mary june brown

He and she are not marionettes. Not dolls led about on pulled strings. But there are surely ribbons at play, here in this mysterious and dangerous place.

There are gossamer threads they labor on, and they begin to weave and knit these threads in the stillness of the dark hours, their partners breathing shallow and unknowing next to them (these partners are asleep, asleep to what is shifting and forming beside them; asleep to what can grow in a starved heart).

The spinners shoot these webs out into the world. They being to whisper their stories. They need to make a bridge, to touch down, attach the personal silence of their nights to some other unspoken quiet. Science has not explained yet how these webs traverse over vast plains, over bodies of water, the fields and valleys, shallow vales and majestic miles of rock. But for all time, poets and philosophers attest to the journey of these webs. They meet and tangle. They crochet a marvelous tale, being made of the same material, having been created out of the same brand of brokenness and the same defiant refusal to lay aside hope.

These webs are fascinating to examine, so uncommon are their patterns.

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She has fallen so far, gods and sad songs and poems—nothing can replace her to her original place.

He hears her voice now and cannot remember the thrall of it from all those thousands of hours ago. But he wishes to. He wishes to remember its timbre and how it was in those great first moments when her voice would embrace him. He could not get the sound of it inside him enough, he wanted to go under it, lay under it so that it covered him whole, leaves and leaves over the forest of his heart. He works to remember why he wanted that.

He remembers specific small things. Her hands: crooked pinky, divine hands playing in his hair. Her hands lifted his fingertips to his lips and she had sighed her warm breath upon them. His shoulders bent under the weight of that sigh. Her hands, the way she covered her face, helpless. She would cover her eyes sometimes, when all the lights and all the features and all the luminous otherness played upon what was left unsaid.

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Every fall she tends to do that thing, that lowered-brow thing, where she squints at the clouds and wonders about those random characters and precious hearts who have touched her.

The woman who she played mah jongg with after she graduated from college? That elderly neighbor who came racing out of the dark of his garage that one night to pick her up off the asphalt, her knees bloodied, and the handlebars of her bike askew. Oh, and the teacher in third grade who told her she had such pretty hair–that compliment carried her through that whole year of being eight years old. Her first lover, deceased now. The man who pulled over when her tire was out. Flash. The lady who came to clean her parents carpets and then stayed for dinner and wine. Click. The funeral director who passed her a pamphlet on grief and then ran his hand over her shoulder with such unpracticed tenderness. The minister who was found out having an affair and ran out of town, but she wished he’d stay. Click. The person who asked for a dollar for a cup of coffee, then came running to give it back to her because he found a dollar in his pocket. The boy she first wrote love poetry for, who can’t be found online or through friends, is he alive?  The doctor, the flash, the checker at the market, the singer at the college nightclub who dedicated  songs to her, the neighbor who helped her jimmy her door open, the flash, the flash, the whir, the snorkeling rental equipment boy who upgraded her to premium equipment because he liked her smile, the shush, the woman who snuck her extra cookies at hot lunch, the young girl at the, the chemist at, the whir, the belhop, the flash, click, flash, click, click, shush, whir.

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The bed.

By itself.

The sheets and pillows, the thousands of threads coming together to form that exquisite cool knit,  the sweet blanketing cover. First about a life put together, then twisted and all-aside, this bed a constant metaphor. (Somone took the corner of the blanket, where it feels velvet, and placed it to the corner of the eye–a particular habit.)

Far too long without words, without writing in the blog. All apologies, where due, to those loyal few readers who have wondered where she is. She is  here, only made smaller by the doubts and insecurities that begin as we age, as we accumulate hurts, and accumulate instances where we’ve caused hurt. LET her put forth: apology to YOU, whoever you are. If her words hurt you, she apologizes ahead of the injury.

So she goes back to the writing. To the seduction of it, a sweet and chemical shot to the blue, chickeny arm, an unforgiving and demanding lover. She worries Karma might have it in store for her–hurricanes and tsunamis, drownings, incoming, unbearable crisis, horrible batten-up seaboard storms. She hopes her God and your liberal other gods will go easy on her. Or that at least all her associates will know something about CPR. Personal protective equipment to get away from the blood that comes from hurting.

Hurry! Put her into the revive position, knees up.

