Broken Butterfly Wings.

Lying in dream, hospital bed covered by a shed of broken butterfly wings, the doctor says: you’re pregnant.

Real life me, she knows nothing of swollen belly or hard contractions or broken water.

Push, the doctor orders, pressing cold cloth to my now beaded brow.

The pain, its real life hurt and dream me lets out yelps of an unforgiving uterus.

It’s a push and a push and a push and it’s over. I stand, gown clad and confused, at the end of a long corridor, hospital fluorescents flickering dream confusion.

Deflated belly, the pang of empty stomach, I ask for the baby.

Baby? the doctor asks. Why, there’s no baby.  

Hands on soft flesh, I feel tight skin that’s never stretched.

But the pain? I ask.

You’ve been eating broken butterfly wings again, the doctor says. Stern brow, steel rimmed glasses, pocked nose, pinched mouth.

We’ve told you, they aren’t good for you.

I nod, I know.

They’ll be gone soon enough, glint of knife a broken sparkle of light.

xoxo,

M.L. H’art

Dressed up in Awkward.

Held together by safety pins, I secure straps of an ill-fitting shirt to that ratty old bra I promised you I’d retire but kept because it goes so well under everything I own, regardless of the underwire protruding white satin, marking indents on soft tit flesh.

I fidget in a room full of strangers, tugging at fabric which doesn’t breathe in summer heat but instead traps sweat, pooling beads of insecurity at the small of back, bleeding through fabric shrink-wrapped to that unseemly swatch of small hairs collected at the nape of spine, a bunny tail.

Shoes, weather-worn faux-leather, stick to swollen pads trapped in pools of stench I’ll apologize to the cat for later when, at home and alone, I slip off the smell and wash toes outlined in sticky dark dirt under bathroom taps which drip-drap into the chipped porcelain sink I neglected to rinse the last time I perched on the edge of the bathroom counter, feet sunk deep.

Bumping the shoulders of these strangers, I order another drink and, with a mighty gulp, shush the rush running laps round my brain as I strategically balance the energy of a room off-kilter. I check my cell again and again and again to look real important, phone face casting eerie blue glow on heat-flushed cheeks, a trick of light making my face look less cordial, more gelid.

Like a lost puzzle piece, I can’t find a fit: shirt too sloppy, shoes too tight, gaze too long, laugh too loud.

Dressed up in awkward, I finger the hole in my back jeans pocket and pray it won’t rip wide to show the sheath of bubble gum pink panties, a little girl playing dress up in mom’s clothes, hiding the stuff of childhood under layers of makeup and lace.

We exchange pleasantries: the rehearsed social motions of hullos and well-thank-you’s and you-know-the-usual’s. You pretend you care because you caught my eye: an obligation to the too long stare when, after you looked away, you realized there was no one standing beside you to goad into conversation and so, without a runaway lane, you’re forced to suffer through the robotic dance: left hand motion hair swipe, right cheek lift half smile, gaze down 4, 3, 2, 1, and up, maintain eye contact, break left, side step right foot, indicate exit, half hug (right arm over left shoulder), two pat reassurance, turn, turn, turn and…cut.

I repeat this dance with 12 other partners – the motions more fluidal the darker it gets – when, after having shed the last of the reserve energy, I nod in your general direction, bid my leave and think what a relief it is to swallow the starry night on the long journey home and not ever have to tell you how discomfited it really was to see you that way.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Again.

I wake up in last night’s clothes, sticky with sleep, on the living room floor again; staring at the stained stucco roof of the old building where I’ve planted my urban life roots, I feel that familiar pang of regret start to turn my tummy, a tumble dry cycle of jumbled emotions slicked with the hangover grease of one glass too many.

The early morning sun streaks the tasks of another workaday week across the wall – an hour and I’m late again; a grumble escaping cracked lips, I drag my wrinkled jeans, my addict genes, down the hall to the bathroom stall and wash away last night, astringently cold water making make-up heavy eyes sting black tears.

Stepping out of last night’s tired clothes, I pull up today’s panties, pink with shame, but forget to change my socks again; a quick glance in the mirror and my habits are an obvious expression: red nose, bagged eyes, ruddy cheeks, creased forehead.

Checking my wallet waiting in line for a dose of wake-me-up, I count the cash left over and am thankful I didn’t spend it all again; fumbling with the creamer and the sugar and the headache, I nearly miss the bus and spill medium roast all over the hand I forgot to wash the bar stamp off of before leaving the house.

