How Do They Rise Up

Peaches

2011-05-28T15:46:00.001-06:00

aka the story I got published

The last summer of his youth yielded the largest crop of peaches that the farm had ever seen.

The size of softballs, round and firm, each one was laden with so much juice that they dragged the moaning orchard branches earthward. When the weight became too much, the deafening silence of the countryside would be broken by a snapping rustle as one fell, a miniature bomb of sagging auburn flesh spattering the grass below and dissolving into a spongy puddle that glistened in the sun.

They filled so many crates full of peaches that they ran out of places to store them. Boxes of peaches, their bottoms bulging from the weight of ripe produce, were stacked up to the roof in the garage, covered the porch from end to end, lined the back of the house in teetering piles, forming a dripping shell of melting cardboard and overripe fruit between the peeling siding and the sweltering heat of the Georgia summer.

They could not sell them fast enough. Every pallet bought by the side of the highway was matched before the evening by the brimming orchard waiting for them at home, roots aching for relief from their peach induced lumbago. And what they could not sell they had to eat. A meal did not pass in the month of August without the presence of at least one peach-related dish on their table. His mother was a constant fixture at the kitchen window, perspiration pooling in the folds of skin at the back of her neck as she poured peaches into pie crusts, molded them into cobblers, folded them into jams in second hand bell jars and stacked them along the mantelpiece. They ate peaches on their pancakes, seasoned their pork chops with them, picked prickly skinned chunks from their sandwiches, drowned their melting vanilla ice cream in the sticky syrup. They toasted every Sunday night with peach wine, thanking God for the summer of peaches and the best crop they could remember.

They were all happier that summer, especially his father. The Old Man would walk the length of the orchard in the evenings with his dust colored dog padding at his heels, beaming proudly at the mines of gold dotting his fields like he was harvesting precious stones, all the while whistling through his teeth. He could not remember the Old Man whistling before. “A fruitful summer,” he would say as he stepped back onto the porch. “The best we’ve ever had.”

It was a summer of firsts for all of them. Their first harvest that pulled them out of debt. The first time the Old Man did not pass each meal staring down at his plate, muttering darkly to himself about the state of their checkbook as he pushed his peas to the side. The first time his mother entered the county fair and his parents took a weekend away. The first time he took the keys to the Old Man’s truck without asking, then drove next door with the windows rolled up, a tin of his mother’s peach pie on the seat beside him steaming up the windshield and spicing the bench seats with the aroma of the summer.

It was the first time too that he took a girl to his favorite spot in the fields. He parked the truck in center and they laid on the hood with the pie between them, watching the sun retreat beneath the horizon as the stars fell into place against the eastern sky, glinting palely through the rosy twilight. He left the radio on, and the swooning strains of his favorite John Lennon song fumbled through the still air, heavy and dripping with the coagulated humidity that had fallen upon them with the dusk.

He watched as her fork pierced the outer skin of the pie with a satisfying flake, the pale gelatin oozing from between the chunks of tender bullion imprisoned within crust, mesmerized by the way her tongue curled around the pastry encrusted fruit, then turned it around slowly in her mouth so that not a piece went untasted before she swallowed. He could not take his eyes from her, so captivating was the grace with which she leaned back against the hood of the truck, letting the searing metal sizzle against her bare, freckled arms as the lethargy of the hazy summer evening settled upon her senses. He watched as she stretched slowly upward across the windshield, the motion coaxing her blouse free of the waistband of her jeans and revealing a thin belt of pale skin between them. He traced the curves of the cotton against her body with his eyes, a fork full of pie hovering halfway to his lips, intoxicated by the spectacle of the setting sun behind her brushing her silhouette in gold.

He had been hopelessly fighting his growing feelings for her all summer, toying with the cowardly prospect of forcing them down each time he had to struggle not to stare when he drove past her on his way into town, only allowing himself one quick glance backwards at her, swimming in a cloud of glimmering dust kicked up from his tires so she floated ghostlike in his rearview mirror. Perhaps if he ignored the roaring in his chest that vibrated through him every time he heard her name passed his lips or he watched her skirting barefoot alone the creek that separated their families’ farms, it would eventually cease, but it felt so good he couldn’t bring himself to silence it.

There was no use denying it any longer; he knew the day of the week by the plait of her hair, measured the time by her morning lap to the mailbox (and carefully scheduled his own so that they coincided), strained his ears across acres of whispering grass, hoping her laughter would sing to him through the heat rising off the peach trees.

After knowing her all his life, why now did he suddenly blush at the sight of her belly button peeping from beneath her shirt? Why did he feel that his day had been wasted unless he saw her across the orchard? Why did his tongue suddenly grow thick and useless when she fixed him with her smoky stare? Eighteen years he had lived in relative indifference to the girl next door, but this summer she had come home from college radiating a graceful maturity, and suddenly a glass jar inside of him had fallen off the top shelf and shattered, releasing a stomach full of butterflies that now beat against his ribcage whenever her name passed his lips. Now, she dominated his thoughts. Her profile, chiseled in his mind’s eye, stirred his every other heartbeat. Sometimes he would write her letters, in which he confessed that he often imagined her lips moving against his neck. He pressed each of these carefully folded sheets between the pages of his Bible like he had seen his mother pressing flowers, so that when he opened the book on Sundays in the middle of a stale sermon, her name would float up from the pages, and he could breathe it in, sustenance that urged him onwards through every sweltering Baptist revival, every ride to town in the rust colored pickup, every afternoon of picking peaches and letting the juice run rivers down his arms and pool in the grooves of his collarbone so that the cotton fibers of his shirt stuck to his skin like peach fuzz. Your name is my prayer, he wrote to her.

And now here he was, floating hazily in the dream that eluded him all summer; bathing her in his gaze and painting her with the sunset as her lips curled around his mother’s peach pie. Here she was, on the hood of his father’s truck, happy, and peaceful, and wanting him there beside her.

The song had ended. They sat in silence, the night punctuated by the echo of peaches dropping off the trees as the crickets began to soulfully strike up their nightly cadenza. He wanted to say something, but they seemed to have moved beyond the period appropriate for idle conversation, and the idea of extending any small talk crumpled against the oncoming darkness. He could feel the two of them brushing up against the borderlands of their friendship, and he was simultaneously tantalized by the prospect of exploring the adjacent cavity with her, and terrified that perhaps her silence was his cue not to take another step.

He leaned back against the windshield beside her, excruciatingly aware of the proximity of her hand and his. He was almost certain he could feel a sting of warmth rising off her skin and tickling his palm. He flexed his fingers, daring himself to extend his pinky and link it with hers.

When he closed his eyes, he could imagine himself rolling over on his side, could see her turn to face him, her head pillowed on her elbow so that the curled ribbons of her hair rippled down her arm. Their fingers would accidentally brush, and she would leave them there, a tangled knot of his calluses and her nail polish. Her skin would be smooth and damp against his, sticky with the syrup that had drizzled of the peaches, and he would be able to feel her heartbeat throbbing through her fingertips. How easy it would be then for him to separate himself from his reflection in the windshield and slide towards her, drawn by the gravitational pull of her mouth. She would meet him half way, and when he folded his tongue against her teeth, she would taste like spiced peaches, and he would never again be able to taste the fruit without the memory of her, his first love, and their sweltering summer rising to the forefront of his thoughts.

But when he twisted over onto his side to face her, she left her gaze fixed steadfastly upwards, staring at the sky reflected in the fireflies now flickering through the field beneath, and he couldn’t bring himself to move an inch further.

For years after, he replayed the night over in his mind, the memory of the last Saturday night, passed on the hood of his truck, before she went away to college and he didn’t see her again until the Fourth of July barbeque three years later, when he watched her show off her ring to a friend. In his mind, he always took that final step, and by the time he received her wedding invitation he was certain that he could still remember the taste of lips he had never kissed. He convinced himself that every subsequent man that had taken her out had heard the story of the boy with the pickup and the peach pie, certain that he had left just as deep of a print on her heart as she had embedded in his.

It was the farm’s most bountiful summer, and the last of his youth. That winter the Old Man fell from a ladder, and the dinner table talk of starting school and leaving home fell into nonsensical daydreams. The next year for his birthday, his parents gave him one hundred and fifty acres of produce and the promise that he would never need a passport or his own set of dreams. He knew enough to pretend that this prisoner’s existence was all he had ever wanted, and accepted their jubilance as his own. He learned to find happiness in the fate that had fallen to him, but he never had another night with nothing on his mind but peach pie and soft lips.

Years later, while leafing for a verse in St. John to share in Sunday school, an age-spotted page slipped from between the thin folds of his Bible. Curious, he opened it, and found the blasphemous declaration, your name is my prayer, scrawled in his own uneven hand. At first he crumpled it, angry and embarrassed that, in his youthful naivety, he had once thought her the most important fixture of his unimportant world. But the ashes of the butterflies she had once stirred inside of him fluttered upwards again to settle between his ribs, and he felt himself transported back to the childish certainty that he had loved her.

He had loved her without ever holding her hand.

Victory

2011-04-05T17:36:00.003-06:00

Ladies and Gentlemen (actually just ladies. I am pretty sure Lauren and Briana are the only two people who read this blog.) something big has just happened. I have just recieved word that one of my short stories is going to be published. In a literary journal. Like, for real. Published. ....published. Victory.

Wrapped (working title, may/will be changed)

2011-02-27T13:32:00.003-07:00

Ha ha! I am writing again! Finally, after a year long famine! Hope you enjoy this little short story :)

She was a weekday customer. I never saw her on a Friday or Saturday, and I never saw her with a man. But she never missed a Thursday night. She would arrive alone, between nine and ten, in a tight black dress and four inch heels. She never checked a coat. She would strut in to the hall, pausing for a moment to let her silhouette hang in the doorway, framed by the headlights of her cab pulling away from the curb, and survey the usual pensioner crowd, taking a lazy drag on her long handled cigarette, before slinking over to her table at the far end of my piano. She always stayed until they closed the bar.

She did not belong here, that was clear. She was the youngest person in the room by nearly twenty years, the only one with hair that wasn’t graying around edges and eyes unburdened with folded skin borne from working day weariness. And she was far and away the most beautiful woman that many of us had ever seen, in or out of the club. She was reed slender with a thin face and plunging necklines that often drew my eyes away from my spotted sheet music, especially when she would lean forward on her elbows for a sip of her third cocktail. Her hair was jet black, her skin pale, her lips cherry, and her eyes too downcast to tell their exact hue, but I always wondered. Once she sat down, she didn’t leave her seat, but rather passed the evening as a statuesque siren staring fixedly ahead, exhibiting her profile from its best angle for any that wished to admire her classical beauty. No one ever dared approach her, not even the waiters; they had to be called to her table. She was not the sort of presence that urged companionship.

We often talked about her after hours when the bus boys were wiping down the tables and I was stripping off my tuxedo for the cab ride home, but we did not know enough about her to ever sustain our conversations beyond ephemeral musings. We only ever matched each other’s questions with further queries, or dabbled in futile observations about the likely value of her jewelry or particular style of her hair that night. No one had an answer or even a guess as to who she was, or why she graced our tawdry cocktail longue each Thursday evening.

The night that she approached me, she was the last one in her seat after the music ended. As everyone else flocked to the coat check, throwing furs over their shoulders and exiting arm in arm like a flood of coupled animals from Noah’s ark, she prowled over to me, fit herself against the crook of my grand piano and leaned forward across the lid. “Do you take requests?” she asked. Her voice was deep, and she strung her words together with an elegant imprecision as to where one stopped and the next began.

“If I know it, I will play it for you,” I replied.

She tapped her cigarette against my music stand, and a bit of ash dribbled down the mirrored ebony. “Play, ‘You’ve Got Me Wrapped Around Your Little Finger,’” she instructed, and I obligingly struck the opening chords.

She leaned backwards against the lid of the piano and closed her eyes, letting her head drift lazily back and forth in slow time with the music. Her cigarette hung loosely between her fingers, as she twitched it sporadically from left to right, creating a swirling snake of smoke that wrapped lazily around her arm. When I reached the melody, she began to hum along, and before I had finished the first chorus she was singing, her voice rich, if a bit rough and untutored. She sang aloud with an unabashed confidence, and the few patrons still straggling out the door turned to locate the source of the armature recital.

“You’ve got me wrapped around your little finger, if this is love, it’s everything I thought it would be.”

