Requiem for the Birds

Requiem for the Birds

The plumber came and went today. I let him
through the backdoor. Sorry, I had a long
night, is what I told him. He attended
the pipes, and at one in the afternoon I
crept back to the crippled comforter Dan
and I chose together the first night we moved
in to our new place. An ugly house with apple-
green shutters, foundation lopsided.

A hideous thing. I swallowed down a blue
pill. Shut the black curtains—room darker than
my dreams. The night wasn’t long. It was you.
Another sheet of their never-ending. Kiss of hope.

It was you all along. The lighting was low, a
disturbing ambience to the place that detained
no fucking promise for me. I think you knew it.
My dreams had flocked away like your birds.

But I was all smiles and sincerity wasn’t I?
You’re a fool. Congratulations on you’re
success. Really. I mean it. Am I still writing?
No. I haven’t been. I won’t. I don’t say this.
You tell me, You have to, But the talent and the
waste, You’re a poet, So strong, and on. And

on. The blanket is heated by the bodies of
loyalty—two dogs that won’t leave my side even
though they’ve nothing to drift them off.
It’s dark and there are salt pearls flickering
across my lips. It was you all along that guided
my hand to the amber bottle for two days counting.
Two days I didn’t eat. I sipped a Cherry Pepsi,
carbonation deceiving my stomach into
feeling full. But, by the second day the hunger
never came. I was—I am—so tired. Why you
(can you tell me why it had to be you)?

You kissed the supple crevice of my mouth
last night. Too tender. Too sweet. Cold when
the Fall air hit the wetness you had left. Maybe
it was a slip. Maybe I stepped into it. Maybe
you were sloppy from the wine and I was
ascribing meaning to the emptiness of that
night—the night that held so little away for me.

That day I designed a Web page I didn’t give two
shits about. It was disorganized, graphics
aesthetically unappealing, content wordless.
I just fucking did it. (Can you please stoppit?)
Don’t keep coming back to me with your sloppy
kiss and unappreciated compliments, your
well-intended pedagogy. Back to bed,
where dreams have not been dreamt. (Go away
and let it be.) The plumber—he came—he went.
He didn’t say goodbye. You’re never-ending
birds float hauntingly away with all winged hope.
Girl, you had called me once. But again,
maybe it was me that night—me and those
damned feathers that meant nothing at all.

Laundry Matt Blues

It's my last day here in Baltimore. The packing is nearly done. It's five am, and I can't sleep. Dan is snoring. I haven't slept normal in weeks; I'm sure I've said that before. Everything feels in a daze.

I've barely gotten used to this place, and soon enough I'll forget the address and it will forget us--the love we've left sandwiched between these walls. New memories will soon seep themselves into the drywall and we'll be nothing but the guts of a dead fly squished against the white wash.

This place--how can I give you a feeling for it?

We didn't unpack a lot of things. My suitcases looked like they vomited labels and last years articles. The furniture is all used, mostly compressed paper board made into artificial wood. I didn't mind it though. It was modest and something else--a resting place. We both knew it was temporary, still leaving feels strange.

Cardboard boxes litter the floor with packing paper. The bookshelf is bare. Things are neatly stacked. The floor is freshly vacuumed. The blinds are closed, and our leave is seeping out.

Sundays are laundry day. We put on the remainder of items that don't match. Neither of us like to get dressed on Sundays. We eat out, snuggle on the couch, play video games and make out. Make bloody marys.

We pack the fold our laundry bags overflowing. A well-used IKEA bag services our detergents and drier sheets, a few books to read and my Ipod. We sit on a yellow wire bench together, sweating a bit.

This place depresses me. The florescent lighting is dulling against the drab blue tile, tinting the room like a moldy berry. It's reminiscent the dirty hospital that nursed me in Queens from a kidney infection.

