Standing in the Garden

(Lights come up on a junkyard. A four door car sits CR. The front end of the car tilts awkwardly downstage, sitting on the frame. The door is hanging open on its hinges. MOLLY is sitting in the car, slumped over the steering wheel, asleep. The missing wheel is laying DC, part of the broken axle still jutting from it awkwardly. KATE enters from SR.)

Kate
(Curt and determined.)
Of all days to have to come down here . . . . Come on, Molly.
(Shakes Molly.)
Molly, wake up. I’m taking you home.

Molly
Wha’? What are you doing here?

Kate
I’m here to take you home Molly.

Molly
Can’t go home.
(Reaches for ignition. Keys aren’t there)

Kate
I know, Charlie told me. That’s why I’m here Kate, to drive you home.

Molly
Charlie? Who the fuck is Charlie?

Kate
The guy that owns the junkyard—he goes to our church, Molly.

Molly
Can’t leave the car here.

Kate
It’s been taken care of Molly. Charlie said Dad can come by later and clean out the car. He won’t scrap it till Dad has a chance to come down here.

Molly
(Anxious.)
Did you call John?

Kate
(Pause.)
No. Dad’s working. That’s why Charlie called me. Come on. My car is parked up by the gate.
Molly
(Presses her forehead against the steering wheel. Awkward silence.)
Why are you here Kate?

Kate
(Looks at her watch.)
Oh for the love of . . .
(Opens the back door of Molly’s car, grabs her purse and slams the door.)
Molly, let’s GO!

Molly
Whatcha doin’ with my bag?

Kate
(Gratingly.)
I am carrying it for you. Now get out of the car so we can go home.

Molly
I don’t wanna leave the car.

Kate
Frankly, I don’t care what it is that you would like to do.

Molly
Who you think your talkin’ to?

Kate
You, Molly. You. Please, can we go now?
(Molly starts digging through the backseat.)
What are you looking for?

Molly
(Ignores Kate.)

Kate
I’ve got your bag right here, Molly. I have your things. Let’s go!

Molly
Jus’ . . . jus’ wait a minute.

Kate
What are you doing?

Molly
Nothin’. Not . . . I’m not doin’ anything. Where’s my bag?

Kate
I’ve GOT your bag right here.

Molly
Give it t’ me.
(Kate hesitates a moment then dumps the contents of the bag onto the hood of the car).
Wha’ . . . what’re ya doin’?!

Kate
(Holds up a prescription bottle and reads it.)
Fuck, Molly. You know, I had hoped that maybe . . . just maybe I might be wrong this time. Just once I’d like to be wrong about you . . . about this. But God forbid you keep your shit together for a change.

Molly
Fuck you.

Kate
How long do you think my father is going to put up with your stupidity? How far did you have to drive to get this one? Albany? Newark? Trenton? How many doctors and pharmacies does Dad have to call and warn about you? How do you expect us to help you if you keep circumventing everything we’re trying to do?

Molly
Oh yeah. You gonna help me? How’re you gonna help me? You don’t know a fuckin’ thing about me! So how d’ya plan on helpin’ me?

Kate
(Starts digging through briefcase and pulls out a cell phone.)
You know what? Dad can deal with this. He’s the one that decided to marry you, not me.

Molly
No! Wait! You’re right. Don’t have to call John! You’re right.

Kate
Whatever.
(Tosses her cell phone back in her briefcase and starts putting Molly’s things back in her purse.)

Molly
Kate . . . Katie sweetie. Maybe . . . maybe you could drop me off at the hospital instead. My . . . my back is hurting. I think it’s from the accident.


Kate
Why didn’t you have Charlie call an ambulance?

Molly
I . . . look. Maybe just give me a Vicodin. Just one. You hold onto the rest.

Kate
(Looks at the pill bottle in her hand. Turns around and throws it off SL.)

Molly
Fuck! Goddamn you! I need those!
(Tries to climb out of the car but stumbles into the mud.)

Kate
(Sarcastically.)
Right. Those are EXACTLY what you need. Get up. You’re going home.

Molly
Oh that’s right. You think you know what I need an’ what I don’t. You think you know everything. You and your shiny diploma and your perfect hair and your perfect job in your perfect fuckin’ world. Everyone thinks you’re so goddamn perfect! God I hate you.
(Tries to stand up and fails.)

Kate
Well at least that’s something we’re both agreed on.
(Starts dialing her cell phone.)

Molly
Sure. Go ahead. Run and tell “daddy” how much of a fuck up I am. Tell him I ran my car into a ditch cuz I was high . . .

Kate
Molly, it’s pretty damn obvious here why you wrecked your car!

Molly
(Laugh)
God . . . you just stand there lookin’ down your nose at me. In your pretty little white suit and your high heels. You say you wanna help me, but you can’t even be bothered to help me up. Might get some mud on yourself.
(Tosses mud at Kate.)

Kate
Oh my god! I can’t believe you did that!
(Grabs tissues out of her briefcase and wipes feverishly at her suit.)

Molly
What’s the big deal, Katie? Who’s gonna recognize ya in here? Charlie?

Kate
This is a two hundred dollar suit!

Molly
Bet it matches your fancy car.

Kate
Look, I worked hard to get where I am and have what I have! I moved ten hours away from all my friends and my mom to go to Yale. I gave up everything and everyone I loved . . . worked 50 hours a week to pay for law school because nobody couldn help me. And now, I work 70 hours a week at the office to afford my “fancy car”. So do NOT turn this on me. It is not my fault that after 45 years you haven’t figured out how to cope with life. You just run and hide in your own little drug induced fantasies!

Molly
Right. Cuz I’m the only one that runs away! You. Pretendin’ you gave up so much. You run away just like everybody else.

Kate
(Nervously.)
What are you talking about?

Molly
Why Yale, Kate? If it was so far away?

Kate
What in the world are you talking about? Yale is one of the best schools . . .

Molly
Did any of your friends go there?

Kate
No, but . . .

Molly
And what about your mom? When was the last time you talked to her?


Kate
What are you getting at?


Molly
What are you hiding Kate?

Kate
Nothing. I have nothing to hide. I have a degree from a great school, a fantastic job . . .

Molly
How about your girlfriend?

Kate
What?

Molly
What’s her name? Amy isn’t it? You guys spend a lot of time together at L'Aubergine . . .

Kate
Amy is just a coworker. She’s a paralegal in my firm. Occasionally we decide to work over dinner rather than confined in the office . . . .

