twas in this room

I'm sure there's some
breath left in there.
The house becomes
from wood steps worn bare
by tiny and large feet both,
in the come and go
that creates growth
and yet we know
the separation, too,
that plagues the place
when one, turning sixty-two
says "enough and there is no grace
in holding on to this abode.
Twas for my heart and she
alone in this room had sewed
and mended for me."

Untitled.

If you're going to
put me in something,
let it be a glove.
Even one that
doesn't fit
would be better than
this box.

solomon the wise

this is how you translate
and I am sorry
but you can not be bold enough
to change the word heard
into one accepted.

Not A Stranger

He walks like stillness.  quiet, tall and reaching.  dark and handsome.

with eyes that dart and seem uncomfortable.

strange and distant.

then calm.

like a wave that comes clambering in, 

then rests on it's way back out again.

Wind that blows hard, and then ceases to a gentle rustle.

Plaintive, then concealed.

Plaintive, then concealed.

Unwatched

Silly little lamb of broken legs
hair all short, matted.
Thank God for a Gentle Shepherd
who did sure tend to his Flock.

The Inman Phenom

It is so much

More than stone.

The road to this new place

was paved by you and made sacred

by the very people who pushed us

In to place.

They didn’t have a clue where we were going.

Neither did you.  Law school, I think it was.

But for me, who knew. 

So you stood there anyway and said,

“Where are you?  Where have you been?”

And I said, “nowhere, really.”

"So why don’t you come back then?"

And I did.  All because

You told me to.

The Hypothesis

I don't know that I'd have lived if I wasn't born after two boys who spent most of their time trying to kill me. Brothers are something special; they built me a thick suit of skin and set me into it before I ever even knew I'd need it. I certainly wouldn't have made it through the third grade if I hadn't already heard every way you could get at a person's fat from my brothers. When I thought my wings made me look like a fairy princess, my middle brother, Granseur, pointed out the rolls created by the elastic straps digging in to my baby girl arm pits.

“Ew, what is that? Pork chops?” he said.

Skinny girls can't touch put-downs like that.

“Hey! Look! It's See See my DICK!” the older kids would yell at recess. They thought they were clever, that maybe they were enlightening this young girl to the true meaning of her last name. They were wrong. I'd already heard it all, every interesting and seemingly harmless combination of names had already been paraded before me in my own backyard, in my bed room, in the hallway upstairs where we used to play. My Grandfather's name is Harold. He never went by Harry, but most people liked to tell me that he did.

I can never remember every particular event, and some I think I made up in hopes that tragedy would somehow find me and make my life more interesting. When I was six, Granseur took a nine iron to a chunk of quartz rock. He told me we would find crystals if we could break it open.

“See the lines of gold in there? That means there's diamonds inside!” I followed his long skinny fingers as they traced the lines of soft metal, squished between fat rows of milky white, hard rock.

“Diamonds?” I asked, with my little nose scrunched up in confusion. I thought diamonds came from Linville Caverns, or the Great Smokey Mountains, or somewhere else too far away to reach.

“Well, crystals, but it might as well be diamonds!” He said, his eyes settling somewhere between green and brown in a flash of excitement.

“We'll be rich! Now stand back!” he said. So I did. Or at least I thought I did. Or maybe I really did and Granseur's arms were just six feet long each. I can't be sure. What I do know for sure, is that he swung back, hard as he could, and following through to contact with the rock, made no impact on it's dense geological composition.

“DAMN!” he hollered.

Then I hollered. But not because the rock hadn't broken and released the crystals waiting inside. I hollered because I was on the ground. My cushy little bottom had plopped hard into the dirt. I did see stars. Then I saw red. Then I saw Momma running out of the house with a look of half despair, half outrage, her hands already carrying the first aid kit and a wet paper towel.

Granseur was too strong, even at a lanky eleven. His back swing had caught me right in the middle of the forehead, one of the few places I had no fat to cushion a blow. The impact of nine iron to skin to bone had ripped a hole in my head, and blood was pouring down my face, spilling down my shirt, and filling the spaces between my toes. It felt like he had run the club all the way through my head. I imagined chunks of my brain were splayed against the well house behind me, buried like old evidence in the layers of ivy. I could visualize the jagged pieces of bone scattered across the ground like arrowheads on Edisto Island. I knew I was covered in blood, my favorite Minnie Mouse sweatshirt, pink and gray, was definitely ruined.

