Pokrovka, Kyrgyzstan. April 23, 2006.

Hands

Hands of dough and string beans, picking onions, fisting in threat
at a descending flock of garden-munching birds

Hands at rest on a lined notebook
purchased for more than it costs for a loaf of bread

Careful penmanship forming lines of words
in a foreign alphabet — English

She asks, what is the word for something twisted, something not straight?
Gnarled, I say. Relishing the sound of a perfect word in my mouth

A word she knows in Russian
A word I’ve forgotten

But not her hands

Carrying me pancakes baked that morning,
buckets of raspberries, a slab of fresh pork

Gifts I don’t know how to accept, but if I give back,
she brings twice as much next time

Then returns to her garden, to bale hay and feed rabbits
aside her ten year old daughter and seventy year old father

A family alone,
hands paler than their neighbors,

Religion and speech and superstitions make them
orphans in their own home—

All the other Russians got out when they could

Now, from afar, her hands are writing letters
in the English I gave her

Studying, memorizing, relating
At fifty years old you aren’t expected to learn another language

But she did

And my hands remember, holding her last gift
her words

I wrote this at a Poetry Workshop with Leslea Newman at the 2009 Write Angles Conference. The poem is about a friend of mine from my time serving in the Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan.

“Lead me, my eyes are closed.” Helen held out her arm to her sister. Elsa took it. This was their favorite game when they were little. See who keeps her blue-green eyes squeezed shut the longest. But you can’t be too trusting, because the one guiding will try to run you into a tree or over a rock. Especially if the guide is Elsa.

Elsa held her sister’s elbow loosely, gazing around for a good-sized bush to steer towards. But why? What was the point?

“Hey, don’t stop!” Helen’s eyes snapped open, and she stepped on Elsa’s heel. “Sorry.”

“Do you have to stand so close to me?”

“I was just…” Helen trailed off. She didn’t have any excuses. She just wished Elsa would laugh the way she used to. Ever since her boyfriend told her he wanted to be with someone else, she’d turned into this prickly lump of self-pity.

“Let’s go home.” Elsa turned around, but Helen blocked her, stepping on her toes this time. “Oww! Watch it, you bi….”

Helen felt her chest tighten. “You almost called me a bitch, didn’t you?”

Elsa shook her head, denying the obvious.

The tops of the bare trees surrounding the forest path clicked together like giant’s fingernails and the leaves at the sisters’ feet swirled in a light breeze. Helen held her hands to her ears, then nose, as the wind drained some of her warmth.

“I didn’t beg you to come out here just to turn around and go home.” Helen put a hand between her sister’s shoulder blades and pushed. “Come on.”

“We’re going to the Cave, aren’t we?” Elsa said, and Helen nodded.

It was only another quarter mile. The Cave was the place they’d built palaces out of mud as three year olds. The place Helen knew Elsa had gotten her first kiss in eighth grade from a kid named Isaac Green.

Of course, the blind walk hadn’t snapped Elsa out of it, so why would the Cave? Helen had no idea, but a little voice had told her, just as she was waking up this morning, that this was what she had to do for her sister. And she listened to those little voices. Honestly, Helen would have much rather spent the morning dwelling in her own self-pity. Who was Elsa to mope over a lost boyfriend when Helen had never even had a second date with anybody? But she still couldn’t stand to see her sister in such a pathetic state.

The rest of the walk passed in silence. Helen kept walking too close to Elsa, who would speed up or stop completely until she got her preferred distance back.

“That’s it.” Elsa said, stopping at a spot a few yards before Helen thought they should.

“You sure? Wasn’t it over there?”

“No, that’s it!” Elsa scrambled down the slight slope at the edge of the path, and began tossing handfuls of leaves aside. “It’s filled in.”

Helen followed and helped dig out clumps of leaves, trying not to get too much dirt under her fingernails.

“Oh.” Elsa stopped suddenly, and Helen peered into the earth-smelling darkness. A pair of eyes stared back at her.

“Away!” It shouted, and the sisters jumped back, hands clasped together so tight Helen’s fingernails broke the skin. Whatever it was that had taken over their favorite spot, it wasn’t human.

New England Aquarium. June 7, 2007.

When the blue comes, I’m sure I’ve phased out. This is the end of the final T-987 robot. Soon my thoughts will wither into meaningless, repetitive signals. But then my sensors flicker back into life and the air presses close around me, thick and sloshy.

This isn’t death, it’s an atmosphere. A dense one. Almost like water, but it can’t be. My chemical sensors know water like human nostrils know fresh baked apple pie. But there hasn’t been any apple pie for millenia, and no nostrils to smell it, either. I only know because of the robots before me, the ones the humans sent out, each with a pocket of DNA.

