Author Archive
I was out of breath from biking, but more dizzy than anything. The bacon and latkes for breakfast felt as if they were sliding into my legs. Alex and I were late, and I tripped over the projector cord trying to squeeze into an aisle seat.
I looked around the room, feeling intimidated by the large group. It was mostly women and teenagers, aside from the serious metal head to my right. I stared at him, wondering what his dog was like. This guy must have a dog. He also had a neck tattoo and long ratted hair. I spaced out on his shirt for a moment and then forced myself to focus on what was being said.
Five hours later, Jerry was leading my group through the inner halls of the Dog Pods. He kept repeating himself and I was agitated. He showed us how to clean out the kennels and scoop the mess into a giant flushing hole. He spoke of the proper way to get a dog out of their kennel and leash them, and the danger of not latching gates behind us. As we walked I spotted Kimmy. I remembered her from the website as one of The Great Eight; the eight dogs at OHS that have been there the longest.
She was lovely. One blue eye, one brown, sweet faced and complete with a bright scarf knotted around her neck. There were notes written by her caretakers tacked to the front of her pen, all stating how amazing she was. I drew closer and peered over the gate. She was calm and held my gaze. Her eyes were peaceful and they searched mine, seemingly asking me why she was there and if she had a chance. A lump welled in my throat, and we sat like that for a few minutes studying each other. I imagined what her life was like before she got there. I wondered how she could still be up for adoption since June, and what her previous owner had said to her upon giving her up. Did they apologize? Did they pat her head and tell her she would be better off? Or did they simply tire of her?
Kimmy contemplated me for a bit longer, all the while her expression hopeful. I didn’t need Jerry anymore to remind me why I was there.
Today when I wrote this I went to OHS’ website to find her on the adoption page but she is gone. It’s my turn to be hopeful.
You have made it through my darkest hour more than once. Sit at your desk still drunk from the night before, look down at your hands and turn them face up and stare at the lines that tell a story you don’t know how to read. Place your forehead in those palms and use your brain to break down the next eight hours into the smallest possible fractures of time so they won’t seem so drawn out.
Forget about the woman that cut you off twice this morning on the way to work and how fiercely you gritted your teeth and considered, for longer than you’d like to admit, considered stomping the gas and ramming the shit out of her tiny car. You will shake it off. You feel guilty now for the hatred and you are surprised by how it boiled up inside of you so quickly, but you allow yourself that feeling.
You want the afternoon to arrive when everyone else will leave except Randle down the hall, and the two of you will watch Youtube videos and drink cherry cola and put your arms behind your heads in relaxing poses.
Randle will stretch his bum leg and talk about what the tides will be like on his fishing trip tomorrow. He will ask you when the last time you went fishing was, and you will reply the same you always do because the answer hasn’t changed since 1999. You will pretend not to notice the hole in his sweatpants because your outfit has a hole in it too, and it is, after all, Friday.
But the afternoon is still two hours away, so for now write a list for the coming months. Eat less hot sauce, order Colorado Bulldogs, stretch when you are lying down and remember to be kind. When the list is finished you will fold it in half and place it deep in your wallet, knowing the best part of forgetting it will be finding it again.
Then you decide to write some more, only this time you type the words on the screen and let them fall from your finger tips without care knowing spell check is polishing each one. The first words come together to form a sentence that reads: You have made it through my darkest hour more than once.
Alex and I trudged through Farragut Park, past a baseball game and across the bridge covering the train yard. To our left the late afternoon sky swirled with breaks of blue and a large cluster of charcoal colored clouds. It was moving. Not the sky, but the mass of weather, in an autumn manner.
The Columbian Cemetery lies tucked beside a giant warehouse, practically unseen beneath a canopy of elderly trees. The first time we ventured there, it was nearing the witching hour on a chilly November night. On that visit we opted to drive, rolling up slowly to unknown territory. The only sound to be heard was the crunching of our tires across the dead foliage, even though an I-5 overpass lines the west side of the graveyard.The fog curling in front of the headlights made me nervous.
