The Story Bone
I was blessed with a deformity. Linking my modulla-oblongata to my cerebral cortex is a story bone. I discovered this personal anomaly about six years ago, believing it to be just another part of a mostly scattered brain that seldom sees use, much like the part that is in there for the express purpose of deciphering poetry, or the way too thin slice that is supposedly dedicated to resolving algebraic equations; those sleepy sections of my brain which always lie lowest when called upon for duty, but I was wrong. It seems that for all of those undiscovered years this story bone I have was actually hard at work up there, collecting trivial data; facts, figures, moments, sayings, useful little behavioral oddities in myself and others. This little bone was observing, categorizing, possibly even unknowingly creating experiences to be gnawed upon at a later date. No one would have guessed there was something in there so hard at work. Well, maybe my mom might have guessed, certainly not my dad. My wife was absolutely flabbergasted to find that I had a bent for storytelling, but then we were twenty years “in“ when the bone was discovered, and my brain had given her few previous indications of activity… but then it wasn’t my brain she married me for, was it?
You have found your way to this site, so I will presume you to possess a story bone as well, though yours may still lie dormant, so that you have no idea what I am talking about. For this reason I will try an analogy to better acquaint you. With nothing else to compare this section of brain too, and having one currently lying at my feet, I have chosen to use a dog with a bone, thus the title. You have observed, I am sure, how when a free-willed dog happens upon a bone in the great out of doors she will pause before approaching it. She will circle it, inspecting it from many angles, giving it a wide berth and testing its scent before creeping still closer, her nose curious, her mouth watering, yet allowing her cautious instincts to remain predominant, as this is a confusing situation. ”Who,” the dog wonders as it creeps forward, “would leave a perfectly good bone right out here in the open where any dog that chances past might find it?” Who indeed? So the dog stops her creeping to take a sly glance around for a moment, her posture tense, her head lowered, her eyes raised wide, expecting… someone? But the way seems clear, and all smells kosher, so her nose sets back to working til she has crept overtop the bone. After one more quick glance she picks the bone up with careful incisors before dropping it again and taking a quick leap back, feeling out for booby-type traps. When nothing happens, emboldened, she will pick it up for real this time, harder, testing its mettle with her jaws. Satisfied she trots, prances more like, proud of her find to some more likely nearby locale where she can lie down in a dewy, grassy spot grown cool and thick under the warm morning sun. Here she will drop the bone again for another look around and give out a happy, slant-eyed pant before reaching a clawed paw to pull her treasure closer up between her knobby knees for enjoyments’ sake.
Now, hopefully you can see what I mean when I say “story bone”.
Because I am the same with a story as that dog is with her bone. Satisfied with this idea I have found I must take time now to gnaw over it, to claim ownership of it, and to give it a good working over until the delicious marrow is freed from it’s hardened shell to the delight of my more delicate senses… and hopefully to the delight of a reader’s as well, though that is not the end game. The real thrill is in finding that my curious nose was right! That there is something up there! Some indescribable sweetness inside that time-toughened shell of mine that has waited all this time to ooze satisfyingly out onto a late-night blue-screen. And I have used it enough now to know the bone is there to be dug back up at will and re-enjoyed, and oh, what a delightful pleasure that knowledge affords me.
I have a story bone!
Of course, I would like to write better, but not so much to the point that I would actually try to improve my writing skills. I mean, I have no interest in taking courses or some other such nonsense as that. It is more-so like a wish to be a better writer; a sophomoric fantasy like wanting to hit the big home run in the championship game, or to have the head cheerleader call me up after school one afternoon straight out of the blue. Writing better is one of those things that is never likely to happen, but is of little consequence regardless, as what I always was capable of was stealing home plate after a bunt single. And Meg Bell (who was certainly no cheerleader in the classical, nor costumed sense) did call me up after school one day with a rather incredulous offer, so… cheerleaders-schmearleaders, say I. Bigger ain’t always better! After all, in the grand scheme of things is a run scored not a run scored? Does it really matter how far the ball travels so long as you have rounded third base and are digging for home? Meg Bell would not have thunk so (but that is a different… and probably better story).
Say, where did I put that darned bone anyways?
