First Night

Exhausted tonight but felt something brewing in my head... and here's the result.

Creaking, rocking

Foundation shatters;

Heavy sighs restlessly

Beneath a painful landing.

Heat escapes

a gasp, a prayer;

Emotion breaking

Bellowing within.

Free from angst,

An energy lapse;

Coolly collect

Against bare breasts.

Heaviest sighs

Retreating tonight;

The feelings sincere,

Lingers sweat in the air.

Darkest night blankets

Expose wilted sheath;

Chests intermittent.

Loose, staggering breath

untitled.

A short story I've been writing.. Not sure how it's going to end. I've written a few different "chapters" following this first piece but I'm still unsure of where I want the story to go...

It's kind of dark, just to warn you. Actually it's pretty morbid. Possibly offensive, depending on the reader. So approach cautiously :)

**********************************

I wasn’t supposed to survive. Juliet didn’t survive. It was supposed to be a foolproof plan. I was ignorant. Too stupid. This really gave Richard a reason to call me stupid. Like he ever needed one before.

“Now tell me, Tia, what’s your relationship like with your father?” Dr. Lambert sucks. She’s tall and professionally attractive. Like you have to think she’s pretty because she wears pencil skirts and knots her hair up on top of her head and wears too much red lipstick. And she makes a kissy-face when she’s thinking. That’s stupid. This room sucks with its dark blue walls and fuzzy impressionist paintings. “Soothing” she calls them. Monet and Degas, they aren’t soothing. They’re dead. And I hate ballerinas. I hate this sunken yellow couch that nearly swallows me whole. It’s so broken down my butt touches a metal rod somewhere deep in the crevices. Every time I shift a musty stench erupts from the cavernous crater.

“Tia?”

“I’m uncomfortable.”

“Here, have an extra pillow.” She stands to grab a fluffy lacey cushion embroidered with the sickeningly false statement “life is sweet”. I could reach it if I wanted. I swat her hand away. Life is not sweet you rat-faced bitch. Life is a race to the finish line, a competition to see who can escape first.

“Your father?”

“Richard’s a prick.”

“Can you elaborate?”

Can I? Yeah. Will I? Hell no. He drinks too much and hits me. Calls me a gothic whore. “That’s a fucking oxymoron, Richard.” He takes a swig of whiskey, straight out the bottle, and swings his arm up in the air across his chest, ready to backhand me. He’s a too-tall, overweight ex-wrestler. How he spawned my scrawny, fragile bones I’ll never understand.

“I’m your father, get it right kid.” Woosh. Another bruise added to my collection.

“I think my face is descriptive enough, doc.” She raises an eyebrow and breaks eye contact, scribbling furiously on her legal pad. I hazard a guess DSS is written on there somewhere.

“What about Donnie? Can you explain that, uh, ‘friendship’?” Bitch said we wouldn’t talk about Donnie yet. My face is a fiery red volcano. Lava drips from my eye sockets. I grind my teeth, hard.

“Fuck you.”

“Okay we’ll save that topic for later.” She’s unfazed. I’ll bet she hears that all the time.

“And your mother?”

“She’s dead. How’s yours?” Dr. Lambert doesn’t laugh. Her face is incapable of positive expressions. She knows I killed my mom. Why does she ask?

I found out I killed her when I was six. “You stupid fuck! If you were never born Mona would still be here!” Richard’s voice sounds like it’s been through a meat grinder. I didn’t know her name was Mona. I didn’t know I killed her. I learned in psychology class that people don’t remember much before the age of six. That’s when our earliest memories begin. Did I just crawl out of her and start choking her with the umbilical chord right there on the hospital bed? Maybe I severed her carotid artery with my razor sharp nails. Or just beat her up so badly she bled out before the nurses could wake from their shock and do something to help. Anytime a kid would ask me where my mother was or what happened to her I made up a new story. My favorite being I was so ugly she started seizing and convulsing, speaking tongues about the devil child then died of a heart attack on first glimpse of my naked ass. That’s the line I used on Donnie the day we met. When Donnie started laughing I knew we’d be best friends. Most people just turned and ran, screaming for their own poor mommies. Not Donnie.

“Wanna go spit in the other kids’ lunch boxes?” I nodded furiously and followed Donnie back into our fourth grade classroom. Best friends.

