t sure they were going to let us leave, that it wasn’t permitted for us to live our dreams. We felt we were escaping.

The July biopsy showed him in remission. August, breathless, we left the country.

We’ve lived together 24/7 since December 2005. Smith’s voice has healed. He sounds like a wise cowboy.

I’ve never been so happy and so sad. I’m happy because I have my road-tested companion, love of my life, and a manuscript… and pictures I hold in my head. My thoughts travel to all the countries we’ve seen and been.

But I’m so, so sad as well. Now that I have someone to care about, my heart has a home in the world. I’m compelled to care about the world to make it a safer place for me and my love. All global terror is personal terror for me, inescapable from my quotidian existence: the political terrorism of our imperialist institutions, the WTO, the IMF, the non-sustainable practice of globalization, our genocide of 1 million Iraqis, our de facto genocide of 100,000 Indian farmers, my recent disillusionment with the Democrats, realizing their complicity in perpetrating mass corporate and political crime. What is happening to our home, the world?

Lady Now

UNINTENDEND CONSEQUENCES DOWN AMONG THE SINNERS

Barcelona - Commissioned Graffiti (photo by Lady)

UNINTENDEND CONSEQUENCES DOWN AMONG THE SINNERS

“I feel like I’m cheating, taking photographs. I’m just shooting what I see.”

But it’s what YOU see. It’s what YOU selected out of everything else going on at the time. It’s your eye. It’s just detail in somebody else’s existence.

You’re the editor. You’re taking one detail and saying, ‘Hey, this is worth looking at.’ It could be a photograph, it could be a painting, just about anything. But you’re the selector. Conductor.

You’re an attractive woman.

“I am? I’m gonna go take a look at myself.”

What do you see?

“I don’t know. A girl-woman.”

Well, you are a girl-woman. Don’t you see yourself that way in your mind?

“I guess so. Yeah. And you’re raising me.”

No, not raisin. You’re more in the grape area.

“Ha ha.”

Well, there’s my grape joke. Trouble is, it’s not tellable. I’ve got a chicken joke, and a knock-knock joke. I’ve gotta get a tellable grape joke…

“You have many.”

…of my own. I got three grape jokes.

“Uh huh?”

What’s purple and lies on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean?

“Hm?”

Moby Grape.

What’s purple and lies in the North Atlantic Ocean?

“Huh?”

Grape Britain.

“That’s terrible.”

And what’s purple, and punishable by 10 to 20 years in prison?

“Hm?”

Statutory Grape.

“That one’s OK.”

I think my favorite bad taste joke of all time is the little boy comes walking into the kitchen, licking his fingers, saying, ‘Mom, remember that soft spot in Baby’s head?’

“Ugh.”

That goes along with my own line. Children belong — in cages, or soup cans.

“That’s terrible.”

It’s absurd.

“Anyways, I think we ought to talk more about ME, the girl-woman.”

Does that mean you’re going to grow up to be a woman-woman? If you had a sex change, you’d grow up to be a man-woman.

“What is a girl-woman?”

Don’t ask me. I don’t understand women of any age or size or genus.

My ten pounds I’ve gained have gone straight to my face. Gonna have to grow my hair long and straight down, so just this thin slice of face remains.

“Is that why they grow long hair? To look thinner?”

That, and to hide. And like Veronica Lake, to look mysterious. She hid one eye behind her falling hair, and seduced you with the other.

“I don’t know. My world is so far removed from that. World no longer seems mysterious.”

It *mystifies* me.

“I have found magic in revelation. Mystery uncovered. Horror revealed, tho, too.”

Your basic magical mystery tour.

“Well, no. Cuz there’s no more mystery.”

Ah… You’re wrong. How do you think we got together?

“I followed your clues.”

They weren’t left by me.

“Oh hoh yes they were. I saw your GO AWAY mat. I thought, ‘CHALLENGE!’ You left clues. Artwork. Poetry.”

I left a lot of clues along the wayside, then.

“That’s what art is. CLUE. It’s the CLUE to YOU.”

I dare say folk put my stuff together, they’re gonna have a hard time placing me.

“You’re a scientific primitive.”

Darned right.

Ah, your fingers are cool, but not cold.

“That’s because I warm them up in my crotch.”

Aha. Finger warmers.