Molly
Is part of the job description to hold hands?

Kate
What are you doing? Following me around?

Molly
Let’s just say I heard it from a friend. Not everyone that goes to Narcotics Anonymous is broke. Some of them even have fancy cars like yours.

Kate
Who do you think you are to pass judgment on me?

Molly
Judgment? No. Damn, I don’t care who you fuck.

Kate
So what is this? Blackmail? Some sort of playground game? You won’t tell on me if I don’t tell on you?

Molly
No. I think you should tell.

Kate
On you?
Molly
Fuck no. On yourself.

Kate
And how am I supposed to do that? Should I call my mom first and tell her that she isn’t going to be having any grandkids but that’s okay because she will have wonderful daughter-in-law instead? Or should I take my dad out to brunch this Sunday after church and break the news to him first? “Hi dad. I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be going to heaven because I’m a carpet muncher.” Look. I’ve worked hard to keep it from them for this long. I’ve given up a lot for my privacy.

Molly
Even your relationship with your Dad.

Kate
(Pause.)
Dad and I get along fine. There’s no point in causing issues if they aren’t there.

Molly
And with your Mom . . .

Kate
You don’t even know my mom . . .

Molly
And your friends . . .

Kate
We were all leaving to go to college soon so there was a good chance I was going to lose them anyways. I just didn’t want to be the one left behind so I made sure I left first. What does it matter anyway? I have Amy . . .

Molly
And what does she think about the fact you throw away anyone that tries to love you?

Kate
I do not. And we don’t talk about my family. I don’t want to and Amy respects that.

Molly
So you’ve pushed her away, too, then.



Kate
What do you care anyways! Since when did you start giving a damn about me, Molly? When I got a hold of your stash?

Molly
Your dad loves you, Kate. I didn’t have that. My mom was drunk all the time . . . at first. Then her liver started to die. So instead she started poppin’ pills. I preferred that. Usually she’d just pass out somewhere and sleep for hours. At least then there was some peace in the house. My dad was too busy avoiding us and pretending everything was normal. They didn’t even notice when I started raiding the liquor cabinet or swiping Mom’s percocet. Not even sure why I did it really. Maybe I hoped I’d get caught and they’d have to pay attention to me. But I kept doing it. Pop a few pills . . . wash it down with a half a bottle of Grey Goose. I finally understood why she did it. That sleep . . . for hours everything just went away.

Kate
Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? “Poor Molly. Mommy and Daddy didn’t love her so she became a drug addict.”

Molly
Fuck no. All I’m saying is John is a good man Kate. He loves you. Don’t throw that away. You’re not like me.

Kate
(Pause.)
Look. Let’s just go home. You’ll feel better after you sober up.

Molly
Don’t you get it Kate! I don’t have a home anymore! We’re done. You don’t owe me anything. He kicked me out Kate. Said he couldn’t watch me kill myself anymore . . . that he loved me too much. And what did I do? Told him to go and fuck himself.

Kate
I . . . oh Christ.
(Leans against the car. Silence.)

Molly
This car is all I’ve got. Everything I own is tucked in that trunk . . . thousands of dollars in medical bills. Empty check books . . . I opened a separate account just to get a hold of a blank check book . . . so your father wouldn’t know. And they’re gone. All bad checks. And I wouldn’t care if I could just forget the look in John’s eyes. But I can’t! Every time I want to pop another pill I see his face—that accusing look in his eyes . . . and I just want to go to sleep and make everything go away so I down the pill . . . and another and another. But then I wake up and I see his face again . . .

Kate
Stop! Just . . . just stop for a minute.
(Silence.)
Look. We’ll get it straightened out. I’ll have Amy write out the paperwork. You relinquish everything to Dad . . . the house . . . the car . . . everything! Then you file for bankruptcy. That will eradicate the debt. We’ll get you into a detox then a rehab . . .

Molly
How the hell am I gonna pay for rehab?

Kate
(Pause.)
I’ll pay for it.

Molly
No.

Kate
What do you mean “no” . . .

Molly
You don’t owe me anything and I’m not taking charity.

Kate
It’s not charaity! You’re right! You’re not my stepmom anymore. In my mind you never really were. You were just my father’s wife. But Christ! I still don’t want to see you laid out in a ditch somewhere!

Molly
(Stands up.)
Look. I don’t want your pity. I don’t want your sympathy. I don’t want shit from you.

Kate
You think I’m doing this for you? You accuse me of pushing him away, but I love my father. And he loves you Molly. God only knows why. I’ve been trying to figure out why for years now. At first I thought it was because you were so unlike my mother, but that isn’t it. I see the way he looks at you Molly. You see disapproval, but I see pain. I think he thought he could save you . . . the real you. The one you’re trying to kill with all these fucking pills. The one who laughs at his corny jokes and doesn’t care how bald or how out of shape he gets. The one who drags him hiking through the mountains to pick blueberries. The one who dances at church like she’s at a Grateful Dead concert. And if you can’t see that then maybe you don’t deserve to have him!

Molly
Get away from me!

Kate
You say dad loves me . . . as if I didn’t know that? I can see it. You tell me I shouldn’t push him away, but what’s the worst that could happen? I’ll lose him but he’ll still love me. If he were ever to see the real me . . . I don’t want him to stop loving me because of who I really am! Because of something I can’t change! But you . . . you’re not really this thing you become when you start using. And instead of trying to clean up and face who you really are you run away. Why won’t you just try? There are ways to get around this! But you can’t if you try and do it by yourself . . .

Molly
You gonna take me through the twelve steps? Don’t give me any of that crap. You don’t have a fucking clue. It’s like the fucking devils is curled up inside you whispering shit in your head!

Kate
Well how am I supposed to know if you don’t tell anyone!

Molly
Christ! You see the way I am! What’s the point? You and your dad . . . you feel things! Me . . . I don’t want to feel things! You want me to face who I really am? I’m dead inside Kate! You want me to face that!

Kate
What choice do you have?

Molly
No choice.
(Pause.)
You have no idea Kate. Everyday it’s like being Eve standing in the Garden staring at that damn apple. And there’s that voice whispering at you. But Eve . . . she took a bite and it was over. Even if it was the wrong choice she made it and it was over. For me . . . fuck. There’s a whole fucking orchard . . . .

Kate
And you just keep falling and falling.

Molly
Heh. Yeah. Something like that.

(Silence.)

Kate
So you’re just gonna run away again?