“Okay, Tia. Tell me about one positive relationship in your life. Grandparents, friends, teachers… Maybe an imaginary friend when you were little, anyone who had a positive impact on your life.”

I vaguely remember meeting my maternal grandparents when I was really young. But I must have killed them too cause I haven’t heard from them in a long time. Richard says I kill every soul I meet. “You dark, wretched kid! Taking every damn thing out of my life! Murderer!” I never got to meet Richard’s parents. They died before I had the chance to kill them. 

Sometimes Richard brings home women. Most of them just spend the night and never return. And he calls me the whore. Allison stuck around for a while. Richard didn’t hit me around Allison so I liked her a lot. She was moderately pretty with dark, curly hair and long legs accentuated by miniskirts and midriff bearing tank tops. “How about I fix that stringy hair of yours, huh?” Always smacking her gum and blowing pink bazooka bubbles, Allison was straight up trailer trash. But she was nice to me. She’d brush my hair, curl it, dry it with a real blow dryer. Richard didn’t allow such amenities. Allison took me shopping for my thirteenth birthday. “You’re a teenager now! Oh I loved those years. Doll you’re gonna love high school!” She carried on about losing her virginity to the quarterback of the football team when she was fourteen; flashing the horny nerds in exchange for writing her English papers; sucking off her math teacher senior year so she’d pass. “God those were the days!” I pretended to love her stories even though they meant nothing to my menial middle school existence.

When I did finally reach high school Allison was there to send me off with hopeful regards. She dressed me up in pink shorts and a white floral tank top. I fought a round of tug-of-war with the shorts; pulled them up cause they sat too far below my belly button; pulled them down because they revealed my heinously knobby knees. I hated wearing anything not black, anything that wasn’t a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. But for her, I’d do anything. That morning Allison kissed me on the cheek, gave me a big squeeze, her lavender fingernails puncturing my bony shoulders. “Oh I just love you! You cute ‘lil thang!” She popped my ass as I stumbled out the door toward the screeching bus. That’s weird. She loves me.

“Richard! Oh my dear Lord, RICHARD!”

“Good God in Heaven, Allison, what is going on?”

Allison busted past me, one hand clutching the towel wrapped loosely around her damp body, the other pointing at me, inches from my face.

“She’s been staring at me, Richard! That mongrel daughter of yours! Watching me in the shower! What a filthy child you’ve raised! Touching herself, too!”

I got the worst beating of my life that night. And I never saw Allison again. The only love I ever knew was watching Richard and Allison hump and thrust in the bedroom every night. Their moaning kept me awake so I’d go see what all the fuss was about. Entranced by the sight of their naked bodies touching one another, touching themselves; that must be love.

“No, Dr. Lambert. No one.” I couldn’t tell her about Allison.

“No happy relationships at all? Other than Donnie?”

Other than Donnie.

“SHUT UP.” I push myself out of the sunken couch, reach for the floor lamp and throw it to the ground. I pace the claustrophobic little room; torn, bitten nails stab the palms inside my slight fists.

“Okay, okay. That’s enough for today.” Dr. Lambert stands and escorts me to the door. Her right hand reaches for the small of my back, an empathic gesture, but I jerk away and barge out of the office, down to the first floor, and consider throwing myself into the busy five o’clock traffic.

name yet to be determined

This is an excerpt from a short story I'm working on... Enjoy.

Everyday during the summer we skipped down to one of the docks off Lake Junaluska. Our favorite dock stretches only five or six feet from a grassy trail lined with magnolia trees and a single weeping willow perched smack in the center of them, directly in front of the half-rotten wooden boards. A cherry-stained gazebo sits a couple yards behind that woeful willow. It was our favorite spot. Charlie picked it out. He said the irony of the scene fit perfectly for summer days.  In the mornings the magnolias represent beauty and bright life beneath the beating sun. Their flowers reflect the penetrating light and color the undisturbed water with their soft pink hues. The lonely willow tree predicts the impending afternoon storms, its stringy green tendons flapping with the wind, lapping the rippling lake.