“Shhhh, calm down baby, what happened?” Momma said, in those soothing dulcet tones only a mother can produce. She hunkered down on the ground in front of me and pressed the wet paper towel to my head. I was taking deeper breaths. The tears were slowing and I sniffed a little, just to see if I could. I could still think. I opened my mouth to tell her how Granseur was trying to kill me, but he beat me to it.

“I told her to get back but she just stood there!” he blurted out.

“No, I moved! I moved! I did too move!” I yelled, the tears pushing to the fronts of my eyes again.

“No you didn't! You just stood there! I told you to step back and you didn't move!”

“Then YOU should've looked!” Momma said, before I could begin my second round of protests. I smiled. It was Granseur's fault. Not mine.

“Am I going to die, Momma?” I asked, looking up at her.

“Nohooho,” she said, her laugh breaking the most serious of words to pieces. 

“You're going to be fine, baby girl, it's really not that bad. Just a scratch.” She lowered the paper towel for just a moment, and I saw there a quarter-sized splotch of red rust blood.

“But, but, I'm covered in blood!” I said, obviously confounded by the majority of white area on the paper towel. “I can't feel my face and he's ruined Minnie!” But when I grabbed my shirt and looked down to show her, there was nothing there. Not one drop of blood. I looked up at her again, surprised.

“See, you're fine,” she smiled, “just a scratch! Let's go inside and get you cleaned up. You can stand, come on. Granseur, be more aware of yourself when your sister's around. Please.”

“Yes ma'am,” he said, lowering his head.

“Tell me you're sorry!” I demanded.

“I'm sorry you didn't step back,” he said, like a total prick ass. Momma shot him a look, the one that I used to get when I would tell her that I didn't have a bedtime any more, and the same look she would give me no less than one hundred thousand times throughout the remainder of my years.

“I'm sorry I hit you, Cici,” he said. And then he smiled at me. And then he kissed my cheek and patted my back, gently. And then I smiled at him, and then I smiled up at Momma, who took my hand and guided it to my forehead, so I could hold my own paper towel against my own forehead, that I now realized was not the Grand Canyon. She took my other hand and led me back to the house.

Sitting on the kitchen counter, swinging my legs and sucking happily on an orange freeze-pop, I had already forgotten about the pain in my head when my oldest, wisest brother came down from his sanctuary upstairs.

“Hey tickle toes, what's happening?” he said.

“Granseur was trying to kill me so I wouldn't get rich off the crystals,” I told him. Momma laughed a little as she dabbed Neosporin onto the cut on my forehead. She looked right in my eyes, somehow splitting her gaze so that part fell on my body, and part dipped into my soul.

“Your brother was not trying to kill you, Cici,” she said. “He loves you.” I believed her. She picked out the biggest band aid she could find in the old first aid tin and stuck it square in the center of my forehead.

“There, all better!” she said, and with a kiss to the wound and a pat on the knee, she turned and left the room to return to whatever activity she had left when profanity and cries had called her outdoors.

Jonathan moved in closer to me and put both hands on my knees and kissed my forehead, right where Momma had. Then he just stood there, looking at me for a moment.

“I believe you,” he said, playfulness in his gaze.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“I believe Granseur was trying to kill you,” he said. “No, actually, I know he was trying to kill you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he tried to kill me,” Jonathan said. I searched his eyes for silliness, but it was all gone. He must have been telling the truth! I turned around to look out the kitchen window, out over the yard to the well house where Granseur was still swinging away in disdain at the quartz rock that could not, would not, be broken open. My scrupulous gaze narrowed in on him. His face was turning red. He was growing angry and frustrated. I could almost sense the tension from my safe place upon the counter.

“Okay,” I said, “tell me when he tried to kill you.”

“Are you sure you want to know?” Jonathan asked me. I recognize now that this was a tease, his way of working me to where I just had to hear the story, working me to where I would have to believe him. I weighed the consequences of knowledge and ignorance in my little six year old brain. If he told me how Granseur tried to kill him, I no doubt would be afraid. If he didn't tell me, I'd always wonder. Knowing was better than wondering, I decided.

“Tell me.” I said, turning back to Jonathan with the most serious look I could muster.

“All right,” he said, “I'll tell you.”