Laundry Matt Blues

Sing, sing the rhythm of

the Speed Queen washin'

machine. In goes the dollars,

round goes the water, rushin'

circles of bubble soap, dirty clothes--

nothin' but weekly chores. Kids

kickin' snack machine, soda pop

and crunchy dues. Terror of

the laundry matt these wanna-be

hoodlums--ain't got much to do

on their low rides, seats all the way

up. Dented machine hissin' softly,

givin' way nothin', not seen a coin

for weeks--expiration dates

tellin' a story this neighborhood

laundry matt knows without being spoke.

Ressurrecting, Us

Today I ruined a first edition book. Water damage in it's comfortable bed in a carefully planned bag in the backseat of my car. What a shame to see a work of history destroyed in a single summer morning's time. So immobile in a place thought to be safe, and it was faded away--pages died red from the sun, withered and waved like old sagging skin. I'll have to replace it; it was my father's book--how he loves them--his temporary escapes to somewhere Other. It'll be forgotten soon enough on a mildewing shelf while its replacement stands dusty and erect.

***

The packing is hard, and the sky is opening up with lead-drop rain. My truck is stuffed to the top with boxes and clothes, a whole big enough for me to see the tiniest reflection of traffic in my review mirror.

We are moving to Baltimore for the summer. Dan has an internship with the Department of Defence, and we've decided a new place would be good for us.

In Cumberland, MD, we stop for the night. We're both tired and sore. We walk the dogs and our suitcases into a cheap hotel room at the Red Roof Inn. The room smells of cigarettes and impersonal stale sheets.

Dan's dad sent us a bottle of homemade plum wine along. We pour some into Dixie cups and drink slowly. It burns because it was the bottom of the barrel, but it's so sweet we can't resist polishing off the bottle. A little drunk and tired, we fall into the bed too exhausted to soil the sheets.

***

The next day when we reach our new townhouse with the three-month lease, we bring in the necessities and the few boxes that had filled my small SUV. They are all we have to sit on. There is no furniture and that night we sleep on the floor on sheets and two thin hospital blankets.

***

It's four days before departure. I can't say I'll miss this place, though it's been kind to us. It felt more like a hotel room than a home. My suitcases never got unpacked, and several things never left their boxes. Makes the packing easier I suppose.

Two nights ago someone got stabbed and died a few doors down. We saw the fighting but kept our heads inside the door. The week before that some deadbeat dad beat up his girlfriend's kid purple. He beat her bloody. The cops came and busted in the door--took him away.

Packing shit in boxes. I'd like to say it's organized but it's not. As a girl I kept the things I loved neat: Barbie's shoes in one box, clothes in another, dresses hung in her revolving organized closet by pink hangers branded with a "B". Now it's just a matter of getting it to the new place.

It's hideous--the new place. The foundation is crooked, so all the doorways are slanted, and I can reach up and touch the ceiling easily with the balls of my fingers. The shutters are sour apple green and the door eggplant purple. It's in a secluded historical town where I can think away from neighboors pounding on their boyfriends next door. (He was locked out the house by her today. He went to the car and smoked a joint.) And there if I don't want to, I don't have to clean up the dog shit while it's still hot.

***

The animal hospital smells of cat piss. I'm here to pick up Plato, our other dog, stitches removed from nuturing surgery. Stranger's discarded love lazes about the corners and surfaces of the dull blue building. Misfit cats eye me from their perches. How many they've seen in and gone, no love for them--the one's left behind scarred, lumpy, deformed. Their flanks whisper liplessly that once they too had a opening in this world. Safe. Enough.

A black cat--pond scum eyes piercing me--cleans its fur. One ear is notched, front claws removed. It pads over to me begging for a scratch.

I'm allergic to cats. They make me itch and sneeze. I turn away. No, Kittie, I think, I will not love you.

***

Strange how love turns over and leaves us dull sometimes. It's not always biting. The simplest moments aren't always filled with appreciation and deep down I think we all know that. There is no background music to make moments more happy, more sad, more full of--well full of--something. We're not sure what to feel. But these moments are not to be overlooked. That would be the mistake. Maybe I put too much weight in the smaller things, and tend to overlook the big ones.

