|
Creative Writing from
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Letting In
Lisa Voltolina
PART ONE
There's nothing concrete in this world to hold on to.
I
Angela
She sat awake last night. The sky was thick, a spill of paint, encompassing everything. The air smelled stale and the fumes from her last cigarette hung about her like a thick, gray curtain. Shielded from the night sky, she watched the stars fight the losing battle against daybreak from behind a drape of Virginia Slims.
It's now nearly morning and she still hasn't slept. Her eyelids are heavy; her skull can barely contain the thousands of words clogging her mind. The notebook is spread open on her lap, not one line of ink decorating it. It's been too many hours of waiting and she's had nothing to think about except him.
He called from the Royal Cliffs on his way back from work. The din of unfamiliar voices and the clatter of plates and glasses against the table reached a crescendo as he mumbled a quick “Honey, I'm going to be late, I'm at the diner” into the phone. And then silence. No goodbye, just the disconnected line, severing them from one another.
It's dark out on the deck and she imagines the universe illuminated only by the glow of the faceplate of her cell phone. She thinks about the summer she spent on the Jersey coast with her sister and Sean, her nephew. He ran along the piers for hours catching fireflies in an empty lunch sack. He rolled the bag closed and didn't punch any air holes.
“They're all going to die if you don't give them air,” she told him, flicking a lighter to life.
“They don't need air, they're flying light bulbs.” Sean explained.
He was ten and she didn't push the matter with him. She sat back on the front porch with her sister and they watched him run up and down the pier and along the empty street until it was time for bed. Sean set the bag on his nightstand and sank into the folds of blankets.
He woke the next morning to a bag of dead fireflies.
She pulls a beach towel around her shoulders and hugs it close to her chest. The fabric has pulled in some places; it's coarse and itchy against her bare skin. If she leaves it on too long she's bound to get a rash. The summer air dries her skin and the rough material makes it peel. It's an old beach towel; the words “aloha” stitched in cursive across the front. Hello and goodbye, goodbye and hello: a summation of every life that ever ended.
When she thinks about their marriage, she sees a blanket folded in the pantry closet. She unfolds it, wanting to wrap herself in its warmth, but it's no use. She's worn him thin. He has been bitten through by time; he reeks of mothballs. But it does her no good to think of him that way. He is intangible; he is one of the hundreds of things in her life that repeatedly slips through her arms.
II
Tim
“You'll come around,” Tim says. “I can feel it.”
He gives Jack a quick wink as if punctuating some joke that's only funny to him. He sits comfortably considering what's happened. He's calm, slopping overcooked lasagna into his mouth, sopping up the chunky meat sauce with the roll. The sauce has dripped over the side of his plate, staining the paper placemat beneath it. A ring of oil surrounds the glob of tomato. Jack won't look at it. He has indigestion.
Jack looks at Tim and rubs his wrist against his unshaven chin. The bristles are rough and he takes a mental note to shave before he gets to the summerhouse. Tim smiles at him over his glass. Jack lifts his beer mug and averts his eyes.
“It's good lasagna. Want to try?”
Tim motions to him with his fork and he instinctively pulls back. Jack arches his back and scratches his paunch.
“I'm going to go take a piss.”
The bathroom is wrecked, which is odd since the janitor's mop and bucket lean against the wall. A man stands at the urinal. He nods as Jack nears him, says something generic about the game. Jack hates talking while urinating so he shuts himself into a stall. The toilets haven't been flushed and globs of toilet paper stick to the pipe openings and he pisses against the base of the toilet. He hangs around a few minutes, not wanting to go back to the dinner table, not wanting to face Tim and the ridiculous things he has to say.
But he has to go back and he has to hear. There's just no choosing in some things.
Tim grins as Jack squeezes back into the booth.
“I kind of thought you were going to make a break for it,” he laughs. Part of him is serious, though.
“No.”
Jack feels he should say more but instead waves the waiter over. He's a greasy man, with slick, black hair and a lean body. He looks as if he's wearing women's pants. Black Levis. Tapered legs. The kind that Angela used to wear, back when they still lived together.
Jack catches his attention and he slithers over to the table, a laminated menu tucked under his arm. His eyes are shiny. He's been laughing – and most likely at their expense.