I watched her carefully as I played, free for the first time to openly stare without having to veil my interest behind my improvisational jazz. At such a close proximity, I was aware for the first time of what an inordinate amount of make-up she wore. There was an exaggerated line along her jawbone that separated the counterfeit cream of her cheek and the unpainted skin of her neck. Her eyes were traced in a heavy dark pencil and her eyelids dyed a smoky grey that shimmered pleasantly as they caught the light of the chandelier above us, framed by thick chocolate lashes that stretched upward in a perfect curl. Her plump, ruby lips were cracked, but they hugged each word of the song like it was too precious to release. I could have watched her mouth clinging to my music all night.

I finished the song with an uncharacteristically flamboyant glissando. She opened her eyes, lips still parted, the song’s final stanza still hanging heavily upon them. She looked down at her smoldering cigarette, then back up at me. “Can I call you Joe?” she asked.

“That’s not my name,” I told her.

“I don’t want to know your name,” she replied, drawing what little strength she could from her dying cigarette and releasing it with a huff in my direction. “If I know your name, I’ll get attached to you, just like a puppy that follows you home.”

I smiled, amused by her blunt rhetoric. “Then you can call me Joe,” I replied. “What can I call you?”

“Deena Lee Marie,” she said.

“That’s not your name,” I told her.

“I didn’t say it was, darling,” she said. “But that’s what you can call me.” She tapped the end of her cigarette holder against her lips thoughtfully, leaving a smear of scarlet. “Joe, are you happy?” she asked me.

From anyone else, the question would have sunk into an ironic heap of ash and smoldered before I could frame a serious answer. From her lips, it flamed between us with a ruby inferno. “Yes,” I said. “I am.”

She leaned forward on her elbows, resting her chin on the music stand that separated us. Her eyes were the color of a rainstorm. “But are you really, darling?” she asked me. “Are you really, truly happy?”

“Yes,” I repeated. “Aren’t you?”

She tilted her head slightly, her eyes rolling upwards to the chandelier. “I’m not,” she replied candidly. “I’m too terrified to be happy.”

“What are you terrified of?” I asked, secretly hoping I was not about to be the recipient of a desperate woman’s thinly veiled cry for help.

She traced her lips with her pinky with a thoughtful slowness. “Joe, I am terrified that I am becoming customary.”

“Customary?” I repeated.

“You know,” she said, obviously impatient. “Ordinary.”

“What’ wrong with being ordinary?” I asked. “Most of the world gets along just fine that way.”

“Because I’ve never been customary before,” she explained. “I’ve always thought of myself on existing at a certain level above the rest of the people around me, and the thought of being like everybody else is terrifying to me.” She extinguished the gasping glow of her cigarette against the edge of the piano. “Will you play me something else?” she asked.

“What would you like to hear?”

She tapped the end of her cigarette holder against her lips. “Maybe ‘As Time Goes By.’ If you know it.” I obediently dove into the melody. She didn’t sing this time. Instead, she stared at me, her grey eyes round and searching.

“I was in a magazine once,” she told me.

“What magazine?” I asked, my music never wavering.

“I’m so silly with names, I can’t remember,” she replied. “But it doesn’t matter. They did my hair up for me, and made me wear so much makeup I had a rash for weeks afterward. Then paid me to lie around and look sulky for a few hours and put my photo on their cover the next month.”

“What did you wear?” I asked, but she waved that away.

“Don’t get hung up on the details, darling,” she replied.

An image of her reclining on a couch wearing nothing but pearls, her crimson lips parted in a provocative scowl at the camera, rose unbidden in my mind, and I kept my eyes determinedly fixed on the keys, hoping she wouldn’t see the blush that stained my cheeks. “That must have been exciting.”

“It was,” she replied. “I got to see myself in blooming color on magazine stands all over the city. I felt like the whole world was staring at my picture. I wore dark glasses for a month because I thought that made me a celebrity; being elusively absent from my fans while all the while walking among them. I kept waiting for someone to stop me on the street or at the store and ask me if I was that woman from that magazine, and I would say yes, and then they would ask me for my autograph so they could show it to their friends. But no one ever did. And the next issue came out with someone else on the cover and I was suddenly yesterday’s news, and I realized I was only famous in my own head. You’re playing too fast,” she instructed. I obediently slowed down. She pulled a compact mirror out of her bag and examined her reflection critically. She ran a finger along her lips, then rubbed them together, her tongue darting across her teeth to catch any stray flecks of color left there. “Joe, there is a man who has asked me to marry him,” she said, the statement coming just as candidly and suddenly as the others.

“Congratulations,” I replied.

“He’s an insurance salesman,” she pressed on as though I had not spoken. “He lives in a one bedroom flat Brooklyn with no heating. He does not go to parties with dancing, he does not drink hard liquor, and he thinks I am beautiful even when I am not wearing makeup.”

“He sounds very ordinary,” I replied slyly, stretching my fingers across an octave.

“He bores me,” she said, moving her compact from her lips to her eyes.”And if I marry him, I will become customary.”

“Why does marriage make you customary?” I asked.

“Because then I will just the same as everyone else who settled for less than she once thought she could be. I am dangerously near to becoming just another woman who has to give herself up and belongs to a man.” She snapped the compact closed and let her head fall backwards in despair. “And then I will have babies and get fat and then I will just be something a child needs.”

“But maybe that will make you happy.”

“Fat people are never happy, darling Joe,” she told me. “And I could never be happy wearing a housecoat and slippers and cooking dinner and walking the children to school with my hair in curlers. It would be so drab.”

“But you aren’t happy now,” I pointed out.

Her head snapped up. “Who said I wasn’t happy?” she demanded.

“You did,” I replied. “You said you weren’t happy because you’re too busy being terrified.”

“Oh. Did I? I supposed I’m not.” She draped herself across my piano as the song ended. “Play it again,” she said softly.

“You want to hear it again?” I asked.

“Just play me something,” she replied. “Something sad and slow.”

“I don’t like sad songs,” I said.

“The world is full of sad songs, darling,” she replied. “Might as well face the music.” She drummed her nails against the top of my music stand. They were the same rosy shade as her lips. “You know why I come here?”

“I’ve wondered,” I said.

“I like to watch all the normal people with their spouses,” she said. “The old people who’ve been married longer than they haven’t been. The women with grey temples who only have one going out frock and their bespectacled husbands who get by on one glass of wine for the whole evening. I want to see if they are really happy being ordinary.”

“And?”

She pursed her lips. “It’s too early to tell. But I am certain they are customary and I am certain I never want to be.”

I smiled. “So Deena Lee Marie.” I ran my fingers in a rapid scale up the ivories. “If you do not want to be happy or customary, what do you want to be?”

“I want to be famous,” she replied, tangling her fingers in the strands of pearls shrouding her neck. “I want to be glamorous and go to parties with people who have their pictures in the paper and have to wear dark glasses on the street so I won’t be mobbed by my fans. I want to be somebody. I came out here to be a model, you know. And more than just a painted up porno. I wanted to wear evening gowns in Vogue and stand in front of a wind machine until I was blind from the flashbulbs.”

“Because that isn’t something ordinary people do,” I offered.

“Precisely, Joe,” she touched my nose lightly with the end of her cigarette holder. “You know, I think you understand me better than anyone.”

“Do you love your insurance salesman?” I asked her.

Her bottom lip protruded slightly in a sulky pout. “I do,” she replied with a hint of frustration. “Dammit, I do. Isn’t that the worst part?”

“Does he have you wrapped around his little finger?” I asked.

I wouldn’t sure if she would notice my allusion, but she showered me with her grey eyes and a receptive smile. “You’ve very clever, Joe,” she replied. “And here I thought you’d only be good for some cheap hotel sex tonight before I’d made up my mind.”

“I don’t do cheap hotel sex,” I told her.

“But you would have if I’d asked,” she replied. “I watch you pretend not to watch me every night I come. I even switched tables so you could get a better view of my cleavage.” That made me blush, and she laughed.

“You are a beautiful woman,” I told her. “You deserve a beautiful life.”

“With an insurance salesman?” she asked. “Can someone like me be happy being ordinary?”

“Why don’t you take a risk and find out?” I said. “He loves you, and you love him, and maybe you’ll find out that being customary is alright as long as you’re happy.”

She sighed, her chin coming to rest again on the top of my music stand. “Do you really think I could be happy in a housecoat?”

I smiled. “I think you could be happy even if you were fat.”

The club was slowly shutting down around us. The busboy was sweeping under the tables, and the waiters were doing slow laps, gathering up empty glasses and napkins stained with lipstick. She glanced around the hall, the looked back to me. “Have I bored you, darling?”

“Quite the contrary,” I replied. “You made my night.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she replied. “You gave me some good answers, Joe.”

“I didn’t give you any answers, darling,” I replied. “I let you figure it all out for yourself.” I let my fingers trail along the keyboard, spelling out the monosyllabic melody of “You’ve Got Me Wrapped Around Your Little Finger.”

She smiled. “Do promise you’ll think of me whenever you play that song, darling,” she said.

“Every Thursday night,” I replied. “I will dedicate it to Deena Lee Marie and her insurance salesman.”

“And her happiness,” she said. “Make sure when you think of me, you think of happy.”

I nodded. “I promise.”

“You’re a doll, Joe.” She fished in her bag until she came up with a small silver case from which she drew a calling card. She rested it coyly on the edge of my piano, sliding it forward with her middle finger. “Do look for my wedding announcement in the paper, won’t you? And do say you’ll come. I think we’ll be married around April. I always wanted a spring wedding.”

“I’ll come,” I replied. “Will I see you here again?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” she replied. “I think I found the answer I was looking for here.” She leaned forward over the keys of my piano and kissed me softly on the cheek, her eyelashes fluttering against my temple. “Goodnight, Joe,” she said.

“Goodnight,” I replied.

I watched her strut out of the club, her pointed chin eternally tipped upward. She stopped for one last moment, silhouetted in the doorway against the streetlights calling her on the other side. With one hand on the doorframe, she tilted her head back and took a deep breath through her nose. I thought she was going to turn back to me, but she didn’t.

She didn’t strike me as the kind of woman that would ever look back.

Northern Lights.

2011-01-10T14:19:00.001-07:00

I have been coughing up your kisses all morning.

I have swallowed every kind of cold medicine in the kitchen

And I’m still itching from

Spitting the taste of your cologne

Into my bed sheets

Because you are the only defeated thing I can remember

Being so cold that it burns going down.

I have never been one to miss an award winning train wreck

Which is why I am keeping bets with myself

That it will be Valentine’s Day

Before I decide that there are more important things

To run from than blood stained wedding rings.

I’m not trying to be cruel.

But since we’re talking about honesty

And the golden rule

We might as well lay it all out there.

You’ve never been a failure

So how can you be the person you say you have become

Without getting slapped in the face

By knowing you just lost the only place

You ever fit between the cracks.

You are stacks of love letters

Written in rain fogged glass

Just asking to be wiped away.

What would I do if you asked me to stay?

How long would it be Turkish delight

Before the fight and the two raised fists,

One clenched around your heart,

The other still hopelessly holding my hand.

What part of “can’t” do you not understand?

If sadness feels like counting to a million while holding your breathe,

If happiness is more than just a metaphor for death,

If love can’t live forever

Then why not just say never now

With little red hearts to dot the I’s.

I’m having flashbacks to the ferry ride

Where you asked me if you were my boyfriend

And I changed the subject

Because I’ve never liked the taste of that word.

We couldn’t do it if you were telling the truth about the Northern Lights.

I know too much about you after that night

To believe that this can ever be more than

Finding myself and a few red balloons

For luck.

You are not the only person walking through this world

Feeling alone and misunderstood, questioning good,

Questioning God,

Answering the phone on the third ring,

Feeling the tingling of your amputate wings.

And wondering why no one else has the courage to be who they are

Because let me tell you something,

You don’t either.

You see I know too much about you

To ever love you

Any more than I already do.

I’m still hunting for some superstitious confirmation

That you are the chivalric declaration

Signed “Everlasting”

That everyone promised me I’d find.

It still hasn’t turned up.

Here’s to all the poetry

You’ll never read,

To the doing deed,

To the Irish Sea.

To not drinking tea.

And struggling to figure out how to tell you that

You shouldn’t be here.

I’m secretly embarrassed that

Scotland was our Paris,

I shouldn’t have told you

That morning on the beach

That you are the answers to all my midnight prayers

That have always been just out of reach.

My seventeen salt riddled fears

Are already alphabetized inside my heart

And “love” falls right between

“Kissing” and “myself.”

