and she shall conquer the semi-colon at last.

Just a few thoughts over the past couple days :

"Well, at any rate, I once know this guy. One o the funniest guys I ever knew. He walks into my apartment one day - we were 24 - you know, completely unannounced and he says, 'Why is this place so damn gloomy all the time.' I wasn't even in the room. I was in the bathroom, you know, well the tub really, with my girlfriend's nipple in my mouth. I don't know, maybe you just had to be there.'

5 different scenarios. 5 different speakers. One psychopathic murder scene with a hint of irony. At least two lesbians. Love triangles always work. Go.

---

"Hear the meaning within the word."
-Shakespeare

---

My roommate throws a record on, a super fast version of Respect by Aretha Franklin, just as I mark the period to the sentence, "I used to live life so fast."

---

They always leave you. The melodies.

They drift in the air and sometimes you can catch them, make them bloom for you, make something out of them, but they'll always leave. They are coasters. They lie on the wind's back beautifully.

I have known some specific melodies. I have known them quite intimately. Stuck my very nose in them, if you will. And I wonder...Am I a melody too?


...a bassist is what you want. A bassist is the key. The bassist is the string, has the spindle; is the only one able to keep the melody in phe's hands. The bassist.

---

It is so weird. There is no way in hell he was the person for me to marry, or I him for that matter, but this is the experience, isn't it? You hear of someone you once dated, once slept around with; you hear that they're married, long after of course (though I was only late by a few weeks it looks like); and you feel a tug at your heart a little, like, 'Oh shit, well now there goes that one,' as if you have these special people set aside, all in a cabinet somewhere, in files, on shelves, just in case; people to remember from time to time, to check up on because maybe, maybe if you had a good thing going once, well, you know, anything could happen. And you feel like, 'Damn I lost that one' but the truth is you lost it awhile ago, or said goodbye to it, let go ages ago. But still you think, 'Well - he's good enough for somebody.' And you even think that all the little things that annoyed you, didn't please you, maybe they're gone and that's why they've found a spouse, it's because their breath doesn't smell anymore! It's because they've stopped swigging whiskey first thing in the morning! They're taking more showers, and so on. It is so strange. Because Really, Really...really what causes the tugging at the heartstrings is the fact that you were not the one for at least one person, and definitely so. Someone with whom you have a romantic history (albeit quite brief) has definitely chosen someone else. They are not thinking about you anymore. Definitely. And a whole new life is beginning for them, while you stay in the same spot, at the same job, university, with the same friends. That's what it comes down to then : even if the truth is that your life is moving forward, and evolving and maturing, to see the wedding photos of someone you once came with induces a feeling of stasis onto you because something momentous has happened for your once-lover and you only get the pictures. You cannot touch the experience, only wonder.

And personally, I fucked him over. He really liked me and I couldn't have given a shit less. He was an in-between. He was the result of my high, high libido. I needed a lover, strictly in the physical sense, and he was there. Simple as that. Well, also I found him very nice, agreeable, same sense of humor and all that. There was something sharp to him, and not just his teeth. But as soon as the one I really wanted was back in town, he never got another call from me again. Just like that. Blade of the sword. Cold; a cold and swift cutting of all ties.

---

Heard on Wickenden St., Providence, RI, 2nd of Sept., 2009, around 4:20 pm :

"My whole life has been a series of preventative measures."

shieldwolf *

[Editor's Note: Original is slightly different. Some of layout has been altered, and certain deletions have been made.]

swords have incredibly fine tuning.
they quiver,
throb
with the slightest
twist
of the knob.

can you hear the music 50,000 feet below us?

I like this speed. 130,000 miles per hour.
>>who
>>what
are we? way up here.
do we have foreheads to touch?
I like our eyes, same colors,
but how?

let’s make mountains with this neon blanket.
with our hands, we are gods –
can’t you see? –
in the dark of the forest next to the road
we giggle like children
and the mountains emerge
from our fingertips
just before our palms smash them,
flatten them down to the table.

>>>>I am glad we are here.<<<<

* * *

“the most efficient movement between two points is often a thought.”

* * *

high in the troposphere
we are.



Τρέπω



Tropos. Old Greek. The closest English translation reads, “to turn or to change.”

In one dictionary, it states, “to prime.” In another, “to bend.”

the closest Latin translation is conversio.
change, alteration,
rotation.
con is together, and
vertere is to turn (around), to
change.