Jack orders the cheese steak. He doesn't really want it but he knows that if he doesn't have something in his mouth, he'll be expected to speak. He feels physically sick. He wipes his mouth with a paper napkin and tosses it into the empty salad bowl. His stomach churns and he pounds lightly on his chest to hold back a belch.
“I'm running too late to be ordering a cheese steak,” Jack thinks to himself. Angela is waiting. He moves to climb out of the booth and his feet brush quickly over Tim's. He looks up and smiles at Jack coyly.
The Royal Cliffs is emptying out. Even the waiters are ready to go home; they're hanging up their aprons behind the register, they're shoving after-dinner mints into their coat pockets. Tim's chewing his dinner roll quickly; his moustache furrows up and down. He's squirrel-like, a yard rodent. The sounds of his chewing makes Jack cringe.
The waiter glides by their table, slips the bill towards Tim and keeps walking. It's all one swift movement, as if he knows better than to hang around at their table. The tension couldn't be cut with a power saw. Jack looks over Tim's shoulder towards the waiters clumped at the main entrance. They're looking back at him and grinning.
Tim's rodent eyes narrow as he pushes the bill towards Jack. His fingers are thin and womanish. His watch dangles on his wishbone wrist. Bile rises in Jack's throat. Tim taps the paper with his forefinger. “Your treat,” he says.
“Jesus Christ! This isn't a date you faggot!”
Tim lays his fork on the side of his dish, a limp strand of pasta still caught in its teeth. His eyes stay cool, his eyebrows don't knot.
“Fuck you,” he replies. “Fuck you, man. This is what I get for telling you the truth.”
Jack scrambles for his jacket and slides his arms through the sleeves. His elbow knocks into the ketchup bottle and it hits the carpeted floor with a dull thud. The cap comes loose and the thick paste globs on the beige carpet. His feet swing out of the booth and his body follows after it. But Tim keeps talking.
“You act as if what I did was easy!” he says.
It's raining and Jack doesn't want to be a mess when Angela opens the door. He can see her face, her dark eyes and tangles of black hair. The air is humid at the beach house and he can see it curling up around her head like a halo. He can almost smell the cigarettes on her skin.
Tim grabs him by the arm. His moustache twitches as he says thickly:
“You needed to know.”
Jack leans in close to Tim's face, pulling his arm away from him simultaneously. His hand is warm and wet. The patches of hair on his knuckles are coarse. It contrasts oddly with his fragile hands. Tomato sauce lingers in his breath and crumbs are caught in his squirrel moustache.
“Get this straight. I don't love you. So just give it up!”
Tim shakes his head and lifts his fork. The pasta hangs from the teeth and he cranes his head to slurp it up before speaking.
“You just don't get it,” he sighs. “The least you could do is pay for dinner after breaking my heart.”
IV
The Mother
The sky hangs gray over the street and the clouds are pregnant, ready to break over the small New England street. Seagulls squawk and swoop towards the shoreline, hungrily picking up surfaced crabs with their beaks. Sean's t-shirt is pulled by the wind and he holds his arms out to keep his balance. He moves slowly, trying to keep his fingers wrapped around a loaf of soggy bread. The outdoors smells like ice. The wind whistles and the wind chimes on the porch clink melodically. He squats at the edge of the pier and drops each soggy lump into the bay.
The mother watches him from the front bench. The porch light casts dancing shadows on her open book. She'd like to think she can't read because her mind is busy with other things, but she'd be lying. Everything is empty, she is a telescope pointed at the brightest star on the blank canvas of night sky, but the cap is snapped over her eye. She sees her son. She sees him and she knows deep within her that this is the child she has reared, he is her creation and she loves him. But he's so far away, so far away. She keeps wrenching him closer but he's always so far away.
Sean drops the bread and the mother is distracted by the low honks of the ducks. They sound like choked bugles, such an ugly sound. They remind her of his father and the way he'd practice his trumpet in the living room on Sunday mornings. They'd wake up to the “honk hunk honk” of his brass second throat. She didn't hate the sound back then. But when she hears the ducks, she can only think about the way every Sunday has been so quiet since he left. With each honk, another precious moment ends. One has only so many precious moments before they all run out. And they run out much, much too quickly.
She folds the corner of the page and shut the covers as a wave of panic washes over her belly.
“Please, God. Please let him stay young and with me forever.”
But the sky opens up; the rain splatters against the rotting wood. She's forced to call him back to the house.
