Ed Said.

Ed said: the note of G, the color red, one earth day – twenty three hours and fifty seven minutes – are all born of the same harmony. C sharp and blue-green, one earth year – the same.

The harmony of sound and light and time and being all wavering at equal frequency.

The chakra a grounding force of connection and earth energy; the slowest vibration an earth toned root; the fastest, a tidal pull in and out.  

Ed said: the alpha wave, the awareness of you and me and the world around us – exists as an energy field.

So, let’s get lost, let’s fall off the hook, let’s touch the vibration, let’s get held in the sound: sound, which came before music, before language.

The simplicity of the echo of time: the mallet to gong a tangible vibration telling stories of settlement and struggle and triumph and change.

Deliberate and slow, Ed said: do you hear it, the hook of tempo? Can you feel it, the vibration of experience? Can you see it, the reverberation lapping like waves?

It’s the sound of healing.

xoxo,
M.L. H’art

Old Blood.

“You from the Cayman Islands?” words muffled through paper.

Catching armpits on crutches, patient chart pinched between central incisors, his foot is broken.

“No, I’m not.”

“You should be. Your last name – it’s the same last name of the foam cup king. You know the one – the baron who invented Styrofoam coffee cups. He owns half the Cayman Islands! Yeah, I bet you’re related. Look at you.”

One stiff leg jutting out in front of him, he teeters, totters, tick-tocks, flops onto the black physician chair, a resident student hand flying out to stop ancient bones from tipping over.

“You ever been exposed to radiation?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Yeah, you know. Chernobyl. Radiation. Know how they discovered Chernobyl?” he turns to the second student standing shy in the corner, How to Memorize Quickly and Efficiently: A Guide’s nose poking out of her white coat pocket. Wide-eyed owl eyes dart around the room – she’s not sure how to answer this particular question.

“No, sir. I don’t.”

“Turns out – “ the back of his hand taps my shoulder.

We should be sitting in a bar over beers.

“ – turns out, the cloud, it went east and west. The first traces of radiation were actually found in Sweden, probably even over in England.”

The students, all three, nod, smile, nod. One reaches for a pen as though to write it down: east and west, check.

“If you’re not from the Cayman Islands, where’s your family from?”

“Uh, England, mostly.”

Bearing weight on just one leg, he stands, tugging on my shirt collar.

“Come on, get up.”

Soft and pale, cold fingers reaching around my neck.

To his students: “Did you feel this? What a great day for you to be here, huh? Look at the size of this!”

I am a showcase medical mystery, prime time television programming complete with montage back-story.

Sipping cup after cup of Dixie’s water, all three medical students take turns touching me.

I am the miniature pony at the petting zoo, matted mane and dirt-caked hooves.

With his back to me, he talks: a language I don’t understand. The students, they nod and write important Latin words in tiny notebooks they’ll pour over later in preparation for the big exam.

Turning back my way, he has a needle in one hand and an alcohol soaked cloth in the other.

I am the proven thesis of an experiment gone wrong.

“Lay down. Good. Now, you’re going to feel a little pressure here.”

Needle digging cold metal, a pin prick pushing suprasternal notches, pushing sternomastoid, pushing cricoid cartilage. Heaviness begging fluid, begging old blood, brown blood, begging cells, ruined cells.

“There we have it.” Vial glinting fluorescent light, dark and full.

“The tumor, it’s hemorrhaging.”

xoxo,
M.L. H’art

Graves.

I slept with the butterfly, allowed it to flap up inside, flutter by hymen, forewing flickering cervix up to vulva; pushing proboscis past anatomical barriers, this butterfly trembled through cardia and corpus, tickled curvature, great and less. Thorax and tarsi prickling pharynx and larynx, a long climb up the vertebral, it dug its palps right into my throat, stole my words.

Laying out the long length of the line of neck for the doctor to take a look, the curve of shoulder to clavicle exposing stretched skin between sternum and scapula, the jugular-pulse an internal lug of blue blood, I am naked.

Baring my shield, an oblong door to the heart of the throat made of steel valour, which – if I had the parts – would bare the peculiar angle of forbidden fruit consumed, I am under the watch of Drs. Galen and Wharton, standing shoulder-close, notebooks in hand.

A pin-prick dig around inside and I am under the microscope – a look-see hide and seek game of who knows what’s next, optically scoping dark corners of neck inferior to expose a constellation of consequential symptoms caused by iodine and tyrosine and thyroxine racing metabolism around and around the trachea rings, so early in the morning.

The butterfly regresses: from flutter to reverse metamorphosis to chrysalis – hard pupa shell tucked tight. Too delicate to touch, the disc of forming butterfly wings running the same length of the tracheae, a yellow-green-red patterned witch who, if let loose, would thief milk late at night.

