DEAREST SAM

Cory Zimmerman

Dearest Sam, 

When the spider in the corner of the room dropped down, not once, but three times, I knew I’d die in the same old farmhouse in which I was born. My only hope, that they find me in such good grace, before my eyes surely sink into the back of my skull. I’ve made sure to leave the house clean and orderly, having dusted and polished the grandfather clock long facing the wall. The floorboards—an 88-key piano beneath my feet—I’ve swept and mopped. I’ve tidied everything, save the last room down the hall to the left, where I keep my room hoarded with books and casefiles—a tomb of tales so to speak. My old Remington sits under the window overlooking the Hilltop—the skin of my fingers peeled off on the keys in layers of grime—where with good eyes one can see the old tombstones rising helter-skelter on the horizon. A denim quilt—stitched of Pa's old overalls—lies draped upon my bed. On a small nightstand, a photo you took of me, Sam, with your 1$ Brownie camera. I was but a girl sat on the porch in a flowered dress, chin in my palms, soles of my shiny black shoes together in prayer. A lone crow lurked about the lawn. And I wore a look on my face, neither here nor there, eyes, far-off, studying the patients plucking petals from the flowers one by one as I asked myself, “What’s to be sane in the garden of madness?” To the left of the Remington, is stacked two of your favorite books, Sam, The Iliad and Romeo and Juliet—a pressed rose in its back cover. To the right of the trusty old typewriter, a pile of words pounded out on wilted paper. All I’d learned from you Sam, a life’s confession, a last breath so to speak, a rather slow death wrapped up in those sheets. Letters I’d pounded out as an offering, last words, or first, I can hardly tell at this point, but as you always said Sam: “The end is merely the beginning.”

Tonight, when the moon rises, I shall walk in one circle and spin the chair about one leg. Then I’ll swallow the whole damn bottle of yellow ones, oval, pills I’ve become so accustomed to. I’ll turn the horseshoe nail ring round and round my finger, and then with any luck, I’ll drift off with grace and sleep the sleep of the dead. I have no regrets, Sam. I’ve indeed lived a long life, nearly an American century, and, that long dusty road I’ve walked alone for so long, scuffing my tiny feet along, I’ve now found my withered age, with only my breath to accompany me. I’ll pick up one last twist, like that old tree along the ravine, the one they found Momma swinging from. Anyhow, may they call it a blessing, may they call it a curse—all I know is no one ever tells you how awfully long it is to be old. And, come to think of it, in all my years, only stepping foot beyond the Mississippi but once, to the St. Louis World’s Fair in the autumn of 1904, but four years old, Doctor Zeller offered to let you accompany me, Sam. But Momma, Pa and I went alone, and I regret that. I remember eating ice cream in a cone and riding a Ferris Wheel round and round up into the heavens and back down again—but surely, I told you all about it many times before—how devastating it was to drop back down into a world where one must remember to leave the house through the same door one arrived; where one must never enter a home with a troubled past; or wear another’s clothes; or walk in one shoe; or brush one’s hair too often before bed. And God forbid someone takes a lock and drops it in a stream, running the mind mad as this garden blossoming with insanity. When the hoodoo is around Sam, I’ve learned to long sleep with one eye open, and as it raps freely upon the door, high or low, to snatch the unvigilant by the tail feathers and split one’s tongue in two. I remember your warning: “Sanity is but paper in a world consumed by fire.” Makes me ponder—what a strange thing the Gods rounded this ball of clay in the palm of their hands, ensuring to look forward is to look back again. And back I have looked Sam, deep down that long path, that long day, and those many long nights. And what I saw, what I see, is the most perilous decision, that again, and again, the clouds will continually gather and turn on the western front. 

I looked all the way back to that great civic awakening, that time long past, long obscured by the growing pains of this once great nation, and those godawful wars. These days Sam, the Bronson Building, its mammoth limestone blocks, once the epitome of timelessness, now sits choked in vines, a straitjacket of time if you will. Its windows, shattered like the minds that once sheltered within, exhausted by the angst that is youth, and the madness of this lost generation. Those once magnificent balconies now overlook the pond dried-up, balconies, collapsed with old age and senility, as they’d forgotten how to stand on their own. And, more often than not Sam, the blue skies seem an endless winter gray as my cataracts have dulled the light in my waning years. Doctor Zellers garden, I hate to say it, is long overgrown with weeds—rose peddles withered decades ago and blown away with the ashes of memory. The graveyard, with each spring rain, the tombstones further erode and slip into the ravine, bones long turned to dust and washed away, yet the Graveyard Elm remains. It still stands tall, yet split in two by lightening, and away it whispers in the breeze, never ceasing to remind me of Old Book. Sometimes when the branches catch the right wind, I still hear him wailing away as the coffins are lowered into the ground. A four-lane highway now runs north to Grandview. In only a matter of years, industry had grown too big for its britches, inviting all sorts of unbridled activity within proximity to the great river. There was a time Grandview was even dubbed the whiskey capital of the world, can you believe it Sam? Those puritan asses embracing a wide-open town, up for grabs by grubby businessmen and gangsters in their pinstripe suits alike, money shall tarnish anything it touches. Yet, in time, the prospectors fled as rust belt crept to the city’s edge and inevitably rotting its heart, where its soul quickly decayed, leaving a post-industrial wasteland in its wake. Not much is left to feast upon Sam, rusty smokestacks, a large stretch of marrowless bones and bricks laying before an enormous plain of great corporate farms stretching beyond a brown layer of smog and dust, foothills of purple cumulus clouds running north to south as the river flows, long lost of its sheen, the muddy conveyor belt flows on. Barges day and night, keeping the heart of America on life support, in these final days I suppose.

Oh, how I miss watching the patients play donkey ball on the lawn, relaxing in the garden, shaking their heads left and right, shaking the hands, slapping their faces, pulling the hair, sticking the tongue, shaking the finger, clapping the hands, hugging the self, singing to the self, crying, lying, and laughing, and cooling off in the shade of the Graveyard Elm. Oh, how I miss you, Sam. Over the years, I’ve watched the honking geese on their great migration come and go and come and go again, as the dear old river flows on, never revealing the reason it swallows whom or what it does, carrying all secrets off to the sea. Yet when those sparrow hawks swoop down upon the Hilltop, bending and twisting and turning through the pony grass, through the tombstones, about the whispering leaves, forever speaking the wild wind. Tonight, Sam, I plan to catch the right wind, and ride that chariot high, and never look back toward that garden again, the year 1900. Surely, you remember Sam. The hornets had built their nests high before the late-season blizzard arrived on the first of spring. Momma’s water broke on the kitchen floor, as you were baking cookies. In those days, as long as the country doctor arrived in time, all went relatively well. However, fetching a country doctor in those days often required a considerable effort, leaving one to assume right the ideal time to go into labor should be when the doctor is at home in his PJs. Regardless, two trips were needed. One, to the doctor’s house, and two, back to the bed where Momma screamed in pain. Two trips by horse-drawn wagon that for too many folks could number ten miles or longer at best, expressly if the subject in labor was but the wife of a humble farmer and lived far off upon the open plains. Luckily for Momma, she lived on the grounds of the Grandview State Hospital. But one must still too complicate matters, behest, the season and weather, Momma should have counted herself fortunate her water was due break on a starry spring night, wise to conceive calculated according to the proper season. 

Yet, humans will be human, and weather, well, sometimes the almanac enters the windpipe instead of the gullet, as accidents do occur, and weather will occur. And just as a seed might fall from the pocket of a pair of bib overalls, and a farmer may plant the fertile soil on a seemingly perfect day, without ever considering the chalk from the cheese. It had been a relatively warm, sun-filled day no doubt, with a joyful choir of birds in tune, until old farmer Morris down the way sat on the wrong side of his porch and lit his pipe just as a rabbit scurried across the field, a lick of breeze on their tail. The tobacco in his pipe suddenly smelled sweeter, and his hogs started squealing when the rain—never failing to follow such a folly—began to fall thick and heavy. The sun suddenly dropped with haste, the songbirds went silent, and the precipitation froze, and old farmer Morris stood up on his achy right knee and knew he did it all wrong and went inside to stoke his stove before it was too late. And just before Momma’s water broke, she heard the fire crackling louder than usual as you, Sam, our live-in patient, removed the cookies and started on your marvelous pot pie for supper. As the water ran down her legs, the moon rose behind the veil of icy clouds, the dogs howled, and Pa kept on chopping wood none the wiser. Warming the widow’s heart down the road was all PA had on his simple mind. The icy pellets turned to thick puffs of snow and a strong gale began to blow, the shingles flapping on the roof, gate slapping open and shut, Pa took his sweet time letting the widow know her wood was neatly stacked in the woodshed out back. And she asked if he wouldn’t mind stoking her fire once more, well hell, he obliged. Washing up, Pa finally threw his ax in the back of the wagon, gave the Widow the glimmer of his eye, a good squeeze, and switched Roan Beauty for home.

Roan pulled that wagon through the ruts, and Pa plowed through his mind for an elaborate foray of words that might offer an excuse as to why he was down the road once again. Pa knew better than to switch Roan Beauty to swift, as Roan knew his way well by now and had a tender heart. But Pa switched him anyhow, and you Sam, with no wagon to speak of, ran the good mile flat for Doctor Zolla, as Momma clinched the quilt in her fists in agony, nearly cracking a molar. Momma once saw the world through faithful eyes, until her apron kept falling one day, until she lost a hairpin the next, and it was then, she knew precisely why, that the widow down the road had stepped on her toes. Desperate, belly swollen, Momma pricked her finger and dropped her blood in the soup and in Pa’s coffee in the morning, dropped that hairpin in a bottle and tossed it in the river. But Pa told her again and again, you can only roof houses at night, seeing how they warp in the day. Momma held onto hope nonetheless until the day the biscuits burnt. Now as Pa put Roan in the barn and walked in the old farmhouse house with a jumble of words choked up in his throat, his stomach growled at the scent of your pot pie and cookies. Through Momma’s clenched teeth, she screamed out and Pa ran up the stairs to the bedroom, where Momma kicked him away—red faced as a chili pepper. Pa retreated for the corner, where he hid in a shadow and little did Momma know, the cord around my neck, was killing me slowly inside her. 

