I enter, eyes peering at me as though I’ve arrived at the wrong place, but I know I’m exactly where I need to be.
Fire is something smokey, something that fills your lungs with gray puffy clouds and makes it hard to breathe which is something that is already hard for an asthmatic like Hyaden to do at dinner and so a fire filling the kitchen, its red tendrils scraping the roof, its orange embers crashing about making the red beast unstoppable, is really not something that she needs especially not when she was having such a lovely time at the family dinner, family dinner is what we call it when none of us have extra circulars that day so we all get to have dinner together, it is always very nice and I wish it would happen more often but we’re all very busy people who are going to grow up and lead busy lives and won’t have time for family dinners, or maybe we won’t grow up because sometimes family dinners are cut short by vicious fires, and the Quad houses re old and the insulation is hay, I found out that it would actually only take 4 minutes for the entire thing to burn down, so four minutes was all we had which isn’t very much, it is very different than the 4 years we were expecting and who knows if we would even stay friends all four years, just because you hope something will happen doesn’t mean it will, unless youre the person that hoped some chef would mess up and leave a pan on for too long and suddenly an entire dining hall would go up in flames trapping six young women inside, one of them being asthmatic, with no way out in sight then yes when you hope for something it does happen.
It wasn’t the train or the sun digging into the benches of the waiting area or the exhausted ticket holder or the travel time that it took to arrive at the bay or the color of the bay itself that seems to always be tainted green when you were out of it’s light, and it wasn’t the grey hairs taking over my scalp at age 19 or the mascara still shadowed under my eyes or the feeling the my skin was closing me in, no, I didn’t have such a resounding reason for not making the trip – the trip which we promised we would go on, which I swore I would take alone if I had to (but I am not good at keeping my promises) – and it’s not that I don’t still love the beach, that not quite knowing where your feet begin and the sand ends, that jolt of fresh air coming right from the water, the line of the horizon where I can maybe imagine everything, everything, so it’s not the beaches fault that I am not taking this trip, but you see, I can’t seem to put on my flip flops and board that rusty train on this sunny day because I can’t seem to remember where you put all of my money, my car keys, or the little part of my brain that sees nature as a metaphor for something else, no, I won’t be going to the beach, but don’t say I didn’t try.
The starting horn blared loudly; my surroundings previously buzzing with excitement now released as hundreds of people began the race; my shoes hit the pavement, one after the other, as I kept the same steady pace; I wondered how long I would last; I was already tired from my early morning, up before the sunrise, shoes tied and stretches completed by 5:30; It was a beautiful day, the sun was glittering off the lake from behind the tall pines; Slap, slap, my soles hit the ground again and again; I could feel the strain in my muscles as I looked ahead and sprinted, trying my best to avoid thinking about the burning pain; as I reached the halfway point, the cheers echoed in my head, I ran by houses, families parked on their driveways in lawn chairs; out of the corner of my eye, I saw little girls selling lemonade, 50 cents, like I had always dreamed of doing; On my left, a young boy held a sign in front of a row of shrubs reading: “Bacon House” and I found myself salivating as I wondered what sort of house could be made of bacon; I didn’t have time to stop and see this culinary wonder, though in my now delirious state, I pictured everything as I continued; It brought a smile to my face: everything hurt now, even my eyes from running straight at the sun, but I couldn’t help but wish I could live in the “Bacon House.”
The girl across the aisle two rows back is talking to someone on the speakerphone for god knows what reason and usually I find this irritating and grumble about “the audacity” under my breath but she’s going to be a bridesmaid at someone named Zoe’s wedding on May 12th and that’s pretty soon and she’s making me imagine summer and flowy linen and dancing at the wedding of someone I love and today is the first warm day where I remembered what its like to sweat under my boobs from my brisk walk to the train stop weighed down with a backpack full of things I don’t need and two fresh loaves of bread one for my parents and one for us to snack on and the sun oh the sun is lighting up the trees which are still leafless from winter but billowy nonetheless and this time a month ago it would be dark already and I wouldn’t have gotten to see the sun bathe the incomprehensibly tiny hands of the tiny child in the seat in front of me pointing out to her overwhelmed mother the blue sky and brown buildings and I wouldn’t have gotten to pull you close into me so we could gasp together at her cuteness maybe somehow cancelling out how her every word is being shushed by busy respectful parents and our loaf is three quarters through and we’ve got two short hours before we’re home.
i wasn’t sure if i liked you at first because i didn’t know if i wanted to like, let alone love, anyone after what id been through i didn’t think i could or maybe i didn’t want to let someone have the power to hurt me the way that love gives people the power to hurt people and yet you broke down my walls from day 2 because you kept your word and respected my boundaries and told me how you felt and let me be me without trying to change me.