I spoke too soon in saying

I could be perfect for you.

Because even if I am, you are all wrong for me.

It’s Sunday.

I need to go home.

Give me three weeks alone

To assess the validity of

Loving someone just to make them happy,

And hating yourself just to fill the void

That being paranoid left on this gravestone of a love affair.

It isn’t fair.

To me.

Or you.

But fair is nothing compared to loneliness.

By the time I am twenty one,

I want to feel good about everything about myself

Meaning you’ll have to go.

So thank you for the grit toothed compliments about my

Lack of style and wavy hair,

For telling me I compare

With the thirteen girls of the past

But that isn’t something I should even have to think about.

Stop patronizing me.

This isn’t snow globes and disjointed love songs anymore.

This is the one bit honest you are going to get.

So stop.

Nobody feels that much.

Play it again, Sam. Play “As Time Goes By.”

The Four Times That He Fell (in Love)

2010-11-08T15:55:00.002-07:00

The first time, he is fourteen, and she is six feet tall in her high heeled boots.

Her hair is copper, and when she laughs the only thing he feels is her sunshine running up and down his arms. When he thinks of her, he thinks of wishing.

She is sharp and quick, the only match he has found for his own wit. He likes the way her smile starts on the left side of her face and the spreads sideways, how she rubs her thumb and first finger together when she’s thinking, and the way she says his name, with the punch on the end.

She’s not afraid of anything. He loves that about her most.

The first time he held her hand, it was twenty five seconds of the best kind of feeling.

Then they both remembered, and she let go.

They are walking in the garden together when he tells her that he’s falling.

She just steps back and lets him hit the floor.

The second time, he is sixteen, and she smells like a waterfall.

Her eyes are violet, and when she laughs, he can’t take his eyes off the mouth curling around her music. When he thinks of her, he thinks of hoping.

She is pretty and pale, the soft spoken thinker who only speaks when she has something that needs to be heard. He likes the way she listens with her eyes, how her hair curls in the rain, and the way she says his name, like the last stanza of a prayer.

She’s afraid of almost everything. He loves that about her most.

The first time he held her hand, it was seven minutes of the quiet sort of joy.

The first time he kissed her, it was a cloud of epiphany rolling candy-round into his mouth.

Then he remembered, and he faltered.

They are staring at the stars when he tells her that he’s falling.

She tells him to learn better balance.

The third time, he is twenty two, and she has a tattoo of peace on the small of her back.

Her hair is short, and when she laughs, it fills every wanting corner of his aching soul with the fire of her. When he thinks of her, he thinks of wanting.

She is artistic and bold, the ambitious rebel with a taste for anarchy and punk rock music. He likes the way she speaks in poetry, how she paints the night sky on the inside of her doorframes so that only moonshine will fall on them in the earthquake, and the way she says his name, like she’s striking it against a rock and making fire.

She doesn’t have time for fear. He loves that about her most.

The first time he held her hand, it was thirty four minutes of something like fluorescent lit asphyxiation.

The first time he kissed her, it was a hurricane kind of moment.

The first time he undressed her, he swooned at the turbulent beauty of her ecstasy.

Then he remembered, and he looked away.

They are lying in her bed when he tells her that he’s falling.

She says, I’ve fallen so many times before, and it hurt too much to do it again.

The last time, he is all grown up, and she is an angel draped in extravagant silk.

Her eyes are eternity, and when she laughs, he’s sure there can be no sadness left in a world graced by such a sound. When he thinks of her, he thinks of loving.

She is soft and supple, the outspoken leader who fights like a soldier and loves like a fighter. He likes the way she bites her lips and blushes when he teases her, how she writes her to do lists in alphabetical order, and the way she says his name, like she can’t bear to let the taste of it leave her mouth.

She is afraid of nothing so much of how much she loves him. He loves that about her most.

The first time he held her hand, it was seventeen minutes of shivering heat.

The first time he kissed her, it was knowing he was almost brushing heaven.

The first time he undressed her, it was tandem heart beats and looking glass wings exploding inside his heart.

The first time he asked her, she said “I do.”

Then he remembered, and didn’t care.

They are looking out across a lake when he tells her he is falling.

At first, she tells him to wake up; it’s just a dream.

Then she tells him to pick himself up.

Then she says she wants to tumble all the way down with him and never stop falling, because there really is no difference between flying and falling, except when you hit the ground.

New novel pt. 3

2010-10-25T16:38:00.000-06:00

The next day at school, I am excited. It takes a lot of effort not to run into the classroom and leap into my seat beside Marsha.

“Guess what,” I say as I flop down beside her. I don’t even give her a chance to say ‘what?’ I just plow on with my story. “Dad gave me the money for the Shakespeare class.” I don’t even care that this doesn’t match up with what I told her earlier about why I wasn’t going to do it, I just have to tell someone.

“Fantastic,” Marsha says, but she doesn’t sound very excited. She is staring down at her desk with a dramatic pout.

“What’s wrong?” I ask her, because I know she expects me to.

“Tommy told me the new school bag is ugly. He says pink is for babies!” she huffs.

Usually, when Marsha is upset, I don’t say anything because I don’t like taking sides. But I am in such a good mood that I tell her, “I think your bag is brilliant. I wish I had one just like it.”

Marsha’s face lifts up a bit. “You really think so?”

“I do,” I tell her. “Tommy’s just a fathead, everyone knows that.”

Marsha brightens up after this, and tells me she is very excited I am going to be in the Shakespeare class. I tell her I am excited too, even though I am much more than just excited. I am bursting.

The day goes by very slowly. Every few minutes, I reach into my pocket and feel the twenty pound note Dad gave me the night before, just to make sure it is still there. I spend most of Mrs. Webster’s lesson staring at the clock, willing the minutes to go faster and hoping that Miss D’s class is everything I hope it will be.

When the bell rings, most of the class takes their bags and coats and heads to the cafeteria for Shakespeare class. Marsha and I are at the back of the group, because Marsha still self conscious of her backpack.

Miss D is standing at the door of the cafeteria, ticking off our names on her role as we walk in, and then handing us each a large, bright sticker with our name printed in bold letters across it. When it is my turn, she looks up at me with a big smile. “Well Miss Lily. Have you decided to join us?”

Everyone turns to look at us, and I know they are jealous that Miss D already knows my name. I smile and hand her my twenty pounds and the registration form. Miss D is suddenly as visibly excited as I am inside. “That’s my girl!” she says, and I feel like glowing. She adds my name in small letters to the bottom of her role, then hands me a blank nametag and a pen to write my name on. I print “Lily” in careful letters, then stick it to the front of my uniform and sit down with rest of the class on the cafeteria floor. Miss D has gotten one of the rolling chalkboards from the library, and it is sitting against the wall in front of us. She has written on it;

William Shakespeare

Stratford Upon Avon

The Globe Theatre - London

Next to the words, she’s taped up a picture of a man with a mustache and not very much hair, and another one of a man in a frilly collar holding a skull in front of him.

When everyone is sitting down, Miss D comes to the front of the group, and everyone goes quiet. Miss D is wearing a long burnt orange dress that almost touches the floor with a bright purple cardigan over top of it. Her necklace and earrings are small bright colored balls of yarn. “Welcome welcome welcome!” she cries, and each welcome gets a little bit more loud and enthusiastic. “I am so excited to have you all in my Shakespeare class for this term! Now before we start talking about the great William Shakespeare himself, I want to tell you a little bit about what’s going to happen in this in here, every Tuesday, from three to five.” She picks up a stack of folders from the chair beside the chalkboard. On the front cover is written SHAKESPEARE FOLDER in big letters. “These folders I’m passing out to you are where you can keep all your papers and scripts from this class so they don’t get lost. I expect you to bring them with you to class every week. Now for these first two weeks, we’re going to be learning about Shakespeare and acting and getting you all comfortable on stage with some games and things like that. Then after that, you all are going to be doing presentations on Shakespeare’s plays. Then we’re going to be working on monologues.”

Nora’s hand is already in the air. “Miss, I don’t know what that word means!”

Miss D points the stack of folders s at Nora. “And you will have to wait in suspense for a few more weeks!” she replied. “Now after we work on monologues, we are all going to take a vote, and you are going to get to decide which play you’re going to be performing.” My heart does a little jump of excitement when she says this.

“We’re doing a play?” Charlotte asks. “Like with real costumes and lines and everything?”

“Absolutely!” Miss D says. “Isn’t it exciting?”

Everyone starts talking to their neighbor about how exciting it is. I look quickly at Miss D, wondering if she will clap her hands over her ears like Miss Webster does, but she doesn’t. She seems even more excited because we are. “I know! It’s wonderful! Now we’re going to meet here every week,” Miss D says, and everyone gets quiet right away. “And I start promptly at 3 o’clock, so don’t be late!”

Isaac, who plays football and is very tough, puts up his hand. “Can I still get my 20 pounds back if I don’t like the class?” he asks.

“You certainly may,” Miss D says. “Am I so boring that you already want to quit?”

Isaac doesn’t know what to say, so he looks down at his trainers like he didn’t hear her.

“Now then.” Miss D rubs her hands together. “Let’s get into the good stuff!” She points to the picture of the man without much hair taped to the chalkboard. “Who can tell me who this is?”

Nora puts up her hand. “It’s William Shakespeare, Miss.”

“Excellent,” Miss D says. “Now how about this?” She points to the other picture of the man with the skull.

“It’s William Shakespeare when he still had hair!” Tommy calls out from the back. Everyone, including Miss D, laughs.

“Valiant attempt,” she tells Tommy. “But not quite. This man is Hamlet, one of the most famous characters from Shakespeare’s plays. Have any of your heard of him?” she asks. Nora puts up her hand, but I think she might be lying. “It’s alright if you haven’t; we’ll be learning about him later,” Miss D continues. “We are going to talk about the man himself today, our good friend William Shakespeare. Now by the time this class is over, I want you all to feel like you are really good friends with Mr. Shakespeare here. And since you are all friends, I’d like us all to call him Billy. Because Billy is short for William, and friends give each other nicknames like that. That makes it a little bit more like we’re friends with him, don’t you think so?”

“Isn’t that disrespectful?” Charlotte asks. Behind Charlotte’s back, Marsha rolls her eyes at me. Marsha does not like Charlotte.

“Not at all!” Miss D says. “In fact, I would bet that he would prefer it. Now Billy was born a long time ago in a place called Stratford Upon Avon.” She points to that word written on the board. “And the funny thing about him is this is one of the only things we know about him! We don’t actually know when he was born or even when he died!”

“Why not Miss?” Nora asks. I am sure that it will not be too long before Miss D gets tired of Nora’s questions like Miss Webster does.

“Because back when Shakespeare lived, lots of people didn’t know how to read and write,” Miss D explains. “They didn’t go to primary school like you. And since they couldn’t write, they didn’t keep very good records of things that happened in their community. So when Billy was born, no one bothered to write it down!”

“That’s sad he doesn’t have a birthday,” Marsha says.

“Well people today like to think it was April 23^rd,” Miss D explains. “So that’s what we’re going to say it is too!”

“Can we have a party on Shakespeare’s birthday?” Tommy asks.

“We most certainly can,” Miss D says, and everyone gets excited. “But we’ll talk about that later,” Miss D calls over us. “Now even though Shakespeare didn’t go to much school, he liked to write, and he liked to write plays. And when he was a young man, he moved from Stratford Upon Avon to London, where he performed plays for the queen in a place called the Globe Theatre.” She points to that word too.

“He got to meet the queen?” Nora asks.

“Not only did he meet her,” Miss D says. “But she liked his work so much that she asked Billy to write plays just for her! She would tell him what kind of plays she wanted to see, and he would write them.”

“Do we get to meet the queen when we do our play?” Nora asks, and everyone gets excited.

“The Queen told me she’ll be away on business when your play is performed, but she wishes you all the best of luck!” Miss D says, and we all get quiet again. “Now who would like to guess how many plays Shakespeare wrote while he was alive?”

Lots of hands go up. A few people give guesses, and Miss D tells them whether they are too high or too low. Tommy’s guess is 900, which Miss D says is way too high. I put up my hand and Miss D calls on me. “35,” I guess, trying to make myself sound confidant.

“You are so close, Lily!” Miss D cries. “Shakespeare wrote 36 plays. Some people think he wrote more or less, because we’re not exactly sure, but most people like to say it was 36. Now these plays are divided in to three categories: comedies, which are his funny plays; histories, which are his plays about things that really happened; and tragedies, which are the sad ones where everyone dies.” She writes these three words on the board. “Now back in Shakespeare’s days, theatre was very different. First of all, women were not allowed to be in plays.”

