Center

The words came out of the girl.
Big pink lips and lusciousness that could only be described by words like liquid and voluptuous and moist.
We looked at her and flipped the pages, there were a thousand more with eyes like feathers.
The words came out of the girl and she knew- there actually could be no asking- it was the center and the center casts no shadows and there just must be a moment when she can let herself feel what it would be like without questions.  No answers either, just a place where the Real could come through the window like moonlight and stroke her with the softness of blue wings.

Center.
We try to maintain the center.
Center.
Center.

The windows were open and the bright daylight revealed all their flaws and they glazed over them like pink lip gloss or sticky donuts and their love coated them in candy without hard shells and turned everything pink and wet and ready for something more. 
More?  Yes, but not then. More?  YES.

They sat in the car, sunlight pouring in. She asking the question. The words again.
The center.
Snuggled against a wiry beard of black feathers, she breathed in the darkness of a scented garage and oils.
We find the center.  Look for it.  Walk towards it.

The sunlight came in and she closed her eyes, letting the struggle inside settle. The moon could be there with its jagged edges.  The silver light could be there with its calm.  It could all happen in that tiny space where his legs could barely fit and she rustled up against him like a pillow.  There were rooms with closed doors that she did not need to peer inside, places with more questions that spiraled like carousel wheels. 
She let the ruffling wings settle.
Those words, once spoken, fly from the open wind and beat out the story of a new memory.

Fading Light

I lay on my bed as the last of the sunlight fades, giving us, this small little planet, its final heroic effort of the day. In a dim room, bright orange light streams in through the window, hitting just three different spots on the walls. I lay on the bed, just minutes out of the shower, my hair now wet and cold. My pale legs are covered in oversized black sweats with jaggedly cut ends and a man’s thin striped pajama top.

I look at the last bits of light, feeling suddenly aware of the calm chamber.

My hands rest on my stomach, my feet are extended, supported by a jumble of three blankets that cradle them. Tiny gurgles call to my fingers below my pillowy stomach skin.

“Just be here,” I think to myself.

My chest fills with air, then deflates slowly.

I look to the wall on my left, the wall my bed presses against. There is a rectangular orange-gold piece of light, like a bright framed piece of sunlight on the wall. Cutting through the center of the light is the dark shadow of a cross. I stare.

“So pretty, I should get my camera…” But I don’t move. My hands stay on my stomach, my legs remain in the folds of soft blankets.

The cross, such an intense symbol; a torso and head, two arms extended, two feet pressed together as one. I see Jesus on a hill, I see myself in the morning, just after 7. How long did it take for people to realize the shape could be used for killing? For the structure of torture?

Perpendicular to the wall is the French glass door that leads to my kitchen. The top half of the door is bathed in soft yellow light, though the top-center of the door is glowing orange in the sun’s last rays. I realize the light is coming through my small window (parallel to the wall with the cross), hitting the doorway, then the glass is reflecting the image on the wall.

I look back and forth between the wall and the door, not needing to turn my head.

To the right of the door, directly in front of my body, on another small section of wall, are a few fragmented pieces of light, long jagged rectangles and bent circles and little speckles.

I think about the photographer I used to work for, Emily Payne. “It’s called the sweet light.” I can hear her say it, holding her big black camera in her hands. I imagine photographers around the world waiting for this time of day, waiting till they have the ‘right light.’ Do they stay indoors like inverted vampires, waiting only for a special hour? How many moments do they let pass? Is everything overlooked until the sweet light emerges?

I look up to the cross and the door. Has the light changed? It must have, the sun is fading by the minute. I search the color of the door. It’s just a bit paler. Still bright, but lacking intensity. It’s fading in front of my eyes and I can’t even watch it, I can’t see its fading unless I look away and then look back.

I turn to the wall. The cross has lost an arm. It looks like a T on its side. I should have gotten my camera. I could have written something about this and I would have had the perfect pictures to go along with it. I stay in bed. It’s too late now. “Just watch it, it’s fading away.”

