Little Weirds(17)

Colors started to ascend in a wave, right out of my body. They got clearer and more concentrated. My colors became the nice easy shapes that babies learn. There were triangles and squares floating in the air. There were at least five hundred circles. There were shafts of color pirouetting during my death. There were random blasts of colors with no shape but the sounds of French horns and bicycle bells and forks on wineglasses when they announce a toast.

A swarm of small lights came out of the tips of my fingers and toes and they sounded like crickets in the night. Each little pill of light in the swarm had wings but no face.

The whole room shimmied with the sound of the xylophone, drowning out the sad songs of my vagina.

Bing. Bong. Bing, plinked the xylophone in the lights and shapes and air.

I knew it: That is my sound. It was like a doorbell that rings, but so I can open a door to leave, not bring anyone in. I was my own guest and host at once at the end of my world.

I heard the sound of the bing-bong, and the electromagnetic field around my heart blushed maraschino cherry red. As my eyes fluttered and closed for good, the lights behind them blinked purple red purple and the blinks sounded a plunk and a fizz and everyone couldn’t help but laugh at those goof-noises, like how babies laugh at sneezes.

The room went black, even though it was only the late afternoon. Then it was very quiet.

Write a letter to someone. Tell them that this is not a tragedy. The rest of me went home to the universe.

There is a rumor that I vroomed out of town on a red maraschino cherry with a wagging tail.





Mouse House

Hello, have you met me? I am a Mouse.

In the mornings of my life, I wake up and I blink my eyes open and I stretch my body with a shudder that holds tension like a string pulled so tight that it makes a musical sound when you pluck it with one finger.

When I wake up my body reacts so immediately to a new day that you can hear one high, bright note. I am so tuned to being alive that if you touch me it makes music.

My love is the first one who may hear that private sound. My love is a sexy rabbit. His heart beats in such strong thumps and his heart sounds like, far away, a wild boy is dribbling a hard ball all alone, practicing so that he can be the best, by his own standards. An earnest dribble. Full focus. My love has a heart beat and heart bounce just like me even though he is a different animal, and that’s that.

I love to smell morning air and I always do. I love to walk quietly through my small mouse house. My feet are clean and rather long and my butt is a soft little pumpkin-rump and my tail is a chestnut-brown treble clef but yes I am a mouse. This is just how I name my parts because it is very pleasing to me to adorn myself with descriptions that I wear like clothes.

The floor is dry dirt that is packed down so that it is not dusty in here. I walk through my mouse house every early morning and I look at all of my own things, like my small table and my windowpanes and my acorn that I keep just for decoration. I walk through each bashful morning with renewed pride, and my heart is perky and smart as I open the door so that I can put myself into the world.

I step out into the sun and air and globes of dew. I can hardly take it, how full I am that there is a new day to have. And there right outside of my house, I have made a little flag for me, to signify that I live on my own personal land. Every time I see that it still stands and has not been trampled in the night, I drop open my tiny little mouth and sing out a victory note because there it is, a flag made of twig and blossom and leaf.





Holding the Dog

I stand in the middle of a room in the daytime when I should be doing a number of things, enough things to fill a list, but I do not do any of the things, I only stand in the middle of a room in a hotel filled with people who (I imagine) have un-ruined hearts. I stand there so still and look out the window and all I can think is maybe I will see your dog and all I can think is a made-up story: “I am on the street and the dog breaks free of you and free of your hold, and the dog runs away from you but I catch it.” And while I’m putting this together in my mind I think, “But isn’t the dog very strong and rather wiggly? I could never hold it.” But I let myself have my thinking again, make the image, and in the image I hold on. I hold on to the dog and you come running up, sort of stressed but not as much as anyone should be when something runs away from them, because the crazy thing about you is that in almost every way you are an example of limits. And then the fantasy starts to melt or have an invisible morphing energy like flubby, distorted sound. I try to hold on. What should I be? I suppose I want to be the hero, but not really, and I want to be the one, but not really, anymore. Mostly I want you to look at me and realize what happened and say sorry at least, and really consider me for a moment in your own padded organized mind and then let me give you your dog back and I will take that tiny chunk of my identity back, the one that you walked off with, and I will take it back and hold on. And then you will just actually dissipate right there on the sidewalk and the dog will somehow be fine and I will stand up and maybe even have no memory of this whole thing, or just a vague memory of holding a loving dog in place for a moment on a street in another world.





I Died: Bonked

Well, let’s see. This one is fun but also serious.

I got bonked on the head by a zig of lightning, and then I died.

But then somebody put my body in the ocean and I got yoinked around by the waves and that helped to get the gloop going inside of me and so I was born anew and I was alive again and I’d really only missed a few minutes of the world. But still, I felt shy and different. And then I glugged up out of the sea and onto the beach and a Big Sweetie blinked at me and even though I was shy, my clothes whipped themselves into a bikini and he blinked at me again and I knew my bikini would just woosh off completely if he blasted one more blink from his peepers, and I was so jumpy about the idea of what that would do that the pumper in my heart konked out and I died again!