Page, Piper, Peter, the ant, the tree, and I

The sweat that had collected in the shallow canyon of her lower back was now cooling and slipping down Page’s ass crack. She shivered as the metal bleacher bench dropped ten degrees. The sun was running away and slurping all the day’s colors down its gullet. The only not-black thing left out there was the faint glimmer of a silver “12” that was rising and falling on Piper’s chest.

Piper licked her lips and gathered a tablespoon of salty mud on her tongue.  She hoped her crusty sweat would be good fertilizer, because she wasn’t sure how long she would be able to last out here, and the only way out, as far as she was concerned was down, swallowed by grass. Only then would she open her eyes. Till then the world would just have to suffer on without her as part of its audience. Till then she would amuse herself with the weird squares that appeared like geometric faeries when she pressed her finger against her eyelids.

No matter how hard he tried, Peter could not make his eyes focus on his sister, who would not move from the middle of the field.  No. He could not move the lenses of his mind around and instead was forced to ogle Page’s cracked heels from where he stay hidden under the bleachers. He hated himself, hated that he, beyond reason, wanted those heels in his mouth. He didn’t know why, but he did know that this was an un-shareable, unspeakable want. Maybe in his mouth, he could keep them warm. And then he knew something else. In a burst of moving from boy to man, he articulated what it was he wanted most in this wide wonderful world. He wanted to be able to take something small and keep it safely inside himself.

It had taken nearly the entire afternoon to journey from the end zone back to the sideline. It had been foolish to cling to the girl’s shoelace when she began thumping her way into the field, but it’s pinkness was so startlingly new, a color heretofore not seen by the ant who had spent his life in the company of only brown, green, and blue. Most spring afternoons he had lazed about in a sunflower seed shell lolling in a lake of jerky-flavored boy spit. But this crispity clean strand of sugar beckoned him. It promised yumminess. It promised sweets. It promised hope, and the ant clung to it until he and the shoelace and the shoe were ejected from her foot and sent spiraling into the sky.

The tree settled down like a stomach after riding a roller coaster. How odd, she thought, to know that sleep is on its way.  She rustled with curiosity having never once experienced the sensation in the entire 83 years in which she had been a tree.

My eyes paused here. Near the bottom of page 97, catching with fear the void halfway down page 98. My lungs paused in the middle of a breath and we hung there: Page, Piper, Peter, the ant, the tree, and I. Suspended. Attempting to control a story so intent on ending. It lay there open in my hands, perfect, so perfect this cessation. 

In the hairs between seconds, I wished something faster than thought. I wished that whomever was reading me would bookmark this page and

Photo by John Henry. Words by Stephanie Chavara.

Locked In

 

I.

Psst. 

Over here.

II.

Little help, please.

III.

I'm locked in.

My stupid fat fucking tears have locked me in.

The molasses molecules of my heavy thoughts have slowed their stream

Highly viscous and agonizingly vicious,

They've petrified into amber bars.

I seem to have locked myself in.

IV.

Psst.

V.

There's a lock on this cage. 

Old-fashioned, for your picking pleasure.

Put down your 

Blow torch, your

Dynamite, your

Drills, your

Other fancy equipment whose names I do not know

Just pick up that bobby pin on the dresser next to the fading receipt for soy milk and trash bags

VI.

Stick the bobby pin in the lock and twist till you feel it click

Be the hero and save me from this crystalized prison.

But before you swing the gate open, befriend the animal inside.

Reach your hand in and let me smell it. 

Let your fingers travel the length of my arm and make me purr.

Stick your head through and nuzzle into my collar bone.

Deeper.

Taste test the length of it.

Run your tongue up my neck like the first ice cream cone of summer and

Disarm the red dragons guarding this sleeping beauty.

As I quiver and wake,

As I stir

As the bars melt into waxen drips, and puddle on the lap of my dress,

Leave the door open a crack and 

Please, dear, disappear.

VII.

Because when I come back I will come back with a scream.

And I shall scream and scream and scream and scream and scream.

I've been locked in for entirely too long.

Photo by Caroline Näslund.  Words by Stephanie Chavara.

Refections on a Barbecue Glass

There is hope in letting it all hang out.  
                                                     Says the bartender to me
There is strength in bottling everything up.  
                                                      Say I to the bartender.
There is comfort in remembering those things we leave behind.  
                                                     Says the bartender to me.
There is relief in leaving those things.   
                                                     Say I to the bartender.
There is  
                                                    Another customer
Those teenage refusals (those adamant declarations of right) of the only things our parents knew to give us-those voids- are the only things we keep with us.  
                                                    Say I to my glass
Those life lessons that you can't pick out of your mind, like barbeque ribs cooked for ten hours now stuck in your teeth
Those family traditions you are dripping in like sticky sweet lemonade on the juicy ridge of your upper lip
We are the pictures of what we have tried so hard not to be
All we have left are the paths we've cut escaping the mud and the music and the mess
Of leaving afternoons so bright they have no choice but to shatter into a million lightning bugs by dusk
                              Say I to my glass
There was a joy before there was questioning
                              Say I to myself
(  )
                              Say I to myself, so I
Pray to a season that has abandoned me. Take me home. Roll me up in your hills and stuff me with dry itchy grass and remember me to myself.
                              Say I to Summer.
(Even if this memory isn't mine. It's someone's. Probably the memory of this girl sitting next to me.  She slides her finger up and down the sweat of her cider while I rock my Jameson into an eddy of time passing wonder whirls. The circular swirl tugs my heart into its gleam and my eye reflects back to my eye, struck golden from the overhead light and I want to fall in, like an orange balloon mistaking the sun for its mother.)
I want to go home.
                              Say I

Photo by Sadie Myers. Words by Stephanie Chavara.

I have come to the edge.

I have come to the edge from so far.
I have come to the edge to crash my waves gently down.  To lay them here to be licked and lapped and ebbed away, like a dog that knows you are sad.
I have come to the edge to make a miracle.
Tired of waiting for them to come to me. 
“It’s time to get pro-active, sucka”  the bully from the 80’s who lives in my head yells at me.
The wind hums out a deep-stand-up-bass-kind-of-chord on the bridge, and lets me know that God is watching.  That this will not be an offensive act, a Promethean fuck you to grace. No, sir. This here is a reckoning.  This here is a gift no one else knows that they are getting.
“Cars, and the lost dads inside. Cars, and the kids sitting backwards daydreaming. Cars, and the twizzlers and lollipops stuck underneath your seats. Cars, and the hot oil dripping out of you. Cars, I will meet you on the other side. And you might think I’m crazy. You might not believe me. But I will be there dry and shining”
My toes touch the bath warm water, water chapped from being kissed all day by the sun.  And my toes twinkle hello in the splishy splash surface that greets them. The water nuzzles a greeting…. and I’m walking.
One foot. One step.
The wind accompanies me with a slow hum, pulls me back like a bow to be released.
I will make my miracle.
I will meet you on the other side.

Photo by Tyler Ross.  Words by Stephanie Chavara.