He keeps it under control, but breaking down in a pew would be custom, especially at this moment, the casket’s open, expression serene as ducks on the estate pond, faces pulled tight, painted rosier than they should be, but that doesn’t matter now, except it does, because he goes up and nadda, so its becoming suspicious how well timed this all is, an eighteenth birthday with no presents, yet he has everything, which is the wrong way, lots of things, arrangements, the wills and the contracts and the insurance, one more year at the academy, and then college, bright boy they say, dark happenings, when the bell finally rings he doesn’t go home anyway cause its raining and he can stick around until 3:00am when it stops, just let the clock tick, tick, spit dribbling down his chin, waking up with a crook in the neck so sharp it’s a needle going back and forth, needles aren’t really all that painful after a while, when he goes to the doctor for checkups, normal, but it should be better, well you could at least be happy for one thing, after all, there’s not a whole lot of people to fill the space, just things, saturated with pond water, sucked up by the rain.
I didn’t even want to go to this stupid dinner party, I think to myself as I throw back another glass of fancy champagne, I’m not the only one feeling this way, I can tell because of the atmosphere in the room just crossed the threshold into hostile and not in a fun way, Sebastian, my so-called date, just tried to slip a butter knife off the tablecloth discreetly, I watch it fall on the floor, sliding out of reach under the table silently, thank god, and I chuckle to myself, he’s probably counting on his strength to save him, me, I know better, I know the truth, that you’re only as good as your weapon, that’s why mine never leaves my side, eight inches of serrated steel in a leather sheath, its there wrapped around my right thigh with two straps, I can always feel it like a reassuring hug, I extremely relieved to have it at this moment as I watch the situation escalating on the far side of the dining room, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone’s arm bend like that before, and certainly never seen a dining tray used for this kind of violence, it’s sort of mesmerizing from here, like a car crash where you can’t look away, or going over that big drop in a roller coaster, I could just let them tear this place apart, I’m certainly enjoying the view, plus this is Angela’s party, Sebastian just dragged me along, Angela’s friends started this, so why do I have to be the one to finish it.
The music is ringing so excruciatingly loudly in her ears that she almost can’t hear a single sound, she’s just spiraling around and down and around, like the falling snow she lay under that night, a girl twirling in slow motion, a blur of red and sparkling glitter, and really she’s not even sure if she’s matching the music, is it country or pop or maybe rock, she can’t tell, but it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s not that jazz that was drifting out of the open window, but its not, she knows its not, so she just keeps dancing, her long delicate fingers with chipped white nail polish reaching for the slightly moldy ceiling and then out towards the plastic picnic table where the bowl of Mystery Punch is almost empty, and through the thick curtain of dark hair stuck to her damp face she watches the figures around her blur into colorful disco lights, making her feel like an art-deco abstract painting, and this is good, she thinks, feeling like a painting, because feeling like a painting is much better than feeling like a drowning girl with a cracking heart, so she lets herself flow, rippling around the room in her knee-length camellia red dress and $11 department store heels that click against the peeling linoleum floor, and if eventually all the people start to leave and the music stops, well she is none the wiser because inside her abstract painting, she can’t hear a single sound.
I once read a book called “On Writing Well;” it was for a high school English course meant to improve our writing, and on the first week of classes our teacher, Mr. White, had assigned us the first three chapters of the novel— I’m not really a fan of excessive reading assignments during the very first week of school, but I am and have always been a diligent student, so I did the work as usual —however, I found myself quite uncharacteristically frustrated with this instructional novel; I enjoy writing and think myself to be a good writer, and I am generally willing to take criticism and read new advice, but something about this book irked me beyond belief: in this highly rated, ranked, and reviewed novel, William Zinsser (to this day, his name still makes me irate just to read) proselytizes his ideas about writing, particularly on length, and how the best sentence is as short and efficient and succinct as it can possibly be— now, that would be just fine and dandy, if only the man didn’t drag out his didactic explanations for long clauses, sentences, even paragraphs— he could not, in fact, write succinctly— or well!