Barcelona (photo by Lady)

the SMITH primer

It’s hard to be a person on this planet. One of the biggest problems is that the people you love are the ones who have conceptions of who you are.

One of the biggest things Smith has taught me is that I can only be me. I can try to be completely agreeable to everyone around, but it still won’t eliminate all friction.

Smith is the Anti-hero, Anti-PC. It’s odd, because normally such folk lie right rather than left.

When we shacked up, Smith told me he’s gonna say what he’s gonna say, and I might not like it. For example, he might think a girl’s purty, so he’ll say it. And if I try to control him, tell him to not say such things, he’ll start clamming up around me, and we won’t have fluid communication.

Most people filter what they say so as to not offend. But for someone who’s trying to be honest and creatively fertile with their writing, someone who’s trying to uncork expressiveness, gloves come off.

There are drawbacks to this philosophy but there’s also a remarkable freedom.

POPPY

Poppy says Jesus is the Son of God, and when I pray (which I don’t), I have to pray to the Son of God because that’s how prayers get to God. Poppy is my real dad. Dad is my adopted father.

I go to church when I visit Poppy, and I don’t understand the sermons. Poppy’s minister talks about Jesus the Son of God and his disciples in a serious way, and he talks about parables and says that it teaches us something. But the words don’t relate to anything I think about. Shouldn’t they? I think about God a lot. People say something had to create the universe, so there’s God. I wonder why nobody thinks to ask who created God, then. Doesn’t make sense. I ask Dad about it, and he says he believes in the Great Turtle but he’s teasing me. Mom says God is Nature — not a person — which makes a lot of sense.

Poppy is solemn quiet on Sundays, even when he makes biscuits and eggs for me and Margaret. I sit in the hard pew with them. He wears a suit. She wears a pretty dress. They go up to the front to drink communion wine. In Virginia, it is always sunny in the church, but I feel solemn, like I’ve done something wrong. Poppy sits in his suit in the hot vinyl seat in the van. He always has to clear a space for me in the van when I visit. I wonder if I’ve done something wrong when he clears the seat because he moves quickly. Maybe he’s mad at me because I don’t have his last name and Dad adopted me. I don’t know how to act around Poppy. He’s a carpenter, just like Jesus was. After church we pick up fried chicken and coleslaw.

How can there be a God, and is this the difference between me and Poppy? There’s something different inside him, who believes, and me and Mom, who can’t believe. It’s like a knife and I can’t see his thoughts and he won’t tell them to me. But if I have Poppy’s blood, shouldn’t I just know? Maybe Mom’s blood is different from Poppy’s blood, and that’s why she divorced him. I’m lonely with him. Maybe that’s why she divorced him, because she was lonely too. Maybe I can’t talk to Poppy because he’s too sad about Mom divorcing him. Maybe I can’t believe in God because I’m bad, and I think God is like Poppy, and I’m sad around Poppy. Poppy tells me things but he doesn’t talk with me, not like Mom and Dad do. Before I visit him I’m excited like it’s Christmas, but when he picks me up it’s like the day after Christmas and I feel deflated. I wonder what it was I expected.

“Becky, I want to talk to you,” Poppy says.

“What?”

“Hey, don’t be such a smart alec with me.”

“But I just said what? What’s the matter with that?”

“You’re still doing it. You just said ‘just.’ That’s talking back to me.You need to be respectful to me. Your whole attitude is bad.”

“OK, I’ll try.” I try to speak with respect and friendliness, but my stomach hurts and my eyes burn. The words don’t seem right. I don’t know what words are correct to say.

“Well, when I come home, I want you to run to me and hug me. I want some sort of acknowledgment.” It sounds like he’s going to cry, too.

That’s strange, I think. He doesn’t usually spend time with me. Aren’t dads supposed to be the ones who take care of the kids? I wait and wait for something special to happen that makes me happy and warm inside, like when I’m with my grandparents or Mom or Dad. Nothing happens. Maybe he doesn’t know how to act around kids because he’s not used to me.

“And you need to talk nice to Margaret. She said you’ve been talking back to her too.”

This is hugely bewildering. I had no idea Poppy and Margaret didn’t like the way I talked. Maybe that’s why he’s short with me all the time. I hurt his feelings and I didn’t even know it. I wasn’t a good daughter.

