Katherine Lily

11. Crossing

They leave early on a Monday morning, slipping out of doorways and sliding around corners. They head out of the city. They head toward the mountains, where the sun is thrusting out threads of color, pushing pinks and oranges into the blue of the sky. The path through forests, through birdcalls and cracking branches and leaves that crunch beneath their feet. They stumble through streams, through water cold and clear and stones rubbed smooth through months of motion. They forget aching muscles and bleeding feet, lose the sounds of pain and longing in the thousands of steps, the everlasting nights littered with too bright stars. They climb through desperately grasping branches and rock that slide around them. They move onwards, they move forwards. Eventually, they reach the sky.

10.

There is something about the way the road cuts through the forest that makes her sad, something about that one hollow of hard concrete and had sunlight between the gentle filter of the tree tops. There is something about the rumble of motors, the tough toll of tires against blankets of pine needles, something about the rain tossed aside by windshield wipers. There is something about the direct route, the quickest way, the right direction. There is something that makes it all feel wrong.

9. So Much Depends Upon

There are days when she’s ready to leave. There’s not much here, really, that’s worth even a few more months. It’s not even scary anymore, not even strange or intimidating. It’s not even new, not anymore, when she’s imagined it for years. It’s still exciting, still different, she hopes. She images there are still things she can’t imagine. But if she can’t imagine it, she won’t know until she sees it. So much depends upon the courage to leave.

Atlantis -- A Lost Sonnet

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder

that a whole city — arches, pillars, colonnades,

not to mention vehicles and animals — had all

one fine day gone under?

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.

Surely a great city must have been missed?

I miss our old city —

white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting

under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe

what really happened is

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word

to convey that what is gone is gone forever and

never found it. And so, in the best traditions of

where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name

and drowned it.

by Eavan Boland

8.

She would be the color blue. There are all kinds of shades of blue: blue like her Grandma’s bedroom, light and fresh; blue like her bedspread, dark and calm; blue like the sky over her house in the summer, endless and unchanging. She would be blue like the ocean. Not the kind of light, clear blue of waves that wash up on white sand beaches. She would be deep blue, a little greenish, the color of the water far out in the Gulf of Mexico. She would be the shadows beneath the waves and the white foam that topped them. She would be the endless expanse of slight variations of blue, greener under the shadows from the clouds, brighter where the ocean floor rises. She would be the uninterrupted blue that goes on as far as the eye can see and the wake of boats cutting through the water and the crash of waves on the shore. There’s something about the ocean, like it contains everything, it holds all the blue in the world. It’s one of those things she loves because there’s so much in the water; there are things no one knows. There is the possibility of anything. The ocean stretches between countries. Walking along the beach in Galveston after Hurricane Ike, she could see the way the ocean was exactly the same. Muddier near the shore, like it always was, but calm and cool, crashing waves onto the beach, onto the debris from the homes it had ruined. She picked up seashells; some were whole, most were broken. There were more than usual because no one had been walking the beach lately. She picked up pieces of sea glass, brown scraps of glass bottles with their edges worn soft by the crashing power of the ocean. She drove back to Houston and looked out over the bridge, watching the blue of the water shift in the sunlight. That’s how she wanted to be; she wanted to be patient as the ocean, calm and always the same. She wanted to have as many possibilities as the ocean, to be that endless stretch of blue water hitting against the shore, embracing the columns that held up the bridge, pulling the remains of buildings back into itself. She wants to be the blue of the ocean, the blue that’s so beautiful and endless and ever-changing. She’s not quite there yet, but she’s close.

7.

About half of her pens leak on her hands and the other half are covered with bite marks. And she’s not depressed, really. She’s just sad, sometimes, because she’s half-in-love and there’s pretty much no chance things’ll ever change. (And she just can’t seem to shake it; she’s tried and tried but it doesn’t go away.)

6.