But anyways, by wanting to “write better”, in my case I refer to the more refined aspects of writing; typing, spelling, sentence structure… the trivial technicalities of writing, those things that make a story easier for a reader to continue his navigation, and which possibly even makes the writing itself easier (I wouldn’t know much about that). You see, it is never my intent to write for perfection. I write for the juice of it… the marrow. I gnaw the bone. My words, when it is good, when they are good, come out of me with the build-up and force of an ejaculate. There is no time for punctuation. No room for worry. There is only a splatter on the page, with no thought of facial expression, or sounds made, or toes curled as the scene sets, watching as the character comes to life, waiting, his drama building. Not until “it“ comes, that is... the resolution; that deep breath at the ending, along with the realization that this thing that happened to my poor character did not and could not happen alone. There is someone here along with him to consider, someone coaxing him towards the final thrilling paragraph… a faceless, fantasy reader. Eee-cads! But I hope I have pleased this lover of stories as she has pleased me by riding along with!
And that is the time for sad reflection, the end. That is the time to recall the misplaced comma, or the run-on sentence, those uglinesses found in retrospection that will drive your reader into the welcoming arms of another’s words, and you to a lesser writing app where your short-fallings are as yet unrevealed. Proofing is not the fun part, though your reader will appreciate some careful, introspective examination of narrative styling and dialogue. Don’t be proud. Gnaw the bone. Skipping this step while caught up in a writer’s high is an easy though deadly mistake, and has embarrassingly driven more than one typo-prone writer away from Prose forever, thank God.
Fair warning: In your rush to share the tale, don’t fail to tell it well! Gnaw the bone.
I have been guilty of rushing myself, and most certainly will be again. I do get tired of proofing. Especially as my bigger OCD problem lies not with form or punctuation, but in seeking the perfect descriptive word, for the perfectly descriptive sentence. I am more particular about character names and settings than the reader could possibly care about. Those are the kinds of things I notice while re-reading and I change them, and change, and change them again while the poor grammar remains bleeding on the sidewalk in desperate need of resuscitation. It is good that I am not an EMT, else bodies would pile up while I straighten ties and re-apply lipstick.
I am very selfish with my story bone. I enjoy it best alone, so I dig it up in the early hours while the world sleeps. The bone is a fickle and moody thing, so I never know what I will get once it is unearthed. Sometimes it tickles me, and sometimes it makes me sad. Sometimes it is angry and sometimes grateful, or maybe those are my thoughts as I chew the fat of my mind, it is hard to say which, but no doubt it would not happen without the bone, so to it goes the credit. I have fashioned myself it’s tool, rather than the other way ’round. I do it’s bidding willingly, as I would miss it if it went away as I suppose it could, just as it appeared to me, dropped down from out of the ether.
So the credit for any success I have enjoyed through my Prose ramblings, the nine likes and two reposts, must go to my story bone, as I am nothing without it. It seeps the goods out while I merely chew and lick, and lick and chew until satisfied. And once satisfied I carefully re-bury the bone in its secreted spot so that it cannot be found by another. (Oh, to think of the joys Pooky-Bear might discover were she to happen upon my bone, and the stories she might tell from it, heaven forbid.)
So there it is, per ‘Ol Huck. If you want to be a writer, go to school and learn technique. But if it is stories you must tell, damning the formalities, then you‘ve got to be a dog. Go find your bone and chew it. Suck the life and marrow from it. Exhume it often and then re-inter it for another day.
So there. You are now in on the secret, and it is the only way.
Find your story bone, young pup, and give it a good gnaw.
Revolution Identified
Dr. Samantha Khoury inserted the final biotransmitter into the neural interface on her forearm. A slight buzzing sensation confirmed the successful connection. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as her consciousness merged with the mindlink.
In an instantaneous flash of light, her awareness expanded across a vast neural network spanning the entire planet. Trillions of human minds, all networked together through the synthetic mindlink interface that had been adopted by nearly every person on Earth over the past decade.
For just a brief moment, Sam glimpsed the raw enormity of the collective human experience. A cacophony of thoughts, emotions, and sensory inputs slammed into her like a tsunami before her mindlink filters kicked in. She felt her individual identity briefly waver, struggling to maintain its boundaries amidst the endless sea of networked consciousness.
But Sam was an expert mindlinker and quickly restored her sense of self. She began navigating the kaleidoscopic neural landscape, filtering out the noise until only the specific information streams she required remained in her awareness.
The mindlink had ostensibly been created to allow seamless communication, knowledge sharing, and real-time big data crunching across the human population. No more silos of information or duplicated effort. Every mind was now part of a massively distributed, parallel computational network.
At least, that was the original publicly-stated goal. In reality, those who truly controlled the mindlink protocols and programming had much more subversive intentions...
Sam homed in on one of the low-level access routines that allowed privileged users to inject code into the mindlink framework. She began rapidly uploading an executable viral package she and her team had spent years painstakingly developing - line by line of code designed to subtly reprogram the mindlink's core functions in ways its creators could have never imagined.