She removes his soggy shirt and shorts and dresses him in thick pajamas. The pajama pants don't fit properly. The cuffs hang inches above his ankles; he'll have to wear socks to bed and then his feet will sweat and he will be uncomfortable.
“Don't worry, mam,” he says. It'll be warm under all these blankets and my feet will be fine.”
“You better wear the socks.”
“No, mam, I don't need them.”
“Just put them on to make me happy. And then I'll tell you a story and things will be the same as last time we were here. That'll be nice, Sean, won't it?
But it isn't nice.
“I've got to brush my teeth,” he says. They go into the bathroom and the mother sits on the toilet while he puts Colgate on his brush. He spits into the sink, a string of saliva hangs from his bottom lip onto the countertop and she moves to wipe his mouth. Sean backs up and shoves the toothbrush back into his mouth.
“I got it, mam,” he says through the suds.
He has gotten so much taller. Not a little boy any more. He is able to brush his teeth without standing on the footstool in front of the mirror. He just stands flat on the floor, all grown up, brushing his teeth like the man he is. The wood floor must be cold on his bare feet. The mother gets up from the toilet and tells him his teeth are clean enough for a bedtime story now.
They sit in the living room. The lights aren't too bright and the snow falls past the windows. The pier will be coated in ice in the morning so the ducks will have to go hungry. Sean sits on the armchair farthest from his mother and tucks his long legs underneath him. Cold feet. Wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, the mother settles into the couch and opens the book.
She reads but Sean is not listening. He's distracted by the clinking wind chimes and the sound of the wind howling past the house. The windowpanes creak on their hinges. The house seems to settle into the cold, bracing itself against the coming storm. She lays the book down.
“What are you thinking, Sean?”
“I was thinking that I'd like to go where it's warm.”
The mother sits next to him on the chair and musses his hair with a towel.
“You're never going to leave me, right Sean? You're going to stay at home with me and feed the ducks and sleep in on Sundays until we both get very old.”
He yawns.
“Mam, I think it's time for bed.”
He slides off the chair and she stays behind, listening to his feet pad along the hallway. The toilet flushes and the tap sprays for a few moments. The door to his bedroom opens and closes. It is quiet. The wind chimes on the front porch send chills down her spine. The sound is no longer melodic, just chips clattering against one another. She gets up, folds the blanket. She runs her hand along the table, looking for the book, but it seems she's left it outside. The pages are probably soaked through by now. They'll swell by morning so they won't fit between the covers.
She thinks of Sean, sleeping barefoot in his tiny bedroom. She'll tuck him in so she'll remember what it's like when he won't let her anymore.
The room is dark when she opens the door. His breathing is rhythmic and she sits at the foot of the bed, watching his belly rise and fall. She touches Sean's chest to feel his heart beat; he flinches. She has been detached from him, from the house, from the storm, from him, from him. Everything is different. He's inches taller, not the same son.
He's only going to grow up and leave her. And the house will eventually be sold; a single mother doesn't need a house at the bay when her only son leaves for college. She doesn't like feeding the ducks; their throaty honks hurt her head, they remind her of too many ended things. Her only comfort is the stagnant water. It's always the same when everything else is always different and it's comforting just to look at it. She needs it to remind her that not everything is going away.
The mother looks back at her sleeping son. He's so much taller; his feet touch the end of the bed. She's not going to need this house much longer. She'll never come outside when Sean leaves and then she'll have to sell it.
She pushes her feet into slippers, grabs the keys and exits the house. The rain has thickened the dirt road in front of the house. Her footsteps sink into the earth – the earth is pulling her back home. She'd like to lay in it, cover herself with mud and finally feel what it's like to be part of the living world again.
She walks to the pier, rain soaking her hair. She makes her way to the edge and gazes out into the road opposite the bay. It's a late night and there's no one out there with her except a rust colored station wagon. She forces herself to look into the water; pieces of bread still float nearby. She watches them slowly break apart in the water and cries as the larger globs sink into the depths like all the precious moments she's come to hoard so eagerly.
The headlights of the station wagon click on across the bay as it all comes clear.
V
Anthony's Wife
It didn't hit her until the body had been dumped.
