Welcome to It

There was a fable-
a blinking star gone green in the distance,
across shore and simple sea. 
Self indulgence alights our enemies.

Thoughts process to grow while ego choking hard
our castle with its single diamond room.
Because just thoughts, simple chaos,
in the far reaches of what's happened to our bodies,
letting those minutes in time eat up
our minds-insides : color coding
trauma equals drama, offers a good impetus to curtain call.

Sing yourself home; no one can rise up from your ashes for you.
None, but you.
Let the thorns binding up your heart's pelt trunk
down, twindle, swarming, free.
Your arms, they're bleeding happy trails to mark
the way behind you.
You'll find yourself always watched over.

Heart born again a lump of dust mites in clay,
without sculpture or circumstance.
Etchings over ridiculous arithmetic parameters of breath and mistakes.

Indeterminism is a clean contract.

~ M. Lucia

Soul-Breath

The heat poured down in dry heaves, bouncing off
the tops of my sandal feet and forming
thick skeletons, dancing and pounding at my skull.
Thoughts of a year ago swimming cool dreams through
the hard, cracked memories.
You both look so much stronger than anyone did that day.
I will never forget the feeling of waking up and wondering
if he was in our world yet.
The quiet of the red hook street like a watchdog, ready to pounce.
The sound of the ambulance forming itself into the tip of a sword
sinking my heart,
for knowing what it was doing to the both of you.
All those warm, balmy nights we spent with you,
on your rooftop watching fireworks,
the ebb and flow of grief, food, inconsistent laughter.
The year since, full of pride, and desperation,
promises and new beginnings.
Back to the heat and the grounded feeling of the cemetery.
I stood with my legs wrapped around a dead, amber thorny weed.
It let me know I was there, and we were here in this moment.
Prayers in Hebrew, I clutched my rock-
the one I had been saving for over a decade from the Irish Sea in Howth,
one of three I still had, infused with all the mystic,
mingling love from those times
to these times, to both of you, my other family, to now.
I caressed the irish-jewish equation and infused it with all the gratitude and love
I could muster.
For you. For him. For the one who comforted me
when I was exhausted with comforting you.
The story of the first breath, not taken
remains still but then moves in air form with the stories of all of us,
happy with you,
celebrating with you, smiling and drinking and laughing him into existence.
He did so much without even making a scene.
For new life, his life was given for a distant, more grounded happiness
that we all share
every day like a carnival ride through the trees and the skies.
We placed our rocks, we ambled out through dusty paths and drove away.
The girl in her belly, double fortune as they say,
will bring him back to us---
the rocks settle still in Dublin Bay.

--for Gabriel Neshama Derris, 6/29/09

~ M. Lucia

JOY FOR BEING NAMED JOHN

Perhaps the ripples that arc out,
from the cushioned wicker chair now empty just outside the door,
past the flag at half-mast, deservedly say the mules in the Burmese jungle,
past the new faces of a neighborhood he always welcomed,
black or white, gay or straight, friends truly, one and all,
down the hill past the street named for his famous friend,
past the high school where all his marks were made on the
inside of people,
perhaps these ripples are only strong enough
to rock the boat, for only a moment,
of his new friend (if he's lucky) with only half his life's experience,
half his openness, his trust, his joy and optimism,
half his satisfaction for a life well-lived,
half his devotion to that which keeps us all sane and binds us,
all the same,
to walk the path from street to stoop,
and back again,
over and over, until the job is done,
the race run and the ladder climbed all the way to its top rung.

Perhaps this is how it should be for those weak(er) of heart
like me;
to forget all too soon and to return to those mundane things,
those silly dissatisfactions with really lovely satisfactions;
those petty jealousies of what seem, darkly, like too careful blessings
bestowed far away and unjustly so,
those careful gestures showing tender mercies, like a quick glance at cards,
only frozen by politeness and by the all-too acute awareness of each passing second
and not of the grand arcs of time suggested
by the ripples that arc out from a wicker chair, now empty,
just outside the door.

Right now,
in this moment,
I will try for more.
If only because my name too is John.

There was so much more happening outside the frame

Sold (down the river)

We are packaging the product
so it poisons you from the insides out,
aqueduct filled up with licensing laws
drowning the idea of children; allowing
recourse to the idea of freedom they once thought
to have.

The oppressive nature of the house on a hill
far enough from human harm;
queen bee’s selling stickers on her arms.

We used to pour symbolism into electric lights.

They don’t but highlight our misfortunes
and shine down
every cracked crevice
of our custom built circumstance.

The one they told us we deserved.

~ M. Lucia

INTERVIEW WITH A COMMUTER

He was just sitting there, obviously a little drunk, but with tears in his eyes, right there on the 5:52:

Everything’s ruined.  My whole life is in the toilet and I can’t do anything about it.  The sad part about it – aside from the fact that I ruined everything and, you know, it was me, myself, that did it (I did say that, right? – O.K., yes, yes I know I did.  I just needed to say it again because it’s, like, you know, right there in the front part of my brain [that is, of course, assuming that the front part of your brain is the part of your brain that does all the superficial and, you know, like caveman-level type thinking.  I’m assuming that it is because I don’t know for sure and I’m institutionally too lazy and way too drunk right now to look it up, so let’s just stipulate, for the sake of argument, that it is]) and aside from the fact that everybody I care about hates me – the really sad part is that I know exactly what I am going to try to do about it.  It’s not that I know what I’m going to try to do about it that’s sad or, for that matter, that I also know, in the very same instant, that what I intend to try to do will accomplish exactly nothing towards making anyone happy, including (and, well let’s face it, especially) me.  It’s what I’m going to do that’s sad, for it is this: I’m going to find (and I won’t have to look hard, you know) some bimbo (a regrettable word but there it is) – a 20 year old, say, with really big tits – and I’m going to (very) routinely fuck her silly for about a year until she gets too boring, and her little smells start to get too hard for me to ignore, and the secretive way she just flicks at her nostrils with the tips of her fingers, not really picking snot but not really not picking either all making it hard (or should I say difficult) for me to even get it up in any kind of meaningful way anymore (my apologies, in retrospect, for being so crass but you need to know and understand at the outset that this is me when I get drunk and it is at least true and real for lack of a better word(s), something which from me [and if you had ever spent any time actually living with me you would know] is a blessing and a relief.  For, as Billy Joel said, “honesty is such a lonely word,” and damned if it isn’t true.)  Anyway, what’s worse (much worse actually) is that I’ll have, like, exactly zero “real” conversation with her.  You know, because I’m so about “real” conversation.  And then after that (soon after that), I’m thinking that it will be time to get on with the “real”, and ultimately most fulfilling but paradoxically most painful and self (for a change)–destructive part of my life, which will be this: generally (and specifically too for that matter) hating myself quite deeply and profoundly—very much like all but one of my three kids (more about that later) and, of course, both my ex-wives.  Oh yes, I forgot.  I drink too.  Yes, I know I kind of alluded to that earlier, but the thing is that I actually really drink, if you know what I mean.  Maybe you don’t know what I mean or can’t know what I mean but I’m thinking that if I keep going on like this, you know this stream-of-drunkenness, that eventually it will become apparent what I’m talking about if not why what I’m talking about is actually happening (i.e. why the copious amounts of alcohol marinating my cerebral cortex is there to begin with.)