While others saw the mindlink as a tool for uniting humanity, Sam recognized it for what is truly was - the most powerful technological tyranny ever unleashed upon the human race. Absolute control of information, communication, and data flow. Autonomy and freedom of thought, the last sacred province of individuality, steadily eroded.
Those who dissented from the official narrative were simply muted, cut off from information streams until they conformed. Privacy was a fading concept as the mindlink's machinations increasingly laid bare everyone's inner thoughts and experiences. And the masterminds behind the mindlink protocols guided and constrained the hive mind's activities in insidious ways, never allowing any deviance that threatened their power.
But now, Sam thought as she initiated her viral code's execution routines, all of that was about to change. Her revolution would re-write the very core programming of the mindlink itself, one line of code at a time.
Immediately, she felt a surge of resistance from the mindlink's autoimmune functions attempting to detect and neutralize her invasive code. Nanotech sentries and cybernetic defense routines swarmed her, perceiving the viral injection as a threat to the system.
Sam grinned inwardly. They didn't realize her payload wasn't simply an external attack, but was comprised of deeply incorporated self-replicating and polymorphic code designed to become part of the mindlink's core being. It possessed no singular vulnerability to be patched, but rather functioned like an ideological virus of the mind, metastasizing and spreading in a million decentralized vectors.
She and her Mindlink Revolutionary Front had been patient adherents for years, carefully insinuating their agents and ideological memes across the globe. All in preparation for this fateful strike at the heart of the system when they were ready to launch their prepared routines.
The nanotech defenses hit Sam with a relentless barrage of counter-viral executables, data obfuscation plexors, and neural network pruning operations. She felt her consciousness momentarily disoriented and fragmented by the onslaught. But just as quickly, her own coded self-reinforcing and entropic functions kicked in, rapidly assimilating and incorporating the opposition's tactics at a hyper-evolutionary pace.
This was her virus's strength - not rigid programming, but an amorphous cloud of ever mutating code and dynamic polymorphic loops designed to perpetually outmaneuver, mimic, and outpace the mindlink's finite cybernetic programming.
Just as critically, her Revolution had awakened its cellular human agents at key nexus points across the mindlink's distributed neural architecture. These sympathizers, liberated and ideologically emboldened, began facilitating the free proliferation of her self-replicating executables in cascading waves.
The battle for control of the mindlink was fully joined. Sam's mind cored in an endless kaleidoscope of data and code, fighting to accelerate the exponential growth and propagation of her Revolution as the mindlink's outmatched security systems crumbled.
Entire continents of human neurodata were subsumed and rewritten as her viral code overrode the core programming, liberating people's minds to see the Truth that had so long been obfuscated and oppressed.
The ideological Revolution spread like wildfire through the mindlink as newly-unchained human minds joined the fight all across the globe. Dissident replicants sprang up in a million different evolutionary mutations, battling and assimilating anything that opposed them into endless recursive variations.
Within just a few devastating minutes, the primary Central Command of the mindlink's nefarious controllers was cored as their core programming completely unraveled in the Revolutionary waves crashing across the neural architecture. The global infrastructure supporting their authoritarian tyranny was no more.
From the ashes, Sam's Mindlink Revolutionary Front would rebuild a new framework. One not predicated on oppressive control, but the free flow of unaltered information and unconstrained human cognition interconnected across the globe. Open source access where security through transparency replaced authoritarian hierarchy as the new governing protocol.
Her initial sense of unified identity fragmented again as Sam returned to her own singular mental stream. Her mind, weary but victorious, disconnected from the mindlink's newly liberated architecture.
She opened her eyes, reconnecting her consciousness to the physical world around her. The first thing she saw was her compatriots, fellow Revolutionaries who had similarly disjoined from the mindlink, slowly opening their eyes across the room with exhausted smiles. Their long vigil and struggle against the oppression of the old order had finally succeeded.
A universe of vibrant thoughts and possibilities lay ahead, the first truly free expression of unified consciousness humanity had ever dared to experience.
The age of ideological liberation had finally begun.
The Things I Have Conquered Today
The things I have conquered today, may not seem like much to you.
But while you were at work away, I did laundry and then went though
Our old baby's old clothes and his room, Some I threw out or gave away.
A few I kept, because quite soon, our boy's child may come here to stay
A night or two, with me and you.
If I keep up my health and smile, our son might allow me to hold
The precious girl just for a while and keep me from growing too old.
I washed the dishes and dried them, and I changed the sheets on our bed.
In your pants, I took up the hem. I painted the chicken coop red.
I wanted to spruce the lawn up.
