The hand pointed to everything
300 million people scramble to see into the distance
Grabbing and hitting and hating each other
Blindly scrounging for a piece of a dream
Or a hope or a one true love
Once upon a time and happily ever after
A forgotten fruit replaced by
Slogans, catch phrases and quips
The American dream mutated into
A smooth mix of conformity and monotony
With a warm, metallic flavor
Patriots leading proud companies into battle
Fighting for the corporate utopia
Beautiful in gleaming grey and solemn stone
Eden comes equipped with a Starbucks
Paradise has a Wall Street
With a hundred dirty dreamers
Begging for a piece of a hope
A part of a life
One quarter closer to stumbling bliss
Smiles behind pity-fear behind hate
The huddled masses yearning to live
Have stayed this course so long
And seen no end to the terror
Of living without choice or knowledge
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Untitled by Hillary Rains
The hand pointed to everything.
Everything that we are.
We are everything.
Everything is us.
In this world of disconnect
Of hurried greetings
Of scurried meetings.
We are one.
Call it God
Or something else
Perhaps just human nature.
Perhaps something more.
We are the world.
The world is us.
Everything that we are.
We are everything.
Everything is us.
In this world of disconnect
Of hurried greetings
Of scurried meetings.
We are one.
Call it God
Or something else
Perhaps just human nature.
Perhaps something more.
We are the world.
The world is us.
The hand pointed to everything... by Norma Taylor
The hand pointed to everything……
and each finger adorned with a beautiful ring,
sparkling in a cloud of hazy doubt
like it didn’t know what life was about.
The hand pointed to everything…..
sometimes fluttering like it was a wing,
as one would follow its pattern to try
to figure its purpose and why.
As in life, one can not point to everything
One has to look beyond any bitter sting.
And see the shining stars bright
with rings on fingers pointing to what is right.
The hand pointed to everything……
to make its point to every living thing.
The hand alone is unable to withstand
but as part of a body, can take its stand!
and each finger adorned with a beautiful ring,
sparkling in a cloud of hazy doubt
like it didn’t know what life was about.
The hand pointed to everything…..
sometimes fluttering like it was a wing,
as one would follow its pattern to try
to figure its purpose and why.
As in life, one can not point to everything
One has to look beyond any bitter sting.
And see the shining stars bright
with rings on fingers pointing to what is right.
The hand pointed to everything……
to make its point to every living thing.
The hand alone is unable to withstand
but as part of a body, can take its stand!
Submissive by Sarah Eller
The hand points to everything
I do not wish to be –
Compulsive,
Unimpassioned,
Submissive.
I can’t imagine my life
without these undesired traits.
I hate compulsivity
because I need scheduled construction.
I detest being unimpassioned
because it is not who I am.
But most of all,
I despise myself for being
Submissive.
I am not the kind of person
to let myself be dominated.
I am an independent –
the stand alone sort of person.
I can’t imagine why I let myself
be drawn into your web of lies,
your deceit or destruction,
but it happened so fast
I couldn’t stop myself.
My fear of you is staggering.
I look at myself.
Then I wish you to die.
Your life should end
in suffering pain.
You should die as I live –
Submissive.
I do not wish to be –
Compulsive,
Unimpassioned,
Submissive.
I can’t imagine my life
without these undesired traits.
I hate compulsivity
because I need scheduled construction.
I detest being unimpassioned
because it is not who I am.
But most of all,
I despise myself for being
Submissive.
I am not the kind of person
to let myself be dominated.
I am an independent –
the stand alone sort of person.
I can’t imagine why I let myself
be drawn into your web of lies,
your deceit or destruction,
but it happened so fast
I couldn’t stop myself.
My fear of you is staggering.
I look at myself.
Then I wish you to die.
Your life should end
in suffering pain.
You should die as I live –
Submissive.
Above and Beyond by Bill Felt
The hand pointed to everything that he had lost. It was a farmer’s hand, broad, thickly calloused, networked with veins. Then, as if punctuating the end, the hand etched a curt, sweeping arc, taking in the farm’s 80 acres, from the newly asphalted road clear to the Wabash River.
Standing on the porch, I listened as he told the story of his family’s farm, jerking his thumb back over his shoulder at the century old, two-story house, which had been weathered a thin-white by the prairie winds. Swaying lazily in a spring breeze, the porch swing rhythmically thumped the wall beneath the front window.
Along the gravel driveway, a newly whitewashed, three-rail fence stretched 150 feet from the road, along the house, to where it butted a giant oak tree that stood in the corner of a withered garden in the back yard.
A trace of amused wonder in his voice, he recounted the story of a tornado a few years back whose winds propelled, as if by a howitzer, a fencepost, unbroken, clean through the wall of the faded barn, which had miraculously survived the violent winds whole and unscathed.
In the pasture beyond the fence, a few remaining head of his prized Angus munched passively on cuds of clover and grass, occasionally bawling as they awaited execution. A squat Ford tractor stood nose first half way into the barn with its big balloon tires up to their hubs in foxtail. Dead center of the front yard stood a tall flagpole, the faded American flag at the top flapping weakly in the breeze.
He allowed his leathery palm to drop to rest on his thigh as if all of it, the loss of all he had nurtured, all he’d fought for, had just gained the irrevocable weight of certainty. In his other hand, he held a beat up cigar box. Most of the outer layer of the faded yellow box had worn away, but the ghost of Kind Edward remained on the lid. He cradled it in his big hands as he sketched his family tree.