The sun shone relentlessly those warm midmornings as we dangled our legs off the pier, my toes tickling the chilly green water. Lake “J” swallowed Charlie’s ankles. He was several inches taller than me. He’d kick some water up onto my legs when I got too hot so I wouldn’t have to bend down to scoop some up myself, hold my balance just right so I didn’t tumble right in with the murk. I’d rub the water up from my knees, onto my sizzling thighs, and scoop up the rest of the trickling droplets to give my arms a drink. We’d spend an hour or so just sitting on that dock, catching up and talking like we didn’t see each other nearly every day, know the patterns of the freckles on our respective backs. Then the wind would slowly pick up, the sun cowering away from fresh ripples on the water’s surface. But it wasn’t cause for alarm until the willow tree lapped at the water, smacked it with his spindly tentacles. That’s how we knew to retreat toward the gazebo. He warned us every time with no more than a few minutes notice. We’d snatch up our towels, snacks, and sunscreen, whatever we’d brought with us that day, and hit the sanded benches in the gazebo just before the first sprinkles fell. Dark, threatening clouds covered the sky, laying shadows across the footbridge in the distance, a slow veil cast down from the mountains. Sometimes we’d wait out a quick shower. We’d see it start over Chambers Mountain to our right, sweep over the dam and make its way toward us. It’d linger ten, maybe fifteen minutes then trail off beyond Pilot Mountain on the other side of the lake. Sometimes the wind raged furiously, sending the rain pelting through the open sides of the gazebo. Thunder rocked above, shaking the ground. These storms would last at least an hour. And I wouldn’t have to go home for lunch. Charlie’d spread out our towels on the dirty floor and we’d lay there in silence, side by side, staring up at the elaborate woodwork of the ceiling. In later weeks he’d hold me. Eventually he kissed. Before the end of that summer we’d make love as long as the storm forced us together. The wind whipped the rain across our saturated limbs, mingling with sweat, surging an incomparable intensity through our veins. I longed for those days. Said a prayer every night: “Dear God, please bring an almighty storm tomorrow around noon. Amen.”

Maybe I should have prayed, “don’t ever let it end.” Now I wish I had. 

Mosquito Bites

This is an excerpt from an essay I'm working on.

My mom used to call them mosquito bites. Two little puncture wounds three-quarters of the way up my torso. When I was little I would run naked around the house before bath time. Mom would chase me, at first laughing for the sake of my giddy body galloping around the staircase, past the TV, down the hallway by the kitchen, picking up the pace as I darted past the waterfall erupting from the bathroom. After several minutes of chasing a reckless nude child she would stop, dig her heels into the dingy brown carpet, grasping her hips with her still sudsy hands and sigh loudly. I just giggled, every time. I’d scream when she’d reach for my squirming body and mom would say, “Shh! The neighbors will think something’s wrong!”

Like the time she tried to get a splinter out of my foot. We’d been at my grandparents’ boathouse on lake Fontana and in yet another stubborn rant I refused to wear flip-flops on the wooden deck, along with a bulky neon life jacket and greasy sunscreen. That ensued a whole different chase-scene.  On our return home I discovered a tiny wooden sliver on the bottom of my shriveled left foot. This time I was too scared to run. If I put too much pressure on the splinter it might just pop it’s way out the top of my foot! I didn’t know which was scarier, Mom coming at me with a needle and tweezers or a long sharp twig sprouting from my flesh. Once I was restrained on the couch, sobbing mercilessly, mom examined my wound. But every time she’d get close to my wiggling toes I’d howl louder than Vera Miles in Psycho. “Honey! The neighbors!” my mom shrieked. “They’ll be calling the cops to report a murder if you don’t hush!” I think the line that got me most was “Do you want to be taken away with social services? If they think I’m hurting you, your dad and I may never see you again!” A bit extreme, but it worked. I boo-hooed into the sofa pillow until the nasty surgery was complete. I sure had a set of lungs in that little body. The evening ended with another naked chase on the Davis-500. 

I had nothing to be ashamed of and if anyone had walked through the threshold of our front door, on the sidelines of my route, I’m sure I would have run right up and greeted them, bare-assed and grinning as if I’d just won a race. I was the princess in my own personal nudist colony. Whether my mother liked it or not. 

