The New World Of Sticks

The sun shines down on the little garden, bathing it in a strong heat that would bring small buds to bloom. The narrow rectangular yard is enclosed by a tall wooden fence and stuffed with young gardenia trees and a hedge of rosemary and lavender. It is a garden for smelling above all else, the shrubbery was planted with the nose in mind and not the eyes. Jasmine covers the back fence, transforming the wooden planks of the border into a wall of green and white speckles.
Beneath the lavender blooms, nearly hidden from sight below the thicket of pale green and purple is a young girl. Her bare feet are caked in dust, creating the look of a pale brown shoe that is corrected only by looking at the small toes tipped in pink nail polish. She squats close to the ground and her long brown braided hair sweeps along the soil like the tender caress of a broom.
The girl does not notice her hair, tipped with the earth’s dust, nor the shoes of soil she wears, all her attention is on the ground before her. She has arranged a series of vertical sticks in a circle and some tender green leaves from the jasmine bush have been impaled on thin twigs, creating flags for her city beneath the lavender canopy.
She has been in the same spot for hours, missing the lunch of macaroni and cheese her mother prepared and also the visit from her friend Dave from next door. She didn’t hear them calling or feel the pangs of hunger. Nothing distracted her from creation. She created a world, and she could feel nothing but the rush of excitement as the small city of wood and leaves came together.
She sits still, adding the last touches of thin sticks and then places one solitary lavender stem in the center of the city-circle. The metal latch of the back gate slams closes and she looks up. Through the fragrant stems she sees her brother walking along the back side of the house, approaching the door that leads to his bedroom in the converted garage.
“Sean!!” she cries excitedly. She jumps up, her pigtails gathering a few yellowed leafs as she runs through a hedge of geraniums. “Sean, come look at what I made. It’s a whole city. A whole world!”
He looks at her, at the little girl whose feet are covered in dirt, this little girl that smells of salt and sun and flowers. She’s running towards him, about to grab onto him as she always has.
“Mattie! Stop! You’re all dirty and I’m on my way somewhere. Don’t get me dirty, I don’t have time to change.”
“Sean! Come look at what I made,” she squeals excitedly, not hearing him.
“Don’t get me dirty Mattie, I’ll come look, but don’t get me all dirty.”
“Okay” she says, slowing down and turning in the direction of the lavender bush, “It’s this way. It’s in here.”
Sean walks towards the bushes and comes to the edge where the purple stalks become a wall. Mattie steps into the narrow path she has created among the lavender. She turns to him, “you have to come in to see it.”
Sean rolls his eyes. “Mattie, I told you…I can’t go in there, I’m going to get all messed up, I’m on my way somewhere. I’m going to get covered in that stuff.”
“Please, it’s so cool. I don’t want anyone to see it but you, it’s a whole world. It’s such a special place.”
“Look, I can’t get in there now, but I’ll look at it later, okay?”
She looks at him, wearing his clean jeans and crisp black blazer. He looks nice, and she wonders who he is going to see.
“Okay, you look nice. I guess you shouldn’t get all dirty, it’s just a little world. Maybe you can see it tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I’ll check it out tomorrow. I gotta go grab my stuff and leave now, okay?”
She nods and then Sean turns and walks towards his bedroom door. She takes another five steps and then kneels, her hair sweeping the soil once more. She takes a deep breath, then starts to breathe into the circle of the new world. Her breath becomes a slight wind and all the flags of leaves begin to flutter.