Τρέπω



To change together.
To rotate together.

>>>>>>>>>>>To alter ( ) together.

* * *

the voltage of a lightning stroke is proportional to the length of the bolt –

>>>amidst this storm
>>>high up here
>>>every hair on my body
>>>stands up on ends
>>>the moment before lightning strikes
>>>taste the air
>>>fixed energy
>>>it smells so clean
>>>an electric stroke
>>>just thirty microseconds
>>>yeah, we’re on that level
>>>and all of a sudden
>>>the air is
>>>three times hotter than
>>>the surface of the sun

– ha.

you are not just a matter of the electrical breakdown of air.

compress the surrounding clear air
create supersonic shockwaves that
decay to acoustic waves.

let’s give them thunder.

* * *

electric water is the air is
the gleaming sword is
the lightning bolt is the madness of
a biting lip and a call
at midnight – I almost slipped
but I walked it anyway
shivering
I walked it
at midnight, you called
– a primary –
we painted –
a prime number? –
like waves, we float
just above,
just below.

we are
the famed and airy
get-a-longs.

* * *

stomp.
like a heartbeat.



stomp.





*From rand (ON rönd) "the rim of a shield" and wulf (ON úlfr) "wolf", a kenning meaning "hunter or enemy of the shield", i.e. "sword."

March 29, 2009. Nicholson Square.

be brave birdie
he’ll come back
be brave
birdie
he’ll come back
be
brave birdie
he’ll
come back
he’ll
come
back to you


your departure makes for awful morning sun
on a sunday
in the square
sitting on a bench
in front of a dry water fountain
i am in the shade
nothing is open right now
goodbye, goodbye,
goodbye

all around me the sounds are big again
accelerating hums of buses,
their hisses,
heels hitting pavement,
shrill traffic lights squawking,
children,
the other people
i am still here standing behind your taxi
i am sitting on a bench
in the shade with wet cheeks
on a sunday in the square
with a pigeon at my left foot
the city moves around me

be brave birdie
he’ll come back
be brave
birdie
he’ll come back
be
brave birdie
he’ll
come back
he’ll
come
back to you

i am smelling your hot heart
beats, the twang of your chest hair,
scratching at the plate of my favorite dish,
i want a second serving
spicy,
sweet,
filling

aloneness swims into my pores
like invisible gas
on this square
on this sunday
though i think i still feel
the sacred dance of togetherness
it fades



i don’t even know if i can return to this bed.

I cannae be afraid o' the written werd.

Embra.

The first thing anyone needs to do after they’ve experienced love at first sight is to learn the name of their new beloved.

Embra.

*

I say goodbye to Edinburgh as a lover. I use a special name for it. I have shared a bed with this city. I have made a home of it. Each day, I breathe in its aromas as I have done with many a past romance, tracing its hard lines and fine curves with my hands. I hear the city’s heartbeat and I walk hard to it. My feet are quick with my lover’s pace. A white petal falls from a tree in George Square, falls into my hair, and I promise I will return.

*

Embra. One hundred promises to you, and all the same. I will not forget. I will not. I carved my initials into your crags. Into the King’s Seat. I will return and my tongue will come alive again. You gave me the beginnings of my novel. You spit fuel into my flame, that waning wick that I’d left untended for too long out of comfort and forgetfulness. Your swirling, ever-shifting clouds spoke to my very nature and you reminded me


I CANNOT GET TOO COMFORTABLE.


*

I left my heart with you, Embra. It is safely buried on the top of a hill, where the wind and the rising sun can feed it. Under a very particular Gorse bush, it lies waiting. Within the bush, your stonechats and warblers make their nests and keep guard. The Gorse itself can protect my fervent heart, however; it is a fire-climax plant after all. Its seed pods are opened by the forked tongues of fire. It can burst into flames and my heart will remain intact. For my heart and the Gorse bush do share some common ancestry. Both can thrive in poor growing conditions – rocky soil, drought, the ledge of a cliff. And both require careful handling. For, despite the fragrant yellow flowers that attract honeybees and wanderers, one mustn’t forget the long spines growing just beneath. The birds that live within the dense, thorny covering never forget. This is why, Embra, your stonechats and warblers are worthy of guarding my hot heart. There are people, less knowledgeable in these matters, that dare to refer to the Gorse as a weed, invasive and aggressive. Yes, it is fact that the Gorse proves quite difficult to eradicate and it is for this very reason that I have buried my heart in the soil just beneath one. The Gorse’s roots will wrap ‘round and hold tight, until the day I return to find it.