They had driven to the end of Windsor Drive, her and Anthony, and delivered the baby. It exploded out of her in a bloody mess and he cursed up and down because of the spoiled upholstery. Even while he wrapped the child in his denim jacket, she couldn't tear her eyes away from the streaks of red across the seat. Anthony held up the baby; it screeched and howled like an alien and she looked at it, lathered in her blood. This alien came from her insides. It doesn't look a damn thing like her husband.
“Fucking shit,” he says, realizing the mess she's made of his truck.
He folds the baby in his jacket; it looks like an overstuffed mailbag, a sack of potatoes. She lies there. The blood has soaked through her nightgown and if she slides over she'll only make a bigger mess. He puts the jacket and the alien into the trunk, the umbilical cord dangling from the folds like a short tentacle. The blood drips from it into the trunk. She apologizes. She says, “I'm sorry, baby, I'm sorry!” And Anthony only grunts and wipes his bloody hands on his jeans. The stain sticks out like a dying star streaking across the night sky. She stares at the mark and keeps apologizing.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.”
Those are the only words coming and they don't fix anything.
Anthony won't do it. He keeps shaking his head, no, no, no. He leans over the driver's seat and she sits forward, wanting to feel his breath on her face. “It's your fucking mess,” he says. “You take care of it.”
The orange bristles on his unshaven chin, the way his hair tips forward on his forehead into a widow's peak: those are the only things that she'll remember of tonight. He's got thick arms, a thick neck. He tries to look calm, but the tendons are thick in his arms, exposed roots. His fingers are strong and he holds her behind the neck.
“Baby, I've missed you,” she says.
But he shushes her and shakes his head, no, no, no. It's too late for apologies.
She looks out the car window, splattered with raindrops, and gazes into a black sky. There is no starlight. Everything is dead.
The baby makes gasping noises from the trunk. Anthony had left it lying near the spare tire. And he keeps shaking his head, wringing his hands, no, no, no. She struggles to sit up and leans her back against the door. The door handle presses into her back.
“Baby,” she says, “I can't do it.”
Anthony puts his hand on her knee and squeezes until it hurts. “It's your fucking baby.” The door handle hurts, his hand on her knee hurts, everything hurts and she knows she has to end it.
VI
Angela
They had sat in the diner; he ordered a cheese steak and picked out the onions with a knife while he talked. The sound of his voice slid in and out of the bustle of the diner and she tried not to lose track of what he was saying. He talked about God, about politics, everything but their marriage. She played with the napkins, folding them into Geisha Girl fans, into Chinese swans and mystery boxes.
She had a coffee. It was bitter and she didn't put cream or sugar in it. She liked the sting on her tongue. He leaned across the table and took her hands in his. He gazed into her face over the thick frames of his glasses. She ran her tongue over her teeth, suddenly aware of coffee stains and hoped that he would finally kiss her. But all he did was talk.
“Tell me something good, something important,” she said.
He pushed the onions to one side of the plate and picked up the cheese-steak. His lips shone with grease and he fumbled for words.
“I left your Valentine's gift with your sister and Sean. I didn't think I should give it to you in person, considering.”
She told him it hardly mattered anymore; they were moving on in their marriage and that stuff shouldn't be dredged up. She didn't mean it, though. She would have liked one card addressed to her. She wanted to see her name in his handwriting. “Angela” in chicken scratch, in running ink.
“I'll bring it with me when I visit in August.” He motioned the waitress to the table. “We'd like the check, please.”
And August came and he wasn't there. He didn't come bearing gifts, or cards, or even that lopsided grin she's learned to love so much. She passes the hours watching the seagulls perch on the pillars by the bay, reading books, watching the stars burn out.
She only brought her journal down there with her; a part of her expected him to show up when he promised and she wanted to write him down so she could save it for when he leaves again. She unfolded the covers and stared into the words.
I want to write you something beautiful
I want the words to bloom like a garden rose
Full and wet
I want you to be my garden.
But I'm always at a loss the moment I see your face
The sentences snap at the stem
The sentiment withers, tinges the leaves brown
The sentences sprawled out before her and the words bled into each other. The beach house was quiet. It was never meant to be lived in by one person.
Her fingers knot around the pen and she knows it's time to stop. She looks back at the lines she's scribbled and rips the pages out. The edges fuzz from where she's torn them from the spiral bound notebook and she struggles to pull the left over pieces from the metal coil.