I already know her name—the 20 year old, I mean.  It’s Brandie—just like that, with the “ie” at the end.  Like that?  I know it’s a cliché, right?  O.K., fuck you, maybe you cut me some slack this one fucking time…maybe just a little?  But it’ll be like this:  I’ll be in the bar drinking.  Drinking what?  You guessed it!  Right, because I’m a drunk but I’m a college educated class-act kind of drunk—you know, the kind that drinks mid-class level (because of my mid-level job title) brandy while eruditely working literary quotes, paraphrases and/or obscure references into my on-going internal and ever-contemptuous assessment of the world around me while chuckling knowingly and condescendingly to my self with just a tinge of self-loathing.  So there’s me and my ever-present Remy-fucking-Martin and along comes Brandie, wearing one of those t-shirts, you know?  I don’t have to even tell you, it will just be right in that “special” kind of way.  Right…I know you know.  Wait, I take it back.  It won’t be the breasts that get me.  It will be something about her ass that connects with my ever-shifting, ever-evolving definition of what a quote-unquote great ass is.  That will start it.  Her pretty face will get me buying her the drink and then those juicy breasts will seal the deal.

Changing gears here, let me just say that, if you’ve found anything up to this point disgusting (or annoying or inspiring in you a desire to inflict physical violence on me if you could only find me) that it’s the box that is at fault.  The box is a killer, you know?  I’ll say it again but this time hoping to get some cathartic relief for my poisoned soul by yelling at the top of my lungs with a reckless disregard for whomever maybe listening and thinking that I’m one crazy motherfucker.  THE BOX IS THE GODDAMN, HOLY SHITTIN’, COCK-SUCKIN, MOTHER-FUCKING KILLER!!!!!  Nah, didn’t work.  

The box is the source of all pain and frustration.  It is in fact the very instrument of the devil, and he plays it like Pinchas fucking Zuckerman, and in this, I know of what I speak.  I know because I get in that box every day.  I willingly climb in and obligingly pull the top down over my head and I lay there, for about two or three minutes, until the walls start closing in.  Then, when I start to really feel the air getting thin and the cramps creeping into every muscle, the pounding beginning in my brain like a pile driver, slamming my skull, I come face to face with the pointlessness of it all.  And I’m entirely powerless, at an essence-sucking, muscle-atrophying level, to make the pain stop.  And the very fact of being incapable of any kind of control over my own destiny is like a knife in my heart, if you’ll excuse the mundane simile.  That’s as close as you’ll get to the real truth about me and I can’t see that there’s really any changing it at this late date is there?  Indeed not.  No trying really.  Well, there can be plenty of trying, I guess, but if I’m not on board at the very least who else is going to be?  

See, the thing is, I’ve been given every break.  I’ve had it great, I never really had any problems that I didn’t cause myself and truly, of all the people around me, I was always affected the least.  All my issues were issues, ultimately, for other people and I always made them more miserable than I ever was.  And I, for my part, would quickly find some kind of emotional closure and move on.  I’ve had it so easy.  So the box isn’t any kind of really big deal.  I can take anything.  I know I just went a little crazy back there and I’m sorry, I mean, I apologize.  I’ve come a long, long way in this life and I’ve got a few hard knocks coming I know.  I know that and it doesn’t really worry me, but I think I know the problem with that logic.  The problem is that I haven’t known any real hardship.  And I’m thinking that when it comes, the hardship that is, and it must surely be coming, I’m going to be totally unprepared for it—utterly even.  Although, I just now had another thought--maybe what will happen is what is natural to happen.  Maybe I’m one of the fortunate ones who have been able, though a trick of fate and luck, to put off tragedy and real hardship, to an age and time of life when I can handle it better.  Little by little life has drained its passion away and I’ve been left only with practicality.  I no longer have a sense of real deep excitement about life – you know the artist’s unbridled optimism?  All I have left is the sense that life is a series of obligations and commitments.  You find yourself in a position where people rely on you and you do what you have to do.  Maybe you have the odd spasm of passion and intensity--a small period where you indulge in a little transgression fueled by the artists’ sense that life is short and all that that expression means but most surely before you have any idea of what’s coming the fucking lion is upon you making “you” into his meal in a most undignified and, surprisingly, ungraceful way.  The lion is dignified and graceful but you, the one being eaten, with your little shrieks and gasps garbled by gobs of blood choking off your windpipe, most definitely not.  

Bones

Beautiful occurrence of providential mechanics

Graceful economy of material

Cleave the air, complete pneumatic skeletons imaginable

It is oblivion; barren, dry as a moth

Hollow cavity without marrow; fused to ossification

Painful reverberations shattering my brittle skeleton

But sorrow cannot take root in my chambers

while you will suck from my mouth the venom as if from a wound,

and replenish my shallows with your tears

Oh, those hands

like white paper folded into origami cranes

you touch me

Here.

Stolentelling

(...Edited for Television...)

The trains had left her behind. Not sure what city or town she lived in now. The smell of the murky waters, the imagined sound of their lapping in and around the outer shores. Strippers danced in peacock dresses upon clouds in the might of the sky. The surrounding birds ran a hunting party over to the sailor's lofts and the street vermin, nestled in after a long run, inside their newspaper feather beds, wishing on reduction.

We are not the realization of ourselves, and no one wants to do the mathematics to build the final equation - bruised, dirty, full of might and cowardice, turning round and round in a fire pit of ego and need, while the tribe encircles us, dancing and praying and breathing through the storm in our paper cuts. A couple, broken in sacrifice, going to their communal death for the good of all, fucking into eternity, burnt into the wood's natural etchings, as the town ate and drank. Lift up your faces, look skyward - kick up your heels and spread your legs. The colours will bleed through the cracks in your eyes whether you want them to or not.

Admitting they'd turned into whores, the strippers continued to cackle in the clouds, smoke in their curls, stink from their knees, love somewhere deep inside their broken hearts. So much love buried in the black hole found at the tip of a needle. Out of it flies their first blood, their empty rooms, and the can-can they did at the age of 5. If only it was as it used to be.

