Eye

 

I saw the main stairway of the old house
But it was closed, cancelled
The stairs continued into the lower darkness
into some kind of forbidden basement
a place I had never seen or been aware of.
This place was also closed, cancelled.

I looked downwards
Into the darkness
And I saw
Or imagined I saw
an awakened eye
which was my own.

I went to my room upstairs
it was more like a small apartment than a room
With a living room, a bathroom, a bedroom.
And on the white wall,
The one that faced the street
I saw
a single colored teardrop
seemingly fresh and alive.
Then I heard a loud noise
and the tear splattered
all over the white wall.

I spent some time
making sure all the doors were closed and locked
I was certain there were other people close by
Wandering around the house.
I had some trouble locking all the doors
since I wasn’t sure
where they were all located.

In the middle of rushing around
closing and locking everything
I heard a sound
That I somewhat recognized as my name
Then I heard it again
And I just heard it as a word
A word without a meaning known to me.


I walked down a long hall
Surrounded by gardens of grass and stone.
I could see other gardens in the distance
I saw a group of children
Led by two or three adults
They were all carrying candles
And raising them above their heads.

The man who was in charge approached me.
He talked to me as if he knew who I was
And why I was there.
“It’s a beautiful house…”
He said.
And I responded:
“Yes, it really is..
But it’s a bit dangerous…
Specially for kids.”
I was thinking of so many levels,
So many ways to fall.
He said:
“It’s ok.
As long as you keep your eye on them.”

Then the children came to me
And carried me like a precious jewel.
I became pink and new,
With a touch of purple
Maybe brown or light blue
Always on the verge of crying.

Please Don't Block The Driveway

It was a sunny morning when Charlie sat down to create the sign. Having searched all over town for a pre-made sign that would have suited his purpose, and having failed to find such a sign, Charlie eventually settled by buying vinyl alphabet stickers and a weather resistant Car For Sale sign. He left these in the trunk of his car for several days because he himself had always been offended by signs such as the one he was contemplating creating. Signs that said things like “Please flush the toilet.”, “Keep off Grass”, or “No Solicitors”. Signs that supposed that the reader was a Neanderthal, or inconsiderate, or weak willed enough to be swayed from robbing a house simply because a “beware of dog” sign was propped in a window. 
It offended him that anyone should think that he needed to be told these things, despite the fact that they weren’t meant for him specifically. It offended him that he should be assaulted by blaring red letters because other people were animals, anarchists, or vacuum salesmen. It offended him that other people were animals, anarchist, and vacuum salesmen, and that these signs reminded him of it. Most of all, it offended him that the messages were so cold, so impersonal. If someone were to say to him:
“Excuse me. Hi. I’m Ted. I really work hard to keep my grass healthy. It’s surprising, I know, but grass is really very delicate, so if you could use the pathways that would be wonderful. It will keep the grass alive. Thanks! I appreciate it.”
Well then, that might be less offensive. If, however, someone said:
“Yeah, go ahead it’s right through that door way. Make sure you flush the toilet and wash your hands when you're through.”, it would be condescending. And that, Charlie thought, was at the heart of what aroused his disdain for signs. They often said things that people would never say themselves. They were cowardly, rude, and driven by presumptions of vulgarity.
And yet, he suddenly found himself in a position in which he had a need for a sign. His new neighbors were blocking his driveway. Now, to be accurate, it was Charlie that was new to the neighborhood, having just purchased his first home. It had been a short sale and the previous owner lived in the house right up to the point at which Charlie was handed the keys. Thus the house had not stood long empty before Charlie began the gratifying labor of fixing up his new home. Popping in and out to paint and make repairs, he noticed that at least every other time he pulled up to the house, the driveway was blocked by one car or another.
If he had known which cars belonged to which houses, he would have simply knocked on a door, introduced himself with a smile and asked that his driveway be left open to him. Unfortunately this was not the case and Charlie was not yet ready to walk up and down the street introducing himself to every neighbor. And after five or six frustrating hikes from the car to the house with paint cans and tools, Charlie found himself sitting on the living room floor fingering sheets of vinyl stickers imprinted with bold block letters.
It began simply enough. PLEASE DON’T BLOCK THE DRIVEWAY. Despite his best effort, the letters had not been applied perfectly straight. Soon Charlie found himself adding the word “THANKS” at the bottom to fill what he perceived as an awkward blankness. Before he pressed on the “S” he realized that to keep things more perfectly centered he had better leave off the “S” and apply “Y” “O” and “U” instead. Besides, some extra stickers had peeled of the backing and it would be good to use them up, so he contrived to add the words “FOR UNDERSTANDING”.
After this, of course, there needed to be something further to balance things out visually, and then more stickers came up off the backing and he thought of more words to make with those. Eventually he needed more sign and more letters to complete the half formed words and ideas already in place. Naturally, the additional signs needed to be centered properly upon the garage door, so more signs had to be created to fill that space properly, eventually forming one enormous sign which swallowed up the entirety of the garage door, the vinyl letters tilting and slanting awkwardly like letters cut from magazines and pasted into a ransom note.