There was a general outcry from the girls in the group. “Why not?” Marsha asks before Nora can.

“Women were treated differently than they are now,” Miss D explained. “They weren’t allowed to do as many things as they are now, and one of those things was acting in plays. Now have any of you ever gone to the theatre?” A few people put up their hands. I don’t, and neither does Marsha. We give each other a sideways glance.

“When you have gone to a play, do you get to sit in a nice comfy chair?” Miss D asks. Everyone nods. “Well back when Billy performed his plays, only the really rich people got to sit in the seats. The normal people like you and me had to stand in front of the stage and watch the play from there. And if they didn’t like what they saw, they were allowed to yell at the actors or even throw fruit.” Everyone sort of laughs at this.

“Are people going to throw fruit at our play?” Nora asks. She sounds very nervous.

“Your play will be so good they won’t want to!” Miss D says confidently. When Nora still looks worried, Miss D assures her, “But even if they tried, I wouldn’t let them.”

It’s about then I realize that no one is talking. In our classroom, even when Miss Webster is trying to teach, there is always someone chatting in the background or whispering to their neighbor or doing something distracting. It is usually Tommy. But even he is staring at Miss D with rapt attention.

I nudge Martha and whisper, “Everyone is being so quiet.”

“It’s because this stuff is brilliant!” Marsha whispers, then shushes me.

I’m still not sure if it’s brilliant. But Miss D is brilliant. And you can tell from the way she talks about him that she loves Billy Shakespeare so much, and she is actually excited to be teaching us about him. She loves him, and that makes us all want to love him too.

The first session of Miss D’s Shakespeare class does not last for the full two hours. She ends it at half four, telling us all she will see us next week and that if any of us don’t want to take the class we can come get our money back. But no one does.

When we get out of the school, the sun is shining, making the raindrops from the early storm sparkle on the pavement. It looks like the whole world is shimmering. Marsha and I walk the five blocks to the Eastgate intersection together. I want to talk about the Shakespeare class. Marsha seems keener to talk about what boys are in the Shakespeare class, and the potential of doing a play where her role involved having to kiss Isaac.

“Maybe if he kisses me, he will realize that he is actually in love me,” she says, kicking a pebble down the block ahead of us.

“I don’t think I ever want to kiss anyone,” I say.

“Isaac isn’t just anyone,” she tells me with a dreamy sigh.

I don’t know what to say to this, so I try again to change the subject back to Miss D. “Do you reckon it’s going to be good though? The class I mean.” I’m am trying to be casual and pretend I am not as excited about it as I really am.

Marsha shrugs. “Today was just sort of like extra school. But she’s brilliant. So much better than Miss Webster.”

We’ve reached the corner now, where Marsha has to cross the street and I go left, so we say goodbye. By now I am so excited to get home and tell Dad all about Billy Shakespeare and theatre and that I am going to get to act in a real live play that it’s hard not to skip the rest of the way home.

When I get to the corner of my street and see our red door, I can’t hold it back any longer. I start to run. I run all the way down the pavement, up our driveway, and into the hall. “Dad! Dad!” I call as I strip off my boots and throw my coat on top of the radiator. I can hear Dad mucking about in the kitchen. “Dad, Dad guess what!?” I cry, running into the kitchen, my socks sliding on the linoleum.

But it isn’t Dad in the kitchen. It’s Hannah from upstairs. She is standing at the stove, slowly stirring a pot of soup. She is wearing one of mum’s old aprons. I stop short in the doorway.

“Hiya,” Hannah says brightly to me. “Your dad’s in the toilet. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.” She grins like that is supposed to be a big joke. I don’t say anything. I can’t even move. My whole body has frozen up at the sight of Hannah wearing mum’s apron.

Hannah doesn’t realize I am upset, because she keeps talking like we’re best mates. “Your dad helped me with a flat tire on my bike this morning, so I thought I’d return the favor and come cook you some dinner. Better than beans on toast every night, huh? Is that the only thing he knows how to make?” She laughs. I don’t.

“That’s not yours,” I say, my voice tight.

Hannah doesn’t look like she understands what I am saying. Her eyebrows squeeze together in the middle of her forehead, and she cocks her head just a little to the side. She probably would have asked me what I meant, but at that moment Dad came out of the toilet. “Hi Lily,” he says. He is as bright as Hannah, which just makes me more irritated. “I thought I heard you come in.”

“Tea, darling,” Hannah hands Dad his favorite mug, the one I gave him for Christmas when I was six, with the calendar from five years ago printed across it.

“Ah, thanks love,” he takes the tea from her with the kind of smile he doesn’t wear very much. “How was your acting class?” he asks me.

Seeing them together, side by side at the stove, looking happier than dad usually looks and Hannah wearing mum’s apron, I suddenly forget everything about Billy not having a birthday, and throwing fruit at the actors you didn’t like, and how I was going to be in a play.

“Are you doing acting?” Hannah asks. “I used to do acting when I was in high school. I got to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. It was great fun.”

Dad raises his eyebrows over the rim of his mug. “Well?” he asks expectantly.

My mouth has gone very dry. I don’t know if I will be able to squeeze any sound out without it getting stuck. “Fine,” I finally mumble weakly.

“Just fine?” he sounds surprised. “That’s all? You sounded so excited when you came it.”

“Just fine,” I repeat.

“It better be more than just fine,” he mutters. “I’m not paying twenty quid of something that’s just fine.”

“It was good,” I add. “I like it. I want to keep going.”

“What did you learn?” Hannah asks.

I try to look at her, but all I see is mum’s apron around the neck of someone who isn’t mum, and I can’t say anything. I just stare at her with my jaw set.

“Hannah asked you a question,” Dad chides. “Don’t be rude.”

“Billy,” I manage to squeak at last. “We learned about Billy.”

Dad looks confused. “I thought you said it was about Shakespeare,” he says.

“It is,” I try to explain. “That’s his name is Billy. Miss D says she wants us to be friends with him so we’ve got to call him by his name, like we would if we were friends.”

But neither of them seems to understand, which just makes me even more irritated. “This teacher sounds like an interesting woman,” Hannah says, taking a sip of her tea.

“Oh, she certainly is. You should see the way she dresses,” Dad replies, and they exchange knowing glances. I feel my face get very hot.

“I’ve got homework,” I say louder than I mean to.

“Dinner will be ready soon,” Hannah calls. “I hope you’re hungry!” As I leave the kitchen, I see dad slip his arm around Hannah’s waist as she turns to stir her pot.

I run down the hall to my room and shut the door quickly. A train is rumbling by outside my window, and I can feel the floor shake beneath me like the earthquake building up inside my heart. And I am angry. I am angry because Hannah was wearing mum’s apron. I am angry because Dad wasn’t excited about my Shakespeare class. I am angry because he made fun of Miss D. But mostly I am angry because I am not happy.

From down the hall, the echo of Dad and Hannah laughing together reaches my ears, and I don’t know what to do except fling my book bag as hard as I can against my dresser. They collide with a clunk as loud as the rumbling train that rings through the windows. A heavy silence falls upon the house for a moment, then I hear Dad’s footsteps pounding down the hall and he bangs open my bedroom door.

“What was that?” he asks, but form the growl in his voice I can tell he already has a pretty good idea.

“I threw my book bag,” I tell him, too angry to lie.

He sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Lily, please…”

I fold my arms angrily across my chest. “I threw my book bag because I’m angry at you!” I cry. “And I don’t want any of Hannah’s disgusting soup!” I almost yell that last bit, half hoping Hannah will hear me in the kitchen and go home.

Dad’s eyes get very big, and his mouth gets very tight. He looks up at my ceiling, then casts a quick glance down the hall to the kitchen. “We’ll discuss this later,” he says at last, his voice ringing with irritation.

“Fine!” I reply indignantly.

“Lily…” His neck rubbing gets more intense, but then suddenly he turns on his heel and stomps back to the kitchen. I run to the door and slam it behind him, then throw myself on my bed. I lay there for a few minutes, feeling sorry for myself, then get up and pull my Shakespeare folder out of my bag, along with my fat black marker. Below the words SHAKESPEARE FOLDER, I write in all capital letters;

LILY FOSTER

JUMP FOR THE MOON BECAUSE EVEN IF YOU MISS, YOU END UP DANCING WITH THE STARS

Then I put on my pajamas and crawls into bed so I can pretend to be asleep when Dad comes back to talk to me.

Dyslexia; A Love Story

2010-10-20T12:00:00.000-06:00

After so long post-less, you get two in one day!

It’s just like I said before.

It’s the three am drop off in front of

The flat in the rain,

And never do anything by half.
Besides, nothing feels as blissful as the pain

That fills the stillness of my beating heart

As it’s stutters to dyslexically

Spell your name.

You know,

You remind me of a boy I once knew

Which is maybe why I’m starting

To let you

Slip between the cracks

In the back of my ace bandaged memories

Of the last time I fell

With no one there to catch me.

And finding this again,

Here and now when I don’t know

How or who or what I want,

It somehow feels like an ocean full

Of molten sunset

Glistening in my tea cup

As I survey you above the rim

And try to remember

That nothing’s ever meant to be.

I’m trying not to imagine

The time we’ll never kiss,

Or hyperbolize the way you

Glance at me,

Or convince myself that I can see better

With my eyes closed.

Because I know I’m not the first

To fall prey to that rouge smile.

It’s like I told you about being afraid.

It’s not about the fear,

It’s about losing control,

It’s about knowing where you stand,

It’s about drawing walls and tearing them down

Because my heart has always been a big top circus tent

Spreading through the cavity of my chest,

And you are the Da Vinci code I just can’t decipher.

Look me in the eyes and tell me
Not now,

So it won’t hurt so badly later on.

Or just come a little closer already;

I might write a poem about you.

Okay so look.

I’m scared to think you’re going to fill

All the holes inside me

When really you’re just gonna melt like

Wet newspaper

The first time it rains.

I’m scared to think

That maybe the boys who say you’re

Inconsistent are right.

I’m scared that when I have my own apartment

I’ll never cook,

And maybe you’re expecting me to

Be the person I told you I am.

Because I’m telling you now,

I’m not that strong.

But I’m ready to fill my days with you.

And if you’ll just say the word

I’ll have my suitcase packed

And it doesn’t even matter where we go

So long as there’s rye bread

And we don’t have stop at every bend in the road

To pretend

That this might work.

I just can’t possibly sit passively for any longer

With my heart set on password protect.

In the middle of the song I’ll

Give into the sweet longing

Of kissing you on the mouth.

It doesn’t take synchronized ivories to

Ignite me.

It’s not about the sentiment.

It’s not about the three day novels.

It’s about the whiplash

And the wishes

And the half hour voice mail messages.

It’s about opening the doors of my long locked ribcage

And letting my heart fly to your hand,

So you can teach me how to trust

That you won’t drop it.

New Novel pt. 2

2010-10-20T11:58:00.001-06:00

Dear Everyone....but mostly Briana,
So my dear, sweet email neglected to tell me that there were any comments on my Shakespeare novel. So I kept busily writing it and never posted, thinking no one was interested. Nope. You read. And you commented. So here's the next chapter...if you're still interested.
Love, M

When Dad asks me if I’m mad about the Shakespeare class, I try to pretend like I’m not. But I am.

Especially on Monday when Miss Webster asks who has money to turn in and almost everyone in class raises their hand. I sink down in my seat and try to pretend like my stomach isn’t twisting.

“Haven’t you got your form?” Marsha whispers to me as Miss Webster is walking around collecting the yellow papers.

I don’t want to tell Marsha Dad said we didn’t have enough money. So I say instead, “I decided I don’t really want to do it.”

Marsha seems very put out by this. “Why not?” she asks.

I just sort of shrug. By that time, everyone’s started to talk to their neighbor, so Miss Webster rings the quiet bell. I turn forward really quick, pretending like I’m trying to be good and pay attention, but really just trying to avoid Marsha, even though I know the subject will come up again later.

But it doesn’t. Maybe Marsha can tell I don’t want to talk about it, or maybe she just forgets, but she doesn’t ask me again about Shakespeare class, even after the bell rings and we go to get our coats and are outside in the schoolyard.

It is raining very hard when we get out. We stand under the front overhang for a while, staring out at the rain, and I listen to Marsha complain about ruining her brand new shoes if she walks home in this weather. I am only sort of paying attention, because sometimes Marsha just likes to complain.