Sam, you returned with the doctor, and you calmed Momma in a way Pa never could.  You took to Momma’s side, holding her hand as the doctor examined her belly, as he hurried her to push and push until my head as blue as a berry emerged, my bloody body sliding into his warm, gentle hands. He removed my auspicious veil, seeing I would see ghosts as he cut the noose from my neck and handed it off to you to throw in the crackling fire. There was a chill in the air as the doctor held me upside down by the foot, and Momma screamed out as she saw my blue body. The doctor swated my backside—slap—silence. Sam, your praying hands and tears pooled in your eyes, as Pa hide in the corner. Slap—silence—slap. Nothing, so Doctor Zolla placed his lips upon my own, exhaled into my lungs, expanding them with a breath of God, and I let out a God-awful cry as the dusty farm was buried beneath a pure white layer of snow. He wrapped me in a warm quilt and placed me in Momma’s arms, and we cried together. There was one memory of this of course, I imagine so, one memory locked away in a vault for all time, where not even the unforgivable claws of senility nor death may grasp at it—that glorious kiss of life, Sam. I was born with blue eyes—as all babies are—but with a full head of hair—means I was to be trouble, no doubt, said Momma between tears. The doctor rubbed afterbirth on her nipples. Brushed the back of his fingers upon the soft spot of my head. Ran them through my blonde hair, messing it, blessing it. And he congratulated Pa who never took a step out of the corner. Gave him an honest handshake, nonetheless. Doctor Zolla thanked you Sam, for all your help. And then he left just as he came.

The following day, Momma and I stayed in bed under the quilt, as she asked you to turn all the mirrors in the house toward the wall, the grandfather clock as well. You then sat beside the bed in a chair and read to us aloud, while Pa kept his distance. Momma turned her back on him, exposing my face just enough for him to take in a brief sight of, “Sarah,” Momma whispered, and there was no debate, that was to be my name. Pa reached out his rough soiled fingertip for my rosy cheek, but Momma covered me in the quilt, saying, “Don’t! You’ll make her stutter.” Then buried my face in her breasts, seeing the window was much too bright for my blue eyes. We listened to your thunderous voice. Sam, you shook the tiny bones in my ear and filled the void in my mind with glorious myth, and if even for a time, I was snow-blind to the muddy reality that laid just beneath the pure white surface. And for this, I never opened your file, Sam. I kept it locked away in a drawer, separate from the others, which sat in stacks about my room, last door on left. Sam, you were quite unlike the other patients—you always seemed quite normal in my eyes. I am not sure if I was afraid of what I might discover or if I felt plain awkward, invading your privacy, but at the end of the day, it just doesn’t settle right I suppose. I suppose I right out, needed you Sam to remain, Sam. 

Things started out just enough, I expect, but in due time, that veil, that cursed trouble I was to become, came along in the shape of a wedge that lodged itself right good between Momma and Pa—a fact I was to come to light of that night I heard them shouting. I swear I heard Momma blame life on me. In fact, I heard many words: Sounds of loss, blame, shame, heartache, and loneliness—but mostly shame. I know what happened wasn’t entirely my fault, but Pa never did look at me the same after the day that rat touched me behind the graveyard elm. And Momma, well Momma wept the rest of her life away leaving me to believe it was all my doing. The deeper I poured myself into the night—sitting quietly on the stairs—the more I settled for the fact that Momma was most likely right. And Pa, well Pa was a simple man, a man who simply met another woman down the way and couldn’t say much given such. He hid his shame behind what he saw in my eyes—eyes he’d never linger on for longer than a moment to look so deeply into again. Makes sense after all—gets mighty lonely out here on the prairie. Just a simple farmhouse amongst a field, arid, dry, yet a sea of mud on a rainy day. The paint peeling like an old birch, ever since that widow’s husband was laid six feet deep, and that corn never grew again. The day she stepped on Momma’s toe, asking Pa if he might mind repairing the gate, maybe put a nail or two in, seeing how it kept slamming open and shut in the breeze—but as for my heart, you might mend why you’re at it, I suppose she hoped. And Pa gave his heart to that widow’s empty chest—though a chest never quite filled—simply too little promise—and then there was me, the wedge—and that day behind the Graveyard Elm. Momma said little, just cried. And Pa, well Pa kept plowing. “Your hands will stick to the plow,” Farmer Morris hollered on Sundays as he trotted by in his Sunday best. But Pa went on anyhow—just to get away, I suppose. Away from God to say the least.

But you Sam, you took darn good care of me, with the scent of Swedish pancakes in the air. The ones waiting on the table each morning, along with a girdle of books from your own collection. And they sweep me away like a broom to broken shards while I made my way to the schoolhouse a mile away. I made the walk each day, belly warm with pancakes, and I read, and reread, and wondered, hell, I even dreamed—JoJo at my side, the rascally little mutt with that tongue too big for his mouth, dangling off to the side of his right fang, the other left stuck in a coyote’s ass I imagine. Anyhow, I buried my thoughts in those written words and ignored the farmhouse where the shards lie, where the paint peeled like an old birch as I passed by for Miss Bradley’s school house. Ms. Bradley taught simple lessons, but my mind drifted through odysseys as I looked out of the window at the vast blue, golden chariots above—little JoJo laying in the green grass below, wagging his tail as our eyes met. And after school, I’d make my way back down the road, and some days rainbows appeared to the East. I’d dodge mud puddles with my tiny feet when it rained, and the sight of that sloping roof, hell, your books kept it right out of my mind. Nonetheless, I’d feel that itch on my left foot as I’d pass by that sea of mud, raindrops battering the pages and my windswept dress. The flies’ bit, and the clover leaves turned upward in the ditch beside the road. At home, German sweets lingered in the air, and Sam, you were always there to mess my hair with a rag before sitting me down by the fire. You’d take whatever book I was in the middle of and read it aloud as I sat on your knee—each page drying to your slow and steady pace—each word soothing my heart—as the fire warmed my bones, and the glowing wood crackled as it did the day I came into the world. You’d read for an hour or so and then finish making supper. At supper, I’d drop a biscuit for JoJo. And after supper, Pa, covered in dust and dirt, was off to bed, too tired to kiss me goodnight or take a bath—the stained outline of his body standing upon the bed sheets as the hung in the breeze to dry by the old oak tree outback. Once Pa was off snoring, Momma would disappear somewhere in the house, where she’d weep her soul into the cracks of the floorboards. 

Momma often left me for sadness—for we do not know as children the responsibility is not ours to bear. The luxury of wisdom coming with distance, and I was too near. And besides, we all like to relish in a bit of guilt from time to time. We savor the thought of control—especially in old farmhouses where we certainly possess none—where we wish not to be victims but victimizers. So, as Momma abandoned me, hell, I abandoned her. As Momma wept, Pa snored. Hollow chest, hollow eyes, hollow home. There was nothing left but to sweep the shards into my heart. Hoodoo stroke me in the night. But also, in the light of day. My childhood was the plague, yet Sam, you did your best to provide me a daily vaccine. Your tonic was a concoction of kindness, attention, food, and words, and as much as you could frustrate me—messing my hair—your words, your deep German accent, exotic and rare in every way, was unlike the common words spoken by Pa—a colorful accent crackling in my ears—a heart, a glow. Sam, you was born far from here, to a different world, another time—strange blood and a different mind, indeed—a utilized mind possessing your skull, no doubt. Sam, you were brilliant, and you watered and fed me, and filled me with wonder, kept my heart whole and my thoughts on hope. You handled me with care, never letting me drop, nor spin, nor shatter, like a dish swept under the rug. This, Sam, this is why I never opened your file, never allowing your own shards to spill out amongst the cracks in the floor.

Sam, you could see it in my eyes, and I buried my teary eyes in the nook of your care. “Did you hear that?” you asked, pulling away for a moment. “What?” “Oh, nothing,” you said, reembracing me. I wiped away my tears, pulled myself together, and went off to the barn to give Roan Beauty a much-needed brushing, and JoJo followed. “Swedish pancakes?” You asked as I walked away. I brushed Roan Beauty and kept an eye on the horseshoe reflection in his teary eye, as JoJo circled around in his spot. Poor old boy was getting old, and the cold ached his bones as he snuggled up in the hay. When I rubbed Roan behind the ear, his lips quivered, and I giggled at his huge comical teeth, as Midnight the cat scurried down from the loft and rubbed on my leg. He arched his back, as Roan Beauty gave out a blow, his nostrils fluttering—tears falling from his cheeks like arrows to the earth. The smell of Swedish pancakes caught me by the nose, and I cringed as the screen door slammed shut on my heels. As I walked into the house, I found myself stood frozen just inside the door, as in the kitchen, I saw a pair of shoes, heels up, a steaming platter of pancakes on the table. I yelled for Momma and kneeled down next to you. Your right cheek was upon the floor with a slight breath. You had just enough strength left in your large hand to grasp onto mine, and you looked up at me with eyes as blue as the sky and the most peaceful smile I’d ever witnessed, and then Sam, you were gone. 

I ran the back of my fingers across your cheek, still blush, my palm upon your face, I shut your sky-blue eyes forever to the darkness of night, saying, “Oh Sam—Come down meekly, come down lowly, come down all the way. Let go to glory, shake yourself, limber be—You will be free. Shake yourself, limber be—you will be free, tra-la-la, tra-la-la—” and I laid at your side, holding your hand—I closed my eyes, and together we laid as still as the dead. You knew you were destined to die here Sam, to be buried here on the Hilltop with the other kooks, far away from your pa, your own ma, back in Germany where they lay, I suppose. Roan Beauty hung his head low and dug nervously at the ground with his hoof, and all across the Hilltop, trees full of birds sang out in glory, Hallelujah in the pit of winter. The whistle of an arriving train at the depot spooked the geese, who batted their mighty wings, and their furrowed feathers rose from the surface of the river, forming a perfectly symmetrical arrowhead passing directly above the old farmhouse. The grandfather clock expressing the passing of time, but there were no ears of corn to hear the honking of the geese flying but-in-a-circle, back from where they had come, as the fields were covered in white.

Momma washed my face with a washrag and called on Pa to fetch the doctor, and I laid at your side until they pried our hands apart and took you away. I placed two horseshoes upon your grave, along with a note that read: Sam, more than anyone, if even for a time, more than you may have known, in a world in need of heroes, you were the greatest hero of all. Love eternally, Sarah. And I began cooking after you died, but I don’t recall it ever tasting good. One night after supper, Momma called me into her room. She said, “When I was pregnant with you, the doc heard two heartbeats.” I looked at her with confusion. “What I’m sayin’, Sarah—I lost one of you.” “I had a twin?” I asked. Momma looked down at her wringing hands, and said, “After losing her, I didn’t think I could bear—” she paused, choking on her tears for a moment, then continued, “I hopped on Roan, and rode ‘em bareback, rode ‘em hard, all the way to Grandview and back trying to—well, you held on tight, Sarah, and after a few months, you were born healthy, and well look at ya! Sarah, you’re still holding on for dear life—just keep holdin’ on, baby!” Then she sobbed, I held her tight, unsure the words were true as I took a deep breath thinking, how absurd. “I forgive you, Momma,” I said, words written with a rusty nail in the sky.