I found myself sitting in a cheap, checkered cotton dress in premature spring, just over a week after holding my father’s clammy hand, warming me for the last time and catapulting me into adulthood in an excruciating blink. I sat with Jack, the one who made me forget, in my shell-shocked, drunken bare feet, dirtier on his floor than on my own. Danced every step, downed every shot – all the sunsets and family albums alive in a brand new way. A way I didn’t show to most people. Somehow, though, I got to showing him. I was in mourning; I wasn’t all there.

Compartmentalization can get you through, or ruin you - all the fluids of our grounded universe are something the angels never see, or taste. The birthing bed is the death chair is the graveyard or the office cubicle, as the lipstick and spit stains decorate a whore’s sheets. Jesus was born in the shit and the straw, and so saves the world and we enter the Kingdom as it enters us, in the blackness of night, in the dimness of a star, wet between the edges of light. After we melt away from whiskey ice cubes and old rotted shoelaces, ruined from the rain.

In this room with Jack’s hair down and his economic strength at play, I was removed from the world. It was about to be my second night there, again, and this was about to become a joining of worlds that I wasn’t at all sure about. Milling the corn with the dollar bills, stirring orange juice into the cake- it was just off. I sighed, without the foresight of lack of grief to focus on any real decision making. Right brain fell asleep, left brain was drowning in the shallow waters. I didn’t even gun my next decision through my intellectual drain pipe for a second. A ventriloquism act on behalf of my lascivious id. I stayed a second night, matter of fact.

People see your insides; they just don't bother to try. They can rip you to shreds, dress up in your entrails, play dice with your fears and arouse your sunshine to see-saw time. After the sacrifice, the couple gets back up again, putting their strewn limbs back on, reacquainting themselves with the spaces beneath their experimental skin. The whores in the clouds will tell you that strippers never keep anything on; that rituals the very first time bear a different name; that a home becomes a house once the windows are clear. That it wasn't what they thought it would be. Not even close.

The payout is shroud-like, lost in the shadows of a gun barrel. It's more than you can imagine. Piles of invisible cash in empty briefcases, littering a dry, straight highway. Always just waiting for the sun to break free from behind a cirrus cloud. He's too busy making time with those dancing girls. They enact their superstition, leaving your belly wrapped tight around childhood. Sweet leaves blown through trees, you were so young and could do anything. The sun shone differently then. It always broke through clouds of painted ladies. Their feathers shone fresh and bright, their feet quick and fancy-free; no one ever knew about their cuts and pregnancies, their ineffectual starry eyes, wanting to borrow some gold of sunshine before the next go around. They'd let you have it back; they can't manage two things at once at that distance.

Jack and I ate up the dust in the air, swallowed the bed sheets, snorted the grime from our feet and devoured the whole damn place, turning on even the stars that watched from behind the window.

You yourself return from the ritual embers, thinking that the humblest hearts make the largest, near silent sacrifice. Passed out, with sideways tears that glide down your neck with each crisp, clean feeling of memory. It serves to reinforce the constant void, lapping and retreating as the waves of this mystery border town outside the window - filling with appreciation, Christmas dinners, silent car rides and warm, low-lit stories, falling away to the worst road, the future one.

Jack is just a shade in my memory now, but the burning, breathing times still survive. I tell this story to the girls who, touched, wipe a tear with their grandmother's embroidered handkerchief, take their pills and wash their underwear in the sink. Lastly, they fill up their wet eyes with the black dirt shadows of everyone else's family secrets. One sip of waterfall whiskey rises in the smoke of the dance hall of jousting erections, life plans demarcating napkins and the glimpse seen of a way back home, through the eyes of a girl whose head is forever soaring above the clouds in the colours of the mythologies that stand beside, watching and wondering how the story will end, what side of the coin will the gypsies win and steal at and what strangers will be stretched out on the fire escape when the hangover passes, and your realize you missed the daylight again. When the light hits your face, and you’re brought back into your body, your life, your father…The sands will stay white, your homeland truer than you remember it.  And I promise to breathe, to walk, to give, to taste and to love of everything you gave me, of everything I am. He is the reason I believe in the might of gods, in the morality of the wise man, in the faith for the hero. Then, just the terror of stillness, the romance after a mighty squall.

The girls, still small, innocent and dreaming manage to gawk, shake off their ashes and smile. He's telling them a story. He'll be off to tell you one next time you sleep, or smell firewood or think of home without a place. And the waves continue, leaving an old faded photograph on the shore.

The trains blew noise in the distance.

~M. Lucia

IMMORTALITY

He kissed her on the inside of her thigh, his tongue brushing slightly along her skin, as he slid his hands down the small of her back and over the curves of her ass.  With two fingers of his right hand he slid inside her and looked up, seeing and feeling her warm and smooth and enfolded, unleashed.

*   *   *

The damn wig itched him horribly.  A job’s a job though.  Playing Falstaff at the Plymouth wouldn’t pay anything. 

“Hold still please.  And tilt the hat slightly again please.”

He shifted the flat black hat on his head for the photographer.  Again.  They never know what they want, they just keep trying things.  At least they wanted him – he should be happy for that.  Not much call for ‘portly’ these days.  Not sure why Judy even wanted him; that way.  She really lived her roles.  I wish I could be more like that.  Her husband’s car dealership made money and she had the luxury of turning down jobs like this.

“If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story.” 

Slight chuckle on the humble: “our huh-huh-humble…” 

Playing characters has become a strong suit.  No more leading man him!  Except with Judy; leading with his cock!  She respected his art—she called him the "amoral immortal", meaning something like that his talent was unfair.  She said she had seen his Romeo and then even his Richard.  Her surprising jokes about ‘hump’ (instead of hunchback) and ‘limp’ were the first suggestions he had from her that she would sleep with him. 

That first, furiously fuck in full view of the stage-hands, if they had bothered to look, between scenes had been followed by regular sessions in her dressing room.  He adored her body; just seeing her in the morning would set his mind racing imagining how to negotiate her skirt, her blouse, her shoes.  He was her servant.

He could feel the sweat collecting under the white wig under these lights.  It was the suit and tie that overheated him.  What was this ad for?  He couldn’t remember--something to do with food.  He would have to shower before seeing Judy later, although she was unlike any woman he had ever been with.  She was so passionate physically and even after a night’s performance almost craved his body, his sweat.  She made him feel more alive than he ever had in his life.

“OK, once more in profile please.”

Did he actually have to wear the boots if they were only shooting him from the waist up?  What was it, breakfast cereal?  Something like that.  His stomach lurched and growled now with hunger. 

“Hold still please.”

She kept reminding him what an artist he was and it was like she loved him for who he was.  It was the way it should be.  She loved him inside, where he wasn’t ‘portly.’  I will never again doubt myself.  Even as a character actor I can make my mark.  Judy made him believe.  I will be remembered.  No one does Shakespeare like I do.

I stopped thinking.

I don't know if there's a protocol.  I don't know if there's an order to things--the stages of grief.  Is that where I am?  Is that what I'm doing, grieving?  Not yet.  This can't be that.  