The journal has thinned from all the pages she has torn out. She hasn't one word worth saving. She needs him to distract her from her inadequacy. She checks her watch. Her eyes blur out her surroundings as she focuses in on the numbers clicking away. “Alone time” feels like an eternity. She hates him for saying he needed space.
As if he would ever understand how awful that space is once he gets it! Once it's his and he is never able to pass it on to anyone else! But he doesn't understand. He didn't see the sky last night. He doesn't know how it spread out before her like a giant spill of tar, how the stars sank into the muck. She watched them drop out of the sky until it was blank, as empty and blank as her heart.
Angela glances again at her watch, the movements of the hands seeming to reveal a message he's tossing out to her. She settles back into the lounge chair letting it sink in until she's fat and full. The numbers glow as dusk falls and she hears him speaking through the face. “I'm.” Click. “Not.” Click. “Coming.” Click. “Back.”
PART TWO
It's been a time since
You stayed in my bed. But still
I remember you.
I
Anthony's Wife
“Get out of the car.”
Anthony climbs out of the driver's seat and presses his face against the window nearest her feet. His breath clouds the glass, blurs out his face. He yanks the door handle and she pulls her feet away from him.
“I can't do it baby I can't,” she tells him.
The door opens and he forces himself towards her, grabbing for her legs. His fingers are short and barely make it around her swollen ankles. He is wet with rain and flakes of snow are catching in his hair. The blood on the seat cushions smears onto his knuckles. Sweat collects on his forehead, his hair line glistens in the light of the streetlamp.
“Get out of the car,” he says again.
She lunges forward pushing off his hands. He backs away from the car and she pulls the door shut, slamming her open palm on the door lock.
His fists rain down on the window. He's screaming, telling her to get out, to fix what she did. The car rocks as he pounds on the door and she wraps her arms around her legs, leans her face into her knees. The nightgown is torn and the blood has stiffened the fabric, staining it bright red. It smells salty and wet.
Anthony suddenly stops banging and leans his forehead against the fogged window; a streak of sweat appears on the glass. His skin looks grey, his orange hair bleeds into the black sky.
“Please,” he says, “Just get out of the car.”
She pulls up the door lock and Anthony opens the door nearest her feet. He takes her by the hands and pulls her onto the gravel. Her knees shake but he leaves her standing there and opens the trunk. The air smells like the bay water. She stares out across the bay into the gap toothed faces of the houses. The lights are out in all of them except one. A single porch light stays lit.
“I'm sorry,” she whispers to the light. “I'm sorry you have to see this.”
Snow mixes with the rain, forming small, white clumps on the wooden pillars, on the bench, on the rusted bike rack. They kneel on the pier, the stink of the water rising to their nostrils. She buries her face in her coat sleeve and coughs. The smell makes her gag.
Snowflakes collect around their heads and Anthony swats them away from his face with one arm, tucking the baby in the cradle of his other arm like a football.
“Let's get this shit over with,” Anthony says, laying the baby on the rotting planks of wood. She won't look at it.
“I can't, baby, I'm sorry,” she says. She pushes it away.
Anthony turns to her and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. Even though it's cold, he's still sweating. The blood from his knuckles smears leaving a red arch on his gray skin. A falling star crashing through the empty sky.
She listens to its soft croaks and feels like she might be sick.
“You do it baby please.”
But he just shakes his head, no, no, no.
She takes it out of the folds of Anthony's jacket; it stinks like piss and thick blood. She stares at its naked body, legs and arms flailing, blue-green skin. The eyes are squeezed shut, the lids wet and filmy. She doesn't want to touch it.
“Baby please,” she starts. He puts a finger to her lips.
“Shh,” he says.
She looks across the water at the houses. A woman runs into her house, the screen door flapping on its hinge behind her.
“Do it for me,” he whispers. “You fucking owe me.”
He picks it up and lays the writhing mess in her lap. It gurgles and chokes, saliva drips from its gaping mouth. She looks at Anthony and his eyes bore into hers. His nose is dripping and she moves to wipe the snot dangling from his nostril. He swats her hand away, no, no, no.
She slides her body closer to the edge of the pier, letting her knees hang over the edge a little. She turns to him and opens her mouth to speak but Anthony stands and dusts the snow from his pants.
“Don't come back to the car until you're rid of it.” He walks away and she rolls it off her lap into the water.
II
Angela
The meat is undercooked, still bloody.