His parents had come here in 1913 from St. Boswells, Scotland. Lenny paused, shook his head and chuckled wryly. “Folks made a beeline for this patch of dirt—‘magine that? Them, all of 18 at the time.”
Snapshot dreams of freedom and the promise of plenty had lured them to America. “Paw said they dropped to their knees and kissed the ground when they stepped off the boat at Ellis Island. Then there was the farm. … I was their only child. Born 1930. … That’s what took Maw. Guess she was too old … for babies … back in those days. Doc couldn’t do nothin’ for her.” His eyes grew moist and wistful. “Aw … But that’s a long time ago.”
Paw buried Kathryn … Maw … yonder under the big oak tree. We laid Paw to rest right next to her.” A single heart-shaped tombstone stood at the head of both graves and seemed to join the two mounds, grown over with the greenest of plush grass.
At least Landis had agreed to disinter and move the bodies the 15 miles to Oakland Cemetery, where a full-time caretaker manicured the grounds and chased off vandals as if the tenants were kinfolk. Through legal maneuvering Landis Land Development Corp. had acquired the land for commercial development. “Stole it right out from under me,” Lenny declared.
Sure, he could visit them every year to put flowers on their graves on Veteran’s Day—his father had served in the Army during WWI. At least, Lenny’s son Jed had promised him that much.
Still, this soil had been part of his family for many years and was infused with much sweat and tears and spirit. “Folks came straight to the Midwest. Worked the land for …” He scratched the gray stubble on his chin. “I guess for more’n 50 years. Survived the Dust Bowl.” I watched his eyes; it was as if you could see the years reeling through his mind as he reflected.
“After I was discharged from the Army … Korea … I drifted for awhile. Wound up back here. Tried to make a go of it. Done all right for a while. Then the city limits just swallowed it up and …” His voice trailed off and his dove-grey eyes gazed at the large oak. His hard fingers absently stroked dry flecks of paint that stubbornly clung to the wind-scrubbed handrail framing the big porch.
“Sure am sorry ‘bout this. I sure am, Lenny.”
He grunted as I handed him the clipboard with the papers that would release the land.
“Where you headed from here?” I asked.
Already ruddy, his complexion darkened as he squinted at the fine print of each page of the five-page document fluttering in the breeze. “G’dam landgrubbers,” he muttered. They had pursued and were able to seize his land through the legal loophole of Eminent Domain.
As Cass County sheriff, I had the lousy job of delivering the final eviction notice. It was my job, but I didn’t have to like it. I thought that for the second time in my life I’d looked into the eyes of defeat. I’d seen that look in my father’s eyes after the old Paper Mill had shut down taking his job and pension with it. Yet something still burned in Lenny’s eyes, something that had blown out of my father’s like candle in a tornado.
Recounting the story seemed to stoke his rage and his lips trembled. But I wasn’t worried about Lenny putting up much fuss, even with the shotgun slung across the rear-window of his dusty Ford pickup parked next to my cruiser in the gravel drive. His anger had been mostly spent in court and wasn’t at the local law.
Lenny had given them hell, fought more than the good fight. They squabbled for years in court, filing injunction after injunction. I remembered reading a barrage of pointed and persuasive letters-to-the-editor Lenny had leveled at the Landis Board of Directors. But in the end Landis had enough stiff Chicago attorneys to persuade the courts the land could benefit the community more as an industrial park than a self-supporting family farm. A strip mall would erase the big pasture, a Piggly Wiggly would replace the house where he’d been born, and that was only the beginning. The big business going up would employee 900 people and manufacture experimental aircraft parts for the Air Force.
Other than what I learned in the court battle played out in the newspaper, I knew little about him or his family, which probably meant Lenny was at least a peaceable fellow, a loner, never giving the department any cause to pay him an official visit.
Rumor had it a handful of shrapnel from an exploding Communist grenade, still imbedded in his hip, had left him his permanent limp. Rumor also had it that his wife had, just as his mother, died in childbirth. Other gossipers swore she’d run off with a salesman leaving Lenny to fend for himself and the boy. Either way, their son ended up staying with her parents in Iowa.
I had no more than tipped my hat to Lenny on the rare occasion I passed him in town, usually as he came out of Hedrick’s Nickel & Dime, across from the courthouse. As he walked down to the Checkerboard, he would constantly pop peanuts into his mouth from a white paper bag he kept tucked in the vest pocket of his overalls.
He slid a big calloused hand into the back pocket of his overalls and sighed. “My boy wants me to move in with him, his wife and two kids … up north … ‘round Chicago. “Never was much for kids. Too much dang racket. Haven’t seen ‘em since …” He touched his brow, “since they was babies, I guess.
“Won’t be long,” he said, raising his chin at the two yellow CATs parked heavily in the field. Work had already begun on the infrastructure, and the silent dozers had gouged thick strips of dirt, rolling them into huge coils of green carpet along the side of the road.
His house would be leveled as soon as he vacated it—by Friday, according to the papers he now clinched in his hand.
“Lenny.”
“Yeah?”
“Hope you don’t mind me asking, but what do you got there in the box … the cigar box?”
Lenny looked down at the box as if he’d forgotten it. “Nothing much. Found it while I was cleanin’ out the attic. Then you came.”
“Mind if I have a look?” Lenny squeezed the box firmly then pushed it at me. A ghost of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth then vanished.
