The Moors

The beginning of this dream is lost. The first thing I remember is dark, cold moors. There isn’t a house around for miles. No lights. I have a job to do, but I don’t want to do it. Oh god, I don’t want to do it. But I have to. If I don’t do what I set out to do, my life will be forfeit.

            I smile in the darkness, even though he can’t see it, and grasp his hand. I hope my grip is steadier than it feels. The smile feels traitorous on my face. He drinks more. Good. He’s drunk. Not drunk enough to stumble and fall. I have to make sure he doesn’t drink that much. He’s bigger than me, so if he goes down, I have to do it the hard way. The mere thought of it sends my stomach pitching and rolling like the hills over which we walk.

            Darkness coats the moors like paint, but I look up and read the thick spray of stars well. I know these moors and I know where I must take him. It’s not far, but the bitter wind slices through to my bones and slows me. Neither of us has a heavy coat, but that doesn’t bother him. Alcohol is his coat.

            I stretch out the hand that’s not connected to his and brush something hard and rough. The tree.

            I tell him that we need to wait a minute, but I don’t let go of his hand. Don’t dare. I can’t lose him in the darkness. I lean against the tree, wrap my free arm around it and press my cheek to its crusty, craggy bark.

            It’s warm.

            I know what it looks like in the light: Gnarled and twisted, dark and blasted. Its limbs do not reach for the sky anymore; they’re arthritic fingers, curled into knobby claws by time and age. It’s shedding its bark; it falls off in musty-mossy chunks. Wind and water and day and night have worn away the ground around its roots. They rise from the earth like the backs of sea serpents. He trips over them and almost falls. My heart leaps into my throat. But he leans on the tree to get up again.

            “Don’t touch it,” I almost scream. “It’s not yours!” I screw my mouth shut against the scream pressing against the backs of my teeth.

            Technically it’s not mine either, but I bare my teeth and snarl at him silently. He doesn’t notice. He spilled his beer on the roots of the tree. I want to force his head down and make him lick it off, but there are more important things to get done.

            I don’t want to leave the tree. I draw no comfort from its crumbling existence. Its peeling, pointed bark pierces the bare flesh of my cheek and arm, but I grip it tighter anyway. It is still warm, and that’s what I cling to.

            It’s time to go, I say to myself. You have to. Now.

            I let go of the tree gingerly, feeling like I’ve left my heart impaled on one spiny piece of bark. It’s connected to me only by strings, which spin out like thread on spools as we make our way over the moors.

            It’s downhill now, and I know we’re getting close. I don’t hear it yet, and I hope he won’t hear it until it’s too late.

            There is no moon, which is good and bad. Good because there isn’t enough light for him to read the land and, more importantly, to read me. He’s always been good at that, and I’ve been bad about keeping my heart hidden. Bad because I love the moon. I miss the moon. It anchors my heart. It is my eye, my satellite, my safety, my blanket of light in this always-night.

            He doesn’t notice when I begin to hum. He still holds the empty beer bottle and tips it back from time to time, trying to drink from it. We still hold hands. I try desperately to keep my grip from mimicking the clawed branches of the tree.

                        To my dearest forsaken

                        Who the earth now has taken

                        Empty, the bottle drains no more

A rushing, hushing sound begins to drown out my quiet hums. I’ve been down here dozens of times, but that doesn’t matter. I must be still. Because to most, the sound has no source. It creeps and surrounds, blankets and disorients, makes you scared and dizzy. The very air makes the sound, it seems, and it’s warning you like a rattlesnake.

            But I know better. I know how to find the source of the sound. I close my eyes and remove myself from myself. It used to be a lot more difficult than it is now. I throw my consciousness out wide in front of me like a net and find what I’m looking for. Close. Not even a football field away. Relief and trepidation muscle into my mind and I am sucked back into myself.

            Awareness begins to clear the cloud of drunkenness around him and he asks where we’re going. I squeeze his hand in reassurance, which he seems to accept. We walk. I feel the strings attached to my heart begin to pull. I hum.

                        It is true that I loved you

                        Despite the harm now on you

                        Wash us; the river has you, boy

As we get closer, the sound does not grow or change. It gets colder, though, as we pick our way through the blasted moor grasses, down, down. I glance up. The fog kicked up by the water is separating us from the stars. That’s okay. It’s not them I’m wedded to, not their tiny needlepricks of cold white light. I urge him deeper into the mist.

            We may as well already be underwater. It’s bone-cold and dangerously black. The air, the fog, the sound presses on us like silt on a riverbed. Here is where it gets tricky for me. I don’t know precisely where the drop-off is, so I have to tread like a frightened child, reaching out to test the ground with one foot before I take each step. I tell him not to step ahead of me.

            Even though that would be easier.