But this butterfly-lover of mine refuses to let go.

xoxo,

M.L. H’art

Ten Years Late.

Ten years ago this month, your skin in ash-blue pucker, flattened veins surface-close, I cried on the shoulder of the all-star volleyball  jock who, if we were still in school, wouldn’t have held my hand and passed me a Kleenex when your mother, stone faced and sure, said you were happier now.

Lid wide open in a roomful of us just starting out, we saw the rope burn left behind when you swung from your parents’ open concept vaulted ceiling second floor railing banister.

It’s been so long since you and I drank a water bottle full of liquor we stole from the pick-locked cabinet in the camping trailer parked on the front drive, playing poker for shots, scrunching our face after each burning shit-mix swig.

It’s been so long since you called late at night, us both whispering in the dark into coil cord phones, for dating advice, telling me you were in love with my best friend, asking how to win her over even though it meant giving advice I’d wished you’d use to win me over.

It’s been so long since we camped in the woods with twelve of our friends and stayed up late under summer stars passing a bottle and a joint, talking about the way things would be when we got the fuck out of this shit-small town and really started living.

It’s been so long since you turned to me in biology class and mouthed that song, the one that went “la-de-la, this year will be better than the last…,” the corners of your lips upturned in smirk.

It’s been so long since you hurt yourself the first time; since you let the light fade to dark in your head; since you stopped calling; since you turned inward on yourself; since you got farther and farther away, the length of my arms no longer enough to connect me to you.

It’s been so long since I walked away from your shadow body, snot-wet tissues crumpled in shaking palms; since I got the fuck out of that shit-small town; since I starting making every year better than the last.

It’s been so long since I thought of you early in the morning; clouds ten years late heavy with the tears shed for a life gone too soon.

It’s been so long since I thought of you and said: it was selfish leaving us that way.

xoxo,

M.L. H’art

Eleven Syllable Escape.

Passing you by – your feet sinking deep into downtown pavement, eyes fixed to shell toed shoes counting careful steps – I barely recognize you.

Thin hair drops in limp lines from scalp to shoulder, spreading greys steal strawberry shine from lengthy locks, locks which used to compete with the sun. Your mouth is exploited by sad lines, deep imprinted tears in sallow skin dyed the color of nicotine. Matte mouse eyes skitter about tired lids, the whites yellow, the yellow fissured with splinters of bloodshot stress.

You’ve widened since I saw you last, hips a spill of squishy surplus, button and jeans fighting to stay together.

Turning, wizened fingers wrapped in paper thin skin reaching for my shoulder, your mouth a cracked red raw O, you say: hullo, girl. How’s your pretty life?

A sideswept chasse and I miss your grip, my hesitant smile a defensive apology for your attempted touch.

Again, you say: how’s your pretty life?

I scrunch my eyes, look you over, try to find the you I knew way back when you used to smile and shine, your packaging still smooth and store-front sexy, your laugh like rushing water, gurgling, bubbling.

Good, happy: I say.

Fidgeting hands smooth a hand-knit tunic over threadbare jeans as you chuckle, the sound of desperation like wheezing sand paper. Yeah, you say. Me too.

You flick a fired butt, the ember grazing paper skin – a quick ignition close to setting you aflame, your widened rack a torch.

Awkward pause, a beat too long, and I think of all the things I’d like to say:

Remember when we sat up all night and laughed until the moonlight cracked to let the dawn in?

Remember sitting on the kitchen floor in the first apartment we shared, eating spaghetti off one green cracked plate, red sauce splashing linoleum only we were in charge of cleaning?

Remember the friends, the drinks, the parties, the fun, the fun, the fun – the fun that poured so easily out of you, the unstoppable, beautiful fun?

Standing, your shoulders a horse shoe slump, I cannot find the you I knew way back when; the hardened turtle shell is hiding the you who used to be and so I don’t say the things I’d like, but instead say:

Great. Okay, then. Was nice to see you. Take care!

Faux enthusiasm, an eleven syllable escape and you’re gone from my memory again.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Blue.

Stall 54, a slight space with grey walls and a heavy door.

“Take off everything but your underpanties,” her voice thick with accent.

I let the word “underpanties” bounce around my brain as the big door falls closed.

In the too small cattle stall, I change out of street clothes and fumble a heavy blue gown over goosebumped skin. The lady, she yells: “stay there till I come get you, k?”

“Okay,” I whisper.

I can hear the shuffling of other women, pent up, pawing the ground.

52 recites a hymn, half word, half hum as she rips the gown Velcro apart over and over again, the crick of hooks and loops keeping beat to the performance staged by 47 and her small son as they sing Old MacDonald’s Farm, the child’s voice an e-i-e-i-o echo of farm animals speaking Portuguese. 55 mumbles to herself, drops her purse, classic girl spill, tampons and lipstick and pens with chewed lids scattering the floor: “motherfuckinshit,” she huffs.