Gently, I pried open the lid to reveal a wrinkled shop cloth. I folded back the soft cloth to reveal a gold medal knotted to a thick, faded blue ribbon. The medal was made up of a Bald Eagle above an upside-down five-point star. The inscription on the medal was tarnished, hard to read in the harsh sunlight.
I looked up at Lenny but read nothing in his face; he was focused on two whitetail deer, a doe and a big buck, winding their way warily along the serpentine Wabash River in the east. I used one corner of the shop cloth to polish the medal until it glittered in the midday sun. The eagle’s talons grasped a panel that read VALOR. In the center of the star, a twisted wreath encircled the carved bust of a woman, around which was inscribed United States of America.
It took several beats for its full significance to register and a lump swelled in my throat. I gently turned the medal over. In the palm of my hand lay the Medal of Honor. Inscribed on the back, THE CONGRESS TO LENNOX “LENNY” MACALISTER PVT 1ST CLASS US ARMY PUSAN ROK 04 JULY 1950. A million questions crowded my head, but I couldn’t get one of them past that lump.
“Len-Lenny?”
He didn’t answer, but I stared as the muscles in his jaws bunched then quivered. “Lenny, what … I—”
Cutting me off, Lenny lifted the box from my outstretched hand, replaced the cloth and closed the cigar box. As he turned, our gazes briefly met and his soft gray eyes seemed to flash icy blue.
I watched him limp away, about a million questions flipping through my mind about the man and medal in a cigar box, now casually tucked beneath his arm. His uneven footfalls echoed heavily as he crossed the wooden porch. The screen door shut with a clack.
By the time I pulled the door of the police cruiser shut, the sun had eased past its zenith and lengthened the shadow of the silo, tall and pockmarked, next to the barn. It too had survived the storm.
© 2006 by Bill Feltt
Standing on the porch, I listened as he told the story of his family’s farm, jerking his thumb back over his shoulder at the century old, two-story house, which had been weathered a thin-white by the prairie winds. Swaying lazily in a spring breeze, the porch swing rhythmically thumped the wall beneath the front window.
Along the gravel driveway, a newly whitewashed, three-rail fence stretched 150 feet from the road, along the house, to where it butted a giant oak tree that stood in the corner of a withered garden in the back yard.
A trace of amused wonder in his voice, he recounted the story of a tornado a few years back whose winds propelled, as if by a howitzer, a fencepost, unbroken, clean through the wall of the faded barn, which had miraculously survived the violent winds whole and unscathed.
In the pasture beyond the fence, a few remaining head of his prized Angus munched passively on cuds of clover and grass, occasionally bawling as they awaited execution. A squat Ford tractor stood nose first half way into the barn with its big balloon tires up to their hubs in foxtail. Dead center of the front yard stood a tall flagpole, the faded American flag at the top flapping weakly in the breeze.
He allowed his leathery palm to drop to rest on his thigh as if all of it, the loss of all he had nurtured, all he’d fought for, had just gained the irrevocable weight of certainty. In his other hand, he held a beat up cigar box. Most of the outer layer of the faded yellow box had worn away, but the ghost of Kind Edward remained on the lid. He cradled it in his big hands as he sketched his family tree.
His parents had come here in 1913 from St. Boswells, Scotland. Lenny paused, shook his head and chuckled wryly. “Folks made a beeline for this patch of dirt—‘magine that? Them, all of 18 at the time.”
Snapshot dreams of freedom and the promise of plenty had lured them to America. “Paw said they dropped to their knees and kissed the ground when they stepped off the boat at Ellis Island. Then there was the farm. … I was their only child. Born 1930. … That’s what took Maw. Guess she was too old … for babies … back in those days. Doc couldn’t do nothin’ for her.” His eyes grew moist and wistful. “Aw … But that’s a long time ago.”
Paw buried Kathryn … Maw … yonder under the big oak tree. We laid Paw to rest right next to her.” A single heart-shaped tombstone stood at the head of both graves and seemed to join the two mounds, grown over with the greenest of plush grass.
At least Landis had agreed to disinter and move the bodies the 15 miles to Oakland Cemetery, where a full-time caretaker manicured the grounds and chased off vandals as if the tenants were kinfolk. Through legal maneuvering Landis Land Development Corp. had acquired the land for commercial development. “Stole it right out from under me,” Lenny declared.
Sure, he could visit them every year to put flowers on their graves on Veteran’s Day—his father had served in the Army during WWI. At least, Lenny’s son Jed had promised him that much.
Still, this soil had been part of his family for many years and was infused with much sweat and tears and spirit. “Folks came straight to the Midwest. Worked the land for …” He scratched the gray stubble on his chin. “I guess for more’n 50 years. Survived the Dust Bowl.” I watched his eyes; it was as if you could see the years reeling through his mind as he reflected.
“After I was discharged from the Army … Korea … I drifted for awhile. Wound up back here. Tried to make a go of it. Done all right for a while. Then the city limits just swallowed it up and …” His voice trailed off and his dove-grey eyes gazed at the large oak. His hard fingers absently stroked dry flecks of paint that stubbornly clung to the wind-scrubbed handrail framing the big porch.
“Sure am sorry ‘bout this. I sure am, Lenny.”
He grunted as I handed him the clipboard with the papers that would release the land.
“Where you headed from here?” I asked.
Already ruddy, his complexion darkened as he squinted at the fine print of each page of the five-page document fluttering in the breeze. “G’dam landgrubbers,” he muttered. They had pursued and were able to seize his land through the legal loophole of Eminent Domain.