How could she think I was bad? Margaret was so nice. I even called her Mom. I even told everyone how happy I was to have four parents, and I was sincere about it. What have I done wrong? They don’t really know me, I think. I’ll show them how smart and good I am. I’ll clean every day before they get home and I’ll study Margaret’s medical books the rest of the time. I won’t be a little piggy, eating all the chips and candy from the cupboard. I’ll show them how adult I am.

I go down to the basement to my bedroom. I tear a poster I made off the wall and shred it. The drawing was stupid, a character from a book. I sniffle and cry to myself as I fall asleep. I can’t wait until I go home.

The next morning I wake up to the noise of Poppy and Margaret going off to work. I feel empty.

They like me, don’t they? They made this bedroom for me. But why was the bedroom in the basement? They could have cleared the office upstairs for me. Maybe they really don’t like me, but they felt it was proper for me to visit. I can’t think straight, but I just know it’s unfair, and I can’t say anything to make it better even though I have the best intentions.

I can’t cry anymore. I feel resigned to my new sober realizations. I wait for the sound of both cars to leave the driveway before I get up.

My stomach has no interest in breakfast, nor can I read anything. My books seem childish, and anyways, I can’t concentrate. I go out to the back lawn. It’s scorching hot. A plane of vision clarifies and I see hundreds of brown things jumping in the dead grass. I catch one. It’s a grasshopper or cricket.

I tear one of the legs off the cricket, and put it on the patio. The cricket struggles about in a circle. I don’t feel sorry for it, just curious. I find another cricket, and pull the opposite back leg. It struggles too.

I go back inside and find a medical book, Grey’s Anatomy. With the goal of memorization, I take some of Poppy’s computer paper and practice drawing the muscles and bones. I have all the main bones memorized before Poppy gets home.

Poppy pulls in the drive in the afternoon. I have butterflies in my stomach. I go up to the door as he comes in and I say, “Hi, Dad,” and hug him. Poppy acts like everything is normal and I always greet him at the door. It’s a little weird, but I’m relieved.

“Guess what I know, Dad?”

“Hm?”

“I know the bones of the body. This is my femur in my thigh, and down here are the tibia and fibula, and the cookie on my knee is the patella.”

“Your thigh bone connected from your knee bone, your knee bone connected from your leg bone,” Poppy sings. He walks into the kitchen with his groceries and puts them away, still singing the funny song.

I come to the door to hang out and watch him. He sings at me, he sings to the chicken he’s making, and he makes his voice alternately low and then fake high like a woman’s. “Them bones, them bones gonna walk around, them bones, them bones gonna walk around, them bones them bones gonna walk around, I hear the word of the Lord.”

He grabs a bag of chips off the fridge makes a quick pre-dinner sandwich, chips and white bread and bananas and peanut butter. He chews it with relish and bugs his eyes at me, and I laugh, and he offers me a bite.

Poppy makes cracker chicken and chicken gravy and rice, with (ugh) peas and carrots for dinner. I don’t like frozen vegetables but I find that if I mix the peas and carrots in with the rice and cover it with gravy, it tastes pretty good.

BEAUTY PAGEANT

BEAUTY PAGEANT

We’re in Mary’s living room. I sit on the edge of the sofa because it creeps me out to touch it.

“Who do you think is prettier, me or Alice?” Mary asks.

I think about it for a while. Mary wears makeup; she looks like a teenager. Alice looks like she should look for a girl her age. Alice has natural blonde hair which is sparkly from being out in the sun, and blue eyes with long dark lashes. Her face blushes easily. I don’t think Mary would be so pretty if she didn’t have all the makeup. She’d look more her age. Still, Mary is probably more pretty than Alice.

“Come on, Becky, who?”

“Well, that’s difficult to say. Maybe Alice,” I say. It’s an act of rebellion. I say it to hurt her feelings.

“You just say that because she’s popular. Well, I’m going to be in a beauty pageant,” Mary says.

“Oh, really?” I say weakly. “What do you have to do for that?”

“It’s not only about beauty. It’s what you wear, and the hair style, and how you do in the talent part.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to dance. I have it all worked out. I’m dancing to Eye of the Tiger. Mom said I’m going to knock their socks off because I dance so sexy. Let me show you.”

The boom box is already loaded with a tape wound to the right place. “I’m going to stand over here. Push the play button down when I tell you.”

