Haunted

"If you could never go back to your world, what would you miss most?"

Josie thought of Jack and her mother; of her aunt; of how it felt to stand barefoot on the cool driveway pavement early on a summer morning.  "Pumpkin bread," she answered.

"Pumpkin bread," the King repeated.  "What is pumpkin bread?"

"Something worth missing."

The King wondered why Josie's smile seemed so sad.  But this time he did not ask.

Tomorrow is Crying for You (Pt. 4)

Still, my woolly thoughts seemed to be leading me somewhere, so I pushed out of my mind the math exams I’d missed, the classrooms I couldn’t find.  I didn’t want to think about the times I woke up in a library, with only a few days left to write a year-end term paper I hadn’t even started.  I never knew how these crises turned out, because suddenly they would be over, and I would be here, on my way to the restaurant to visit Marietta.  She never asked where I’d been.  She was my friend.

Finally the hallway widened into a large, silent atrium, with massive stairs leading to the second floor.  I buzzed up the staircase, following its curvature instead of simply flying straight up.  In the much smaller hallway off to the right some instinct, or past experience, brought me to a small bedroom, gently lit by a reading lamp.  I didn’t know whose it was or why no one slept there tonight, but I did know I would be safe here—at least for a little while.

Photo by C. Hornby

The bed, however, was not an option.  I fluttered over to the tall chest of drawers.  Each drawer had been left open, just the tiniest bit:  I settled for the middle drawer, the one with the thick woolly winter sweaters.  When I was big I’d hated wool and its scratchy, suffocating warmth, but now I curled myself into a tight ball between a snowflake-patterned jumper and a purple cabled cardigan and let out a little sigh.  Tomorrow, perhaps, I would be big again.  Tomorrow I might remember why I kept forgetting.

The Coming Fall

I do not know the riddle, I insist

perhaps this is a trick

there is no riddle

Is this what you must believe, the

dragon returns

I never told you so

the riddle has been scratching at you for years now

no wonder you are tired

I am not well, I repeat

I want none of your riddles

I only want peace

There is the problem, my child

there will be no peace until

you speak the words

you knew this long ago

Mary's Mother

where did I go to

just to be loyal            

to one last deception

cycles of wishing

no chance to be faithful

when I meant to love you       

dreams made me leave you

heavy as warheads

this fear almost fatal

here in your believing

triumph is fleeting

from so far away

no tongues left to speak in

so our silence becomes as

cold as the season

each yesterday we kill            

another act of treason

            but could it be             could it be       that she creeps up behind you

            could it be       could it be       that whispers will deny you   

                        no tears and no words             no soul for the selling

                        too much to pay                      to keep her from telling

since pain could not be swayed

a slow train runaway again

            the line for redemption

            from here to forever

and that jail you broke out of

the last portal to heaven

time is a monster                     asleep under the carpet

so easy to trip up on                to cover in never

with purples and yellows                    not just for pictures

but her yesterday sees            

her tomorrow remembers

because your shame hid away

a slow game come to play again

            the mercy you traded

            bursting with color                                                     

and what you thought finished

only just started

                        I could never love you

                        hope made me leave you

                        the damned has its day

                        trust still in the cradle

now here in this leaving

one stopped the bleeding

from a day unintended

night saved for dreaming           

where have you gone to

crouched in a circle

you married the flame

this death for your trouble

if only for tomorrow

one last declaration

a lifetime of knowing

I will be faithful

Tomorrow is Crying for You, Part 3

This corridor, illuminated by glass chandeliers, was, like the restaurant, empty and silent.  The noise of my beating wings sounded too loud in the stillness around me.  As I buzzed along, weaving and bobbing, expecting to plummet to the ground at any moment yet moving forward all the while, I felt vaguely troubled.  My illness had made the many snickets of my mind as dusky as the sky outside, but that wasn't the problem.  I’d been ill before.  I had forgotten before.  But when I’d woken up the other times, it was to find myself at school and late for a math exam, with just a faint, frustrated notion of where my classroom might be.  I was used to that, even if I hated it.  I was not used to this fairy business.

Uneasily, I wondered if I would ever be big again.  Where would I live until I was?  The doll house in the attic had gone long ago.  As with nearly everything else I cared about, it had been sacrificed for a future that kept morphing into a past I could not remember. 

The corridor seemed miles longer than usual, maybe because I was so little now.  I peered into all sorts of paper thin passageways I’d never noticed when I was big, but they were so dark and uninviting that dared not travel down any of them.  I needed to solve this fairy riddle first.  

Tomorrow is Crying for You, Part 2

            In this endless sunset that enveloped the restaurant, no customers ever came.  Instead, my friend Marietta, the hostess, usually sat at one of the perfectly made tables by herself, doing paperwork of a kind we never discussed.  Only the fading light that rippled through those whispering trees dared enter the large T-shaped room.  Why were there no customers?  On my previous visits I’d only seen Marietta in that hushed hour of solitude.  Like so many other questions I must have forgotten to ask her this one, too.

            Now, in the pantry, I stretched myself and without thinking remembered how to fly—I began running until suddenly my wings caught air and lifted me off of the hardwood floor.  From the kitchen I turned down the narrow, artificially lit hallway that led into the dining room.  No one waited for me; not even Marietta sat at her usual table.  Only I existed, passing through, a lightning bug in disguise. 

But while the restaurant was familiar, it was not safe.  I would need to find some other shelter, to clear my head, maybe to sleep and wake up again as something else.  In the lobby I held my breath and squeezed through the narrowest of gaps between the locked double doors.  When I exhaled again I rolled, tumbleweed style, into the magnificent hall that joined the restaurant to the great corridor.  

Gone

I cannot be alone

I am scared and exhausted with the effort

of being awake

It feels like I have been awake forever

I dream of snow

of running in it

of hearing the crunch of my footsteps

on the ice

I dream of diving into the water

so deep

and not needing air

I wish I had never seen it

never heard of it

never known it

I wish I could only remember it

as I ran in the snow