Licking ink and coffee off the backhanded skin that slapped me with the realization I’m too old for this shit, I plough into a blue shaded bus seat and catch the reflection of a little girl growing the worn lines of absent memory and feel that old familiar sting sneak up the length of my oesophagus again; bitter bile biting at my throat, I choke it back and close heavy eyes and silently count the stops until I arrive at work – just on time, but not all there.

The click-clack of a life wasted on an ergonomically adjustable keyboard sets the tempo of a day behind the desk again; the formulaic process divided into billable hours when, at the end of the day, I go home, hit the bottle back and start all over – again.

xoxo,

M.L. H’art

Bite my Thumb.

I toss the butt of my cigarette on the lawn of the Fort Knox Methodist Church and bite my thumb at God.

My mother – she did not raise me to be spiteful, but I am angry for no reason.

Frustrated at the sun shining in my eyes, I shuffle another smoke from my pack and fumble the lighter from my pocket as I cross an intersection without looking both ways, causing a white rusted work truck – gas cans and loose wrenches slamming to the front of the bed – to come to a quick stop.

I am immortal on days when the wind is just right and it’s not so cold and the perfect tune pumps through the cheap ear buds I bought on sale – the same ones that, if not sitting just-so, shock my ear drum with enough electricity to make me swear out loud on the street corner – the days when I understand, you and me, we’re not so different.

Of course, your past, it’s not quite the same storyline – yours is glossy pictures and sappy songs and saved birthday cards and glowing memories.

I am jealous – mine is cocaine hangovers and morning after bruises and tear-wet pillows and “I’m sorry” two minutes too late.

Your new girl, I bet she’s pretty – after school special pretty, all blond hair and cute giggle and pretend morals. I bet she’s popular – teen magazine popular, all Friday night parties and saved lunch room table and doting offers: “let me, babe.”

I bet she’s boring – wet cardboard boring, all uninterested in learning, experiencing, living, laughing. I bet she’s easy to please – bobble head nod: “oh yes, if you want to. Oh I don’t care, only if you do.”

The doormat I wipe my feet on.

**

Down on the platform waiting for the train, we are all performers.

I pop my coat collar and stand wide legged, straight backed and take inventory.

New shoes and old coat, he paces back and forth checking the time again and again – a big rush for the long wait when, at the end of the date, she’ll say: “let’s just be friends.”

Androgyny perched on the edge of the bench fights the urge to cross legs, ankles, fingers – stay cool.

Hardass twisting bent baseball cap left, right, 180, 360, he can’t remember which train’ll get him home.

Student, lonely nose shoved in book, salty fingers shovelling cheese chips between raw lips, nervous mouse eyes jumping back and forth and back again, she’s wondering if she’ll miss her favourite late night true crime drama.

The train blows in and we all scatter – our performance interrupted by life.

**

Shambling away from my stop, I walk head down against the wind. When I run into you I nearly knock you over, my shoulder a solid thump against your chest.

We head into the bar.

The awkward hello: a crisscross of words over the liquor lacquered table, the shine of our consonants bouncing off bar grubby pints. We are thirteen again – second guessing our intentions, wondering if he feels the same way she feels the same way I feel. I am inspired to walk right out the door and not look back because I don’t want to see your puppy dog eyes when I say the words: “it was just a phase.”

You and me, playing the game, we smile and pretend nice – we are sharing our bucket and shovel in the sand before lunch even though I want to push your face into the rotting shore seaweed and make you say “give.”

You hug me and you smile and you say: “I promise baby, we’ll always be friends,” smirking the same way you do when you tell your new girl behind closed doors I am the worst thing to happen to you since your wisdom teeth were pulled.

We order another round. I drink mine down fast, before you even sip the foam from the lip of your glass.

In the morning you’ll remember the fragments of my smell, the shine of my smile, the ratty shoes with the frayed laces I wore. You won’t remember my clever conversation, my witty comebacks, my biting, bitter laugh. You’ll remember the score and the fourth glass and the impossibility of us having such a good time.