Sam, it was the Summer of ‘35, when we lost Pa. I’d been peeling carrots when a bird flew into the window. I found him twitching on the ground and was left little choice but to twist his head off his body, leaving it to dry on the mantle, keen-eyed even in death. As you know, life in those days was lived by the law of lore, and everything revolved around the weather and seasons. A rainbow in the morning meant rain on the horizon, and a flock of clouds would surely herd up on the western front—achy bones, house flies followed, and a fragrant flower scent in the humid air. A red sun in the morning meant it shall be a beautiful day. If you spotted a crowing rooster on a fence post, or bees flying far from their hives, it was indeed a sign of fair weather, a bee would never get caught in the rain. And when the owl hooted during the day, the geese were noisy, and when the chickens refused to come out of the coop, you knew it would be a rainy day, but Pa carried his hoe through the house for the field, nonetheless. Pa swore by the woodpecker, which echoed through the ravine around the 26th of March—by then, the oak leaves should be the size of a squirrel’s ear. And the corn should be planted at once, so that the large ears would grow near the bottom of the stalk where they would be within reach and easily picked. When planting, Pa was always sure to say aloud, “Here’s one for the worms, one for the crow, and one for the rat thief, and here are two to rot and two to grow.” You could expect a good crop if the weather was dry in June. If some of your stalks were really white and had no green on them, you didn’t pull them up, for if you did, someone would drop dead in the field. And Pa always walked backward after a good harvest, throwing his handkerchief over his shoulder into the field, leaving it behind for good luck.

Pa spent the better portion of his life in those fields, a life lived at the mercy of the rusty nail, the cat's meow, the caterpillar's nose, the flies’ flight, and the bees’ buzz. His life’s work was measured and proven by the success of countless harvests—routines cultivated by tradition to be taken to heart. Each new season began anew, with patients clicking their hoes together and bumping heads—a good sign. And if it rained while plowing the field hardened by winter, the corn shall have been knee-high by the fourth of July, and Pa could finally take a deep sigh and wipe his brow and come in for a cold glass of iced tea. Pa broke his back in those rows—corn was his life—his life was corn. He worked with hundreds of insane patients under his care, as you know, but in all honesty, Pa worked alone. As the patients whistled and sang, plucking slugs under the blazing sun all the way through autumn when those ears were golden yellow, Pa kept to himself and his eyes to the horizon. He had a deep understanding of the land and sky, and everything in between that scurried and flew and grew—all but myself, I suppose. I remember his large Adam's apple as he swallowed Momma’s iced tea or chewed on an apple. I can still see how he held a tight glare with a wrinkled brow. I barely knew the color of his eyes, and my heart ached when he walked in for supper, his chin dropped, his gaze toward his muddy boots. I tried to see in his sad eyes what he saw on the horizon, but come to think of it, Pa had toiled in nothing but the dirt since he was a kid, and I’m not too certain Pa didn’t have hopes and dreams for himself, just like the rest of us. And like us all, for risk of showing a lack of appreciation, he never did speak of them aloud—or perhaps it was only his back paining him to silence. All I could be certain of was rising with the same sun that reddened, burnt, and leathered his skin—living life with constant grime under his nails—made for a worn-out man, a man who sat at the end of the supper table in worn-out overalls with holes in the knees. Pa was always layered in filth, a grime not worth bathing off, and that ring of dust that outlined his body upon the sheet as he snored away by sundown, and I wondered why he didn’t just sleep out there in the rows, as he loved that corn, and that corn loved him. However, I suppose Pa often scorned the corn at the end of the day. Hell, maybe he cursed it from the moment the rooster crowed, hard to tell. Regardless, Pa provided millions upon millions of kernels for them patients. The wind upon his neck, Pa was always a quiet man, but he was a good man, and Pa stood on his own two feet—to me, Pa was an oak tree that would never fall.

But the day I cut my finger slicing a loaf of bread and soaked it up with an old washrag without thinking, I hung it on the doorknob to dry before sitting down to rest a spell in Momma’s old rocking chair. The sound of the rain was soothing—and it was then I heard three cracks from the stove as I made tea, and I swear I heard Pa call out my name. And I’ll admit I forgot to stop the chair from rocking as I stood to holler back. But Pa was nowhere to be found, and come supper time, I’d found him, lying face-down in the mud. He had been there for some time, and it was a struggle pulling him out, as his roots had grown deep into that field with the rain, into all he ever knew. I left his handkerchief where it lay. The first cob of corn had been covered in white silk that year—and I believe they somehow missed a row planting seed as well. But mostly, I just hope amongst those rows, Pa’s soul dwells in peace. When the corn is sad and hangs low by the ears, I knew as surely as Momma’s weeping, the sky would cry that night. And the day they put Pa in the ground, I’d awoken early to a bright red sunrise, and hurried off in my best dress to bury a few kernels of corn, remembering to say, “and here is one for Pa, and one for the rat thief,” just as a crow flew away.

From that day forth, Momma stopped washing the bedsheets, only airing them out on the clothesline back by the old oak tree. And that filthy outline of Pa’s body remained, and in the right light, just as the sun was setting, and the baby birds chirped with hunger, just on the other side, Pa stood on his own two feet, never to fall. Pa’s funeral, a hero’s farewell, a military affair, a first-class fare for the deceased, a flag for the coffin, and a round of blanks for the graveside firing party, shot into the air, scattering the birds from their perches, flying high above Pa’s pine box. Momma collapsed into my arms, and with an old hammer, she turned away, nailing shut her heart, and she became war unto herself. But a few days after the funeral, she perked up a bit, insisted, we go to the rodeo, it was an odd gesture, as we rarely took outings beyond the Hilltop. Watching the barrel races, I felt a deep sadness overcome me. My heart bled black like a fistful of berries in my own inner moonlight, and I missed my Pa. Yet, with a feigned smile, for Momma’s sake, I hid what I was feeling within. Yet, as the horses trotted the clover pattern, I pondered—no one knows what the hearts and minds of those closest to us endure. As if, the closer we inhabit, the more blind we are to one another, who they are, and what they feel, which is often buried deep within ourselves. Brushing flesh, nonetheless, falsehoods and forced smiles are settled upon to get through the day. Avoiding the unspoken, only to pretend to understand one another’s human-condition, as a family more often than not becomes a covenant, one that worships in matters favoring solely the fair-weathered plains that provide simple emotional survival. Whether out of ignorance, supreme frailty, or the inability to accept the harsh realities of watching loved ones inescapably perish from the inside, we wear a smile upon our faces. The mask is preferred—the veil which hides the hideous, unbearable truth. A truth one cannot withstand knowing that those we love cannot endure the experience of wilting like a flower in the chill autumn air. The cold hand of loss and yearning, loneliness, and dread—knowing all the while we must endure our suffering alone until our final days. 

I thought of Roam Beauty. Born of the God of the West Wind, Roan Beauty was immortal, a magnificent stallion, given by Poseidon to Achilles upon his wedding day. As you know Sam, Homer’s Iliad reads:

The rapid stallion Roan Beauty—

Grazing the lush green grass along the Ocean’s tides.

There is no use running after him—

You’re chasing the wild wind—

For all but Achilles.

Roan Beauty, said to be capable of human emotion and human speech, weeps and warns Achilles of his impending doom. And my Roan Beauty was a star—an American Paint Horse—a combination of western stock with a roan coat shimmering with mixed black and white hairs, one white rear foot, and a tail and eyes as black as midnight. He was clever and could open any closed gate. Graceful—superior in agility, he could roll and roll, making him quite the valuable equine. Given his speed, I raced him with a horseshoe nail in my pocket, and Pa always said he earned his worth. And every time I’d hear a stranger say, “What a darling, what a warmblood—a winner—a purse—” I clenched my teeth as Pa counted numbers in his head, my white-knuckled grip tight around Roan Beauty’s rein and collar. The very collar I was passed through on my first birthday, and as soon as I could walk, you remember, Sam, I started riding. When I was four or five, Pa trained me to barrel race. The only time Pa and I bonded was in the corral—where he drew a starting line in chalk and set up three barrels of water, arranged so one was directly in line with the start, one to the left, and one to the right, to form a triangle—the three-leaf clover pattern. And I would bolt from the line directly toward the barrel on my right, making a loop toward the second barrel, changing direction to create a figure eight, for the third barrel, the one furthest from the start, where I made a loop around and headed straight back to the beginning, Pa stood, pocket watch in hand—winning times under fifteen seconds. Barrel racing combines a horse’s athletic ability and the rider's horsemanship skills—quick and precise barrel racing is not an easy task. But Pa taught me if I rode the pattern slow and clean, I might get a better time than if I go my fastest, galloping wildly all over, making huge turns, with wobbly runs between the barrels. “Control is just as important as speed,” Pa said, “keep your heels down, your eyes up, and your hands quiet.” 

And when Pa and I returned home from the rodeo one Sunday, my first-place prize around my waist—a leather belt with a nice shiny buckle—Pa, a fat purse in his trousers—I brushed Roan Beauty down. He nuzzled me and gave me an odd sniff—the hairs of his pink nose quivering. I looked deep into his dark eyes—deep emotion—a sight into a future so vast one could see the ends of time as a tear rolled from the corner of his eye. I gave him a kiss on the nose and felt Midnight rub against my leg. I then came inside to show you my belt, Sam, as you were the grandfather I never knew. You knew me so well—you could see straight through me—but a child, chilled by the west wind. You did what grandfather’s do, you warmed my heart by the fire upon your knee. The bond between you and I was sewn as tightly as the binding of the books that bound our love—a love, mysterious and between the lines. Sam, I am sure you know, I often felt sad—a quiet and lonely girl, sitting on the stairway listening to Pa’s snoring and Momma’s weeping—tears which could be heard rolling down her sunken cheeks. Oh’ Sam, as you closed the book that night and I hopped off your knee, my prize belt tight around my waist, I turned to give you a big hug. When you saw in the light of the blaze the blood I’d bled onto your knee, and you gave me a look, Sam, not one of anger, nor of fear, but a look nonetheless, and it broke my heart. Our connection so thick quickly felt so incredibly thin, a moment impossible to communicate—I’m sorry, Sam, it was not your job to do so. The canyon of that sliver of time filled with empty air, too thin to hold words—I sank into its depths. I saw your lips move as you told me not to worry, to go wash up while you’d make some raspberry tea—but it's only now that I hear your words.