*

With a wretched hangover I sit in the back row of this Aer Lingus flight that will take me first to Dublin, then Boston. Nothing about this situation seems right. O Embra, I feel sick. A force such that I’ve never known violently bangs against the inner walls of my chest. Wait. I thrust my forehead against this tiny plastic window and I peer down in disbelief. Embra, through the raindrops that slide down over this window, you grow smaller and smaller still. Wait. Your green, your nation are fast disappearing. I am flying out of reach. But wait! I want to shout. My brow is soaked with sweat. Wait! wait! Up, up, up I go, (wait!) away I go, (no!) away I go, into those swirling clouds from which I came less than six months ago. I must let go of you, Embra, and I know you wish it for me. But it is so hard right now, when it is still so early in the morning and when the taste of alcohol is still so strong on my tongue. You introduced me to new friends and it is so hard right now, with their voices ringing loud and clear between my ears. Goodbye, goodbye. I don’t wish to say it but with my lips I make the motions. My forehead throbs, sends pangs of longing up and down my limbs. My stomach hates me. I wish I could lie in your grass, Embra, so that your crisp air could cleanse me and your ground could absorb my pain. But I am on a plane headed for Dublin, then Boston. I am in this giant metal tube and there is no turning back. I cry, and to no avail.

*

Embra – enough with the sorrows. I love you dearly and it is for this reason that I’ve written to you. I love you so dearly because it was you that awakened the poet-wanderer inside of me. She was fast asleep, tucked away in a tower somewhere and you led me right to her. You showed me how to slay the dragons. You whispered the fairies’ secrets into my ears. You taught me that the witch guarding the tower is not to be killed but rather followed. She was the only one who would lead me to the right room. And in the realest sense, you gave me the beginnings of my novel. You gave me Ken Mair, and Pony Lawrence, and Nina Clara, and Edie. You rekindled my passion for learning and literature. You demonstrated each and every day that there will always be two sides to the same coin at the same time, for there always has. You reminded me of the fire and air that make up my spirit; the wild ocean spinning my emotions. I am an archer with wings and I cannot, will not stop my gallop. I will continue on my adventure. I promise to be brave. I promise to always listen to the air. I promise to return.

With tears in my eyes but a grin on my face, I sing:

O, all the money that e’er I had,
I spent it in good company.
And all the harm that I’ve ever done,
alas it was to none but me.
And all I've done for want of wit
to mem’ry now I can’t recall;
So fill to me the parting glass,
Goodnight and joy be to you all.

So fill to me the parting glass
And drink a health whate’er befalls
And gently rise and softly call
Goodnight and joy be to you all

O, all the comrades e’er I had,
They're sorry for my going away.
And all the sweethearts e’er I had,
They'd wished me one more day to stay.
But since it fell unto my lot,
That I should rise and you should not,
I gently rise and softly call,
Goodnight and joy be to you all

So fill to me the parting glass
And drink a health whate’er befalls
And gently rise and softly call
Goodnight and joy be to you all.


...yea, it's an Irish song, but ye ken wha I mean.

Europe.

nine mirrors in the room and my friends in one bed.
some things are so unbelievable.
smashing pumpkins, look at us.
crushed velvet, leather, and denim, like.
we need another, please.
try walking like clockwork and nobody will ask,
'what time is it?'
'wha?'
'is it diamond or moose?'
'wha?'

for the championship,
i'm gonna go have that cig.
'damn, you are the champion.'
there will always be an asterisk.

**

'what do my fingers smell like?'
'like human flesh.'

**

bitches know what they gotta do.

smashing pumpkins faggot.

lost puppy sleeping in a bed of white linens –
he feels at home.

**

the special ingredient is bailey's.

try bending over backward through the window after this email.
let's hit him in the crotch!
'would you like this feeling?'

who wants to kill jimmy carter?
conflicts of the major kind destroy the

'did you know that without smokin' weed farming is boring as shit.'
'did you know everyone at the G20 got dosed with mdma?'

if you could marry her, wouldn't you fuck her?
if you could marry her, wouldn't you fuck her?

hitler was an avid stamp collector – stampologist.