“Whoa…this place is scarier than I was expecting,” I said quietly. We spent a few moments trying to focus our eyes on what could be waiting further in the dark. At least that’s what I was doing. Then we stepped out of the car and I undressed quickly. We had hoped to snap some creepy pictures of me naked, wearing a bird mask Alex had made, but once onsite I think we were both too spooked to focus on aesthetics. The whole twenty minutes we were there, I felt as if something was watching us, lurking on the edge between darkness and light.
I smiled to myself as we walked now; sure this two mile jaunt would be much less unnerving. As we rounded the corner from Vancouver onto Columbia, traffic roared by and horns honked. We joked about how we must have looked: two misplaced girls plodding a path on an otherwise pedestrian free road. The further we got the more uneasy I began to feel, recognizing the same sensation in my gut from our previous trek. I blamed it on the greasy factory workers leering out their windows and the distinct odor of welded metal.
Our destination certainly looked different in the daylight. Garbage lined the cast iron fencing at the entrance, and one of the massive trees had crashed to the ground destroying a few more with it. The grass was taller than before, and seemingly grabbed for our feet as we wandered. Dusk was arriving quickly and inside the wooded area was darker than desirable. We meandered to the back of the plots, making small talk to ignore the now very constant feeling of otherworldly presence.
“Man, this is just as scary as I remember,” I finally admitted. The look on Alex’s face said she couldn’t have agreed more. Toward the very back corner I noticed a strange square of shrubs, all trimmed and growing together in tight rows. I started to walk toward the patch and then saw a blanket, and remnants of occupancy. Alex squealed and my heart pounded in my chest. “Let’s get out of here,” she proposed, already heading back toward the front gate. I tried to be peaceful in thought and reassure myself we were alone. We read a few headstones aloud and the dates etched in stone. All in all I think we only spent twenty minutes there, just like our last visit.
As we retraced our steps back to my house, the uncomfortable pit in my stomach slowly subsided. We paused at the bridge overlooking the trains to admire the view. Alex pointed out the excitement of visiting a cemetery and the rush of adrenaline from fear, which is clearly why we are both intrigued by these places that house the dead. I like to think a graveyard provides the doorway for those who’ve passed on, to continue their journey, or not. In any case, the Columbian Cemetery is still the creepiest one I’ve set foot in.
How you are doing can go downhill pretty quickly. Finding myself newly single, I took a day off work figuring my boss would rather I stay home than drench my desk in tears. While I was away, the cunt that sits directly across from me tried very hard to get me in trouble. Or fired? Who knows. Who fucking cares. Thankfully everyone in the office is fully aware that she’s a lunatic, and that work drama is the last thing I need in my current situation.
Saturday night I panicked. It was 3:30 am, I was absolutely plastered, and I could not find my cat anywhere. I stood barefoot in the street calling her name repeatedly, straining my ears in hope for the jingle of her collar. My fantastic ability to worry set in and I began to imagine an assortment of horrible events that had occurred. Of course she was torn in two by those pit bulls that had been seen scouring the neighborhood. Either that or she had been bitten by a raccoon and had crawled into the bushes to gasp her last kitty breath. Or she had gotten ran over by some other drunken asshole. But most likely, a neighbor had noticed she wasn’t just your run of the mill cat and had catnapped her for himself. Now she was certainly trapped in their house, doomed to live out the rest of her years wondering why I abandoned her for the bottle. I was positive I had lost my best friend and that bad things do come in threes. Come to find out, that little shrimp was actually sawing logs in the basement, oblivious to the meltdown taking place outside.