Molly
Sometimes it looks like you’re running away. Eve could have run away . . . turned her back on that apple and just walked. Your dad made a choice. He’s walking too. It’s so easy to pick that apple Katie. To run away. I suggest you stop running and start walking.

Kate
Come home. We’ll talk with Dad . . . figure things out.

Molly
Your Dad can’t save me Kate. Neither can you.
(Holds out a hand for her bag.)

Kate
Where are you going to go?

Molly
(Looks toward SL.)
To stare down the devil.

(Fade to black.)

Making Christmas

Written for a Christmas pageant at my church a few years back . . .


Making Christmas

When the Calendar page turns
and November smiles at me,
thoughts of Christmas dance
along the edges of my mind.
Everywhere I go,
people are making Christmas.

Perhaps the anticipation
of the impending chaos that is
the annual pageant,
or the tinsel and garland
that begin to flood the retail aisles
awake in me a giddiness for Christmas.

I try to remember where I stashed
last year’s decorations
and begin to plan
my escapades to the mall.
My brain begins its planning long before
the Thanksgiving turkey is carved.

The advent candles
ignite a desperation in me . . .
a sadness and a joy
that mingle in their holiday dance.
The emptiness and the fullness of my heart
are the fuel for making Christmas.

The closer we get to Christmas day,
the faster the wheels of time spin us round.
Shopping, baking, rehearsing,
decorating, visiting, blinking lights,
Christmas cards, Christmas trees,
wrapping paper and candy canes . . .

But in all this something is missing.
That emptiness in my heart lingers,
and the torment of it urges me to pay attention.
We try to fill the spaces by filling our days
with Christmas songs and parties,
but we are never really satisfied . . .

Until that starry night when snow blankets the earth,
and we climb out of our cars and file into the church,
the lights of the tree finally drowned out by the advent fire.
We no longer notice the space under the tree,
but our eyes are drawn to the emptiness of the manger,
and Peace floods our hearts.

Twinkling stars and angels songs . . .
shepherds and sleeping babies . . .
Then you close your eyes and realize
that when no one was watching
Jesus came in
and made it Christmas in your heart.

A Buddhist Walks into a Bathroom

“. . . his wife is waiting outside.”

I wander towards them as they fidget in conversation. Closing time. The night had been slow and they had already gone through the store several times, touching books here and there to keep them on the straight and narrow path. The last hour of the night—the hour after the doors have been locked—belongs to us, the booksellers.

We move through the store like a wave, returning order to the dishelved. We gather up the displaced and return them to their homes, never asking what pilgrimage they had embarked upon, nor whether they had reached Mecca. For the most part, it is simply a cleansing, an exorcism of the chaos that had descended upon us that day. It’s a futile cycle. Come morning the droves will return, the other books will set out again in the hands of the reader, and tomorrow night we shall again sanctify the store in our detracted way. It almost seems sacrilegious. We hold these treasures in our hands every day, but within this sanctuary we are not allowed to worship them. We, too, take them on pilgrimage, carrying them from place to place, but our longing to delve into their deep mysteries must be postponed. We are simply altar bearers.

“She’s not his wife; they can’t marry, can they?” He didn’t mean to sound condescending, but the nasally twinge to his voice gave it an edge of agitation.

“Who can’t marry?” I ask, wandering out from behind the registers.

The boys look at me. It was Kevin who spoke up. “So, there’s a Buddhist monk in the bathroom taking a dump.”

I stare at him silently for a moment.

Then I consider pointing out that the religion books are near the restrooms. I ponder the potential significance of that floor plan. I decide to keep my opinion to myself.

“Well,” chimes in Brian, “whoever she is, she’s waiting for him right outside.”
I glance through the dark store front windows at the short woman standing alongside the curb. Her dark hair is cropped short to her head. She has a round face with prominent cheekbones, and her cheeks are like apples--round and red--giving the impression of a perpetual smile. The crow’s feet gracing the corners of her slanted, almond eyes only enhance this impression.

Kevin looks towards the ceiling, slightly rolling his eyes. “Well, she can’t be his wife.”

I look away from the tiny woman outside. “So she’s his Yoko Ono . . .”

“That’s racist.” Kevin looks at me over the tops of his dark, retro-style glasses and smirks . I don’t think he believes that.

I laugh nervously because maybe he’s right.

I turn to begin straightening the mountain of Christmas cards on the table. They had been placed prominently by the door even though it was only mid October.

A streak of yellow flashes through my periphery, and I see a quiet ghost fluttering past the rows of book shelves on the other side of the store.

“There he goes!” I speak before thinking. I am momentarily embarrassed by my excitement at seeing the elusive monk. Brian sets off in the direction I had indicated. I stand sheepishly at the card table, not sure for a moment what to do with myself.

Brian returns, the monk trailing quietly behind him. “ . . . she’s just outside, your . . . friend. The woman you were with, I mean.” The monk smiles and nods his covered head. Kevin holds the door for the man as he flits out. Then he locks it.
Without a word the boys head off to finish the end of the night tasks.

Dear Misery

[I wrote this piece awhile back, but it was too raw--or maybe I was--at the time. I think it's time to publish it now.]

you whispered, "I don't love you anymore"
And suddenly the world grew silent
I toyed with the promise on my finger
thinking maybe you never did.
Seven years is a long time to forgive
when you suddenly don't know how to live

yet still, somehow, invisibility sinks in
I don't know how to tell them that I still love you
They think I'm crazy; if only they knew.
I just tell them that I'll try
but I've tried and I've tried
but all I can think is how you lied.

Dear Misery,
please let me go
There's a bottle in my hand and
through it I can see the void in my heart
Dear Misery,
I don't want to be alone
but I'm tired and I'm sore
and I'd give anything for you to go

Some days I just drive and drive
hoping somewhere I'll see a sign
leading me to the answers I can't find inside
It seems these days Washington's always on my mind
I'm stuck somewhere between here and there
the road looks so different when the map changes
So I'm just orbiting, orbiting . . .

I don't know where I'm going so I keep circling.
I'm chasing a ghost of you
like the sun chasing the moon
unable to see it's only a reflection of myself, that beauty in you
Maybe someday I'll be able to walk away
but not yet . . . I can't walk away yet

Dear Misery,
please don't let go
I'm feeling so empty now
I'm afraid of being alone.
Dear Misery
The bottle's almost empty now
And I'm tired and I'm sore
and I'd do anything just to go . . .