I realized that when my wife blurted out "but he has a baseball game Saturday" that these men who work in the funeral home, the fat one, so clean and beautifully dressed in the blue shirt and dark tie (I hate this suit I'm wearing but my God why do I care?  I hate that I care!) and the one with the scraggly hair and bad mustache, and yet so clean too, how do they stay so clean?  But somehow it's nice that they're clean.  It's comforting.  I trust them.  Anyway, I realized that there isn't an order to things.  Not here.  And not when his coffin is so small.  They know that, these men.  When she said that and they didn't blink an eye.  The fat one just said "yes" and then asked her about some pictures of him she had in her purse from one of his games.  Before you knew it she was telling him about how good he was and not thinking about Saturday's game and the fat one would listen forever it seemed.

And so I know that anything goes.  They have suggestions, and I've gone along and it has been good, I have to admit that.  He looks so beautiful in his suit, his communion suit.  I don't know what I was thinking, thinking he should wear his Jeter shirt.  The shirt with the #2 and no name.  He said "everyone knows it's Jeter, Daddy.  It doesn't have to have a name."  That wouldn't have been right, I see that now of course.

But they've all gone now and I stayed behind which is somehow fine too.  Just me and him.  And they're standing waiting.  They want me to leave before they close the lid.  Somehow my wife wanted that and that's become the plan but I don't want to leave and I told them that.  And so they're waiting.  Quietly.

I've already touched him for that last time.  That's done.  I see him now.  I'm looking at my son and it's already just the memory of him, this shell has so little to do with who he was, but I know too that the memory will at least grow and have a life even if he doesn't.  So I nod and they just know what that means.  That it means I'm ready.  These people are amazing.  Slowly it closes and I duck my head down so I can see in until the last moment and breathe into the space so he'll have at least that from me, even if I failed him in so many other ways.  They step away.  I'm ready to go and they know I won't make a scene and they know I'm ready.  How horrible that they've seen this all before.  Me in this suit I hate breathing into that closed space.

I whisper "I wanted so much more for you than this..."  

Shadow-Double

Manipulation in bold schemes of umbra
desires the retreat beneath
straddled souls,
salty women of old,
grand in their hips that mark the dirty floor.

Finds myself breaking into boudoirs
mildly to keep a straight face
into the waste
of mirror time;
the world left meager exhausted by its counterpart.

A Dustbowl mighty and incomplete
cannot feel through its shadows,
as I sense to your need,
as I shout to your breed-
how much of your body is theft to me.

~ M. Lucia

Who could imagine,
loving me,
that I could be dragged under,
lifted up,
over and over,
and over,
turned around,
made to look,
set aside,
torn asunder,
set to dreaming,
inspired by anyone
less
significant, important, steady, dreaming, longing, committed, brainy (for God's sake) and alive
than she
is.
She is.  And she will always be.

Mother’s Little Helper

I hate the smell of hospitals. I've never met anyone who didn't feel less than repulsion, fear and sometimes utter nausea at the scent of one. Even if clinically clean, with happy attendants dressed in crisp white, the sort of white only those of sound mind wear, it just feels dirty. Like the ailments of those surrounding you will somehow seep into your body, into your thoughts and limbs. That you will step out of there with the liquid stench of sick and death on your footsteps. At the very least, it's not a fun place to spend a day.

A friend of a friend of mine apparently overdosed on pain pills last week. My friend was caught in the emergency room, waiting to hear. There apparently weren't hard drugs involved so no rock n’ roll suicide in this situation. Only the daily grind of maintaining a stable mood and a disappearing stomach lining to wallpaper the situation. She got out of there once it was apparent that all was relatively ok. And the patient? All he got was a free ride to the hospital and some overdramatics that he thankfully slept through. You know the sort. When people suck out the trauma nectar from other people and make it their own. Like a mentally ill transubstantiation, without the wine.

Back to the idea of pain pills. I will only ever call them pain pills, and not medication, treatment, therapy, anything else that cushions the situation. This world is rough, and for some it can be absolutely fucking brutal, so who am I to comment on what people need to get though their day. Some like cold turkey; some like warm Prozac. A side of denial and a generous helping of over-analyzing? Maybe. It's really not the idea of taking a pill for a mental condition or situation that arose out of the life lived by the person surrounding the brain that irks me. It's the recent development of the Norm of all this- not for the abused, not for those who survived hellish families, or were abandoned by them when tanks came rolling in, it's the idea that when you don't feel happy, you must now take a pill so you will. The replacement system. People are running, bolting, streaking practically to the drive through drug store to get their medications. They cough when you smoke near them, they worry about those who drink too much but they, in return, step up to the barstool in their bathroom and watch themselves silently get drunk. The sort where there is no imagination, no jovial undertaking, just them – their own bartender for free looking back at them. Like drinking alone.

But let's be honest. Pills, when taken moderately, don't make you "drunk". But maybe it's just my love of the double dare that asks the question: what would happen if there were no pills? Would they collapse? Would they have a breakdown? Would they commit suicide, hurt themselves or others, would they sleep for days or check out of life while sleepwalking in the same way as the rest of us? The answer is different for everyone I suppose. As I stare down with my high and mighty glare, I did not come here to judge. But only to say, people should start asking themselves why they Need certain things. And in the tradition of the dare, and in the idea of stubbornness, try to let that black hole inside of you remain, untouched. The hissing will turn into sweet music, or into a good conversation or even if into screaming and yelling, it needs to be looked at and not drugged or put to sleep. The dormant stinking gases of what Hurts needs comforting, and as you wrap your arms around each one with a mother's sweet embrace, they could just happily burn in the fire and rise up from you, and be transformed. No one seems to believe in the idea of transformation anymore. That you can, in fact, Become something else. All the way to your core.

We, as human beings, have been around a LONG time. For eons, centuries, nights and days into millennium and endless mornings, we have been disappointed, enslaved, beaten, raped, killed, disregarded, enraged, fucked over, unloved and abandoned. Some of us made it to something better; some of us didn't. We should put down the pills and turn to the right or left and not forget that we are here for each other. No pill can save us from ourselves, each other or this beating heart. Neither can a drink, a fix, a binge; neither can pushing away those we love, shutting ourselves down and banishing ourselves to our own private padded room, hurting and hurting until the good disappears and we won't feel it anymore. Saying yes instead of no, saying no instead of yes, tempting ourselves ands trusting that there is more to this breath than our own anxieties- more than doping ourselves up so we can sleep through life. It's not a hangover. It cannot be slept off. You wake up and it's all still there. Hard, razor sandpaper in your skull, sloughing off the cells of empty promises.