Today came around. I had quite a large hangover on my plate, but the morning was scooting along alright. While I was waiting to pick up lunch, I got a wild hair to call my dad about a financial matter since those are the only matters that matter enough for us to interact. I had forgotten that my sister moved in with them, as per my dad’s only email of the year stating so. She answered. The two minute conversation that followed ranks with the worst I’ve had, and definitely didn’t help the five years it’d been since we last spoke. I hung up and considered barfing. Instead I walked the two blocks back to work in a daze, only to get a phone call from the one person I would have dialed immediately if it were last week and not this one. Losing seems to be the only thing that sticks around.
A Clearing in the Woods
by Thomas P. Lynch
You have come into a clearing in the woods
and want to live your life out, here, alone,
joyous and remote among the catbirds
letting the light fall on you and the shade
in hourly changing angles as a grace
endlessly descending among tree limbs
while growing in you is the will to grow
mindless of the niggling everyday
profusion of detail by which you know
uselessly the names and dates and shape of things.
After a while, you will begin to sing.
Harmless and plentiful you make the sounds.
Bent on nothing that does not bend with ease
you and your song rise in the leafy air
chancy as bass spawn in a mallard’s underwings.
We lay on the sand, three bodies facing west. The only light came from the moon above the sea and the bonfire in the distance behind us. I hadn’t worn shoes in two days and my feet had grown numb to the cold. I could barely make out the ocean or its waves rolling forward.
The mushrooms made me nervous. I thought the water was considering taking us with it. That morning I had finally noticed how the left and right edges of the cove arched into the ocean to form the shape of a dragon’s head and tail. We were nestled against her mountainous side and I imagined her giant sleeping belly rising and falling with each breath.
There had been a curious sea lion earlier in the day watching us from the bay. He would poke his shiny head up out of the waves and stare for a moment before disappearing into a crest. I hoped he was still out there watching us; taking breaks to snatch mussels from the tide pools.
My companions’ conversation drifted to the faces they could find in everything around us. They spotted a Japanese soldier in the sand and a chubby woman’s face curling into the foam. I told them I used to find faces in the ceiling of my bedroom as a child. We all agreed face finding was a sign of a healthy imagination. Then we sat silent as if we had spoken enough words to fill the night sky. It was an extraordinary feeling for three bodies facing west.
I am going to preface this dream sequence I had last night because it’s one of the scariest I can remember. Lately my vivid dreams have made a comeback, keeping me from actually getting any good rest. I apologize for any detail that may gross you out. I have never been one to keep details to myself.
My Jeep is half dog, half jeep. His name is Jupiter and he is looking at Melissa and I, wagging his tail, brimming with excitement. We decide to ride him to a gravel road by the entrance to the freeway. Jupiter switches back and forth from giant Malamute to 4×4 on the ride there and then speeds up as we go over dirt mounds and mud puddles. We are having a blast.
I wake up in my childhood bedroom. The chalk drawings are still scrawled across the fake wood paneling from my years of pretending to be a teacher. I feel funny like something isn’t right. I really have to pee. I go to the bathroom, and as I situate myself I realize something is terribly wrong. My vagina has been sewn shut. I look down at my stomach and see a large incision 5 inches in length starting at my belly button that has been sewn shut also. I feel sick to my stomach. I glance in the mirror and see that my eyes have incisions on either edge also. I quickly look away knowing my reflection is too frightening to handle.
I can hear voices down the hall and a TV blaring. I search for something sharp in the bathroom drawers and find a box knife and a book of matches. I burn the tip of the box knife to kill any germs and then try to cut myself open. I am dizzy with nausea and disbelief, but somehow instinct has taken over. I stop. Is my stomach moving? Or is it just my imagination? The overwhelming sickness is making my hands and legs shake and I begin to give into the fear.
I think if only I can get to a hospital they will be able to correct all of this. I scramble back to my room and see my cell phone sitting on the dresser. The 911 operator has the most soothing voice. She speaks gently, asking where I am and if I can get to a safe location. I promise her I’ll try. I do not provide details of my condition, only that I need an ambulance.