The first generation, the T-1s, didn’t make it far. Only out to Neptune, where they reassembled themselves into the T2s. The reassembly cost one or two their lives, and so did every reassembly thereafter. I am the lone child of a thousand ancestors, and along with their memories, I’ve carried my load of DNA safely through star systems unknown to planet Earth.

But this one will be the last. As I plunged to the surface, I could feel my sensors and fuel cells weakening. But I’m still alive, and I plan to complete my mission.

If only this were a water planet, I think as I struggle to eject the safe box in my belly. My joints are starting to corrode–I was built to withstand all the common planetary atmospheres, but this one is different. Something acidic and soupy. Not the ideal home for my Earth DNA.

Have I failed? The very last of the robots, farther out in the universe than its human makers could ever have hoped, and my mission is for nothing. My cargo will die, and so will I. I’ll be dissolved in this blue deathtrap.

That’s when I see them: shimmering bodies floating in the blue air. They are coming closer, strings like tentacles reaching as their capped bodies propel them, forward.

Jellyfish, report my Earth animal memory banks. Yes, that is what they look like, but it’s certainly not what they are. This isn’t an ocean, and these creatures seem to know that I’m here. In fact, they are wrapping me with their tentacles, but it doesn’t sting. It feels… better. Whatever they are doing, it’s stopping the corrosion!

My chemical sensors are spinning with confusion. It seems these creatures have evolved a special coating that protects themselves and others from the harsh atmosphere.

Then the tentacles reach inside for my DNA cargo. Do they know what it is? Do they have any idea what they’re doing?

Quietly, with such sparkling serenity it calms my spinning sensors, they coat the DNA with a protective shield, and release it.

Will it evolve? Will this planet someday be home to clear-coated creatures who bake a thing like apple pie?

I have no way of knowing, but thanks to the Shimmershields, as I’ve named my saviors, I may be around long enough to find out.

Newton Lower Falls, MA. October 31, 2009.

The weather this Halloween was astounding… about 75 degrees, and so windy the leaves whirled around like a rainstorm! And the sky kept shifting from gray to blue with bouts of bright sunshine in the midst of all the wind.

Waterville, ME. May 9, 2003.

Part I

We wound up walking the whole mile from my house to town and then up to the pond.  I offered to drive, but Eve insisted on walking.  She wasn’t impressed by the muddy, polluted water of the skating pond, so we walked another mile following a small stream through the woods until we found a much larger pond surrounded by impressive pines and a few small maples.  Lily pads floated on the surface around the edges, and it looked like a beaver had built a lodge in the center.  Eve was overjoyed; I was miserable.   Somehow, in her skirt and leggings, she’d managed to move more quickly and efficiently through the woods than me.  I’d been scratched by branches, my right foot was soaking wet and muddy from the time I tripped and stepped in the stream, and I was out of breath from trying to keep up with her.  But my pride kept me from making any number of sarcastic comments as Eve sat on a fallen tree by the pond, smiling.

That wasn’t the only time we made the trek out through the woods to that pond.  We walked there at least once a week, and each time I got a little bit better at stepping over logs and rocks, and picking my way through the underbrush.  I couldn’t have told you then why I kept hanging out with her.  The guys figured I had a crush and left me alone.  I was adamant that I didn’t like her.  I mean, when you’re 18, you admit it to your friends when you like someone.  Though I thought she was pretty, I didn’t want her that way.  It was more of an exotic snake kind of pretty.  Fascinating and scary at the same time.  There was definitely something about her that caught my curiosity.  Something unusual that had nothing to do with her volcanic hair, violet eyes, strange outfits, or bizarre conversation topics.  Even now, though, I couldn’t really put a finger on it.  It was just these things that happened when she was around.

Like the deer incident that happened maybe the third or fourth time we hiked out to the pond.  The doe was standing off to our right in a clearing, and I wouldn’t have even seen her if Eve hadn’t suddenly stopped and pointed her out.  Even then, it took me five minutes for me to separate the tawny body from the yellow-green light of the forest.  I was ready to say, That was neat and keep walking, but Eve whispered for me to stand still and started moving towards the deer.  I say moving, because she definitely wasn’t walking.  She crept through the forest, making only as much noise as a slight breeze.  She was wearing pale colors today, greens and browns, like she knew she would have to blend in.  All I could see of her by the time she made it to the clearing was her bright red hair.  The doe was still standing there, like nothing was happening.  Eve just crept up to the animal.  She didn’t sneak, that wouldn’t have worked, just moved forwards until the doe looked up.  The deer didn’t run, just reached her neck forwards and sniffed at Eve’s hair.  Then Eve reached out and petted the deer’s head between the ears, just like it was a dog or horse or something!  My muscles were getting sore from standing there frozen in one position, so I shifted a little bit and sat down.  I didn’t think it made much noise, but the deer startled and danced away into the woods.  Eve came running back,

“You scared her!”

