He called her a hostage and there was a time that would have thrilled her soul, to the bone, marrow vibrating with enchanted hope for that particular prison.

What bells ring now. Bells of freedom, carillons that shout with relief that she has moved astride the Phantom Spectre, given the slip to his outsized shadow. Like finger puppets against a child’s bedroom wall, fangs and horns creeping ever closer, when the lamp is flicked on, the shadows fall away and all that remains is a soft and small hand, held close to the plaster. Defenseless and innocent.

In the clink. Him, the jailer. Somehow he is kind, or impervious, enough to put that big brass key well within her reach and somehow, she accepts it. Feels the weight of it in the palm of her hand. Places it in her mouth for a moment to taste it’s metallic bite against her gums, her teeth.

Well, he’s incurious and satisfied. And she won’t abide that. All. Or nothing. Place the key into it’s slot, feel it click and fit. Turn it and feel the satisfying groove, a key making love to a lock, jigsaw’d. Swing the door wide.

A hostage on the lam.

###

She’s a queen and a sovereign and she gave him an audience in front of her, where he stood, back stiff and hands at his sides, full of military bearing.

She waves a hand. He’s dismissed; he may begin his depart march. (Her body sinks back into her chair, where she rests, poised and serene, her face composed.)

He doesn’t know it, but when he leaves that room, her troop of chastisers marches in, loosed from the shadows. Clubs and sticks raised in reprimand, the purple bruises begin to bloom inside her chest, where nobody will ever see them, and where they remain sore and tender, long after his footfalls are out of her hearing.
###

September the fourth. A whole night spent writing from within the rings of fire, at the circus. A whole block of hours spent suspended from reality, the nets below disintegrating and unraveling. September the fourth is the anniversary of her spirit’s inward collapse, the reckoning and the tallying up…it is the day she lay down her masks and her costumes, the day she stopped flinging bright glitter from her hands so that those who looked at her would not look into her eyes, but out into the air all around her, where magic and color swirled.

September the fourth. The day the jesters stopped dancing, the night a Phantom Spectre cracked a whip and all the lions ceased their roaring, the entire circus coming to an abrupt stop, the trick walls and paint and electronic cannons all illuminated.
###

No hay a quien culpar.

Tonight. I stood unsteady on my feet, as though I had my fifth glass of wine in hand and searching for the sixth, but I had no wine left, and here is what I thought: I’m surprised at this, this day…that this day is here and I stand like this alone, a tree trunk sawed off and blackened out in the verdant forest. This is where I am. Unsteady on my feet, rooted and burnt, my bark felling its blackened crust all about me. But poised where I’ve never been poised.

I feel the wind upon my oaken mask, the skin underneath thin and bruised. Settled like I never was; oh, I eat it up, this day, the newness of it. Scooping it in huge bites into my mouth, into the pitted whirls in the wood. Using my fingers, no patience for utensils or spades.

Things move along. No blame and no recrimination. Some more love waiting out there for you, some more love out there for me, too.

It’s true that things move along.
###

I am working on a novel and am seeking feedback on the “voice” or “tenor” of the book. I have essentially written the same material in two different treatments and would like input. If you are interested and willing to give me about 30 minutes of your time, please contact me: maryjunebrown@hotmail.com

Thank you!

Have looked, not found

Googley, yahooie

Your name in quotes bears

Nothing, nothing.

Eleven years swim like eels

Various directions

A flash of silver there

A sprite of orange here

You’ve taken shelter somewhere

In the desert, a movie not playing

I can’t know where it’s playing

Ghosts and eels colliding
###

someone–not the love of your

Life

has you more than I have

You.

What?

What does that make me?

I’m without. No power.

No. No, not anything.

Nothing at all.

That is all.

###

*This has been purchased and published elsewhere, but I retain the rights. -mjb

One Year

She frowned and wiped her eyes and muttered softly and let out the biggest sigh. She was unsure of what to do in just too many moments anymore and in other moments she would wonder without actual curiosity if she would ever be happy again. She worried that she would regret the times she turned away from the cries of her son, or the moments when she wouldn’t allow her husband to jolly her into a good mood. If she thought about it, which she didn’t much, she would have said perhaps her negativity was born of the vast and booming and hailstorm exhaustion she’d felt since having Lucas. When he was only ten days old, she had laid in bed, desperate for something. Sleep? She thought of sheep but instead counted nothing. She stared at the ceiling, too wiped out to find a position that would allow her body to calm. Her legs jumped and jived involuntarily, a twitch she had acquired as the nights went by with too little rest, too many times up nursing the baby.