How often had I missed this light? Maybe it would be the same tomorrow. Or nearly the same. The earth would not tilt too much in one day. What if I had not laid down? Would I have just sat at the desk, doing something, oblivious to the light around me? How many times have I done that?

I look up again, the light is dull.

“Just be still and watch…” I keep wandering away, I can’t even watch the light change for a few minutes without drifting.

The cross has become a single vertical line. The French door creaks open, pulled by the crack of the open window 15 feet away. As the door comes forward, the cross shifts, creating one solid black line, then another slightly lighter shadow line behind it.

Then the door creaks closed, and a single line emerges on the cross once again. The door’s bright orange light has faded almost entirely. I know that soon it will be completely gone, maybe then I’ll wonder what happened, how it left so fast.

I look over at the speckles of light on the wall perpendicular to the cross. The light there has faded too. Watch it. “Don’t take your eyes off it, watch what’s left.” I hold my eyes. Its fading…but a part of me cannot believe it. I realize I can barely watch it straight on. It’s almost painful. Why can I only see something changing if I look away?

The door is now dark. The cross is gone, and just a few sprinkles of light remain on the wall next to the door. I watch them, intent, finally holding my attention fixed as they fade. Dark, darker, then they are gone.

The phone rings.

The Mountaintop

She had been on the mountaintop since the early afternoon the previous day. She had watched the birds and the lone hawk that swept over her in circles again and again, as though he had something specific to communicate. She searched his feathers and form for a message, letting the tenuous sparks of insight fall to her like snowflakes.
The afternoon had stretched long and wide, opening its tunnel of curiosities as the sun arched across the sky. She walked the path of the day without fear of a setting sun, and soon, as she knew would happen, the light turned golden and then slowly drifted below the long mountain range in the distance. Her vision blurred and she opened her arms wide and lay back on the firm soil of the earth, letting blue twilight spill over her like the sweet arms of death.
Blue turned to crisp black and without light, her body quickly grew cold. She kept her eyes wide, letting the blackness and flickering stars roll and tumble over her with possibilities, letting it drag her mind into depths that daylight preferred to avoid.
There were demons and they laughed and giggled. There were animals with horns and a lilting flute somewhere in the distance.
The wind moved over her and a nearby howl danced with her fears. Dark time lasted for an eternity, just the slowly arching crescent moon marked the movement of the earth and her body’s place upon it.
Her body held onto the deep worry that came from childhood and her parents and the movies she had seen. Her mind clung to visions of chains and bumpy demons and the sounds of crying. She knew she held on to the light, thinking that it alone would ease her deepest fears.
Just as she clung to the daylight, she held on to the world, to the flowers and plants and dreams that she could see. As she looked, she saw the nightmares of her youth and the cold waiting chains of years within a sphere of words she had never asked for.
The long night opened its tunnel and she walked in, letting herself be filled with its chill and rich sounds of pain and mystery. And then there was a chamber without words. Here, she was truly scared. Here, she had no body, no role, no purpose. Here, she was nothing.
Then the nothing found its way back, it found the body, the fears, the worry. It found all that it ever was. But it brought back the memory of the chamber. Her eyes were wide once again, and she knew that to live in the light, she would have to learn to voyage in the dark.
She lay on the mountaintop as morning light spilled into the world of a newborn day, and she drank in the pale pink light, letting it come into her like the semen of the sun. She opened her arms wide, letting the day bathe her in its clarity.

