In Parts

It’s hearing The Hollow on a raining Tuesday in July when you least expect it: a splish-splash over the edge, flooding up thoughts fast, forcing me to cling to the what-used-to-be’s and the never-again’s.

It’s a bird’s wing cut at the carpal joint trampled in freshly laid snow: flight severed short, feathers fallen fresh on winter carpet, trying hard to remember the mechanics of flight. Lift, weight, thrust, drag.

It’s the rusted blue bicycle frame without wheels tethered to the fence, sparkly streamers wind-swept and swinging from cracked black handlebars: reckless late summer nights spent staring long into the sky, charting navigation since moment immemorial. You and me drinking in the field out back the park the way we did when we had nowhere to be, and infinite time to get there.

It’s the squirrel’s severed tail, still bushy brown-black in backyard leaves: an animal in parts, the heart wondering where all that leftover blood should circulate.

It’s knowing sometimes you just need somewhere to start.

It’s tugging on the sleeve of how things used to be, looking up at the sad moon face to say: I know you meant well.

It’s kicking at the regret of yesterday, turning to the twin stars: You’ve said it all before, in a million different ways.

It’s smoothing the wrinkles of painful memory, shouting at the horizon: Why didn’t you listen when I told you stop?

It’s folding up the fabric of memory, saying in a hushed whipser: you’ve said it all before in a million different ways.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Fortune Telling

Rolling up in the rental car after two weeks on the road, unwashed hair grease painted to sun-kissed foreheads, new freckles star-speckled across skin pulled tight against smiling cheeks, we rocked the Toyota Corolla into the deep ditch indents carved in soft sand and grass gone bare and got out into stifling heat muggy with the weight of the Atlantic, sticking strappy clothing to dew-damp shoulders, jean shorts soft with sweat and ridden deep into bums stuck sitting for long hours across the Confederation.

The parole officer knock, knocking on the front door, kids in the chicken coop smoking blunts saying “nah man, he’s not here, man. He’s gone down to the creek to catch fish. He’ll be back in an hour, man.” The parole officer waves and grunts and shuffles back to his squad car, lights quiet and sirens dimmed, and pulls out all unhurried-like – because everything is dawdling here, a turtle pace in slow-motion, soaking in every second the sun hangs high in casual afternoons spent picking peas barefoot in the garden tended to by the hippy-momma who lets her hair grow wild and long and grey.

And we, us who’ve never been here before, we stand in awe of this place forgotten by the ticker-tape pace of big city life and breath in deep, salt air licking lungs. She, a wolf mom with piercing blue eyes and a voice made of crushed shale, hugs us like she’s known us her whole life, and hands us a beer from the cooler in the yard, the label soggy wet and half peeled away, the nose of the boat dog-eared and wrinkled, and we store caps in our pockets so we can count just how many we’ve had at the end of the night when the moon is full and so are we, beer bellies sloshing with laughter ‘round the fire pit.

She looks at you and says: “I’ve known you all my life and we’re just meeting now. Thank the heavens you’re finally here.” And she looks at me and says: “You, I have to show you something – I knew this day would come.”

She kicks the kids back into the coop with a joint fresh from her cigarette pack, and takes you and me into the kitchen we’ve been in one million times before that we set foot in for the first time, the smell of one million familiar summers filling nostrils happy to be home, and says to you and me: “let me read your fortune. I must read your fortune.”

From the back room, fumbling for cards and that crystal ball with the chip and patchouli incense and a lighter – “damn those kids taking my fuckin’ lighter all the time – she hollers: “the moment I saw you I just knew – we’ve met before, I don’t know how the hell and I don’t know but when, but my goodness my dears – I’ve been waiting for you.”

A board, carefully detailed with houses of luck and success and moon and seasons and sun – hand drawn pictures of gods and goddesses and birds in flight – laid out on the kitchen table, the crystal ball placed precariously on the corner, teetering every time a chair, uneven for the missing foot under leg, shifts, she shuffles cards – plain old playing cards – and says “I used to do this all the time y’know, would be paid to read cards at fancy parties and things, but it come too hard after a while – I hated when I had to tell people they’re gonna get sick, or gonna lose someone – sometimes to death, sometimes to heartbreak – and I just stopped, y’know? Besides, it’s bad luck to ask a fortune teller to read your cards – it’s best to be offered.”

We nod, you and me in our old new home, and smile and laugh and touch her words, rough like red rocks filled with the wisdom of infinite years in the most unlikely way.

She turns over the first card and says: “someone who’s recently passed is thinking of you.”

My face goes white and your face goes slack and together we say: “Yes.”

She says, a smile spreading across cracked lips pink from the sun: “he wants you to know he thanks you for thinking of him, he thanks you for coming all this way. He loves you, y’know.”