Remembering Heaven and Endless -- Part 2

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Part 2 – The Garden
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And yet it wasn’t Eden.

It was just a garden.

I wondered at my surroundings. Leafy canopies hung down in sweeping valances from branches whose wooden hue was lost in the Green, Jade, Hunter, and Emerald. Cobblestones clicked beneath my feet in resolute stubbornness, refusing to yield to the sprigs of grass growing between them. The whole garden was robed in Life. For all the greenery the place was full of Light. The place glowed and pulsed with a rhythm that try as I might, I could not master the pattern of. Though I tried. My heart matched its tempo, my feet danced to its beat . . . its meter fluttered my stomach, its tattoo tickled my flesh.

I laughed.

I couldn’t help myself. I laughed and then laughed for laughing. And then I sprinted forward, leaping into the air with a mighty, laughing cry of victory. The garden tinkled back at me, birds twittering, four legged furry bush tails creatures chattering from behind their peekaboo screens. The place was full of sound, a symphony, and it was the trees that were singing.

I continued forward, at times skipping, at times tiptoeing, at times hopping, at times racing backwards as fast as I could without falling flat on my back. My eyes were wide and alive, flitting this way and that, afraid to miss the fuschia of the blushing roses, or the cerulean of the lilies dangling like trapeze artists from the high wire of the trees above. As I moved deeper into the garden the stones beneath my feet grew lazy in their pattern, more splayed and less laid to plan. The wide spaces that grew up between them eventually because the path, the cobblestones nothing more than pebbles sprinkled like bread crumbs. Yet the path remained clear, the trees growing together, their arms intertwined like maidens in a country dance. I listened to the song of the daffodils growing and the rabbits nibbling, hoping to hear some clue as to the steps of their dance.

Instead I heard a plucking sound vibrating through the air. Chords echoed off the trees, reverberating through the warmth of the fragrant air, caressing the wakening buds peeking out from beneath the undergrowth. The song pulled at my hands, ushering my feet forward, stirring a shudder of joy in my stomach. I rushed forward, listening intently to the melody of Life stirring the garden to ecstasy, desperate to find the source of beauty. I ducked between the trees, finding myself falling into step with the waltz of the garden, weaving my own ribbon of color into the May festivities.

The trees fell away into a wide glen. The oaks and maples stood in attendance, creating an amphitheater open to the sky. A stream crept through the heart of the glen, and seated beside it was the source of the music. He was not tall, nor was he broad in the shoulders, but he was not slight either. Instead, his muscles seemed in perfect harmony with his modest height. He was dressed in the earth, the colors of his long tunic a mosaic of umber, sienna and russet. His feet were bare. Amber curls cascaded to his shoulders, a mess of twigs peeking out from beneath them. In his hands he held a wooden instrument that dwarfed him, though he was not small. His fingers danced across the strings stretched over its wide body. At first glance I thought it was a large guitar, but as I approached I realized that no guitar would ever possess so many strings. His eyes were closed, though his mouth was parted in song, his voice pouring from him with the richness of caramel or silk. I stopped short upon the sight of him, the beauty of his song stinging my eyes.

At the height of the melody he paused, the fermata pregnant and yearning forward. The vibrato of the strings travelled out into the garden, the air trembling with the pulse of it. He sat motionless, his hands poised over the strings as they fell still.

Every muscle in my body tensed, and shuddering I fell to my knees, my muscles no longer capable of supporting the aching in my soul.

No sound could have seeped from the springy turf that caught me. Perhaps he sensed the motion of my collapse, or perhaps, in the yawning silence left in the wake of his song he could hear my shuddering exhalation. He lowered his hands to his sides and opened his eyes. The light reflected off them, a glint of light breaking into a prism against them. He placed his instrument beside the stream and glided towards me, sinking to his own knees before me. I met his gaze. And then he smiled a grin that caused the universe to ripple with joy.

I laughed in joy. I laughed in sorrow. I laughed in complete absurdity. I laughed in revelation. I laughed release. I laughed at myself. I laughed at the opportunity of an instant to do nothing other than kneel in a garden, tears streaming down your face, laughing like a lunatic before a complete stranger that was more than human.

I sighed in contentment and then I spoke. “I do wish the song hadn’t ended.”

He stood. “It hasn’t ended.”

I too stood. “But you stopped playing.”

He took my hands and spun, propelling me into a wide arc. I stumbled over my own feet, but his grip on my hands kept me from falling. I gave a clipped shriek which ended in a nervous laugh. “Music never stops. Listen.”

I did. And I heard the fading echo of my own laughter spinning around in the amphitheater of the glen, bouncing off itself, sending its own echoes spinning off in new angles only to bounce around the vibrato of my shriek. I stood a moment, listening to the interplay of emotions as the vibrated in the air around us. “How did you do it?” I whispered.

“I don’t.” He smiled again and raced to the instrument he had laid beside the stream. In one motion he swooped the instrument up into his arms and strummed a chord. It joined in the strange swirling vortex of shrieking laughter that surrounded us. He paused a moment and the plucked a few splayed notes which spun off into the loop. He then added a longer, more complex melody. They all fell into place, finding their own pattern in the space of the glen, creating a strange symphonic cacophony. He continued to play, skipping and spinning around the clearing as he played. The sheer mass of the instrument looked absurd in his hands, but though his movements were sporadic he fell into the space of the song with such precision that it took me only a moment to realize that he was playing the earth. The beat of his bare feet on the sod was only another part of the song.

I watched in amazement, unable to take my eyes off him. He danced around me, grinning and strumming and tapping his feet as he moved. I soon found myself following him and then mimicking his strange dance. Around and around I spun. Soon the whole world was full of the blur of the green trees, the plucking melody of the strange wooden instrument, and the loop of my laughter. The sounds pulsed against my skin and seeped down into my bones. I whooped with delight, I let out a booming “ha,” I clapped, I snapped, I made every sound I could think of just to feel the vibration of it in my body. Soon I was no longer trying to control my muscles, but let myself bounce off the sounds around me. I stumbled over my own feet and tumbled to the ground and lay there, relishing the feel of prick of the grass against my bare arms and tattoo of the earth beneath my back. For a moment I watched him whirl in the emptiness of the glen around me, but I soon became so dizzied by it that I closed my eyes. I lay there listening to the music we had made, trying to pick out the different pieces, to pick it apart again to see how many parts we had strung together to create the symphony. But I couldn’t do it. Occasionally I would catch the hint of a laugh, or the honeyed strumming, but then the shriek would cut in, or two notes would land in such a way that I felt the hairs on my arm stand on end with the electric tension of it. I suddenly longed to get up again, to move, but each time I tried it felt like the wrong moment, as if I did it would be in discord with the tattoo of the music. To move felt wrong. To lie there made my soul itch. The prick of the grass beneath me started to pain me, but the weight of sound pinned me to it. I tried to find one strand to focus on, to ground myself in . . . . In the eternally pulsing wave of music I tried to find reality again, but my world had become nothing but sound and I was slave to its intangible grip.