PLEASE DON’T BLOCK THE DRIVEWAY.
THANK YOU FOR UNDERSTANDING THAT THIS HOUSE IS NOT EMPTY.
ALTHOUGH I HAVE NOT YET MOVED IN, I AM MAKING MANY IMPROVEMENTS AND NEED ACCESS TO MY GARAGE. I AM SURE THAT WHEN THE PREVIOUS OWNER VACATED THE PREMISES YOU CAME TO BE UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT THIS HOUSE WOULD STAND ABANDONED FOR QUITE SOME TIME.
AFTER ALL, IN THIS ECONOMY THAT IS QUITE OFTEN THE SITUATION.
SOME NEIGHBORHOODS ARE RIDDLED WITH EMPTY HOMES LEAVING THEM LIKE DESOLATE BLOCKS OF SWISS CHEESE, ADOLESCENTS AND VAGABONDS SWARMING THESE GAPING HOLES IN THE COMMUNITY LIKE STARVING MICE.
I AM PLEASED THAT OUR NEIGHBORHOOD WILL NOT SUCCUMB TO THE DIFFICULTIES OF THESE TIMES. THROUGH MUTUAL REPECT AND COURTESY I KNOW WE WILL LIVE PEACEFULLY TOGETHER, EACH WITH FULL ACCESS TO THEIR DRIVEWAYS. THE LAWNS WILL THRIVE AS WE ATTENTIVELY KEEP TO DESIGNATED WALKWAYS. OUR DOGS WILL REST SERENELY, UNDISTURBED UPON OUR PRIVATE PROPERTIES UPON WHICH THERE SHALL BE NO TRESPASSES.
WITH THE PROPER APPLICATION OF AWARENESS AND RESTRAINT WE WILL CO-EXIST PEACEFULLY. OUR HOMES SHALL BE PAINTED INDISTINCT NEUTRAL TONES SO THAT THE ENTIRE STREET WILL BE AWASH IN HUES OF SEPIA AND POWDER BLUE.
GONE ARE THE DAYS OF CLOTHESLINES HUNG IN THE FRONT YARD AND MOTHER IN HER APRON. MOTHER SHALL DRIVE TO WORK IN HER HYBRID CAR DROPPING THE KIDS AT SCHOOL ON HER WAY OUT.
 DUE TO THIS I UNDERSTAND THAT NO ONE WILL BE BAKING COOKIES TO WELCOME ME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
NAY, THE DEFINITION OF A GOOD NEIGHBOR HAS CHANGED FROM THOSE THEY STILL PROPAGATE ON TV SITCOMS.
WE SHALL KEEP TO OUR OWN RESPECTIVE DOMICILES AND REFRAIN FROM SPEAKING TO ONE ANOTHER.
A CURT NOD OR WAVE ON THE WAY FROM THE FRONT DOOR TO THE CAR IS ALL THAT SHALL BE NECESSARY.
FOR ALL WE WILL KNOW, IN ONE HOUSE MIGHT LIVE A SERIAL KILLER,
IN THE NEXT A FAMILY OF MORMONS WITH THREE WIVES DISGUISED AS ELDER DAUGHTERS,
IN THE NEXT A GAY COUPLE SNOGGING ON THEIR RETRO SOFA, TOES LOST IN THE SOFTNESS OF NEW SHAG CARPET,
IN ANOTHER A CHINESE FAMILY IS SECRETLY TUNNELING BENEATH THE ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD TO MAKE MORE ROOM FOR THEIR KNOCK OFF DESIGNER BRAND PURSE FACTORY,
WHILE IN YET ANOTHER A SINGLE MAN WONDERS WHAT HAS BECOME OF HIS SELF RESPECT AND IDEALS. WITH BLOCK LETTERS HE WILL BE BEGGING STRANGERS TO ADHERE TO THE CONVENTIONS OF CIVILIZED SOCIETY, OR IF THAT IS TOO VAGUE, THEN WITH CITY ORDINANCES THAT ALLOW THAT HE MAY HAVE ANY CAR BLOCKING HIS DRIVEWAY TOWED.
HE WILL REFRAIN FROM ASKING THEM TO FLUSH THEIR TOILETS AND WASH THEIR HANDS BEFORE EATING.
WHAT THEY DO IN THEIR OWN HOMES IS THEIR OWN BUSINESS, UNLESS SOMETHING HE HEARS THROUGH THE WALLS OR GLIMPSES THROUGH A WINDOW GIVES HIM CAUSE TO CALL CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES OR THE HUMANE SOCIETY OR THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY.
IT IS IN THIS SPIRIT OF RESPECTING PERSONAL SPACE THAT I HUMBLY ASK YOU TO LEAVE MY DRIVEWAY FREE OF OBSTRUCTIONS.
THANKS.