Day And Night

She watched his smile fade, the corners of his mouth dropped slightly and the song he had just sung faded into a melodic memory. His face softened and she watched the wind blow away the last remains of his overt delight. She watched the rainbow of his mouth turn from a Technicolor pageant of beet red and hazard-cone orange into a muted palette mixed with white acrylic. She watched the fading glory, the spiral of rainbow dye that moved into oblivion with each second that passed. How long had she watched his lips? The endless transforming of emotion that played with the muscles of his face.
She sat on the bed, an orbit of delight herself, beaming in white and blue as she sat before him. She was smooth and nearly naked in her white and pink lace panties. She sat crossed legged, slightly embarrassed by her lack of graceful ballerina posture, yet unable to will her muscles and bones into spinal alignment. She watched him and the vain angel on her side tugged at her thoughts, “Sit straight! You look horrible!” And although the same thought entered over and over, it blew through her mind like a fluffy cloud. When his smile at last faded like a fiery sun, she brought her eyes to his, feeling the endless river of power that seeped from him. She sucked him out, pulling him inside by concentrating on the back splash of energy. The soft bed accepted her weight and she fell deeper into it. She sat there.
How long had she been there, watching his smile fade into a soft mouth that bore no particular expression, but was rather a statement in contentment? She had nowhere else to go, rather, she had no where else she wanted to go and this bed, this small room stuffed with books and made smaller and warmer by a heater that whirred throughout the night and continued with the day was the whole of the universe. His eyes and mouth, they were every star, every undiscovered sun.
Outside, she felt that it was light. She felt the bright whiteness of a cloud covered sky infiltrate the room with its sense of urgency. Light being the indicator of action, the time to drive and work and run errands. But she sat and held his stare and practiced moving against the rules of nature. Light was to see his smile. Light was to see the contour of his flesh expand from thigh to chest. Light was needed for holding his gaze.
When the dark would come, perhaps then she would rise and take the memories of his smile with her. She would dress, covering her white panties and sculpting her breasts into more recognizable shapes. She would find her shoes and pull up her mismatched socks and head out into the night. She would drive, up the hills that overlooked a sleeping city and insistent street lamps buzzing for the attention of moths. She would drive in silence, holding the scent of him on her mouth until she found the small house
tucked into the curve of the street. She would wait in her car, listening for the sounds of other approaching cars and then, after determining she was all alone under a cloud-covered black night, she would exit and walk across the street, entering her small room. She was then ready for a new round of work to begin.

Fruit Holder

The words struck hard and deep. The expected mechanical reaction appeared quickly: tears, fear, an instant urge to pick up the phone and hear a soothing voice. Time, the great immortal nothingness within which I dwell. I perceive the great waves but for a brief moment…then, the fear kicks in and we journey back into bed, back under the covers, where I rest. Warm and cozy, but with an uneasy fragile tranquility. But the words stay, like an unusual taste upon my tongue, a new fruit, different than any others in the market.
Among wheelbarrows of apples, oranges, green grapes and promises of sweet, juicy refreshment…there is a lady, disguised as a man. She opens her coat and reveals the translucent spherical fruit. The size of cherries, they hang from two thin green threads, each strand hanging from her nipples like jeweled grapes from a vine. Within the small fruit, I see flashing pictures and flickering colors. Each little ball a world within itself, displaying its own show, its own version of reality. Faces morph from one to the other, colors blend and turn into futuristic vistas of silver and gold. I watch, I stand still before a dozen clear fruits projecting images above the flesh of a woman with a bearded face. The streets are crowded, housewives and young girls navigate the thin alleyways, doing their best to avoid collisions with other housewives at every turn. They carry bananas and fish, watermelons and household cleaners. None carry the clear flickering fruit. None look in our direction, none see a man-woman with an open red coat, revealing elongated breasts and strands of fruit universes. A glass coating seems to cover us. I feel no heat from the sun, no cool breeze of the ocean wind. There are people on the periphery of my attention, but there is no sound. No voices from moving lips, no barks from the roaming stray dogs, no cries from the many babies strapped to sturdy backs. The woman-man watches me, holds my eyes with her own. He looks up, into the direction of the would-be warm sun. The small fruits begin to synchronize…the various flickering lights and images slowly begin to all turn a delicate shade of blue.

They begin to pulse, slowly at first, but glowing faster, moving in more rapid intervals by the second. Light blue, dark blue, light, dark, faster and faster, the colors pulse interchangeably, become more ferocious and alive. Ta, Ta, TA...they move to an inaudible beat while the colors morph into an electric blue brilliance, the color moves so quickly it seems to be stagnate, one extended color of brilliance; but it vibrates with a radiance that has reached into the depths of my heart and pulled out the silent kernel that has been watching attentively.