The bus turned around the corner and she saw that the strawberry plants were flowering, tiny white blooms springing up in patches that would soon turn into fields.  She’d spent her summers here, racing up the cliffs to search out the fruit.  She looked over her shoulder, meaning to tell him a story, but his eyes were serious.  Aviator sunglasses on top of his head and chin resting on his hand, he stared out the window.

She looked at him for one long moment, memorizing the laugh lines already–at age twenty-eight–beginning to embed themselves around his eyes and mouth and forehead.  She wished she could trace those lines with a pencil and then trace them onto her own face.  Would that take away the nagging sense of forewarning?

She put her fingers gently on his wrist. He smiled when he saw her and took her hand.  The uneasiness quieted.  She believed him again.

“Let’s get off here,” she said.  ”I know this great place for strawberries.”

They sailed in the morning when tides were still good and then hiked up the rocky shore to get to it.  The lighthouse itself was a figure of some mid-nineteenth century genius.  Tall, stalwart and permanently whitewashed with a brilliant blue stripe just below the lantern, it spun slowly, almost wisely.

At the top, they sat with legs dangling through the bars of the balcony.  She’d sat this way every day with her father, waiting as he washed each window pane carefully.  Sometimes they sat there at night too, with the light whirling gentle around and around above their heads, waiting for the fishing boats to come in.

She couldn’t think of a time when she hadn’t loved the sea.  Looking at him now, dark hair blowing violently back in the wind, she knew he loved it too.  It was one of the funny things that had somehow begun to bind them together in a way that felt almost permanent.  She shook the thought away and looked out at the water.

He pointed to the left, across his chest.  “I didn’t think you’d see a Destroyer so far out of port.”

She looked.  There, on the horizon, was the familiar long, grey ship.  She nodded.  “It’s a little strange.  The closest big ship yard is over a hundred miles from here.”

“Have you ever been on one?”

She had, years and years ago, on an overnight Girl Scout trip in South Carolina.  The story poured out of her, as it most things—yes, only most—did with him.  She didn’t question the words that spilled out, laughing and remembering the one night on an ancient battleship when she’d told secrets and ghost stories and made MREs for the first time.  He laughed, understanding that this was a story about her father, rather than a battleship.   He was good at latching onto things like that.

It was always funny to think the no matter how close they’d been geographically, their upbringings couldn’t have been more different.  He himself was the product of home-grown parents, farmers who raised cows and corn in the western mountains.   She was first—and always—the lighthouse keeper’s daughter.

They stood and she braced her palms against the railing.  His arms were around her in a moment, chin resting on top her head.  She held onto him, afraid to hold too tightly.  Afraid to be too much or not enough.

“Where do you think it’s going?” He asked, but he wasn’t really asking about the ship.

She wished she could say that in that moment, she came home, but she didn’t.  Instead, she tipped her head back against his chest and shrugged.  “Somewhere warmer, I guess.”

a Palace Players piece (IV)

In the early morning, she brewed a cup of coffee and took it out onto the dock.  Hair piled into a lopsided bun on her head, she watched the fog whisper over the shoreline, gently receding as the morning took shape.  Since the breeze was warm enough, she slipped into the cool water, sinking beneath the waves to listen to the silence.  She emerged with dark red hair streaked across her forehead and the reticence she generally felt hanging around her neck slightly looser.  It was enough.

Mentally, she went over the menu again.  Step by step she built each dish, julienning red peppers, braising lamb shanks in olive oil with fennel and coriander, tossing a salad of blood oranges and roasted beets.  If she’d paid more attention, she wouldn’t have taken the corner of Scott Road so sharply or at such a speed.  The Camry wouldn’t have spun off the road, slipping halfway into the trees.  She wouldn’t have hit her head.

She came to with rain pouring over her face.  It took her moments to realize that she was moving, that someone bent over her to cover her from the storm.  The rain was suddenly blocked out completely.