Remembering Heaven and the Endless -- Part 1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Part 1 – Heaven and the Endless
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The sky was blue black above me. November wind swirled around me in a cyclone of sere leaves; corpses animated by the deitic breath of the earth.

Breathe.

That’s what I tried to do as the cold bit into my fingertips. The night sky was filled with stars, glittering in the eternal eons of the universe, winking at me from distances that in my mortality my soul could not even begin to grasp. My universal insignificance nowhere near the microcosm of the infinite I wished it to be. The vertigo of the heavens was heavy upon me, and I suffocated beneath their weight.

Before me, surrounded by trees was a doorway. Curtained from within, light spilled out around the edges of the heavy drapes. The hung completely still, yet in their immobility seemed to dance within the light, embrace it, cloak it in a protection I could not understand from where I was outside it.

The Light was where I wanted to be, yet I stood immobile, afraid of it. I was afraid of what lingered behind that curtain.

Not afraid.

I yearned for it desperately with a yearning I did not understand, and that yearning . . . that misunderstanding of myself kept me rooted there, ankle deep in the dying leaves, my own hair whipping about me by the cold November wind that threatened to crystallize me with its frigidity.

Frigid. That’s what I was.

I did not move, and yet I was standing at the door, my fingers pressed against the transparent glass door that stood between me and the heavy curtains, my eyes still shielded from the Light within. I knew that my feet had carried me here, but I did not remember the journey, the release of the roots of my insecurities. Somewhere lingering as a shadow in the back of my mind I remembered the trudge across the soft, spongy earth, damp and swollen with a forgotten rain. I remember the sensation of the squish of the mud as it gripped my sneakers. Though it did not hold me back, the caress of the mud added a solemnity to my walk. Or so I remembered, somewhere in that shadow of my memory. But as I stood, fingers pressed against that glass, the cold seeping through my fingertips and burying itself in the frail bones of my hands, I remembered the walk, know that it was some part of myself that propelled me forward out of my frigidity and towards the abstract warmth that the Light promised me.

The movement was not pre-meditated. I cannot share the thoughts as they spun through my brain in the instant before I slide the glass aside and felt the wave of heat burst through the curtains and envelope me. This place stands outside of time. I see that now, though I did not know it then, perhaps because time did not exist there. Or I should say it does exist there, but all times existed there in unison, a orchestral whirlwind of time signatures, silent and cacophonous, harmonious and mute. There were no thoughts. There was only movement. A conviction that refused frigidity. A preserving curiosity, refusing to let me fade to evanescence and rise like vapor into the blue black night.
To cease to be.

That is what warred within me. A desire to simply cease and a raging need to exist. To enter this place was to embrace destruction and eat of resurrection. There are moments that change your life. This was not one of those. This was a place that to enter would eradicate any conception of the self before as the Self and replace it with a memory of what was. Its timelessness would permeate your past and place it within the stars like a constellation, a mythic memory of something that sings of the ghosts of truth.

Or maybe, it was just a door.

But glass no longer froze my fingertips. Now Light sterilized the Chill that had eaten away at me as I stood in the leaves beneath the night sky. Now the curtain fell away at my touch, Guardians, deadly and full of flame that would allow no retreat. The Flaming Sword of Paradise made of twilled cotton.

I closed the glass behind me and stood in Eden.

The Monster in the Library

She had come to the library in a rush of frustration. The intensity of the semester was pressing in on her. She had firmly planted her feet on Shakespeare and the course offered her a respite of familiarity, but to her left and right loomed Literary Criticism and Romantic Poets, hard and unyielding in their insistence. She had fallen behind in the required reading, and the tall stacks of critical articles leaned on her heavily while the Poets surrounded her, eyes ablaze with scalding scolding for neglecting her inner-self. The presence of these left her feeling boxed in and claustrophobic, the sensation of which she had before been able to force herself into ignorance, but now she found herself at a loss. Studies in Old English loomed above her, the heavy Germanic Epics sinking towards her, bloated with the enormity of the ancient language and threatening to suffocate her. For weeks a single essay had separated her from the sky. It was one too many for her, and she felt frantic against it. If she could only conquer it she could relax and the towering stacks of articles and scowling poets would fall to her feet, succumbing to the awesome power of her intellect. But Beowulf loomed above her, glowering at her, a thick miasmas oozing from the stump where his arm should be, goading her on. He knew that she was no Geat; she was only a graduate student, and she was outnumbered.

She had come to the library for comfort. The smell of the dusty texts infiltrated her sense, revitalizing her like smelling salts. Here she could breathe in intellect and academia. Here, suffused into the stuffed chairs and hanging heavy in the air, lingered a century of sighs—exhalations of epiphany. Innumerable scholars had sat in the building as they struggled towards enlightenment, they too feeling overwhelmed by the heaviness of intellect. They had rallied here to stand against the ignorance that threatened to undo them, and they had triumphed. Here, in this open space, she felt reinforced, her brain barricaded against the onslaught of thought that threatened to overwhelm her. If she were to defend her sanity against the crushing weight of work, this is where she must make her last stand.

Her eyes roved the room, resting briefly on the image of scattered students descended deep into thought, each of them searching the texts before them for that which was precious. Like Orpheus, they hoped to return to the world trailing that which had so recently been dead to them. They descended deep into the hellish realms of obscurity and coaxed from it Eurydice or epiphany or ecstasy. Yes, for some of them pleasure was the temptation. Their languid eyes meandered across the pages, stringing together poesy and prosody and wreathing their brow with Dionysian drama. They lounged in lyric. On them she could almost smell the Elysian fields, almost embrace the Asphodel . . . but first she must toss those confounded critical essays into the river. Her ferry must be built of theory and she loathed it. With a deep sigh she began her journey, weaving her way through the labyrinth of tables.