**

how are we world-rich?
give me the other language.
language of the others.
i need some bread.
lord, we take photos incessantly.
we are so beautiful.
chocolat. chocolat. chocolat. chocolat !

ooh in the sense of where.
the feminine the.

if you've been to england don't answer this question.
what is an oyster in london?

**

bears drinking shit tons of guinness are wacky-ass.
'i'm like high and drunk on my visa card.'

traveling
fuck the person who took that picture, fuck them
we'll be dancin' yeah
dancin'

crow? pigeon? ravens in the park.
nevermore.

'what do an elf and a screwdriver have in common?'
'neither of them are a blade of grass.'

***

swords have incredibly fine tuning.
can you hear the music 50,000 feet below us?

can we paint up here?
do we have foreheads to touch?
I like this speed.

I like our eyes, same colours, but how?
let’s make mountains with this blanket.
would you like that?

electric water is the air is
the gleaming sword is
the lightning bolt is the madness of
a biting lip and a call
at midnight – I almost slipped
but I walked it anyway I walked it
at midnight, you called
– a primary –
a primary number? –
like waves, we float just above, just below.

***

he is
a wizard
mixing concoctions
from digital dust.
he is
an alien
with an extraordinary
residual thrust.

***
In Paris, we write songs about ex-lovers.
In Paris, we cut our manes for them to grow.
In Paris, we sunbathe in parks with wine.
In Paris, where everything is a show.

In Paris, we wear feathered hats.
In Paris, we dance and smoke with the moon.
In Paris, we steal white chocolate bunnies.
In Paris, where nothing is soon.

In Paris, American rock spilling out of windows.
In Paris, I can’t remember my dreams.
In Paris, we will all sleep in one bed.
In Paris, where nothing is as it seems.

In Paris, don’t you know,
you must give it a go.
In Paris, don’t you know,
you must give it a go.

***
It’s Bowie, man.
It’s fucking champagne!

***

wine all the time makes my mind criminal.
you think I am ‘so elegant’ on this metro.
I wanna give my body
to the noise
to the noise
I wanna give my body
to the noise.

clouds like never moving cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

we were living in the streets like packs of dogs
looking for packs of cigarettes
and a chance to shine –
(we’re all waiting in the waiting room.)
I try so hard to make it real.
for you I keep my promises.

and when the roses all dry up,
your friends will sing songs your
once-lover once sang.

The roses are wilting
The roses are wilting
The roses are wilting

Holy shit! I’m swimming in your eyes!
I am in no hurry to walk away.

How does it feel?
All shook up.

***

‘What are the 3.9’s doing, that’s what we need to think about.’
‘If we bring beads, can we see tits?’
‘This guy’s clearly a villain –
he’s rolling dice.’

Change is across the street from the green house.

Why are we all so tired?
mud on our sneakers
I got sand in my eyes.
the tallness of things,
ideas stretching into dreams
is this really what we call life?
obvious human.

la la la de la dee dee dee
la dee dee dee
la la la de

could we be hitching with vampires?
we’re not meant to be at this altitude – it’s inexact.
do you know what I mean?
the Ice Hotel construction is pure snow and ice.

we were living on in by the
seat of the collective pants
thriving by walking
and while the moon gains light
Amsterdam in April
coffee and cigarettes
we need more fruit.

we need more fruit.
(we’re all waiting in the waiting room.)

my third grade teacher
he said
‘there’s nothing to worry about
unless you’re writing vertically.’

I cannae be afraid o’ the written werd. O Embra!

the city is a virus.
we are the Memory Collective.
yet we have a physical presence.
what about the humanness?

does the city take more than it creates?
are you part of the virus?

is the city a shadow?
is a city the shadow?

old woman happy in corner of
Amsterdam coffee house
delightfully colouring in some
design on a piece of paper.

american guys. NY caps.
growing up with the scum of the earth –
what is it like?

tourists in a glass box.
hazy scenery. hazy heavy.
air is thick at twenty.
smoke and taste the weirdness of all things.
this place is a five
which is four and ALL IS COSMIC.
you’re not looking hard enough.

always stay in bubbles that can rebuild after some shock.

‘where are you from?’

music can change everything!