“Is your Dad picking you up?” Marsha asks.

“Yes, but he’s always a bit late,” I reply. Marsha is one of the only people who I’ve told about what my Dad does.

Marsha sighs dramatically. “I wish my Dad would pick me up,” she says. I don’t know what to say to that, so I just let it be silent between us for a while and listen to the drizzling rain connecting with the pavement. Finally, Marsha says, “I should probably get home.” I nod like I should too, even though I can’t go anywhere until Dad comes. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.” I think for a moment she is going to leave, but at the last second before she steps off the porch, she turns to me and says, “I’m sorry you’re not doing the Shakespeare thing.”

I look down and kick the edge of the stairs with my wellingtons, trying to act casual about it. “Maybe next year,” I say.

Marsha nods, and I can tell she wants me to say something more about it, but I just keep staring at the ground, so she pulls her hood up over her head and scurries off into the rain.

I wait until the school yard is almost clear before I shuffle out from under the protection of the overhang. My coat doesn’t have a hood like Marsha’s, and before I’ve reached the corner my dark curls are sticking to my face with the drizzle. I take up my usual Monday afternoon position at the corner bus stop, waiting impatiently with my face scrunched up against the rain and my hands dug deep in my pockets. The noise of the storm is so loud I don’t even hear anyone come up behind me until a voice over my shoulder asks, “Is this the bus stop?”

I turn around. Miss D is standing behind me.

She is wearing a fluorescent green mac with little pictures of umbrellas all over it, and wellingtons in an even brighter pink. Her white spiky hair is drooping around her eyebrows, and her earrings today are a long string of old bottle caps. Under her mac, I can see she’s wearing a long flowery dress.

I am so startled by her appearance that I almost forget to answer her question. “Uh….” I start to explain to her the bus stop is only for me, but she recognizes me before I can finish.

“You’re one of the children in Irene’s class, aren’t you?” she asks me. Unable to remember whether she is talking about Miss Webster, I decide it will be easier just to nod. Miss D looks very genuinely excited about this. “Are you going to be taking my Shakespeare class then?”

I swallow hard, wishing I could tell her yes. “No,” I say very quietly.

Miss D looks genuinely disappointed. Her whole face crumples, like a kid who’s just been told they can’t have their favorite sweet. “Oh. Well that’s a shame. It’s going to be really good, we’ll really miss you.”

“I want to do it!” I burst out suddenly. I surprise myself with how boldly these words fall out of my mouth.

Miss D raises her eyebrows so that they disappear under her sopping hair. “So why aren’t you?” she asks.

I think about lying for a moment, but her eyes are so big I can see white all the way around the irises, and I know she’d see right through any of my feeble fibs, even the best ones that usually work on Dad. “We haven’t got the money,” I say miserably. “And my Dad says he wants me home after school so he knows where I am.”

“Well he’d know where you were if you’re at Shakespeare class,” she says and smiles widely down at me. I smile back, mostly because she looks so sincere I can’t help it, but the smile doesn’t make it all the way up to my eyes, and her grin fades into a sudden seriousness. “Look, love, if your Dad says he doesn’t want you doing it, I’m sure he’s got a good reason for it. Best thing you can do is just be mature about it and not put up a great fuss.”

I don’t say anything to that, mostly because I don’t know what to say. We stand in silence for a moment, listening to the rain and Miss D humming softly under her breath. “Wish I had my brollie,” she says at last. Then suddenly her face lights up. “I forgot! I’ve got one in my bag!” She reaches down into a large carpet bag at her side and rummages around for a moment. I try to glance over her shoulder into the bag without looking like I’m snooping. I’m half expecting her to pull a Mary Poppins and yank out a lamp out.

But she doesn’t come up with a lamp. She doesn’t even come up with an umbrella. Instead, when she draws it out of her bag, she’s got her fingers wrapped around like she is holding something, but there’s nothing there. “Here we are,” she says. “My best umbrella.” She pantomimes running her hand along the handle, the pushes open the umbrella and raises it over her head. And there she is, standing on the corner in the rain, holding an umbrella that isn’t there. “I always keep it on hand for emergencies,” she tells me. “Would you like to share it with me?”

I am beginning to think Miss D is mental. But I don’t tell her that. I don’t know what to do to be honest. So I decide the best course of action is to step closer to her and huddle under the umbrella that isn’t there.

“That’ll keep you dry,” she tells me matter of factually, and I suddenly realize that it isn’t about whether the umbrella is there or no. It isn’t even about Miss D’s crazy. It’s about her trying to make me feel better in the best way she knows how.

“Do you like the color?” she asks me, staring at her umbrella that isn’t so raindrops run down her cheeks like little waterfalls. “It’s my favorite shade of blue.”

I hesitate for just a moment, then say, “I like the flamingos on it the best.”

She looks at me for a second of utter astonishment, and I smile widely, a real smile this time. Miss D smiles back, then suddenly her smile bursts into happy laughter. And I laugh to. And we are suddenly two girls standing in the rain under a fake umbrella laughing. And it almost feels like happiness.

We laugh until Dad pulls up with the bus along the curb. I help Miss D put her not umbrella down, on account of the wind blowing it backwards and giving her a lot of grief. Then Dad opens the doors for me and I climb on board. Miss D starts to follow me, but Dad calls to her down the stairs, “I’m off duty, Miss.”

“You’re giving my friend a ride,” she says, and I flush with pleasure at being called Miss D’s friend.

Dad is not amused. “That’s my daughter, Miss,” he says coldly.

Miss D’s eyes get wide again. “But of course! I can see the resemblance now. It’s lovely to meet you sir,” she says, sticking out a hand for Dad to shake, but then quickly realizes it is the hand in which she is holding the not umbrella. With a twinkling glance at me, she stows the umbrella in her bag, then reaches out to shake Dad’s hand again. “I’m the drama teacher at your daughter’s primary school.”

Dad does not shake Miss D’s hand. “Oh, are you the one that sent her home with that flier?”

“Yes sir, I am,” Miss D says proudly. “I really just need a ride over a few blocks. My car wouldn’t start and I’ve got to get to the garage. I’m so sorry to inconvenience you.”

“Well I’d take you, but since I’ve got Lily…”

I can tell Dad is fishing for an excuse not to take Miss D, and since I’d very much like for her to come, I add in quickly, “I don’t mind Dad. It’s not too far out of your way.”

Dad sighs, and turns forward to stare in resignation out the windshield. Miss D takes this to mean she is invited on, and quickly hops up the stairs, earrings bobbing, and sits down on the seat across from me. Dad closes the bus doors, tugs at the gear shift, and with a screeching grind we begin to trundle forward.

Miss D doesn’t waste any time. She leans forward to talk to Dad, shaking water out of her white hair. “It’s the garage over on Eastgate Street, if that isn’t too much trouble.” Dad doesn’t say anything, just keeps staring forward with a noncommittal grunt.

We are all completely silent for a moment. I am beginning to think letting Miss D ride on the bus was a bad idea, when she suddenly turns to me and says, “Do you like Miss Webster’s class, Lily?”

I try to ignore the distracting squeak of the window wipers. “I guess so, Miss,” I reply hesitantly.

“Is she not very good?” Miss D asks. She must see me hesitate, because she adds, “I won’t tell anyone, I promise. Is she complete rubbish?”

“No,” I say quickly, suddenly feeling a strange allegiance to my class. “She just…isn’t very friendly.”

Miss D nods like she understands, and I have a very strong feeling that she actually does. “Some people are just not born friendly. Doesn’t mean they’re bad people. It’s just that when God passed out the talents, they forgot to grab a friendliness card.” I think about this for a moment, and then Miss D says, “Do you like school, Lily?”

I shrug, looking down at my wellies. I am sure Dad is listening very intently. “Some days I do,” I say.

“I always felt alone at school,” Miss D says suddenly. “I always felt like there wasn’t anybody who really listened to me. Do you ever feel like that?”

I swallow hard. I want to tell her yes. I want to tell her that Marsha never listens, and Dad is always too tired, and I haven’t really got any other friends and that I’m almost sure half the children in my class don’t even know my name. I want to tell her that absolutely every day I feel like there isn’t anyone I can talk to about how much I miss mum, and how I wish I had Ben, and how I’m tired of not feeling happy. Every day I feel alone, I almost say.

Dad makes a sharp turn left on to Eastgate Street, and I nearly slide out of my seat.

“Sometimes I do,” I tell her, saying it quietly enough that there’s a chance Dad didn’t hear it over the noisy windshield wipers. “Sometimes I feel alone.”

Miss D gives me a smile that is half sad, half fused with something like hope. I smile back, because it feels good to smile at someone who asks me questions that they actually want to hear answered.

“Here you go,” Dad says, and the warm feeling hanging between Miss D and me breaks, and I quickly look back down at the floor.

Miss D stands up, gathering up her carpet bag in her arms. “You’re a good girl, Lily,” she tells me. “And you keep your chin up. You won’t be alone forever.” I nod like I know what she means, when I’m really just trying to decide if I believe her. “Thanks so very much,” she tells Dad. “Can I pay you for your trouble?”

“It wasn’t too far out of the way,” Dad says, and I notice that his coldness before has melted into something softer. “No trouble.”

Miss D gives him her biggest smile, and even Dad can’t resist it. He manages to pull his tired face into a little smile back. “I really appreciate it,” she tells him. “Now you take carry of Lily. She’s a good girl and she deserves a lot of love.”

Dad nods. “That she does,” he says, and his voice almost catches. I think for a minute that he’s crying, but he’s not; it’s just the raindrops running down the windshield reflecting against his face.

Miss D starts down the stairs as Dad opens the door, but stops in the doorway and turns back to look at me. Then she pantomimes opening her not umbrella, and, with a twinkling nod in my direction, disappears in to the rain.

Dad and I don’t really talk the rest of the way home. He asks me how school was on the way to the depot, and I say fine. In the car, he asks me if I liked the new crackers he packed in my lunch, and I say yes. Other than that, we don’t say anything. I don’t mind when Dad and I are quiet on the way home. Neither of us are very good at saying much. And it’s not really about the talking as much as just being together.

By the time we pull in to the driveway, the rain has stopped. Hannah is out in the yard in a green mac, picking slugs out of her garden and dropping them in a large blue bucket. She waves as we pull in the driveway. “You alright?” Dad asks her as we get out of the car.

“Just fine,” Hannah replies cheerfully. Her wild red hair is poking out from under the hood of her mac. “Long day at the office?”

“Too long,” Dad replies. “The rain always makes for a rough roads.”

Dad leans up against the side of the house as he says this, and I can tell the conversation is going to last for a while, so I excuse myself. I let myself into the flat with my key and retreat into my bedroom, where I strip off my coat and boots and flop down on my bed, staring up at my stars. I lay for a long time, still in my school uniform, counting the stars over and over again until I hear the front door open as Dad comes in. I wait for the sound of him taking off his boots, but the house is silent. I sit up, listening to him standing still in the hallway, wondering what he is thinking. It is a long while before I hear him slowly take off his boots and move down the hall. I expect him to go into his bedroom, but instead he keeps walking until the floorboards outside my room are creaking and he is standing outside my door.

He must know I can hear him, but he doesn’t move for a long time. We both stay completely still, separated by a door, wondering what the other is thinking. I want to reach out and put my hand against the knob, like I can feel his fingers pulsing against it on the other side. But I don’t.

He finally knocks, then pushes the door open. He doesn’t come in. Dad almost never comes into my bedroom. He sees me sitting on the edge of my bed, still in my uniform with my damp hair sticking to my face, and asks, “Aren’t you going to change?”

I shrug. “Probably soon.”

He nods, glancing over my shoulder and out my window. “Right. When do you think you’ll be hungry for dinner?”

“Whenever you’re hungry,” I tell him. I am still trying to guess the reason behind his uncharacteristic visit.

“Are beans and toast alright?” he asks. I tell him yes. “Right,” he says again, rubbing the back of his neck and looking around my room as though he has never been there before. It’s quiet for a minute, then out of nowhere he says, “You can do the Shakespeare class.”

I am so caught off guard by this sudden announcement that I almost forget to breathe. “Really?”

“Yea,” he says, still not looking at me. “You’ve been good this year, and you’re getting good marks. I guess we can make it work.”

“Thanks Dad,” I say. I want to give him a hug, but I don’t know if he’d be able to handle that.