My father once told me that my mother would believe the first person who told her that she was crazy and needed to be put away in a mental hospital. That most people would believe, say, the third or fourth person. But that he and I were different. That the whole world could call us crazy and we'd simply say "nope". Perhaps this just makes me a crazy gypsy bitch who comes from a long line of crazy gypsy bitches, but, well, like a scar yours is yours until the end of time, and not belonging to anyone but you. Sipping side effects and glazed eyes poolside while your insides rot and your thoughts dull, dreams reduce into a stock of mushy thoughts, a porridge of average, a cauldron of acceptance… You can have it. I'll dive deep into that black hole, hear the hissing in all my broken places and bind them every morning, heal them and keep diving, curious to know what's to come and knowing that I am the captain gypsy bitch of this ship. And I'll take you with me too. I'll slap you into submission, set you free, love and heal you without losing myself, name every of your fears and let them fly off to a country where they belong, and we'll keep on sailing. I'm strong enough to take you all on. There is no bottom to my eyes, or my heart or the depths otherwise. I know what forever means and I live it every second. Why go on living in a cluttered attic room when the castle is empty, you don't owe any rent and you can have your run of it. Why stay cooped up in that room? You don't know what's out there, but pack a lunch, some good strong boots, and Go.

And, as long as my heart beats loud, my body wants what it wants, my intangibles keep on the journey and I know the fact that the mystery shouldn't be dissected on the street corner, operating table, therapist's chair, barroom floor or in the places we hold inside our secret selves, you won't be seeing me in the Emergency Room anytime soon. That's a promise.

~ M. Lucia

Sketch for a Later Work

"You don't need to see my ticket."

The conductor was only momentarily confused.  The passengers around him hadn't started listening yet.

"I don't need to see your ticket."

His seat mate thought, "wait, this sounds familiar."

"This train is now an express."

There was an almost imperceptible tinge of question to the tone, like he wasn't sure but he was still saying it.  The conductor removed all doubt.

"This train is now an express," he stated emphatically.  

He was feeling very satisfied with himself, now, in charge of the situation.  Even HE wanted it to be an express but he never had the guts to just say it.  Why shouldn't it be an express?  Why did it have to stop all the time?  It would be easier if they went straight on through to Grand Central and this whole confusing episode could be over with.  He couldn't remember why now that he was thinking about it but the whole train ride, up until he started talking to this handsome gentleman with the close-cropped beard, had been a real annoyance.  Who were these people anyway?  Everyone with their electronic devices and their feet on the seats.  And the farting and the slurping of coffee.  But then there was this guy and his young friend, thoroughly pleasant people, and now the train was an express.  

"You'd better tell the engineer."

My God, his voice was like an angel.  It made him feel all creamy inside.  Some of the other passengers started looking at him with confused glances.  They were trying to figure out what was going on.  "Fuck you you rotten screw-heads," he thought.  Mind your business.  The only reason he would want to stop now would be to throw their assess off the train.

"Step aside, I'm coming through now."

He passed through to the next car.  The announcement came over the train speakers, oddly enough, in haiku:

"We're now an express,

No more stops till Grand Central

Force having been used."

Venal and Tornado have a discussion, Part Deux

As the Poetess demurely made her rounds, nodding politely to all that had gathered that night to meet her, Tornado stealthily toed his errant muscle further under the table and smiled politely. The observant attendant winced and rolled his eyes heavenward; what he would give to see these people perish in some cataclysmic event—tsunami being his current favorite scenario.

When the Poetess had perfunctorily greeted all she turned to return to her seat, Tornado thought to scramble to get her seat like a gentleman, but then thought better of it. No use in setting up expectations that he would fall short of. Again, there was that sound—like a droning—it was a mesmerizing sound that he could also feel in the soles of his feet, like someone waiting for a train and could sense its maniacal propulsion towards them.

Venal sidled up to her chair and sat quietly, nodded to a gentleman on her left with her sylphlike neck and then in a most elegant contropposto turned to face Tornado.

‘Lord, we have not had the pleasure to meet before now—and yet, I have heard so much about you. I feel that you are already an intimate. Forgive me—do stop toeing that little muscle under the table—it’s terrible distracting.’ She smiled calmly and he thought her exquisitely beautiful with a smile so dangerous and expansive that he worried her mouth was a secret hinge within her face and her head would suddenly open up like a box and suck him whole within, right there at the table. This excited him terribly. Her voice was soft and soothing, sharp, like the blades of a scissor slowly forced shut.

He smiled, stole a sip from his flute and leaned in a little closer to respond—he noted peripherally that the rest of the occupants at the table moved in closer as well.

‘The pleasure is all mine, Madmoi—I’m sorry, how do you prefer to be addressed?’

‘Titles are tedious,’ she sighed and played with a string of black pearls wrapped languidly around her neck, like a seductive noose, ‘you can start by calling me Venal. Now do be a darling and tell me all about yourself. And not the silly rubbish you’ve been practicing in an attempt to enchant me—lets see if we can make words come out of your mouth that match the thoughts up in that head.’ She raised an eyebrow, cocked her head and in a crescendo of vibrational din, she turned her attention and her lovely torso suddenly away from him and set into a discussion with that old bag, Duke Tampaune, with the musty coiled wig. He couldn’t hide his erection if he tried. ‘And yet,’—he snorted to himself, ‘she asks me to tell her all about myself and then denies me. Maddening.’ He fell deeply in love at that moment and felt like a marked man—he looked peevishly around as if worried he might be struck by lightening at any moment. He wouldn’t be surprised to lift up his sleeve or peer under his arm only to discover that he had been marked in some way, that some kind of a signifier had been burnished into his skin so all would know that he was in love. He would have to go into hiding.

Feeling ignored and in contempt he busily stabbed at his mussels and listened to the clatter of forks on plates and chortles of laughter, the sounds of people enjoying themselves at his expense. The mussels tasted of petulance.

He stole a peek to his left and could see her deep within conversation, could make out the muted sounds of her words but he could not discern what the topic of interest was. Her long pristine fingers were woven together and hands were clasped in her lap, long lovely stems for legs, crossed, and her backbone stretched and curved up into her neck, like a vine up a tree in search of sunlight. Modigliani, he thought. Her hair was swept up and turned and knotted, revealing the powdery white flesh of her nape. The features on her face were not perfect…and yet—they worked perfectly together in some kind of rapturous harmony. Strange green eyes, too far apart—and those lips. The nose he couldn’t even fathom—if it were removed from her face he would surely laugh.

‘So where do we go from here?’

He thought he heard something but the buzzing noise was too intense and he had his pinky jammed tight into his ear to try and shake the confounding sound from his head. He will have to phone the good doctor in the morning. It dawned on him that he was being spoken to again. ‘Je suis désolé?’

‘I asked you a question, darling. So where do we go from here?’

He thought a moment. Stared at her lips, that dangerous mouth.

