that's mrs. mediocrity to you

Maizey knew secrets about everybody. She wasn’t the town gossip, quite, because she only ever listened—no one’s deepest fears ever passed her lips. Instead, she was a sponge, and felt herself grow heavy with whispers and confessions, felt herself expanding with fertile wish and hopeless error. Some days her head tilted to one side with the weight of it all.

But that never stopped her, never kept her from patting a shoulder and asking all the right questions. This was her purpose, her role in life, and she’d never once questioned the wisdom or the burden of her gift. At night, she planted these secrets like seeds, and then she waited. And every morning there were flowers. Morning glory and nasturtium, rose and daisy, snapdragon and alyssum.

In her mind she knew their real names, Fred and Ruth, Shannon and Cindy, Brittany and Brian, but she liked to think of them as blooms, growing up through life’s soil.

She liked to water them with tears and open them with sunshine. She was happy to keep their truths hidden underground.

She was happy to be the gardener.

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Overhead, a flock of tree swallows circled like vultures. She wasn’t sure why, or where they’d come from, but the sight of them stopped her in her tracks and she stood there, face upturned, mouth open, watching quietly for several minutes. Remembering how to fly. The air hung heavy on her skin with the weight of long-discarded clothing, and she swam through each breath with the slight panic of not enough rising up in her throat. Sweat ran down her back in sheets, and leaves pasted themselves to her skin in a rorschach of camouflage. She wasn’t lost, or floundering, she’d simply decided to marry the landscape. But the forest had a way of closing in on her even as the sky made her taller, and she had to keep moving lest her feet take root.

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she wandered the floor
in search of midnight feathers
fingers clutching blue

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Linking in over at dVersePoets with a haibun for Haibun Monday.

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told

through wind

and sky

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It was always there in the corner of her mind, and every room she’d ever been in: the power of words.

Some days she chose to ignore the sounds that rattled and clanged like locks and chains, and other days, the only thing she could do was listen. Every minute was a story, every hour a poem. And the nights, the nights were cacophony, which is why her dreams were always silent, like old movies.

Once she’d tried writing them down, every word she heard, every sigh that whispered, every sentence sailing past her extremely near-sighted eyes. But her hands were never fast enough, letters flew through them like birds and scattered across the ceiling in a murmuration of mockery.

Sometimes she caught an M on a finger or grabbed a Q by the tail, but they were never letters she could use, and she dropped them in a bowl that by now was overflowing with impatience, red and gold seeping out from a crack down the side. She wished she could hold them in somehow, or wait until she had enough for a story, but every time she tried with her glue and clumsy fingers, a question mark escaped, and she spent days looking for the answer.

When she got hungry, she tore pages from the books lining the walls of her house. It was never enough to fill her, and the only one left that hadn’t been tasted was the atlas.

One day she filled a bucket and started scrubbing. Her knees grew dark with ink and tiny commas kept catching in her fingernails. She didn’t stop until the floor ran black and the only thing she heard was her own breath.

She sat down then, and began to write.

and sometimes we find it
nestled in
between sanity and severance
leaf and litter
imitation and impostor

our hands
will always
get dirty
in the search

but that’s the nature
of atonement
and you know
what they say
about cleanliness

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and we swam circles around each other
like shark or sunfish or skittering
pond skaters
because
neither one of us
heard ophelia singing
and what did it matter
so deep in the forest
of upside down
neverland
sky

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Because that’s where she felt most alive. When she’d said that to Stuart he snorted a little, not mocking, really, but clearly not understanding. Still, he hadn’t said a word, just walked back down into the cellar, and pretty soon she’d heard the sound of his saw. She knew then he wasn’t thinking about her any longer, he was thinking about getting that shelf finished for old Mrs. Lattimore.

She wished she had a hobby to distract her, or a project. She wished she could read. But her eyes had got so bad in the past few years that mostly all she did was sit in the rocking chair closest to the fire and listen to herself growing old.

Her body was betraying her after all these years, forgetting how to do all the things she’d once taken for granted. But she didn’t feel old on the inside. She still felt young and stupid and naive. And most of the time, she felt scared.

Every day she tried to rock herself a little farther away from this place where she’d lived all her life. She always thought she and Stuart would travel once they retired, but she knew now that she was stuck here, in this house, in this chair, in this creaky old body.

But that never stopped her from going places in her mind. Just this week she’d been to Spain and Paris and even Cuba, following Hemingway around in her mind.

She always ended up right back in her own living room though, staring down at someone else’s gnarled, spotted, wrinkled hands.

But sometimes, when she came back around, she was smiling.

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Without the darkness, we would never appreciate the light. At least that’s what you said when you took my hand and pulled me in.

We still had to walk through all those cobwebs though, me holding my breath the whole way and you pretending not to be scared. I heard water dripping and my imagination slithered a little beneath my feet, but I kept heading for the green I could see in the pinprick of light I named Beacon.

Funny how we didn’t make it, you and I, somewhere along the way our paths split apart and there I was, alone in the tunnel of love, up the proverbial creek without a paddle. I had a feeling that you’d planned it that way, planned to leave me in the blackest of shadows so you couldn’t see my eyes when you walked away. I only called your name out once, and when you didn’t answer, I stopped moving, just for a moment. I heard a splash and then silence, and I waited as it settled down around me. I knew it was time to make my own noise, and I guess I forgot to tell you that I’ve never been afraid of the dark.

I walked for an hour and then started singing—a song my father used to sing when I was young, something about a bicycle built for two—and far away, I heard you laughing. Or maybe I heard my own echo, I’m not quite sure.

I made a choice that day, a choice you forced, but I’m the one that made it. I came out of that tunnel with my head held high, refusing to cower.

I always was good at lessons.

Every so often, I think I hear it again, that faint, faded giggle, skittering across the floor. I never think it’s you though, not anymore. I think it’s the string of strength I pulled myself out with, playing cat games with these memories. I think it’s my heart, volunteering to walk through the darkness to find maybe one or two more.

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for the color

of sunset

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I found another rock the day you planned to leave me, white granite, sharp-edged, palm-sized, set down right in the center of my path like a gift or an offering or a message.

It felt just right in my hand, too, as if it had lived there once, forever, and then been lost. Later, I buried it beneath the pine in the corner of the yard, embedded in a sea of needles.

And even though it was a rock, it took root and grew beneath the surface, became a boulder. I know, because I tried to dig it up once, I spent a day on my knees with a pick and a spade until finally, at dusk, I gave up and filled it all back in, tamping down and spreading smooth the bed of my discomfort.

I slept beneath the stars that night, too tired to move and too silent to care, refusing to listen. The sky whispered lies and the stars held their arms up high like a prayer or a promise or a salutation.

I kept my cheek pressed to the earth, kissing gravity in gratitude for holding me in place, the rock beneath me still warm from the sun of exposure.

In the morning I went inside, boiled water for tea and sat in the chair by the window, already forgetting about rocks and love and heartache, my head filled with dark sparkling stories.

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Linking in over at dVersePoets for Open Link Night today, join us!