‘you guys are gonna die from the smoke.’
‘the water’s fine!’
‘try the cheese.’
‘i wanted Aqualung in Paris.’

shake with the nervousness.
shake with the nervousness and
flex your language skills.

we are definitely not team Düsseldorf.
our mascot is a kung-fu master with no set direction.
except maybe over his right shoulder.

spider’s bite like one in a million.
you spilled on my rug a reason to
wash all I could of your trace
from the place – it’s over.

(&we’re all waiting in the waiting room.)

I have clockwork orange pants.
How can it be true that I see your face
when I’m 3,000 miles away from you?
Should we always be striving for FREE AIR?
You can put air in a box.

You were
red checkered cloth stained with sun
and messy madness ripe for the season.

You asked
you know this girl what’s her deal is she crazy
you asked if I was crazy.

into the forest with the hounds she goes
run elicia run elicia go
run elicia run elicia go
you are no mystic woman use your hands
I am human – will use brain.

Watch your flower beds – they get thorny
when you’ve been on vacation so long.
Ruthlessly, they’ll prick you.

***

The Mediterranean hisses
‘Remember’
in measured whispers
while we find a syringe in the sand
and I begin to view everyone suspiciously.

We are crackin’ down on piracy.

Nina is a high-cut bangs type of girl She has carefully crafted eyebrows. She likes looking at corsets she cannot afford in small boutiques when she can. When Nina wears yellow, be sure to smile and suggest ginger lemon tea. Nina says the atoms are singing all the time. ‘Everything changes’ goes the universal grin.

She’s got a hero in the waiting room.
(and we’re all waiting in the waiting room)
On our words, we stand.
When I am again I am again.
We’ll be dancing ‘til the break of –

Tell me, when we gaze through
our glasses, under
the yellow sun and at
the horizon, into
the endless stretch of ocean before
us, should we bask?

We are nail biting dancers,
delicious young things,
carrying lovedrug chameleons.
We have so much fun.

Tie my wrists Calliope.
Tie me tight with fern.
Allow the birds –
they wish to interrogate me.

blue skunky daisies zip
blue skunky daisies zip
blue skunky daisies zip
tell me what to do from here

(we’re waiting)

it is the artist’s diseased nervous system.

naked party in the cesspool.

It was the night that drew the line between Libra and Scorpio. October 20th. It was also Saturday on a college campus. Harmony and horniness were inextricably bound, both doomed to be toyed with by wild, intoxicated youths. As the sun set and the prospects of that night danced in their heads, some students may have experienced a vague sense of premonition. It was going to be one of those nights. It was going to be a shitshow. Things would be broken.

The co-op down the street was throwing its annual naked party, a festivity by invitation only. An invitation with cartoons of monsters, some cute, some grotesque, all of them smiling with exposed genitalia. While others scrambled to find someone with an invitation to spare, I received mine with no difficulty. Let’s just say that I’m a pretty good friend to hippies, deviants and dogs.

I was nineteen, a sophomore in college. I had been to two naked parties before, one with all women as part of a female sexuality workshop, and the other in a basement with a pool table, blacklights, several erections and a tub of red wine. But this naked party – this naked party was the real thing. If you were lucky enough to receive an invitation, you bet your ass you’d be there. I was single for the first time in years, had taken my first visit to California over the summer, let loose at a reggae festival...let the liberation come, I thought, all over me!

I arrived at the co-op with a few friends, one of whom hadn’t planned to attend the party. Her name was Jade Paris. She was my first female friend in college and, really, since grade school. My other friends Jacqueline Kennings and Kaden Boyer were also with us. Jacqueline had been fretting for the last 24 hours because she was having her period and didn’t want everyone knowing it. Pubic hair was also a concern. “I’m completely shaved!” she moaned. “Everyone there is gonna look at me like a freak!” I told her to use a tampon, cut off most of the string, and that only freaks lived in the co-op so it didn’t matter. Kaden would only be staying briefly; he had a date with a French boy, Niko Something-or-Other. Kaden had just broken Numero Dos of our illustrious Manifesta only three days earlier. La Manifesta - in reality my creation - clearly stated: “Rule Number Two: No Boyfriends.” And what had Kaden gone and done? Agreed to “being exclusive” with some older pretty boy with an accent who wore his five o’clock shadow like his jeans. Close-cut and stylish. Soon enough I would be spitting at Kaden, “Exclusivity breeds exclusion!” but, for now, like I told Jacqueline, it didn’t matter.

We were getting there early so as to ensure sufficient blood alcohol content for the evening’s festivities.