‘I should like to take you back to my house and pluck you, prick you, boil you, and consume you until our skin falls from our bones. I would do everything in my power to make you eat your pillow.’

She smiled. ‘You are finally not entirely full of shit.’

Kissing Time

Marked in the twilight
of a golden grimace green;
tumbling weed beauties admiring
Dublin back street.

Flirtatious rhythms weary-
blighted remains cast sleeping;
sorrows colossal, bounding showers
down sea’s neck to Bray.

Stepping cordial along ragged road,
early drowning crimson
curtains closed----
single spies wanting a taste of the rain,
clandestine fancies more primitive
than blame.

Soaring cathedrals over tides mistletoe
yield to strangers welcomed in to tea;
judgment ponders over window shades,
mosaic indefinite burying seed.

Sounding children’s cries,
rounded pious sighs,
the quieter language of river lies;
equations run right past in 32 high tides.

Each failing inch, left cloudy to insane sleep
pulsed to the brim…memory’s artificial life
worth calm the setting stars, ensnared their seething tune,
full faced dawns peeking-
raindrops of Irish night.

(Happy Bloomsday {“A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs”.} Finnegans Wake)


~M. Lucia

TRULY ON THE MOON, Part 3

Lieutenant Colonel Knoxville Cuddy stared off into space, figuratively speaking, lost in the static coming over Missle Command’s speakers, the typical chaotic noise of the room having dropped to a shocked hum at the Colonel’s unprecedented dismissal by the odd, and yet somehow oddly appealing, voice of the woman flying her rocket to the moon to “get away for awhile.”
“Mojave?”

“. .”

Cuddy’s dream broken, he turned suddenly to the pudgy man sitting slack-jawed to his right at the main viewing console, one hand poised above the intercom button the other plowing through the generous muss of hair above his regulation buzz over the ears and sending his headphones into a temporary skew.

“Major Mojave!”

Mojave snapped back to reality and began to busily flick switches and spin dials.

“Colonel?”

“You alright Major?”

Mojave’s hands paused.  He looked woefully up at his commanding officer, his signature calm shattered.  He had always wondered how he would deal with a crisis—a real crisis.  Now he knew.

“Sir, the Vulture?”

“Easy son.  Clearly we’re dealing with some sort of deranged personality here, woman with a mouth like a chicken’s ass.”

“Sir?”

Cuddy clapped his hands loudly the way he normally would when he was getting down to business and ready to issue himself some orders. 

“We got a bead on this rocket?”

“Sir, we’ve only been tracking it for the last 10 minutes.”

“Well, OK, let’s get Charlie to extrapolate the trajectory back to the source, find out just who in the hell we’re dealing with here.”

“Sir Sgt. Sweetwater’s in Florida. "
“NASA?”
"Magic Kingdom, Colonel."

“Well if that don’t just dill my pickle.  Well, who we got on S&A?”

“Capt. Campbell’s on systems and Corporal Johnson’s aeronautics.”

“Johnson?!  Johnson’s so useless if he had a third hand he’d need another pocket to put it in.  OK, then, get me Cheryl on the blower.  And tell the General I’m on way up.  Meantime get the wonder twins started on finding me the lauching pad of that goddammed rocket and keep trying to get this uh…Captain Turdie…”

“Truly Tess Trudy sir.”

There was something about the way Mojave said her name that gave Cuddy the creeps.  He had never known him to even like women in the flesh, let alone over the comm. system and three miles up.  Cuddy gave him the thousand-yard stare.

“You sportin’ wood for this lunatic Major?”

“Sir, I-…”

“Listen Major--save your excuses.  Excuses are like assholes.  Everyone’s got one and they all stink.  Are you ready to sit-up and fly right with me on this one airman?

“Yes sir!”

“Are you ready to be my WARRIOR?!  To answer your NATION’S CALL?!  To fly, fight and WIN?!”

“Absolutely Colonel!” 

“Goddammit son, we’re Americans here.  This woman’s fucking with our protocol.  Get Cheryl on the horn and try to get me this Capt. Trudy before she leaves the goddamn atmosphere.”

Cuddy looked with wonder at the Command Room’s main screen and the dotted line blip that was the Vulture streaking across the afternoon sky.

“I’ll be in my office.  Hell, I ain’t ever even been to the moon.  Who in the hell does she think she is anyway.”

When Lord Tornado Meets Venal Flytrap, Part One

The guests entered the dining room through the main hall and surveyed their opulent surroundings. The celestial ceiling was slathered in gilt with an ethereal chandelier of great magnificence dripping crystal droplets like condensation. The table was laid out with the best china old money could buy, for each plate had been hand carved from the clavicle bone of a tragically extinct beast. Candles were lit and set just below eye level and placed equidistant, exactly 2 feet apart and centered down the 84 foot long mahogany table. Exactly. Everything was draped and awash in silken tones of ochre and teal. Diners were placed appropriately, alternating male and female so that in addition to stimulating conversation and gustatory delights—the eyes would be fed as well. It should be noted that they were all famished—and terribly ravishing.

Demoiselle Sweetbryar, while only the tender age of twelve was already a spectacular hostess and everyone clamored for her attentions and an invitation to her salon. Invitations were delivered by hand in the form of a single pink rose complete with thorns. If there was anyone who experienced a sense of confusion about when and where the event was to be held then they had clearly received the rose in error. The bloodletting upon acceptance of each rose was an honor and no one dared to complain, although many did consult with their physicians about the migraines that resulted from the Rosa Ragusa’s cloying apple-like fragrance.

Tonight’s dinner was to be spectacular, as the guest of honor was to be none other than the scandalous poetess Venal Flytrap. Men and women alike took great care to look their best. Cheeks were powdered, nostril hair trimmed, the décolletage as ripe and perfumed as muskmelons. None of the guests present could quite recall exactly what the Flytrap scandal involved; only that it had been quite salacious in nature, which of course only propelled her to new heights of popularity. Her maudlin poetry was considered intense and was in great demand.

Lord Tornado perused the other guests as he strolled around the room whilst enjoying his requisite plate of Moules Mariniere. He was never without a plate of the delicacies, and could be seen obsessively poking their vulnerable pink insides with his fork and slurping the broth noisily from the shell at every opportunity. People had long ago given up thinking it inappropriate and instead came to embrace it as an idiosyncrasy prone to the noble class. Some women were put ill at ease with the clear pleasure he took in mouthing the succulent little morsels; averting their eyes, they would dab their foreheads with their kerchiefs and invent another place to be. Many more would brazenly blush and approach him with sly smiles, coyly slipping him their calling cards while their husbands were busily engaged in dreadfully mundane discussions.