Bus rides are a hassle—the wait for the bus itself was fine, if a bit irritating, even if the bus was twenty minutes late or a just a moment too early, that despite my best running efforts the driver picked the journey back up, at least I am outside, alone and peaceful—on the bus itself one thing or another always seems to take a turn for the worse within these makeshift walls, first, its an entitled passenger, face flushed red with anger as she deflects, acts a victim, and assaults the poor driver with her words, demanding he make the traffic dissapear—because she has a “very important” meeting to attend—second, its a young man with a scent so poignant one would think he’d walked into a bath and body works and tried on every novelty scent they had before waltzing onto the bus—his hodgepodge of lemons, buttercream, lavenders, and some unidentified rustic smell wafting into my nose from halfway across the bus—third, its a high school girl with no sense of anxiety rambling into her phone, long and loud, about how she was guaranteed the spot of the lead in the spring musical—because why wouldn’t she be—fourth, its a couple, sat right in front of me, seemingly imploring me to understand their love as the sights and sounds of their lips and tongues clashing, wet and slimy, fill my world, fifthly and finally, me, surely tainted by the scent of weed that trailed me from my neighbors apartment, choosing to latch onto me like a parasite, my red sweater, my destination seeming lightyears away with the ever-morphing, ever-unpleasant attractions of the bus around me, and—oh—a nosebleed.
Under no circumstances were the filing cabinet doors to be opened, because if the filing cabinet doors were to be opened, well, then they would have to gripe with the handwriting from the dead secretary that still lingered on each of the filing cabinet’s dividers–or perhaps still is not the right word when the writing on each of the filing cabinet dividers is not what it was when the dead secretary died, nor what it was each of the prior times someone had opened the filing cabinet after the dead secretary died, but rather increasingly vitriolic messages of the are you gonna miss me huh and join me in hell you stuck up bitches variety, with one word on each divider and any unused ones occupied by exclamation marks–and if they had to gripe with the writing, then they would have to address the fact that the office building was haunted, and no one particularly wanted to do that, since it was much more convenient and much more efficient to pretend that there were simply no signs of Margaret’s vengeful ghost, and besides, outside the filing cabinet there were no such signs of a haunting, so unless a new intern mistakenly opened the cabinet (despite the sign posted on the outside) and reported the new message to the office, usually under the impression of it being a practical joke, then it was quite easy for them all to continue their business as usual, except for the occasional spilled red ink on the desk that had used to be Margaret’s, but, well, they ignored that, too.
I enter, eyes peering at me as though I’ve arrived at the wrong place, but I know I’m exactly where I need to be.
Fire is something smokey, something that fills your lungs with gray puffy clouds and makes it hard to breathe which is something that is already hard for an asthmatic like Hyaden to do at dinner and so a fire filling the kitchen, its red tendrils scraping the roof, its orange embers crashing about making the red beast unstoppable, is really not something that she needs especially not when she was having such a lovely time at the family dinner, family dinner is what we call it when none of us have extra circulars that day so we all get to have dinner together, it is always very nice and I wish it would happen more often but we’re all very busy people who are going to grow up and lead busy lives and won’t have time for family dinners, or maybe we won’t grow up because sometimes family dinners are cut short by vicious fires, and the Quad houses re old and the insulation is hay, I found out that it would actually only take 4 minutes for the entire thing to burn down, so four minutes was all we had which isn’t very much, it is very different than the 4 years we were expecting and who knows if we would even stay friends all four years, just because you hope something will happen doesn’t mean it will, unless youre the person that hoped some chef would mess up and leave a pan on for too long and suddenly an entire dining hall would go up in flames trapping six young women inside, one of them being asthmatic, with no way out in sight then yes when you hope for something it does happen.
It wasn’t the train or the sun digging into the benches of the waiting area or the exhausted ticket holder or the travel time that it took to arrive at the bay or the color of the bay itself that seems to always be tainted green when you were out of it’s light, and it wasn’t the grey hairs taking over my scalp at age 19 or the mascara still shadowed under my eyes or the feeling the my skin was closing me in, no, I didn’t have such a resounding reason for not making the trip – the trip which we promised we would go on, which I swore I would take alone if I had to (but I am not good at keeping my promises) – and it’s not that I don’t still love the beach, that not quite knowing where your feet begin and the sand ends, that jolt of fresh air coming right from the water, the line of the horizon where I can maybe imagine everything, everything, so it’s not the beaches fault that I am not taking this trip, but you see, I can’t seem to put on my flip flops and board that rusty train on this sunny day because I can’t seem to remember where you put all of my money, my car keys, or the little part of my brain that sees nature as a metaphor for something else, no, I won’t be going to the beach, but don’t say I didn’t try.