“My car,” she said.  She was surprised at how clear her voice was, how unafraid.  Should she be afraid? She didn’t think so.  Maybe later she would be.

“It’s okay.  You ran off the road.  Damn near hit me too, which is probably the only reason I saw you.  The rain makes it hard to see.”  It was a man’s voice, loud above the downpour slamming against the pavement.  “We’ll need to call a tow truck.”

She nodded, turning her face into his jacket.  He was carrying her, she realized, like some kind of maiden in a fairy tale.  The Prince rescuing Sleeping Beauty.  Robin saving Marian.  The Beast coming after Belle.

He opened the door of a black Tundra and slipped her inside.  She looked up at him.

Well, he definitely didn’t look like the Beast, she thought.

His back was to her now, the breadth of his chest and shoulders covered by a puffy vest and plaid shirt, a black baseball cap on his head.  He might have been a homegrown farm boy about to harvest the corn, or the senior quarterback at the start of a victorious season.  There was a sense of ownership in his stance, a solidity to his feet that said “This is mine.”  He didn’t look much like a man who was used to getting told no.

She guessed that applied to the elements too, since the end of his cigarette was still burning, despite the rain.   She didn’t remember smelling smoke on him, but the clove was definitely there, sitting on the sideview mirror, unmoving but still smoking as rain pelted down.

He pulled out a cell phone and dialed, explained the situation, then hung up.  Climbing in the car, he flashed her a crooked kind of smile.  “You’ll only be stuck with me half an hour or so.  I guess they think the storm’ll let up soon.  They’ll be here after that.”

“Thanks for stopping.”

“My pleasure.”

She believed him.  For reasons unknown to her, she felt peaceful, safe.   Half an hour here didn’t sound terrible at all.  Instead, it felt very much like a beginning.

You can read another Palace Players piece–written by my dear friend JD–at iminthemiddleofyourpicture.wordpress.com.  

The breathing problems were back.  Air was seemingly too heavy for her lungs.  With every intake, less oxygen came in, leaving her gasping for breath while sitting sedately in the backs of cars or after walking for only a few moments.  Every exhale was a chore.  It was if every inch of her was on notice, high alert, trying to cling to the last moments of peace while knowing–with the uncanniness of knowing that she sometimes had–that something was coming.  Maybe it was the knowing that made this season of uncertainty so difficult to breathe in.

There was a whole team of people at her disposal, waiting for her–or anyone–to ask for healing just so they could pray… but she couldn’t ask.  Some unseen residue of pride lingered around her throat, choking her, forcing back the words “Please”.  Show no sign of weakness.

This was a year to be the golden girl.  To perfect joy.  To be a bringer of smiles, not sadness.  Not intensity.  Not intimidation or too-much-to-handle-ness.

It wasn’t that she wanted to put up a front.  Indeed, she wanted this smiling, joyful, problem-less girl to be her new normal.  She’d seen it work for other people–other girls, anyway–who had no trouble looking at someone across the room and smiling, drawing them in with a flash of eye contact.  Not flirtation, just openness.  Not a “Oh, hello you”, but a “Oh, hi there new person.  You look interesting.”

Maybe when her lungs opened, her mouth would too.

The little girl she sometimes was still hung out out between her spine and sternum, playing hide and seek with white blood cells.  That girl wanted to wear daisies in her hair but settled for uncertainty, wanted to put on lipstick like Momma did but settled for toughness, wanted to play soccer with the boys but settled for shyness.  She was a raven among robins– stunningly simple and heartbreakingly dark.

She wanted to become a woman of sunlight and peonies and Indian summers.  She felt more like the first day of school after Christmas break… like a picture in the back of a forgotten diary… like an unrhymeable rhyme.

Her lungs fought the air and captured it.  Released it.  Took a few more breaths prisoner.  Stumbled and lost the next.

She wasn’t sure, wasn’t sure, how to make it stop.