“Sorry, I had to move.  I was standing still for, like, ten minutes straight!”

“That’s ok, I was saying good-bye.  She has a baby to take care of, anyway.”

“What?”

“Well, the fawn’s almost ready to be on its own, but she’s still teaching it some things.”

“How do you know all this?”  I knew I shouldn’t ask her things like that.  Eve was always telling me how trees felt, how the pond was doing that day.  Her answers always left me more confused, but I asked anyway,

“Her eyes, I guess.  You just look, and it’s there.”  Eve shrugged.

“What’s there?  And why wasn’t she scared of you?”

“I guess she knew me.  I look for that knowledge.  Everything knows everything else, Ant.  People just have so much ego built up on top of the instinct that they forget.”

“What, you going to be a psychologist, or something?”

“No, I’m going to art school.  I told you.”

“You’re not going anywhere.  You didn’t apply.”  We’d had this discussion before.  Eve insisted she was going to RISD in the fall, but she hadn’t applied anywhere, and hadn’t even really finished high school.  She was supposed to be taking summer classes right now at the local community college, but she never went.  She always got mad when I brought up her education.  She thought I was just going along with the flow, not thinking about what I was doing.  Society expected me to go to college after high school, so I went.  She lectured me for an hour once about how I would graduate in four years, get married, work in some cubicle, have a baby, and spend the rest of my life driving to and from work never really taking any time to live.  I asked her how she expected to make any money if she never went to school, and she gave me the worst look I ever got from a girl.  I didn’t usually bring it up.  This time, she didn’t give me the horrible look, only smiled,

“You’ll see.  You don’t always have to follow the rules.  People aren’t that smart, really.”  I got the same kind of cryptic answers whenever I asked about her parents, or her life before this summer.  I mean, my life hasn’t been that interesting, but at least I have stories to tell.  Everyone does.  The time you cut your thumb open with a pocketknife, the time you actually saw Adam Sandler in real life, the time your friend laughed all his Mountain Dew out of his nose and eyes.  You’d figure Eve would have even better stories since she’s lived all over the world.  But I’d tell her my stories and she’d just stare, or ask things like, “Who’s Adam Sandler?” I sometimes wonder how we ever managed to carry on conversations at all.  My mom thought it was hilarious.  She’d listen to us talking in my living room, the few times we actually stayed inside, and she’d ask me later how the “Blair witch project” was coming along.  I’d just shrug and find something to eat.

One night I had to work at the video store until ten, but got stuck there until 10:30 while this guy and his wife tried to decide whether to go with James Bond or Robert Redford.  She won, of course, and I finally got to lock up and go home.  It was raining again, just this disgusting slow drizzle.  I wasn’t really paying attention as I pulled into my driveway, so I had to slam on the brakes when I realized Eve was standing right in front of the car.  It hadn’t rained much since that first night I saw her – had been almost draught conditions, I guess.  I thought it was pretty nice to have a summer without much rain.

“Whoa!  What’re you doing standing in my driveway?”  I grinned, sticking my head out the window into the misty air.

“Hello!  Isn’t it great?”  She spun around in a circle, damp clothes sticking to her sides, and I wondered if she was referring to something she was wearing or the weather.  With her, it could be anything.

“Well, I’ll come out and talk to you if you let me park.  Or you could come sit in the car.  It’s nice and dry in here.”  I knew she would never get in the car.  We’d walked absolutely everywhere this summer – usually to that damned pond, but sometimes to a café or even once to an art gallery (I still can’t believe she dragged me into an art gallery).  Everywhere we went, Eve insisted on walking.  My calf muscles were much improved after that summer.  So I didn’t really wait for an answer, just turned to park as Eve danced out of the way.

“It’s just like the world’s being born!”  Eve shouted when I climbed out of the car.

“More like it’s sweating, I think”  I commented, adjusting my baseball cap to try to keep the rain out of my eyes.

“Come here!”  She laughed and dragged me around to the back of my house.  As usual, I had no idea what was going on as she pointed excitedly.  My mom’s garden was behind the house, a fairly wild collection of plants, weeds, vegetables, and anything that could gain a roothold.  My mom loved gardens, but couldn’t bear to rip anything out if it was even the slightest bit interesting.  As a result, our garden was more of a miniature jungle.  Out of the midst of the green chaos, a single largish, flat leaf projected over the grass.