She settled down in a corner. Beside her stood a statue—a reproduction of Grecian granite all done up in plaster. Perhaps it was not Grecian, but Italian. She did not know. He reminded her of the David, but it could not be him for in his arms he held a small child, its proportions distorted. The infant was an imitation of him in the way that he was mimetic of man. His eyes gazed forward, empty and unseeing, and his lifelessness filled her with a mystical sadness. Yet, for all his crumbling impotency she found him enchanting. Let him stand above her with the child. For all his monstrous villainy even Grendel would not dare impugn on such alabaster innocence. Here in his shadow she would be safe.

Withdrawing from the bag at her side a long, slender laptop computer, she set it on the table before her and opened it, releasing a wave of ozone and pixels from the cold, plastic shell. As the cursor winked into life she was confronted once again by the essay that had resisted her thus far. She took in a deep breath of academia and art and attacked it, renewed.

For hours she worked, waging battle against the essay, wielding words, sharp and metallic. The fluorescent bulbs began to overtake daylight but, here, in her remote corner the fluorescence held no sway. Somewhere a switch had not been flipped, and sunset shadows crept across the rippled torso of her silent guardian, washing him in shades of red and grey. The light from her computer bathed her face in an eerie iridescence. But the fading day could not take the vibrancy from her. Here in the library she was strong. Here in the library she strode unshaken towards the paragraph that would end her torment and give her release.

It was the smell that she noticed first. A strong wave of incense swept across her, dizzying in its pungent power. It was a familiar smell to her. The spicy weight of it hung over the small shops that littered the main street of the artsy community in which the university had grown. Sandalwood and something else she could never wrap her brain around—perhaps spirituality. Normally the scent filled her up and left her open and receptive, but in this moment—when triumph was so close—at this moment it distracted and, thus, repulsed her. Try as she might, she could not ignore it, and quickly she found her fingers numb with it, the words falling clumsily from her grasp. It landed like dust on her tongue, but her brain drowned in the potency of it. It swirled around her in prehensile vapors that clawed at her, tearing away coherency, leaving her mind naked and defenseless. She stumbled in a fog, unable to continue.

A stack of books landed beside her, the impact of which was felt but not heard. She tensed at it, turning her eyes towards the motion. A man stood there, his grey jeans splattered with white paint. His tee-shirt was dark, but faded so that it appeared dingy. It hung from his slouched shoulders in awkward bunches. His face was haggard, his mouth dragged down by the weightiness of his flesh which pooled into nightmarish wrinkles. His grey eyes peered out over the bridge of his crooked nose, but his eyes did not seem to see. His hair was not greasy, but had a dusty quality to it, clinging to itself as it straggled across his brow and crawled down his sallow cheeks in grey and white creeping vines. He tossed a ragged canvas jacket and a garish purple sweater across the back of the chair at the end of the table—her table.

She glanced around. The scattering of tables nearby were still empty, and as her eyes roamed to the larger area of the library she realized that this, too, had become vacant as twilight had deepened. Yet this stranger had chosen to infiltrate the sanctity of her space—to usurp the divine presence of the plaster idol that faded into dusk beside her. A heat rose up inside of her. Audacity and presumptuousness emanated from him like shadow from a demon. She loathed him. She loathed his presence. Yet she railed in silence. He had descended upon her, pulling down Tartarus around her and casting her intellect into darkness. She was left groping blindly in the night, stripped of words and reason. Oh, how she loathed him! He shuffled behind her, moving passed her in a swirling fog of opiate sandalwood. Something deep down inside her cowered at his presence even he it moved away from her. She struggled for calm rationality, but her horror at having been so violated left her in a shuddering insanity.

Damn hippies. The village was rife with them.

Overhead fluorescence flickered to life, and she cringed beneath it. He had found the forgotten switch, and she blinked painfully in the glaring light. She cast pleading eyes at the ruler of the temple of her thoughts, but he still stared ahead lifelessly. As she was no Geat, he was no Galatea. He could not help her.

The wrinkled demon returned and sat down. He began rifling through papers, the sound of which drove her spirit into frenzy. She felt her skin crawling with it. Agitation ate away at her. She focused her eyes on her work, but her fingertips lingered lifelessly on the keys. She sat there, inert and infuriated. In her peripheral vision she could see him draw a long slender object from the pocket of coat. He studied it for a moment in the fluorescence. Then, with it, he traced long slices into the white skin of the paper before him. With sharp, tense strokes he darkened the face of the page, and each stroke grated on her nerves. He looked again and again at her . . . no past her. His eyes roved over the naked figure of the plaster god that stood beside me. He raped his divinity with his eyes and fondled his form with graphite on the page. And still the thick, heavy incense roiled around them.

Her thoughts turned to flight. She longed to grab up her things and flee from his infernal darkness. She reached out and caressed the plastic casing of her computer. The essay still flickered before her. It mocked her in its prematurity. It was still not finished. Again Grendel stood before her, that dark miasmas oozing from his shoulder. He grinned, a hissing laugh escaping through yellowed teeth. She slammed the case of her computer shut and stuffed it into her bag. She no longer cared to stare into his maw.

Slinging her bag on her shoulder she stomped through the clutter of chairs, banging her knee hard on the corner of a table as she passed. She stopped and looked around the library for a space that would suit her purposes. Nothing appealed to her. The library had lost its mystic power. The bookcases no longer stood proud and majestic. The air now tasted stale. She sank down at a table in the center of the room, all too aware of the eyes of the librarian as she slammed her computer far too hard down onto the surface of the table. The essay blinked at her. She tapped out two or three formulaic sentences. An abortive perversion of a conclusion, she knew, but an ending nonetheless. She opened an email and sent the monstrosity off to her professor. It was done.

Still, she stared at the abandoned essay before her. She waited for the wash of relief she had expected when she first entered the library, but it did not come. Her claustrophobia had not relented. Instead, she felt sullied. Her mind was capable of far more, but she had forsaken it. As she stared at the words before her she felt the villain. Grendel took up a seat in her soul, and she suddenly pitied him. He too knew the ignominy of defeat. She felt failure drip down onto her shoulders, dark and heavy and thick. She and Grendel were bloodied kin.