When the phone rang, she answered it.  The voice on the other end said, “It’s okay if you aren’t okay.”  She couldn’t find words, just nodded.  They sat in silence for long minutes, then hung up.

Somehow, she slept better after all that.

or, why i didn’t want to leave you

1. You are there, and I am not.

2 – 23 are variations on that theme.

*****

We raced the dusk to Topeka, cheating tiredness with undersweetened tea and the promise of soft pillows, not realizing that when we got here there would be signs warning against car theft.  I said, “So is this a pretty safe neighborhood?” realizing that I asked the question of a worn out woman in her fifties who looked like she’d been in a fight with a jackhammer and lost.  I started composing hatemail to Kansas, perfecting my punctuation with the precision of a pointalist painter and then, quit.  What a waste of breath to tell Kansas how hated it is simply for not being Colorado. I’m sure it hears that speech all the time from tired-out truckers and road-tripping couples with two year olds screaming in the background.

At dinner, before I left, they asked me for 22 reasons why I would be sorry to leave Fort Collins.  In my grief, already hanging heavy against my chest, I found no answers.  In Topeka, I found them readily, clunking around in my pockets like so many foreign coins.

*****

OUT OF GOD’S HAT

a poem by Hafiz

The stars poured into the sky
Out of a Magician’s hat last night,
And all of them have fallen into my hair.
Some have even tangled my eyelashes
Into luminous, playful knots.

Wayfarer,
You are welcome to cut a radiant tress
That lays upon my shoulders.
Wrap it around your trembling heart and body
That craves divine comfort and warmth.
I am like a pitcher of milk
In the hands of a mother who loves you.

All of my contents now
Have been churned into dancing suns and moons.

Lean your sweet neck and mouth
Out of that dark nest where you hide,
I will pour effulgence into your mind.

Come spring
You can find me rolling in the fields
They are exploding in
Holy battles

Of scents, of sounds – everything is
A brilliant colored nova on a stem.

Forest animals hear me laughing
And surrender their deepest instincts and fears,

They come charging into meadows
To lick my hands and face,

This makes me so happy,
I become so happy

That my rising wink turns into a magic baton.
When my soft-eyed creatures see that wonderful signal
We all burst into singing

And make strange and primal beautiful sounds!

My only regret in this world then becomes:

That your shyness keeps you from placing
Your starving body against God

And seeing the Beloved become so pleased
With your courage

That his belly begins to rock and rock,
Then more planets get to leap
Onto the welcome mat of existence
All because
Of your previous love.

The friend has turned my verse into sacred pollen.
When a breeze comes by

Falcons and butterflies
And playful gangs of young angels
Mounted on emerald spears

Take flight from me like a great sandstorm
That can blind you to all but the Truth!

Dear one
Even if you have no net to catch Venus
My music will circle this earth for hundreds of years
And fall like resplendent debris,
Holy seed, onto a fertile woman.

For Hafiz
Wants to help you laugh at your every
Desire.

Hafiz
Wants you to know

Your life within God’s arms,
Your dance within God’s
Arms

Is already

Perfect!

She put him away abruptly as if he’d never been there at all.  The truth was that she’d been more shocked and hurt by what happened that night than she cared to admit, that her unanswered words had been only exactly what she told him it was: a partial apology.  She’d wanted him to kiss her like a man kisses a woman who matters to him, rather than how it happened, as if she was the little sister of an old friend and completely off-limits but wanted all the same.

Swallowing her pride to walk through his door was the release of something intangible in her. In one look, she both hurt for him and hated him for letting it happen.  She suspected from his smile that he felt roughly the same way, although he’d only looked at her quickly before going back to the kitchen.  He wasn’t unkind, only absent, as if skipping a day of classes without any intention of coming back.  She wished he’d be cruel.  It would make his previous kindnesses easier to forget.

She’d hit her shoulder, then her head against the uneven black pavement in the fall. Some tattoo artists saw her tumble, heels over handlebars, and then came to get her as she lay stunned, gravel gunning into her cheekbones.

