The Jackhammer Waltz.

Machine gun rattle, the jackhammer bullies each one of my slippery dream thoughts hard into the spring-wet pavement. Sunlight vibrating the length of each rat-tat skips through the cloudy window. It is morning and I am red-wine dry. Smacking stained lips, the sheets shush and rustle as I turn over and over in the covers – a twisted game of hide and seek.

I share my first cup with the construction workers four stories down – leaning against the coerced chain link fence, it bowing under their weight, they raise their indestructible faux-titanium travel mugs their wives and girlfriends wiped out and refilled just that morning as a half hearted cheers when I step out onto the balcony.

“Morning boys,” I mutter, sticky morning breath swirling steam above the lip of my pink mug.

Skyscraper blue glass bounces stretched rainbows of Saturday sun across tired city streetways. A lineup trickles out the door of Money Mart, weekend tired warriors rubbing grubby mitts across crinkled foreheads, eyes squinting back early light, creased post-dated pay checks shoved into flannel shirt pockets.

Trundling traffic takes corners with less urgency. The lights shift slower. No one honks.

Like the sound of wind chimes tickling the backdoor of grandma’s house, the tink of green glass shimmies up the drainpipe. The calculated sorting of glass versus can has begun; the tchick-tchick of shopping cart wheels on winter-worn back alley pavement a race of rattled metal over uneven cracks.

Batonning the fan-belt crescendo screech, I conduct the moving echo of sirens cascading up and down, up and down. The concrete symphony swells and wanes on the dew-wet lips of wind, a compliment to the bellowing chorus of construction holler.

Keeping rhythm with the smacking steps of flip-flop clad feet, the song of spring has arrived downtown.

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

Thoughts, on fire.

Six thirty in the morning. That ringing, it’s not the alarm clock.

A groan: you’ve got to be kidding me. Covers back, feet on the floor, early morning sleep-crust sticking to my bones.

Fuck me.

Fire alarm wakeup call on the fourth floor.

Shuffle to the door, slide deadbolt – left, right, left, right – peek confirms no one else is in the hallway.

False. Alarm, false.

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Feet still sleeping, no need to pick them up. Flop into bed, pillow over head.

Still ringing, getting louder and louder, my groan a yell: shut the fuck up!

I am so pleasant in the morning.

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Deadbolt slide. Peek – left, right – neighbours in winter coats and boots hightailing for the stairwell.

Shit.

Socks. Need to find socks. It’s cold out there. Sweater. Check. Jacket. Okay. Mittens. Need mittens. Hello mittens? Aha! Under the couch cushion.

Pray: fire, please don’t spread quickly.

Shoes. Where’d I put my shoes? Right. By the patio door. Wore them outside to smoke last night.

Smokes! Should take those.

Logical. Very logical.

Records? No.

Computer? Possibly.

Cat.

Shit. The cat.

Here, kitty, kitty.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

Yes, I hear you!

Cat carrier case. Where did I leave the carrier case? Front hall.

Okay, cat. It’s just you, me and this damn plastic carrier case.

No.

No paws, no meows, definitely no hisses. Get your angry ass in the carrier!

I don’t want to go outside any more than you!

Pleading with a four-legged animal before dawn – get! in! the! case!

Success! No, aw, no! Get back here! Stop with the scratches. Get in the case!

Okay. Cat in carrier. Latches fastened.

This is good. We’re good.

Keys. Crap. Need keys to get back in building.

Smash!

Cat crashes through carrier door. Door on floor, cat under bed, carrier cracked.

You have got to be kidding me.

Fuck it, cat. Smoulder!

Can’t kill cat. Guilty conscience no way to start weekend.

Cat in coat.

Socks. Sweater. Jacket. Mittens. Shoes. Smokes. Cat. Keys.

What’d I forget?

Sanity.

I’ll come back for that.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

The Quiet of Chatter.

The wind tears through clothing, biting raw skin, a rash of goose bumps breaking out across layers of wool, ice picks pricking swollen cheeks, nostrils stuck shut with frozen snot.

Waiting for the reprieve of winter takes on a whole new meaning when you’re unable to breath, your lungs suddenly solid with the vapors of ice.

On the bus, everyone is a rendition of a wild animal bearing its winter coat: the mink on the left, dark and slick, black eyes peering from behind layers of Lycra fur made by the poor indigenous people of a country that’s never experienced weather quite like this; the bear, his beard thick with frost, his paws pulling a worn wooly toque over sad, experienced eyes, feet dressed in boots too big save the three pairs of socks; the bird, always at least one, too proud to hide its feathers but obviously shivering in its poor choice of stylish jacket and delicate shoes.

I, smudging fog from the frames of my glasses, unzip the first layers of down, loosen the wool around my neck, pull one then two pairs of mittens from warm and wet hands and settle into my seat for the long ride into dark morning.

The snowflakes fall fat, slow – almost apologetic in the way they drift softly in an attempt to excuse themselves from the shoulders of passers-by. Pardon me, oops, excuse me, they’d say in swirling whispers.

The winter dampens the noise of the city, cushions the chaos of rude traffic, softens the belch of industry, hushes businessmen yelling into cellphones. Slowly, the city is padded with the Styrofoam crunch of packed snow under tires, underfoot. With no rush to be anywhere in particular, traffic crawls, creeping down side streets, the rumble of engines lost to white noise.

With every sound suddenly so dampened, the world moving so slowly, I can finally hear my own thoughts.

Sometimes I get these words stuck in my head – just one at a time. I repeat them over and over and over again and again not because I want to but because my brain gets stuck like a sports car high centered in a plow bank of snow – a constant loop of letters spinning without gain or change, the same song stuck on repeat.

Calculated. I am calculated. I calculate moves carefully, chess board strategy – sequencing a chain of reactions. Calculated gets stuck up there, I can touch the letters – round and soft, interjected with sharp swords – swift and strategic in their placement. The word talks in my mind, tries on different voices, speaks different languages: prémédité; kalkuliert; calculado; gerekende. The voices, they’re hurried sometimes – in a rush to spit out letters too bitter to keep in. But sometimes, sometimes the voices are slow, carefully forming each letter, slurring them into one another. Caall-kul-ltd.

The squirrel gets on board on Jasper and 116, its cheeks full of saved food, its coat shivering with the chill of winter wind, eyes glassy, nervous, darting back and forth from door to window to the bear’s face, who’s drowsy with hunger.

Loss. This word is hissed sometimes up there – serpent and slithering, a flicking tongue, four letters, a gentle start to a slick, slow end. Loss – a forgiveness of something once held dear, letting go, a loose kite string floating higher and higher, or a treasure sunk deep in high water, filtering below the surface lower and lower until nothingness – black, murky, the treasure of memory. Perte; verlust; perda; het verlies: lllossss…

This word, it sleeps in the corner of my mind, wound tight around other thoughts, slipping between full sentences, interrupting logic, a low, slinking ssss, a muted soundtrack of letters in my mind.

The chatter on the bus competes with the chatter in my mind, each loud, persistent, vying for attention via auditory hallucination. The bird, chirping: calculated dress is a consequence of the interactive genetic algorithm; design is of the origination of the Latin ‘designare,’ you know? It means to symbolize some plan, a calculated placement of feathers, the bird coos, puffing feathers, ruffling wings.

The bear wipes his mouth with a dark paw, growling under his breath: failure, destruction, privation, defect, misfortune, risk, not gaining, not winning. Bearing a loss.

The chatter is loud today.

Jasper and 124. End of the line: tightened scarf, zippered jacket, mittens pulled on.

Soft steps off the bus, plowing through quieted streets, the chatter – it stops.

xoxo

M.L. H’art