“This is a Hasta leaf.  See how the rain’s collecting in the middle?  It’s got just the right balance to hold the water!”  The rest of the plant was obscured under something else, the leaves tiny and starved for sun.  This one leaf was at least four times larger than the rest.  Eve took it in her hands and gently poured the water into a pool in the center of her hand.

“Hold out your hand.”  I obeyed, as usual.  She tipped half of the water into my hand.  As soon as it hit my hand, it started running into the little creases and dissolving into my skin            .

“Now drink it.”  I did, what little was left of my handful.  Her own hadn’t shrunk at all.  I was a bit curious about why she wanted me to drink rainwater, and why the hell I was actually doing whatever she told me to do, but I didn’t get a chance to ask any questions.  Eve closed her eyes and started humming.  The noise reverberated through the air and vibrated in my chest.  I stepped back and looked around nervously, wondering if my mom was watching now.  I was getting cold and wet and hadn’t even been inside yet to change out of my video store t-shirt.  I stuck my hands in my pockets, scrunched my shoulders together, and waited for her to finish… whatever she was doing.  After about five minutes, she opened her eyes and breathed out very slowly.

“Ok.  We can go inside now.  I need you to come with me.”

“Can I change my shirt first?”

“Why?”  She laughed.

“Well, I have to wear this thing five days a week.  Also it’s kind of wet now.”  She raised her eyebrows and shook her head slowly, like she was trying to think of how to incorporate my t-shirt crisis into her secret plant-ritual.  “Ok fine, let’s just go inside, then.”  I offered, settling for simply getting out of the rain.

“My house.”  I followed her across the lawn to the Cawley’s house.  They were sitting in the kitchen watching the news.  Mr.  Cawley waved, but didn’t turn as we walked down the hall to Eve’s room.  I’d been over before, so they were used to seeing me around.  They never seemed to care what Eve did, either.  Sometimes I wondered if they even knew she was living with them.  I mean, they had to know, but I never heard them talk to her.

Eve’s room was always dark. She’d covered the walls with large paintings and posters, all dark colors in abstract patterns.  Her bed was right next to the window, which was wide open as always, rain spattering the windowsill through the screen.

“I want to paint you,” she said.

“Right now?”

“Yes.  Just sit there,” she motioned towards an ancient dark green chair in the corner.  It looked like it would fall apart if I touched it.

“Don’t you think I should change into something dry?  Or… um, I haven’t even been in my house yet tonight.”  I’d never been asked to model before.  How are you supposed to respond to that?  I’d never even watched Eve paint before!  I knew she wanted to go to art school, and she’d told me which paintings on the wall were hers, but I never really thought about the fact that at some point she sat down and made them.  None of them were of people, either.  Why did she suddenly want to paint me?

“Just sit.”  As I tried to back away towards the door, she touched my arm.  Ice spread under her fingertips —they  wrapped around my bicep and she led me to the antique chair in the corner.  She had never touched me before.  Her hands were so cold it ached.  When she let go I grabbed my arm with my other hand,

“Jeez, you’re cold!”

“I’m sorry.”  Her eyes were so sad I decided to forget about the iciness of her touch.

So I sat in the chair for about two hours while she set up a canvas, got out her paint and brushes, and set to work.  I almost fell asleep.  She didn’t say anything the entire time she was painting.  I tried to start conversation a few times, but she just shook her head at me.

Finally, she stood up. I moved my head around and raised my eyebrows.

“Done.”  She pronounced.

“Can I get up?”

“Yeah.”  I walked around to the other side of the easel.  It was covered with red and black and dark green.  In the middle I could see a splotch that sort of resembled my head.  My arms were simple streaks of tan paint, and my body blended into the chair, which looked more like a dark green blob than anything else.  “Wow.  That’s cool,”  I said.  I’ve never understood art.

“I don’t know.  I’m trying to figure something out…”  She paused for a long time.  I’d never seen her this confused before.  “I need to tell you something,” she continued.”

“Shoot.”

“I’m not human,” She said, completely serious.

“Right.  And I’m from Mars.”  I couldn’t deal with her seriousness.  My eyes were blurry with tiredness. and my arm still ached where her fingers had touched it.

“No, you need to believe me!”  Her voice was so desperate, so strained.  I realized it was like she was crying without the tears.  I didn’t say anything.  Just turned my head, stared out the window, into my living room.  Nobody there.  Not like there would be; it was almost two a.m. and my mom usually fell asleep around midnight.