I paced about in a circle nervously with my dress bunched up between my legs, waiting for the tea, but when I opened my door, there stood Nurse Kate, not you, nor Momma. She felt for warmth in the middle of my palm and welcomed me to a sacred covenant. She gave me a bundle of rags, instructing me how to use them. “A little cinnamon will stop the heavy flow,” she said. And later that night, I caught sight of Momma gazing in through the crack of my door with loathing eyes. I could see her misery—her tears—I could see hope wash away in a sea of sadness. I held my brush in my hand as she shut the door, and I dropped to the floor. I stared at the rags—I stared into the mirror—I saw a wretched thing. I watched myself wither and grow cold. I changed those bloodied rags obsessively. They piled up in the wastebasket. I could not stand the filth—the shame—I covered the mirror with a quilt, so the spirits might not see me bleed. I stopped drinking milk when the cramps came, but it made none the difference. Curled like a fetus, clenching my abdomen, I lied upon a pair of scissors. I feared death. I wished for death. I remember thinking, how absurd. This curse—that the bleeding would never stop. I watched the soiled rags pile up—turn from bright red to rusty brown. I thought of Momma’s loathing. I wept. I laid alone—alone with my thoughts—my fears. I began to hate Pa for having no pity—he knew not the curse. I thought of Roan Beauty’s tearful eyes—falling like arrows to the sea. But with a soft knock upon my door, you brought me applesauce, Sam. Too ashamed to look you in the eye, I heard you say my name as you opened the door but an inch. I didn’t want you to see the ghost I’d become. I covered myself in a sheet. You left the dish and a few sheets of paper. This annoyed me, Sam—I wanted to scream, “I AM CURSED!” I looked over at the pile of rusty brown rags in the corner and felt buried beneath their wretched stench, buried beneath the shame and secrets, buried beneath the silence. I looked down at the purity of the clean white sheets, and I tainted them fiercely scribbling the words: 

I AM CURSED!

But, Sam, I now see, you gave me a door—a way out. It was time I found the courage to walk through it. It was time I confess. As Momma’s tears welled up in her eyes in some dark corner, my own, fell like arrows to the sheet, from the mystery that is Roan Beauty to the coal that is Old Scratch, my mind swirled in confusion—would he come to get me? I worried, as the hoodoo swirled about me. My tears smeared the words: 

I AM CURSED!

Blurred but fierce and desperate words: 

I AM CURSED!

Is this what you want?

I wrote.

Did I coil around your leg like a snake?

A wicked voice plagued my mind—an emotion I could no longer contain—a silence that must be broken. I needed an escape. Yet, my feet were nailed to the floor. I remembered the day the rat ran up my leg. I became consumed with desire—feverishly wishing he would return—wanting to snap his crooked claw—oh, the way he cursed me—the way he brought the plague upon me. I grabbed the ace of hearts from under my mattress—I tore it in two. Never keep anything the hoodoo gives you. I struck a match. I watched in silence. My heart burnt to white ash upon the floor. I broke the pencil in two. Hoodoo circled around me. I wanted to roll up the rug and expose the shards buried beneath. I wanted to tarnish those sheets with dirty, rotten words—Bloody words—a confession—I was a wretched thing with a broken pencil in my own tiny claw. And I scribbled as the devil’s hand guided my own:

My sinful heart shall bleed my wicked words upon this blinding purity.

The words flowed, oozed. An exorcism. I wrote until the lead diminished, wood on paper, wood on wood. I wrote my passage into womanhood with each drop of blood. Each cold, crooked word—I felt chilled to the core, but it was of no concern as the fire raged inside my belly. I whipped that rat’s tail round and round as I paraded about the arena of madness. I felt what no child should. I wrote of loathing—of pathetic tears—of abandonment. I wrote of the cold—the empty—desperate dark place. I wrote of the creaking—the cracking—and falling apart. I wrote of the distant—the dusty mouth—the dusty damned road. I wrote of the missing Achilles—the hero—absent from his own tale. I wrote of death, doom, and despair. I smeared blood across the bottom of the page as I wrote my final words:

I am Nobody!

Nobody, but a confused and wounded girl, gobbling down applesauce with a sprinkling of cinnamon. I stood from my chair, sliding its legs backward across the floorboards with a screech—but I cared not. I opened my door with its unoiled hinges—but I cared not. The pile of crusty brown rags smelling of wet pennies under my arm. And I went to the barn to burn them. Yet, I feared the blood in my veins might boil. So, I buried them in the loft. Midnight rubbed against my leg—a cat’s cry in the night. I climbed back down the ladder. Roan Beauty stood like a monument—perpetual Sorrow. I rubbed behind his ear, as he blew and whispered in my own, “In your knees and in your heart, I give you strength.” And I then returned to gather the sheets of tarnished paper upon my desk. You were poking at the fire, Sam. I held the fistful of sheets in my hand with a stiff arm, I handed them forth. If he wants the wretched truth, I thought, here is my story of ruin. Do you remember, Sam?

After Pa’s death, Momma experienced a disquieting time. And one morning, within an unsettling silence, I peeked into her room but found her bed empty. The rocking chair empty. The kitchen empty. The barn empty. But the grave diggers found her swinging from the twisted tree at the edge of the ravine. Furious, I took Pa's rifle and blew the feathers off a crow on the fence post and threw it upon the burning hot coals of the stove, for hell is a place with no birds. I am not proud, but after putting Momma in the ground, I shut the door on the world. I closed the curtains to the sky and found myself alone in a dark dusty field where I belonged, where I lived like a stray with what I deserved—an empty belly, an empty heart, a relentless hunger one cannot rid of. A hunger that gnawed on the bones, chewing relentlessly on the meat of the soul—not the chirping hunger of life, but the howling hunger of death. And I did not watch Kennedy land on the moon, nor did I give a damn about the Cold War or lose any sleep over a nuclear winter. By the time the last brick of the Berlin wall was in place, America had found itself in a suicidal standoff with Communism, and I could have cared less. In the meantime, the Nazis swooped down on the Hilltop like vultures, while I was still under the impression the Allies had left them to rot in trenches stretching from Spain to Stalingrad. I watched them roll the patients out one by one, nurses with blonde-hair, blue-eyes, in starched and stale uniforms, wheeling out patients—stiff with rigor mortis—right up to a hole a drunken Russian could have dug deeper in the frozen Siberian tundra and dumped them right in, frozen patients snapping in two like twigs in December.

For years I only left the house to visit your tombstone, Sam, no. 4824. I suppose I could have straightened it out with a kick—but regardless, you were now amongst the nameless, the forgotten. Your family didn’t attend your funeral—probably long dead—no one did—not one of the baker’s dozen, at least—no one but me, Momma, Pa, three gravediggers, a stranger, Book, Nurse Kate, and Doctor Zolla, and the Godforsaken priest—nimble pages wanting nothing more than to tear away in the wind. I’d stand at your tombstone a while, then I’d turn and walk away, my shroud flapping as I crossed the tundra, the atomic blast tearing the flesh from my cheeks, red like a spanked ass, delighted in the comfort of the nuclear winter numbing my heart. The old farmhouse creaked in the cold howling hell like the joints in my knees. It was time to forget all about hope, it was time to let my mind march off to the South Sea—the isles of Delos, Helios, or Mykonos. No more mouth to feed soup, nor narrow lips to wipe clean with blinding white napkins, no more clean white sheets, no more blinding white windows, as I shut the curtains on the world. Like a whisper into a deaf man’s ear, we are gone before we arrive—finality, the only truth ever told. A ticket to no man’s land, a ticket made of paper, yet, as weighty as a tree—truth—be it a silent, leafless, truth, a truth, nonetheless, a truth pleading silently to God, I want to go home. And so, I went. I walked home upon that frozen ground, and I shut the door behind me—no shame—with a bottle of Nazi pills, all shapes, sizes, and colors awaiting me.

Nazi pills, the one worthwhile thing the German doctors brought with them when they crawled out of the muddy trenches and put on white Hippocratic jackets, invading the Hilltop with degrees and specialties, with hypnotizing colors, all shapes, and sizes—little white paper cups—a soft surrender—the only war worth fighting is a war worth losing—the poetry of pills.

Relishing in the strange and twisted numbness, my old, twisted mind, my twisted reasoning, branches of confused memories, frayed rope—a bolt of lightning bursting into flames, as out of the smoke a face from the past had arisen. I swallowed a red one, a yellow one, a blue one, two round, one oval, and I began my dusting, dusting away memories, sneezing away the past—the future polished, I kept my eye off the reflection. I froze when I heard a single knock at the door, and as I unhinged my feet from the floor, and tiptoed forth, I grasped at the knob with fright, with a trembling hand, and opened it but an inch, broom in hand—a ghost from the past—I shut and locked the door and waited for it to leave. I went upstairs, the gout in my feet aching, the pills taking off the edge, and I laid upon my cold mattress and begged Momma, “Please don't let me wake in the night, for I shall see the stars and remember who I am. Please, I beg of you, don’t make me nail my feet to the floor—Momma, I fear you.”

Beyond the curtain, the morning sun rose repeatedly, and the flowers bloomed every spring as the geese returned north. Behind the curtain, my daily routine—scrubbing the floor, washing clean dishes, and splashed water on my face, lying down, trying to breathe, standing, shaking my hands as my heart raced, splashing water on my face again, making tea, drinking it cold, scolding hot, all the while the room spinning round and round like the Ferris wheel at the Saint Louis World Fair in 1904. With the arrival of spring, the geese circled back around, and the rabbits scurried about. The deer frolicked yet froze at the sight of a Nazi doctor or lazy nurse, white, sterile, starched, as cold as winter, as the oddballs no longer made snow angels—their sad, empty eyes peering out from behind grated windows at the budding trees once more. The cars coming and going through mud, mud caked on the soles of my shiny black shoes until the blazing heat of summer—dried and cracked. And in no time, the petals dropped one by one, and the leaves of the oak shed like antlers in the ravine, as snakes shed their skin in the rocks near the tracks below. The geese returned south, guided by the winter winds, and soon, the Hilltop would be blanketed once more in a fresh layer of snow. Time froze over, while beneath an icy crust of denial, the truth carried on—the fish grew older, and the undercurrent washed away our secrets to the sea.

Year after year, coming and going, back and forth, round and round, to and fro, my old worn-out tiny feet slopping through the mud—I learned to blend in with the oddballs screaming and moaning and cursing holy hell. I stared with empty, hollow eyes, as the animals of the zoo were released into the thicket to run free, as man had once again imprisoned himself behind bars, locked doors, straitjackets, and doped up on stupefying pills, pills which I adored. Seeing that so many patients roamed about in the skeletal nude out of their damned minds, there was little about myself to gain notice. Disheveled, disoriented—none too troublesome, yet just enough—none too dangerous, yet just enough—with hands trembling, I anxiously waited for my turn to grab a paper cup of pills off the tray, ass bare in a stolen gown—their metallic taste drowning out the smell of feces smeared on the walls. When a Nazi doctor passed by, I froze like a deer and let a tit slip from my gown, as others ripped their own to shreds, baring hairy vaginas, a little drool pooling upon their lip, a little froth upon my own—one of the long lost and forgotten. I fit right in, a lab rat wandering about the lazy maze of nurses smoking their cigarettes, gossiping about Friday night and dick. Dignity had been tilled under with the almighty Doctor Zolla. Someone had been counting his days, waiting around with a shovel, smoking a cigarette, flicking ashes, applying thick globs of red lipstick with legs uncrossed. The Hilltop had become a place to sit freely in one’s own piss and shit. At the same time, the Nazis acted out their sadistic fantasies, displacing their inferiorities and aiming their ice picks and dicks at the weakest and most vulnerable of us all. And between fucks, they kicked the weak while they were down—shiny shoes, right in the gut, the ribs—souls, broken and bruised. The wailing terror-filled screams of those strapped down and rolled away were lit up and picked like ice—silenced, stupefied, and undone—sat in a chair by shit stained wall. Birds chirping on the other side of grated planes of glass, as fragile as reality, covered in iron to prevent said reality from shattering. Paper cups were arranged, and I grabbed them freely from trays and carts, and counters.