She hadn’t realized she was bleeding until he said so. Her hands shook as she took the BandAid from him; it took everything she had not to grip the edge of the counter but stand straight. Her spine threatened to fold over itself, not so much from pain as shock. The fall knocked the breath out of her and even half an hour later, she still couldn’t seem to stop shaking. He handed her water and a BandAid, then, seeing her fingers tremble, came to wrap his arms around her. She’d let herself shake then, took too many deep deep breaths and let him hold her.  Falling was a scary thing, she thought, as tears threatened her cheeks. 

He told her friends that her vulnerability had been sweet, that he was glad he could take care of her. How could he have known that he’d witnessed her at her most defenseless, when she felt most burdensome and useless and alone? How could he have known what it had actually taken to ask for his help, to be held, to allow his hands to clean the blood from her knee with the gentle assuredness of someone who had come to let her matter.

And she kept telling him how fine she was. How sorry she was that he had to see her like this, a mess, hair barely gathered to the side, lips trembling, sweat and dirt caking her arms. I’m such a mess. She said over and over, and she meant it in every possible way. 

Because it wasn’t just the fall that had her fearful. It was the way he said he didn’t mind cleaning her up, the unusual lack of hesitation when she asked to be held, the fingers caught in her hair and the way his cheek had rested on her forehead comfortingly as if to say, “I’m here. Don’t worry”. It was the uncharacteristic gentleness of someone so much bigger than she was. It was that her wrists had been trapped between their chests so that she could feel his heartbeat drumming alongside her pulse and they matched. It was how it felt to go into his arms. It how he didn’t know anything about her and how little that fact seemed to matter to either of them.

It was that everything changed.

She hated the remembering.  Hated herself for such harsh words.  Hated him for the brief–too brief–touch of his lips on her forehead when alcohol made it easy.  Hated them both for ever walking the line between friends and  falling into each other with the explosiveness of cannon fire.  Hated that there was nothing to fix.

She couldn’t make herself even look over her shoulder when she left.  Maybe that was what brave looked like now, not looking.

She thought there was something magical about this time of evening.  Not that she was generally up late enough to see 11:39 pm roll around, you understand, but in theory the moments before midnight had a mystique to them that she didn’t quite comprehend.

It would have been useful to have someone with her on nights like this; however, it was understood–and quietly so–that she wasn’t ready for that yet.  She was all lonesome bike rides by the river and quiet, underwater laughter.  Someone told her once that everything in the world could be cured with saltwater. What they meant, that is, was with sweat, with tears, or with the sea.  Partially, this was true, but silence didn’t always come with salt or water and it solved many things.

There was a seperateness to the silence that took away any Insta-gram feel that memory can take on and allowed her to look at things bluntly.  She was thinking more about that night behind the couch, talking about it a little more, allowing herself to believe in her innocence more.  It had taken years to get even this far, to allow herself to be separate from what was allowed and what was taken.  To give herself leave to break out of the freeze frame and say

“Yes, I remember everything. I always have.”

It was easier to do that in the silence.  There were still things she didn’t want to talk about, people she would never tell the truth to, and a someone she would never confront.  What did it matter now, she wondered, except to matter to her?

She didn’t want to be a woman whose identity was wrapped up in all her brokenness, who, when the LORD came to heal her clung to the scars and said, “You can’t take this.  This is all I have left.”  Not when He was offering to take those scars and create someone beautiful from them.  Someone beautiful and strong and free.  Someone with the courage of Esther, insightfulness of Deborah, redemption of Rahab, faith of Mary.

Because, if you want the truth–and you do, don’t you?–she wanted to be that woman.  She was ready shed what was left of her sophomore skin and become that woman.  A woman of God, of grace, the way they all prophesied she would be.  She was ready…

Well, dammit, she was trying really hard to be ready anyway.