I sneak down the hallway to the backdoor, knowing that if I make it outside I will be ok. I see a woman in the living room talking on the phone in front of the noisy television set. She is black with purple lips. She looks like she has been dead before. Our eyes meet and she is surprised at first, and then lunges for me. I make it outside to my car, which is a bright blue two door Sprint hatchback that my parents had when I was a kid. I am still on the phone with the 911 operator and she assures me I will be safe once I make it home.
I woke up at two completely terrified, suffocating from the heat. I ran outside to the front porch where Monday was lounging. The night air was cool and I let myself breathe, my mind still racing from that nasty dream. When I looked up at the sky there was one huge bright star directly above me. At first I thought it was a plane, but it did not move and neither did I. I stared at it for a while until I felt normal again.
After a minor freak out at work this morning, it was all I could do to not tell everyone to fuck off and walk out the door forever. Instead I walked around the block and called my boyfriend. “These people aren’t your family,” he said. These people are not my family. I absolutely needed to hear that.
I have such high expectations of every person I come into contact with. You’d think by now I would be used to selfish disrespectful assholes but it never ceases to blow me away. Maybe I just forget. Even though we spend ten hours a day together, they don’t owe me a thing. They are not my family.
When I got home Monday was doing her stretches on the front porch wearing the knit poncho I picked up in Carson City. She yawned at me. I asked her what she’d been up to but she didn’t feel like talking. I didn’t care that much anyway.
The sun dipped low in the west and I gazed at the feathers dangling from the overhang. They danced and twisted around each other in the light so delicately it was mesmerizing. Monday followed my stare and watched with me, falling into the same peaceful reverence. We sat like this until dusk arrived.
“I want to show you something!” Monday finally said. Her tail was gently tapping the ground beside her and I grabbed at it. “Don’t. I’m serious. I’ve been PRACTICING.” she placed a lot of emphasis on the last syllable. I shrugged. “Show me then.” We were always very good at indifference.
Monday drew in a deep breath and began to concentrate. This in itself captured my attention, as she was never one to focus particularly well. As I watched she placed her front paws on the edge of the hand rail and gently pulled herself forward. She was squatting much like a kangaroo and I laughed at her furry rear end until she slowly rose on her back legs. From there she carefully stepped forward, one paw in front of the other. “What are you…,” I trailed off. My cat was walking on two legs.
She grinned at me deliberately, her front teeth peeking out from her little black lips. Then she strutted in a circle, down the stairs and into the lawn. ”You’re blowing my mind,” I murmured. Monday pointed at me with her left paw. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this,” wagging a claw. “Meow sing a song or something would you? I’ve got moves.” I thought for a minute. “Uhh like what?” Monday was swishing her tail side to side and shimmying her shoulders. She motioned at me to hurry it up.
“Hey pretty baby with the high heels on, you’re just a product of loveliness….. I like the feelin you’re givin me, just hold me baby and I’m in ecstasy,” I began hesitantly.
She started pumping her paws in the air and bouncing in the grass shouting, “Yeah! Oh yeah!” Monday danced this way all through the yard clapping her paws and air pumping as I sang, our silhouettes illuminated against the hazy backdrop of the night.
“The way you make me fee-el, the way you make me feel,
you really turn me on, you really turn me on,
you knock me off of my feet, you knock me off of my feet,
my lonely days are gone, my lonely days are gone.”
How I left the ministry – The Extra Glenns
There is one thing I found I couldn’t help thinking
As they pried me free with the Jaws of Life
None of this disaster would ever have happened
If I had not been driving my neighbors wife
To the Alta Loma Days Inn
Where I’d registered us as a couple with a name
I’m sure some other couple somewhere has
And the last thing I saw before falling unconscious
Was your right hand tracing a heart on my thigh
And I thought my God what an infantile gesture
and I thought my God what an indescribable high
The autumn air was sweeter than a slice of wedding cake
As I overshot the exit and I tried and failed to find the brake