I Live Around You

I live around you. I extend myself and cut myself and double myself and triple myself in all directions, and I do it all around you. I breathe around you. I hunger around you. I feed myself from you and from all that lives around you. I dream around you. Someday, I will die, clinging desperately to one last flash of gentle brilliance, and even then, my last gasp of life will be around you.
I branch out like a spider web and I come back to myself, like a word that sums up a long and carefully planned sentence, after taking many detours and sliding off on many tangents. I am very thin, thinner than a pencil at my finest points, so thin that I may break and I might not even know when it is that I broke. But I don’t worry about such things. There is so much of me and I have multiplied in so many ways that a thousand breaks won’t hurt me, they will only make me more than I already am. I cling forcefully but tenderly to you. I reach down to your roots and touch the edges of the dark kingdom that stretches far and wide beneath us both. There I find great fountains of cool sustenance, gushing graciousness that springs eternal from sources I may never understand. This mystery of overwhelming pleasure flows up through me, along the ridges of your body, up through the slivers of mine, it talks to me of places far beyond this lake, far beyond the thick sprout of life that is you, far beyond the complex web of life that is me, far beyond the tenuous surface of the water that I feel shifting just beyond my reach.
In days of great heat, my body grows as brittle as the dead bodies of insects that have come to me to find their final resting place. In those days, life is pain and the dark kingdom gives me little hope. I suck as hard as I can on its remains but it can not give me what it doesn’t have. I cling harder to you and many of my branches fall away. I can feel them floating and dancing as they slowly fly away from me, me who was their home, me who was their body, me who was the only place where they could live. In their death they are no longer me and so they become they, and they are gone and I can feel them falling on the dry grass, being pulled away by dogs, played with by dressed up monkeys, dissolving into the mud like memories of things that never happened. I know I keep on being, I know I keep on sucking on the dark source that is beneath us and clinging deeply to you and so I am still me and you are still there and I am still around you, but I must tell you, with the clearest sincerity that I can muster: there is a kind of sadness that washes over me as I see these little branches fly away and dissolve into nothingness, a selfish sadness for that within me which has fallen to the ultimate fate that awaits us both.
In days of cold, my whole body freezes and I cling harder than I should. I know I hurt you without meaning to. I know my thin branches press against your flesh in a way that is harmful and, as they press against you, they leave great wounds behind. I know I hurt you because your blood slowly drips through me and over me and I can feel your pain in subtle songs that pass through your strong body into mine. In those days of cold, I suck hard on the source beneath us both and the sustenance does come, but it is slower, less full of music and more full of dread, like the thunder of a storm that hasn’t quite begun. In those days of cold, we are all alone and not even the birds, that on warm days rest their tiny claws on your branches, are there to sing for us, and not even the monkey children laugh as they run under your shadow. In those days of cold, it’s only the two of us and nothing else, and I can almost see a dream when we stand as we do here, but there is only a great valley all around us, as far as my branches can feel, a valley that is all white and cold and dead, and in that valley we are alone forever, you and me, and nothing can ever save us from that final desolation. I don’t know where this dream comes from, but I’ve had it more than once. I wish you could sometimes tell me your dreams. Maybe I could taste them in your blood as I crush my branches around you, maybe the dreams would flow through your white pain in teardrops of sadness and windy gusts of laughter. Maybe that is where I got my own dreams. Maybe I have no true dreams of my own.
In an afternoon like this one, I can simply let my presence wander. From the top of your thick body that allows me to reach heights beyond my power, where the wind blows a little stronger and the birds are a little louder and the lake shines like a silver mirror that extends in all directions and lets me know how large the world truly is, how complex and how terrifying; to the deep darkness of your roots, where the soil and the bugs and the worms and the grass can cover me and I can become as if one of them, where I can be as dark as to forget myself in the utter oblivion of warmth and silence, and down here know that the world is simple and small and caresses me with gentle fingers of dirt.
In an afternoon like this one, I have no limits and, as much as I cling to you, as much as I live for you, from you and in you, I am alive and complete. In an afternoon like this one, I can almost believe that I love you and that you love me, and, furthermore, that there may be no distinction between you and me, and that you are like one of those branches, the ones that were me once but are no longer me as they have fallen away and are now in the process of vanishing. In an afternoon like this one, I know that the branches that were once me can never really stop being me, and that I myself may be such a branch fallen from a larger web-like being that is also me and is so large as to betray the limits of my comprehension. When I see that, I can only cling to you harder, hurting you in the process, leaking at your blood, pressing at your wounds, now without guilt, now without remorse, for I am only hurting myself and I have a right to do so.
When the afternoon passes and the night falls, I will be me once again and you will be you. And the wounds that I made on your strong body will be healing and my body will be at peace in the darkness. And then, when you are you and I am me once again, I will only tell you that I don’t know you, I never will. I don’t understand what you are or who you are. But I do live all around you. And without you, I am nothing.

