almost up against yet leaning away
from the pine tree that is not inside a
half moon of lawn that peeks but does not
grin, it's color refusing to be named. angel
boy toddles free from maternal hands across
the white striped crosswalk, snug inside
his lime green sweater, adorned with
marshmallow chicadees. blossoming in
circles, the blooming has us surrounded,
but someone forgot to tell the petulant sky,
still sulking above. i opened my door to
the aftermath of its early morning tantrum.
a bald head appears in the window, cradled
in the pine tree's branches. a pink fist precisely
strokes, with a barber's professional care,
a tender wing of ash. jacket zipped, i exit
with arms raised into a torrent of sad.
late sunday afternoon on the first hot day of the year and they were hiding beneath fashionably huge hats that eclipsed themselves from themselves. a couple of young women with eyelashes that feathered the air as i approached. they appraised me with quick feline glances that flicked their dismissal of me as a possibility for anything before i had even arrived. they might have been shopping, they were probably shopping as they strolled up the little stream of pavement laid in between two yards, deeply shrubbed on both sides with trees from the yards, clasping their arms, forming a tunnel of foliage. it's always awkward passing strangers there; such a lovely place to get mugged. one of them had red hair spitting out from under the hat and perfect vanilla pudding skin, which made me feel suddenly like a vampire as i realizedd that i'd never noticed skin before my own skin changed some time ago, roughened, peeling & flaking. marred, i don't remember the skin i used to have. i wish i could try it on, just to feel what i've lost, to feel what i used to feel with the mind i now have. do vampires ever develop a taste for certain bloods? do they become vintage blood connoisseurs? does a nurtured longing for what you don't have cultivate an exquisite taste for what you could? her mouth was an exquisite gash of black cherry, her lips a neat wound that stabbed me in the shade as i passed beneath the buddingtrees. what is it about spring that insists on being frilly? i don't feel frilly, but i don't have a body like an open window that the sunshine blows through, billowing the dainty curtains on a warm vanilla cake of a spring day pretending to be summer. i was a sorry penguin toddling alone toward the supermarket, looking for icecream. the young women were perfumed in the cloud of their own conversation, oblivious as a bubble floating past me from some other land that i could lean toward without touching, and peer into and hear something that might be revealing. in such moments i feel like angel tasked to observe humanity even when i feel like i'm the one fully here and not visiting like them, taking notes to share with the other angels, who are clearly bored of this. when do we get to be the one who tastes the color of flesh? i was too wounded back when it was my turn, long long ago. will it never come again? does listening drain the angel too perfectly, so that he's only good for the wind to whistle through? a container to carry longing? indefinitely empty enough to receive is a lousy job with benefits. just because you get a glimpse doesn't mean it's free, doesn't mean it means anything, but it might. just open a book randomly if you can, and not to the middle, and jab your finger at the page. could you extrapolate the story from there? how often are we at such a place that could describe who we are? could you put your finger on it? how often do we arrive with an accurate backstory and a thread firmly in grasp that we can walk forward with? how often do we expose our true mind with the most flippant thing that we could possibly say? never knowing what angels lurk in the brush listening with acne-scarred hearts? how such tender lips could so thoroughly betray such a lovely disguise?
he looks like a monk doing his rounds all wrapped up in a bold blue blanket, as clean and fresh as he wasn't. i saw him methodically marching downtown, wearing flip flops in fifty degrees, as if he had just escaped his rescue. his cherubic face exploded in bursts of grimace as he whipped his head forward & back with every other step, as if fly casting his nightmares against the wall of his skull, concussing the instrument of pain. the incongruity of his presence amid the canyons of smooth surfaces that do not permit, mugged my eyes behind the window where i sit drinking tea. he stops at the corner and approaches a middle-aged woman with a huge lions-mane of auburn hair, a classy corporate stripper in knee-high black leather boots & stiletto heels, second skin clothing merchandising the curves. there is so much that is false about her i don't even know where she actually begins, clinging desperately to a hand-me-down beauty that is failing her like a plastic toy from walmart. the disturbed blue blanketed man approaches and appears to compliment her on how great she looks and she smiles back, a real smile, as real as this woman gets, the bright gleam of her too white teeth, stained from the abuse of dentists, strobes the overcast morning. and then the light changes, and they go their separate ways. she continues her stroll as he continues to pace his nightmare.