A Letter to a Latent Lover

To write without thinking is like breathing, except that writing carries with it a fear of failure. We do not associate failure with breath; it is an involuntary action, a contraction of muscles, the osmosis of life into our blood and, unbeknownst to us, our souls. So why is it that we can rely so unhindered on breathing but stumble so regularly over the blank page? Perhaps it is because when we write unconcernedly we bear something of our souls on the page? No. It isn’t that… I would like it to be. That would be poetic and literary and echo of sages and gurus and Dickinson and Keats. But I know that their words fell into form and structure, their words carefully selected, their genius a frightened insanity. Dickinson hid her poems away, never intending to let anyone read them, but instead we rape her mind and her soul, defiling her wishes because she was brave enough to put the pen to the page in the first place.

Ah! I yearn to be Dickinson or Keats or Poe or Tennyson. Let me even be Hemingway who I despise for his simplicity and brilliance. Give me their tragic genius! I ache for it like a virgin for a lover. Yes, there is sensuality in words—round and sharp and seducing in their power of thought and exposure. I long to be a verbal exhibitionist. I lust after metaphor! Give me imagery hot and sensuous and naked before me! Once Rachel was shopping for pens online and showed me one asking if I, too, thought it looked like a vibrator. Oh, the poignant truth when I responded “that’s only because stationary turns us on!”

But even this is only metaphor and I lie in bed with it, panting heavy with the aftermath of my heavy handed conceit.

I write by candlelight because deep down I believe that the flickering of the flame awakens some primal knowledge within. That and there is something romantic in candlelight. The pliability of wax, the heat of the flame, the smell of the dying wick . . . . Candlelight is sensuous. It stimulates our eyes and our fingertips and our noses, daring us to reach out and grasp its evanescent, flickering form. And we do, at least once in our lives find ourselves moth-like, drawn to the danger that wavers before us like a curling finger, beckoning us closer.

But I have digressed as one is apt to when writing freely, the proverbial pen uncapped. So I shall let wax bring me back to the written page, to the letters of paramours and the missives of kings. Perhaps it is not so far fetched to think that there is some greatness in the candle if it is the final punctuation of such secrets. It was empowered to protect the promises of prince’s and, more importantly, the whispers of women locked away in the dark by propriety or their husbands or their loving fathers. Love poems, sonnets to the bosom and the lip, ballads to the fair-skinned maiden and the dark-tressed mistress. Mythology cites Cupid, Eros, as the lords of love, but I say that it is the letter, penned by candlelight in the gloaming evening and the dawning of desire. As the day fades and darkness becomes doorkeeper, so much easier for the lovers’ thoughts to turn of each other and their idle, itching hands to take up the pen in order to belay other less Christian tasks in the lonely gloom.

I feel the wave of my words drawing back, afraid of the insinuations I let slip through my fingers and onto the page. Dare I continue my erotic musings on the nature of words, or should I hide behind greater tasks than the love affair of poet and page, writer and words, lyricist and letters? Perhaps I should write an epic, a great tale of war and tragedy, but even then I may grow hot with the sweaty, rippling bodies of the brutal warriors and their Beowulfian bragging.

Perhaps I should never let this page be seen, I think with a sideways smirk snagging the corner of my mouth. But I know I shall share for this may be one of the greatest pieces I have ever written. A dissertation on literature and language. I write for the sake of writing, a calisthenics in anticipation of more focused exercises, but because I have no fear the marathon comes easily. How could I dare to hide away something so telling. The race I set out to run was that of rambling words, but the victory I have won is of devices. I should grow heavy with medals of alliteration, allusion, imagery, metaphor, and conceit. I should be breathless from my dash across the page. I should feel weary with the weight of my words.

I say let me run again! Let me take up the torch and run to the candle and light the fire of inspiration. Or at least, let me play with puns, and mock myself in metaphors. Let me enjoy my writing.

At least while I can.

For now it is easy, the words flowing with hardly a thought onto the page. No plot, no character—a careening course through my vocabulary and stream of consciousness. Eventually I shall stumble under the knowledge that I say nothing, that these musings are the nightmare of a restless spirit so delirious with the desire to write that she cares not what greatness comes of it knowing that in the end, this is from where greatness shall spring.

Shakespeare knew the power of prose. He was master of the secret of the sonnet, of the stanza, of the scene and the soliloquy. He knew the power of other letters too, besides the S. But his greatness transcends his witty banter and weighty themes. He has something that I have not. Tennyson had his isle of Shalott, but his isolation led him to realize that his great art was only imitation of immortality and had no place in the world. Ah to be a god of words! Let me never reach Camelot if only I can die knowing that I have taken a risk and achieved such greatness as Poe or Hawthorne. Let Thoreau gag on his beans, I desire to drown in experience.

But to live in the world and work, to watch and to write . . . can anyone actually achieve such a thing anymore without being independently wealthy. I long for a patron to pay for my paper and pens. Let a lord take up my cause and I shall shower his feet with reams and roses. Give me a name to fill in the phrase “This book is dedicated to *blank* without whom I could not have written it.” Give me my Queen Elizabeth! Where is my Medici? Alas, my only patron is the page, and to it I am a slave and a poor slave at that. But I am a loyal slave. Let him beat me and starve me and I shall still return to his side. But no, to say slave is too strong a word for the page is kindly to me. It alone consoles me in the dark. It alone fills my empty bed and whispers promises to me in the night. My paramour, my consort, my husband, my soul mate.

You blank page, understand my fears, and you wait patiently for my tentative, weak, words. But you have faith in my greatness. You know that I am faithful and that, one day, I shall succumb to your power. And then, I shall lie in your arms for all eternity in the literary greatness that you have promised.

Oh, wait a little longer. I shall send you my letters soon, sealed with the wax of my dying candle.

The Comforter

We used to take afternoon naps just for the guilty pleasure of hiding together beneath the pale blue, generic brand comforter we had purchased for $69.99 three years earlier as a wild splurge of funds. By now it had turned scratchy, the pills of cotton that had rolled up in self-defense scraping against our bare legs, our feet wrapped around one another’s in a defiant possessiveness. I would wrap my arm around your waist, the crook of my elbow sinking into the soft space between your ribs and hip. On afternoons like this I made sure to keep my fingers fiddling with the folds of your tee-shirt, unwilling to destroy the innocent pleasures of the afternoon by invoking other less innocent pastimes with wandering hands.

That blue comforter shared in our intimacy. You used to pull it up between us, wrapping it around your shoulder like a cloak. The insistent rhythm of my breath beating a tattoo on your shoulder blades made you fidgety. But you liked to be held, and so my sighs infiltrated the fibers of the blanket, diffusing into the poly-fill that embraced us four o’clock of a lazy afternoon. I would close my eyes and press my forehead to the back of your head, and you would hug my arm tight to you, pouring all your affection into the gesture. My fingertips reveled in your attentions.