In the haze, one could ignore the rats scurrying about, the snakes wrapping around willing and unwilling and unconscious legs, making their way for hairy vaginas, and for the scrabbled minds—a dark wave heading for the heart of mankind, where it would leave an institutional wasteland in its wake. I moped about in this desert of misery and stupor with a tit hanging out to appease the doc, with perverse anonymity until I could scurry off back to the farmhouse like a rabbit, waiting to die. At an endless grey, I looked up and asked, “why?” 

However, the breeze carried no answer, as it blew dust in my eyes, only whispering, “Go mix your wild drugs, Circle Daughter of the Sun!” So, I popped four red ones, shiny and round, and I scrubbed my flesh raw of filth until I bled. As the moon rose somewhere beyond the curtain, I crawled upon the cold mattress begging Momma, “I wish not to hear your whispers tonight, but, as I might, I shall nail my feet to the floor.” Breaching madness. Civility, as thin as an old crone’s skin—skin that tore open with every mishap, every bump of the left knee on a table, as thin as the silver plating brushed upon the skull of a coyote of which I gnawed. As thin as the air upon which the rain crows circled overhead—we teeter upon the tip of the needle of righteousness, of sin, of shame, of redemption, of madness, and reasoning, of life and death, of man and beast—

This journey, this world fabricated by the mind, by dreams, by nightmares, by worms in the brain, squirming about—drooling, frozen limbs, empty skulls, dry valleys, lies, flies, foes, and fleas; disturbed souls, sleepwalking in immense heartache, loss, and desperation—led to endless trenches. Reasoning had scurried off like a rabbit at the drop of a hat. In this dark thicket of lies, we float about like ghosts, as the owls watch wide-eyed, as we chew the edges of pure white pages like nervous filthy rats—the swirling, stalking spirits spoke through me—unique speech, once spoken in family homes, words, and phrases only loved ones could comprehend—dead, dreadful dead, haunting thickets where the floor and the sun never meet. Rocking chairs and turning tables—pages twirling and twisting in the wind. I saw wide-eyed children with rotten teeth, souls blown away long ago, swearing and pissing upon gowns, and graves called beds. Checkered tiles of black and white, good and bad, angels and demons, men squatting in corners, shitting, spewing chicken blood, and God knows what else—vomit: the drink of demons. The truth is that some wander wearily through the vast desert thirsty. And some seek refuge in dark corners, in shadows, cracks, and crevices, hiding in the shade, under nightstands, from vessel-to-vessel where serpents coil. It is true the night indeed speaks with a hiss. And fingers, and hands like the briar patch, latch onto anything and anyone within grasp. Loathsome and pathetic, ghouls ceaselessly feigning for tongues to whisper, leaving me to ponder, what horrid words are whispered into our ears in the dead of night? “Momma, you haunt me, Momma, let me be.” The old farmhouse creaked and breathed shallow breaths through such sullen nights. The old grandfather clock stood tall, silent, and dead, unwound, face long buried in the wall. The merciless wind thrashed the tiles from the roof, the shutters, the paint peeled as I wondered of the fate of the widow down the road. My breath dry—lips chapped, peeling—my chin tucked into my gout ridden knees—tucked into my hollowed, sunken chest. “Why do you whisper such wretched things?” I asked Momma. The hoot of an owl sent chills down the spines of wide-eyed rats. The chirping baby chicks with bellies as empty as my own somewhere beyond the curtain sang of sunrise, waiting for snakes. A single knock on the door—I froze. It was Saturday, no postman today.

Nervous hands = two reds and a blue. 

With a single knock at the door, I opened it but an inch, broom in hand. As my eyes adjust to the light of day as before me stood a ghost from the past. I shut the door and waited for him to leave. Peeking through the curtain, I noticed two grocery bags on the porch. When the ghost had vanished, I tore into them with my claws, throwing crumbs to the crows and strays. I scribbled off a note and nailed it to the door: 

More bread and butter!

I popped a yellow one that swept me away like the broom across the room, the floor, the walls, the furniture, the chair, the bed, the pillows, the old cold mattress, the voices, the words, “Momma let me be.” Reagan was nearly killed by a young man with the disease. Nonetheless, old Ronnie, born right here in the State of Illinois, star of the film Brother Rat, didn’t much believe in schizophrenia and closed the Hilltop down in no time—citing the filth and shit smeared walls, I suppose. And the Nazis knew nothing of bread anyhow, knowing no use for ovens, but as crematoriums. And as the bastards herded, carried, and wheeled the last of the patients out of doors­­­­­­­ chained shut behind them, they abandoned ship, leaving the lost to tread water in the middle of the sea. The patients succumbed to wandering about the lawns and gardens confused, disoriented, walking about in circles, pleading with themselves, with straps of leather cinched tightly and buckled around their minds—birds searching desperately for a cage, while others sat motionless in wheeled chairs, content to die, content not knowing why. I felt pity for the utterly lost souls, afraid, abandoned by the State. With winter fast approaching, soiled gowns blew in the breeze, shitty butt cheeks were exposed to the chill—goose-pimpled. Lightning-white static hair of disheveled old women uttered the names of long-dead husbands and estranged sons with memories forgotten, shivering and nude, vile, and blue. Erased by the overexposure of the light of day, unable to place one foot before the other, the blank slate before them, all the same—empty, unknowing, foreign, dislodged, and distorted. North, south, east, or west no longer arrows pointing any which way—not toward homes of aunts nor uncles, nor distant cousins. No homes with doors to rap upon, let alone to step forth. As the medications wore off, subdued minds awoke, and the disease took hold—hallucination, hunger, rage, thirst, joy, and paranoia. The patients went down with the ship in no time, making their way by the law of gravity, down the ravine to the old wagon trail, the train tracks, the river, and the blacktop below. Many swam and sank in the nude or strolled along the shoulder in tattered gowns, tractor-trailers rasping at the fresh layer of tar, the draft leaving genitalia exposed to twisted-necked children in backseats in bewilderment, and mothers covering innocent eyes to the undesirable fallacies of society. Fallacies escaping from shadows—faces, with wild eyes—an army of madness let loose by old Ronnie—an absolute lack of reasoning, haphazardly made its way for the city of Grandview—a tidal wave of unreality—a reckoning. An assault upon the senses of the light of day, upon the sidewalks which man walked in suit and tie, in denial of his own misdeeds, for the sake of pseudo sanctity and civility. 

Huddled down in the stoops and alleyways, the diseased were forced to eat from garbage cans and dumpsters like strays, like beasts, left to their own means and ultimate demise, ruin, as the whole community awaited winter to purify the streets. And when winter did arrive, the blue-lipped, blue-toed, and frozen solid were carried off by those hoping the lice neither withstood the freezing January night, as they nailed shut within the darkness of plain pine boxes, the forgotten, and buried them in the back corners of pauper plots, where no stones were placed, nothing but mounds of dirt that sank back into the earth with the melting snow. Souls were not laid to rest but tossed and turned about—hallowed bones shattered as new holes were dug—a casserole for the worms. A heart grown as cold as those January nights, beating on into spring—buds blossoming, flowers perfumed with the stench of great shame. Those who survived the harsh winter, now burrowed down in boxes in back alleyways as open hunting season began for moral-less and hate-fueled drunkards and teens to run them down in the night, flattening them like frogs under the tires of their Chevys and Fords. A curse had undoubtedly been cast upon the city, a plague unleashed, revenge, as the spirits never forget, nor forgive, nor had I ever stopped wondering, 

just who were the diseased of the mind? Mercy had been pawned for an acceptable currency of cruelty at the trading post of the crossroads, where morality and truth collided—the disease had swept across the city, and the nation, from coast to coast.

America! America! / God shed His grace on thee / And crown thy good with brotherhood. / From sea to shining sea. 

Rats—brothers stepping over brothers, sisters, husbands, daughters, aunts, uncles, wives, neighbors, and sons, ravaging upon each other in unthinkable ways—crossing the street to avoid some long-lost and abandoned son whirling about in one shoe, going neither to, nor fro. Out of the corner of the eye, the vast blue had turned an endless grey in the searing summer stank. As the sun nestled into the trees for the evening, I made my way for the graveyard in what light remained—the towering elm budding high above the silence at my feet. I placed my palm upon the rough bark and felt his soul within. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and carried on to the old, twisted tree, spun like a rope that Momma once swung from in the breeze—long frayed to nothingness. My heart sank as I noticed the tombstones in the ravine. I scampered through the fallen branches, crossing the tracks and the highway, tractor-trailers rasping at another fresh layer of tar, then through the willow to the river, swollen high above its bank for late Autumn. The days of old steamers braving its swift currents long past made way for a slow convoy of rusty barges, bolts of light searching their way through the night, groping the shoreline—the blinding brightness illuminating the dark swirling eddies of my mind. I bowed my head with the nestled geese, snug in the tall grass, in ease, and a sense of peace. The moonlight reflected off the tide—the moment shining bright. And I grabbed a handful of clay from the old earth and rolled it between my palms into a ball—a story that should be fed into the river one page at a time. I flattened the clay into a Swedish pancake and with a slap, I tossed it in with a splash. A large fish leapt just high enough above the water’s surface to gaze its eye to the dark horizon before plunging back into the muddy abyss—a ripple across the current of time. In the stillness that was night, my own reasoning, by that great hour, had long-washed away for the sea, words nonetheless circling round and round, as I listened, and heard, and felt—sad poetry.

I noticed a dim light glowing from the Bronson Building one night, as the hobos had spared no time finding shelter through a broken window. I sat straight up from my chilled mattress—one thought I spoke aloud, “The pharmacy.” First thing in the morning, after watching the hobos leave in search of beans and whiskey, I was relieved to find the pharmacy undiscovered. I broke open the locked door with a pry bar, and my stomach turned as I saw the room fully stocked. I picked up a bottle, shook it, and the beloved rattlesnake charmed my ears and sent me running for the hall, where I shit on the floor. I wiped with a discarded gown and filled an old wheelbarrow I found upside down in the weeds with reds and blues, ovals, and rounds, and went back for yellows. Seeing the glow from the Bronson's windows again the following night, I became saddened at the thought of burning books. Goddamn them, I thought, looking down at my feet, drunken fools, cooking their beans over the words and wisdom of the ages—charred edges, which called out their final words in incomplete sentences—such timelessness burnt to ash for mere comfort of the finite moment. I went wild with fury, drunkards pissing all over Dickinson, Woolf, Whitman, Poe, Shelly, Plath, Emerson, Hesse, Thoreau, and Dickenson. Filthy rats chewing up the reflections of the greatest minds of mankind—Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, and your beloved Homer. Sam, it was no simple task at the age of eighty-two, emptying a complete library, but two reds and a blue did the trick. Or maybe it was three...? Having rescued the pills and all the books, I was then shocked to find Doctor Zolla’s office wholly intact so many years after his death. His personal museum upon the wall, the display of chains, cuffs, straitjackets, etc., remained, though covered in a thick layer of dust. His file cabinet—no task for my pry bar—was filled with patient files and case notes—official records of the names and other personal details of the insane, guarded so privately that most nurses could not lay eyes upon them. An example of such read: 

No. 7849: Gilbert Sharp - male, single, age 24. He does not know why he is here, thinks, however, that he might have been brought here to be killed.