And. The large ones, I think they are resurrected by the smaller ones. Like when Dan purposed to me on sandy knees at the beach we both loved to wet our feet in and scour for sea glass. He said he had found a piece, but it was a ring--his eyes bluer than the water coming off the tide. And the smaller moment: I gave it back a year later, not ready to fill the expectations I thought had been layed down when we were girls.

***

"Resurrection Fern"

By Iron&Wine

In our days, we will live

Like our ghosts will live

Pitching glass at the cornfield crows and folding clothes

Like stubborn boys across the road

We'll keep everything

Grandma's gun and the black bear claw that took her dog

And when sister Lowery says Amen, we won't hear anything

The ten-car train will take that word, that fledgling bird

And the fallen house across the way

It'll keep everything

The baby's breath, our bravery wasted and our shame

And we'll undress beside the ashes of the fire

Both our tender bellies wound in baling wire

All the more pair of under water pearls

Than the oak tree and its ressurection fern

In our days we will say what our ghosts will say

We gave the world what we saw fit and what'd we get
Like stubborn boys with big green eyes

We'll see everything

In the timid shade of the autumn leaves and the buzzards wings

And we'll undress by the ashes of the fire

Our tender bellies are wound around in baling wire

All the more pair of under water pearls

Than the oak tree and its resurrection fern

Shoulder Lyrics

Sometimes communication get's lost. Sometimes the only thing left between people is a language long forgotten--that of the body. It's the painfully executed movement of the eyebrows, the angry raising of an offensive finger, that dutifully careful shoulder shrug. You know what I'm saying girls, when the house gets all broken and the playing has run it's course.

Don't tell me you haven't been there. Don't tell me for you it's been all kisses and, I'm sorries. Like I'd believe you. Childhood is long gone, the bewitchment of it faded. Here we have cemented facts: things go wrong. Dreams don't always come true. And in between love and hate there's that dreadful indifference where words fall away unjaded.

Fuck the rules. I layed it out for everyone to see. There's not always words. "House" doesn't go like we played. Love isn't perpetual plastic smiles. Kissing is much harder when someone else is involved.

Words fail us. Relationships can be sad. We don't get to play a new game.

The game we sometimes play: Shoulder Lyrics.

Let's talk words. Let's talk
like we love the sound of syllables
falling off our mouths as water
rushes around smooth rock. You
know I loved you. (Hey that's the secret,
I said--you know past tense.) I
didn't mean to keep back, it's
just those sounds never came.
I'm tellin' it now (it's too late) but
I'm tellin' it. I've said it before
(the few letters I know to put
together), sorry. I needed to say let's
talk words, except I only talk
shoulders--the careful shrug I
managed when you decided words
were what we talked and
walked out on me, and my non-
musical lips--lyrics long gone.

I'll Be the Wife and You Be My Hunny, That's How it Goes

Remember middle school--that tragic age between dropping the barbie dolls because you were too embarrassed--and picking up the doll again in the privacy of your own room, nothing but your nightlight on, brushing her delicate blond hair, matching her shoes to her dress, then sadly tucking her away before caught.

I recall kissing the bathroom mirror just for practice. I wanted to find my Ken. What girl of thirteen didn't? What a mistake we made thinking it would be that easy--that fogging up the bathroom mirror was actually like real kissing. And the barbies, I mean their plastic lips touched, but that's all. Just a perpetual smile privately between her and Ken. I imagined it close to the cool glass. They were both hard at the touch.

I started with a new "baby"--that disastrous story about a feral puppy intent on digesting the inedible. The truth is, I started there because it was easier to start there. She was tough on me. And we both grew together. But how wonderful it is to love something and simply be loved back. No words. No grudges. A puppy always forgives your moods, licks at wounds, and finds its way back into your lap. Loyal and faithful and pure in love.

The first time I kissed Dan my skin bumped. His tongue against mine was like tasting a battery. But our love story is full of words and grudges and questionable passion. It began. It ended. It began again.

Tell me, when was the first time you tasted a kiss and new it was meant only for your lips--that inexplicable connection when the lips simply meet, move together, touch in just the right way, and then you smile? It was September 10, 2006. And my Ken wasn't so plastic. His flesh was hot and soft. He didn't have a perpetual white smile. In truth, his teeth were a little crooked, hair not so perfect.

