I tent myself in silence—an homage to my father

Who chose to do the same, every day of my childhood.

I still stand, waiting to be let into a place

With a fire giving warmth

But cannot find what is necessary for even a spark.

I open myself in fear—a re-imagining of my mother

Who flinched the same way every day of her married

Life and never asked why because she thought she knew

What was expected.

She could not find what was necessary to discover herself.

I suppose my tip-toed, light-hearted,

forced-ballerina-days have ended

and I never got the pony named Pickles.

My friends once-were-now-are-ever-will-be skinny

but in my mirror, I’m always me.

Two-handed, I search fearfully

For another gray hair: the first’s twin

Until I’m sitting, scare-crow-messed with

a face streaked by an hour’s dose of reality.

Too tired to roller skate, play, fight, or smile

and too consumed to rest

I feign love since I need the help.

I’m so-and-so’s mom, and Mrs. what’s-her-name,

and: does-she-own-a-house?

Or will-she-have-another-kid?

I long to scream the whisper within

but can’t remember how.

I long to be the girl I wasn’t.

But I’m a woman now.

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

He soared on the wings of passion

held aloft by the warmth of the sun.

How he must have felt to be

high above all other men, knowing

that he had something they would not.

…perhaps it was something they could not.

I would have liked to have seen him climbing,

steadily ascending above the clouds

if only to get closer to his daystar dream.

I wonder though, what if he didn’t fall,

but instead merely slowed for too long?

In the end, anything worth doing,

is worth doing foolishly and being

brave and wanton is revelry.

Suppose the sun was so intense, so alluring,

that Icarus simply stopped flying in order

to renounce the wind and embrace its rays.

If that’s true, or something near,

and he had found something worth falling

for, then he wasn’t foolish, nor full of fear

as he plunged. He wouldn’t have stopped smiling

once he’d found that new love worth falling for.

I believe Icarus was not falling as he fell.

He merely came to the end of his triumph

Miles to go and I cannot see.

Miles to go and I cannot see.

Where I go, I cannot know.

Where I go, I cannot know.

I cannot, and I cannot go. See? Know

Where I go? To miles.

She no longer wants me.

She no longer wants me,

Yet I do not feel.

Yet I do not feel.

She do not wants me

Yet I feel no longer

Numbness envelopes who I am.

Numbness envelopes who I am;

I do not choke back tears.

I do not choke back tears.

Numbness choke back—envelopes.

I am who? Tears? I do not.

I cannot. Numbness.

Who am I? I cannot know.

To miles I go where she

Do not feel me no longer.

I see. I wants and yet go;

Do not choke back. I am.

When I was eight, Mom had a tumor the size of a softball just left of her liver. Calling it softball-sized made me smile since playing softball with a tumor would be gross. Seeing Dad crying reminded me not to smile about the tumor again. It was a Monday when she’d found out.

The doctors had said that they wouldn’t know if it was malignant or benign for a couple of days. I didn’t know what those words, malignant—benign, meant until people started whispering malignant like it was something dangerous with ears that would jump out and

get you if you said it too loud.

Cancer. It was two sticky August days until I’d heard the word being nervously passed back and forth between mom and dad when they had thought I was sleeping. Instead I’d sat at the end of the top bunk, perched like a secret bird feeding on their words and not being able to swallow such bitterness that caused so much silence between my parents.

When we went for a McDonald’s ice cream cone the next day after school it tasted metallic like the conversation I heard the night before.

Friday came and went without Mom hearing from the doctors. They’d done the biopsy--sliced, diced, and smeared the slides--but couldn’t give an answer about the softball growing inside Mom. She’d cried when I asked if she was scared. She told me that it was just the nerves and that she wasn’t afraid. We prayed at dinner for the first time that night.

Just after lunch the next day we drove sickeningly curvy roads for three hours into the hills of West Virginia for a chance for Mom to be healed at a big tent revival that looked like a circus tent for Jesus. No one noticed when we were thirty minutes late. They were too busy saying “amen” between the preacher’s shouts which were peppered with praise-Jesus-hallelujahs.

We sat on folding wooden chairs pushed too closely together so that our shoulders touched and it was impossible to cross my legs the way I wanted. The preacher wiped sweat from his bald head with an already soaked handkerchief while repeatedly calling the people “the body of Christ”. On that day, Christ smelled hot and thick like cheap deodorant cut with even cheaper cologne rising up as a sunburnt offering to his father. I dozed off, periodically being elbow-jabbed awake by Dad. My four year old brother was allowed to sleep; purse candy syrup dripping lazily from the left corner of his mouth.

All the while, the sugary sermon frothed from preacher-man’s mouth who was running, pacing, gyrating like god’s jester at the front of the striped revival tent held up with poles, ropes, faith and hope. I won’t lie. I have no clue about the finer details of the man’s message. I only remember the collection plate merry-go-rounding endlessly and being filled when the congregation would be whipped into frenzy by his addictive words which gave life to the promise of eternity and healing.

