Bits and pieces

Above the roofline, more stars than sky.

A loon calls across the lake.

Cicadas constant in the woods.

I pick cobwebs off my sneaker.

I try to fit in small spaces.

The shadows of leaves on my tent.

They call those web caterpillars. They don't hurt the trees.

My brother blows on the fire. Ash falls as slowly as snow.

"Sometimes knowing it exists is enough," my dad says, of a blue crab shell I leave on the beach.

Lydia's Island #9

Cole woke up in pain. The stitches on his chin had caught on the blanket. When he lifted his hand to free himself, he felt the blood pounding in the bruise across his right bicep. He tasted blood in his mouth, too, and a sharp pain on his tongue outdid the stitches. He got his arm out from under the blanket, got the blanket away from his chin, and touched his teeth. The front two were broken, jagged. Shit. He squinted in the bright light from the side of the blinds. As he started to sit up, he became aware of Myra’s oldest son, Dylan, who was playing underneath the card table like usual. Cole lay back, so he could pretend to be asleep, but Dylan had already noticed him. The kid turned on his butt to face him, a cross-legged little Yoda.
“What?” said Cole. Dylan was staring at him.
“Are you going to kill yourself?”
“What?”
“I heard Mom say you’re going to kill yourself.”
“Oh.”
Cole’s injuries competed for his attention. Most significant, at the moment, was a pounding in his head that made him feel like throwing up. He figured he’d better not try to move just yet.
“Hey, can you throw me that pack of cigarettes?” Cole asked. They were on the card table, just above Dylan’s head.
“Those are Mom’s.”
“I’ll get her another pack.”
Dylan hesitated.
“Come ON,” Cole said, too sharply. “Please?”
With a theatrical sigh, and still looking directly at Cole, Dylan reached above him, got the pack, and took out one cigarette. He scooted over to the couch on his knees and gave it to Cole. Myra smoked Mistys, cigarettes so thin you could barely feel them between your fingers. Cole hated that shit, but he remembered running out of Camels early on last night.
“Lighter?”
Dylan stood up and dug through his mother’s purse. What a grubby little kid, Cole thought. The elastic waist on Dylan’s jeans was stretched out almost all the way. He wore this light blue pajama top with tanks and trucks and flags on it, and for some reason he had tucked it in tight. His hair was pushed down on one side, like a guinea pig’s.
Dylan said, “Your breath stinks,” as he handed Cole the lighter.
Cole ignored him. The cigarette made him feel a bit more settled, although he knew the smell of smoke would flush Myra out of wherever she was.
“Your mom say that last night?” Cole asked, trying to be casual.
“What?”
“About me killing myself?”
“Yeah, when she got home from the jail.” Cole didn’t like the way Cole said the word jail, the way he spit it out like rotten food.
Cole looked at the ceiling and tried to remember what had happened. He went to Grundy’s with Skip. They made some sales and then bought a few beers. Cole didn’t remember anything else. He moved the blind aside to see if his truck was in the yard. It was. Good.
“Don’t you even remember?” Dylan’s socks weren’t pulled up all the way, so the long dirty toes of them lay limply on the floor.
“Why don’t you tell me.”
“You and Skip Lawler got into a fight. And then you got arrested for OUI, again.” He said the last word the same hard way.
“Your mom bailed me out?”
“Of course.” Dylan tried to roll his eyes, but wasn’t entirely successful. He crossed his pudgy arms.
“You better be careful, Dylan. You watch the way you talk to me.”
“What are you gonna do about it?”
“Just watch yourself. You don’t want to find out.”
It was an idle threat, and Dylan knew it. Cole had never hit the kids. He didn’t bother. So he was surprised to see tears in Dylan’s eyes. The kid hit his head on the card table as he stood up, and Cole felt a little sorry for him. Dylan pulled up his socks, then hitched up his pants in the back, a motion he must have copied from someone else, since his pants didn’t need hitching.
“I wish you’d just do it, if you’re going to,” Dylan said, his voice high. “We don’t need you.” He tried to kick one of his matchbox cars at the couch, but missed. Then he ran out of the room. Six years old and he already had to turn sideways to get through the narrow hallway.
Cole sighed. He felt under the couch cushion for one of his bottles of pills. He actually needed them. Maybe he could get the doctor to prescribe some Percocets or Vics. They weren’t too free with the Oxy right now. He heard a truck coming up the driveway, and was surprised and not exactly pleased to see his sister Miriam get out. Probably about to say exactly what Dylan had, but maybe more politely. Cole swallowed a pill without water and pretended to be asleep.

Lake Notes #1

I get down close to the frogs. They're quiet now, mid-afternoon. Tucked into the muck, nothing moving but eyes and throats. Water bugs skate on the surface, a seemingly random pattern. What are they looking for, in those tight circles? The wind sighs through high branches.

Erasure #2

Killing Time
4:53 PM

Erasure from the religious tract,
“Just for You: If You Don’t Have Time”

The revolution
we call one year.
And the rotation
One day.

This box we call time.

Jesus, timeless, tried
To understand this truth.

We leave
this box of time,
no longer bound by time,

the eternity-dweller
as timeless as
pleasure and glory.

Invent a
wonderfully complex
universe

as timeless as
that close relationship.

Seems like a predicament,
(our small minds)
a way to bring us back
glorious, amazing, awesome:
a human being.

What is time?
The place we make choices.

You do have time.
You have today.
Blessing and cursing.

sick day

Foreground: A candle. Heat rising.
Background: Beige building. Gray steam.

Lightning

lights the inside of the clouds over the basilica, behind the gold cross. I imagine a lightning bolt hitting the cross, how dramatic it would be. But I think I've seen a lightning rod sneaking up above it in the daylight. Ready to absorb the impact of an act of God. The lightning makes the clouds pink, the cotton-candy pink of last night's sunset. And everyone says sunset clouds look like cotton candy, but I can't think of a more perfect description. Clinically perfect. Clouds stretched pink, thin, fibrous, starting at the gold cross and widening over candy-blue sky. Tonight's lightning makes the clouds the same color, but just in places, on one side of a cloud and then another, a flash and you missed it. A breeze comes in, slowly, slightly, piercing the maddening hot, the hot that feels hotter because the heat wave broke briefly and then grew again. So humid it feels like I'm wrapped in the clouds, suffocated in them, even though I'm not that high, just on the tenth floor, level with the dome but not the cross. In my camping chair, I think of cold wind off the ocean, a beach fire, cinders and sparks rising. Morning, wrapped in an unzipped sleeping bag, a plastic thermos lid of hot chocolate, my burned tongue. Or of night coming in fast, the breeze turning, waves stronger, camp chair communion on the other side of the country, my North star home, west or east. Churches without crosses, without lightning rods.

hot

Swedish fish on the sidewalk, melted around the edges.