As Cass County sheriff, I had the lousy job of delivering the final eviction notice. It was my job, but I didn’t have to like it. I thought that for the second time in my life I’d looked into the eyes of defeat. I’d seen that look in my father’s eyes after the old Paper Mill had shut down taking his job and pension with it. Yet something still burned in Lenny’s eyes, something that had blown out of my father’s like candle in a tornado.
Recounting the story seemed to stoke his rage and his lips trembled. But I wasn’t worried about Lenny putting up much fuss, even with the shotgun slung across the rear-window of his dusty Ford pickup parked next to my cruiser in the gravel drive. His anger had been mostly spent in court and wasn’t at the local law.
Lenny had given them hell, fought more than the good fight. They squabbled for years in court, filing injunction after injunction. I remembered reading a barrage of pointed and persuasive letters-to-the-editor Lenny had leveled at the Landis Board of Directors. But in the end Landis had enough stiff Chicago attorneys to persuade the courts the land could benefit the community more as an industrial park than a self-supporting family farm. A strip mall would erase the big pasture, a Piggly Wiggly would replace the house where he’d been born, and that was only the beginning. The big business going up would employee 900 people and manufacture experimental aircraft parts for the Air Force.
Other than what I learned in the court battle played out in the newspaper, I knew little about him or his family, which probably meant Lenny was at least a peaceable fellow, a loner, never giving the department any cause to pay him an official visit.
Rumor had it a handful of shrapnel from an exploding Communist grenade, still imbedded in his hip, had left him his permanent limp. Rumor also had it that his wife had, just as his mother, died in childbirth. Other gossipers swore she’d run off with a salesman leaving Lenny to fend for himself and the boy. Either way, their son ended up staying with her parents in Iowa.
I had no more than tipped my hat to Lenny on the rare occasion I passed him in town, usually as he came out of Hedrick’s Nickel & Dime, across from the courthouse. As he walked down to the Checkerboard, he would constantly pop peanuts into his mouth from a white paper bag he kept tucked in the vest pocket of his overalls.
He slid a big calloused hand into the back pocket of his overalls and sighed. “My boy wants me to move in with him, his wife and two kids … up north … ‘round Chicago. “Never was much for kids. Too much dang racket. Haven’t seen ‘em since …” He touched his brow, “since they was babies, I guess.
“Won’t be long,” he said, raising his chin at the two yellow CATs parked heavily in the field. Work had already begun on the infrastructure, and the silent dozers had gouged thick strips of dirt, rolling them into huge coils of green carpet along the side of the road.
His house would be leveled as soon as he vacated it—by Friday, according to the papers he now clinched in his hand.
“Lenny.”
“Yeah?”
“Hope you don’t mind me asking, but what do you got there in the box … the cigar box?”
Lenny looked down at the box as if he’d forgotten it. “Nothing much. Found it while I was cleanin’ out the attic. Then you came.”
“Mind if I have a look?” Lenny squeezed the box firmly then pushed it at me. A ghost of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth then vanished.
Gently, I pried open the lid to reveal a wrinkled shop cloth. I folded back the soft cloth to reveal a gold medal knotted to a thick, faded blue ribbon. The medal was made up of a Bald Eagle above an upside-down five-point star. The inscription on the medal was tarnished, hard to read in the harsh sunlight.
I looked up at Lenny but read nothing in his face; he was focused on two whitetail deer, a doe and a big buck, winding their way warily along the serpentine Wabash River in the east. I used one corner of the shop cloth to polish the medal until it glittered in the midday sun. The eagle’s talons grasped a panel that read VALOR. In the center of the star, a twisted wreath encircled the carved bust of a woman, around which was inscribed United States of America.
It took several beats for its full significance to register and a lump swelled in my throat. I gently turned the medal over. In the palm of my hand lay the Medal of Honor. Inscribed on the back, THE CONGRESS TO LENNOX “LENNY” MACALISTER PVT 1ST CLASS US ARMY PUSAN ROK 04 JULY 1950. A million questions crowded my head, but I couldn’t get one of them past that lump.
“Len-Lenny?”
He didn’t answer, but I stared as the muscles in his jaws bunched then quivered. “Lenny, what … I—”
Cutting me off, Lenny lifted the box from my outstretched hand, replaced the cloth and closed the cigar box. As he turned, our gazes briefly met and his soft gray eyes seemed to flash icy blue.
I watched him limp away, about a million questions flipping through my mind about the man and medal in a cigar box, now casually tucked beneath his arm. His uneven footfalls echoed heavily as he crossed the wooden porch. The screen door shut with a clack.
By the time I pulled the door of the police cruiser shut, the sun had eased past its zenith and lengthened the shadow of the silo, tall and pockmarked, next to the barn. It too had survived the storm.
© 2006 by Bill Feltt
The Hand by Lindsey Durbin
The hand pointed to everything
at fault
lines on maps
cigarette smokers
Pastors and politicians
and at every small piece of reflecting glass.
The hand, shaking
reaching for anything
steady
accusing anyone worthy.
Only blaming itself
for pointing fingers.
at fault
lines on maps
cigarette smokers
Pastors and politicians
and at every small piece of reflecting glass.
The hand, shaking
reaching for anything
steady
accusing anyone worthy.
Only blaming itself
for pointing fingers.