He nods, like it was nothing. “Dinner at six,” he says, then turns and retreats back down the hall. I lay back down on my bed as the bay windows rattle with the passing train. All I can do is smile.

For Real. The Second Book.

2010-09-30T08:32:00.002-06:00

A new novel. For real this time. None of the crap from before. I haven't named it yet, but it's a middle grade novel, meaning that it's geared towards elementary/early middle school kids. So far, this is what I got. It write much faster than Latvia did, mostly because it doesn't require the same levels of intricacy and detail I suppose.....not that Latvia had either of those things. ....
xox kenzi

The day we came back from Christmas holiday, there is a woman standing at the front of our classroom.

She’s taller than Mrs. Webster, who she is talking to, and really thin, and she’s got short white hair that sticks up in chunky spikes. She’s wearing long, heavy earrings made of gold coins, and when she moves her head, nodding at what Miss Webster is saying to her, they knock against her shoulders.

“Who do you reckon she is?” My best friend Marsha appears beside me at the coat rack, peeling off her mack.

“Not a clue,” I reply, hanging up my backpack on the hook beside hers.

“Some outfit she’s got on,” Marsha says with a giggle.

I look over at the woman again. She’s got on a black turtle neck sweater with a long, silky green poncho over top. Her arms are glimmering almost up to the elbows with thick golden bracelets, and her high heeled black boots reach her knees.

“Maybe it’s a costume,” I offer.

“Maybe,” Marsha replies as we start to head to our desks. “How was your holiday?”

“Fine,” I reply, still glancing at the woman. “Yours?”

Marsha shrugs. “Pretty bland. We got a flat tire on the way down to visit my Gran in Preston, and my dad got bit by a cow while he was trying to change it on the side of the road. That’s about the most exciting thing that happened. Get anything good for Christmas?”

That’s when Miss Webster rings the quiet bell, meaning that class has started, which is good because I didn’t get anything good for Christmas, but I’d rather not tell Marsha that.

“Welcome back fifth grade!” she calls over the top of our dying chatter. “I need all eyes up here please!” She says the directly to Tommy Binks, who has to be tapped on the shoulder by Marsha before he realizes that it’s him she’s addressing, since he’s too busy talking to his neighbor to notice. “Did you all have a good holiday?”

There’s a general outcry as everyone tries to shout out something about their Christmas holiday over top of one another. Miss Webster claps her hands over her ears; the Christmas holiday has obviously made her forget just how rowdy we can be. The lady with the spiky hair’s mouth gives a little twitch, like she’s trying hard not to smile.

“Inside voices, please!” Miss Webster cries over top of us, and we all quiet down. Miss Webster waits until we are completely silent before she continues. “Well I hope you’re all as excited about being back to school as you are about Christmas. Before we start our lesson today, I have a very special guest here who is going to talk to you about an exciting opportunity for this coming term.” She steps back and the woman with the white hair gives a big smile.

“Hello everyone!” She says, and we all jump a little. Her voice is much louder and happier than Miss Webster’s, and it seems to explode across the room. “It sounds like you all had a lovely holiday and are ready to jump back into your studies. My name is Miss D and I’ve come in today to talk to you about a new after school program that you can all take part in.”

“What does the D stand for?” Nora calls from the front row. Nora is the smartest girl in class, but Miss Webster says she asks too many questions and always gets annoyed with her. The white haired lady doesn’t seem to mind at all.

“The D stands for whatever I want it to!” Miss D replies, her smile getting even wider. “Today it stands for December, because I wish it was still December and we were all still on holiday.” Everyone starts to talk again, agreeing with Miss D about how much they wish it was still December. Miss Webster tries to quiet us down, looking horrified at our behavior, but Miss D doesn’t seem bothered. She calls right over the top of us, “Now how many of you like to watch films?”

Almost every hand in the class flies up. I raise mine too, even though most of the films I’ve seen are the old black and white ones my dad plays on the VCR. Miss D nods enthusiastically. Her earrings make a jangling sound as they clink together. “Me too! Now you tell me, what do you think makes for a good film?”

“Lots of action,” says Tommy. “And sword fights and guns!”

“Hands, please,” Miss Webster chides him.

Tommy raises his hand, but doesn’t wait for Miss D to call on him. “And a really evil villain who gets killed in the end.”

“Both excellent things,” Miss D replies. “What else?”

Marsha raises her hand, and Miss D points to her. “I like movies with romance,” Marsha says. Tommy makes a noise like he’s throwing up, and Marsha kicks him under the desks. Marsha likes anything with romance. Especially romances that involve her and Johnny Depp, who she has been consistently writing letters to ever since she saw him in that pirate movie that my dad wouldn’t let me watch.

“Romance always makes for a good film,” Miss D agrees, and Marsha sticks her tongue out at Tommy tauntingly. “Anyone else? What about you, young man?” She points to Kevin, who sits in the very front row.

Kevin looks around nervously, as though to be sure it’s him she’s pointing to, then squeaks, “I like adventures.”

“What kind of adventures?” Miss D asks him.

Kevin fiddles with his glasses the way he does when he gets nervous. Kevin is always nervous when he has to talk to people. “Oh you know. Like a big quest sort of a thing. Or like a lost thing that they’re trying to find, or something they’re trying to do.”

“Who’s they?” Miss D prompts.

Kevin’s face goes red. “Um, like, the hero I guess. And his friends.”

“Most excellent!” Miss D exclaims. “A good quest, and a good hero. So we all agree that these are the sort of exciting things that make for the best kind of films. Now what if I told you that I was starting an after school class that had all of these things; action, romance, a good hero and good villain, and a good adventure. Would you be interested?” Everyone shouts yes. I don’t say anything. I don’t like to say anything until I’m sure I know what’s going on.

Our enthusiasm only makes Miss D more excited. “Brilliant!” she cries, waving her hands around so that all the bracelets on her wrists sparkle. “Because that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m offering an after school program, every day from 3 to 5, that gives you the chance to learn about some of the most exciting stories of all time. How many of you have ever heard of a man by the name of William Shakespeare?”

Most of us raise our hands. “Is he the one that wrote that Romeo and Julia play?” Nora asks.

Miss D laughs, big and full like an inflating balloon, and Nora looks a little taken aback. She obviously did not intend for her comment to be such a big joke. “If you mean Romeo and Juliet, then yes, that’s exactly right. Mr. Shakespeare is one of my favorite writers, and one of the world’s greatest playwrights.”

“Is that what you call someone who writes plays?” Tommy asks.

“It certainly is, love,” Miss D replies. “Now if all of you pay your teacher twenty pounds by next Tuesday and fill out one of these forms,” she pulls a stack of canary yellow papers out of her bag, “You can all come meet me in the cafeteria after school and together we’ll learn all about Shakespeare’s plays, and you’ll even get to trying doing a bit of performing in some of them.”

“So it’s like an acting thing?” Nora asks.

“Exactly!” Miss D says.

“Isn’t Shakespeare supposed to be kind of boring?” Tommy asks. Miss Webster’s mouth gets very tight and she gives Tommy a very squinty stare that he does not notice.

Miss D doesn’t seem to mind Tommy’s question at all. “The people who say Shakespeare is boring, young man, are the people who have never read him. Because Shakespeare’s plays are all about heroes and villains, just like you were talking about, and all about adventure and quests and love and romance and the things that get in the way of it. There are no stories in the world that are more exciting than his, and I’m sure that you all will learn to love him as much as I do. And I’ll tell you what, if you come to the first class and think it’s going to rubbish, I’ll give you your money back. Does that sound good?” There’s a murmur of agreement from the classroom. A few still look unconvinced, but most of us are bouncing in our seats with excitement. I look over at Marsha. Her face is glowing, and she’s leaning forward, almost standing up in her chair.

Miss D claps her hands together. “Brilliant. Well I’m going to leave these forms for your teacher to pass out, and I’ll hopefully see you all after school next Tuesday.”

She hands the stack of yellow papers over to Miss Webster, who begins to walk around the room handing them out. “Any questions for Miss D?” she calls.

Charlotte, who, with her golden hair and painted nails, is widely considered to be the prettiest girl in class, raises her hand. “If I take dance classes in the evening, can I still sign up?”

“As long as your dance class isn’t from three to five o’clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Miss D tells her. Charlotte says it isn’t. “Then we shouldn’t have a problem! Anyone else?”

Marsha raises her hand, and when Miss Webster calls on her, she says to Miss D, “I like your earrings.”

Miss D smiles, but Miss Webster gives an exasperated sigh. “That’s not a question, is it Marsha?”

“No, Miss,” Marsha replies. “But I wanted to tell her.”

“We need to learn to treat visitors with respect and not waste their time,” Miss Webster tells us all.

Miss D quickly interrupts. “It’s really alright, I don’t mind, Irene.”

Immediately everyone starts chatting excitedly. We’ve never heard anyone call Miss Webster by her first name, not even the headmaster. Some of us were beginning to wonder if she even had one at all. Miss Webster goes pale. Miss D doesn’t notice.

“Why don’t we all tell Miss D thank you for coming,” Miss Webster says, her voice very tight. “And then we can get on to arithmetic.”

“Thank you!” Everyone choruses together. Miss D gives us a little wave and a big smile as she walks out of the classroom. As soon as she’s gone, everyone begins to talk very loudly. I don’t say anything; I’m too busy reading the yellow form Miss Webster has just set on my desk. The print is big and friendly, like the words are smiling at you, and it’s got a little picture of two masks at the top, one with a big grin and the other with a frown. Underneath it says;

After School Shakespeare!!!!

3 to 5, Tuesdays and Thursdays

Come learn about acting while performing

the most exciting plays ever written!

Just £20 for the term!

Talk to Miss D for more information

Below there’s a form to fill out, where you write down your name and class and things like that. Then at the very bottom it’s got some more pictures of children about our age in old fashioned costumes and big hats. Some of them are even are holding swords. One boy has a dog with him. The photos are grainy and black and white, but I can see in all the pictures the children are smiling wide, cheery grins, and they look happier than I can remember being since my mum left.

“Alright everyone, settle down!” Miss Webster calls. “Let’s all put our fliers inside of our desks so they don’t distract us from our arithmetic.”

I slide mine into my desk, but leave the corner with the photographs peeking out, so I can look down and see the pictures of the smiling children all morning.

At lunch that afternoon, everyone is talking about the Shakespeare class.

“Reckon you’ll sign up?” Marsha asks me as we sit on the pavement and eat our sandwiches, huddled together against the chilly breeze.

I pop a carrot stick into my mouth and chew for a thoughtful moment before answering. “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t think I’ve got enough money.”

“You don’t think your dad would pay for it?” she says.

I just shrug. I know that none of us have much money, but I always feel like dad and I have even less than everyone else. So I don’t tell Marsha that, considering all I got for Christmas was a Hershey’s bar and a new pair of trainers, I don’t think my dad will be to keen on giving me twenty pounds for an after school class. “What about you?”

Marsha wipes the peanut butter from her fingers on her pants. “Well I was going to, but I don’t want to do it if you don’t,” she says. She rubs her hands together to try and keep them warm. “I hate January,” she complains with a shiver. “It’s always so dreary, and there’s no time off from school.”

I just nod, still thinking about the Shakespeare class. “Do you think many people will sign up?” I say.

Marsha shrugs, digging in her lunch sack until she produces a bag of celery sticks. “Probably. That woman seemed to get everyone very excited about it. I thought she was weird.”

“I quite liked her,” I say softly, but I don’t think Marsha hears me, because she pushes on like I didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know if it’ll actually be any good though. My sister had to read something by Shakespeare for her English class last year and she hated it.”

“Your sister hates everything,” I remind her.

“Yea, but she hated this especially much,” she replies, then holds out the open bag of celery to me. “You want it? I keep telling mum I don’t like celery but I don’t think she remembers.”

I tell her no, and she reaches in with a sigh, pulling a face as she takes a mournful bite. “If you don’t like it, don’t eat it,” I tell her.

She shrugs. “I’m too hungry not to.” The wind rises again, and I cover my face with my gloved hands. Marsha looks out across the school yard with eyes squinted up against the wind. “Poor Kevin,” she says suddenly. I lower my hands and see Kevin, sitting alone on the stairs a short distance away, slowly gnawing on an apple. “No one ever sits with him.”

“We could go sit with him,” I offer.

“Don’t be stupid,” she replies, and then we are silent until the school bell rings calling us back to class.