***

When I was in sixth grade I became aware of a freckle between my slightly larger but still quite tiny mosquito bites. A scowl crossed my face each time I saw it, bulging, staring at me from the valley of my chest. I’d inch my finger toward it, poke and prod the little brown dot, and then push it furiously into my body. Maybe if I squashed the thing it might just disappear. These days brought a more modest era to my youth. I started locking the door when I went in the bathroom, breaking one of my mother’s cardinal rules: No locking/slamming doors. I decided to hide the brown speck in all circumstances. First and foremost: bathing suits could not reveal the hideous birth defect. Thus all previously worn bikinis must be disposed of and new ones purchased. Mom couldn’t understand my proclamation. When I attempted to explain my predicament she simply cut me off. “Well let me see it then.” I cowered back in terror, stretching my t-shirt down to my pants pockets. No way. It was too embarrassing to reveal, didn’t she understand? That was the problem! She made the viable argument that no new bathing suits shall inherit my future without her first assessing the situation. It was May; I had no choice. She responded with something along the lines of, Oh that little thing! I smacked her hand away from my bare chest and huffed and puffed to the corner. It was a big deal to me! But so many things were for a pre-pubescent young girl. 

Bch2mnts*

A friend of mine and I were conversing about what it's like to live at the beach versus what it's like to live in the mountains. My friend being from the Jersey shore and myself a native of Western North Carolina, we both shared our love for our respective hometowns as well as an appreciation for the other location. She couldn't understand what I did with my time during the summer if I didn't live near a beach and boardwalk then confessed that she had never really spent any time in the "mountains" and if anything she'd merely driven through or past them. Her professor, the head of the English department, had asked his class, "Are you a beach or a mountain person? And you can't be both." My eyes widened at the thought that I couldn't equally love both. Because I do. How is it that one person can choose between two of the most beautiful natural phenomenas?

She left me with my thoughts that day and I couldn't stop reveling in the idea of CHOOSING my ever-faithful mountains or the majestic sea I longed for each summer. Having grown up hiking and camping on the Blue Ridge Parkway I have always loved the mountains for what they provide visually: a vast view of the blended red, green, orange, and yellow leaves in the fall and their fluttering descent to the soft, cool blades between my toes; glowing white peaks against gray cotton clouds; the full, plush blossoms of spring and the honeysuckle smell of summer. Home to the most radiant of sunsets, the rim of the parkway yields an incomparable front row seat to the romantic, nostalgic descent. My earliest memories include picnics in the clouds with my parents at dusk, impossibly close to the sinking star. Aesthetically pleasing, the mountains also provide a sense of love and emotion in the peaks and valleys of what is home. Driving west from my piedmont-located university evokes a longing sensation and a heavy foot as I weave through the traffic of I-40. My lead foot grows heavier as the peaks make their first appearance somewhere between Hickory and Morganton. Not only will I greet my family and dog in fewer than two hours but I'll also be reunited in the embrace of my mountains. Surrounded by their towering arms I simply look up and feel emotionally, mentally, and physically calm. The only other time I'm overcome with such powerful passion is when the ocean greets my toes on the edge of the world.

The smell of the salty sea alone brings me to a corner of my mind untouched by any other physical location. To relax with a novel or favorite magazine in the rays of the brightest star, serenaded by the rushing tide is to erase any adverse mentality. Its vastness is a relentless force of power and mystery unknown to any person. Endless and expansive the sun against the sea or the sound is inimitable in its own way. Bleeding into the horizon the red-orange stretches across the edge of the world.  It is this time of the evening, twilight, that is my favorite few moments to spend by the ocean. I'll stretch out on my towel in an effort to read but instead find myself lost in thought, hypnotized by the distant swells. I am at peace in the war-like howls of the ocean. And I never want to leave.

Filled with conflicting emotion about summer - my desire to spend three months in the mountains as well as my countdown to family beach week - I cannot simply choose a favorite. My time is never done on the early morning of day seven as my mom and I traditionally, woefully saunter to the sand and wave goodbye to the roaring whitecaps at sea. But with the commencement of each semester at school I drag my feet in the direction that leads away from the mountains. I can't help but wonder: am I loyal to the mountains because they've been my home for 22 years? Or do I love the ocean because I only see it once  or twice a year?

Are you a beach or a mountain person?

*A family friend's license plate reads: Bch2mnts. Born and raised in WNC she moved to the coast of NC for a while, only to return after 10 years. I thought it a fitting title.