Imaginary Things

Imaginary things take imaginary wings

And lift me to a place of wonder

Dreams and fancies and demons and banshees

And fairies that pull my soul under

Churning and spinning and praying and sinning

Dancing with lightning and thunder

The Crone

Suddenly bitter as a reflection of her youth

Glides past and takes a seat across the aisle

The crone, alone with her withered hope, and regret

Casts dark glance at rays of light

Flaxen curls resembling tiny ethereal halos

That seem to laugh and dance, mocking the dark

Mocking the fluorescent glow of the auditorium

By shamelessly parading as bits of midday sunshine

From the shadows strikes a forked tongue

Wishing to reclaim some lost piece of past

In desperation, frustration at the mirrors in her eyes

That narrow but refuse to close, tear but refuse to blur

As her fervent whispered lashing fades unseen

Retreating, widening the gap across the aisle

The crone shrinks back into the safety of darkness

Where the fluorescent spotlight cannot go

Playdates With SueEllen

My daughter had a daycare friend. The friend was being raised by a single father so one day, when my mother was helping me out by picking up my daughter, she decided to arrange a playdate between my daughter and her friend, at the single father's house. So we could get to know eachother better. I had met this guy. Knew a bit of his family history and could guess the rest, and I felt bad for the daughter. I thought to hell with it, I'll give it a chance. Everyone deserves a chance. At least he's a hard working guy, trying to do right by his daughter.

Imagine my surprise when we arrive for the playdate and are greeted at the door by the girl's mother Nellie, who has just moved back in to play "Mommy" again, even though there is a court order preventing her from being around her family. But it's fine, she reassures me. She's totally off the meth now, totally learned her lesson. I can't decide if she is drunk at two in the afternoon, or if the slurring and darting eyes are just leftover meth damage that stayed like it will so often do.

"We're here for the playdate!" I tell her a little too loudly. I slap a big toothy smile on my face to cover up the fact that I am standing on her doorstep judging her from head to toe. She leans against the open door, stepping back with it when it moves with her weight. Her too-bright eyes land on my daughter and she draws herself down, too close. "You must be SueEllen's friend". My daughter turns and looks at me. She waves me in and I vice-grip my daughter's shoulder as we step inside the entrance. 

The living room is barely recognizable for being that purpose, save the tiny children's recliner in the center of the room, parked in front of a tiny camper television on the floor. Aside from a one foot clearing around the chair, the rest of the living room is cluttered with an assortment of the most random things. An amplifier, some crayons in a mixing bowl, an empty birdcare on top of a soiled army cot, pizza boxes, a safe, books, magazines, papers, and for some reason I notice a tucked away pile of little ceramic decorative theater masks. The kind that were popular to collect in the 80's. My brain can't process what I am seeing as we wind our way through and into the kitchen.

A smell hits me in the face like a slap before my eyes focus and begin searching for the source. That rotted smell of something left so long that you can smell beyond the old smell a new mutating smell. Sickly, sweet, eye-watering. The inside of my mouth sweats and I know that if I stop biting on the sides of my tongue I will gag. I pray that we are going to the back door. I can see it now, and the fresh air behind the grease-smudged glass pane. But we stop just short of the door as she yells down a long dark flight of basement steps. SueEllen comes bounding up the steps, shrieking as she spies my daughter and the two run off to play in her bedroom. And while I haven't seen it, I say a little prayer of hope that my being too busy to wash her long, gorgeous hair these last three days is enough to keep the lice away. I will murder Nell in her sleep if I have to shave my child's head. Nobody will ever find her in these piles.

I'm not perfect. I have a past too. Days where my kid stays a ruffian. Days where I do too. I'm always secretly afraid that I might be a little bit white-trash but not today. Not here at this table. We are posted up in rickety kitchen chairs with a backdrop of dirty dishes, smoking cigarettes without the window open and ashing into half full glasses of god knows what. The stories she is telling me sound like a jailhouse letter to a sad lonely man with a dime bag. Her stories vindicate my insecurities and I suddenly have compassion for her, knowing she is pouring herself out in front of me, a half full glass of god knows what.

"At least you're trying", I tell her, looking around. It's her daughter I feel sorry for. And who I will continue to feel sorry for. Because while I believe everyone deserves another chance, I also believe you must treat that chance like the gift that it is and not squander it away just because trying is too hard. "There is a way to come back from all of this, " I sweep my arm out. "I've done it and so can you. And doing the dishes is a good place to start." So I spend an entire summer believing that she will do this. Because I have done this. 

