Bright jade jack pines strike against sky, surround the lake in full, a catch to keep the magic in. Whiskey Jacks perch, invisible. Their whistles and chirrups bounce between branches, stir the air as a paddle stirs water, ripples peeling from the blade with every dip.
Paddle until dark, circle until your arms burn and shoulders ache, until the lake trout stop their trick flips and the sky opens. Night turns it transparent, fades the sky in slow gradient, bright blue soaking into black like wet spill into rag. It lets the light through, magnetic pinpoints of flood that sew lake and sky close, the gap between pressed thin, every prick and sparkle reflected, carried on the ripples of your blood stream, spinning with the cells, a golden match, stars so thick they could be water. …
We are turtles. That is correct. We have grown shells firm and round and we know how to use them. If you wait, we will stretch our orange-speckled necks, show you the strength of our legs. If you wait, we will run.
You are not elephants. That is correct. Although you have their eyes, each of you, deep and seeing. Your fingers give you away, and the many small connections in your feet. You touch the earth lightly, flex to what’s beneath.
They are horses. That is correct. Everything lithe and sure that we dreamed we could be but always woke before seeing. We—the almost-elephants and the turtles— watch breathless: they herd and flow, rolling the earth’s orbit as they pass. In the dust and silence they leave behind
we unfold our legs and necks, gather ourselves into a circle and dance, letting our bodies sway
with the things we’ve seen, the things we believe.…
All the boys of my class thought Miss Eliza beautiful and mysterious. Like an American film actress, she had pale skin and wore skirts or jeans. The other teachers wore saris or dresses more concealing than the nun headmistress’s black blankets. She was also kindhearted. For the two slum kids in class, she sometimes brought food. And before going home, she gave everyone a hug.
Our house is not big. I used to like the closeness of it all. Each day I leave to walk the quiet streets of our neighborhood. Sirens are the most common sound these days. I haven’t been keeping count but I easily hear them twice as often as before. Now is the time of year when I can usually hear kids squealing from many yards and have to remind myself that this is the noise children make when they play but also when they’re in trouble. It always makes me uneasy. I think I prefer that unease to this particular quiet. Sometimes I see people and dogs stare at me from their windows. I am not breaking the rules. I don’t have a dog, one of the legitimate reasons people have to leave their houses; a necessity as defined by the city.…
a lot of what i became was the moon: a reflection of someone else’s light, the glow in the dark, masked behind the bramble— it’s like discovering my fabric is made of the night sky and that it can never change that the cape i use to float in the wind is made of the stars and constellations but that everyone is asleep and indoors when it takes hover but if the evening could transform to what image does it become am i even myself if i am not a satellite “we wouldn’t see the meteor showers or the fireworks if not for the dark” we wouldn’t know gleam if not for gloom then what is the moon for what is the moon for what is the moon
After Gabriel García Márquez died, I picked up my copy of Love in the Time of Cholera – or rather your copy, since your name is still written on the first page. For years, the book’s been a permanent fixture on my shelf; until yesterday, I forgot how it ever appeared.
You may not remember, but you gave me the book for my birthday, a day I hated and which I still hate, even though I have, in my old age, resigned myself to the fact that birthdays are like funerals – events which the guests require but which the person of honour would be just as happy to avoid. I never liked to talk about my birthday but somehow you got it out of me, which was a talent you had.…