When it had been completed Charlie stood in the driveway admiring his work. He felt a strange mix of dread and elation. The old lady across the street was peering out from behind her curtains. The sun was shining and sparkling off the bright emerald green fibers of the synthetic lawn in front of another neighbor's house. Charlie glanced at his own little patch of lawn, a yellow melee of crab grass and wild oats. Then he walked around the corner to where his truck was parked and drove to the home improvement store in search of fertilizer and weed killer. 

A Different Life

I find myself in a two room flat on the third floor of a refurbished duplex. The floors are a warm honey color speckled with tiny dark knots. The only remaining architectural hint of the apartment’s long past is the embellished molding of flowers and leaves nestled in the corner between the walls and ceiling which outline the apartment’s perimeter.
Besides the whisper of a long forgotten period of detailed craftsmanship, the flat is decidedly modern. The kitchen, though small and lacking more than a few plain cabinets, is complete with chrome refrigerator and marble counter tops. Colorful snapshots and notes on brightly colored post-its dot the fridge’s double doors.
In the same room as the kitchen, though closer to the large street-facing window, is the square dining room table. The formal table is a bit too large for the space, surrounded by matching dark wooden chairs along all four sides. There is a two foot perimeter between the chairs and two walls perpendicular to each other, as though the table was bought for another space and then crammed into this one, like a woman squeezing into a dress one size too small. The table, designed with a minimalist aesthetic, is covered with scratches and the rings of coffee mugs which have removed parts of the dark, espresso colored veneer.
From where I am sitting in the living room, on the plush cushions of the L-shaped couch, I can see a narrow credenza in one corner of the dining space covered with framed photos of babies and a wedding ceremony at city hall. A clear glass vase, two feet tall, holds a bouquet of calla lilies. The sweet, sticky scent of their ripe pollen permeates the small apartment.
The living room is crowded too. The plush gray colored suede sofa takes most of the floor space, though it is the blanket of baby toys on the ground surrounding the couch which seem to close the space in, making it difficult to walk. The couch faces the dormant fireplace and narrow mantle, which is covered in a dozen stacks of CDs. They line the mantle in stacks of five or six, perching like flat pigeons on the thin brick ledge. Just over the mantle is a flat screen TV mounted directly to the wall. Just like the couch and dining room table, dominating objects in their respective locations, the enormous glowing TV takes up nearly the entire wall. I turn to it, finding it hard ignore the basketball game blaring forth from the flat surface. Beside me, an enthusiastic young man is shouting at the TV, looking like a teenager in his red and white striped shirt and baggy jeans. He had been trying to ask polite questions, making simple conversation while he and his wife waited for the taxi to arrive, though as he tried, he just was not able to take his eyes from the TV for more than a few seconds at a time.
An eleven month old baby with big brown Bambi eyes is sucking on a green pacifier beside his sport-obsessed father. “So what were you saying?” the man turns to me with divided attention.
“I was just saying that I take these photos and then turn them into something else, I can show you.”
“Yeah, show me,” he says enthusiastically.
I begin turning on my computer, looking through the multitude of dated folders, trying to avoid any risqué photos that might jeopardize their faith in leaving me along with their child for the night.
“What’s that one?” he says, pointing to a colorful thumbnail. I enlarge it, a highly altered photo of a man wearing a feathered mask.
“Is that a bird?” he asks.
“It’s a guy wearing a mask with feathers.”
“Oh. I like it. Show me more!” He turns back to the game. “Oh come on!” he shouts at the TV.
His wife approaches. A heavy set woman in high heel boots. She stands next to her husband, touching his arm. The gesture strikes me as forced, as though she needs to protect her territory from me. Looking around the space, I realize that it is she who has picked the couch, the table, the adult pieces of modern furniture. She seems old to me, not so much in her appearance, but in her approach, in her way of being.
“Okay, hun, the taxi is here,” she says as she glances out the window.
When they are gone, leaving the baby in his crib just moments before walking out the door, I wander around the apartment, looking more closely at their photos, at the accumulated items of their lives. They are a young couple, two people very identified with their Jewish heritage. There are references to it all over the apartment. From the brit milah pictures of the baby to the name of their network wireless connection, it is there, saturating their lives, a huge part of their created culture.
It is then I realize, these are the people I might have become. These are the people my parents had hoped I would be, the life they wished me to have. A stylish apartment with adult furnishings. The marriage, the baby, the teaching job. They are an off-shoot on the path. I begin to take pictures, using their world for another purpose, exploring the choice I didn't make.