That afternoon, because it is Monday, I wait on the corner by the flagpole for my dad to come. He is always late, and I try not to get agitated, even though I get very cold waiting, because I know he’s been working hard all day and it isn’t his fault when his schedule falls behind.

My dad is a bus driver. Most days I have to walk home from school, because he works until the evenings, but on Mondays his shift ends at three, so he makes the school the last stop on his bus route, picks me up, and drives back to the bus depot where he keeps the car during the day, and then we drive home together. When I was young, I used to think my dad was more important than everyone else’s dads because he picked me up in a bus, which was much larger than any of their cars. Now I’d rather walk home than let all the other kids see my father pulling up against the corner with his breaks squeaking loud enough that everyone in the school car park turns and stares. Even though by the time he arrives most everyone is gone, I still feel as though the whole world is watching me climb up the steep stairs into the open mouth of my father’s big grey bus.

Once, just after school started, Charlotte walked up to me at lunchtime. This was strange, because Charlotte had almost never spoke to me before this, even though we were once partners on a book report. We looked at each other for a moment, then Charlotte said, “I had to ride the bus to ballet yesterday because my mum was ill.”

I felt my stomach sink. “Really?” I asked, trying to busy myself in my sandwich and pretend like I didn’t know why she was telling me this.

“I think your dad was driving it,” she said. She wasn’t speaking very loud, but I found myself wishing she would whisper so no one else would hear. “I think I recognized him from parent’s night last week.”

I shrugged. “Could have been.”

“So he really does drive buses?” she asked. “I mean, I didn’t know if that was his real job or if he did something else.”

“No, just the bus driving,” I whispered, staring down into the dark cavity of my lunch sack and wishing she would leave.

“Do you like him being a bus driver?” she asked.

“Um, it’s alright I suppose,” I said. “Better than him having no job at all.”

“That’s true,” she said, I thought for a moment she was satisfied, but she pressed on. “Do you ever get to ride on his buses?”

“Sometimes,” I replied, searching for an excuse to make a getaway. “But we do have a car as well.”

“Oh, I didn’t know bus drivers made enough money to have a car,” she said. I don’t think she meant it to be mean, but I suddenly felt my eyes filling up with tears. Not wanting to cry in front of Charlotte, because she would surely tell everyone, I pretended to see Marsha across the schoolyard and excused myself from the conversation. After lunch, I told Miss Webster I wasn’t feeling well and asked to be sent home.

Today, dad is unhappy. I can tell as soon as I get on the bus. His eyes look like a reflection of the sky; dark and overcast with a hint of storms around the edges. I drop my backpack into the aisle and slide into the seat behind him. “Hi dad,” I say, leaning forward so he can hear me over the rumbling engine.

“Hello, love,” he says, and his voice is very tired. “Good first day back?”

“Not too bad,” I tell him. “We started working talking about Ancient Egypt today. It’s our next history unit.”

“Good,” he says, pulling the bus into gear and easing it back into the traffic. I can tell he isn’t listening. This is our usual after school routine; I talk, and dad pretends to hear me, but later that evening, after he’s been off the job for a bit and his mind’s relaxed, he’ll ask me the same things he did after school, and I know he wasn’t really paying attention before.

“And Marsha said her dad got bit by a cow on the way to Preston,” I say.

“Sounds exciting,” he replies, not sounding excited at all. I find myself suddenly thinking about Miss D, and how excited she was about Shakespeare.

I rest my head on the back of his seat, watching his big hands gently guiding the bus around the corner. Once, when I was small he let me sit on his lap while he drove the bus. It’s one of my favorite memories, pressing my small hands against the center of the wheel, watching as his knuckles wrapped over top of mine so I felt like I was driving the great monster of a vehicle. I remember mum sitting on the seat behind him, laughing as I squealed with delight and my dad narrated our trip like we were driving a safari jeep through Africa, pointing out the various elephants and giraffes to us, though they were really just postboxes and lamp posts. It was before Ben was born, so it’s one of my last happy memories of mum.

We ride the rest of the way to the depot in silence. I reach into my backpack and pull out the yellow flier about Shakespeare class and read it again, staring again at the smiling children in the pictures, and I start to wonder again if Miss D’s class really could make me that happy.

I’m planning on telling dad about the flier in the car ride home, but he seems so distracted by his bad day at work that I know he’ll say no. So I just nestle down in the passenger’s seat, wrapping my coat around me and letting the stale air gushing from the heaters wash over me.

When we get home, dad puts the kettle on for tea, and I retreat into my tiny bedroom, dropping my backpack on the floor and flopping down on my bed. I pull the flier out again and stare at it, plotting how to ask dad for the money. I stay on my bed until dad calls me for dinner.

I don’t ask him about the money that night. Or the next day. I don’t tell him about the flier all week. I keep waiting for the perfect moment, when he will be least likely to say no, but in the end that moment never comes. By Sunday night, I know I am running out of time, so I wait until he is at the kitchen table with a mug of tea, reading the paper in a contented sort of way.

I go and stand at the edge of the table and just stare at him for while, hoping he will say something first so I don’t have to. In one hand I’m holding the flier behind my back. The other is balled into a sweaty fist at my side.

It takes dad before he gives me a curious look. “You alright, Lily?” he asks me.

I nod a little too eagerly to look normal. “Fine, dad,” I say.

He raises an eyebrow at me over the rim of his tea cup, then slowly turns back to his paper. Just as he finds his spot on the page, I cry, “Can I have 20 quid?” The words burst from my mouth before I realized I said them, startling both me and dad.

“What do you need 20 quid for?” he asks, looking up from his paper.

“Um, just a thing,” I tell him, shuffling my feet nervously against the linoleum.

“What sort of thing?” I can tell he’s skeptical now, so I pull out the flier and hand it over to him. I hold my breath while he scans it with disinterested eyes, then hands it back to me. “I don’t think so Lily.”

My heart sink. “Please dad! The woman came into our class and talk to us about it and it sounds like it’s going to be brilliant!”

“You’ve never been interested in acting before. Do you even know who this Shakespeare person is?”

“Yes I do!” I reply, sticking my nose in the air. “He wrote Rodney and Julia.” I realize that doesn’t sound exactly right, so I add quickly, “Or something like that.”

Dad’s already gone back to his paper. “We haven’t got the money, sweetheart.”

“But dad,” I cry, trying to force myself between the newspaper and him. “Everyone else is going to do it! I can’t be the only person who doesn’t go!”

It was true. After Charlotte announced loudly at lunch on Wednesday that she had turned in her money for Miss D’s Shakespeare class, nearly all the boys in class quickly followed suit. Even Tommy the goof around had turned in his money, and Marsha told me Friday that her mum had said yes.

“And if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you do that too?” Dad says evenly, taking another sip of his tea. “The answer’s no Lily.”

Hot tears are welling up in the corners of my eyes, and I stamp my foot furiously. “You never let me do anything! Charlotte gets to take ballet and Marsha’s parents got her a dog and everyone in class has been to Ireland except me! And everyone else still has a mum and I don’t!”

Dad’s face goes stony, and I know I shouldn’t have said anything about mum. I let a heavy tear drop from my eye and tumble off my cheek, instantly sorry I had said anything.

Dad folds up his paper slowly, his face a mask of impassive calm. “Lily my love, you know that you and I make up a very special kind of family. We aren’t like everyone else. We haven’t got a lot of money for fun things like a Shakespeare class, and vacations to Ireland, and we haven’t got your mum or Benjamin with us anymore. But you and I, we love each other. Isn’t that all that matters?” I sniff, dragging my arm along my nose to stop it from running, and dad wraps one arm around me and pulls me against him. “You understand that, don’t you?” I don’t want to say anything, so I just nod. Dad kisses me on the top of my head. “I know you do. Because you’re the strong one in this family. You’re my brave little girl.”

I lean up against him, nestling my head against his neck and staring at the color advertisements over his shoulder as he opens his paper again. We stay that way for a long time, in our one armed hug. I’m still angry at him for saying no. I want to show him the flier again, want to explain to him about the smiling children at the bottom, but I don’t say anything. When he does to turn the page, I slip out from under his arm and walk slowly back to my bedroom. I drop the flier in the bin on my way.

Third Time's the Charm!

2010-09-07T21:26:00.003-06:00

they say editing your query letter is a constant battle. Here is my third attempt....and it is MUCH better than the other two!

Bellissa has never worried that the deposed Prince of Latvia doesn’t love her. But while aiding his revolution to help him reclaim his throne, she finds herself inexplicably cast off by her brooding childhood sweetheart.

Though their relationship has ended, Bellissa reluctantly agrees to keep their breakup a secret, since the Prince is unwilling to admit to his men that he as wrong about his once-certain love for her. However, this means Bellissa has to stay in the Prince’s camp, pretending to still be in love with him while nursing her broken heart and hoping to regain the Prince’s affection. On top of that, his enemies have sought her out as a target, thinking that killing the Prince’s true love will weaken his resolve and destroy his chance of recapturing his throne.

One of these assassins sent to the Prince’s camp is a young soldier from the capital, who is captured before he can carry out his orders. With hopes of obtaining information about his enemies, the Prince asks Bellissa to talk to their prisoner, thinking him more likely to reveal secrets to her. Bellissa agrees, only to find that the prisoner shares her sentiments over the Prince’s budding revolution: they are both caught in a fight they don’t want to be a part of. And the more she gets to know the enigmatic young man, the more Bellissa is troubled by feelings arising for someone other than her Prince. When the Prisoner asks her to escape with him and flee Latvia, she cautiously agrees, though still harboring a secret love for the Prince.

But they are both too tangled in the revolution run far. When they are unexpectedly forced to take part in the Prince’s siege on the capital, Bellissa realizes there is much more than just love on the line. She finds herself caught between two sides of a fight for the fate of her nation, and struggling to save the lives of both the men she loves.

Set in the nineteenth century, The Last Prince of Latvia is a young adult romance novel complete at 84,000 words.

Thank you so much for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Mackenzi Lee

Also.......is it young adult? I still can't decide!

Compelling?

2010-08-30T22:49:00.005-06:00

Okay, so I am in the process of emailing and querying agents. So far I have been met with only rejection. But that was to be expected.
Anways, I have written two query letters that I am sending out. I just need to know now which one is better. Which one is more compelling, attention grabbing, which one better captures the plot and essence of the story. They're very similar. I just need to know which one is better.
Thanks for the feedback! --M

OPTION 1

The only thing Bellissa has ever been sure of is that she loves the Prince of Latvia. Which is why she agrees to join a revolution that will restore her brooding childhood sweetheart, the now-deposed Prince, to his throne.

She doesn’t plan on him unexpectedly ending their engagement and breaking her heart before the fight has begun.

Hopeless and lonely, Bellissa parts from him, wishing to leave his painful memory behind her, but quickly finds herself already too tangled in his budding revolution to run far. When his enemies seek her out as a target, she is forced to remain in the Prince’s camp for her own protection, all the while harboring a secret desire to win back his affection and restore their love. But when a handsome, boyish enemy soldier is captured in their camp, Bellissa is troubled by feelings arising for a man that is not her Prince, and she begins to doubt her certainty that there is only person that she could ever love. When The Prince’s revolution begins sooner than anticipated, Bellissa finds herself caught between two sides of a fight that could change the fate of her nation, and forced to choose between two different men that she loves.

Set in nineteenth century Europe, The Last Prince of Latvia is a romance and adventure novel complete at 84,000 words.

Thank you so much for your consideration.

OR......

OPTION 2

Since her fiancé, the deposed prince of Latvia, is in the middle of staging a revolution to win back his throne and avenge the murders of his family, and since he’s always promised her that she is the only woman he could ever love, Bellissa isn’t worried that their relationship may be falling apart.

And yet, before the fight for their nation has begun, she finds herself not only cast off by her brooding childhood sweetheart, but also the target of many of her Prince’s enemies, who would like nothing more than to see the two of them dead and his plot to restore the monarchy overturned.

Too tangled in the budding revolution to run, Bellissa is forced to remain in the Prince’s camp for her own protection, all the while fighting desperately to win back his love as he plans his takeover. But when a handsome, boyish enemy soldier is captured in their camp, she is troubled by feelings arising for a man that is not her Prince, and she begins to doubt her certainty that there is only person that she could ever love. When The Prince’s revolution begins sooner than anticipated, Bellissa finds herself caught between two sides of a fight that could change the fate of her nation, and forced to choose between two different men that she loves.

Set in nineteenth century Europe, The Last Prince of Latvia is a romance and adventure novel complete at 84,000 words.