Spiced Brandy Lipstick by Rebecca M. Griffith
The hand pointed to everything…
Spiced brandy. It was her holiday look, her winter look. It was drawn over her lips with precision every morning—fireplaces and tinsel, candlelight and shadows…
“Okay....”She snapped her eyes all over the sidewalk, like Fourth of July fireworks, even though it was December, and shyly hid her hands in her pockets. “Did you ever figure out an answer to my question, by the way?”
He began walking again beside her, and she belatedly took a step. “I don't remember, what question?”
“Never mind.” She said it quickly, with a dismissive toss of hair he’d once told her was too long. It was long again. Almost the same. Almost, but not quite. There were layers now. Layers of dark blonde. Subtle, but there.
“Maybe I do remember.”
“...Mmm,” she murmured, waiting.
“... Mmm,” he echoed, as though to mimic her. His eyes caught hers, accidentally, like a stray hair catching on the side of her mouth, and she nearly lost it again. Every bit of her resolve fought to leave her and float somewhere in the sharp blue of those eyes.
The nice thing about winter is that the sky is dull. You still get sunlight, but you don’t get blue skies, you get gray. You don’t have to think about his eyes every time you look up. You don’t have to wonder what you might have lost when he walked away…again.
“I'm not just checking up on you. But that doesn't mean we talk all the time.” He started up the stairs, his hand on the peeling banister.
“Why do you keep doing that?” She wheeled a step above him, hurt making her tone sharp. “Adding those ridiculous disclaimers. As though I'm going to jump all over the fact that you're not ‘just checking up on me,’ and cling incessantly. Is that really how you see me?”
“Mmmmmmm . . . yes. I'm not gonna lie.”
“Fine, then. Don't. I'll leave you alone, then. I should head to bed, anyway.” She turned from him, facing the strikingly cold air as it bit across her cheeks, and sprang up the rest of the wooden steps.
“Okay, go be huffy now,” he told her, his voice as strong and confident as ever.
She turned, fire covering hurt, hurt covering disappointment, in her green eyes. “I cannot believe you just said that. How would you expect me to react?”
“Hey, you asked.”
“Yes, I did. I'm aware of that. That doesn't mean I have to be all sugar and niceties. I can still think you're being a jerk at the moment.”
“I can be cruel, yes.” He held her gaze, watching her eyes simultaneously pull away from him and attack him.
“And you're just fine with that, apparently.”
“It's not as if I enjoyed telling you that, though.”
“What do you mean? You certainly act like you did.”
“The pause was meant to imply uneasiness.”
“Fine.”
“I was uneasy about saying that.”
“Either way, it's the truth, so me and my overemotional tendencies will leave you in peace. How's that?” She turned again, intent on leaving him alone in the cold, but her boots hit an ice patch on the landing, and she slid a bit before she caught herself. She looked down to find his hand on her elbow, and shook it off.
Winter is a cruel season. It is so cold, you are driven to find warmth, the warmth of having someone next to you, of having someone else’s hand in yours, or someone else’s arms around your waist. But if you can’t, if you are too proud to give in when he places a cracked hand on your jacketed elbow, too scared to let him see the vulnerability in your eyes when you say you’ll leave him be, winter can be a long season, a season full of frost and frozen tears, and nothing but a shade of lipstick to imply warmth on your face.
Winter is a cruel season, allowing everyone to stay frozen in their thoughts and assumptions. If he thought you were weak-willed, overemotional, and easy to take advantage of when the first drops of frozen water fell into your hair, he won’t change his mind again until spring brings the rains and washes all of winter away.
“I can't really help it,” he began, “regardless of how much you may have changed, if that's how you were the last time I interacted with you frequently.”
“Fine.” And then, she remembered that this wasn’t fine. His was an excuse made out of convenience, not truth. “You could help it, though. Don't use that kind of cop out. At least take responsibility for choosing to stay in that kind of assumption about me. I’m not the weak little girl who needed your hand to be pulled out of her mistakes.”
“You're right, I could help it, but that would require a lot of talking, and that's not something I'm really up for.” He laid claim to her elbow once again, and moved her away from the ice patch with a little too much ease.
She stepped away. She was not a pawn on his chessboard that he could move around at will. “Fine.”
“Honestly, this isn't a good time to talk to me.” He moved past her and opened the front door. “I'm in a bad mood right now, anyway. The Cardinals just won the NL pennant, and my best friend blew me off. Not a good night.”
She stood on the doorstep, contemplating finding somewhere else to spend the night. She hadn’t known he’d be here, too, renting a room in the same cottage over the holiday break. It was a thrilling coincidence, but one that was beginning to hurt with every dismissive, careless word from his mouth.
“You know, you aren’t always right, Austin.” She was shivering, but hoped he wouldn’t notice. The last time he’d noticed, she’d all but fallen apart. But two years had passed since that day they’d stood on her front porch, she, trembling in the freezing air, he, taking her into his arms. That had been the last time she’d shown him vulnerability. “You think I’m so weak, when I’m not. You think you can use me for your own casual entertainment just because you don’t prefer my company as much as some of your friends. You think I’m in love with you when—” His eyes caught hers again as he looked up, just a fragment of blue cutting into a haze of blazing green, but it was enough to take stability out from under her. “When…” She paused, and so he wouldn’t hear the tears, lowered her voice. “Just because you don’t prefer someone's company doesn't mean you have the right to treat them as though they have no feelings worth taking into consideration. And I do not mean some infatuated, over-glorified idea of you or who you are or what you stand for. I simply mean you have no right to treat someone with what you yourself consider ‘cruelty.’ Frankly, I deserve better, even if I am a ‘second rate friend,’ as you so nonchalantly told me the last time we talked, and even if you didn't have a good night. Go be in your bad mood. I'm heading to bed.”