I took possession of the files, abandoned journals, various other parcels, postcards, photos, and diaries to use as research material, and hoarded the stationary—pushing home the doctor’s Remington typewriter in the wheelbarrow—and I began to write to you, Sam. The rare pleasure of painful examination of humanity, history, oneself, and one’s past was now mine to be had, and mine to offer you, Sam. The suicide of thoughts, daydreams, and night terrors—my withering eye looking down upon those worms slithering through all I ever knew, pounded out on keys into words—slivering through the 16th-century alphabet—171,476 hazy shriveled up words dribbling from the tongue of time. Fingers jammed and cramped, curling up like claws, knotted, crippled, kinked, rusted, crystalized knuckles—osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, which made the pushing of the keys a living hell, as the average person can remember but seven spoken words. And before a majestic view of lost wonderment, my ears ringing with every clank, clank, clank of the typewriter keys, they took me back in fields of time, to a time no more, yet everlasting. And with a seed, an endosperm, pericarp, germ, and tip cap, I grew a stalk with leaves and ears of corn wrapped closely in husks, with hundreds of filaments called silk, which protrude from the top of each ear, a stalk upon which vines grow toward a heaven which may or may not exist. On clean white sheets of parchment, perished souls laid in wobbly type told a story of shadows mistaken for crows—born into my world, or rather I into theirs, a child coloring between the lines, offering color to an otherwise institution grey. 

Story: An account of past events in someone’s life or in the evolution of something or another, an account of real or imaginary people and events, unpredictable tales, unpredictable moods, arcs, plots, and a withdrawn child—aloft, imprisoned within a glorious universal youth—lost notably to time. 

Incorrigible: A person or their tendencies unable to be corrected, improved, or reformed—endless, long-drawn-out, never-ending worn-out need. 

The keys, the words, the mind, O’ time—

Schizophrenia: A breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.

My case note might have revealed what an unfortunate little woman I was, sweet and pleasant, with fine traits, though prone to erratic, unpredictable, and emotional actions. My writing exemplifying capricious, whimsical thoughts—

No. 3274 - This man’s actions and reasoning were so lucid that I was writing his discharge when he told me that he had something to tell me before going out. What is it? I asked, and he answered, “Jesus-Christ cut my nuts off last Monday, and it was not until Tuesday morning that I found it out.” He was positive his testicles had been removed. When I made him examine himself, he laughed & said with surprise, “Well, I made a mistake. I told a lie but did not mean it. I take it all back. Sure enough, they are there.” Then he goes on to speak of Jesus Christ, says he knows him well, has often seen him, that sometimes he appears under the shape of a man, at other times that of a child, etc. This man is possibly a masturbator. 

No. 1012 - Her face is badly marked by smallpox and is very ragged. She imagines that an angel is in her; then she imagines herself persecuted by hoodoos, who have placed snakes in her body and thereby injure her, then she will jump up, run about with her hands raised to heaven, howl, beat her feet against the floor, etc., etc.… She makes night hideous by her shrieks and cries, tears her clothes to pieces. In a word, she is a complete Maniac.

No. 4712 - He claims he was in the war but is unable to give an account of the date of the war and knows not if he was in the Confederate or Federal army, nor if the war took place five or fifty years ago.                                          

No. 7759 - This boy is crippled and walks with a crutch. He has been insane from childhood. He is dangerous to his relatives. Has been once arrested and charged with attempting to commit rape.

No. 6846 - Says she is hungry, something is gnawing at her insides, wants to eat at all times, and yet says someone wants to poison her. Attempts to eat her chair.

No. 8565 - Says his name is “Duke.” I suspect a syphilitic affection of the brain.

No. 1321 - Index finger of left hand amputated at the first joint.

No. 9711 - Prefers to be naked.

And as the hobos moved on, Sam, the teens came flocking to the Hilltop like geese, not to graze and roost, but to chug and crush beer cans under their sneakers, spray painting dicks on the walls of the Bronson, and:

FUCK YOU!

Fuck who? I wondered, assuming they were screaming right back into their own faces—breaking glass and noses, noses that bled upon the checkered tiles where rats shit and glass shards lied. They came in hordes stumbling over one another—howling—declawed beasts—in search of howling clawed beasts—shadowy figures crying out in the night, and the elusive electro-room: 400+ volts. Perhaps they might have found a truth better left be. They came in search of greater fright than living in a world in a constant state of frozen war. They came in search of a bellow so deep it turned the bowels, so ear-piercing it split the mind, yet they found only silence. As I followed them in the night, I watched as they tripped over their own sneakers, arms around each other like brothers. A quest into peace and quiet—dreadful quiet. Stalked by their own shadows, chased by their own footprints—the elms looming above, whispering fare warnings, “Despite agility, smoothly flowing joints, blood pumping through your mighty limbs, in time you will enrich the black river valley earth—youth is but sand through nimble fingers.” Out for cheap thrills, flirting with the mere concept of death, the spirit realms of which they trampled, moaned. In search of the Bookbinder’s grave, the teary rose, shivered young gals, and boy’s laughter to mask the terror of the night. Young gals were dragged about by boys, boys dragged off by gals, begging, “Tommy, please, I don’t wanna be here, come on, let’s go, I’m leaving with or without you!” 

As Tommy and his gal disappeared in their sneakers down the bluff, laughter echoed through the ravine. Still, the broken bottles piled up, along with the FUCK YOUs, and the dicks.

TOMMY

JIM

JOHNNY

HANK

HENRY

...and:

BEN WAS HERE.

And the sweeter, more tender:

I LOVE TOMMY

JIM

JOHNNY

HANK

HENRY

...and:

BEN 

All piled up like rat shit.

Loud moans of pleasure, screams of anger and shrieks of terror and fierce thrusting of stone through glass, the shards piled up. The seizing of power and expressions akin to tearing a mental straitjacket to shreds, one shackled by society—disease once treated by Herbs, Minerals, Gums, Oils, Shells, Salts, Juices, Seaweed, Excrements, Barks of Trees, Serpents, Toads, Frogs, Spiders, Dead Men’s Flesh and Bones, Birds, Beats, and Fish—now bred wild hearts that howled at the moon—reds, yellows and blues, coursing through my veins. The Hilltop, the asylum, continued to attract madness at will—no wrangling, no trains, no depot, no intake nurse squat on her stool, no gowns, no slippers, no bed assignments, no question of reasoning, no readjustment of medication, no case notes, no files, only chained doors kicked wide open, exposing the inner workings of madness.

 Asylum: a place of refuge, reemerged from the muck, a sign of the times, a folk-refuge for the anguished, the pissed off, the pent-up, and the horny.

As babies were made, bottles were shattered well beyond the limits of reasoning and sanity. And I long wondered, who were the real kooks? Was it the mommas and pas? The Great War had once filled these halls, the walking dead, or was it merely life itself—a battlefield spread round and round this ball of clay, leaving nothing but shards scattered across the checkered halls. Shattered hearts. Shattered minds. Shattered windows. Shattered words for a shattered world. Shattered meaning. Shattered definition. 

Asylum: A place of retreat and security, an institution offering shelter and support to people who are mentally ill.

Shards, broken words, four-letter words. A war waged against the S-E-L-F. 

In time, I came to pity the teens, listening with great delight as they howled at the moon, gentle souls under cloaks of rabid beasts—for their illness was for the world to own, as an old miner’s flashlight lit up a black book emblazoned in a hellish red Old English font upon its cover: 

Satan

A dozen or so young men and women, whose flannels, t-shirts, and worn-out Levi’s, holes in the knees that expressed what their blank faces failed, grew silent amongst the haunting drone crackling through radio speakers somewhere off to the side. They lit the wicks of candles with the same worn-out zippo used to light a small fire out of newspaper, twigs, and damp branches—the same worn-out zippo used to light Marlboros in the humid Vietnam jungle. The cloaked woman, black book to her breast, with an attitude of offering, bowed and said, “Come, O Mighty Lord of Darkness, and look favorably on this sacrifice which we have prepared in thy name—AVE SATANAS!” Everyone held out a particular object to their own breast as she continued, “Come, O Mighty Lord of Darkness, and look favorably on this sacrifice which we have prepared in thy name—” With the gesture of a nod, the dozen or so riffraff, placed on the ground before them ceramic dogs, jewelry, wedding rings, a tambourine, photos, letters, medication bottles, clothing, and sheets of paper rolled up in glass bottles. The flashlight grazed my face as I hid in the corner, clutching the cross I never wore. “Therefore, O mighty and terrible Lord of Darkness—” she went on, the book disappearing within her cloak, the flashlight sat aside, “AVE SATANAS!” She held out her hands and turned her palms down, as someone dumped an old military duffle with “Jones” written on the side, full of hammers, knives, a bat, pry bars, and mallets, all crashing to the floor, each person grabbing one before circling once more about the flame. “AVE SATANAS!” The cloaked woman bowed her head toward hell. And in a sudden and disturbing uproar of violence, the objects before them were smashed with cathartic screams and wailing, as rodents scurried, and bats flew from the attic peak—hell smashed between steel and checkered tile. I covered my ears until the dozen or so fell calm, falling to their knees into a silent trance, the radio crackling, the chant droning on. What shards remained were scattered in the fire, shadows dancing wildly in the whiskey-fueled blaze, licking the ceiling, blackened with soot of the devil’s tongue—Old Scratch himself. Not a word was spoken as the bottle was passed. And I watched unseen as death turned to ash, realizing, in a world as confusing as theirs, beautiful hoodoo was all that made sense. I went back to the farmhouse that night, gathered up stacks of case notes and files, made a large pile of them on the lawn, soaked them in kerosene, and lit a match, knowing no one would ever lay eyes upon their mythology again. Within obscurity, dignity lit up the sky, the stars blinded by the fury of the forgotten—my name is nobody.