The personality of these numbers a show of feet on display in the one foot window between the door and the floor; I stare at poignant pumps and fraying flip flops and smart sneakers; I paint pictures of these women in my mind: coiffed backcombed ‘do, peasant skirt, pleated pantsuit, desperate ladder climbing, school-test-frenzy, long road retirement.

“54? 54!” her gravelled voice worn with use, camouflaging a slight lisp: “follow me, please.”

Downtrodden patients awkwardly fidgeting matching blue gowns, embarrassed by the bare ass underneath, line the walls. No one makes eye contact.

In the room, I’m told to lay down, lay still, don’t breath, look left, now right.

On the screen, my insides in auric light: dancing violet, indigo, blue and green, a sway of yellow, orange, red; a rainbow reveal of creativity, awareness, intuition, health, love, wisdom, happiness, courage; my being in parts: the brain, the brow, the throat, the heart, the stomach, the ovaries, the adrenal glands.

Blue, so much blue.

“Stay here,” the door a whoosh-shick behind her.

Under low lights, I stare at the tiled roof wondering how the sallow stain managed its way, way up there, when the doctor walks in.

He pauses thoughtfully before the imaging screen and nods his head, pulls a clenched fist up under his chin, removes his glasses and slides his open-pore-pocked nose closer and closer until he says: “Hm, why yes. Right, I see.”

He walks back out. Whoosh-shick.

She looks at me and grins: “let’s do it again!” repeating the board game dice roll that didn’t get her to the desired square offering the jackpot win.

This time, black and white, a scroll of larynx and lymphnodes and esophagus. On the screen: white, white, grey, white and then black, black, black – a big black void. A hole.

“Aha.”

A blip-bloop press of sonar machine buttons.

“K, you go now. You’ll know results in five to seven business days,” she says ushering me back out into the herd.

xoxo

M. L. H’art

In Somnolent.

Holding sleep in the palm of my hand, I pull closed tired joints, each knuckle choking one more hour.

A hint of night light paints dancing wolves on white walls – the snarling silhouetted pack surging forward, pulling back: a sympatric shimmy, tree leaves making me believe I’m being hunted.

A sway in starlight and the man enters my room. He’s been here before, the stench of his dark trench coat a familiarly sticky scent of dank earth and rusted blood and dried skin.

The shadow bird perched on the closet door quavers: he has a knife, little girl. Be careful, little girl.

Heart knocking ribs, crouching under covers, arms clamped to wobbly knees, eyes pressed closed, sharp blows of breath heave heavy lungs – puffing away shadow puppets playing amygdala tricks.

A negotiation between conscience and imagination, the wolves retreat and the bird stops singing but the man, the man draws his blade. Refulgent metal catching moonlight, his silver sharp tongue licks slick shank.

On theatre walls of bedroom late, drips of backlit blood run a slippery wash over white paint, soak into threaded carpet, rise past dusted baseboards, spill over well-worn chair covers, splash into dresser drawers ajar, creep to the edge of the bed and, lapping at bare phobic toes curled, stain sheets, a blossoming claret bloom spreading over pillow shams, dying nightgown hem.

It’s been days since I last slept.

xoxo,

M.L. H’art

59.

Heaving coo, a woman moaning, stout body writhing – the sound, a disjointed image of sleep. Coming to, shading sun from crusted eyes, it is morning. The woman momentarily falls quiet and I am left looking round the room for evidence of her, her ghost gone.

The cracked window spilling fresh spring air is a speaker box clue: blaring her purr, distorting the ruffle of her clothing flapped loose.

Standing at the sill, I stare out onto the balcony but cannot find her in the filter of early morning light. A dream figment, faded.

About to turn from my windowed reflection, I see her scuttling, her fat body edging the old apartment brick.

Dressed in moulted blue-grey finery, her nose a cere of soft fleshy swelling, she collects the flimsy night sticks and dusty day old trash blown over the parking lot concrete. Holding them carefully in her mouth, she is greedy.

The descendent of the great figments of war and peace, she is not the product of her genes: she cannot race, she cannot carry; she is not a messenger nor a passenger; she won’t detect nor save.

Her great, great grandfather puffed up his chest, a cog integral to the machinery of the 72 lofts of the Battle of Marne; the grandfather before him, a peaceful conciliator delivering olive branch signals of landlocked safety following the flood.

A forgotten shame of her lineage, she floats from dumpster to dumpster, her next meal an a la carte menu of half-wrapped three-day stale burgers and rotting tin can residue pecked out of kitchen catchers. Her waste, the trace she leaves behind, has the acidic corrosiveness capable of eroding metal, eating stone. She is dirty, she is sad: she is the didus ineptus of downtown.