When Jonathan was seven or eight, and Granseur was three or four, they were after each other every moment of every day. They would push, shove, pull, grab, scratch, bite and roll around with each other constantly in hopes that one would get sent to their room and rid themselves of the other's presence for a while. They hated each other, Jonathan assured me. See, Jonathan was born first. He was the perfect, sweet, dark little boy child, first heir to the Dick throne, and loved immensely by both of our doting parents. Then Granseur was born, and everything changed. No longer was Jonathan the center of attention. No longer was he the perfect child of mother and father. Now he was part of a perfect pair of boys. And that was bullshit. Something had to be done to get this boy out of their good graces! He would scatter Granseur's toys about the upstairs hallway. He would spill Granseur's breakfast all into his lap and onto the floor. He would go into Granseur's room at night and watch him sleeping, allowing Momma and Daddy to catch a glimpse of a sweet older brother's watchful eye, then the second they left the room, he'd grab both of Granseur's legs and pull them between the crib rails, ramming his crotch over and over and over again. But he never tried to kill Granseur. He thought it was all fun and games. He thought Granseur thought it was all fun and games, until one day, little Granseur decided to kill Jonathan.

Jonathan was playing Lincoln Logs, peacefully and quietly, at the bottom of the stairs. Granseur spotted him there from the balcony at the top of the steps. He crept silently to his bedroom and grabbed the biggest, heaviest Tonka Dump Truck he could find. He proceeded quietly to the landing in the turn of the steps. He counted. Eleven steps. He eyed Jonathan's position, two feet from the steps. He calculated angles, right triangles, and hopped just once, quietly, to test the springiness of the wood. Lifting the truck high in the air, and letting it drop to his waist three times, he heaved it up one final time, steadied his eye on the back of Jonathan's head, and pitched the truck as hard as his three year old arms could, straight down at his big brother. The truck crashed into the second step from the bottom, and in a perfect arch, bounced from the step right into the back of Jonathan's skull. Jonathan fell forward, wailed, and Granseur sat down right there at the top of the steps, folded his legs under him, and smiled. Momma came running, ready with wet paper towels and the first aid tin. When she sat Jonathan back up, Granseur's little boy smile faded, and he returned to his room, grumbling as Momma shouted up at him.

“Be careful, honey! You dropped your truck!”

Jonathan told me he heard Granseur mumble something as he retreated to his room, defeated by the human body's ability to withstand brute force.

“'Almost,' I heard him say. He was trying to kill me, once and for all!” Jonathan said.

“Gosh!” It was all I could say.

“But, look,” he said, and turned around and parted his hair in the back so I could see the smooth, mounded skin where no hair would grow.

“I've got a scar there, and that skin is so thick, that if anything ever hits me there again, no matter how hard, it wont be able to break through!” he said, turning back around to flash his grin at me. For a moment I thought I saw green in his eyes, just like Granseur's and just like Momma's. But when I looked closer, they were just plain brown. Like mine.

“So Granseur's trying to kill us, then.” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, “but that's a good thing. If he wasn't trying to kill us, then we would know he didn't really like us that much.” I thought that was ridiculous.

A scream from outside broke my train of thought, and Jonathan looked over my shoulder, back out the window at Granseur in the yard with his nine iron and that quartz rock.

“He's done it!” he proclaimed, and lifted me off the counter with a grunt and set me on my feet on the kitchen floor.

“Come on, let's go see some quartz crystals,” he said, holding out his hand for me to take. I hesitated a moment, frightened still by the story I had just heard. What if we went out there and it was all a clever ploy? What if we got outside and Granseur took the nine iron to both of our heads?

“It's okay, tickle toes,” he said. “He wont try to kill you any more. He knows your head wont bust now.”

Taking his hand and walking back out into the yard, I spotted Granseur as he called to us excitedly.

“We're all going to be rich! Look! Just look!” And there, on the ground was the quartz rock, busted open revealing dozens of clear crystals jutting out from the center.

“I'll buy you a new head, Cici!” he said. I smiled at him as he took the biggest whole crystal and put it into my palm, closing my hand around the little treasure. He held my hand there for a moment, then kissed my fat little fingers before letting go to run around the yard whooping and hollering.

“See, I told you.” Jonathan said. Then we both joined in the celebration along with Granseur, shouting and pumping our arms into the air in communal ecstacy.