i think my cat needs a scratching post. i guess she needs a name first, one to wear around a little collar, one of those silver plated ones with the hearts on top, at least that way if she were lost someone would recognize her. names are important things, or so i hear, though i sometimes wonder. a name can be changed by something as easy as a typo, a toothbrush, a bit of paint in the cupboard, a marriage. names can be so easily taken away, you blink and suddenly the woman you were refuses to correspond to the girl you've become, and you fold yourself up in manilla envelopes and twist your hair and watch landscapes slide with the paper weights the universe places upon them, the ones that hold the corners down. back in my mounatins, i curled up in the place where where once he had slept, where once the bard had parked his voice on one of those trips over to my house, i remembered coming in to wake him up in the morning, his smell in the room, how perfect that was...and all of things, all of these voices remind
ing me of him, and how is he, anyway? and have you seen him? and yes, i saw him just the other week at a party, he had his perfect girlfriend with him, nothing like you alice, she was blond and was a snappy dresser...nothing between the ears? ah well. i guess at least he's happy now with a girl who refuses to correct his punctuation, to a girl who doesn't offer a symbolic analysis of any story he ever writes, to a girl who doesn't just stare at the keys when he begins to play his augmented chords. it stung, it burrowed itself deep in that place where he used to live, in gnawed at me the entire few days where i laddeled my soup and tried to call him to get my soul back, but his number had changed, just for spite. and something inside, it whispered, "alice, you can't ask back something you most willingly gave." but rain's shoestrings, but i thought he was going to take care of it, but he lied he lied his lips were too sweet with his kisses where is he!? it doesn't matter. i gave what i gave and it is gone, and
all the king's horses can find the scattered symmetry and place it back in any coordination that would make the slightest sense to me. it's over. it was time to cry, to finally understand, to open the hands and let the spool through, and yes, sometimes the string cuts, sometimes it burns for hours afterwards, but all souls must fly free, only to be retrieved by angels at the end of the story. just as tam snatched mine from the freeway when it decided to test the heights of its rainbow coloured world. "but he always talked about you as if you were his possession," the blues man said, the black coffee one. "he never understood how important it was to let a soul like you fly free." and maybe he did, and maybe he was just afraid of heights, and maybe it was my flight that frightened him away, but in the end, he was the one who cut his hair--not me--and i did something right, something really right, for the first time in my life. and there are certain things you never get, and there are certain things that will
always splinter and hurt, but i took every precious memory of him, transformed into tears, and scattered them on the pillow that night, with the wise side of fred peeking through to help a damsel in distress, because he's always there when i close my eyes, and he knows everything i need to. "and you have been taking all of this and placing it on tam's shoulders. tam would never have done any of this, not in a million years, and had you been listening to yourself instead of living in the stained glass memory of another time, you would have noticed you already knew. it was a test, did you care enough to keep him there? you did, that was all he needed to know. all he ever wanted was to see you smiling and know it was because of him. you need to trust." "but what if, but what if," "there is no 'what-if's' alice. this universe may be flat, this world may be on the back of the turtle, but what does it matter to you? you still believe what you will. 'just because i cannot see it doesn't mean i can't believe it.' yo
u will never know anything for certain, but you don't need to, alice. your entire existance is based on faith. tam is not puck, and will never be. just because puck left you, that doesn't mean everyone else in the world is going to. look at your batting average, alice. you left all the others. just because one silly boy doesn't want your gift doesn't mean the entire world doesn't want it. and tam, he's never going to leave you." and i knew, then, talking to fred in my swollen puffy eyes, the swollen eyes that fred said were okay, were alright, go ahead and cry, girl, it's time to let the chimney sweeps loose, think about it all, think about the first kiss behind the curtains, think about the roses, the tulips, think about his crazy father, think about milkshakes, think about when he first brought you his poem and how you locked yourself in the bathroom arguing with your reflection that there was no way you were in love with this boy when you knew that twinkling in your eyes was because of him, your little da
rk aclove, his favourite flannel shirt, climbing up in the skeleton of your aunt and uncle's house, curling up together on the rocks at horse creek, blowing bubbles, imaginary campfires, hanging out of the sunroof at prom, feeling the wind, laughing, the blue chalk, the olive garden, the theater seats, surge, the perfect valentine's gift, guessing the colour of the skittles when watching batman and robin, watching him sing "for the longest time" at his chorus concert and his eyes seeking you out of the crowd, all of it, out, in those little crystals on your pillow...i knew then, that all of my fears with tam were simply the transference of what i always feared went wrong with doug pasted over and carried over and still haunting. i know he isn't you. but maybe i wasn't so sure. angels, you can't ever try to measure their wingspan...even if they let you, it would defy definition, and anything you can understand, and some things you couldn't...accept. accept and know, forever. and know that forever is forever,
and love. it's all you can do, and trust. trust is a very important part of it. so fred really does know everything.