Wandering In The Shadows

“The goal is simple but difficult to comprehend.”
Older Brother said it in carefully measured tones and his eyes widened to emphasize the weight of his words.
I had begun to suspect that the goal transcended any words that he or I could utter, that it was hiding right in the corner that we refused to look at, that it scampered in the shadows that our conversations left behind them with every verbal turn.
But I wanted to hear what he had to say. Right then, it was my goal to listen to him and to take in his words even if their effect within me was not what he had intended. The timbre of his voice was as crucial as the rhythm of the syllables that rubbed against each other like tiny silver stones.
“We must find a way to rise above the circumstances that surround us, to banish the forces that seek to cage us in. We must disrupt years of mechanized conditioning and find a way out, a way out of the prison, a way out of the cage.”
I nodded and sincerely agreed. It was never what we said but what we didn’t say that left me with a gap in the pit of my stomach. There was something that we had been avoiding, and we had been avoiding it for years, together. We had shared years of looking elsewhere, years of carefully tracing our steps around a gap in our understanding that pulsed and breathed like an angry stingray.
I couldn’t point to it because I was avoiding it as much as he was. And even if I did point, it would only shift quickly into a different corner and our conversation would continue and soon I would once again feel it pulsing at my back. I could only sometimes call attention to it but even the call itself would soon be swallowed in the vortex of our endless stream of words.
I remembered all of this in the darkness, even if it seemed to mean little if anything to me now, even if it was all incomprehensible to the one that now walked alone in the Old House, trying to ascertain where things were and what meaning they now implied with their existence.
At first, I could only see the outline of everything, like thin lines drawn on black paper to suggest a wall or a desk or a painting. I didn’t reach out to touch anything because I didn’t want to find out that there was nothing there for me to touch.
I was standing over the second stairway, looking all around me and wondering how I came to be here. Was I remembering Older Brother while I walked through the Old House in the darkness or was I thinking of the Old House while Older Brother talked to me about leaving the past behind?
Here was the past itself, in clear and distinct shapes and heavy massive volumes. Here was the long white wall that ended in gray river rocks, spread out in random patterns over an ocean of sand, subtly vibrant with implied whispers of endless suffering, of a place where old soldiers went to die, where they vanished forever after a long life of battle and hardship. Here was the oval shaped dinner table which was also an ancient city full of criminals, here were the dark wooden stairs which were also an old port full of ships and soldiers.
I turned around and I could see the long open windows that surrounded the corner of the upper living room, and I could see the dim lights of a city that pulsed with an angry desperation that reached through the glass like a giant invisible hand covered in rough hair.
I looked up towards the long and final corridor. There was a light in Father’s bedroom. I couldn’t stop myself from believing that it was him, that he was up there and awake and that he was bound to notice that something or someone was wandering out here in the darkness. But it was only a light, a dim yellow light in the middle of black emptiness.
I moved slowly through the open space that surrounded me. I looked up towards the slanted wooden ceiling and the Old House overwhelmed me like an ancient temple. For me there was nothing, there could never be anything, more ancient than the Old House.
The Old House was the place where everything began and it would have to be the place where everything ended. As I looked up, I could sense the walls and the roof rise up above me, or maybe I was just shrinking as I fixed my attention on the apex of the wooden pyramid. The more I looked, the larger the Old House became, the more it spread out in all directions.
I pulled away from that vision and stepped into Grandmother’s room. It was a small white barren room just to the left of the last set of stairs. There was no one there. Nothing but shiny white bricks and open windows. I looked towards the house next door and I thought I saw a light there, but it could have been nothing, a firefly, a match, maybe even just the reflection of the light that was still shining in Father’s room, calling to me without spoken words.
I was by then convinced that Father was there, behind the closed door at the end of the final hallway. I had to make certain that he didn’t see me. I had to make sure that he never became aware that I had come here in the darkest hours after midnight and that I had wandered through his house like an intruder without any apparent purpose, moving little things that should have remained still. I had to be careful to leave him undisturbed and to eventually find a way back and out that didn’t leave any trace of my presence.
“We must find a way to break the chains that have held us. We have to work on this. It won’t be easy. Nothing that truly matters can be easy. “
Older Brother said it and his eyes were as wide as before. As always, I listened and agreed, for there was nothing that I could disagree with in what he had spoken, there was no impulse within me to disagree at all. The words flowed out of him and into me like water and water easily changed shape to fit a new container, leaving behind any previous form it might have held.
I spoke for the first and only time to him that day and I said:
“It is only because of the memory of what you once were that it is still good to see you. You once were something truly great, so great that some of it still slips through what you have now become.”
I thought that maybe that was why we would recurrently return to our past, to reexamine our childhood. Maybe it still held on tightly to that which we valued above all things. Maybe that was why I found myself in the Old House now, wandering through the darkness, hiding from the light.
I lifted my eyes towards the slanted roof again and I allowed myself to float upwards. I rose up slowly, feeling the sensation of freedom rise within me as I released my hold on the floor. There, at the very apex of the wooden pyramid, that is where I would find my escape route.
I saw the empty garden in the distance and the long wooden doors with their rattling little glass windows. I heard a lonely car roaming the empty streets outside, moving slowly from corner to corner, maybe looking for something or someone they had lost. I rose towards the apex, feeling sure that I would soon leave this place behind.
Maybe then there would be no Father. Maybe then there would be no Older Brother. I didn’t know what waited for me on the other side of that wooden barrier but I was eager to face it. I had been avoiding it for far too long. The darkness grew deeper around me, heavier and more oppressive. But it couldn’t bother me. It was now a thing of the past.