“You don’t think anyone will be naked yet, do you?” asked Jade.

“Nah…”
“No way…”
“Not yet…”

We tiptoed to the front door through the cans, trash, and tattered couches littering the porch. I went to open the door, but it was locked. I was stunned; the door was never locked. “Just knock,” someone said. Without missing a beat, the barks and squeals of three pitbull mixes sounded. The door swung open, a curtain of beads parted, and there stood our friend Drew Bayne. He was naked. Jade will just have to deal with it, I thought, as I yelled, “Alright!” and slapped Drew’s hand high in the air. “Yeah, people here have been naked all day, man,” he said. We entered the house.

Upon entering the co-op, the stench of stale cigarette smoke, beer, body odor, compost, dirty dishes, dirtiness that has stuck to every surface, every corner for 30 years – all of it assaults you at once. (For me, it’s like a creepy molestation, one that tickles a deep perversion inside of me and so I adore it). There are two sets of stairs, one of which is climb-at-your-own-risk. Someone is always coughing. Paintings, scribbles, poems all over every wall. The word GENDERFUCKED scrawled across a red spray-painted anarchy symbol, for example. Or Uncle Sam farting in the face of America. Or dirty personal ads pasted over cracks in the wall. Saran wrap covering the windows. One of the dogs shits in the “dining room” at least three times a week, more often if its owners are lazy. And they are. Make sure you always check for toilet paper before taking a seat in the bathroom, and never use the shower on the first floor. Not like you’d want to once you saw it.

It was the poorest excuse for a cooperative establishment I’ve ever seen. I mean, the motto of the place is “the ******** Co-Op…where they eat soybeans and fuck like animals.” I can personally attest to both. It was not the kind of place you’d want to come home to. But for a naked party, it was perfect. So long as you wore flip flops.

That night I had chosen my jewelry carefully. With nothing else on, my earrings and necklace were the outfit. Why did it matter? Well, as with any party, there had to be music. And as with any good house party, there had to be a band. Except this was a naked party, and so the band would be naked. And the boy I had been seeing for a little over a month was in that band. The band playing naked. He was the singer. With a guitar. And soft bluegreengray eyes. Adam Brown, a sly, sexy sonuvabitch.

Drew led us up to his room on the second floor. His girlfriend Lily was sitting in bed, nude, with a silver platter balanced on her lap. She was drinking straight out of a bottle of wine. Her eyes shone with excitement as she leapt up to greet all of us. “Aaah!” screamed Drew. “Was there anything on that?” “Relax Drew, don’t be such a fiend,” said Lily, and we all had a good laugh. One by one we began removing our clothes (except Jade). We poured drinks. We cut lines on Lily’s platter (engraved with the title, “My Best Friend” for reasons unknown to all of us, Lily included). We talked about the band. Soon it was ten and we could hear them warming up. It was time to descend.

“You have a great ass,” Lily said to me as I led the group down the stairs, plastic cup held delicately in my left hand. “Thanks!” I replied. Really, I didn’t give a shit what Lily thought of my ass. Or anyone else in the house, with the exception of one. But it was nice of her to say so.

The music began and I was right up front, as usual. Everyone was dancing, cups in the air, beer spilling everywhere. Despite the beer, the room distinctly smelled like vagina. I danced with a few girls, all of us pretending there was an imaginary joint in the room, taking outrageous imaginary hits and passing it along. A tall boy with dirty, blond dreadlocks and a tiny dick hit me in the face with his pink boa. I lit another imaginary joint and gave it to him. In the future, I would share a cat, a house, and a lover with him, although none at the same time.

When the band started playing “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window,” one of the girls I was dancing with grabbed my shoulder and yelled in my ear. “Isn’t Adam your boyfriend?” she asked. I laughed out loud. “Oh god no!” I screamed back. “We’re just fucking!” She howled in response.

The police were outside, being stalled by some half-naked residents. The noise complaint would later reach $1200. At the time, I didn’t give a shit. I thought to myself: I’m naked, and I’m dancing in front of this naked boy who is playing the guitar and singing and looking into my eyes. He likes me. I know he likes me. I am young, and drunk, and I think I’m in love. I am on top of the world.

or you can store it in a treasure chest.

The sky and earth speak sternly as the girl with the orange scarf ‘round her head hurries across a great field.