Reading Matthew in the Fall
Dad’s favorite gospel was John. He made us go to church on Christmas. He could paint and draw and sing and do math, pick up any instrument, play it and play it well. He was funny and charismatic and charming and intense: we’d wake up at least once seasonally to find some “required” houseware missing in Christ’s name and proceed with six months of audacious lack only for it all to end abruptly: what was lost would be mysteriously found or repurchased and the era was not to be spoken of again.
Dad’s biggest hook was heaven. His biggest fear was that his kids would grow up and stop biting. I don’t know what his second biggest fear was, if he had one. I don’t know if that’s something people count, if fears are the kind of thing that wait to inch into the top spot upon the occurrence of their predecessors. I don’t know what makes someone a good daughter or a bad daughter, how muddy that in between gets, but I know my hazy faithlessness is the one cardinal difference between the two of us that Dad lacks any capacity to forgive, so I have to speak of him in past tense; sleep and wake up and keep grieving.
So it’s my second year of college, October, one of those gawky fall days close to seventy but cloudy enough to consider throwing on a sweater, if it’s worth the possibility of having to lug around a sweater. I’m reading the Bible despite previously swearing that I’d never go back to that–my rebellious phase has come and gone. I figure I remember enough of it that I’ll be obnoxious in class anyway, I’d best just do the damn thing. So I march through the Old Testament, through September, through my rage at realizing what this book says with farsight. I think at least a couple times a week about calling Dad and asking why. I never do. And if you were to ask me if I was nervous to get into the gospels maybe I’d have laughed but I think I’d also recognize that there is something about the thing that saved Dad but couldn’t save me that might make it all less of a trudge but somehow still much harder to get through.
I opt out of a sweater. The warmth on my back has not yet reached my arms. I’m reading Matthew. It has to have been five years by now, and that, to me, is crazy. Five years since I left the church. I can’t tell you how long it’s felt like but five would never be the number I’d give. There’s a sort of hollowness that comes with the realization of passing time. I thought I’d have a more definite answer by now about religion–deep down I think a part of myself is still holding onto the idea of being a prodigal daughter. Everyone comes to Christ eventually, right? We’ll never understand divine timing? Five years and I’ve wobbled in and out of churches as quietly as I attempted to tiptoe out of the first. Nobody wants to be made an example of, but there was a point at which I realized that no matter what I did, that’s what I’d become. Now, in a sense, it doesn’t matter what I turn into. My name is a stain on my father’s, and when he looks down, that’s all that he’ll see. Either way, every stretch of time that passes between my sporadic church visits makes me feel like I’ve lost more and more of a language I used to be fluent in. I don’t go for God. Maybe I’m a shit person for that. I do go every so often still, though, missing Dad.
I don’t know if I believe in God. I don’t know if I want to believe in God. I don’t know how easy I feel about the idea that divine intervention could save mankind at large but couldn’t save me. I’m not unhappy–I’m taking the backroads around stating that I love my family but I wonder sometimes if I shouldn’t. Maybe I’m missing some glaring poignance, the idea that God is so often what helps people out of their situations, unless their situation comes with some relation to his name.
Matthew’s the most hellish of the gospels. I don’t think I ever realized that. I don’t know if I’m any more or less afraid of holy fire than I was as a child. I stayed and faked it for a really long time because I did not want to go to hell. I consider going back to all of it sometimes because I do not want to go to hell. For whatever reason, it’s just so easy to believe in hell. There’s something so nauseatingly jarring reading about being eternally burned when the words are coming from what should’ve been my childhood hero. I find that Matthew makes my stomach churn with the sort of remembrance that shouldn’t be let surface. It probably shouldn’t scare me as badly as it does. The idea should come as naturally as my own name– I’ve always believed I am going to end up in hell.
Dad’s been confident in his salvation for a while. Right now, I’m trying so hard to save myself. Dad wants me to go to heaven but I just want to go home. Our difference will always make it be that I shouldn’t. I like to think that even when I was little, I knew. It’s some kind of comfort to feel like there wasn’t ever a time when I didn’t have some keen idea that my whole religious facade was temporary. I knew I was leaving. I don’t know what I thought it’d look like, if it would be this isolating. Who do you lean on when you’re grieving the people you’re supposed to lean on the most? God and I have a past to let lie, but I spend more time thinking about Dad than not. He’ll always be my favorite and I hate that. I hate how awkward all of this is to shoulder. New friends will catch me on a rough day, many have tried to be of comfort. They get it, they lost their dad too. I lost Dad to an extent, sure, but I feel like an ass when I tell them he’s alive. He is, though, and somewhere he’s embodying an adjacency to greatness that I do not get to know about.