A superstitious lady, she makes the same rounds each day, bobbing her head up, down, up, down asking passersby to take pity, to throw her just a crumb, not realizing superstition is only the repetition of an action with no influence over desired outcome.

Pipio! I call over the balcony. Pausing, she looks up, cocks her head left, then right. On the breath of the wind, she escapes down the alleyway in flight to haunt another ornithophobic.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

His Old Apartment.

In the back of the closet for 87 years, his life: layered between cling-wrapped bedsheets fresh from the cleaners ten years previous, four crisp, uncut sheets alternating green, black, green, black of Canadian mint one dollar bills; standing between big band pressed vinyl, a forty year yellowed history of National Geographic, heralding new age space age on spines uncracked, covers unbent; tucked behind stale liniments and powdered pill boxes with peeling labels, one pair women’s earrings – gold and emerald sparkling in dull light.

Photos, yellowed and peeling, tucked between unread book pages – scenery blurred by tour bus windows, landmarks and rayon-clad tourists crowding the lens, him riding a desert camel, a skinny sepia smile spread across youthful lips; a sock, tired and threaded, full and pushed to the back of the mahogany drawer, a numismatist’s dream of collected international currency: one coin for one memory; a single postage stamp floating on the shelf, glue dried and flaked, a memory of the shadowed sore spot lacerated on the postcard fallen to the floor, faded words: wish you were here, in cursive scroll.

The liquor cabinet, a passport: tequila, ouzo, sake, scotch. Etched shot glasses, engraved gold chalices, frosted martini glasses – dustbowl passages to old boys’ club deals, when handshakes and paper napkin signatures were the stuff of good business; bank notes and promissory titles on rice-thin paper, faded from forgetfulness.

A scratched mint tin with loose lid, inside the letters R.C.A.F. etched into the wings of lapel pins; a pendant, heavy with time, of a boy kneeling at an alter, the year 1938 inscribed; a locket, inside the photo of a man, young and tanned, smiling and sure.

A blue steel tool box housing crescent and socket and open end and monkey and pipe and torque and mole wrenches, original price tags affixed in place; unopened packages of screws, uncapped glue, unbroken seals on caulking tubes.

A fishing rod, a camping tent, a mosquito net, two kerosene lanterns – all forty years new, all unused.

The apartment: a front.

In the top drawer of the bureau, a stack of photos carefully tucked between the folds of a letter: the locket man in Palm Springs, in Greece, in Japan, in Hawaii, in England, in Vancouver, his beauty of youth a shifting timeline, young to old – the evidence of a true love kept in the back of the closet for a lifetime.

xoxo
M.L. H’art

Spreekt U.

Passing me on the street, the man, he asks me: Spreekt u het Nederlands?

Caught off guard, choking up my words: Oh, uh, no. I’m sorry.

A hand on my shoulder, he stops me: Kunt u alstublieft mij vertellen waar een honderd en tiende straat is?

He is red. Red pants, red shirt, red face – a full up thermometer taking the downtown temperature of passersby.

With more force: Een honderd en tiende straat.

Polite affirmation, flicking his strange hand from my coated shoulder: I’m sorry sir, but I don’t understand what you’re saying.

Agitation, a hand covering wayward eyebrows, pausing as he swipes a palm over his greying beard; a giant, anxious sigh: Geen begrijpt u niet.

Me, desperately looking for help in the faces of others, shrugging when they can’t: Are you looking for a business?

Shaking his head, a downtrodden look, frustrated he says: Ik kijk voor een bijzondere zaken. Een honderd en tiende straat.

Parroting his words, I am the puppet and he the ventriloquist: Ti-end strat? Ti-end strat.

The words, they roll around my tongue, smooth rocks slick with saliva. I get a feel for the letters: Tenth street? Are you looking for tenth street?

Flashing my palms, a wide open gesture, I count to ten like I did when I was a little girl – slowly, pointing to each finger, saying subsequent numbers louder and louder.

Nodding my head: Tenth street? Yes?

Confused eyebrows rumpled, a deep v of concern pinched tight between small mouse eyes: Kunt u alstublieft mij helpen? Een honderd en tiende straat. Ja? U hoort niet mij.

I throw my white flag in the air – hands palm up to the dark night sky, a show of surrender : I’m so sorry, I just don’t know what you’re saying. I wish I could help you.

The v relaxing, his eyes lighting up: Vergeet het, onnozele meisje.

The despair of failure, my mouth a half moon smile: I’m really sorry. I hope you find wherever it is you’re going.

A laugh erupting from his lean frame as he pats my shoulder, pushing off down the street: Ah, don’t worry about it. I’m just fucking with you!

xoxo

M.L. H’art