Near the end of the tow and a half hour service, after the purse candy was gone, and after I’d filled the back of a bank envelope with doodles, but before the last offering was taken up, the preacher called for people to come up for the laying on of hands and the reception of the healing power of Christ. There was a trickle of people who went forward. Mom and Dad whispered an exchange before privately deciding to join the ascension of the ailing body to the front of the tent in order to receive Mom’s share of the healing power of the lord. We walked to the altar as we’d snuck in the back: as a family.

I shuffled quickly, eyes down, feeling the looks and hearing the mumbled requests for Jesus’ favor from furrow-browed parishioners, squinting their eyes in consternation, hoping for an answer. Nearer the front were prayer “partners” who asked the ailments of the stream of people. One assured us that god loves a family that prays together and acknowledges the true followers of Christ. Jesus liked a posse.

The preacher had taken off his jacket before we presented our case to him. His suspenders accented the lines of sweat on the white long-sleeved shirt. The wilting collar of it was yellowed from weeks of summer-spiced salvation.

“Folks, we have a woman with us today that needs a healing!” His voice was getting hoarse.

The congregation hushed to below a whisper. A nearly silent intensity charged the air.

“Wanda? Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Do you know that he defeated death and can defeat any cancer that you may have?”

The crowd was moaning, nearly wailing with praise. I couldn’t see a collection plate but there had to be one making its round again.

Mom was nodding. Dad was trying to stop, unsuccessfully, the tears from streaming, my brother stared at his dusty shoes kicking grass, and I wondered why he called it cancer. He’d been told it was a tumor. Had god told him it was cancer? It wasn’t Mom or Dad.

As people manifested around us to lay hands on Mom, a lady spoke in tongues. Every sentence started the same way that sounded like “Ronda la-she-a”. Only the preacher knew how to translate it to English. It was one of his “fruits of the Sprit”. The preacher talked about our ability to be a conduit of healing and rebuked the devil for his stronghold on Mom’s disease, her body and her family. He shouted for the cancer causing spirit to “go back to Hell” where it had come from and just when we weren’t sure what would happen next, Mom was deemed healed, everyone sang praises and shouted hallelujah, strangers cried, and we went back to our seats.

On Monday a nurse called to tell Mom that her tumor was benign. Her softball was downgraded from dread to an annoying reason to have surgery; a non-metastasizing nuisance that frightened but couldn’t kill.

“I’m glad your tumor is better Mom.” I said.

“God healed you.” Dad said.

Mom cried, joy replacing her salty dread from the week, the day, the hour before, while she praised God for being cancer free. I wanted to ask her when the doctors had said it was cancer, but mom was busy calling Grandma, glad to have found Jesus in a circus tent in backwoods West Virginia.

Shelby sat down on the backless stool and ordered a Bud Light. She squinted through a window, yellowed with years of BBQ pit smoke. Looking back, she smiled at the familiar walls smeared brown. The greasy air clouded the mirror behind the bar. Taking a sip, she appreciated the cool amber liquid. Chuck’s wasn’t like most BBQ joints in that regard. The beer was actually cold, not like that piss warm beer they served at Three Pigs down the road. Absent mindedly, Shelby picked at her beer label and scraped lines into the label softened with condensation.

“Dammit, Danny” she thought. “Late again.” She’d already been forced to skip lunch due to the open house going late, and now this. She was selling her house—a bigger undertaking than she’d hoped for—even with the bad market. The plan was to move in with Danny as soon as possible. She’d explained to her mother that she loved him and besides, the money she’d save on bills alone would make it worth it.

“Hi Chuck.” Shelby said.

Chuck had come out of the kitchen to mingle with the guests; his usual routine for a Friday evening. He cradled a slab of pork ribs, baked beans, and collard greens. Shelby’s favorite. Grunting, he sat them down with a thud in front of her. The cutting board on which they were served stretched nearly to the front edge of the bar and sauce dribbled lazily down the sides to pool below the edges of the fall-off-the-bone meat.

“Chuck, I’m not ready for food yet. I’m waiting on Danny.”

“And how is Danny?” Chuck asked dryly. He didn’t like the man. There was something about him that Chuck had only recently been able to put his finger on. He didn’t like the way Danny treated Shelby and he sure as hell didn’t like the way Danny told everyone how much he hated Chuck’s food.

“He’s fine Chuck. He’s just running late.”

“What time was he supposed to meet you?”

“Six”

“It’s already a quarter till seven.” Go ahead and eat. On the house. If he gets here, I’ll make sure to invite him back to the kitchen.”

S

helby knew what Chuck meant. Danny had a habit of getting drunk at Chuck’s Place and telling people how dirty the kitchen must be in order to “make shit like that”. Just as Chuck hated Danny, there had been several things about Chuck that Danny didn’t like either. Especially the way he looked at Shelby.

It was nearly eight o’clock by the time she’d finished her rack of ribs and both sides.

“How’s Danny?” Chuck asked smiling.

“He didn’t show. Again” Shelby didn’t look up.

“No. I meant your food. How was Danny?”

cerulean

desires etched

into the back of my

mind escape into

the night of her possibility.

shimmering,

she dances

and I hold her closely

in hopes that I can

learn the footsteps that she leaves each night.

tidal

in her love,

she ebbs and comes madly.

lost to her desire,

I can only hope for another.