There’s no reason for the sheets to lie without any body to warm them tonight.

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She thought the depthless dark of his eyes made him look perpetually sad, somehow more serious than was strictly modern. This made him seem ageless.

There is something undeniably luxurious and simple in being in the presence of such calm. There is no need for showing off an intellect, no need to entertain. All such a soul wants is the companionship and the hope of enjoying a shared moment. Perhaps there is no request as sweet in the world as this one:  Tell me what you are thinking, speak of what is in your mind.

A murmur here, sentences spoken quietly, and the dearness of soft laughter. There is something wonderful in such easy peacefulness.

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Silence. No sound. In her bag: granola bars, hope, bottles of water, instant ice packs, pride, and band aids. Nothing that can soothe the child’s anxiety, the lopsided stomach…all highstrung momentum.

The calm before the calamity, a ball kicked up up up up and over the heads of all defensive players…the arc of its path aiming at the goalkeeper. The keeper: a lone man, isolated, mouth stretched wide in ghastly determination, crouched, then sprung, lifted impossibly sideways. The bruised fingertips grazing the ball to keep it from earning a point. The clapping, and shouting, “Good, Keeper! Good, Keeper!” She knows this good keeper will not hear any of this…he is already advancing to throw the ball in, already calculating where to place foot, leg, torso, mind.

So there are saves, and there are losses. The losses are extreme. Outsized. A ball goes in and she shouts, “Good try, Keeper!” She watches him pull at his hair, his chest heave with the effort to not sob. She watches him crouch in the net, waiting alone for the next ball to punish or redeem him.

Silence. No sound. After the game. Out of her bag comes a portion of praise. “You were so good. You made so many saves.” He frowns. Then: “I should have kept that second point out.” She explains life. There are things that are not possible. There are things that cannot be prevented. “There was no way to prevent the ball from going in, son.” She explains physics. An acrobat could not have contorted and lifted their body to have stopped the ball. The mother explains all this. Her son listens. Nods. Then says: “I should have kept that second point out.”

The good keeper.

When is it finally one last thing, and when does that last thing expire? (When things have expired, they are said in the vernacular to have “gone bad.” )

The things we burn ourselves with. Trying to grasp a match through the flame. The matchmakers, when they made matches, they attached a little stick to the sulfary head so that the fire needn’t be touched. But we forget that.

The knives we wield backwards. The way we go to grab and cut the other. We forget ourselves, and we forget which end is the handle, which is the blade. Hold the cutting edge tight in the hand, until the flesh is so slaughtered, the sweet pad of skin so bloodied that the knife finally must fall away. There is no hand where there once was one, there is no way to hold onto the sabre to fight with. The fight was won and lost the moment the hand picked up the knife and the spine of the blade made its first cut.

The delusions and the mistakes we make. Seeing a wreck before it happens. The purposeful and panicked abandonment of a train powering 1000 miles per hour toward disaster. So safe and sure that tragedy has been avoided, breathing in vats and vats of relief. Bent at the waist, hands on knees, shaking with relief and breathing until the trembling ends. Forgetting to leave the tracks. And so run down by the next locomotive.

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And she wondered–is a memory something you have or something you’ve lost?

That’s an important question. Think about it and give it some credence. The confections, the efforts, the sweetness of moments in a hurricane, or moments crossing a bridge (the Golden Gate Bridge is a beautiful bridge!) -

Is a memory something you have?

Or is it something you’ve lost?

If someone ever makes a picture album recalling their life, will she warrant at least her own page?

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In a box are components of an era: gray twill shorts, tough with starch. Silver ring. Moving pictures of being in a hurricane.

Her car is a box, too, and in it are the trimmings from today, things like a milk cup and half-eaten sticky candies. Glued art projects shaking glitter loose on the floorboards of her car. Boys looking out the windows and spying motorcycles they wish they were on, brandishing toy swords, pirates on bikes.

Under the hard soil outside her house, there is plywood. All she need do is dig it up and build a crate. Hoist wood up and nail iron pegs into it to fashion a cage of sorts, where she can stow the things she’ll accumulate soon. Days poolside and a trip to the Academy of Natural Sciences. What else will go in there, she wonders. Good things. Clean things.

(At night, she sneaks out and runs water over the soil, to soften it.)
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