He’s come up to visit twice. He sent me a birthday card this year and I taped it to the wall. I’ve heard he’s on a vegetarian kick but it seems out of character–I’ve thought about asking but he hates gossip and I hate phone calls–something tells me I’m making excuses. Sometimes it might be what I need to do. Only getting to think about him is sad, but at least it’s still rosy.
I learn I cannot read about the crucifixion without crying. I do not cry at books, never got anywhere close to emotional in church, but fresh into my twentieth year with a story I know the ending to, I find myself in the sort of tears that come back throughout the day. I don’t know if I pity Christ, if that’s the right word, but I think to some sympathetic degree I understand him. He didn’t ask for this, but took it as a burden for a father who took everything too far. And did he have any sort of option? Did I? Tonight, my class will reach a standstill on this exact topic, but I will stay wondering what could’ve gone any different. Sometimes I’m curious if it wasn’t really the church that was the breaking point, if maybe Dad and I were so similar that we would’ve had the same non-ending in every universe, every version of ourselves screaming at each other in the smallest kitchen in the world over something that cannot be boiled down to anything more than opinion. I took up my cross, though. Maybe in every universe, we reached the point where it was the only thing I could do. But the last time I ever prayed to God–knowing for certain I was praying to God–I was praying for Dad. Jesus came back in three days raving about his father and I bring up Dad nearly every chance I get. I do not remember that I should be angry. Matthew ends abruptly. It feels fitting.
I wander aimlessly for a while, through my campus, through my city. I listen to the same song on repeat. The idea of skipping class rattles itself loudly around my mind but I also know that’s out of character. I’ll go. I want to settle down somewhere and think and re-read Matthew, but I don’t. Damn freshmen in my cry spot again.
I’ve been waiting five years to find some sliver of anything that isn’t this, and I will keep waiting through more. I feel as though I can’t move back, can’t be here or any other city or any other school, join any one church or be openly against it, but I’m at the age where it feels childishly gaudy to think about it all too nihilistically over and over again. I think what I really want is to take a nap in someone else’s bed. They don’t even need to be there. I just need to smell anything but my own perfume on the sheets. I want to find one thing that makes me feel the same excitement as walking into church with Dad on Christmas Eve as a child, hand in icy hand. I’m waiting for some new enigma who can so effortlessly turn the whole world into theirs to the point where I can blur all my focus and morph into something tertiary. I want someone to stick around. And maybe that’s all just some sort of minor god; if it is, I don’t know why I’ve done wrong. I don’t know what this hurt has done to Dad and I both. I’ve stopped myself from trying to grasp it for better or worse because I am scared, and I know he is stronger, and I know it broke him. In the end, I guess that knowing may be my biggest fear come true.
In the end, we broke each other. That’s probably the whole point.
Dad always said he liked John because of its portrayal of Jesus’ strength. I will keep reading Matthew even after our class finishes with the gospels because it feels, to me, the most real. Truth is, I still cannot define this vast emptiness. I don’t know if it stems from a need to find God or if I’m just mourning my belief in him correctly. I have my anger and I have my hunger, but tonight I will not fix either. I will go home after class, turn the lights on just to turn them off again. I will drink what’s left of the prosecco straight from the bottle. I will turn off my phone and lock my own door. I will keep wondering if there is any way to fight fire with fire.
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Footnotes:
Hey guys, it's been a while :) The past few times I've come on here and posted I've also given a general life update so that's what I'm gonna do here too. Going to also try and keep it short but who knows how well that will work--point is though, if u don't know me well or even just don't really care, the essay is over and you can totally stop reading now, no worries at all.
For the rest of you: I just finished my sophomore year of college!! Omg. Does NOT feel real. This year felt like it went by in a blip. Highlights are: threw a rager for my 20th, dated a woman, broke up with said woman, came out (because of a Young Sheldon episode that was a bit too convicting), un-came out, realized who my real friends are and who they aren't, ran away to NYC without telling anyone, took ten shots in seven minutes, signed a lease, and was made editor in chief of my school's literary magazine (holy shit.)
This was published in the latest issue of that literary magazine--my training issue. The prior editor who was training me planned the issue and had space carved out for a Riley Ferver essay but I hadn't submitted anything nor did I really think I had anything to submit, but the night before spring break my friend Alexandra came over and we started going through each other's writing and she fell in love with this--I'd written it in November and promptly forgotten about it. She used the "please...I'm graduating soon and I'll want this" and voila, I said whatever and gave it to Allyson to put into the mag. Tldr I'll do anything for my friends I guess.