Halfway between midnight and morning, she falls in love. She’s not surprised, really, ‘cause she’s spent the last ten years of her life life falling in and out of love, from her huge crush on the boy with the black curls who sat next to he rin first grade to the moment she glances over and her eyes catch on him, silhouetted in the faint reflections from the street lights. She’s always liked driving at night. His fingers are tapping against the steering wheel and he’s mouthing along to the music she can barely hear. She watches the way he wrinkles his nose and the way his mouth curves when he smiles at her and she thinks, well, it could be worse.

5.

She loves the late nights, slipping into his chambers when everyone is asleep. She loves the smooth glide of her fingers over his calloused skin. She loves the way he whispers to her, talks low into her skin. She loves the way she feels beneath him, protected. She loves the way he always knows when something’s wrong, what she does when she’s nervous. She loves the way his face lights up when she laughs and the way his fingers tangle in her curls. She loves his answers to her questions and his fingers against her skin. She might say she loves him.

4.

She misses early mornings, slipping out of his chambers when the sky’s still dark. She misses the rough slide of his fingers over her skin. She misses the way he yields to her voice, like no one else’s. She misses the way he feels above her, invincible. She misses how he tries to hide things from her, twisting his hands and clearing his throat. She misses his laugh and his soft hair slipping through her fingers. She misses his questions and smooth, sweaty skin. She might say she misses him.

3.

There’s something about driving through the country that makes her sad, something about the hard concrete and hard sunlight twisting through the miles of green grass, past the small towns and lonely houses. There’s something about the road she’s driven so many times, between there and everywhere else, that reminds her things will never be right again.

***

She didn’t think she’d die so young, but there comes a time when there’s not much left living for anymore.  She doesn’t want to say she’s alone; she refuses to say she’s lonely. She was married once, for a few years, but nothing lasts if you keep secrets and she keeps secrets from herself these days.

***

It took them a long time (too long) to find the cancer and sometimes she still doesn’t believe it’s there. But then the pain comes back and she has to bite her lip to keep from screaming out. She’s never felt anything like it, not when she fell off the garden fence when she was eight or when her boyfriend drove his car into a brick wall when she was eighteen and in the passenger seat. It’s the kind of pain that starts as a twinge, in her left hip, and pulses outward, encompasses her whole body until all she can feel is her entire body beating in time with her heart.

***

She falls asleep and dreams of a world she used to remember. She wakes up in the hospital.

She sees a door, carved of dark wood, with a shimmering door handle. She walks closer, but it just seems to get bigger, until she has to stand on her tiptoes to reach the handle. Her fingers slips against the cool metal and she just manages to grasp it when she wakes up.

She dreams again and again.

***

The doctor stands at the end of her bed. He’s wearing a white coat with dirt around the hem, like he’s been running through the mud. “She doesn’t have much longer,” he says, looking at the nurse standing near her head.

The nurse looks sympathetic and says something she can’t decipher. She reaches out, but doesn’t touch. She’d love to be touched again.

***

She walks through darkness and comes to light and comes to the door from her dreams. It’s as huge as she imagined, but when she reaches for the handle, it turns easily beneath her fingers. She pushes it open, just a crack, just enough that she can see a brilliant light spilling out and making the light of this world seem dim.

My dear, says a voice inside her head, racing around her brain, filling her ears, I’ve waited for you.

She steps through the door.

2.

I don’t think you remember but the wind was strong, tangling my hair in my face and throwing sand against my back. My legs were sticky with salt water and I was the only one who wasn’t scared. Little drops of melted ice ran down your feet and sunk into the sand. I could barely speak to make you feel better. You waded into the tall grass and I wandered off to take off my bathing suit. It rained on the ferry; you stayed inside and slept, I sat on the top deck with a towel over my head and got wet. We left and the ocean swallowed the island.

1.

I’m writing you because we’re both older now and I don’t see you anymore. Do you remember late summer afternoons, just before dinner, on your front lawn? The ground was still damp from the sprinklers. Your mom would make us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and I don’t even like jelly, but I ate them anyway. My hair was wet and tangled from the pool and your skin was dark from the sun. We prayed for wind and when it came it brought the shuffling sound of the leaves in the bushes and the barking of the dogs on the other side of your fence. Your hands were always scraped and the hot pavement of the street burned my feet as I ran home.