When you’re really tired, your mind plays tricks on you.  I think the whole thing that happened next was some sort of dream.  It had dream-like qualities, when you can’t really move and time feels disjointed. The memory’s fuzzy, too – whenever I try to think about it too hard, bits of it fade away.  It’s damned frustrating.  So Eve was sort of sobbing, but not crying.  I don’t know if she could cry.  I mean, if she wasn’t human… but what could she be, then?  Crazy?  Whatever she was, I wanted her to smile again.

“I thought you’d understand,”  her voice had changed, that sub-tone had returned, like a deep reverberation.  I still couldn’t talk, it was that frozen feeling, you know?  Like when you dream and can’t move no matter how hard you try?  Eve sat down on the bed, cross-legged, her back to me, right in front of the window.  It was raining harder now, splashing down, getting the covers of the bed wet, splashing onto her skin now that she was sitting right there.  The room was getting cold.  I didn’t know how she could stand it.  I stood in the middle of the room, shifting my weight uncomfortably, while Eve sat looking out into the rain.  Eventually, she stood up, put one leg out the window, then the other, then closed it from the outside.  I watched, stunned, as her bright red hair faded into the darkness.  I guess she must have walked away, but I couldn’t see her at all.  I never saw her again.

The first time I saw her it was three o’clock in the morning and she was standing in the rain.  It was late May, one of those warm spring downpours that falls in huge squishy drops turning the whole road into one big puddle.  I’d just graduated from high school and the parties were finally breaking up.  I’d only had one beer since I had to drive most of the guys home, so there was no way I was imagining the girl standing there in the driveway next door, hair plastered to her face, arms up in the air like she was trying to catch something.

I just slowed to a stop in front of my driveway, put the car in neutral, and stared.  The only people I’d ever seen next door before were the Cawleys who had to be about 87 years old and never did anything except watch their three beagles run around and crap in our yard.  I was worried, you know?  It took a moment before she turned.  I couldn’t really see her face, but I could tell she wasn’t happy to be caught in my headlights.  I hurriedly put the car back in gear and pulled into my driveway, doing one of those half-wave greetings that really means, yeah, I see you weirdo, why are you looking at me?  I tried not to glance back at her as I parked the car under the basketball hoop and waited for the garage door to open.  Engine off, parking brake, half a minute to get out the door and shut it again, ten feet at a sprint to the nice, dry garage and I was inside.  As far as I know, she was still standing there.  Weirdo, I thought again.

When I crawled out of bed at two the next day, Saturday, The girl was still on my mind.  I swear, she clawed her way into my dreams!  I got dressed thinking how the first day of being a high school graduate was pretty anticlimactic.

“Do the Cawely’s have kids?”  I asked my mom.  She sat at the kitchen table reading a book on the social behavior of four-year-olds. She was taking classes for her degree in childhood education, which was weird since your mom’s not supposed to go to college at the same time you do.  Well, I obviously wasn’t in college yet, but I’d been accepted to St Anselm’s.  Mom looked up after a few moments—her eyes looked more wrinkled today, I thought.

“What was that you said?  These psychological studies have my head swimming!  Would you believe they did this experiment entirely involving the way four-year-olds stack blocks?”  She paused for effect, “You were back late last night, by the way, good party?”

“Yeah, a bunch of the guys were there.  Ryan and Jeff had to leave early.  They both have work this morning already.  I was just asking if the Cawley’s have kids.  I saw this girl over there last night, really strange, just standing in the rain.”  I poured myself a bowl of frosted mini-wheats as I spoke, and sat down across the table.

“They’ve got a few kids, I think, but they’d all be in their forties by now.  Oh, wait!  Sandy Trilotti was telling me the other day in class that they have a granddaughter staying with them for the summer.  Her parents went to Europe or something.  I’m not really sure, though.  Is she pretty?”  She looked at me with that penetrating look only moms can produce.

“Mom!  She’s a friggin’ weirdo.  Standing in the rain at 3 am?  She probably came from a mental home or something.  Maybe they sent her out here thinking rural life would calm her down or something, but really she’s going to murder us all in our sleep and the guys who made Blair Witch will have to come up here and make another sequel.”

“Anthony!”  My mother was the only one who ever called me that.  To everyone else I was “Ant,” but my mom insisted that she named me Anthony because she liked the whole name, how it sounded like poetry or something.  Does an eighteen-year-old guy want a name that sounds like poetry?  Of course not.