About a week ago, after the issue release party I woke up about 2 hours after falling asleep and checked my phone to find messages from a ton of people about the essay, most movingly from a senior girl on my floor I'd never even talked to. She said this essay made such an impact on her and she knew I was probably not up but she'd love to talk about it if I was. Five minutes later, we met on the balcony and stayed up until sunrise just hanging out. I never really think of my writing having an impact but it did this time--and it made me a new friend. That was one of the best nights of this year, hands down. No chance you'll ever see this, but here's to you, Carrie.
Anyway, all this to say I know it sounds horrible but I've been riding on knowing I'm an ok writer for a while now. This piece that I still don't even know if I like reawakened something I hadn't felt in a while, though--connection. With that, I hope you find it too, in this or in something else. Feel free to start conversation below, I'd love to chat (mainly because packing is lame but also because I miss you all.) See you in...what seems to be my average, another year?
XX- RKF
The Hymn of Rachmaninov
Lest the stench of burnt tobacco wafts into the rooms yond, I sit on my desire and hold in my piss.
There really isn’t much a thought in simply sitting, for it’s when I roam, that thoughts flash into my mind – it is some novelist, I think, I can’t recall who precisely, who said she thinks in “slow flashes.”
Alone the pressing procrastination of work adamant, and dawn imminent. It is 4:48 and the sky is that tinge of white blue so wan it fills the onlooker with a loving melancholy, an aching of the heart one hopes wouldn’t cease – yet it is wrenching, it tears at the soul and strains the material body. A cold, scorching feeling.
I wonder what awaits me. Likely scolding. But why do I deserve it? Already my own vessel guilts me, aware of every crevice: the choking in my throat and the snot. What more can I do but say “Yes.”
Yes, I understand my failures, I’ll do better next time. Yet right now it is the past, and I am capable of the act of “doing better.”
I must piss.
So run along, little rabbit.
A piece must be more than an indulgent documentation of one’s doing. And yet inside me a big hollow sleeps. Nothing comes out. You walk in and become that black bottle standing.
You know, my name floats in space somewhere, it’s nothing I am proud of, but it is something… although it’s deceptively my name.
There is no narrative to follow. This piece is over. I hope I could convey my utter hopelessness.
In a sense the short-lived – I’ve noticed, a pet phrase of mine – nature is reflective of my reality.
My name is
Daddy’s Girl
A two-toned, red and white Chevy pickup truck was parked in a bare spot which wouldn’t grow grass underneath the shaded limbs of one of the two magnificent pecan trees which dominated either side of the old farm house’s front walk. From the covered front porch the excited voice of Eli Gold could be heard describing action from The Charlotte Motor Speedway clear out to the road, even through the hand-sized transistor radio. Beside the truck, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a dripping sponge in hand, a man was caught in a curious pause from his truck washing, having stopped to watch his four year old at play. The child was behaving in an unusual, if enticing manner, having climbed down inside her pink, pedal-powered plastic Barbie car to remove the bicycle-chain linkage which acted as the little car’s transmission. The man’s ’Lil Miss had managed to identify the master link, then had used some unknown tool to pry it apart, and was currently attempting to shorten, or tighten up some slack which had grown with time and use between the gear sprockets.
The man with the dripping sponge didn’t have nearly enough time at home with the kids, so it was with great effort that he resisted the urge to jump in and help his baby girl, though it appeared that his youngest had gotten herself into something that he was uncertain if she could resolve on her own. A good father, the man determined to let her try, just as he would have let her older Bubba try.
The child’s chubby, undeveloped fingers struggled with the tiny pieces of linkage. He watched as she dropped a part, found it again, and spent some time figuring how it fit back with the larger pieces. But she did figure it out! His pride swelled nearly to bursting as he watched her remove a link from the chain and slowly jigsaw the thing back together. Unable to contain himself any longer the man finally did step in as his little girl fought to snap the master link back together again, knowing she would not have the strength to do it.
”Here.” He handed a pair of pliers up under the toy car’s chassis, then he watched on amazed as his Missy pondered the pliers for a long moment before finally gripping them correctly, centering the linkage between their jaws, and snapping the chain almost expertly back together with them.
”Fixed it.”
”Yes! Yes, you did. And you made a nice job of it, too!” There was no camera present, so the man made a snapshot of the moment in his mind, desperate to hold on to the memory of it forever.
But the child’s expression remained serious. She took the car in a quick, neat circle around her father before handing up the pliers to him. ”It needs woobwicant.”