James watched her in the kitchen as she fumbled with a can of formula and a bottle. He had slept, and was showered and dressed to go to work. She realized it was, dammit, morning already. “Hey you, smile,” he said, trying to catch her eye.

“Can’t.”

“Won’t.” He spoke lightly.

She felt the burn of liquid anger filling her face, “I can’t! Look, what is this!” she thrust the bottle out for his inspection. “Is that mold?” Her voice was on the rise.

“Looks like.”

The adrenaline surged. It felt better than the fatigue, so she went with it. “You have to dry everything, James, or it gets moldy! God!”

◦◦◦

There were times in that first year of motherhood when she would have traded it in for anything, traded in the whole experience just to go back and be free, unencumbered. Nobody had told her what it was really like, being a mom. No one had said, “It’s harder than it looks. In fact, it sucks somewhere around 50 percent of the time.” When Syra had first announced her pregnancy, she had received congratulations all around. Pats on the head. The enthusiasm was so great she felt she had accomplished something unique, as though she alone where pregnant in the world. Except that everywhere she looked, she saw pregnant women, in fact a whole jammed pack of mamas.

Her mother, though, did try to tell her. “It can be a thankless job,” she had said. Or, once, when they were looking at cribs, her mother had laughed. “Syra, you know why people cry at weddings and when a baby is born? Not because they’re happy for you. Because they know. They know that the woman has no idea what she’s getting herself into!” Syra had frowned, disturbed. Had she been a difficult baby?

“Oh no, dear. But you were a child, and children can’t help it,” her mother patted Syra’s round belly. “They need you so much.” She went on to tell the story about the time when Syra had been sick for three weeks with croup, then the flu. But Syra stopped listening, busying herself with buttoning her fuddydud maternity sweater all the way up to the top. She was freezing.

◦◦◦

At Lucas’s first birthday party, Syra handed James the lighter. He handed it back. “No, you go ahead and do it,” he said.

She leaned forward, touching the flame to the single candle. Lucas clapped his hands, beaming as Happy Birthday was sung to him. Syra’s mother laughed, “That’s my grandson!”

One year, Syra thought. It had not flown by, as the baby books had cautioned it would. She thought of all the moments it took to fill that year. She was wholly changed, a scion in a vacuum, and she tried to put words to it for James.

“Is it postpartum? Or baby blues, or whatever they call it?” he wanted to know.

No. It was the giving up of herself. It was the lined fatigue that she saw in her own face, and it was the utter absence of that fatigue in his face. It was the wrestle with the notion that motherhood made you different, and there was not a path back. It was the eventual giving in to being changed, of absorbing the extremes: more tired and more smiles and more scared moments and more understanding. It was more.

One year of trials, of lost tempers, of demanding work. Also, more wisdom — damned expensive wisdom.

It had taken months to lose the feeling that she was entrenched in a mistake, and a full year to sleep soundly again. She regretted that. But regrets were part of the whole, like grains of salt in a cookie recipe. They were the least significant part.

A month ago, she had stood in line at the grocery with a woman who was bulky with pregnancy, flipping through a baby magazine. The lady had looked at Syra, standing with Lucas in one arm. “I can’t wait!” the woman had said, grinning at Lucas. Syra felt enthusiasm and regret well up inside her for this innocent. She wanted to tell her what it was, motherhood. That is was a soggy muddle. She wanted to say how it made you feel part of things, and completely alone, depending. But she only smiled and kissed the top of Lucas’s warm and fragrant head.

She looked at her son now as he held a fistful of pale, smeary cake. One year, entirely lived.

“Thank you, Lucas. Happy birthday.”

###

Upon waking in morning

In bed, almost not sleeping, I
Heard an airplane pass close
To my window, the engine vibrations
Felt loud and humming and dark.

Come closer, I cooed, break through!
Destroy all, I sang. I held still then,
Waiting and patient. My ears were sharp,
Strained for the tinkling of glass.

The hum became a bellow.
The plane was right there, just there
(If you are only going to pass, take me)
So close, I felt I could jump up to open
A window and touch the cold wingtip.

It passed, the mood and the aircraft, the
Noise droning in three-quarter tempo
to decrescendo, and for some time I
Felt and did not feel and did not do.

Afterwards I sewed stitches of lamentations, of
Low notes. Today would continue, today
Would fly into night. I would be in the night,
The plane gone.

###

Stop. Stop stalking my blog. Are the posts about your friend? Sometimes. Not always. Stop looking. Let me have this one little thing, and give me back the anonymity of air filling the lungs of these words. Go away.
###