            But I still have hold of his hand; if he falls, he’ll grip me tighter instead of letting go.

            I can’t let that happen. I can’t fall with him. I can’t.

            The heartstrings, connected to my heart still at the tree, are nearly taut now.

With my next step I reach out, step on nothing but air. I find the edge of the bank, orient myself along it so that we stand side by side facing the yawning crevasse the river has cut into the flank of the moor.

            Despite how close we are to the roaring rapids, the sound is not deafening. That’s because the water has spent millions of lifetimes carving this never-healing wound; it’s cut so deep into the earth that the sound works so hard to reach us it’s tired and weak when it gets here.

            “It’s warm,” he says.

            It is. The poisonous cold is less here, right at the bank, especially when you lean out over the emptiness. The river ran so deep it must have struck the earth’s vital warmth, which it was now releasing. I look down, even though it’s still too black to see even a hand an inch from my face. The water must be boiling down there.

            I let go of his hand.

                        Here on the eve of too long

                        Where you’ll think I have done wrong

                        Waking in fear of you no more

I am scared. I feel the triphammer-pound of my heart through the strings, which thrum and vibrate and send out a frantic, skittery song.

He is quiet. Still. He’s sober now and beginning to guess why we’re here. I have to do it before he realizes how deeply I violated his trust.

            I have to do it.

            I wonder if he can feel the terror and anticipation baking off me in waves.

            I have to do it.

            I will the soft soil under his feet to suddenly crumble and pitch him into nothingness.

            I have to do it.

            I put my hand on his shoulder.

            If he decides to fight, he’ll win. He’s bigger and stronger than me. What will I do then?

            If I move another inch, the taut strings of my heart will snap.

            I have to do it. Now.

            I take a shuddering, painful breath and push.

            There is a terrible ripping from the center of my chest. The pain is blinding. It tears the breath out of me and I fall back onto the bank coughing and gasping. I clasp the sucking hole in my chest, expecting to plunge my hand into gouts of hot, thick blood, but feel nothing. Not even a hole.

            I feel nothing.

            I lie there for a moment and catch my breath. Gazing up into the stifling blackness, I begin to hum again.

                        To my dearest forsaken

Dearest vow I have broken

Afraid of your angry hands no more

River may help me later

                        Sleeping my lost love for you, boy

Song: "Dearest Forsaken" By Iron and Wine

What a car tire can teach

Someone in the oncoming lane ran over a puppy.

I did not see the small puff of black and white until it was already under the other car and rolling like a furry bowling ball with legs.

           

My reaction was lighting fast; my concern was only for the animal whirling into the path of my car. I slammed hard on the brakes, leaving a couple feet of rubber on the asphalt behind me. Momentum flung my laptop on the passenger seat into the dash and then onto the floor with what would have been an unsavory series of clunks had I been paying attention. Luck would have it there was nobody behind me.

It was not clear to me what kind of animal it was. It could have been a dog or a cat or a skunk. All I knew is that it had been hit. I vaulted out of the car and sped around to the front. Several feet from my bumper was the body of a small dog, a pool of blood so brightly red it reflected iridescent already forming under its head. I knelt and, knowing it was futile, nudged two fingers into the softness on the inside of its front leg. All was quiet.

The little black-and-white patchwork mutt had some Westie around the face and ears; some Yorkie in the coat and who knew what else. But its coat was clean, smooth and bright. It was obviously someone’s, and obviously not an adult. A few milk teeth still nestled in its pink gums.

That’s when the tears started.

I lifted the body as gently as I could, one arrow piercing my heart for how light it was, one for how warm it was, one more for how broken it was, and stepped to the side of the road. On the other side was an apartment complex; on my side, woods. I gazed up at the apartments, wishing for its owner to come and not come at the same time. What was I supposed to do with this little body in my hands?

I sat on the curb asking myself this question over and over for a little while, sobbing, and then began to hate the person who’d hit this puppy. I began to hate its owner for letting it get away. I began to hate myself for being seconds too late to save it.

I thought maybe I should move my car out of the middle of the lane, but I didn’t want to, couldn’t, leave the puppy. I thought maybe I could go find its owner. But the thought of going door-to-door with the bleeding body of a puppy in my arms was macabre enough that I had to laugh. It was a croaking, cracked sound.

           

So, then, I asked myself as I looked down at its half-lidded oildrop eyes, what was I supposed to do with this tiny body?

I decided to sit with it for a few more minutes. If nobody came looking for it, I’d have to leave.

Nobody came.

With dry eyes I lay the body down on the grass. I stroked its fur one last time, more for my comfort than for anything else, and said goodbye.

I sat in the car for a few seconds longer, willing the puppy’s owner to come out now, please, so I wouldn’t have to leave it all alone.