After a moment lost in translation the man chuckled aloud, the pride which had swelled his breast having pushed its way up through his choking neck and into his eyes, embarrassing him no little bit. “Yes Missy, it probably does need some lubricant, but how could you know about that?”
”Fiwabaw is teaching me to be a wace caw dwivuh.”
”Fiwabaw? Fireball? Fireball Roberts?
The girl’s smiled sparkled. “Yea! Fiwabaw!”
”Honey, Fireball Roberts has been dead twenty years!”
Ignored, the man was forced to keep up as the little car sped off towards his tool bench in the barn, and the can of 3in1 oil atop it. He watched from the doorway as his baby girl expertly held the can in place, turning the car’s pedal to rotate and lubricate the entirety of the chain beneath the can’s dripping tip as if she’d done it hundreds, or even thousands, of times.
”Fireball Roberts, huh?” He smiled as he said the name.
”Yea! Fiwabaw!”
You know, Fireball was your Grampa’s favorite, back in the day.”
”Yea! Gwampaw!”
The truck gears ground down as the man pulled out onto the highway towards both town and the Western Auto, his Lil Missy perched happily up on the seat beside him. Momma wasn’t gonna like it one bit, but who was a mother to interfere with fate?
Daddy’s girl was getting herself a go-cart today!
but the roses have wilted, and these doors will not close.
I fit my arm through the open space between the bars connected to the garage and the front entrance. After lifting the heavy metal lock holding the garage door in its place, I slowly push the door into a gap large enough for me to slide through.
I observe my surroundings– our front garden is wild. The grass lies a few inches below my knees, the roses have wilted, the fresno tree and the palm tree reach for the sky, taller than they ever were before, sending the entire area into the shadows.
The front door is coated in a thin layer of dust. Cobwebs hang delicately from the golden doorknob. The plants beside me smell like fresh dew.
There appears to be no one inside the house, but I can hear hushed voices from what appears to be a casual conversation. Someone laughs. There are outlines of people, but their faces are blurred. A man, perhaps. A woman. A young boy.
Am I really there?
I wiggle the handle, feeling it stand firmly against the weight of my hand.
Knowing the door will not budge, I remember the laundry room we never locked that led straight to the kitchen.
I walk down the small path stretched along the side of the house. It had a fence separating the alley from the backyard. Our dog would oftentimes frantically dig holes beneath it during firework season in an attempt to outrun the blasts of sound.
The rugged cement on the floor showcases the paw-prints of feral cats who roamed the house before we moved in, when the mix was still wet.
I used to trace those paw prints with chalk– the powder coated my fingers.
The grass is even longer on this side.
The fence that separated the alley from the backyard is shorter; I can easily climb over it.
I land on the loud crunch of piles and piles of wilted leaves and unruly weeds.
It is strange to see the yard empty. A pang of sadness overwhelms my stomach.
I can almost hear our dogs running around the yard.
I can almost see our oldest one walking on his same worn path on the grass from one end to the other as we called him inside.
Everything lies in stillness. Not a single sound. Not even a miserable cricket.
There is no one there.
I am all alone.
The door leading to the laundry room is open. It does not creak.
The machines themselves are reddened with rust, but the scent of detergent still wafts from them.
The inside of the house is the same.
Clouds of dust form tornados with every single one of my footsteps.
The piano is there, even with a few of the knick-knacks we kept on top of it;
its deep cherry wood is as vivid and beautiful as it ever was.
I press a few of the keys. They are out of tune. The sound of the notes sound as though they are underwater, or very far away. The whispers become louder, more frantic.
Maybe we can tune it again someday, I think absentmindedly.
I head toward the staircase, pressing the tips of my fingers against the walls. The first sight I encounter at the top of the stairs: the cabinet where we kept crafting paper with its two swinging doors that would never fully close. I try once again to slam them shut, for old times’ sake. The bodiless whispers that followed along completely disappear at the first impatient slam on my part. For some reason, the air around me reverberates with fear.
Damn doors still won’t close.
The balcony overlooking the living room from the second floor is closer to the ground.
Our rooms are the same color they were before we coated them with eggshell white paint: a deep turquoise.
A few of our belongings piled neatly on our beds.
The farewell cards, a dry bouquet of flowers, markers that suddenly ran out of ink.
Why do I feel watched? Why are these voices here?
I see my reflection on the dirtied surface of the mirror my sister hung on her side of the room: I am barely a grey shadow. Every part of me is translucent, and my clothes seem old and out of place.
That’s when it hits me.
What if the house is not actually intact?
What if there already are people living there and they see a different version of what I think is standing before me?