i found myself in the halls of west greene again, the little school i used to live in, the one where the page of swords followed me to, the one where we used to hide in the girl's locker room, the one that she turned into this entire strange universe with her transverse tales and poison tongue, the one she left me with the mumbles boy and stephen (stephen, who i saw for the first time in three years only two days ago, stephen who used to pass notes to me during health class...) the mumbles boy who wanted to murder those boys who caught me under the bleachers, the first time i said no. the first time i ever put my foot down. the first time i threw a backpack at someone, the first time i escaped. the mumbles boy and his roses and his moody thoughts and his parchment letters. i went back there, wandering the halls, where they changed the locks and the doors and set a stage downstairs, a real stage, one i perhaps helped establish when i became a queen with wings...the english teachers and my surrogate father, ho
w they all came to find me there...up, in the bleachers where the mumbles boy and i used to hide in the farthest corner during pep rallies, watching these faces below me graduate with the little blue caps, so many years...why should it matter? there, in my angel dress, with the same unfriendly eyes upon me as before when i painted my eyes black and drew all over my face, (i knew it never had anything to do with the way i was dressed, stuart said sheep can smell a wolf a mile away, and that's when they start bleating)...and then i guess that was when i realized the beauty of the asphalt universe, being flung headfirst into the realm i had rationalized into a beautiful little package to display to my friends...why did it hurt so much to be there? so again, the outsider, with small children for friends, as always. "i love you, alice." didn't even know the child's name. but i didn't need to. i saw brian for a moment, but with a flash he was gone. the greetings were too quick, faces were gone in an instant. my su
rrogate father, i pasted the past year in a twenty word or less paragraph, this life he has heard so many details of my life for the past four years, my art teacher who never wanted my wings to be clipped, frowning at my sudden semi-interest in computer science, frowning and the possibility of me majoring in aerospace or biology..."what have they done to you in college?" he always meant so much to me, the father i never had, the one who adopted me and created extra art classes so i could end my senior year with five fine art credits...mrs. patricia, i spent my visitation with her cleaning desks and boards and arranging things as i always have, and glenna, she spoke of how much she missed our journalism class, and wasn't i glad i didn't have to put up the bulliten board this year? well, maybe i was always a good student...maybe that's what saved me. the accents, the thick ones, they stick to me in the wrong place, and i wonder how long it really has been...so strange, this moonshine still universe i left only
yesterday, though some things never change, especially in east tennessee...
miss kitty is biting at my feet again. sometimes she is too playful, though her teeth don't hurt nearly as much as i know they will someday...sometimes i think she sees me as one huge scratching post.
i danced again, this afternoon. on tiptoe, waiting for the moon to fall. and one day, i'm going to be a dancer, and one day, i'm going to touch the stars, and one day, i'm going to do anything...but too much, i find myself in a sluggish pit of afterthoughts...afterthoughts after they have left. the ring master and i, our words crossed here today, trying to make me feel less guilty, in explanation, in confrontation. knowing she doesn't think any less of me...that helps. talking to the wiley boy, that helps. maybe one day, maybe soon, maybe i won't feel as if my apron's been stained.
this uncreative stir, i need to go do something manual now. this is only the mundane side, and that only happens when i am too awake to breathe.