Anyway, I wasn’t really interested in the girl.  Just curious.  Curious enough that I actually decided to talk to her.  I mean, I was bored.  I had a job at the local video store, but since everyone from school worked at either the video store or Friendly’s, we never had days off at the same time.  It was a Thursday afternoon and I wanted to go somewhere, do something.  I was still feeling pretty rich.  See, high school graduation is the only gift-giving occasion where you can just reach into your wallet, pull out twenty bucks, and hand it over inside some cheesy card that basically says, hey man, have a nice life.  And I knew that the 250 dollars I made off of various relatives and neighbors would only buy one semester’s worth of textbooks, so all the better reason to spend it all now having fun.

There were plenty of other girls from my senior class I could have talked to.  Unfortunately, my town’s pretty small, so I know them all.  I know they’ve all slept with some combination of my best friends, and that just weirds me out.  Besides, the only relationship I ever had ended after two weeks.  Really, I’m not bad looking, but I guess I’m too intense for girls.  That’s what Cindy said, at least, said I scared her or something.  If there’s anything I’d call myself, scary is not it.  I’m exactly one inch under six feet (which is as annoying as hell), with hair that looks like a dark brown mop someone attached to my head.  If I cut it, it grows back in a week, so I just let it grow long and attempt to keep it contained by squashing it under a baseball cap.

So I needed somewhere to go, and there was the girl again, outside in the Cawley’s front yard watching one of the beagles run around the yard like it was on acid or something.  Now that I was looking at her in the daytime with dry clothes on, I noticed that she wasn’t that bad looking.  She was definitely weird, though.  She wore one of those tiny black leather skirts over blue leggings, a t-shirt advertising some obscure rock band, and the most worn out pair of sneakers I have ever seen.  More amazing than her outfit, though, was her hair.  It was this insane shade of red, like one of those drug store dye jobs, only it seemed to change color when she moved.  I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before.  A color like that would be visible even through a torrential downpour in the middle of the night.  I figured she’d done it recently.

I walked nonchalantly over towards the row of short bushes separating out two yards,

“Hey,”  I said.  It was not the best opening line, but I was still staring at the hair.  Volcanic red, I guessed.

“Hello,” she replied, but only after turning and scrutinizing me for a few minutes.  She looked straight into my eyes, not like most people who just glance around while they talk.  What the..?  Her eyes are purple! I quickly looked away,

“What did you feed him this morning?”  I asked, gesturing towards the dog, who was currently attempting to climb a tree in pursuit of a squirrel.  Each jump resulted in the dog sprawled at the base of the tree and the squirrel chattering away in the branches, having the time of his life.

“I have no idea,” she said, “If he were my dog, I’d teach him to hunt for his own food.”

“Yeah, what kind of dog can’t even intimidate a squirrel?”  We both laughed as the squirrel climbed halfway down the tree, taunting the poor yapping beagle.  Her laugh was low and musical, with this intense effect that was sort of like the feeling you get in your chest when you turn a sub all the way up.

“I’m Ant,”  I said, and held out my hand over the bushes.  She walked over without looking at her feet at all, just stared right ahead at me.

“Eve.”

“So, uh, I guess I’m your neighbor this summer.”  It was a pretty idiotic thing to say, but it’s hard to think when two purple eyes are focused on your forehead like radar.

“Yeah.  I’ve seen you.  I can see your living room from my room downstairs.”  She gestured back towards the Cawley’s house, and I noticed a room with dark purple curtains, and figured those must be hers.  Kinda of freaked me out, though, that she’d been watching me play Sega every night for the past week.  “You don’t come outside very often,” she continued.

“Well, there’s not much to do out here.”  I remembered playing baseball every summer as a kid.  Now all the guys were either working or lazing around, watching TV, playing video games.  Wasn’t much else to do, really.

“Maybe you need to look harder.” She paused for a minute, like she was listening to something, then crouched down beside the low, squared-off bushes and touched one of the leaves, “They don’t make a very good fence, and the plants aren’t very happy.”

“Um, I never knew plants could be happy.”

“Anything can be happy or sad.  You just have to know how to look. Here, see this leaf?  It’s cut in half.  The edge is all brown and sad.  You can tell, can’t you?”  This was probably my cue to say something like, Nice to meet you, say hi to the men in white coats for me, dash off into my house, and amuse myself with video games for the rest of the afternoon, but the sheer immensity of boredom I had accumulated over the week outweighed natural instinct.  I sort of shook my head and tried to come up with some way to change the subject,

“So, where are you from?”

“England.”  She shrugged.

“Really?  You don’t have an accent.”

“I know.  I was born in Washington DC, grew up all over the place.  I only said England because that’s where our most recent house was.”