“Jessica, don't go to bed mad.” His soft request followed the few steps she took away from him. She stopped, but kept her back to him. It was so much warmer in the house. She stood, listening to him close the door and hang up his black jacket. When she heard nothing more, though, she turned, her cold hair sliding across cheeks reddened by the weather and the argument.
Austin was looking at her sweetly, regretfully, like a dog who’d gotten into the garbage under the sink.
“I think it's a little late for that, and I don't think you have any right, at this point, to give me such advice. I'm sick and tired of you walking all over me just because you feel like it, when you feel like it.” She stepped toward him, boots clicking on the laminate floor. “You do it quite often as of late. And I won't stand for it. I told you that before.” She pulled her scarf from around her neck and hung it next to his jacket. Then, her coat rested on top of the scarf. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Please stay here, yell at me. Don’t walk away angry.”
“Why? So you can say more drivel along the lines of what you've been saying? Besides, I doubt the neighbors want to hear me going off on you as they get into bed tonight.”
“I won't say much. I want to hear you say this.”
“Why? It's not like you're ever going to bother to see me for who I actually am, anyway.”
“That's not true.”
“You said it yourself.”
“I never said never.”
“Oh, come on! Don't give me that. You made it clear enough to count. And I'm sick of waiting on you, Austin. I'm tired of you always calling the shots. Always deciding what level of...whatever we're on. Of how comfortable I can feel talking to you. You waltz in and out of my life as you please, saying and doing as you please, as though nothing is of any consequence, and expect me not to cling, not to wonder if this is the last time I'm going to talk to you? And then, you have the absolute nerve to make my trust in you even shakier by telling me I am, in effect, nothing to you. A second-rate friend, right? Someone you’ll pretend to be able to stand, but won’t bother to get to know.” She hooked her hair behind her hair and then dropped her hand to rest on her hip. “Say something, damn it.”
“Wow.”
“That's all you have to say?”
“No. What can I say? Hear me out?”
“Maybe. I'll try.”
Shortness is what we use to cover up fear. Sharpness is what we use when we don’t want it to be known that we entered battle with our hearts on our sleeves instead of behind armor. Harsh glances and harsh words are often a mask for the tears trembling behind them. A mask for weakness. A cover for vulnerability.
”Ok, thanks.” He took a breath, collected his thoughts. “I honestly want to forget the past. People think everything needs to be solved, but when things were bad, I think it's better just to forgive and forget. And you forgive, you always do . . . but you always have these questions about the past. What did I mean by that? Why did I say that? I wish you could just forget everything about me from before, as I wish I could just forget everything about you from before.”
“Why?”
“Because, there's no point in talking about it—it's done, over.”
“What is?”
“Can't be helped. Everything that has already been said, everything that has already happened.”
Spiced brandy. It is the color of roses exploding into bloom. The anticipation of seeing him turn back that day two years ago, take her by the shoulders in the middle of the road. The heady confusion as she waited for a kiss that never came. The way her breath still caught every time his eyes chanced to meet hers.
“Yes...” She dropped her arms as adrenaline left her, as she cradled a new rose between his words. What was he saying? Why did he want to erase things that had very obviously happened?
“You forgive, bless your little heart for that, but you never forget. I wish you would just forget. It doesn't matter anymore.”
“Forget what, exactly?”
“Everything I've ever said. Don't forget, just don't ask me. And don't wonder. It doesn't matter anymore.”
“How can you say that?” Her voice tore, tears leaking out, and she fled up the stairs as the clock began to chime midnight.
Downstairs, where she couldn’t see, he glanced at his watch. Twelve o’clock exactly, the hands lined up and pointing toward the stairs, which still held the scent of her perfume. As the second passed, the minute hand stayed, as though pointing to her wake. As though pointing to the space which had, a second before, held her, in all her fragile and mercurial beauty.
The hand pointed to everything.
Spiced brandy. It was her holiday look, her winter look. It was drawn over her lips with precision every morning—fireplaces and tinsel, candlelight and shadows…
“Okay....”She snapped her eyes all over the sidewalk, like Fourth of July fireworks, even though it was December, and shyly hid her hands in her pockets. “Did you ever figure out an answer to my question, by the way?”
He began walking again beside her, and she belatedly took a step. “I don't remember, what question?”
“Never mind.” She said it quickly, with a dismissive toss of hair he’d once told her was too long. It was long again. Almost the same. Almost, but not quite. There were layers now. Layers of dark blonde. Subtle, but there.
“Maybe I do remember.”
“...Mmm,” she murmured, waiting.
“... Mmm,” he echoed, as though to mimic her. His eyes caught hers, accidentally, like a stray hair catching on the side of her mouth, and she nearly lost it again. Every bit of her resolve fought to leave her and float somewhere in the sharp blue of those eyes.
The nice thing about winter is that the sky is dull. You still get sunlight, but you don’t get blue skies, you get gray. You don’t have to think about his eyes every time you look up. You don’t have to wonder what you might have lost when he walked away…again.
“I'm not just checking up on you. But that doesn't mean we talk all the time.” He started up the stairs, his hand on the peeling banister.
“Why do you keep doing that?” She wheeled a step above him, hurt making her tone sharp. “Adding those ridiculous disclaimers. As though I'm going to jump all over the fact that you're not ‘just checking up on me,’ and cling incessantly. Is that really how you see me?”