SueEllen spends most of their playdates with my daughter at our house. After that first playdate I always have a plan that requires us to be at my house. It's not spotless, but at least I know the spots I do have aren't bed bugs. Sometimes the spots at SueEllen's house move. I am dropping her off on one such afternoon when to my surprise I see their front lawn covered in piles of junk and furniture. "Are you having a yard sale"? I ask SueEllen. She jumps out of my car to intercept her father, who is carrying out a half broken headboard covered in bumper stickers that I recognize from the few times I've been inside SueEllen's room. He lays it on its side as SueEllen screeches to a stop at his side.

"We are trying to get refinanced on our home loan so I don't have to get a job" Nell informs me from the doorway. Loudly. Her neighbors glance up from their own driveway. "I want to be able to look after SueEllen, take her to school!" The elementary school is literally behind their back yard. They share a fence line. Taking her to school equals opening the back gate. Nellie is holding a pint of whiskey. It's almost empty. It's not even noon.

"Well that's nice I guess. So you're having a yard sale in case that doesn't work or..." I trail off, gesturing to the piles. 

Nellie shakes her head. "No we have to clean this place up! They have to come out and do an inspection but we'll still get enough money off it to let me stay home."

"Oh." Secretly I think this inspection is great news. "But what about the damage? Like the hole in the bathroom door your pitbull ripped open trying to get that duck y'all rescued?" I see the neighbors glance over again out of the corner of my eye. They have slowed down cleaning their van to a snail's pace.

That duck bothers me so much. She brought it home as a newborn. I imagine that it was the last in a line of ducklings following their mother across the road at the park. The slow curious one that hadn't quite caught up to the rest of the flock. Snatched. She said she rescued it. Rescued it from what? I don't have the heart to ask. I don't want to know. She keeps the duck locked up alone in the bathroom upstairs in a tub full of water. The only working bathroom in this house because the basement bathroom got torn out and never remodeled. 

"Oh we still have the duck," Nellie says. "They can't get us for that because it's a pet". I look down at the empty, dirty, birdcage amongst the rubble in the front yard.

The next time I drop SueEllen off, I agree to come inside because I am curious. The piles that graced the front yard for two weeks have disappeared. The house looks amazing. The living room has real living room furniture, the bay window I didn't know they had is clear of dog and child smudge, and the smell is almost gone. I can see all of the walls, all the way to the carpeting. 

"It looks great in here!" I call out to Nell, genuinely proud that she managed to finally get her shit together. "You guys finally got rid of everything!"

"Got rid of it to the basement", she cackles. She takes another gulp of whiskey as she comes around the hallway. "Well most of it anyway, there were a few piles I just couldn't bear to move".

What's the difference if you hoard it in the basement or hoard it in your bedroom? I want to scream in frustration. Instead I look down at the little floaters in the glass of water she'd handed me. "Oh?"

"Well yeah." she says. "I seen them mice!"

Goosebumps break out across my flesh from head to toe. "Oh dear god Nellie! I wouldn't have touched it either!"

She shakes her head. "Can't. Not while they all have those little babies." She holds out a little dish filled with what I'm pretty sure is peanut butter. "Wanna help me feed em?"