“Was?”

“Well, my parents are out searching for our next house right now.  They didn’t want me on my own all summer.  I don’t see how it matters since I never see them at all, anyway.”  I couldn’t tell if she was angry or just sad, she had drained all emotion from her voice.  She still looked straight at me, though.

“Yeah?  Well I never see my dad.  He lives somewhere in Canada.  Hasn’t talked to my mom or me in fifteen years.”

“Some guys are assholes,” she said.

I had no idea why I had just told her about my dad.  I never talked about him, not even to my best friends.

“So, um, I’m a guy, too, you know,” I said, grinning nervously.

“Well, you have yet to show me that you’re the good kind.  Guilty until proven innocent, you know?”  We both laughed again.

“Want to go somewhere?”  she said suddenly. “I only have to watch the dog for another ten minutes.”  She smiled, and I wondered if she’d read my mind.

“Sure.  Where do you want to go?”

“Well, I don’t know the town that well, but I was wondering if there were any nice ponds.”  I had been thinking more along the lines of lunch at the mall or something, but sure, finding a pond could be fun.  At least it would be something to do.

“Um, there’s the one we all used to skate on in the winter, out behind the town hall.  I guess it’s nice.  I haven’t been there in a few years.”

Part II

Mt Glastenbury, VT. September 2009.

Into the fog, drifting, heartless

Swaying side to side to side

Walk thee ever facing forward

Think not again of those who’ve died

The crunch of memory underfoot

The cry of deep dark wooded night

Swallow tight thy fears of sunset

Raise up thine eyes and join the fight

Stumbling, reaching, beasts and burdens

Be they phantoms? be they real?

Without a sword or spear or arrow

Alone ye face them, eyes turned steel

Pride and doubt and rage and greed

Claw and tear and rip and shred

Slivers of cloud rain down like blindness

Shrouded by mist, the beasts have fled

And ye walk on. On towards daylight

Where thy name and home await

“Oh God,” ye say, “the battle’s won!”

Thy voice alight with fresh earned fate

Laughing, sighing, a wind caresses

“Oh no, my son, it’s just begun.”

When it’s this cold and we’re huddled around the fire
like this
I like to tell this story about Ri and Gurum.
I first heard it from my grandmother,
long before you were born.

Rivan was the first man
you’ve heard about him before

The first man was sculpted by the trickster Ri
with clay from the riverbank
He was very funny looking
with no fur or claws or tail
to protect himself.
When he woke up, he was very cold.
The sun was very far away, like it is now
A fox kept him warm
but that is another story, for another time.
Just remember that if it weren’t for the fox, you wouldn’t be here now!

Anyway, Ri didn’t want his funny-looking creation to die.
His brothers and sisters had already created many plants
and animals
and Ri knew that though the man lacked
claws or
teeth or
fur or
scales,
he was smart.
like you are smart.

and Ri knew that the Sun was warm. He thought:

Maybe I can steal some of the Sun from my brother Gurum.
then this man can stay warm until summer time.

So Ri set out to steal some of the sun.
He soon arrived at Gurum’s house
The house far in the East
where the sun rises
And he asked his brother:

Brother, may I have a piece of the sun?
It is large and hot and heavy.
You do not need all of it.
Let me carry some today

Gurum laughed.

I am leaving soon for my trek across the sky,
Get out of my way little brother,
Or the Sun shall burn you.

So Ri left the house in the East.
He returned the next night
Disguised as a salamander
and crawled up
the tiny path in the sky
it took him all night
to get to the middle
without being seen by the moon
or the stars.
And he waited there in the sky
for Gurum to come along
walking carefully
with the sun on his shoulders
He carried it like you carry the corn in from the fields, in a sack attached to his shoulders with a strap of leather.

Ri the salamander crawled out
In front of his brother and asked
His voice was high and squeaky

Older Brother,
Where are you going with the Sun?
It is so heavy and hot.
Perhaps I can carry some of it for you?

Now, Gurum was immense in size with muscles like large boulders
and legs like the largest trees.
Ri was a tiny salamander,
the size of your little finger
Gurum almost didn’t hear his tiny voice,
and almost stepped on Ri
who was sitting
in his path

But when Gurum saw
Who had asked to carry the sun,
he began to laugh.
His laugh was like thunder
or the ocean
or a thousand wolves howling
He laughed bent over
and tears started to fall
raining on the earth
Then Gurum lost his balance
On the path in the sky.

And he fell.
He fell towards the earth,
and the sun fell with him!
This could have been the end of everything
Since the sun’s fires would have scorched the whole earth!
But Gurum’s father,
UA, the sky
And the earth is EA, UA’s wife, you remember?