But how wonderful it is to love something and simply be loved back.

Stupid, delusional thirteen year old girl, why did you think it would be that way? The Barbie Dream House was just that: a dream. So listen girls. We're in our twenties, or maybe older. Love goes like this:

It's been a damned hard day. The puppy still isn't potty trained, the other dog is instigating a rumble, and my pot is boiling over. The laundry still isn't done. I haven't done my fair share of reading today. My legs are sore.

I have insomnia and haven't slept a full eight hours in months. I wake up every forty five minutes to see what time it is--hoping it's time to get up and I don't have to lay there desperately trying to fall asleep. He hasn't touched me in weeks. I'm unapproachable, he says. I don't like affection. That's true enough.

I'm planning graduate school. A master's degree to make me feel important because without a book in my hand I have too much time to analyse my own life and I don't really like myself very much.

He walks through the door. He's dirty. Covered in oil. The dishes aren't done because I took two sleeping pills after I woke him up for work at 5:25 am--because I always wake before the alarm at 5:30 anyway--and went to sleep in a zombie-state of consciousness from six until 9:30.

I got up. Sat on the couch. Watched TV, but couldn't tell you what was on. I just stared. The sleeping pill took several hours to wear off and I couldn't concentrate on anything. Couldn't sleep.

I chased the puppy through the house demanding that she GO WHERE SHE'S SUPPOSED TO GO, but it failed. I put her in my lap and held her for hours. I cried.

Anyways, he's walked through the door dirty.

I say how was your day, or something, and he talks for ten minutes. I'm not listening. He stops in mid sentence, looks at me, shrugs, and heads for the shower. I don't notice he's gone until I hear the water running above my head.

I finish dinner. I let the dishes rot. I serve his plate.

I refuse to write. I haven't tried to but once. He knows I love to write, but he knows I won't. I'm disappointed in myself. It shows. I haven't dressed. I haven't worn makeup for six weeks.

This is how love goes:
He ate his dinner, went to bed at 9:30pm. I watched TV. Couldn't remember it. I took a sleeping pill again. Just one. Nothing. Then I went up two hours later. I tried to wake him, but he shrugged me off mumbling, "something, something, tired." Whatever, I don't remember. Then I tried to sleep.

In the morning I wake him before the alarm. He says, "I'm awake," which he's not. Five minutes later the alarm buzzes. I hate that fucking alarm. He presses snooze. He presses snooze three more times. I want to break the fucking alarm.

Then I smack him. "Get out of bed. You fucking turned the alarm off again and it's six."

"Shit, I'm gonna be late."

Scrambling for clothes. Slams the door. That evening he comes home and kisses me. I kiss him back. We go upstairs. It's not always good, but the days it is, it's enough.

But how wonderful it is to love something and simply be loved back.

Baby Dolls

So, where to start. Suppose we begin in April, when the stork arrived via an Internet window that said, "Save Pound Puppies." And so we did. My boyfriend, Dan, and I finally agreed to do what was sure to be undoable during finals week: we got a puppy.
Or should I say, we more or less got a puppy.

The omen should have been clear. The rescuer clearly warned us, "Now, she's an ornery one." So she's got some attitude, we don't mind.

Tiny problem. She was a monster disguised as a fur ball. We couldn't touch her without being bitten. She lunged at your face. She went, where and when she pleased. She ate everything but the drywall, including the base trim. But the worst was that she screamed whenever left alone. She shook and got the hiccups. It was so despairing to see, you almost forgot the bloody bite marks on your fingers and arms.

I didn't know what to do. I mean, playing house was easier right? If you had a baby doll that wouldn't stop crying, you just said never mind let's pretend I don't have a baby. If you got sick of it, I mean it was only pretend, you just gave it up for adoption. Or dropped it at daycare. Or hired a nanny. But this was something else entirely. I couldn't give her back. I couldn't say, Uh I'm erasing my baby.

Instead I sat marooned on the bed while she ran tirelessly around the bedroom in circles, attacking your feet if they hit the floor.