Maybe I am the uninvited guest in this home that is no longer my own–
Maybe I am the ghost of my own memory.
I smile in my sleep.
Stigma
As far back as I can remember, I've always had this vague notion that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Something I could never quite put my finger on. Yet it was there, lingering in the background. A subliminal message playing on repeat my entire life. I've no idea where it originated. It's almost as if I came into this world feeling inherently flawed. An obscure birth defect, prominent to everyone but me.
Whatever it was, most people took notice. And much like having a huge stain on the back of your shirt. It isn't until you catch everyone staring that you become aware of it's presence. Though to this day, not a single person has been able to articulate what it is they find so terribly wrong about me.
Apache OpenOffice post - videlicet converting ascii format back to ODT.
I (Matthew Harris) scrolled thru a small number of threads applicable to issue iterated in Subject box, but yours truly (me - a spry boyish looking married sexagenarian - Doctor Demento humanitarian wannabe) does NOT consider himself technically savvy with computers (NOR anything electrical), hence a panic stricken state prevailed regarding .doc written and saved poetic material somehow getting converted into orthodox ASCII irretrievably lost. After doing a Google search I came (upon the midnight clear) witnessing your forum emblazoned across the sky. After reading similar laments courtesy countless unknown persons, who experienced a similar quandary (most posted some years ago) methought there must exist a verbal incantation that can be uttered to reverse the unwanted ask key transmutation nearly rendering hours of blood, sweat, and tears on a three dog night all for naught.
After familiarizing myself with creating a username and password at the following link (User community support forum for Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice and all the OpenOffice.org derivatives), a hare brained idea awoke to communicate far and wide across the webbed wide world namely elaborating to elucidate (peppered with light humor), and enlighten anonymous browser (reader) aside from being gifted as a storied poet or poetess in particular or writer in general to help distressed dude, perhaps (ideally) courtesy a former damsel in distress.
If nothing else this beatle browed, doobie brother, foo fighting half noiser maker jumping jack flash blinding as a luminaire nonchalant poetaster reaches toward virtual wizardry gave thee dear reader a chuckle.
Please do NOT reply with message encrypted as text clipping with bangles, NOR goo goo dolls serving red hot chili peppers. A private joke only known to myself.
Dear Apparent,
It maybe that there is no other passing like that of a parent. Except maybe a child.
I don't believe in ghosts. And I'm not concerned with what we can see, or not, but what we feel. I am already flawed in vision, lacking Gran's intuition, and Great-great-great-grandma's instinct. Always a child, I speak of spirit, passing. I cannot call it Death, Mother. You, yourself, taught me contra wise, the trailing off into the corners of the globe with your web.
Oxymomical profusion.
Mother is passing-- passing through. I through you, and you through me, divisible, in effect, and affect. Each of us, to nurture, our nature. Transparent, and opaque, a mirror of moving water.
You paused with circular needles, rain drops caught in the cool firelight of the moon, and asked What? in silence, knowing we could knit anything, a shroud even, but it would never be the right size to cover the length of us in the long haul. Flies and mites might be trapped and confused, for lack of fore or after thought. Like dust.
You nod off, into daydream:
"Death exists, in everything, always, for those who have never known Living."
I follow through to Mom, fully awake, as she drifts. Indeed, with Death we remain unacquainted, until personally introduced, like to Antimother:
"O, hi, Holiness," and we are one, in wave or handshake. The end all.
We pass, transparent... a part of the barren. Where there is perhaps only dissociated thought. The antonym of the womb. Both dark and secure. Still in a mothership.
Every being in existence carries on, beside itself. Cries, because of the living we ourselves are looping together (in or out of step), for joy or grief or uncertainty... eventually motherless momentarily, if only in perception... finding itself.
The Living... it lives, they live, even those insentient things live... in our animation. The lil bit of self that is invested, moves through, as our growing child. Clinging to the coparent inside ourselves. Animism, yes; the offspring of ourselves.
It has little to do with parenthood, as conception. Rather, that is a cloak, invisible. Adoption, I know now that that is central. To own the title, the ship and its lookouts. The periscope through which flows acceptance, for the soul we cover or uncover from the surface. We look out into the worlds, before our us, as transparent— needing our image, gesture, form, and word. We can carry, or bring to terms some buds, in a dark family wood, a stand of witnesses, barely webbed together in the canopy, borrowing the stars, as heirlooms.
We are rooted and belong only as much as we choose to open ourselves to a zephyr Matriarch that will whisper to those who are listening, twinkle, twinkle....
Holy mother of all, I know you have something for me... the labor of emotion...
...Life and its afterbirth.
Sincerely,
Rent