Lego House

I step through the fog. Thick, like the layered contours of deep sleep. Each step leads me through a slower stew of grayness. Shapeless hands whip past me in waves of beaded moisture.
I am walking up a slight hill, known through the body and not the eyes unless against this window of pale breath. Long sinewy calf muscles are hard at work, pulling and tearing in an unusual effort. Dense ligaments have slept behind my thighs, only to awaken in this moment under strain. The past itself is a hazy fog, just blackness speckled with the light of an occasional star and multilevel building. There is a landscape of fuzzy lights, a city covered in smoke. Long, long ago. I move as though this has always been done, only the body screams otherwise. Each step, a pulse. Each step, traveled and regressed. Surrounded by white, forward seems to be back, only the incline reveals another truth. One moment after another, then another. Another step into the thickness of gray, into the clouds which cover me as though I was them. As though I was nothing but a movement of moisture and white mixing with gray and converging with water. Change is upon me with the stirring of a lavender scented mist. The clouds swirl as though in a last dance with time, peaking like ocean waves that have met the might of a great titan, and then recede. Each step takes me further from them. I watch as they swirl, trapped in a barrier they cannot cross.
The night opens like a flower. Black. I have nearly reached the crest of the hill, the mound which may be a smooth mountain. Ahead of me, at the peak of the hill is a multi-colored house. Almost square but for the small rectangular shaped tower on the right side. I run to it. I run as if it breathes. I run to my old friend. I run to the house. There are no lights, but we are illuminated by a yellow light that comes from no sun, no stars. An eerie yellow light that casts shadows on the grass that move with the shape of elephants and tigers. I run to the house, to a memory, to the self that I have left. My fingers caress the walls, the thick plastic bricks that protect the house from the night and the night from the whispers of those who dwell there. My body twirls with joy, with a memory that I can not recall and yet I look for.
The house grows as I open my eyes to its form, the life-size Lego house. I run around the periphery. There are four feet of solid yellow bricks that touch the grass and above is an explosion of color. From four feet to the flat roof is a mixture of red, blue and green bricks with an occasional yellow acting like a star. I touch the smooth walls as though it was a lover’s chest. Each side of the house has three small square windows. No glass or shade, just a portal in and out. Under the center window of each side is a bush of fresh lavender. I reach out to one and pull from a reluctant stem. “Thank you,” I say as I crush a purple cone between my fingers and bring it to my nose.
The tall tower, slightly larger than a chimney, is formed from solid green plastic bricks. At the top, a hard plastic flag stands. It’s shape invokes the memory of a proud flag flapping in the wind, crying for freedom. This flag is forever frozen in the ripple, a snapshot to a moment that existed with other material in another place. Beside the open rectangular door is a little plastic tree. It stands still though the night is alive with the dance of the wind.
The gap of the door calls me to enter. I step in. There are no lights. No sounds but the wind slamming against the plastic walls.