The sky gleams sapphire.
The earth sits brown.

*

Earlier in the day, the girl was startled by a crone dressed in flowing black garments. The sun was just beginning to peek out from behind the hills, painting the sky with lavender, rose, thin bursts of gold. The girl with the orange scarf 'round her head was sitting under the great tree in her front yard. She had been writing in a book of blank pages. A fanciful line of six words and six syllables had just taken form with the ink of her pen, when suddenly a hard wind from the west started and nearly tore the scarf from her head. It caused her to look up from her words, whereupon she spied the old woman approaching. The woman was quite close by the time the girl saw her. She said nothing, only stared as the figure in black drew closer and closer. The woman paid no mind to the girl at first; she moved straight for the tree. She huddled close to it for some time, one hand on the thick, gnarly trunk. The girl did not move, nor say a word. The cold gusts tickled her neck. A sudden shudder shook her. The old woman then looked at her. The woman’s left eye was strange. The girl remembered her grandmother back at home, in the house behind the tree, and realized the woman now bending above her suffered from blindness in that eye. As the woman crouched lower, the girl took a deep breath. Pulling her dark cloak around the two of them, the old woman whispered in the young girl’s ear.

*

The sky gleams sapphire.
The earth sits brown.

Her shoes are thick with mud, so she tears them off and leaves them behind. With her feet bare, she is able to run through the dirt, hop over rocks and rabbit-holes as she stares at a forest across the field.

The sky grumbles and the girl looks up. The cold wind is growing stronger. The orange scarf whips into the girl’s eyes and she falls face down into the mud. She lies there for a minute, face buried in the earth. The earth stays silent, but she thinks she can hear its hushed groans. Her heart thumps powerfully against it. The earth remains unhurried. With fingers and toes clenching the ground, she raises herself onto her hands and knees. Limbs trembling, she howls at the sky but receives no answer. The sky feels sorry for her but cannot help. Some things must be done.

Then she is on her feet again, darting toward the thick line of trees in the distance. While she moves, she wipes some of the dirt off her face with the palms of her hands. Behind her, dark gray clouds are moving forward. They swirl swiftly, and before long the bright blue sky is overtaken by thick curls of clouds churning in different directions. The girl notices the change. She thinks of the old woman’s eye. As she nears the edge of the forest, she pulls the scarf off her head. The wind shrieks all around her. She raises it into the air with her left hand and runs into the forest. She can see the cottage from here. The little red cottage with the moss growing over it. The crone’s voice echoes in her head.

Upon reaching the door of the house, she kneels and sets the scarf down next to her, to her left. It is a curious little home. The moss completely covers the two windows, and the front door has no knob. Scratched into the wood of the door is one short line, beside which is also scratched a small circle. The roof is thatched. It reminds the girl of a bird’s nest, and again the crone’s voice sounds between her ears. With a throbbing forehead, she ferociously tears into the ground with her hands. A small hole is soon between her and the door. She picks up her scarf, marveling at its color. Despite the stains of dirt from the tumble before, its fiery hue shines back at her. She smiles for a moment and falls back onto her heels, nuzzling her face into the scarf. It is warm as she clutches it so dearly. The trees around her give rumbling creaks. The girl looks up at them, through their crackling yellow leaves, sees the swirling sky. One deep breath, and she buries her scarf in the ground. Before rising, she lays the palm of her left hand over the little brown mound. She whispers something. The wind continues with its screams as she leaves the little red cottage behind.

*

With no shoes and no scarf, she walks back across the field toward her own house. The wind ceases its crying, and soon all is quite still, except for the girl heading home. She glimpses her grandmother slowly moving around to the back yard, with a bucket in her hand. The girl quickens her pace upon remembering it is time to draw water from the well. As she jogs past the great tree in her front yard, she spies something out of the corner of her eye. It is the book of blank pages she left behind when she fled to the forest. She stops to retrieve it, and notices something black inserted into its pages. She opens to a black strip of cloth. The page on which just this morning she had written the fanciful line of six words and six syllables is gone.

With a furrowed brow, the girl turns her head over her right shoulder, in the direction of the forest. She imagines her nails scratching into the moss that covers the windows of the little red cottage. She wants to see inside. Then she remembers the well. The cottage will have to wait. With book in hand, she rushes to her grandmother.



For how long will the scarf call to her from across the great field?
For how long will she continue to listen?