The starting horn blared loudly; my surroundings previously buzzing with excitement now released as hundreds of people began the race; my shoes hit the pavement, one after the other, as I kept the same steady pace; I wondered how long I would last; I was already tired from my early morning, up before the sunrise, shoes tied and stretches completed by 5:30; It was a beautiful day, the sun was glittering off the lake from behind the tall pines; Slap, slap, my soles hit the ground again and again; I could feel the strain in my muscles as I looked ahead and sprinted, trying my best to avoid thinking about the burning pain; as I reached the halfway point, the cheers echoed in my head, I ran by houses, families parked on their driveways in lawn chairs; out of the corner of my eye, I saw little girls selling lemonade, 50 cents, like I had always dreamed of doing; On my left, a young boy held a sign in front of a row of shrubs reading: “Bacon House” and I found myself salivating as I wondered what sort of house could be made of bacon; I didn’t have time to stop and see this culinary wonder, though in my now delirious state, I pictured everything as I continued; It brought a smile to my face: everything hurt now, even my eyes from running straight at the sun, but I couldn’t help but wish I could live in the “Bacon House.”
The girl across the aisle two rows back is talking to someone on the speakerphone for god knows what reason and usually I find this irritating and grumble about “the audacity” under my breath but she’s going to be a bridesmaid at someone named Zoe’s wedding on May 12th and that’s pretty soon and she’s making me imagine summer and flowy linen and dancing at the wedding of someone I love and today is the first warm day where I remembered what its like to sweat under my boobs from my brisk walk to the train stop weighed down with a backpack full of things I don’t need and two fresh loaves of bread one for my parents and one for us to snack on and the sun oh the sun is lighting up the trees which are still leafless from winter but billowy nonetheless and this time a month ago it would be dark already and I wouldn’t have gotten to see the sun bathe the incomprehensibly tiny hands of the tiny child in the seat in front of me pointing out to her overwhelmed mother the blue sky and brown buildings and I wouldn’t have gotten to pull you close into me so we could gasp together at her cuteness maybe somehow cancelling out how her every word is being shushed by busy respectful parents and our loaf is three quarters through and we’ve got two short hours before we’re home.
i wasn’t sure if i liked you at first because i didn’t know if i wanted to like, let alone love, anyone after what id been through i didn’t think i could or maybe i didn’t want to let someone have the power to hurt me the way that love gives people the power to hurt people and yet you broke down my walls from day 2 because you kept your word and respected my boundaries and told me how you felt and let me be me without trying to change me.
He keeps it under control, but breaking down in a pew would be custom, especially at this moment, the casket’s open, expression serene as ducks on the estate pond, faces pulled tight, painted rosier than they should be, but that doesn’t matter now, except it does, because he goes up and nadda, so its becoming suspicious how well timed this all is, an eighteenth birthday with no presents, yet he has everything, which is the wrong way, lots of things, arrangements, the wills and the contracts and the insurance, one more year at the academy, and then college, bright boy they say, dark happenings, when the bell finally rings he doesn’t go home anyway cause its raining and he can stick around until 3:00am when it stops, just let the clock tick, tick, spit dribbling down his chin, waking up with a crook in the neck so sharp it’s a needle going back and forth, needles aren’t really all that painful after a while, when he goes to the doctor for checkups, normal, but it should be better, well you could at least be happy for one thing, after all, there’s not a whole lot of people to fill the space, just things, saturated with pond water, sucked up by the rain.
I didn’t even want to go to this stupid dinner party, I think to myself as I throw back another glass of fancy champagne, I’m not the only one feeling this way, I can tell because of the atmosphere in the room just crossed the threshold into hostile and not in a fun way, Sebastian, my so-called date, just tried to slip a butter knife off the tablecloth discreetly, I watch it fall on the floor, sliding out of reach under the table silently, thank god, and I chuckle to myself, he’s probably counting on his strength to save him, me, I know better, I know the truth, that you’re only as good as your weapon, that’s why mine never leaves my side, eight inches of serrated steel in a leather sheath, its there wrapped around my right thigh with two straps, I can always feel it like a reassuring hug, I extremely relieved to have it at this moment as I watch the situation escalating on the far side of the dining room, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone’s arm bend like that before, and certainly never seen a dining tray used for this kind of violence, it’s sort of mesmerizing from here, like a car crash where you can’t look away, or going over that big drop in a roller coaster, I could just let them tear this place apart, I’m certainly enjoying the view, plus this is Angela’s party, Sebastian just dragged me along, Angela’s friends started this, so why do I have to be the one to finish it.