Dan is home from work. He looks exhausted. I'm on the bed, eyes teary. You can hear snarling and ripping beneath the bed, though you see nothing.

"Baby, what's wrong--what the hell is she doing?" he says to me.

I pull my knees to my chest. "I can't take it anymore. She's a demon. I can't get her to listen to me. I tried pulling her out of there because she's acting psycho and she bit me.
Look! It's still bleeding."

"Just calm down. Don't be upset. I'll get her out."

"Delilah," he calls for the dog sternly.

"She's not going to come out. She'll just bite your face off."

"Lilah! Come out of there." His large frame is bent up, the remainder of his legs under
the dresser in our small space.

There is a long pause while he searches on all fours under the bed.

"Hope, I don't see her down here."

"Dan she's under there I can here her throwing a fit. I can feel her moving around hitting her head."

"Seriously Hope," he says shocked, "she's not here."

"What are you talking about dammit? Just leave her alone." I hop off the bed and onto the floor only to realize she isn't there.

"What is that snarling?" Dan looks at me.

I make my way on all fours to the foot of the bed and see what she's done.

"Dan come here."

"What?" He stands up, walks over, and kneels.

"Oh my God." His eyes are large and round.

"She tore a big hole in the fucking liner of the box springs and shes actually INSIDE the bed."

I put my hands over my face defeated as I hear more snarling and ripping. Then I look at Dan, and we both just laugh.

He grabs a stuffed bunny off the floor and starts waving it inside the massive rip. We hear tiny feet burrowing their way through the slats of our bed. Then, she latches on--baited so easily.

He snatches her quickly, tosses the feral beast my way, and I gently pin her down while he runs for a stapler to reattach the liner. She squirms but I distract her with a strip of leather, which she tears at until she feels she's sufficiently shredded it.

Once the staples are in place, I let her off the bed, then say to Dan exasperated, "That's it, I'm calling my Mom. I can't do this by myself."


Like I said, it was easier when we were girls. Dealing with a very young pup, estimated 6 weeks old, that has been abused and abandoned wasn't easy. But the rules of house are simple: we must nurture. Or so "house" dictates, and mommy and daddy thought they were ready. But when we were girls, we never called in our parents to deal with a plastic doll, or a mouthy child, work related stress. We just played a new game, or gave ourselves new names.

It's not that simple anymore girls. When we were young our plastic play centers had stoves and high chairs for babies that actually wetted themselves. We really were doing the things our mothers before us had done. And it occurs to me now, when did our mothers realize that they too were "playing house", with newborns that they couldn't quit and husbands that they couldn't quicky divorce or give new names? After all, then they were just imaginary and it was all just pretend.

Playing House

Let's say you've found yourself in your early twenties--say 21--and in a semi-adult relationship. That is, by definition a relationship that constitutes of sex, finances, and obligations. And let's just say that you've decided to stick it out on your own, a committed couple breaking roots from a low-income city just hoping you don't fall down flat. That means juggling things you can't possibly afford, bouncing from location to location trying to make it through the early years of adulthood, pregraduate studies.

This is the beginning of a chronicled manuever to what all young girls know as "playing house". From choosing who will play the mommy, daddy, and the baby, to platforms much too big for our feet, dresses drooping casually where breasts have yet to develop, long necklaces, broken telephones, old brief cases that no longer latch properly, hats that will sag over ours ears, and bedroom forts as substitute housing.

I am no longer a girl, but the rules still apply. Instead of plastic vacuum cleaners and rubber foods, its the real thing that sucks up a quarter and burns up or vegetables bought two days too late, rotting in their plastic store-bought baggies, forgotten in fridge drawers all too quickly. It was easier when we were girls, and we decided we didn't want to be the mommy, or we wanted to move, change our adolescent careers from actresses to dancers to police offices to robbers. No, no. The rules still apply and they fit a bit too snuggly, like those jeans from freshman year. So like I said, this is my attempt to set down those rules, guidelines, and non-rules for those of us still succumbing and over the course of these entries show exactly what it's like for girls "playing house" in their twenties.