White Picket Fence Around My Laughter
The Muse
is at the back door tonight.
I hear her scratch-tap
as I am sweeping the linoleum.
My heart races a caterpillar of fear
up my spine to the top of my head.
I turn around in slow motion,
never sure what I may find with her.
Could be weeks, could be months
between visits.
I quiver in strange joy
that I so rarely experience these days.
She is breathing on the glass.
She is drawing an arrow out
with her fingertip.
She is beckoning me to follow
with the toss of her head.
I inhale.
The kitchen smells like Windex
and the remnants of vegan lasagna.
I so much want
to leave it all behind me.
Things like fake cheese
are
such a bad idea.
I rush out the door,
closing it behind me
with a quiet hush.
Then I have that scary thought,
the one that comes upon me
when I am smelling the melons
at the grocery store
or trying to fold a fitted sheet
into a perfect cube.
I just never know
when it will come.
A thought lands within me with a kerplunk,
but it is more of a question.
Will I ever go back?
Back through that same door?
If I come back,
will I be the same,
even if the door is the same?
Why do I think so much about leaving?
Just then, I see the edge
of her emerald green dress
disappear into the density of the hedges.
I rush to follow her,
but she is too quick.
I can’t find the opening.
I feel frustrated.
Why won’t she wait for me?
Then I know why.
The Muse waits for no one.
If she comes, follow quickly.
I won’t miss her this time.
I press my face into the green leaves—
the smell is intoxicatingly pungent.
I lose myself in the scent,
like Meyer lemons and lilac blooms,
like night falling on a lover’s picnic,
I swoon . . . I am losing my balance.
Just as I feel I am about to fall,
I am through the hedge,
into the thick green darkness
of the unknown.
I am inside
of wherever I am.
I cannot see her
and I am afraid of where I am going,
but more afraid of going back
without her.
I move forward in the dark
as the last glow of the light
from my kitchen window fades
into the shadows.
The last bit of light
from the life
I just walked out of
disappears.
Is this what is required?
That I walk forward in the dark?
Haven’t I already been doing that?
It is hard to explain how
this cycle of time has felt—
as if nothing will ever be the same again.
Am I the only one who hopes it won’t
go back to normal?
I don’t think that
where we were was normal at all.
I am not saying I want it to stay like this,
but I don’t want to go back, either.
I don’t know what I want.
I shudder.
Not because my life is bad.
But because I don’t know
exactly how I got to this restless hedge
and lately, not certain I want
whatever it is
I signed up for.
What was it, anyway?
That I wanted?
This is the life that happened
when I wasn’t looking.
The one “they” told me I wanted.
Their voices were louder than my cravings.
The life that was told to me,
sold to me on TV,
The jargon and the bargains,
the three-car garage,
the husband with a good job,
the kids—oh yes, at least two,
and don’t forget the dog!
The dog everyone but me wanted.
The one I walk with a poop bag.
That dog. That shit. This life.
Yet I admit the dog is my trusted confidant.
Without Lazarus,
I fear I would feel so alone
Then her laughter cracks like lightning,
sending a flash of pale-yellow light
bristling through the bush.
She sounds like she is cackling
at some fantastic joke
that I clearly missed.
I don’t know what else to do,
so I laugh, too. Kind of.
I notice immediately that
my laughter isn’t like hers,
thick like hers—mine is thin.
Hers is easy like a river,
as if she knows all the jokes.
Mine has a white picket fence around it,
little sharp white spikes.
Who is the fence keeping in?
And who is it keeping out?
My laughter turns on me,
and my stomach hurts.
I start to cry.
This hurting
opens me up,
breaking through
the fake cheese, vegan lasagna life
that I have been keeping behind
that fence.
In the quiet dark, I cry
until there are no tears left.
I cry for something I cannot name
that feels broken in me,
but I know it is more than me.
Green light is flickering
through my closed eyelids.
Slowly, I open them,
filtered colored light moving
through my lashes,
creating rainbows all around me.
Then I see her through the rainbows.
I am relieved to not feel so very alone.
How I have missed her!
Her back is up against
a big, scaley tree trunk.
It looks ancient
and seems to have many eyes
looking out at me.
She looks like she is a part of the tree.
The rainbow lights
are moving and cast a glow on her dress.
Oh, her dress!
Her dress is made of leaves!
Delicate and heart shaped at the bodice,
curving in whisps around her hips,
cascading down in green ribbons,
and bits of maiden hair fern shimmering about.
Silverish leaves dangling as lace,
rustling around her plumed sleeves.
“Eucalyptus,” she offers
as she sees me
eyeing the dress
and sniffing at the familiar scent.
Now I recognize the smell,
like a long walk in
Golden Gate Park,
The one he and I
used to take
when we first met.
Why haven’t we walked there
in so long to smell the sea
and the eucalyptus?
“You could have a dress like this, too,
if you only know where to look.
Love lives where life grows.”
Her words are like tiny arrows,
entering me one by one.
Love . . . lives . . . where . . . life . . . grows?
I have so many questions.
I can’t find the words.