The song starts. Mary pops her shoulders to the initial thump thump thump of the music. She walks purposefully, as though on a catwalk. She makes a motion with her hand as though casting something away, then casually looks back, unconcerned, then gets down into some serious punky dance moves.

“Did you see that?” she asks. “When I threw my hand, I was supposed to be throwing my sweater. I’m going to tie a sweater around my shoulders like a preppy, and then throw it off before I really start dancing.”

* * *

Mom and Dad and Mrs. Rumsfeld go to the pageant. I’m in the makeup room with Mary to give her support. It’s a large dingy bathroom. It’s total chaos. Boxes of clothes and props are haphazardly scattered. Moms bend over their daughters. Some of the girls are kindergarteners. Girls crowd to the full length mirror.

Mary’s in the stall again. She has to go pee all the time and I’m always waiting for her. I wait for her by her box. I think It’s strange Mary wants me there. I’m not the type of girl who would enter a beauty pageant and I have no idea what to do to help.

Mary brought her own makeup mirror. Star bends down to fix a curl. Mary slaps her hand away.

“Come on, Mare, be nice,” Star says.

Star wears bell bottoms and a rabbit fur coat. Her hair’s been washed and curled and it looks orderly, like a wig. I think she’s trying to look sexy today but she still seems like a beaten down walking skeleton. When Star walks, she bends her head down. She has thick eyeglasses, so her eyes seem remote, dull. Her face is dry looking. Lines run down from her nose to her chin. On another person, they’d be laugh lines. But Star doesn’t laugh.

“Leave me alone,” Mary says.

“Fine. You can do it yourself. Don’t say I didn’t try to help you.” Star walks out.

As Star leaves, Mary mumbles “Stupid bitch. You don’t help me, you stupid bitch.”

I’m a little bewildered. How can Mary talk about her Mom this way? I think Mary’s a rotten egg.

Mary asks, “How do I look?”

“You look great. Very pretty.”

Mary’s applied thick eyeliner. I think of it as her feral racoon disguise. She wears matte pink lipstick. Her skin is orange from foundation. She never looks natural, but even so, I know all the boys find her attractive. What do I know about makeup, anyways. If the boys think she’s cute, then she must be doing it right.

A pretty brunette comes up to us. She’s not wearing as much makeup, and her hair looks healthy, shiny.

“Becky, this is my friend Ann,” Mary says. “She’s been doing this since she’s little. And she’s won a lot of pageants.”

“Congratulations,” I tell Ann. I look quickly at her face, but it seems so perfect that it blinds me. I feel embarrassed about myself, and I stare at the floor.

“My Mom’s my manager,” Ann says.

“Ann’s been in commercials, too. She never ever eats sweets and she exercises every day.”

“For an hour,” Ann says.

An organizer opens the door. Everyone turns quiet. “OK girls, Moms, you have five minutes.” Door closes.

Mary looks in the mirror. “Oh shit, my hair’s all wrong. These curls have not set right. I wish I had more time. I’d redo it.”

I don’t understand why it takes so much time to do hair. The more Mary looks at her hair, the more she doesn’t like it. It’s like she can’t see herself, or she changes her mind all the time.

“Don’t worry. You’re great.” I don’t know what hair’s supposed to look like, but this seems like the right thing for me to say.

I run out to the audience before the show starts. There aren’t very many other kids in the audience, just parents and family. I sit between Mom and Mrs. Rumsfeld.

“Are you going to be in a beauty show, too?” Mrs. Rumsfeld asks.

“Aw, no. Not me. I’m just here for a friend.” But I’m honored that she thinks I could do this. It seems as far away as the moon to me.

* * *

Mary’s in a queue to perform with the other girls. The queue is organized by age. Her white jeans are very tight, and they do not have bells, because they are new. Her feet are in white cowboy boots. She wears a preppy pink and white dress shirt with the collar turned up. The dress shirt is not tucked in to the jeans. A wide pink belt with a big gold buckle is wrapped around her waist. Big pink oval earrings dangle from her ears. She’s tied a fluffy pink sweater over her shoulders like the preppies.

None of the other girls look as adult as Mary or have as much obvious makeup.

The moms are segregated from the rest of the audience. They’re not supposed to make any noise.

