For my friend

I liked the little walk behind the school. I liked being with you.

I felt like a kid again. I wanted to hold your hand.

We talked about llamas and sheep, and how they listen better than people.

I ducked under the tree branches and touched the fence.

We were all alone, and no one would have known

if we'd paused a moment, smiled and blushed and touched,

left our fingerprints on the backdoor and on each other,

laughed and cried and held on like we needed it,

like we needed each other just then,

and we had each other, just then.

I don't know if we'll get that chance again.

Dear Ozzie

Dear Ozzie,
You were just a wretch, a waif when I found you. But I didn't find you, you found me.
You lost your baby teeth chewing on my fingers.
You were a tiny thing, with fleas and worms and mites. The day after I found you I saw a dead rat in the gutter and thought that could have easily been you. It was raining so hard the night before and the Fenway was waterlogged.
You came to me in the rain on a Sunday night. You cried outside my window.
I'd been feeling lonely, and my horoscope for that week suggested I might find "a different kind of soulmate."
But I didn't find you. You found me.
You were so scrawny and sick. I was afraid I would lose you as soon as I found you. I did a little magic spell with a scarab beetle and some herbs, wrapped them up in a piece of blue velvet and kept it safe in a box.
16 years later I buried you with that trinket.
Ozzie, you were my best friend. I loved you with all my heart. I hope you knew that.
Some people would say I saved you that night, but actually you saved me.
You found me.
I am honored to be the person you chose to spend your life with.
I miss you so much I can hardly stand it.
I hope someday we'll be together again. In the meantime, I hope God lets you sleep on his lap, and I'm jealous of Him for the head-bonks He will receive.
Dear Ozzie, I love you.
Signed,
Mom

Dream of my Father

I had a dream of my father.
We were standing on a beach.
I knew he was dead, and I knew I must be dreaming
But I could see him right there in front of me.
I said, "Dad, how are you here?"
and he smiled and hugged me,
he didn't speak but in my head I heard him
say my name.
He held me close and we flew straight up into the sky.
I looked down and I could see the beach
and the water and seagulls and clouds beneath me.
I was scared then, I said,
"Dad, be careful! We're going to fall!"
But without speaking my father told me we wouldn't fall,
that we could fly now.
And I remembered that I was dreaming then,
and I realized I could fly.
 Right then I knew that even though I was dreaming, my father really was there.
I started to try to speak to him for real.
I said, "I miss you," over and over
until I woke myself muttering in my sleep.

In my dream, my father did let go of me,
and I fell. But I floated like a leaf on the wind
and landed in the tall grass on the beach.

excerpt from Sliders

My mother used to tell me I was a slider. Street light interference. She meant it as a joke, we all know street lights are energy-savers. They go out and come back up periodically to save power. But sometimes it was funny, like everytime we’d drive under a streetlight it would go out or come back on suddenly. And we’d laugh. My mom said that’s always happened to her. She said she never had an electronic device that she didn’t have to return as defective. They’d just stop working around her, she said. They’d fritz out.

She couldn’t use anything with batteries. They would drain in a matter of hours, at best. She couldn’t talk on any kind of cordless or cellular phone. I’ve always been the same way. Technology just does not function around me. Things malfunction, in fact. Things crash and die.

100 Minutes of Solitude, for Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It was during those days that she began to think she was dying. She felt as if she had swallowed poison, and it was softening her bones and burning her organs, until finally her insides would rot and boil down and stream out of her rectum in a torrent of sludge and sewage, black and putrid like the pipes overflowing after the heavy rains, flushing the gutters of the narrow dirt streets. She felt that time was reflecting itself in the bathroom mirror, trapping it in a moment that could never be escaped. She sat and glared at her image in the mirror, like an angry cat mistaking its reflection for another angry cat, scared and threatened and ready to attack itself. The bathroom was small, and the mirror so large it took up most of one wall. To avoid it at first she pulled a towel over her head when she had to use the toilet, bathe, or wash her hands, but still she felt the ghoulish presence of the reflection watching her, and she feared that obscuring her eyes only left her more vulnerable to attack and entrapment in the endless moment of fear frozen in the mirror. She began avoiding the bathroom, preferring to shower under the garden hose, and pee in a clay flowerpot which she emptied in the far corner of the yard.

Touisset

Clams, quahogs, mussels, mud. The smell of something dying and something being born. Something green and black and slimy, like sludge, slurry. Protein rotting. Eel grass, slick rocks and seaweed, bladderwrack. The air is heavy with moisture and salt. The wind picks up suddenly in gusts and calms again, balmy. Sometimes there is fog so thick you can't see in front of you, at night shining a flashlight only makes it harder to see through.

There is shoreline all around but no open ocean. There are coves, bays, and salt marshes. Soggy ground, inlets. Cow ponds and cow paths and corn fields, old barns and stone walls and rotting wooden gates.

A strange, watery place. Water all around, in front and behind, East, West, and South. Salt water. I have salt water in my veins.

A place lots of people had lived before, where other people's memories clung to the slimy rocks and pylons of the dock, other people's lives depended on the fish they caught and the oil they left puddling in the cove where the kids learned to swim.

What happened there before that? Were there always boats in the cove and paths in the woods and fields of corn? What spirits live in those trees and stones vines and ivy grass sumac and clover moss. What ever happened there?

something There was

There was a place once I knew about

There was a song I heard

a sound

There was a smell

like flowers and salt water

decay

There was the sound of the waves

the low moans of trawlers

creeping

There were shooting stars

at night the sky

so vast

There was a time

I feel like I remember

in pieces like a dream

not quite

There was a time

slow as mud and tides

slow as the moon

There was a fire that burned all night

There was something I forgot to say

something I forgot about

something

There was

something

I forgot