The Love Of Pigeons

The wind was blowing softly through the fragile branches of the deep green bushes and the tender leaves of the tired creaking trees. The water of the lake lapped at the muddy shore like soft kisses bathed in saliva and completed with the loving taste of a moist tongue. There were many little broken twigs on the ground, half covered in the mud, half bathed in the rays of sunlight that made their way through the trees above. Among the twigs, there were many little black worms, twisting back and forth in the ecstasy that was the wet soil. The sounds of laughter and the honking of cars came through intermittently from the concrete path that made its way around the little lake and from the road which was only a few feet away, but seemed much farther. A dead tree extended into the water and a pink flamingo rested its long claws on the wet wood, every so often dipping its beak into the calm waves.
A young male pigeon flew in between the branches, avoiding the obstacles that were the big leaves and the possible danger of the big gray cat that sometimes was hiding in the darkness of the trees. He opened his wings, resisting the momentum that carried him downward, and he landed softly and quietly on the muddy ground next to the shore. A young female pigeon was already there, digging for worms in the mud and flapping her wings slightly as she made her way through the offerings. The young male pigeon stepped close to the female pigeon, pressing his right wing against her slightly. The female pigeon reacted with a slight jump and a quick turn of the head. She looked at the male pigeon with eyes full of curiosity and then the male pigeon did it again, letting his weight rest on her side for a bit longer. She again flapped her wings, this time a little harder and then she slid away from the intruder.
The male pigeon then turned away and moved closer to the shadowed darkness on the edge of the concrete path. He tried to find some worms in the deeper mud that brushed against the concrete, his little head flipping up and down, in a delicate dance that was both sudden death and an urgent desire for life. His wings flipped backwards and he stepped away and dug beneath a twig. The female pigeon raised her delicate little head, her little dark eyes bulging slightly, wondering what had become of the wings that had pressed against her not too long ago. She turned around, away from the shore, and looked for the male pigeon that was still there, digging under a twig. When his eyes came to rest on her, she turned away once again and shivered and let out a quick song that bounced against the thick trunk of the nearest tree and got lost in the rolling waves of the lake.
The male pigeon stepped close to her once again and, while looking towards the emptiness that was the path, let his wing touch hers, as if by accident. She couldn’t help but jump up slightly and she let her body shake deeply and, once again, a sweet song came out of her, rising from the depths of her full round chest and vibrating out towards the trees like a tiny ray of hope bathed in gray and blue shadows. The male pigeon responded with a song of his own and the two songs met in the moist air between them, vibrant sounds lapping at each other like soft little hairs that tremble with the hint of human breathing. The male pigeon was then feeling very bold, and he came to rest right next the female pigeon, so close that the whole side of his body was pressing against hers.
For a moment, they were both quiet and still. In that moment of silence, they could both sense the big change that was then about to come upon them. Even if they lacked a way to describe it, they could feel the change like bolts of electricity that traveled through their soft feathers into their beating hearts. It was then a mix of sharp fear, like the teeth of silver knives, and hopeful emptiness, like soap bubbles that fly away on a lazy afternoon. The change then cradled them like warm loving hands and it lifted them away from the mud, even through their little bodies never left the ground. There was a sudden radiance that bathed the muddy ground in light and then the sound of giant footsteps and then more footsteps and then silence again.
The male pigeon pressed himself again against the female pigeon’s body, but this time she didn’t resist at all and instead, she pressed herself against him as well. The moment of change had passed and it had altered them forever, and its echoes would still be ringing through their feathers, long after the day became night and then day once again. Their bodies trembled together in the burning echoes of its passing.
The water still lapped softly at the muddy shore and the flamingo was still dipping its beak into the waves, but something had changed forever, something had touched the color of the leaves and the sound of the water, something had invaded the substance of the wind itself and made its cool touch a bit warmer. The male pigeon could feel it and he could also feel that his partner felt it too. They let their wings press softly against each other again and they simply shivered in the aftermath of the change, singing songs every so often that twirled in the shadows like many-colored ribbons.
A bit later, other pigeons came and looked for worms in this little secluded spot where the couple still stood, singing and trembling. By then, things were clear and established and, seeing that their little space was no longer theirs, they both flew away, side by side and only a few feet apart. They flew satisfied in the knowledge that, when they came back down to earth, there were wings nearby and, with them, their own wings would tremble once again.