Foreclosure

The window was still spotted with circles of white from the rain of two nights past. It had come down like an avalanche of tears, a state of being she had come to know so very well. There had been thunder and lighting to match the violence of her mood. As the orchestra of electrical sounds played, shooting as they went through the air like gagged lives running from a demon, she took her brother’s old wooden baseball bat and destroyed the contents of her old family house.
The bank had sent her the final notice three days before, the words in stark black and white. Those sentences showed no mercy, no softness of compassion. The words blurred her vision and took away the speed from her heart, she fell to the ground. At first, unable to breathe, unable to cry, unable to think. The world closed in on her, swallowed her up and took her into the small little cave that she would soon learn was home. Her new home. She sat crumpled like a piece of dirty laundry on the rug in her hallway, she sat there as the afternoon turned to night and until her little white dog came up to her and took a lick of her ankle, on the skin just above her sock line. The feel of life, of wetness and heat brought her back just a little, then the thoughts rushed in to fill the newly opened space.
What would happen next?
Where would they all go?
What would happen to all their things?
The stuffed animals and the furniture that her grandfather had carved and the album collection she had spent so much time building. How would she get it all out within a couple days? They had shown no mercy, those men in tailored suits and black hair, she thought of them with hate. She had no job and no waiting apartment, no trucks or movers. It was her alone, and she had nothing to fall upon, no mattress to catch her fall, no soft arms that would open and receive her, taking her pain.
Her chest moved up and down slowly. Life indeed was ending, this life that she had known. She watched the dark rain clouds moving in fast, pulled in from the coast by the heat further in the valley, just beyond the mountain ranges that filled her window with their power.
And as the rain came that night, she smashed holes through the walls, she tore at the sheet rock with her bare hands, cursing with each action. She crushed the tiles along the bathroom sinks and in the kitchen and pissed on the carpet and smashed the glass doors that led to the patio. She cried as she did so, screaming and cursing with rage.
She was hurting her own child, the place she had loved and tended to. But if they thought they would just take it from her, if they thought she would just walk away and give it to them without pulling it down with her, no…they were wrong. They would come to know her rage, or someone would. She would leave her ghosts in these walls, she would forever linger here, her screams would come with the rain.