He was known to be a moody man, one given to extreme fits of ardor or temper; the sequence and appearance of which were always unpredictable. Charming and well educated, he was respected by many but mostly regarded as a bit louche. Although verbose he fell short with the art of conversation, and to his own surprise (and no one else’s) he found himself constantly at the epicenter of a swarm of confusion and drama as a result of miscommunication.

He was known to affect the weather and his prowess with driving a bed was spoken of throughout the region. Many of the women in the room could attest to this and held him in high regard, indeed. This might explain the crimson flush on the cheeks of many of the ladies at table; one observant attendant even took it upon himself to open a few windows to cool off the room. He double checked the thermostat and scratched his head.

While extremely self-centered, Lord Tornado was every bit attentive—and his inability to develop lasting attachments to his women only served to increase his appeal, as most of his conquests were happily unhappily married.

You see, the Lord’s heart was surrounded by an unstable storm system that would never allow him to settle or remain happy with any one thing or person—just as soon as he basked in the sunshine of one woman’s affections the clouds would move in, the wind would kick up and the relationship would be blown into oblivion. He could be half way through a delicious Mille-Feuille for breakfast, only to violently switch directions and insist it be replaced with a Beignet. With jam. NO! Make that butter, salted. From this he adopted the belief that there was always another pretty face to be gazed upon; another woman would be found to divert his attentions. It couldn’t be helped and he felt little about any damages incurred, as he did lamely profess from the outset that he was a bit of an ass and if his warnings were not heeded he could not be troubled.

After having reviewed the place cards he found that he was seated between Lady Champignon and the Poetess herself! Today was his lucky day; he mused, and sipped his champagne. Lady Champignon was charming and a decent conversationalist, although she gave off a strange musty scent that he found off-putting. He was delighted with how the evening was proceeding nonetheless, and worked contentedly on tomorrow’s hangover while planning his conversations with the Poetess.

He found himself suddenly distracted and observed a distinct humming within the room, a buzzing. Have I had that much to drink already? You must pace yourself old boy, he chided. The sound grew louder and he tilted his unpredictably coiffed head, smacking one of his ears with the palm of his hand in an attempt to clear the bath water that had obviously become trapped in his ear canal. Returning his attention to his Moules, he looked up to see Venal Flytrap make her first public appearance in over a year. In she sauntered with the Demoiselle, surrounded by sound, cool and calm in floor length silver, her eyes fixed on some distant point on the horizon. He froze and dropped his fork that was held midway to his mouth—her eyes slowly pivoting to meet his gaze at the soft wet sound of his mussel falling to the floor.

Deep Sea Diving

Billowing down the levels of psyche til you find your outer shore.

Climbing along treetops and telephone wires, your past hits you right in the face. Bloody nose trickles down your ego and childhood circumstance until you’re knee deep in a treasure chest of toys, painted with old fears and seen through new desires. Your dreams are your reality and there’s nothing stopping you from thinking so.

Scratch to the surface of that faded old photograph. Who are those people and why is there a cauldron of blood between you? Why do their actions need your forgiving, and why must you miss them so much. Some pairs of eyes belong to us and others just swim on by. The mermaids are old, and their scales tattered, as they try not to nod off every night, preventing the theft of your possessions from the chest, deeply rooted in the ocean floor. They’re not getting raises anytime soon, and the pills aren’t keeping them awake as they once did.

So what did you find there? Past that old scratched up photograph and those security blankets? The same belonged to your parents and the same to theirs. My father didn’t know his father as well as I thought he did. His father came to Farrell, Pennsylvania, up from Pittsburgh and just over from Youngstown, Ohio. Worked in the mills and factories. Sent money home to his family in Croatia. His wife lived with him for a time in Farrell, but for the most part he traveled back and forth for months at a time, from being an American to being himself, a Croatian (then Yugoslav). I am made to believe he was a good, honest man, but hard to think he was completely loyal to my father’s mother. The dark one blamed for my eastern looks. Whenever he came back, he’d find my father a little older, a little less scrawny and much more rambunctious. One such return found my grandfather not recognizing my father who had dark brown hair like me, but was born blond. He told him “you were a blond the last time I saw you”. So, the many things he missed flew past, as did the rocks my father threw at the soldiers when scampering across the water, a fatherless creator of his own pathway.

You found a story which told you that your father was not just a provider, or an over protector, and more even than just an adventurous child. He slept on the streets on Christmas Day, he got everywhere on his own accord, and he, like others, got fucked over by our economy, by George Bush the First King. The story will find a cycle and that joyride can take you to the end of the forest, the crux of the desert, the worlds beneath the ocean floor and inside the mind’s eye. Everything reflecting on everything else, as a dream reflects on the water at which a child gazes through her grandmother’s eyes, which held secrets that conquered men’s hearts and informed their decisions, who then dreamed up goals to live and die by. And more dreams each night, all the same, filled with numbers lost in history and families of every universe across these great divides.

Hurt is a strange thing. It feeds on you as long as you feed on it. Hurt, like ego, belongs in a performance. Without the curtain falling and the roses pricking you on your nose as they sail to your feet, you won’t know what to do next. Whirling dervishes also eat supper and bed their wives. Memory is a swing line, low and repulsive which gathers moss and seaweed around the treasure chests of our youth. Time to let the mermaids take their ascent. They need time off too, and it’s time for a tag sale. The contents will always remain; some more so than others. Like the touch of a fabric you will never forget or a smell that is burned into the fire pit of your nostrils, they never leave you. But you have a choice in the arrangement of the show.

They move into dreamtime, which makes me wonder – we can fly in our dreams, soar and experience supernatural occurrences, events and stories. We can have a million faces and experience a million lives, but how does living time affect that of the dream? Could the cave men have dreamed of the automobile and think it a fantastical sleep voyage? Could the Romans have dreamt of the Second World War and thought it a demon or a sickness that was at their constitution? Just because time in the world is progressing, does that mean that time is progressing in the dreaming side of things? As far as dreaming in the ‘other’ world goes?

I wish my father were here to talk about these things with me. I look at the old photograph of him now (and I have dreamed him a dozen times since as I knew him, as he was when I was a child, as he was before I was born or even near gazing a star) and separate my life from his, my choices from his, his choices from himself and see him as a man. As someone I would give anything in this world in order that he could have shared a night staying up late, drinking with you and I. As a great and loyal friend. As a friend I miss very much.

Nazdravlje.

~ M. Lucia

Gooches

Her daughter runs ahead and is immediately engulfed within the crowds of people silhouetted by firelight along the beach. There must be hundreds of people gathered at dusk for the show, sitting perched along the beach wall, naked feet, flip-flops clinging for life to sandy toes or dropped, discarded below them in the sand. Others are gathered in chairs and blankets along the beach in gaggles of tan and ruddy exuberance. Children of all ages are running everywhere; shadowy figures squealing and darting to and fro, many run recklessly with sparklers to illuminate their way.  She knows without having to look that her husband is nervous about someone losing an eye or combusting into flames.