Sometimes I’d lie on my back, and you’d rest your head on my shoulder, your arm across my stomach, your fingers falling lazily towards the mattress. I’d play with the small hairs on that arm, or twirl strands of your hair between my fingers as I kissed the top of your head and drifted into a doze. The comforter surrounded entwined in our legs we’d dream until the daylight had faded out. We’d awake in the dark, our sight gone, but our sense alive to the warmth and scent of each other trapped beneath the pale blue we could not see.

When I met your mother for the first time we left our border collie in the care of my father. I was worried about leaving her for a week’s time, but we gave her the comfort of those afternoon naps. We had retired our poor, pilled comforter and you tucked it into a space beneath the porch where she would lie out of the glare of the sun. I cried when we left her, but you kissed the top of my head and assured me she’d be ok, that the comforter would smell like us and so she wouldn’t feel alone.

Nothing smells of you now. I bought a thick comforter, dark brown Victorian patterns breaking the sickly periwinkle in mock richness for $120.00. It kept me warm this past winter. But now, in May, when I awake alone in the dark, I feel cold.

Upon Leaving the Cabin in the Woods

I listen to the plinking noises of the heaters as the afternoon sun dwindles to nothingness. Like everything else, the sun’s rays leave the cabin for the last time. The boxes have been piled into the back of the moving van, the floors vacuumed and swept. Even the dirt has left, brushed out over the door jam in a flurrying cloud. Like us, it too had settled into this place and, having left the confines of the cabin, explodes into the world, meeting it full force.

I wish I had the same courage.

The boxes and me . . . trapped in the space between here and there, here and . . . where? What do we really know of the future? How much do we truly remember of the past? How much of it all is fabrication, imagination, or lies? If we really believe, does it then become reality? Or truth only for ourselves?

But I ramble which I have a tendency to do at the best of times. Is this one of those?

I will miss this place. It offered me sanctuary—or at least the people in it did. But they have all gone, too, now. Lives packed up in cardboard boxes taken out into the world. That strange place which presses them back until they stand suspended in a single moment. An instant—a memory.

Maybe it was an era, or something less grandiose—an experiment. Has the experiment failed? What have we learned from all this?

Love.

Friendship.

Life.

All of these are little bits and pieces of the time spent here. In this space they merged together into a picture of truth for me. This was what I wanted. I lived vicariously through those that had succeeded in living—in loving.

It was fear, I realize. I hoped that if I tread in these footsteps that maybe my feet would find solid ground. The dance would be laid out for me, and I could follow it in confidence because I could see where it led. I was tired of laying out my own path, finding my own beat, spinning with my arms wide open in the sunlight only to slam into the unexpected, stumble and fall. Call it cowardice—I do.

But now this place has become empty. It is a shell without the beating heart that rested in this space. What happens now if I spin in this space? There is nothing here for me to trip over. Nothing left off of which to rebound. I could spin here forever, but would the laughter be temporary? Would it matter? Do I want it to?

I don’t spin. I sit and stare at the open door, watching the golden particles of dust dancing in the air outside this room. They spin and dance with no fear of what time or the world holds. They are suspended in the now. If only I, too, had the courage to be dirt.

“But you—are you the one?” ~ from “The Farm on the Great Plains"

This piece is an experiment with a line of poetry taken in isolation.

"But you-are you the one?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The child’s eyes peered at me from across the room, speckled with green and guilt. It was my first day working in the children’s ward. Disney films whisper weakly from several rooms, their fairy tales muted and suffocated in sickness and disease. The walls were painted a stale white with red and orange hand prints splattered across it—as if trying to dirty the over-sanitized feeling of the place. Bleach and vomit permeates the air in this place . . . perhaps it’s the red and orange hand prints that smell that way.

She stands in the doorway of her hospital room, a limp animal hanging from her hand. I think it’s a bunny rabbit, but the poor creature has lost his shape to a thousand embraces. His demise is immanent, but what a wonderful way to go . . . .

Her slippers are pink and fuzzy and peak out from beneath her blue nightgown with the yellow ducks all over it. Moving only slightly, but incessantly, the slippers seem alive. They peer this way and that, as if searching for something. Maybe they, too, want to help this little girl.
I hate this place. It makes me want to run away. There are no smiles here. Mothers and fathers sob silently in the hallway, hiding just outside their child’s room—just out of sight. The nurses are calm, just long enough that the children never see them frown. They exchange grim looks with the doctor, as they hand over a chart.

She still stares at me. I wander over to her doorway and crouch down, my brown eyes level with her green ones. “Can I get you anything sweetheart?” I force a smile, my dry lips creak with the effort.

“Are you the one?” she asks, her blonde head tilted to the side, her cheek resting on the pink terry cloth robe that hangs from her slight shoulders.

“Am I the one what, honey?” She stares at me silently. My knees are already aching with the effort of crouching. “What do you need, honey? Would you like a glass of water?”

She nods and I walk her back into her room. I help her climb into the bed and tuck her and her bunny in. She tells me his name is Indy because he likes to watch Indiana Jones with Daddy. Now I smile and my lips don’t creak. I hand her a glass of water and she takes a small sip. I feel it is out of politeness. She does not appear to be as thirsty as her scrutiny would have suggested. She hands me back the still full cup. I take it and place it on the tray by her bed. “Now, sweetheart, you shouldn’t get out of bed. If you need anything, just push this button here, ok?” I let her practice. She tucks the remote under Indy’s arm. I smile again and turn to go.

“But you—are you the one?” she asks again. Again I can not answer. All of the hours and dollars spent in medical school and I can not answer the question of one child.

“I don’t know honey.”

I walk out of the door and return to the desk. The head nurse is there. Her name is Rosemarie and she has cartoon characters on her scrubs. “Rosemarie, that little girl in that room—the blonde girl with the green eyes . . . . Why is she here?” I point at the room where Indy is holding the remote.

follows my gesture with her eyes. “That’s Sophie. Her heart is failing. She is waiting for a donor but . . . .” Rosemarie bit back tears. “I’m sorry doctor, it’s just not fair sometimes.”

No, I think. It’s not fair. I hate this place. Hold onto Indy tight, little Sophie. This place smells of bleach and vomit and death. No, Sophie, I am not the one.