Afternoon Memories

The hand on the clock inched itself closer to two with every second that passed in its infinite journey of circles. He watched the black hand moving on the small watch his wife had given him for his birthday five years ago. He was on the couch, a long outdated piece of furniture with worn fabric along every edge and small round black burns of cigarettes that pocked it like the marks on an old man long past his prime. Each burn was a memory that smelled of tobacco and melted synthetic fabric, a moment when he coasted from the relative consciousness required for a TV show to the space of melted trees and illogical planes. Here, the cigarette could never remain in his mouth, and as it fell and began to burn, he was always granted another chance of life. When the entire house already reeked of cigarette smoke, something always came to him, the distinctly different smell of melting fabric, and he always awoke, somewhat startled, to find the couch burning. Now, the house was completely quiet.
The bright light of the afternoon was seeping into the house from the large, bare windows. Inside, it was calm and warm and subdued, and everything appeared to be peaceful, the dishes were washed and everything was tidy, but within him, nothing was calm as he watched the second hand move. Outside, the sun bestowed the warm day’s light on the rural land. There were rows of almond trees occasionally mixed with some old oaks for as far as the eye could see.
In the silence, he heard a single shot.
The sound echoed in the stillness of the hour.
It was a single shot.
Perhaps his neighbor hunting rabbits, he thought, with a passing interest. Besides the shot, he could not find another sound. The refrigerator had stopped humming, the birds were quiet, he had fixed the dripping faucet a week ago, so now, it too melted into the vacuous chamber. The men in the fields had stopped working an hour ago, retiring all the yellow machinery to the large warehouses a couple miles away, so he didn’t hear the distant echoes of tractors or the dim Spanish profanity. There was not a small plane overhead, not a fly that had found its way inside, not a cricket out by the pond, and it was so quiet…and not a sound from the gaping hole of a mouth in his wife, the aging model who had left him four hours and 26 minutes and seven seconds ago…eight…nine…ten…she had taken a suitcase and walked out the door, a final move after 2 years of constant threats and midnight wailing.
He had watched as she packed her small bag, too small he thought, for all the clothes she had stockpiled over the years. It still boggled his mind, he didn’t know where she had bought all the various shorts and shirts and little dresses, there were no shopping plazas within 200 miles. All he knew was that he would come home after a ten hour day of working in the fields and she would be standing in the doorway with a new dress or a new pair of shoes or a new shirt. When he had first brought her here, he had liked seeing her smile so brightly in her new clothes, she looked just as fresh and clean as the garments that covered her naked body. But after a couple years, after she no longer met him at the door and when he would find her asleep on the bed in a new dress without a warm meal waiting for him on the stove and the house unkempt …that’s when he began to get mad.
Where the hell were the clothes coming from? He always wondered, but never asked. He kept his suspicions to himself. He kept his accusations inside. The only thing that seeped from him was the growing sense of fury and dissatisfaction and he always let her know in the middle of the night, when he grabbed fistfuls of her hair in both hands and pushed himself inside of her without warning, without foreplay, without a moment for her to get ready and wet. His eyes would open from a dream and he would feel the heat emanating from his cock and he would rapidly push her flat on her stomach with both of his rough hands and he would grab her by the hips and pull her ass into the air and he would pull down her panties and grab her by her long brown hair and he would force himself inside within seven seconds. And although the pattern repeated at least every other night and although each night he seemed to tear through her with a little more force, she would always be too shocked to scream. Her neck was always too cocked to get a big breath and her mind was on the pain of her head and the dry thrusting in her pussy and she couldn’t scream, not then. Afterwards, she would silently cry on her side of the bed, but when he pushed himself in, allowing his anger to explode into her, she could never let out a sound, she could hardly breath, and knowing that, knowing her silence was caused by his pain, not the lack of it, he pushed himself in harder, faster, until she felt his frustration, until his fury became hers, when his pain overwhelmed her and she began to pant and bleed, then it would all come out in a stream of white anger, then, after he had passed the chaos of his energy into her, then he could fall asleep again and she would let out her own silent sadness.
Sitting on the couch, in the late light of afternoon, now that the sun was turning into the golden cousin of the sun that was before, he thought again about her new clothes, the mystery of their origin, the mystery he had never dared to ask, instead, and in place of questions, he had let the silence turn to poison. The woman didn’t even have a running car most of the time! Where had they come from?
He pictured her now with her father, driving in the golden light of the fading sun, driving back to the city in which he had found her so many years ago. He smiled, remembering how he had spotted her on the side of the road, her rear wheel as flat as a pancake and her face as frozen in disbelief as a deer in headlights. He had pulled his big truck over immediately and offered her some help. Later, he bought her a cup of coffee and then some dinner and then…,she invited him to her small apartment and she thanked him properly for all he had done for her that afternoon. She thanked him good, real good. Her mouth thanked him so good he never wanted to let her go.
Looking back now, remembering that day, he felt like a victim of his cock. An unwitting bystander to the primal seduction of a warm, wet tongue and a woman’s eagerness to please. The rest of him, everything other than his cock, was a victim of the orgasm, the release he found in the grasp of her thick, parted lips. How did it happen? The romance, the wedding, the move? The past was like a blur, a fast moving haze of trucks and tractors and new clothes, and fresh meals and almond trees in the summer and nightgowns on the floor.
He was right back where he had started, alone in a big ranch house, with a couple more gray hairs and rougher hands and some memories that would fade in another couple of seasons. His father had warned him about women, he remembered the warning, he had probably been seven years old, his dad had been drinking and from across the room, rather suddenly, the old man had shouted, "never trust a beauty that will suck ya off!" At the time, he didn’t understand, he was only seven, but it always stuck with him, the sudden outburst from his father that had sprung without provocation, and because of this odd manifestation, he had kept the words with him always, although, the warning had really done him no good, since he married the first woman to suck him off that wasn’t an honest-to-goodness prostitute.
She had been a model, she had worked a couple international shows she had said, but when he met her, as far as he could figure, she was living off an inheritance. She had seemed willing to give up her apartment and move to the heartland, the real honest-to-goodness America, where real men worked the land and fed the country. He was one of the few father’s of the country god-damnit! He fed the hungry mouths, he brought food to the children! He was their real father!
He heard another shot.
It echoed a bit louder, bouncing off the meticulously planted almond groves and into the stillness of the house . The light outside had turned from gold to the dim haze of blue, the last of the sunlight was leaving. In the house, all the lights were off. In the near darkness, he could still make out the hands of his watch, 2 o’clock had long since passed.