The music is ringing so excruciatingly loudly in her ears that she almost can’t hear a single sound, she’s just spiraling around and down and around, like the falling snow she lay under that night, a girl twirling in slow motion, a blur of red and sparkling glitter, and really she’s not even sure if she’s matching the music, is it country or pop or maybe rock, she can’t tell, but it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s not that jazz that was drifting out of the open window, but its not, she knows its not, so she just keeps dancing, her long delicate fingers with chipped white nail polish reaching for the slightly moldy ceiling and then out towards the plastic picnic table where the bowl of Mystery Punch is almost empty, and through the thick curtain of dark hair stuck to her damp face she watches the figures around her blur into colorful disco lights, making her feel like an art-deco abstract painting, and this is good, she thinks, feeling like a painting, because feeling like a painting is much better than feeling like a drowning girl with a cracking heart, so she lets herself flow, rippling around the room in her knee-length camellia red dress and $11 department store heels that click against the peeling linoleum floor, and if eventually all the people start to leave and the music stops, well she is none the wiser because inside her abstract painting, she can’t hear a single sound.
I once read a book called “On Writing Well;” it was for a high school English course meant to improve our writing, and on the first week of classes our teacher, Mr. White, had assigned us the first three chapters of the novel— I’m not really a fan of excessive reading assignments during the very first week of school, but I am and have always been a diligent student, so I did the work as usual —however, I found myself quite uncharacteristically frustrated with this instructional novel; I enjoy writing and think myself to be a good writer, and I am generally willing to take criticism and read new advice, but something about this book irked me beyond belief: in this highly rated, ranked, and reviewed novel, William Zinsser (to this day, his name still makes me irate just to read) proselytizes his ideas about writing, particularly on length, and how the best sentence is as short and efficient and succinct as it can possibly be— now, that would be just fine and dandy, if only the man didn’t drag out his didactic explanations for long clauses, sentences, even paragraphs— he could not, in fact, write succinctly— or well!
Bus rides are a hassle—the wait for the bus itself was fine, if a bit irritating, even if the bus was twenty minutes late or a just a moment too early, that despite my best running efforts the driver picked the journey back up, at least I am outside, alone and peaceful—on the bus itself one thing or another always seems to take a turn for the worse within these makeshift walls, first, its an entitled passenger, face flushed red with anger as she deflects, acts a victim, and assaults the poor driver with her words, demanding he make the traffic dissapear—because she has a “very important” meeting to attend—second, its a young man with a scent so poignant one would think he’d walked into a bath and body works and tried on every novelty scent they had before waltzing onto the bus—his hodgepodge of lemons, buttercream, lavenders, and some unidentified rustic smell wafting into my nose from halfway across the bus—third, its a high school girl with no sense of anxiety rambling into her phone, long and loud, about how she was guaranteed the spot of the lead in the spring musical—because why wouldn’t she be—fourth, its a couple, sat right in front of me, seemingly imploring me to understand their love as the sights and sounds of their lips and tongues clashing, wet and slimy, fill my world, fifthly and finally, me, surely tainted by the scent of weed that trailed me from my neighbors apartment, choosing to latch onto me like a parasite, my red sweater, my destination seeming lightyears away with the ever-morphing, ever-unpleasant attractions of the bus around me, and—oh—a nosebleed.
Under no circumstances were the filing cabinet doors to be opened, because if the filing cabinet doors were to be opened, well, then they would have to gripe with the handwriting from the dead secretary that still lingered on each of the filing cabinet’s dividers–or perhaps still is not the right word when the writing on each of the filing cabinet dividers is not what it was when the dead secretary died, nor what it was each of the prior times someone had opened the filing cabinet after the dead secretary died, but rather increasingly vitriolic messages of the are you gonna miss me huh and join me in hell you stuck up bitches variety, with one word on each divider and any unused ones occupied by exclamation marks–and if they had to gripe with the writing, then they would have to address the fact that the office building was haunted, and no one particularly wanted to do that, since it was much more convenient and much more efficient to pretend that there were simply no signs of Margaret’s vengeful ghost, and besides, outside the filing cabinet there were no such signs of a haunting, so unless a new intern mistakenly opened the cabinet (despite the sign posted on the outside) and reported the new message to the office, usually under the impression of it being a practical joke, then it was quite easy for them all to continue their business as usual, except for the occasional spilled red ink on the desk that had used to be Margaret’s, but, well, they ignored that, too.