Saturday

It doesn't happen very often, but occasionally some days turn out to be absolutely perfect. Usually Aaron works on Saturdays, so Saturdays never feel saturday enough for me. This one was different.

In the morning, there was coffee and cartoons and shared laughter. And then we were off to the library together and back home with comics and novels and board books. Music and reading and resting, all together. And when the whole house was as mellow as milk, I found time to write.

It began as a story with cakes and children and quickly manifested into a strange tale of horror. With English manners and American violence. I found solace in all of its bitter sweetness as devoted writing time is hard to find in this house.

Here is an except of Fairy Cakes, a short story that I hope to linger with in the next few days:

When I was eight years old, I went to a party where I had no friends. All the children there were grim and green, full of ice and too much sugar. Their parents were friends of my parents. My mother mingled with long, slender women holding golden-spritz champagne in white-satin gloves and my father smoked BBMF cigars with a chain of distinguished men; the acronym stood for Big Bad Mother Fucker, and if you saw them, that is what you would call them. I was sent off to play with my friends.  

The green children sat at tables lined with red and white checkered cloth. The tables were filled with cream colored porcelain dishes. Tall glasses held mint lemonade and sweet peach teas. Sponge platters turned right-side up with the sponge batter, layered in a sticky white glaze, turned upside down. Strawberries swam in small tarts and black, blue berries sat fat on top. The children licked their fingertips and used their collars to wipe their mouths. The tips of their noses crawled upwards when I walked past them.

It doesn't always turn out this sweet, but when it does, it must be Saturday. And this one is worth spilling into a capsule. Happy Saturday!!

Luna

Luna

I remember a night, awake

in the middle of a string of pearly dreams:

A deer stood at the foot of my bed

Her eyes were liquid white

and her mouth, spoiled with red

She pulled at the layers of thin white sheets

“Follow me through the moonlight,”

her speckled form

weaving in and out of sight

I slipped out of my gown,

my skin was cellophane

Through the astral night,

we ran lucid like rain

Beneath a sky where stars are strung in lace,

hours held together by a set of invisible rings,

Bare underneath a cotton-cream moon,

she fed me a feast:

white cedar, tea rose, English yew

I ate hollyhock petals and picked the buds of roses

I watched her devour,

basil with licorice tips

We capered across the meadow;

covered ourselves in mint,

and at the bed of a shallow stream,

we slipped right in

The water was full of jewels;

we swam in its belly

and drank from its mouth

The cry of a woken wolf

hovered across the wind

she slid her fingers across my skin

In a cool pool of water,

the wind and the air and the wave

pulled in tight

The sky pressed against our playful thoughts

each moment began to lose its formative structure:

splitting into dancing particles,

twirling in and out of reach,

spinning out of shape

And when the strings broke loose,

the first glimpse of dawn swallowed the night,

sealed it away in a capsule, held together

by the ripe scent of twilight

I woke in the morning,

when snow-in-the-summers

sparkles with dew,

In my room, the air began to melt

my skin, covered in leaves of thistle and mint

my hair, damp and blue

The silver silhouette of the moon

peered its weary head into my window

I stretched my liquid limps,

covered in a thick film of

sea and star and sand,

and carefully pulled

a string of soft, white petals

out of my mouth