Playing at the Borders

In the kitchen they sit around the table, all different shapes and sizes. This one is lean and pretty with a cruel little mouth and matching dark eyes set in a bronze face, another is round and white with a plain face void of any make up, a simple face that reveals a sweet disposition, this other one is short with kinky hair and a perpetually sour look on her clean face, and here is another with springy hair and eyes that are on the verge of snapping shut with fatigue. She is a composite of them all, oscillating between their extremes, unable to be completely cruel, incapable of being wholly jolly, with curls and make up, neither thin nor thick. At the head of the table sits the mother, unlike any of them now that age has overtaken her. With her short haircut and spectacles, her casual pants and striped sweater, she could be the mother of any one of them, or of none of them at all. The sisters sit at the table, and so does the sister in law, bouncing a baby in her lap. The brothers come and go, two of them. One is the master of the house, the father of the little baby bouncing at the table. He has a mustache and a weathered air about him. He looks as if he has stepped out of another era, an era when men were stronger, harsher, almost made of stone. The other is bigger and has a more modern look, he wears a hooded sweatshirt, and he can speak as easily in English as in Spanish. A son in law hovers behind the mother, rubbing her shoulders, drinking and joking.
In the living room, the old uncle sits in a chair wearing his brown hat and a red tropical shirt. He tells the story of his retirement to two women, friends of one of the sisters, one is a painted and bejeweled Latina, the other is the only "Gringa" in the whole bunch. His white whiskered face is tanned and his huge belly heaves as he explains that he left San Francisco, out of boredom after his retirement, and he moved to Florida so he could work again without loosing his pension. After seven years of listening to his wife complain about that land, so similar in climate to their home country of Nicaragua, they returned to San Francisco to find that their old house was now worth a million dollars and far from their financial reach. So they live now in Sacramento, economically exiled from the beautiful windy city, permanently aware of the consequences of a whimsical decision. He tells the story of his years of reckless drinking, and of his mother’s collapse in the middle of the street, which led him to set the bottle down on top of the television set and vow never to touch the stuff again. Then he stands to teach the blonde haired gringa how to salsa.
"March!" he tells her, "Forward… and now back."
They put a cake with a little candle set in its center, shaped like the numeral eight, on a high round table. Everyone comes round. A boy sits on a tall stool in front of the cake and his brothers crowd around him, placing gentle hands on one another’s shoulders. For a moment, in the random course of events, they stand in a line from eldest to youngest. Then the room is filled with song and the candle is extinguished with a soft swoosh of warm breath. The birthday boy’s face is pushed into the cake, leaving his nose and cheeks covered in blue frosting. His brother, the second to the eldest, comes to his aid and wipes his face with a towel as carefully and lovingly as an old kind mother. The cake is cut and the children leave theirs lying about, because they dislike the fruit in the center.
The sun has gone and the light is fading. The children run in a long howling line around the outer perimeter of the house. In the back, there is a built-in swimming pool filled with dirt and weeds instead of water. The concrete around the house is cracked and uneven, moved by decades of seismic activity. Behind the house, there are a series of smaller cottages and sheds, white paint peeling from the wooden boards, rusty old nails sticking out of old forgotten corners. The children keep on playing, running, jumping, screaming, laughing. Dangerous possibilities abound. Plenty of opportunities for a terrible accident. The neighbor’s houses are far off across fields that have lost their golden color under the pale sheen of the moon. The few gates which might confine or protect the children have been thrown open through the course of their raucous parading. They make their way up a long dark street, seeing phantoms in the shadows of every shrub. The very eldest of their party permits himself to tremble a little, and the very youngest pulls herself to her full height and presses on bravely so that they are all one, unified in their quest to touch the unknown.
Inside, the house is brightly lit and the music plays loud and lively. The tiniest children, the babies, ride around over the hard honey colored floor on tricycles, crashing into the legs of the adults, happy to hear them curse. The old Mother dances now with the two friends of her daughter, the Gringa and the painted Latina. The three face each other forming a soft triangle which pulses like a beating heart as they move into the center and then back out. As a unit, they rotate 30 degrees and then back, always suggesting with this motion that they will turn in a complete circle, but never quite fulfilling that suggestion. They shuffle in and out, wiggling their hips, and keeping their wrists limp, subtly invoking a thousand years of hidden sacred dancing.
The windows of the house are small, holding the dark night at bay, framing its deep purple color in little squares of yellow, beige and white. From beyond the little windows, comes the laughter of the running children, still together, still playing at the edge of the known world.