The next day, I made a pork roast and yanked out the dream bone, but I found no jam as I went to the pantry for bread. It had rained the second of June, and I knew the blackberry bushes must be full. So, I popped three yellow ones, oval, along with a small piece of salted pork to prevent seasickness, and I set forth with a buckeye strung around my neck and Pa’s knife in hand. Being careful not to hit my right leg on the corner of the table, I blessed the house so as it should not burn down in my absence. I stood upon the porch until the tide went out, and when the time came, I climbed into the ship and sailed gently forth across the sea of dirt. The wind filled the sails, and I could see the thicket on the horizon. I thought of Pa, how he once sailed this sea, bending the crop down to whisper a word of encouragement in its ear, “Grow.” The yellow ones flowing through my veins, Achilles whispered in my own, and I agreed to honor his request. With winged heels to the shores of the thicket, where the immortals no longer thought dividedly, where vultures circled above, and the severity of my quest coiled up inside my belly like a snake, I disembarked into the dense, dark thicket, immediately coming across a dead raccoon covered in flies. I stood amongst the stench of death for a moment before continuing on for a place where the air was hot, and the hair stood on end. I pondered the hardships that must await as a dizzy spell overcame me, and amongst the growth, delirium drifted over me, and I was carried away into the land of dreams.

The towering trees stood high above me in council, barking, “Woe be unto thee who thrashes the thicket without the purest of intentions.” “I am but a messenger,” I said, as the council bent in toward one another in a whisper, and a blackbird startled me. With wailing arms, I shouted, “Away!” at the bird, chasing the echo of the woodpecker, running smack dab into a beehive. I outran their stingers through the thicket where no flowers grew, where the sun did not reach the floor, dense, dark earth groaning beneath my tiny feet, but a prickly bush entangled my flowery dress. The trees looked down upon me, nodding and barking at my misfortune, suggesting I return home at once before it was too late. Denying their counsel, I tore my dress free, leaving my breasts bare and my thighs bloody. Achilles had entrusted me, for I was his messenger. Although many spears were aimed my way, I rushed forth and found them rotten and crumbling. This angered the council, yet I ignored the arrogant barking. I smeared blood over my flesh, and a great wave of wind opened a path through the thicket, a rabbit scurried about, and I made my way forth. The earth beneath the roots upon which carried my feet lent a tricky course, my toes and heart beating so. I thanked the West Wind for assisting me upon my voyage and decided to run full gait—the thicket, nails, and spines, leaving me but a scrap of dress to cover my shame. The council quickly reconvened with a roar, brushing a wall of leaves before me, wrangling me like a wild horse, amongst devious laughter. 

I shouted, “Set me free Goddamn it, I am the messenger of Achilles, the greatest warrior the earth has ever known.” As one heel was pierced by a thorn, blood oozed, and the earth drank. My breasts bare, hair scattered about, I stomped one hoof and neighed, “I am a messenger of Achilles, I tell you, now set me free.” Yet, the council had aligned against me, stubborn in their minds, barking, “What does thou, a mere mortal desire from the thicket?” “Achilles has sent me with a message, and you must honor me to deliver said message!” I spoke proudly. “How do we know the words of which you speak are not as tarnished as the heels of your feet?” they asked. “You wish to take the gamble of dishonoring Achilles?” I taunted them. And after a brief deliberation, the council spoke, “Journey on, mortal—though the thicket is no place for an old crone such as yourself, we shall lend no branch, and it must be known.” But I warned them in return, “Surely, there is not much hatred in the heart of Achilles, and although he is in this moment forbearing, I am certain if you thrash upon me once more, you shall have insulted Achilles for the last time.” The council bowed, saying, “If you truly are a messenger of Achilles, there is not another mortal as honorable as thou to grace the thicket, may you be on your way, and you shall not be thrashed upon again. Go in peace, deliver said message, and seize your reward, and return home gloriously.” I bowed and carried forth, promising, “Achilles will not forget your grace, immortal ones.”

Carrying forth, I came upon the most beautiful oak tree, around which flowed a stream of Olympiad water, from where a black serpent, spotted on the back, appeared from below the surface. It glided out of the water, and disappeared beneath the roots of the oak, then slithering up the trunk of the tree, where a young sparrow on a topmost branch sung of hunger. I spotted seven in number in the nest above, the mother swooping down to deliver dinner. The young ones desperately devoured the worms she provided, as she fluttered about, tending to her young when, to her horror, the serpent seized one by the wing as it cried out, and the six-remaining fluttering about helplessly. Astonished at what happened, I cried out, “why do you remain silent as this serpent has devoured this young sparrow, there were seven, including the mother who simply brought food for her young, now only six in total? Why must you stand tall with pride, yet let war wage amongst the thicket?” The council responded, “A serpent eats but once a month, my dear—shall we starve them of but a single sparrow who daily eats a worm, while for the mother five remain?” I sighed with sorrow as I laid eyes upon a deer skull in the growth. I lifted it carefully and held it in my hands, realizing—a skull is nothing more than a thing—an object—unanimated, never to float through space nor time upon a pair of shoulders again. A skull simply lies upon the ground or sits on the bookshelf of a scholar, never to move without the hand of Yorick. Death is but a transformation, from a “head,” to a “thing,” to a “possession,” a “bookend,” a “stage prop,” yet only if one’s skull is fortunate enough to surface from a shallow grave due to wind and rain, or an earthquake in some thousand years left behind to bleach in the sun, and held by the gentle hands of an archeologist, pondered by the mind of a scholar on the meaning of death, adorned by a poet in search of the words of mortality, or sniffed out and gnawed upon by the slobbery jaws of a mangy coyote. I set the skull down upon a rock at the base of the oak and enthroned it within a shrine of small stones when the serpent slithered out of its empty eye socket, his split tongue craving a woman’s thigh. “A snake killed is an enemy conquered,” I said aloud as I lifted my foot, knife in hand, stomping down on its head, cutting it into thirds. Looking down upon my slain foe, I felt the pride of victory. However, I was soon startled as the pieces began to move about, uniting once more. I stepped back as those shiny, soulless black eyes laid upon my own, that split tongue asking for a kiss. “You are no serpent. You’re a Goddamn rat,” I said, throwing a stone, and with a hiss, it turned and slithered away.

I continued on following the echo of the woodpecker toward the rays of sunlight piercing the foliage like a quiver of arrows. As I reached the opening, I grasped at a dandelion growing in the tall grass. I blew on the seed ball and followed them as they led me to a bush full of ripe blackberries. Bowing, I said, “I have been sent by Achilles. I shall relay a message in exchange for a small batch of your berries.” The bush bowed in return, and I leaned in close and whispered the message, and the bush bowed once more. I quickly but gently plucked the berries and filled the scrap of the dress. I thanked the bush and made my way back through the thicket without incident, past the immortals who no longer thought dividedly without a bark, nor a whisper of gathering leaves, and silence rang in my ears as the echo of the woodpecker grew faint. I stepped out of the thicket upon the shore, where my sails flapped in the breeze—triumph, victory no longer impending. In the kitchen of the farmhouse, bare-chested and bloody, I crushed the blackberries in a pot with my hands. Above a crackling fire, I worried not, adding half a bag of sugar and stirring the mixture with a spoon made of the bones of those who stood tall, and I boiled the mixture down. Impatient and drooling, not waiting for the jam to cool, I spread it on a slice of bread with Pa's knife and seized the prize of the thicket. And dropping to my knees, I slid my purple palms forth in full prostration—nipples chilled and hardened—my heart beating into the wooden floor—teeth full of seeds, I spoke to the great Achilles, “You give me peace in a lifetime of war.” And what of the message? A message is for whom a message is heard. And then Sam, reality struck like lightening. The sound of my pill bottle no longer rattled—a dead snake. My teeth ground as I scoured every nook and cranny to no avail. Scraping on the inside of the skull, nails dug deep into the marrow of the bone.

Reality: The sound of shattered mirrors and bloody knuckles and fuck.

My chest pounded as the room spun about in dizziness and fear and hate. Ribs cracked with gut-wrenching heaves into a bucket full to the brim with vomit. Squeaky springs, a mattress soaked in haunted delirium sweat. Metallic snakes slithered through the mind like razor blades. Thin flesh, tearing like tissue, red, inflamed heat. Rashes and gout, unable to bear the weight of the cotton sheet, I shed it like the skin of a snake. A mortal coiled up inside—I found only a battleground, a trench of stench and filth and misery, as all the songbirds knew to flee. Lost, no longer in control, disconnected from the existential umbilical cord that anchored one to time and space—I desperately grasped onto my body, onto flesh that I desperately wanted, yet needed to claw myself out of. From midnight to dawn, rodents and bats preyed upon the weakest hours of my mind, and I prayed for a merciful death and welcomed the shadow in the corner of my eye, but when I asked, “Who are you bitch?” she said, “Nobody,” and when I asked, “what the fuck do you want from me?” she answered, “Nothing.” She left in silence, but the others, the countless and cursing others, came out of the walls, piercing my eardrums with their sharp tongues, circling like buzzards as I rubbed spit in my ears. But they bit my big toe and held me tight—might I sleep the sleep of death. Yet, my pinky finger woke me, time and time again, to the cawing of the circling rain crows just above the slouching roof. Breathing the breath of death upon my goose-pimpled neck, I promised not to spat in their eye. But death failed to arrive in its darkest cloak to shroud my eyes in eternal darkness, and my heart continued to beat despite loathing life. The old house shook after midnight, and the chairs spun and rocked, fists knocking from within the walls, and I was starving, and I managed to mutter, “Bread and butter come to supper! Bread and butter come to supper!”

With my legs crossed, cheekbones protruding, hair and yellowed nails growing like the dead, scissors clenched in my claw, I thought to stab myself in the neck. But I rubbed an egg on my throat and found the strength to stand and wobble, only to get lost in my own home, staring at walls for endless hours, looking for a door in a room with no door. My Goddamned mind, Sam. A rabid beast, feigning for a way back to a place that rattled, a snake pit, a bottle of bones, a bottle I could crawl back inside of and perish in the warmth of lofty dreams. My Godamned mind—wicked nightmares of Old Scratch himself with his coal-black eyes and his split, cursid-tongue. I begged the darkness, offering promises and deals, drawing a cross of soot upon my heart to appease him with my soul. He swallowed me whole only to vomit me back up into the bucket, but I overflowed its edges and seeped deep between the floorboards, and when I awoke with a gasp, my heart was weak. But I rubbed my eyes and looked around the empty room for empty eye sockets, dolls pulled out by the hair, scarred across the face by fire, bent-over men with no spines, and bloody wounds screaming in terror, abandoned, and lost, clinching and grasping onto form and time, wanted what was mine, but I saw them not, I had survived. In a fine pair of shoes, I had survived. So, I crossed the endless plain in the merciless winter, as a strong gale howled something fierce across the Hilltop, the creaking of the frozen thicket in my bones, but in time the shiver fled, and my eyes thawed upon the twisted tree, as my ears rang out, carried on by the wind—and finally, Momma whispered me awake.