They sit across the table from one another and she stares into his face, into his blank eyes. They suck her in and she stabs at her meat absently, not wanting to break her connection with his face.
The house isn't the way he remembered it; the wallpaper has been changed. She had hung the floral paper herself and some of the strips don't match up properly, giving the room a lopsided, warped look. He says it makes him dizzy and that he'd rather eat dinner in the living room.
But he pulls out the kitchen chair anyway and sits down as if to show her the sacrifice he is prepared to make for her. The chairs are made of cane and sag a bit from years of wear. It's been a while since he has sat with her at this table. He looks so different amidst the backdrop of the new wallpaper. He looks wild, like he's sprouting from amongst the purple and pink lilacs.
“I forgot the card I promised,” he says, tipping his chair back, his arms folded behind his head.
“It's okay,” she sighs.
“And I'm sorry I'm late.”
She tosses a smile out to him from across the table, thinking quietly to herself, “My love, my love, it doesn't matter.”
His face hasn't changed. The eyebrows still knot on his forehead; they rest low on his brow, shading his deep set eyes. Dark facial hair; he hasn't shaved and she knows that it's because he hasn't rested in days. The sleep has crusted in his eyes. His hair is tousled and she tells him she'll cut it for him in the morning. It'll all be the way it was before. It'll be even better.
The buzz of his cell phone breaks the silence between them. He fumbles for it in his pocket and randomly presses buttons, trying to quiet it. His face reddens as he catches sight of the name across the faceplate and he pushes his chair away from the table.
The sliding glass doors swish open and closed and she hears his feet thud across the wooden planks of the deck.
“Okay.”
She breathes the words towards his empty seat.
She is washing the dishes and it feels good to have two of everything. She has missed the extra glasses, the doubled forks and knives. She runs the water of the dishes, letting the juice from the steak run into the drain. The water swirls with pink as it threads its way towards the drain. The meat juice swirls in the sink and she sees all her troubles swirl away with it.
The window in front of the sink looks out onto the deck and she pulls the curtains back to see him pace back and forth, his cell phone pressed firmly to his ear. His back is rigid and his voice sounds tinny as it makes its way through the closed window.
It's muggy outside; a winter rain is coming and the mosquitoes are out. They hover about his head and he swats them angrily with his free hand. But he'll get bitten anyway and she'll spend the night applying aloe to the rising lumps.
She turns the faucet off and admires her reflection in the porcelain plate.
His face is flushed when he comes back in and he tells her that he'd much rather go to straight to bed. No talking tonight. There are too many other things for him to worry about. She smiles and stretches her arms towards him.
“Then we'll talk in the morning, Jack.”
He loosens his tie and shrugs.
“Whatever.”
And his footsteps pad down the hall and into the bathroom and she listens to him rummage in the cabinets, spray the tap, gargle with Plax.
She traces his path towards the bathroom door. It is shut; light threads through the crack in the door. She leans her body forward and rests her forehead on the door. He spits in the sink, clears his throat, urinates. The toilet flushes and she stands as he unlocks the door. The door opens and she hurries down the hall.
III
The Mother
Sean will find her floating among the ducks, riding the crest of the waves.
The air will be misty in the morning; the dew will leave a film on the windows, on the wooden planks of the front porch, on each blade of grass. She imagines strolling along the pier in the morning, the sun still tucked beneath the shore, the sand damp and dark from the night's rain.
She'll walk to the waters edge and wade in with her clothes on. The soaked Levis and plaid shirt will weigh her down; she'll sink into the depths of water and stare into the sun from so far beneath it. Sean will show up eventually, she's sure, and find her bloated body resurfaced, floating on its back.
When he goes away to where it's warm, she'll let the ducks choke on his father's sheet music so she can ride the waves amongst their feathers.
The crickets are out, balancing atop the weeds and the flower petals, wings vibrating. The sound crashes through the silence of the night. The ducks balance on the mirror face of the bay, still water, soundless ducks. She watches them bend their throats towards the water, nibbling at lily pads, nudging frogs into the water with their beaks.
The sun breaks over the crest of the water, spilling red onto the black spill of the bay. Two buckets of paint spilling into one another. They don't mix. Red and black. Separate.
The crickets decrescendo as the red expands across the water. Their humming slows and slows and the ducks stay silent and she watches the white feathers blend into red water.
|