A feeling of grief rises up—
an unwelcome wave.
I feel like I am being swallowed.
I shake myself out and
manage to make eye contact,
imploring. She tells me again.
“Love . . . lives . . . where . . . life . . . grows.
Are you growing life?”
She seems impatient.
“It really isn’t that complicated,
are you or aren’t you growing love?”
I don’t know the answer.
But what I want to say is . . .
—I feel hurt right now.
How can love grow
when the world is falling apart?
When the people are dying
and the trees are burning
and the oceans are rising
and the polar bears
don’t have enough food?
What happens when you can’t trust
the leadership in the place you live?
Or what the news tells you?
How can love grow
when you don’t feel lovable enough?
When days stretch endlessly into each other?
What happens to a woman
When, day after day, she becomes
more invisible to herself
and to everyone else?
What happens when the
picket fence which keeps the lawn in
and the dog in
also keeps you locked in?
But I don’t say it out loud,
yet she has been known
to read my mind before.
I see her hands
are covered in tiny dots of light,
a constellation, a map perhaps—
but to where?
They are glowing.
She follows my curious eyes,
holding up her hands for me to see.
Her hands look like a galaxy.
“I touch the stars,
do you?”
Her voice is gentler now.
I shake my head no and say,
“No, I do not touch the stars.”
but I am holding a wishbone—
yet I don’t say that part.
“You used to touch the stars.
Why did you stop?” she asks.
“I don’t know . . . I don’t know
what you mean.” I say, wondering—
must it always be a riddle with her?
“Oh, darling one—
how far have you come
away from the place
your heart longs for?
Does your guitar gather dust?
Are the tips of the colored pencils dull?
Is the canvas hungry with one thin layer of paint?
Is the white page staring blankly at the sky?
The starlight—is it blocked by heavy curtains?
Does your lover have to ask every time?
Do you no longer make invitations?
Oh, darling one,
how far have you come
away from the place
your heart and body long for?
Have you fashioned yourself
a cave of your own making?”
“It’s a fence,” I blurt awkwardly
“What?” She is annoyed
that I have interrupted her rant.
“A fence” I say, explaining.
“It’s a white picket fence,
not a cage.”
She nods, saying, “I know the one.
I have to hop over it to get to you.
Come closer, so I can see you.”
I feel exposed, and a little sad.
I don’t want her to ask me
what I am not doing as if
it is all my fault and as if I
have the solution and I just
haven’t been willing to try it.
I want her to tell me
I can leave it all behind—
start over in a new town,
somewhere no one knows me.
“What do you want?” she asks.
It’s a simple, loaded question
for any woman in mid-life.
Without thinking, I blurt out,
“I want a new name.”
Wow, what is wrong with me?
I don’t even know
what I mean.
“You can’t find your new name
the places you are looking.”
Evidently, SHE knows
what I mean.
I step forward.
Now I am just a few
feet from the Muse.
I see that her hair
is dotted with tiny green flashes.
I move even closer, amazed,
‘Grasshoppers,” she says
in answer to my unspoken inquiry.
“They like hanging out with me.
Rather fine company,
don’t you think?”
“They are, or you are?” I ask
“Yes,” she replies.
I wonder if I was ever good company.
I begin rambling, so uncool,
“As for the invitation; yes,
it my husband who always asks,
I don’t ask anymore.
After the kids,
I didn’t ask for
pleasure anymore
but I don’t really know why.
I haven’t thought about my vagina
for quite some time.”
“That’s a problem,” she offers.
“What kind of problem?” I ask.
She tilts her head to the side.
Now it is her time to be rude,
flicking her tongue in and out
and clicking her teeth.
Wow, the Muse is vulgar sometimes.
Her sounds disturb the grasshoppers—
they jump off and scatter all around us,
glowing green light inside of this place.
I don’t know if we are in a tree,
or a cave, or a bush.
I don’t ask.
“I have no idea what that meant,”
I tell her, brushing a grasshopper
off of my arm.
“Confused often, are you?”
she quips, looking at me
and leaning towards me.
Is it just me, or do her teeth
look sharp?
Her eyes are an endless vast-black
but not empty—more like chaos.
Her smile is uncanny, unsettling,
pushing me out and calling me in.
I feel like I am floating—
as if there is a big spaciousness,
and I can’t find my balance.
She hands me a cup of tea
out of nowhere. She’s like that,
the Muse.
“Where the ‘f’ are we?” I ask, feeling panicked.
“What, can’t say the word ‘fuck’ anymore?
Too tame for such trash?” she mocks.
I am beginning to wish I hadn’t come.
I am no match for her.
I sit down in the dirt in the roots.
I am gulping my tea,
which tastes like ass.
I want to spit it out.
My face crumples as the tea goes down—
I can’t help but wonder
if she has laced it with something.
“The tea,” she says,
“is from the roots of the Mother Tree,”
as if that explains the flavor.
“Go easy,” she says.
(to be continued)
From Muse at the Back Door – A book coming soon of these writings from 2020.
Keepers of the Golden Egg 2018
Red Thread Letter #834