“Mmmmmmm . . . yes. I'm not gonna lie.”
“Fine, then. Don't. I'll leave you alone, then. I should head to bed, anyway.” She turned from him, facing the strikingly cold air as it bit across her cheeks, and sprang up the rest of the wooden steps.
“Okay, go be huffy now,” he told her, his voice as strong and confident as ever.
She turned, fire covering hurt, hurt covering disappointment, in her green eyes. “I cannot believe you just said that. How would you expect me to react?”
“Hey, you asked.”
“Yes, I did. I'm aware of that. That doesn't mean I have to be all sugar and niceties. I can still think you're being a jerk at the moment.”
“I can be cruel, yes.” He held her gaze, watching her eyes simultaneously pull away from him and attack him.
“And you're just fine with that, apparently.”
“It's not as if I enjoyed telling you that, though.”
“What do you mean? You certainly act like you did.”
“The pause was meant to imply uneasiness.”
“Fine.”
“I was uneasy about saying that.”
“Either way, it's the truth, so me and my overemotional tendencies will leave you in peace. How's that?” She turned again, intent on leaving him alone in the cold, but her boots hit an ice patch on the landing, and she slid a bit before she caught herself. She looked down to find his hand on her elbow, and shook it off.
Winter is a cruel season. It is so cold, you are driven to find warmth, the warmth of having someone next to you, of having someone else’s hand in yours, or someone else’s arms around your waist. But if you can’t, if you are too proud to give in when he places a cracked hand on your jacketed elbow, too scared to let him see the vulnerability in your eyes when you say you’ll leave him be, winter can be a long season, a season full of frost and frozen tears, and nothing but a shade of lipstick to imply warmth on your face.
Winter is a cruel season, allowing everyone to stay frozen in their thoughts and assumptions. If he thought you were weak-willed, overemotional, and easy to take advantage of when the first drops of frozen water fell into your hair, he won’t change his mind again until spring brings the rains and washes all of winter away.
“I can't really help it,” he began, “regardless of how much you may have changed, if that's how you were the last time I interacted with you frequently.”
“Fine.” And then, she remembered that this wasn’t fine. His was an excuse made out of convenience, not truth. “You could help it, though. Don't use that kind of cop out. At least take responsibility for choosing to stay in that kind of assumption about me. I’m not the weak little girl who needed your hand to be pulled out of her mistakes.”
“You're right, I could help it, but that would require a lot of talking, and that's not something I'm really up for.” He laid claim to her elbow once again, and moved her away from the ice patch with a little too much ease.
She stepped away. She was not a pawn on his chessboard that he could move around at will. “Fine.”
“Honestly, this isn't a good time to talk to me.” He moved past her and opened the front door. “I'm in a bad mood right now, anyway. The Cardinals just won the NL pennant, and my best friend blew me off. Not a good night.”
She stood on the doorstep, contemplating finding somewhere else to spend the night. She hadn’t known he’d be here, too, renting a room in the same cottage over the holiday break. It was a thrilling coincidence, but one that was beginning to hurt with every dismissive, careless word from his mouth.
“You know, you aren’t always right, Austin.” She was shivering, but hoped he wouldn’t notice. The last time he’d noticed, she’d all but fallen apart. But two years had passed since that day they’d stood on her front porch, she, trembling in the freezing air, he, taking her into his arms. That had been the last time she’d shown him vulnerability. “You think I’m so weak, when I’m not. You think you can use me for your own casual entertainment just because you don’t prefer my company as much as some of your friends. You think I’m in love with you when—” His eyes caught hers again as he looked up, just a fragment of blue cutting into a haze of blazing green, but it was enough to take stability out from under her. “When…” She paused, and so he wouldn’t hear the tears, lowered her voice. “Just because you don’t prefer someone's company doesn't mean you have the right to treat them as though they have no feelings worth taking into consideration. And I do not mean some infatuated, over-glorified idea of you or who you are or what you stand for. I simply mean you have no right to treat someone with what you yourself consider ‘cruelty.’ Frankly, I deserve better, even if I am a ‘second rate friend,’ as you so nonchalantly told me the last time we talked, and even if you didn't have a good night. Go be in your bad mood. I'm heading to bed.”
“Jessica, don't go to bed mad.” His soft request followed the few steps she took away from him. She stopped, but kept her back to him. It was so much warmer in the house. She stood, listening to him close the door and hang up his black jacket. When she heard nothing more, though, she turned, her cold hair sliding across cheeks reddened by the weather and the argument.
Austin was looking at her sweetly, regretfully, like a dog who’d gotten into the garbage under the sink.
“I think it's a little late for that, and I don't think you have any right, at this point, to give me such advice. I'm sick and tired of you walking all over me just because you feel like it, when you feel like it.” She stepped toward him, boots clicking on the laminate floor. “You do it quite often as of late. And I won't stand for it. I told you that before.” She pulled her scarf from around her neck and hung it next to his jacket. Then, her coat rested on top of the scarf. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Please stay here, yell at me. Don’t walk away angry.”
“Why? So you can say more drivel along the lines of what you've been saying? Besides, I doubt the neighbors want to hear me going off on you as they get into bed tonight.”
“I won't say much. I want to hear you say this.”
“Why? It's not like you're ever going to bother to see me for who I actually am, anyway.”
“That's not true.”
“You said it yourself.”
“I never said never.”