I’ll only remember the awkwardness lurking dark and weird in the corner, the one I believe I created.

xoxo
M.L. H’art

Conversations with Dad (Canto II)

Choking its neck, his plump red-raw fingers – small flaps of torn skin pulled loose around the cuticles – curl tighter and tighter. He tilts the bottle to his lips, a light amber trickle dampening his beard. Swallowing loudly, a gush of afternoon-warm beer swills in his gullet; taking pause to catch his breath, he pushes wheezing stale air through the last of his teeth – only three calcium soldiers stand stained, nicotine and alcohol pocking their once strong enamel armour.

Wiping a paw across a wrinkled brow, his white widow-peaked hair revealing dark weather-leathered scalp, he averts eye contact. Lecturing the carpet as he speaks, his words fall into the snags of the flat orange-yellow flowers.

“I won’t be running for office any time soon,” his laughter deteriorating into a fit of phlegm-heavy coughs. “Do what you will,” a hand covering his mouth as he struggles to catch his breath, three sharp sucks of air kicking at his chest bone.

“I get to see what you’re going to do with this before you show anyone, right?” his hand waving away invisible flies when he says the word “this.”

“Like, editor’s rights before publishing? I should have some creative control over the way you paint my life. Then again, you don’t know the half of it. Not like you’ll share the worst of my story,” a wobbly chuckle, the sound of gravel squished under a worn-soft running shoe.

“Don’t matter much to me. I’ve done the worst I can with this life,” absently tapping a heavy gold ring against the lip of the table, his feet shuffle under the table as he readjusts his weight to fit a chair too small for his decades-widened girth. A hand patting his rotund tummy, he struggles as his lifts his weight. He adjusts the collar of his plaid driving jacket once steady on his feet.

“Nope, don’t matter much to me. Let’s go have a smoke.”

Outside, talking with a smoke in his hand, he is animated. He tells stories of a friend named Weasel who got them kicked out of the strip joint in Winnipeg the time Weasel tried to fall asleep in the girls’ pile of blankets set to the side of the stage. Or the time Weasel shoved a half empty beer bottle into the open fly of his pants and asked all them girls to take a taste. The stuff of urban legend.

Gasping the life out of the last flakes of nicotine caught between his finger and the filter, he tosses the butt to the ground, grinding it cold with the heel of his steel-toeds. Coughing again, the shudder shaking giant shoulders, his broad height becomes round and soft, old and worn. He throws open the door and yells on his way back to his seat: “Sweetheart, bring another round of beers, will ya?”

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Come and Play.

A choppy day, waves wide and white capped, the grey clouds rolled over the lake like a great big blanket. Woolly rain drops scratched my face. The little boat, the one you carefully painted red and decorated with thin white stripes from bow to stern with a steady hand last summer in the backyard, that little boat you built all by yourself – it had no chance.

I stood on the shore, Bubba whipping her tail side to side, smacking my calf with mud-wet fur, and watched your boat bob up and down, a capsized buoy waving a white surrender.

Mother Nature’s hands clapped loud, causing waves to leap in fear. Her growing grumble sent a humbling electric shock of split light. All sides of the shore lit up like a Canada day firecracker.

The doctor, he said there was no chance.

I toed the bright orange life coat you’d left on the beach, the straps whipping in the storming wind.

The doctor, he said you probably hadn’t felt a thing. It was just like falling asleep, he said; a peaceful way to go. There wasn’t much we could have done.

I’d asked you to come and play, I said: please, won’t you come and play today?

Shaking your head, you closed your bedroom door, you said: nope, can’t today Lily-flower. I have important things to do and you’re too little to come too.

Stomping frustrated feet on worn hardwood all the way down the hall, I yelled: suit yourself Jack-attack. I don’t like to play with you anyway!

I sat in the great big green reading chair, the same one Gammie sat in and sipped tea and said to me: little girl, come here and read aloud, won’t you? I pouted in the great big green reading chair as the wood screen door slammed once, twice behind you. I pretended not to watch through the full-size picture window as you dragged your little boat down the path, leaving a snaking trail in the sand behind you. Sitting all alone in the great big green reading chair, I stared out the full-size picture window and watched as the sky swirled – changing blue, changing green, changing purple, changing dark, changing – churning.

Mom, she pleaded: why didn’t you tell me where he’d gone, why didn’t you tell me Jack had left?

Looking at my toes, the air still and stale, I muttered to my feet: you didn’t ask, you know. And I was mad. I’d ask him to come and play. I’d said: please, won’t you come and play today?