Dragons

A slave have I become to a thousand beating wings

Talons tear the sky as the broken church bell rings

Echoing the prophecies sung by the ancient one

The power of the fire's flame scorch the serpent's tongue

The moon hangs like a backdrop for the shadows of the night

The air in churning protest of outstretched wings in flight

My sword cast away on the ground at my feet

Drenched in tears of falling stars shattered in defeat

Footprints in the Sand

We were all the way back to the car when Patrick yelled, "Fuck"! I turned to see him digging frantically through his pockets.
"What's wrong," I asked, already irritated because somehow I knew the answer.
"The fucking keys are gone! The keys...we fucking left them!" He dug through the pockets in a frenzied desperation.
I searched my jeans, discovering that my lighter, the lucky one with the owl on it that had been with us the entire road trip, was also missing. I muttered under my breath. If this wasn’t an omen I didn't know what was.
"What!” Patrick demanded. I startled at his sharp tone and took a deep breath, dreading what I was about to say.
"We lost the lighter too."
Patrick lost control. He threw down the coat and started banging on the hood of the ancient car we were calling home. I turned to Alec, some little hippy kid we'd picked up at gas station in the previous county, and apologized.
"He gets like this sometimes," I tried to be reassuring. "Don't worry." But the kid looked like he was going to run. I couldn’t tell in the moonlight if this was just how he looked. At the gas station I thought he had just looked hungry.
"Pat! Patrick! Chill!" I said. Alec had gas money for a ride to San Francisco. Which we needed desperately or WE would not be going to San Francisco. We couldn't afford for Patrick to scare him off. I put my hand on Pat's shoulder trying to draw him back to me. "They probably just fell out where we were sitting. We'll just go back and find them."
Patrick stopped ranting and pacing and whirled around, his eyes lit with violence and rage. "Oh yeah," he seethed. "And just how in the hell do you expect to do that? In case you hadn't noticed, it's dark now!"
I opened the back door, grateful that the doors to this giant emissions-leaking beast no longer locked. We could sleep here where we were parked if we had to. I grabbed the Coleman lantern before remembering that we did not have a lighter to light it, and dug around for a flashlight instead.
I held the flashlight up to my chin and flashed a smug smile, wiggling my eyebrows. “Come on,” I said over my shoulder as I took off toward the beach. I really had no idea what my plan was. I have the worst sense of direction and being in a different state wasn’t helping at all. In Colorado, West is always toward the mountains. Out here, in the dark, I wasn’t even really sure I was heading back toward the beach until I reached the sand. I stopped short.
Patrick and our hitchhiker caught up to me then and, smiling triumphantly, I shone the flashlight onto the sand, revealing three perfect sets of footprints in the sand: mine, Patrick’s, and a smaller set belonging to Alec.
Patrick grabbed the flashlight from me and smacked me on the back. “Good job Watson!”
We followed the footprints all the way back to the lifeguard tower where just a short while before we’d all been sitting; watching the sun set, eating a gas station dinner, and talking about our individual hopes and dreams for San Francisco. Wedged into the sand at the base of the tower, a sliver of metal glinted in the moonlight. I reached down and snatched up the partially buried keys and felt around in the sand for the lighter which by now had been completely sucked into the sand.
Alec looked amazed. Patrick looked ecstatic. I looked at the moonlight glinting off the ocean. I followed the boys back at a distance, completely unaware of anything but my focus on those sets of footprints. It had just occurred to me that all Patrick and I were doing on this trip was following footprints into the dark.

Early Sunday Morning. After the Honky Tonk Closes.

She walks through the empty bar, heels clicking like glassware in a sink on the wooden dance floor as she checks the back door and gives the men’s room a quick glance, a quick peek into the ladies’. She admires the shine of the hand-worn wooden rail, runs her fingertips across the rounded edge as she walks to the far end of the bar. Sits down. Pours a glass of something strong. 

The silence seems louder than the thrum of the live band that played her stage earlier tonight and she settles into the soft well-worn leather of the stool, glad she sprang for the kind with backrests all those years ago. They’ve held up so well for the beatings they take.

She lights a cigarette and the sharp sting of acrid smoke hits her first, followed by the lingering swirl of the heady perfumes and colognes that graced the air tonight. It’s probably her favorite part of the honky tonk, the smoke and the perfume. The cologne and the leather of the boots that were shined hours ago. The way it all mingles on the dance floor like secret dance moves. 

She loves dancing. She loves the line dances and the boot stomps. She loves the promenades and the two steps. She loves the slow, slow dances where the couple barely remembers to move because time is standing still and so are they, mesmerized. 

She’s mesmerized by it all. By the dancing, the live bands, the customers. More than customers, most of them are family. It’s a small community and this is a comfortable place that by day draws a food-crowd; and a loud, rowdy, good-time crowd at night. The honky tonk is just large enough to rage each night but small enough to make it feel like home. And it really does, she realizes. 

Old Man Joe brought her a war flag to set on one of the many shelves. Says it’s for a friend of his, lost to the war. Says this place would’ve felt like home for him. Sometimes Old Man Joe and his friends meet at the table way in the back on a quiet Tuesday afternoon, and get lost in their memories and their glasses. She put the flag on the shelf way in the back. Next to the table. The bar is filled with ephemera and trinkets and artwork of indiscriminate origin. An animal head here and there. Knick knacks on random shelves that tell a story of local history and local legends. 

People tell her their stories. And their joys. Their pains. Their triumphs. And sometimes they don’t tell her anything. She’s come to know them. To cherish them. Even the ones who grunt when she talks to them (there are two of ‘em). She loves em anyway. She loves watching them all from her spot behind the bar. The frat boys who come to party. The spitfire gal at the end of the bar with the tequila loosened tongue, the woohoo girls in the back corner. The cowboys, the rockers, the goth couple with the matching piercings. 

It’s a frenetic energy that buzzes through the place when the dance floor is full and the boys are being rowdy and the girls are laughing, heads tilted back. The bartenders are moving at full steam, doing their own dance with the customers. Everybody leaving at light’s-on feeling energized from the vibe, the pulse inside a honky tonk. 

She throws open her arms and feels it still pulsing in her soul, and to her tippy toes. She sighs happily and finishes her last drop of whiskey, letting the silence and the bubbly scent of suds and hot water fill her senses. She skirts behind the bar with a twirl to a tune that only she hears. Begins humming it. Glassware is calling.