“Oh, come on! Don't give me that. You made it clear enough to count. And I'm sick of waiting on you, Austin. I'm tired of you always calling the shots. Always deciding what level of...whatever we're on. Of how comfortable I can feel talking to you. You waltz in and out of my life as you please, saying and doing as you please, as though nothing is of any consequence, and expect me not to cling, not to wonder if this is the last time I'm going to talk to you? And then, you have the absolute nerve to make my trust in you even shakier by telling me I am, in effect, nothing to you. A second-rate friend, right? Someone you’ll pretend to be able to stand, but won’t bother to get to know.” She hooked her hair behind her hair and then dropped her hand to rest on her hip. “Say something, damn it.”
“Wow.”
“That's all you have to say?”
“No. What can I say? Hear me out?”
“Maybe. I'll try.”
Shortness is what we use to cover up fear. Sharpness is what we use when we don’t want it to be known that we entered battle with our hearts on our sleeves instead of behind armor. Harsh glances and harsh words are often a mask for the tears trembling behind them. A mask for weakness. A cover for vulnerability.
”Ok, thanks.” He took a breath, collected his thoughts. “I honestly want to forget the past. People think everything needs to be solved, but when things were bad, I think it's better just to forgive and forget. And you forgive, you always do . . . but you always have these questions about the past. What did I mean by that? Why did I say that? I wish you could just forget everything about me from before, as I wish I could just forget everything about you from before.”
“Why?”
“Because, there's no point in talking about it—it's done, over.”
“What is?”
“Can't be helped. Everything that has already been said, everything that has already happened.”
Spiced brandy. It is the color of roses exploding into bloom. The anticipation of seeing him turn back that day two years ago, take her by the shoulders in the middle of the road. The heady confusion as she waited for a kiss that never came. The way her breath still caught every time his eyes chanced to meet hers.
“Yes...” She dropped her arms as adrenaline left her, as she cradled a new rose between his words. What was he saying? Why did he want to erase things that had very obviously happened?
“You forgive, bless your little heart for that, but you never forget. I wish you would just forget. It doesn't matter anymore.”
“Forget what, exactly?”
“Everything I've ever said. Don't forget, just don't ask me. And don't wonder. It doesn't matter anymore.”
“How can you say that?” Her voice tore, tears leaking out, and she fled up the stairs as the clock began to chime midnight.
Downstairs, where she couldn’t see, he glanced at his watch. Twelve o’clock exactly, the hands lined up and pointing toward the stairs, which still held the scent of her perfume. As the second passed, the minute hand stayed, as though pointing to her wake. As though pointing to the space which had, a second before, held her, in all her fragile and mercurial beauty.
The hand pointed to everything.
Dead Hands by Jay Prefontaine
The hand pointed to everything that I have accomplished this week, a metal hand the local blacksmith welded onto the weather vane that stands askew on top of my gazebo, a flat, shiny palm and fingers that invite you to check out my garden where I have spent countless hours, most of them wearing Marty’s work gloves I borrowed from his apartment after he was dead, pulling crisp not-so-stubborn plants—tomato, pepper, marigold—from the earth and tossing them onto the leaves I raked there in a pile, a pile I very much enjoy burning, a little bit at a time so as not to alarm any neighbors, some of whom have been a bit jumpy about smoke since that house on Madison burned to a blackened shell, a pile that changes every day as I rake and burn every last leaf in my yard, crispy ones and soggy ones, newly fallen ones, even the black ones that had already started becoming part of the earth, and all the leaves in my next door neighbor’s yard where I have a flashback about sticking my head up over the top of the fence this summer and announcing to three or four of my friends who were sitting on the back porch over there that JB—a friend of ours—flipped his corvette and is dead, and all the leaves in the Louds’ yard across the street, even though they have moved out—long story about infidelity, child support, and trucking that ends with the dad gone and the mom on welfare living in a trailer park on the north side of town, a story that also ends with a mound of trash taller than I am and wider than their carport, which is none of my business and which I actually appreciate because I like neighborhood spectacles for the same reason I like death, for their purity; but none of this really matters to me (and all of it does) because I’m busy in my backyard, in my garden, which I’ve discovered I like just as much now that it is inert as I did then when it was bustling with first birds and rabbits, both of which the plastic owl from Rural King scared away, and then the marigolds whose smell also deters rabbits, and the ubiquitous morning glories that for a couple of months I labored to kill twice a week by scraping the earth with a hoe until I finally gave up and watched them strangle everything in a twenty-five-foot radius, followed by the squash and cucumbers, and then by the tomatoes and peppers, lots of peppers: orange, yellow, and green bells, cayenne, red chili, jalapeno, and of course habanera, this last of which I share with the only two people in town who I know applaud the shiny orange monsters, and then after a few months all the brown and tan skeletons that stand withered and bent and waiting, perhaps wondering (not aloud like my grandfather often did before he died this past Sunday, the day before his eighty-ninth birthday) if they’ll have to stand there stiff and useless throughout the winter until they crinkle and fall and become dust only to be mulched in the spring—better to get it over with now—and after I burn them, their ashes, quiet and powdery, waiting for the tiller that will churn the drowsy earth before it can fall asleep, liven it to a dark vibrant brown again, one last intercourse before I cover it with a warm blanket of compost, after which I will not know what to do with myself, petrified as I am of the dark months, a time when I get so depressed that I continually—at least once or twice a week—imagine my friends surrounding my open casket, their heads bowed, snickering about my new suit and whispering to each other about whether the undertaker had to expand my spoon ring to keep it on my middle finger.
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