But I drove the remaining quarter mile from my father’s place to my mother’s, reminding myself that the puppy wouldn’t be the one to suffer once I left it alone.

Life, as we all know but never truly understand, is short. You never know when some great cosmic tire could come rolling along and squish your head. So here is your great cosmic warning: Stop being paralyzed by doubt and indecision. Few people really KNOW who they are and what they want when they’re 18, 20, 25, 35 or even 45. You just have to start trying things. Start talking to people. Be open to where your endeavors take you and understand that plans can change. If you continue to cleave to inaction, your tire will roll along and you won’t have left anything behind besides strings of your own guts. That won’t really make the world any better.

The truth

At night all my doubts and worries creep from the shadows and the shadows give them life. They whisper my fear back at me and since there is no such thing as a voice without a body, I glance fearfully over my shoulder, even though my back is to the wall, for the dark bodies with claws.

            Did I do the right thing? Did I make the right choice?

            I still wonder. I may never stop wondering that.

            And that is another set of claws, attached to long, many-jointed hairy arms, attached to a shadowy body, home to a mind that’s nothing but the worst of my own.

            One set of claws says that I did this to myself. People say “It’s not your fault”. No, it’s not wholly my fault, but nothing in this world is wholly anything. I made some decisions and brought the consequences down on myself. I know I’m going to have to pay my due. And I’m paying it.

            And I’m learning lessons.

            This is what I think about during the day, when the shadows slink and melt and the claws crumble like ashes.

            I’m learning lessons that I should have learned much sooner, that many people learn much later and even more never learn at all.

            Part of doing right by to someone else is doing right by yourself first. First.

            Other people never ever ever fit in the holes in your soul. Trying to make them fit is an injustice to both of you.

            Where you invest your love is where you invest your life. Invest wisely.

            These things, and thousands of other little lessons like dandelions fill a field I like to visit when I’m feeling bad. Their sheer yellowness is overpowering and blasts every fold of my brain clear of shadows.  Each time I leave the field I bring a little bit more of its light back with me so that the good mood lasts a little longer.

            It’s like a battery, this yellowness, but it never lasts long enough to get me through the thick, creeping night.

            Not yet.

            I know there’s something else I’m supposed to be learning, supposed to be doing, but I still don’t know what that is yet. That’s why the yellow battery runs out so quickly.

            I’m back to square one, the skittering claws and snapping jaws say. Before, at least, I had love. I had a badly-fitting but well-sewn patch for my threadbare soul. Now the patch has been ripped away and the tight stitches have taken that piece of my soul with it. Now there’s nothing to keep the shadows and their poison out.

Good thing I’m used to this.

It’s been easier this time to fight the corrupting influence of them, ironically because the love I had gave me strength and gave substance to my soul. It heals just like the body does, by bleeding, by pain, by sewing up the fabric with its own substance. But it heals much more slowly.

And the infections are a problem.

            All the while I gather the shreds of myself up and try to fit them back to where they once were. Oh but the pieces are so tiny. I’ve always been bad at jigsaw puzzles. Not bad at them, but just not patient enough.

            But I can’t afford not to be patient, or I’ll never finish and I’ll never get my whole self back.

            If only I had some other enemy than my apathy or impatience or insecurity.

            People say, “Nobody’s perfect.” People say, “Nothing’s impossible.” People say,“You tried your best and that’s all anybody can ask.” People say, “Do or do not. There is no try.”

            Which is it?

            People say, “Your decisions make you who you are.”

            I say, “Everything is relative.”

            So where does that leave us?

            A lesson I keep learning and I will never stop learning and it will never stop hurting is this:

            There are no absolutes. There are no forsures. There are no guarantees.

            That is the single most comforting and the single most terrifying truth I have ever encountered.

            And it seems to run the universe.

Hey I'm back with a poem

This is my first post here in almost a year! Also this is my first poem in almost that long.

I suck at titles.

"Sigh-n Wave"

Me minus you is

A simple equation with no simple answer.

Us minus each other is

Nothing but silence across the covers.

Two asunder is no longer one and one

But one asunder

And one asunder.

I’m so tired of these mechanical anti semantic

Idiot numbers, one, two, thirteen.

Idiot one.

Give me words over numbers, please

Oh won’t you say something

To divide this silence, to

Subtract the longing, to

Derive some sort of meaning from this negation of years?

Years minus us is time torn from memory.

Unanchored, we float in our memories of each other. Moorless,

Our numbers a poor substitute for the muscle memory of holding each other.

Time plus time will be multiplied into healing and motion but

Sorrow graphed in lines and waves upon our faces, our hearts is

A repeating decimal,

Forever reminding us of our idiot ones, our broken twos and how we

Add the idiot numbers up to make something

Not so idiot.

(C)Kate Capehart 2011