A trickle of shiver in a house without air conditioning, electricity running the length of spine, a shudder.

“Yes,” we say.

Grandfather, dead and buried on the island, sending us well wishes from beyond the grave.

“Business,” she says, “with family? You’re in it together, in the arts, theatre maybe. Something with lights. Success there – great success. And soon. But it will grow and grow – and you’ll grow together.”

Smiles, big and anxious, we nod. Our little theatre company back at home waiting for us to return, to make it great.

Card after card, truth after truth, we are awed.

At the end, a trip to the bedroom, her hollering: “Wait, I have something for you!” Hands closed, fists hiding gifts, she extends one hand to each of us and says: “I held onto these for so long because I just knew I’d one day meet the person I was supposed to give ‘em to.”

To you, a pair of painted butterfly earrings, copper frames holding tiny pieces of art carefully crafted. To me, silver with blue jewels, sturdy and feminine at once, a pair of earrings she bought when she was young but knew they weren’t for her.

Before we skipped out the front door to the coop to show the boys our finds, she said: “One last thing,” as she packed up her book of fortune and her board of the many houses. “Fortune tellers become so when they are given the gift of sight by another teller. I can tell just by looking at you, you have the ability. Take this, will you? Use it? Tell people what they need to hear? You’re meant to have this.”

A gift from the fortune teller in Wolfville, from the most interesting woman to ever grace my path, I take the book and the board and nod and smile and say: “I’ll look after it, I’ll use it, I’ll tell people what they need to hear.”

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Starburst

Lost and leaving, the goodbye got jumbled up: leaves left turning, summer to fall when we fell apart, it was the year the emails sat unsent, the phone calls disconnected, the so-long’s so unnecessary; it was the year we kissed kindred memories of budding womanhood goodbye, promises of growing up and growing old and growing fond of bravely wearing purple together put on the backburner bubbling discontentedly to a char, thick black and burnt to the brillo-scratched Teflon coating flaked for sake of dishwashing worn thin.

The soul-searching need to define oneself outside the context of back stabbing gossip gone wrong: all made up, we tore it down, fake eyelashes fluttering, silver hoops tearing sensitive lobes in long stretched lines ripping skin, lip liner smudged for un-lady-like words drooling out droll lips laughing bitterly at loves lost to chances missed, what a mess.

But I ain’t the goodbye girl and I doubt much I’ll see you soon, so save your teary-eyed goodbye and give me the satisfaction the faction of friendship wasn’t a waste for years spent holding hair back and wiping tears dry and clasping hands in uncomfortable moments: abortions and addictions and arrests and obsessions and cravings and cavings, awkward bathroom stall fumblings, secrets kept and woes wept, we saw it all.

While I’ll take yours to the grave, you gave mine to the next available ear and, dear, that’s not the pact we made when we stayed up the night through, doctor dealt sobriety saving you from momma’s wrath when I held your hand, IV still dripping, and said: No, I promise. I won’t tell. But if you make me take you here again, hospital reprimand for partying awry, emergency ride from bar to bed, I won’t do it, friend. No, I won’t.

Black smudged makeup wink, you promised: we’ll stay true and you and me, girl, we’ll be besties till this world be through and I promise when your kids call me auntie I’ll tell them harrowing stories of their cape-clad hero-mom, sugar smile sure, the demise of my undoing undid with one hug, a glass of wine and a word to the wise. I’ll hold you right here, you said, hand on heart, IV line drip-drapping, saline sailing through night to morn and back again when you and me, we really were the best of the besties.

But faded photographs of fashion fads long past and bodies shifted, shapes bent and broadened and broken, only tell the truths we want to remember – and doll, in all this time, I clean forgot what it was like to have you in my life.

xoxo,
M.L. H’art

Tawny

Thick storm white framed windows, lattice a crisscross shield against winter, fit carefully into eighteen windows twenty years or more ago, picture and bay and widow and wide –when spring comes these painted shut safeguards stay put.

Upon snow melted, I throw open front and back door to welcome fresh air and neighbourhood cats and sometimes the daughter from down the street with the Dora backpack and the thick rimmed glasses too wide for small eyes who stands in the doorway and yells: Oh hi, are you there, hi, hello?

On days when rain comes to grow grass green and on days when I fight that same earache, I watch a VHS about vinyl and think about dark things that roll in with clouds: the mortality of my parents, your missed call because you crashed the car on the way home from work, taxes not filed, being alone, alone, the cat and I late in life when wrinkled, unrealized dreams trapped in expired lotion bottles on dresser top to look as though I take careful time primping for the great date, dreary dreams drenched.

Breaking late, sun cracks grey sky bringing bright glow, pieces of orange glass broken and sprawled across scratched hardwood creaking, the light scares away shadows of thought leaving emptiness like stomach starving.

xoxo
M.L. H’art