I look behind me and see Mary’s Dad way out standing against the back wall. There are seats up here by us. I wonder why he doesn’t want to sit by us. I’m surprised to see him here. Sometimes he’s not home for weeks and I forget Mary has a dad. He’s not smiling. I wonder if he’s bored. He justs stares at Mary with a blank expression.

* * *

It’s Mary’s turn to perform. She’s shaking a little. She does not look at us.

“Oh boy, look at that one,” says woman in the row ahead of us. “She looks mature for her age.”

Eye of the Tiger starts, and Mary’s activated. The first part looks mechanical. After Mary drops her sweater on the floor, she coyly shrugs it off.

“Ew,” whispers Mrs. Rumsfeld. “That’s way too adult.”

Mary comes to life in the dance part. She whips her head, performs somersaults, and everything is flawlessly timed to the music. Her expression is stern.

I look back at Mary’s Dad. Something about the way he’s standing bothers me. Now it’s the end of the song, and there’s a noticeable silence.

“Woohoo Mary!” Mom yells. She’s broken the silence and everyone claps.

The judges do not have an exceptional opinion of Mary’s performance. The numbers are average.

* * *

On the way home, I listen to Mom and Dad in the car.

“She’s probably living through her daughter,” Dad says. “She wants to make her into a miniature version of what she’d like to be.”

“Well, I think it’s good for Mary,” Mom says. “It’s exciting for her. And she has an aptitude in beauty. Why not use it?”

“Yep. Anyways, regardless of what her Mom’s like, Mary’s smart,” Dad says. “She’s going to find some way to get ahead.”

I’m glad I don’t have to think about ways to get ahead. I’m glad I don’t think Mom’s a stupid bitch, and that Dad’s home at night and he’s fun to be around.

happily ever after

New piece finished Sept. 8

It’s our second anniversary. Smith & I hooked up September 9, 2005. We’re in bed. I look into his eyes, and his face looks friendly. “Your irises have a purple edge,” I say. “And then they’re green and orange and rust brown next to the pupils.”

“They’re hazel,” he says.

We kiss, unhurriedly. I’ve devoted this day to him, to bed, to whatever it is we might want to do together. The kiss feels good, and I remember what it was like when we first kissed. How our mouths fit, how he made a little noise, an “umpf” when we kissed that first night. How if we take time to kiss, I still hear that “umpf” of pleasure.

“I’ve got to remember that we can do this,” I say.

“Do what?”

“Well, I have my companion, my love, my best friend. And we’re together all the time, but my mind is diverted by writing and correspondence and art. But what I like most is to spend unstructured time with you. I enjoy just being in your arms, kissing you.”

“Yes,” he says. “I understand the art and writing, but what I don’t understand is when you’re finished with that, and you go on the computer rather than spending time with me.”

“I don’t understand it either,” I say. “I’d much rather talk to you than read the news or read blogs obsessively. And I’m so pleased that you actually want me to pay attention to you. That’s what I want in a companion. I’m so honored to have you. It’s such a relief to have you. But things are always complicated, aren’t they? When you get what you want, there’s still a lot of work to be done. Happily ever after involves work.”

“Happy Anniversary.”

“Happy Anniversary to you, too. Just think of how much we’ve experienced since we left last year. It seems like it’s been years.”

“It’s been a full two years. And we’ve changed.”

“Yes. We are different people now.”

I look at Smith’s neck. I’m worried because he spends so much time in the sun, but I don’t hassle him about it. The radiation treatments he had to treat the cancer last year aged the skin under his throat. Where it used to be tight, it’s slack. But it’s tightened up a little bit lately. I think, “I’m going to put some positive energy on his throat.” I kiss it, and draw back.

“I love you,” Smith says. His eyes are now dark slits. Little drops of light are reflected in his irises from the window.

“I love you, too. My one. My true love.” I kiss his chest. It’s dotted with freckles that grow more dense towards his shoulders. His nipples are pink. It seems weird to recognize mammalian features on Smith. Precious to know his naked body.

Smith looks beyond me to the window. “The pattern on the lace curtains is a repeating vase with flowers.”

I look at the lace. Through its holes, cerulean blue sky, and purple mountains in the distance. I’d looked at the pattern for a long time, but absentmindedly, and I’d not seen the vases. But now they coalesce. I think, “I promise you, my true love, I will spend more time just talking with you. What is this all for other than to be with you?”