Saw his son falling,
and reached out
to catch him

But when UA reached out his hands,
a space opened up
between the sky and the earth.
And Jai crept through
You know who Jai is:  The demon who brings sickness and death and old age to all living things.

Ri did not fall
from the path
when Gurum fell,
but when UA moved,
the path shook, and Ri fell, too.
Ri landed on the earth
and saw that a piece of the sun
had come very close to the earth
and started a fire.
It was a very small fire,
Like the one we sit around right now
and Gurum didn’t notice.
So Ri took a branch and carried the fire
back to Rivan, the first man.

I wrote this fable in college for a Native American Literature class. The mythology is one I made up.

Part 1

Shae and Selena were discussing lip gloss. Apparently, strawberry-melon was the choice of the day. Ronnie made a note in his case book.

“Did you see they make new flavors with swirls and glitter?”

“Yeah! I begged my mom to get some, but she won’t unless I pass the spelling quiz,” Shae’s perfectly lip-glossed lips turned down into a frown.

“Um, do you need help in spelling?” Ronnie new as soon as he spoke that he should have kept quiet. His huge nose was definitely turning red, and both girls were staring.

“You’d help me?” Shae seemed surprised.

Ronnie considered his offer. He wasn’t the world’s best speller, but this was a chance to see Shae’s handwriting up close and personal. It was also a chance to completely humiliate himself in front of the prettiest girl in school.

“Sure. Um. During free study?”

Three hours later, Ronnie found himself sitting across from Shae at the free study desk in the back of Mrs. Stephanopolous’ classroom.

“C-R-I-S-T-A-L,” Shae spelled.

“It’s C-R-Y,” Ronnie said. “Like, don’t cry, that’s real crystal!”

Shae laughed. “You’re funny, Nose!”

“Here, write it down. It’ll help you remember.”

Ronnie tried not to stare as she wrote. Her letters were bubbly, just like the mystery note, but there weren’t any i’s in the word to see if she dotted with hearts.

“Okay, now spell ‘pickle.’”

No hearts. Ronnie’s heart sank. If it wasn’t Shae, who was it? While Shae snapped her brace bands and scanned the word list, he noticed something shiny on the floor.

Shae wasn’t really looking, so he ducked down and picked it up–it was a broken friendship bracelet. The beads had mostly fallen off, but the colors were the same as the ones in his note: pink, green, and orange. And the beads that were left spelled out part of a name: K-A-I.

Kaitlyn? Kailey? Ronnie couldn’t think of any other names with those three letters.

“Quiz time! Return to your seats.” Mrs. S swooshed to the front of the room in one of her huge flowy skirts.

Ronnie tucked the bracelet in his pocket and gave Shae a thumbs up. “You’ll do great.”

Shae looked like she was doing great. She wrote carefully with a smile through the whole quiz, but Ronnie couldn’t think about spelling at all. Not with an unsolved mystery on the brain. He went through every girls’ name in the room, just in case the letters were mixed up. There was a Kaitlyn, but she might spell it Caitlin, Ronnie wasn’t sure. Then there was Kira and Annika. That was it. Three possibilities. Unless…

Ronnie racked his memory for girls’ names in the other 6th grade classes, but he just didn’t know them all. There were more Kaitlyns for sure, but beyond that?

“Who knows?” Ronnie said out loud accidentally.

“Excuse me?” Mrs. S asked.

“Nothing.” Ronnie slumped down in his seat, sure his nose was redder than ever.

After class, he walked right into her.

“Sorry!” She yelped as papers went flying.

“No, that was my bad,” Ronnie ducked his head so maybe she wouldn’t make fun of his nose. He recognized the girl, but didn’t know her name. She’d always been the quiet type.

Then he saw the name on one of her papers. “Kaila?” he asked.

“Yeah… that’s me,” she said.

Ronnie fished the bracelet out of his pocket. “Um, is this yours?”

Kaila’s eyes widened. “You FOUND it! Where? when? It’s been missing for a week!”

She snatched the bracelet and danced around in a circle.

“Um, are green, pink, and orange your favorite colors, by any chance?” Ronnie asked.

“Of course! Why else would I make my lucky charm bracelet those colors?” Kaila danced away laughing, and Ronnie was left with the uneasy feeling that maybe, just maybe, he’d found the note-writer.

Oil on paper. October 25, 2009.

It was finally warm enough this weekend to go outside and paint the fall colors! This is the community center near our apartment in Newton Lower Falls. And… here it is in photograph form!