When they brought you up on shore, your little red boat tethered to the back of Mr. Swaine’s old steel boat with the motor hanging out the back, you looked so small. You looked too little, too much like me.

When they brought you up on shore, laying limp and loose in the doctor’s arm, everyone wore a look that said: I’m sorry.

When they brought you up on shore, the clouds split right in half, a sideways slant of sunlight pouring through cracks of grey.

When they brought you up on shore, your eyes, they didn’t blink in the bright sunlight.

When they brought you up on shore, Mother Nature, she washed her hand over the lake and smoothed the waves like mom does our bed sheets on a hot summer night.

When they brought you up on shore, the lake, it was quiet like midnight.

Everyone wore their I’m sorry looks and Bubba barked twice and the doctor said again: there wasn’t much we could have done.

Then the lake, it whispered: I lost you.

The lake, it shushed through the reeds, saying: I won’t be the same without you and your little red boat you’d built by yourself that had no chance.

The lake, it cried: Jack, come and play.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Red Car.

I used to ride around with this guy in a car with failing brakes. Intersections became inclined planar pavement, the car a red rocket pinball bouncing between obstacles. Traffic circles were Tilt ‘a’ Whirl platforms of chaotic manoeuvring – around and around and around we’d go until an opening in traffic led us out into the straightaway. Letting off the gas toward the open parking stall on the far end of the lot, the emergency brake would bring us home, tin-can shudder jarring us to a halt as the split bumper kissed the brick walled apartment building.

When it was cold, really cold, the doors wouldn’t open. We’d crawl in through the hatch and scrape the inside of the windows with overextended Mastercards, clearing enough frost off the cracked windshield to see late night headlights coming at us down the road.

The horn was a high-pitched wail, a constant bleep-bleep soundtrack announcing us as we weaved, in and out of and back into traffic, dodging shiny Jags and steering clear of pedestrians pushing newborns in swaddled strollers. The car, it was a 1988 rust-hole death trap.

One blister hot day after messing around under the hood, my driver cum mechanic left a rag lying on the hot engine. He slammed the hood, sparked the car and we turtled off down the open road. Before long, the car began to smell. The smell became a whisp of smoke. The smoke, a billow. The billow, an attraction for fellow automobilists, honking, waving, panicking. Pulling into a back alley, we rolled a long length to a slow stop, the crack snap of bald tires spitting gravel out in all directions barely audible under the hiss of the searing engine. We scrambled out into the alley, the car’s fumes hot on my bare summer legs. We watched and watched as the car, it smoked and smoked.

We left the rotting red corpse full up of the trash of life: crushed pop cans, dirty socks, smushed coffee cups, wrinkled candy bar wrappers, long-hardened French fries, one shoe, empty plastic bags, a cassette tape – it’s ribbon looping the backseat –, a baseball cap, the kind free with a two-four of beer, cigarette ash.

“Not so bad for two hundred bucks an’ more than a few years on the road, eh?” my driver laughed, throwing an arm over my shoulder as we walked down the alley, the car’s death rattle becoming just a whimper in the late summer light.

xoxo
M.L. H’art

Go.

I am a fish.

A great, big yellow pike. Eyeshine mirroring the glint of light falling in slow layers below the surface of ink dark water, I am gills and fins and olive gold scales.

I am slicked by a current carrying me along shallow shore lines, just out of reach of your lure. Unaware of my own cold heart, I am an ectothermic experiment in love and loss.

I am a fish.

A ripe pink salmon, dorsal fin flapping the wisdom of rivers and oceans, intuitively defying death by defying life: a refusal to spawn to die.

I am a last meal on the river Boyne, escaping punishment by frustratingly swimming upstream, but suffering the consequence of a tapered tail by the hand of Thor.

I am a fish.

One half a pair of shining gold fish, I lap the shores of happiness caught inside the reflection of a glass bowl, an endless cyclic swim taunting freedom just the other side.

I am a fish.

The intuitive minnow slipping in and out of your dream current.

I am a fish.

Ichthus. Matsya. Ea. Aphrodite escaping Typhon. The spawn of Mangala. Divine Mother granting you fertility. Fionn mac Cumhaill, giver of knowledge.

I am a fish.

xoxo
M.L. H’art

Gretel Says.

The receiver smashed into plastic cradle, a resounding silence filling the space inside my ear where your voice sat only a moment ago, I say: “Please don’t.”