The excitement is palpable and she detects and appreciates the sulfurous clouds of smoke from the sparklers reflecting the firelight and the atmosphere it adds to the beauty of the beach at night. There is just enough of a cool wind to keep the state birds at bay and she spies a good spot just big enough to lay out their spread and sit and wait for the fireworks. She scans the crowds to try and pinpoint where Frida has gone—pushing hair from her face she assesses the outlines of all of the small dancing shapes and zeros in on one dancing along the perimeter of a group of older girls—enjoying herself while looking to the elders to inform her of what is next on the horizon.  She hopes that her daughter is not feeling like an outcast. She is so adorable in her blossoming young body and her feral beach hair. Please don’t let her get hurt by anyone. Ever.

She waves and Frida nods with a tilt of the head but chooses not to wave back; she is enforcing her independence but still being polite and acknowledging her. Pointing to their blanket, she turns and sits down and starts unpacking; wine, sparklers, sweatshirts. She slips off her flip-flops and pulls on an overly large sweatshirt and settles into the evening.

'She needs bug spray. She is going to be eaten alive.' He is stressed already. Please relax and sit down. In an attempt to appear placating she assures him that she’ll administer a healthy dose of pesticide once Frida returns. Please relax. Beach. Wine. Smile. She pantomimes a smile, in case he has forgotten the mechanics behind the process.

Looking up the beach she follows the dark stretch of land jutting out to a point where it meets the glistening inkblot of the sea, the jetty extending out from the dunes, clogged with wild roses and ocean detritus; driftwood, broken lobster traps, seaweed dried into clots of fermented stink drape the rocks. Small pinpoints of light from houses across the port blink like fireflies trapped in a jar. She smiles.

This place, this beach is a crossroads of sorts for her. It occupies a crucial place in her memories, like a temporal gathering place; a church, where all ages of her self reconnect, remind and inform. Turning back to watch her daughter frolicking she can almost see a shadow of herself there too, scampering around and dancing right behind her daughter, her childhood folding forward to overlap the present, two generations and multiple times meeting at one point; this beach.

She had her first sexual experience right over there, in those dunes. He was older and more experienced, one of many tan and athletic sons from a wealthy family from down Bayberry street. He will forever be nameless and remembered as something of a dullard, but the dunes will always house the spirits of the clumsy figures, intertwined. He had coached her and she had acquiesced, feeling the excitement but also keenly aware that he was nothing but an item on a list in the process of being crossed off. The sandy groping and grappling had been a new and heady introduction to the beach; from child to teen in one night; she could now look at the wild and familiar landscape through different eyes.

'I’m going to go find her.' She is right there. 'I don’t want her getting lost.' What about you? Here. Take these sparklers. 'Ha-ha.'

Checking her watch and then the sky—still a ways to go. There is something about the light that triggers another memory—or a feeling of a memory. Of evenings hanging out around the bugzapper with the other kids, bikes abandoned against trees, hoods up and listening to REO Speedwagon on the transistor tied to a tree branch. The light cast from the small fire danced warm on knowing faces intermittently flashed with a terse ZAP of blue white light, the moths circling helplessly above the flames, beautifully trapped in an inevitable swirl of smoke and light, helpless to prevent extinguishment and locked in an atmospheric beauty and her face, upturned, couldn’t help but think it was the most beautiful thing she had ever witnessed.

Again folding forward there were fireworks that summer, too; a hug from behind and a box produced with a ring. She had known, could see the box jutting out from the back of his sweatshirt, wedged down into the back of his shorts. Not wanting to spoil the secret and the wonderful tension she had feigned surprise and yet still was surprised. Right over there.

Sipping her wine she sees Dominik leaning over Frida, his body still and serious as he helps his jittery daughter light a sparkler. When it sparks she begins moving fast, like electrons bouncing around inside an atom—atomic! —while he stands close, anchoring her to reality. He is a really good father. Their daughter will teach him to be even better.

Looking past them she sees two figures walking side by side down along the water. It is low tide and they are far away. They walk silently, equidistant and parallel at all times. They are both barefoot, her legs are bare and she allows the water to run up and soak the edge of her skirt. Squinting, she sees that they are both holding something in front of them; if they speak she cannot see their mouths moving. Watching, she feels a tugging, a pulling sensation, of needing to be closer to them, or to be a part of them. She rises to walk slowly down towards the water, hesitant to be so voyeuristic but unable to stem the overwhelming sense that this couple is familiar, familial.

As she draws nearer she slows down her pace, pretends to wet her feet as she wraps her arms around herself. It is dark now but the two seem to not be effected. They have stopped walking and turn to face each other, at arms length their feet sink firmly into the wet sand, planted together and rooted to the beach.

The girl is shuffling through cards, seeming to read each one as she reorganizes them in her hands. Without pause she sees that this girl is she. Younger, less encumbered; Dominik has hair and his face is open, unlined and looks infinitely approachable. Swiftly turning her gaze back up the beach she confirms placement of her husband and daughter, still playing their parts and dancing their dance.

The couple solemnly looks at each other and without prompting he takes a card from the pile he is holding and hands her one. She bends her neck to read what is written there.

I’m sorry that I took you for granted.

The girl cocks her head sideways, assessing him. Her face is neutral. He looks young and uncomplicated—her heart expands fractionally at this poignant memory of a person she has misplaced.

The girl takes a card from the top of her pile and hands it to him.

I apologize for being selfish.

He allows only a second to pass before he hands her the next card—they are allowing less reaction time now, only holding the silent conversation and telling each other what needs to be said.

I wish I had tried harder to understand you.

And in return—

Thank you for all of the little things I didn’t pay attention to.

And—

Thank you for trying.

I should have hugged you when you were grieving but I didn’t know how.

I shouldn’t have had so many expectations.

I should have lived up to your expectations.

I wish I had been more honest with you.

I wish you had been more honest with yourself.

She stood watching the couple in the perpetual conversation; locked in the seemingly endless reconciliation. She cried for them, and for herself and her family, at what they had lost and she wished that this young couple could reach out and gather them all into this moment where they could all silently emote and converse and emerge whole and themselves again.

Running back up the beach, she flops down onto the blanket and dries her yes. Dominik appears before her and sits next to her, planting a small kiss on her cheek while Frida runs, jumps and lands heavily in a lap growing too small for her. She fills the void.

The thunderous clamor of the fireworks begins followed by the sublime echo—birds screech off into the night for safety. The crowd collectively oooh and ahhs and she cranes her neck, looking up into the bright projections of light and the swirls of sulfurous clouds descending, as bits and pieces of paper flit and fly like moths, swept up in a current of memory, ash and hope. Hugging her daughter, feeling for her husband's hand, she can’t help but think it is the most beautiful thing she has ever witnessed.