She called me to her room, and as I sat down in her rocking chair, right there before me on the nightstand sat in the light day, a plastic bottle, and when I shook it, a rattlesnake, yellow and oval, and my stomach coiled. And as I now sit with these pills, the last of them, I look over at the photo on the nightstand beside my bed. I was eleven years old. I had plopped down on the front steps, dropping my chin in my palms, and chewed on my bottom lip. I sat in stillness. I sat in silence. I watched as the patients in the distance plucked the petals off the flowers one by one. The breeze blew, ruffling a crow’s feathers as it lurked about in search of a worm on the lawn before me. Our eyes met, you and mine, Sam—mine bright and hazel, yours blue as the sky. And the crow, eyes, the dark night of the soul. I’d thought to split his tongue as I asked, “What’s to be sane in the garden of madness?” and click, you snapped my photo with your 1$ Brownie camera, and the crow flew away without a word ever spoken, only written on paper in a world consumed by fire—the soles of my shiny black shoes together in prayer.

I’d awoken this morning to a loud clap of thunder on a sunny day and a breeze blowing through the curtain whispering in my ear. Laying upon my cool mattress, legs crossed, eyes shut, I simply listened to the beat of my heart as the lonely cat’s cry of the night had been replaced by songbirds, the rooster’s crow, a barking dog, and from afar, the whistle of a train. I thought of days when the squeaking brakes of trucks delivered warm bread across the Hilltop—but in time came a deafening silence, a loneliness of unparalleled solitude—but I’d come to accept my fate, my endless hunger as I inhaled all I knew of the world around me—then I exhaled and let it all go—and when I opened my eyes to see the spider in the corner drop-down, not once, but three times, as mentioned, I knew I should die in the same old farmhouse I was born. Over the years, Sam, as I watched the honking geese on their great migration come and go and come and go again, swooping down upon the Hilltop, my memories bent and twisted and turned through the pony grass in a wild wind. Staring at the sun, staring at nothing, talking to the sun, talking to no one, walking in circles, marching in place, spinning around, skipping, hopping, tiptoeing, hollering, whispering, knocking, rocking, sitting in silence, shaking the head, shaking the hands, slapping the face, pulling the hair, sticking the tongue, shaking the finger, clapping the hands, hugging the self, singing to the self, crying, lying, laughing, and lying in the grass—all things I learned growing up on the Hilltop. Sitting before the typewriter today, as I put an ending to my letter, dearest Sam, my hands shake—I feel weak and lightheaded, and panicked. I shall slide against the wall down the stairs and out of the house, vertigo every step of the way. Outside, I will collapse to the ground, gasping for air. My chest will heave as I cling to the grass with my fists, waiting to fall from the earth. I’ll lie on my back and let the sun calm me, and as it slowly warms my joints, long knotted with time, I shall worry my heart might seize—an old Ford out to pasture. But the cool breeze, the rich soil below my back will provide me a sense of peace, a trick Doctor Zolla taught me long ago. And as I return to my desk with steady knees, and I stretch out my clawed and aching hands, and press the dreadful keys, one of twenty-six, will continue to haunt me until I reach the end—S.W.A.K., sealed with a kiss.

I’d always felt safe, given the unpredictable world in which I grew up. I felt invisible, utterly ghostly, as the means to stand out upon the Hilltop were quite illusive, as you know, Sam. Year after year, growing pains went unseen, until the day I met Birdie in the rose garden. I was twelve years old, and I fell in love. She was breathtaking, cunning like a fox, and I begged her to teach me all her tricks. We would lie in the grass and bat our eyes like butterflies, and we laughed and laughed when I fell to the ground in pain as I threw my hip out, trying to swing it in that way that “makes the boys go wild,” she would say. Oh, how I loved her so. She showed me how to keep my ankles slim as we held our feet in the air, saying, “You must lay upon the floor and rest your feet upon the foot of your bed every morning as you dream of love.” She taught me to wash my face with buttermilk, and I almost gagged watching her gut a chicken she stole from the coup—devouring the heart for the sake of beauty. We were friends. At night I’d sneak out to moon-bathe, and we’d dream of adventure, myself, hoping to live half the life she had. She once told me she’d stolen a cow and rode it all the way from the Ozarks to the Iowa border. In all honesty, I never knew what to believe, but I chose to believe it all. However, looking back, I suppose Birdie could have gotten anyone to think or do just about anything she so desired. She was the first to tell me I was lovely, saying, “Eat plenty of Sam’s sweet potatoes,” as she pinched my cheek, “they’re good for those rosy-red cheeks the boys adore—or you can always slap yourself across the face, whichever you prefer,” and we laughed until our bellies ached. I began not only to walk like her but dress like her, showing a little leg here and there—talk like her, “hot-dog,” a little attitude stirred with flattery. I pushed out my backside, arching my back as far as I could, a bit painful, but I didn’t mind. “The consequence of beauty,” she would say, “you gotta be on the make, especially while smelling the roses, and never forget to peek ever so slightly over the shoulder—bat your lashes like I showed ya, not once, but twice, not three times, and right when you catch his eye, look away, and when you walk away, remember that sway, keep them yearning, yearning for more—get’em him hooked. That’s how you get them to kill for ya!”

I was desperate for love. So much so, I swallowed a four-leaf clover with love on my mind—Love times four—lying to myself, “I am a woman,” as I beat my heart, my lips, itching for a kiss. Momma finished my yellow dress on the new moon, a few inches too high, though it was of no matter to me, as I so wanted to be wanted, I wanted to be seen. And as I threw an apple peel over the shoulder, along came a man with eyes on me, yellow dress blowing, wild and free. A wild one, he’d thrown on a smile for the ground’s keep and snagged a job trimming rose bushes in the garden. With those windswept, sun-bleached bangs, the new guy was quite a looker, no doubt, and one day he caught Birdie’s scent. And it took no time at all for Birdie to take a liking for those sky-blue eyes, and I grew jealous and walked away. Birdie needed a big catch, the kind that needed wrestling, but as it turned out, the wild one was a horny dog, and Birdie realized he would not take much wrestling at all, or so she thought, as he approached her, saying, “Why hey there Foxy! I knew I’d catch up to ya sooner or later,” he said. Birdie smiled, looking down in shyness—she was charmed, she bit her lip, the cat had finally caught her tongue. It didn’t take long for the wild one to sweet talk Birdie behind the Graveyard Elm with a bottle of tequila at sundown one night. She ran her fingers through his beautiful bangs—he was dreamy. He ran his hands all over her goose-pimpled flesh, and she moaned heavenly. He slobbered all over her neck as his fingers walked up her thigh, and she moaned in that way she had always detested, as he touched her sweet spot. But when the wild one got a little brave and spun her around, shoving her face into the tree’s bark, Birdie turned back around and scolded him—but seeing how he could no longer hold back, as his desire for her took over, he threw her to the ground, messing her dress with grass stains, as he held down her arms by the wrists. Birdie had had enough, and they got into a shouting match, nothing Birdie couldn’t handle, as she kneed him in the crotch. He cursed, and slapped her across the face, and she saw stars and grew silent with shock—but before he knew it, she gave him a good right hook to the lip, and he yelled from the ground, “You whore!” “You fucking hick!” she shouted with a good kick to his ribs, and she ran off toward the garden. The following day, he decided to set his sights on me.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, along came a man, a man indeed—

About the garden—an ace of hearts and a rose just for me—

I felt his sharp eyes from behind those sharp shears—

Looking back but once, not twice nor three—

My handkerchief over my shoulder—

All I could that he might see—

My hips swung wide—

To overwhelm—

Making my way for the Graveyard Elm.

I giggled, pretending to hide. But he snuck up on me—his fingers down my neck—goose pimples down my arm—hair standing on end. I gasped as he curled around the tree—his fingers curling my lip—butterflies—the most thrilling sickness. His body pressed into me. The rough bark dug deep into my back. His mouth upon my quivering lips—I worried they may chap. But he moistened them with his tongue—and did not seem to mind. I was stunned—quite nervous—with his hand on my neck—fingers walking up my thigh—when blinding white light came over me. Then with a CLANK, I heard a thump as he fell to my feet. And upon opening my eyes, I saw you Sam, standing before me with a shovel. “Hurry, get outta here,” you said. But I stood frozen as I saw the man lying on the roots of the elm, squirming, and crying, bleeding from his head. “Run, Sarah,” you yelled again, so, I ran—I ran without looking back—and with another CLANK, and another, all I heard was a whimper. A whimper of a boy—a lost little boy behind wind swept bangs—in a grown man’s body—a broken-hearted man—a man brought to a whimper—by such a tiny girl. And then all was silent, all but my racing heart and shallow breath, as my tiny feet carried me all the way home.

I kicked over every chair to call off the marriage. I shattered my mirror, and JoJo dove under the bed and you Sam, you rushed to my room where you saw my tears and opened your arms, and I collapsed into them. But I pushed you away and hid in the barn, and in the loft, I turned my yellow dress inside out and fell to the hay in fright. Midnight purred and rubbed about my thigh. I cursed, and threw him from the loft, and he scurried away, and Roan Beauty blew and dug his hoof into the ground—and I cried and cried. Sam, you came out with a bowl of sweet potatoes sprinkled with brown sugar, your worrisome gaze upon me as you stood upon the ladder—but I refused to look up, and you let me be, and the sweet potatoes went cold, and I threw the dish from the loft. Startled, Roan Beauty stomped the dish to shards—and my handkerchief was gone. I must have dropped it at the roots of the elm, I feared, the rat may think it a sign—I worried. I stayed in the loft until dark, lying awake through the night, and Momma nor Pa came looking for me, but I saw you, Sam, through a crack in the boards—I saw you sitting on the porch well past any reasonable hour, well past midnight, when I dozed off but once, only to awake with a rat tangled in my hair, but there was nothing there—a dream that would haunt me. My mind, sick with terror, I knew I’d give birth to the spawn of Old Scratch himself. So, I snuck into the kitchen through the back door—a hex, as I’d left through the front—desperate for a half-pint of vinegar and six tablespoons of salt. I returned to the barn and gathered nine rusty nails. A tear from Roan Beauty’s fell hard to the ground. I picked up a shard and slit open my thigh to disguise my wound—for I was a wretched thing. Blood oozing down my leg, midnight returned to the scent. As Sam, with your sleeves rolled—cap upon a branch in the Devil’s hour—you finished digging the grave along the ravine by dawn. And the rose bushes went untrimmed the following day and the next, and they grew wild and bushy, as the mound of dirt gradually settled, and tiny blades of grass pierced the black soil in search of light. And as I slept in the hay loft for nine nights, with fingers crossed, as you, Sam, you kept an eye on me. As, more than anyone, if even for a time, more than you may have known, in a world in need of heroes, you were the greatest hero of all.

Love eternally,

Sarah.

S.W.A.K.

Sealed with a kiss!