Ringing with the echo of all the things I left behind when I asked you to leave such a long time ago, my ears begin to burn: a red hot awkwardness crawling in through the canal, kicking at the drum, slipping down the tube into my throat until my tongue smacks of your tinny aftertaste. Trying to defend myself to walls staring blankly at me, I say: “It was nothing. It meant nothing.”

Stomping my feet, I am surprised by the protein-crack of eggshells, the same ones I tiptoed over when you raised your voice too loud. To compensate for all the noise, I whisper: “Shh, you don’t understand.”

Between the accusation and the unforgiveness, you didn’t leave much time for me to tell you: “I can explain!” Between the distrust and suspect, you didn’t leave much time for me to say: “I came back because I thought I loved you.”

Staring straight ahead, pinpoint eyes glazed with the familiar slick of liberally slathered guilt, I am leading down the same path where I’ve already dropped a line of homeward bound crumbs. “It’s all so familiar,” I muse.

But the me I met when I left you, the me you decided wasn’t for you, she’s kicking at my gut, raising her voice, punching my throat – quick jabs bringing out indistinguishable sounds: a groan, a growl, a bark.

The me I met when I left you, she’s holding a road map. On the map, there’s a clearly defined line. The line? It’s leading me in the opposite direction of you.

The me I met, she says: “This isn’t about you.”

xoxo,
M.L. H’art

The Backseat of Summer.

Sitting in the backseat of a long-ago summer, you turn to me and say: Do you believe in the universe?

Squinting bright-sky reddened eyes, sunlight strands falling across tanned cheeks, I reply: The sun, the moon, the stars? Our planet in relation to all those things? The entirety of space and time? Matter, energy, momentum? Or are we waxing philosophical about the cosmic exchange of energy between us and the greater power of mother Universe?

Fingering the hemline of lake-wet shorts, the Velcro holding them tight to your hips a scratching crinkle as you adjust the towel under the damp imprint of your bum: Yeah, that.

Sure, I believe: I say. Pushing too big sunglasses up the bridge of my nose, I wonder for a minute if I look cool or just plain ridiculous pretending I’m rockstar-worthy on a small town beach in the middle of the prairies as nowhere kids roll by on rusted cruiser bikes, towels slung over sunkissed shoulders. I don’t care, and so instead I push up the glasses and push out the thought.

Tilting your wet-dog head back on the seat, looking up at the pearl blue sky, you ask: You think if I asked for something, the universe would listen? A sigh escaping on the tail end of your question, lingering like cigarette smoke just above the crowns of our heads.

Sucking in your letters with stale air from inside the car, I say: I could listen.

Rolling onto your side, slipping long legs under the driver seat, your hands fall to the cracked pleather seats and you pick, pick, pick at the trim with chewed stub nails, letting loose beads of crumbling foam. You say: Yeah, you could.

Smacking the seat, a fake plastic thwack, you grumble: I guess, I just don’t know.

Counting cotton clouds through the smudges on the backseat window, I ask: Don’t know what, hm? Smearing the noseprints and fingerprints and foodprints, I look at you in the reflection of my window.

Reaching for my hand, your finger a light tickle tracing life lines on my palm, you pause, you say: How to feel about today, I don’t know about it.

Scrunching lips, a sour pucker of disbelief: It’s been fun, we’ve had fun, right? I ask, the concerned crease in my forehead deepening.

Yes, yes: a nod quick and sharp. You say: We’ve had fun, this is fun. A double back repetition of my words in your mouth.

So, then, the problem? I pose to you as I watch the family on the beach, dad and son in the water, mom lying on the sand crusted blanket piled high with forgotten buckets and shovels and inflatable floaties – a well practiced ritual for the family who’s here every weekend, the taunt of going to the lake losing its lustre when it’s the same every time.

Folding forward the driver’s seat you kick open the door with a bare foot, grass caught between toes dusted brown with still-wet sand as you lower shoulders under the gray frayed seat belt pulled taught as a trip wire. You say: This fun, I don’t want it to end.

You’re gone, running through the parking lot, over the grass littered with families and friends and squished pop bottles and crumpled chip bags, your lean gait a great splash in the lake as you disappear into a pool of people and gently lapping waves.

Me neither, I say as I lay back on the seat, my head resting in the wet warmth where your towel still sticks to the backseat of the summer I won’t ever forget.

xoxo
M.L. H’art