Thank you so much for your consideration.

A New Novel To Be Named

2010-08-29T22:18:00.002-06:00

It begins again. This is a very short prologue to a half formed story that is still trying to squeeze itself out of my brain. Feedback DEFINATELY wanted/needed.

There is no such thing as perfection.

Any quest to achieve it is destined for failure. Any attempt to attain it will end with defeat.

Nothing can be perfect.

And yet I have spent eighteen years creating a self image based on this; an idea that was always unattainable. I have lived my whole life believing I was part of a reality that never existed, and thinking that I could only ever be happy if I achieved the impossible. Expecting something of myself that I could never be.

And everything I have lived for was never real to begin with.

My hands are shaking, my palms clamming up against the gun clasped between them. I can feel Nick’s fingers on the small of my back, pushing me gently forward, his lips against my ear, whispering, “Now Regina, do it now.”

Now Regina. You don’t have to be perfect to be happy.

The muted ding of the elevator strikes my eardrums with a jarring harshness, as the floor beneath my feet trembles to a halt.

On the other side of the door is the man I am going to kill.

I can picture his face, though I’ve never seen him before; heavy lidded eyes dropping beneath dark, straggly eyebrows, his greasy hair slicked back and his lips upturned in a smug smile perpetually traced upon his lips, as he plays God with hundreds of people whose lives have been destroyed because they trusted him.

“Now Regina.”

Now Regina. You don’t have to be perfect to be loved.

I could never be perfect. None of us ever could.

The doors open with a hiss, and a man in a plain grey suit steps into the elevator. As the doors slide closed behind him, I raise the gun level with his chest. He never looks up from the file he is flipping through absently. “Have you come to kill me, Regina Samson?”

The gun is suddenly heavier, and I can barely keep it from slipping from my fingers. “It’s you,” I whisper, my voice tight. “It was always you.”

“Now, Regina,” Nick is squeezing my wrist, his nails digging painfully into my skin. “Kill him now!”

“Yes, Regina,” the man replies, spreading his arms wide and letting the file drop from his hands. From beneath its manila front, a photograph flutters slowly to the ground, landing face up. “Kill me now.”

I glance down at the photograph. It’s a picture of me, standing between my parents on graduation day, silhouetted against the words “Congratulations Class of 2010” printed in a bold red on the banner behind us. I can remember the moment the photo was taken. My sister, holding the camera, calling over the cacophony of proud parents around us, “Smile on the count of three! One…two…”

I remember my father looking over at me, flashing me his executive grin, his eyes glowing in a way they rarely do when he looks at me. “Regina, you look…”

“Three!”

“…Perfect.”

Now Regina. You don’t have to be perfect anymore.

I take a deep, shuddering breath, and close my eyes.

Thoughts? Feelings? Impressions? Is it interesting enough to make you want to read more?

Blast from the Past

2010-07-28T00:27:00.003-06:00

As you may or may not have noticed, Last Prince of Latvia is finished. In the mean time, I am struggling through the beastly job of editing, querying, and being rejected....okay that part hasn't happened yet. But it will. Meanwhile, to keep the blog going between now and when the second novel gets going (yes, there will be another...but it is not a sequel) I thought I would repost the first chapter of LPOL That started it all, just so you could see how much better it has gotten. It's really an amazing difference....really :) Please comment!
Love, M

He was the last prince of Latvia, and I will never forget him for as long as I live.

Even though his memory is no longer the final picture that stings my waning consciousness each night before I fall into sleep, nor is he the first thing my eyes ache for when they wake, sometimes I still see him in my dreams, a print so faded that the shadow of him now caught in my mind’s eye is merely a fragment of the boy I once knew like my second self.

He was the last prince of Latvia, but we did not know it then.

When I look back now, I see him as I choose to remember him, the version of him I like the best: young, restless, and wild, like a flightless bird aching to take to the skies and watch the world glide by beneath his wings. The boyish days when he was passionate and romantic, and devoured Byron, Balzac, and The Canterbury Tales like delicious chocolates, licking their luscious residue from his fingers and savoring it against his tongue. The days he thought he’d live forever and see the world, and wanted me beside him for every step of eternity. The days his touch sent me reeling, his kiss rendered me senseless, and the very mention of his name left me swooning in a dizzying prism of the purest kind of bliss. The days he loved me. I remember those days the best.

On the occasions that he slips from my memory and forms piece by piece in my dreams, it always begins with his hands. They are always the first part of him I remember because they were the first part of him I touched on the first day I met him, when I climbed the tree that had always been mine and found him staring down at me from its highest branches.

“What are you doing here?” I had demanded angrily. “This is my tree.”

“This is my palace,” he had replied. I had had no argument for that.

“I’m hiding from my mother,” he then informed me. “She wishes me to learn English. It is a loathsome language with no practical application which I will have nothing to do with.”

At the time, it did not matter to me why he was in my tree, I just knew I wanted him gone. In a ploy to lure him away, I told him there were much better places to hide and that I would show him some if he liked. He considered that for a moment, then begrudgingly agreed to follow. I climbed down first, nimbly jumping the last few feet to the ground, then called to him to do the same. He clambered awkwardly a few branches down, then hesitated, unable to make the final leap to solid ground.

“What’s the matter?” I called up to him.

“I don’t think I can jump,” he replied matter of factually. He did not sound scared. In all our years together, I never knew him to be afraid.

“Here,” I knew no way to aid him but stand on my tip toes and extend a hand. “I’ll help you.”

He looked at me for a long moment of skepticism, then accepted my outstretched hand. His fingers were the smoothest things I had ever felt, manicured and washed by Europe’s finest soaps. I was suddenly ashamed of my own calloused palms, and I thought he would surely pull away.

But he didn’t. He just jumped.

And even after he had landed, he did not let go.

It is always his mouth that forms next, and I can still recall its every shape. The way it curled when he scowled, the curve of it that encased each word of his expansive vocabulary in six languages, the way it spread and danced as a laugh formed on his lips. He had a peculiar habit of laughing before telling me an amusing story, like he was sharing a private joke with himself before divulging it. So I would always laugh too, even before he had told me the story, because he was laughing, and that made me happy. He made me happy.

The mouth that told me every story I knew, every fairytale and fable that passed through his ears became surrogately mine through him. The mouth that read me every novel we could find, recited from memory passages and poems, and sang me off-key songs of which he only knew half the words. The mouth that taught me how to read Latvian and Russian and broken bits of English and Italian, and write my name.

I loved his mouth the most when it pronounced his name for me. Bellissa, he always called me. Or sometimes simply Belle. Italian was the loveliest of his languages, and so it was the tongue in which he chose to name me his beautiful one.

And every time he called me, I believed him.

I loved his mouth the first time it touched mine, and each time after I only loved it more.

“I think I love you,” his lips whispered as they released mine for the first time.

I didn’t tell him, but I’d known I loved him from the day I met him.

Perhaps clearest of all, I remember his eyes.

His eyes at eleven years old, like stabbing knives when we argued, fierce and furious because I was the first person to ever deny him what he wanted.

His eyes at twelve, reflected and replicated in the rippling river as we dipped our toes in and splashed at the fish swimming by.

His eyes at thirteen, cloudy and damp as we buried the body of his favorite Pekinese behind the blooming orchard. The only time I ever saw him cry.

His eyes at fourteen, alive with an unquenchable fire that I saw in him every time we sat shoulder to shoulder on a the fences that bound us and dreamed aloud of breaking free of them.

His eyes at fifteen, scanning the pages of Shakespeare, as I sat at his feet and he acted aloud his feeble translation the tales of Othello and Coriolanus, playing every part single handedly.

His eyes at sixteen, the first time he closed them and leaned towards me, purging the final gap between us.

His eyes at seventeen, steadfast and impassioned, when he swore to me that he loved me and would marry me, and we would spend the remainder of our days side by side, writing the chapter after blissful chapter of our fairytale.

His eyes when we said goodbye, dimed by the steely cavern of secrecy and darkness, both of us knowing that the next morning I would be on a train bound for uncertainty, he would have faded into a memory, and we had no one to blame but ourselves. Their look of desperate resolution as he swore that he would search the world until he found me, and that someday we would be together once more. The eyes that never cried for me, even when he loved me.

His eyes at twenty five, when I found him again.

He was the last prince of Latvia.

And I loved him.

The Last Prince of Latvia....the end :)

2010-06-27T17:04:00.002-06:00

I don't want ANY comments on how fast it moves....BECAUSE I KNOW THAT!!! I'm only posting because I felt bad keeping you in suspense :) right now, I absolutely HATE this....but this is basically how the story concludes. enjoy!

As Cunningham had predicted earlier that day, the Prince’s new regime did not last, but it fell sooner and in a way that no one had expected.

As the Prisoner and I spent the night in our separate cells, the city above us had exploded. With their army imprisoned and their government failing, it was the people of Riga who rose against their newly appointed leader and sought to drag him from his throne by whatever means necessary. Before the Prince had a chance to reinstate tyranny, they were upon him, armed with justice and citizenship and any sort of weapons they could find. Masses of men and women from across Riga and the surrounding villages stormed the palace walls that night, pouring through the gates and tearing down any of the Prince’s men who stepped in their path. They crashed through the palace with torches, igniting the drapes and carpets, waiting till the men inside were forced to flee and then murdered them mercilessly. They looted the few possessions left in the palace, overturning tables and smashing chairs, their flames alone not enough to satisfy their thirst for justice. They stampeded through the halls and up to the ballroom, thrusting open the large doors and liberating their soldiers inside, who took up arms against their guards and easily defeated them.

It was then they hunted for the Prince.

They found him in what was once his study, standing at the shattered window looking darkly out into the night with a sort of weary resignation, rubbing small wooden button between his fingers. It was as though he had been expecting them; he turned with purposeful calm, his face grave, challenging them silently to wound him deeper than he had already been sliced.

He did not speak a word as they dragged him from the palace. He did not beg for his life or his crown or his palace or his men. He held his head high, his dignity never faltering. He knew when he was defeated, and he would not shame himself with futile resistance or pleading. He would retain his honor; that alone could not be taken from him.

Perhaps he wished he had had more time. Perhaps he wished his family had never fallen, or that he had never come back, or never fought. Perhaps he wished I was dying beside him. Perhaps he wished many things as they bound his hands and twisted the rope around his neck.

Perhaps he wished he was dying in battle, or perhaps he realized this was just a different kind of fight.

They hung him from the towering pine tree on the edge of the palace gardens without any sense of the significance of their chosen location. Perhaps his final moment was one of peaceful memory, as a wild haired girl of eight years old reached up and offered him her hand as he swung from the branch from which he had once leapt to her. I like to think it was peaceful. That’s the only way I hope he’d go.

The last time he died, I was running.

It was the family who rescued the Prisoner and me who informed me of the Prince’s death. When their youngest son had found the two of us collapsed so near their doorstep the following morning, he called to his parents, thinking us dead. When his mother and father came, they found us both alive. Their compassion knew no bounds; without hesitation, they brought both strangers into their home and cared for us until we were well.

When I awoke, confused and frightened, the only explanation they had to offer me was the news of the death of the Prince and the restoration of democracy. They thought perhaps that would soothe me.

If I had been thinking clearly during our escape, I would have realized that the burning palace certainly meant his death. However, it struck me to the bone to hear his end pronounced aloud, and I shuddered involuntarily, feeling inexplicably cold and suddenly broken. I sat completely still for a minute, rolling over in my mind the idea of again facing life without the Prince, and this time with no chance of running back to him and changing my mind. For a moment, it hurt so badly wasn’t even sure if I wanted to cry.

Then I remembered the Prisoner. And it suddenly wasn’t so painful.

He was asleep when I slipped into his room. His face was stained with dark bruises and several long scrapes, traced starkly across his pale skin. He was shirtless with a quilt pulled to his waist, revealing a white bandage wrapped around his stomach and his shoulder darkened by a burn. I eased myself onto the edge of his bed, and he woke slowly, his face cracking into a smile as he saw me.

“Good morning,” I said, reaching out and intertwining our fingers.

“Are you alright?” he asked anxiously.

I stared down at our hands. “The Prince is dead.” The words leapt from my throat before I could stop them.

He nodded, watching me warily as though expecting me to crumple, his lips pursing. “I assumed he was,” he replied. He paused, then repeated more gently than before, “Are you alright?”

I hesitated. “Yes,” I whispered, my eyes suddenly brimming with unexpected tears and my already burning throat tightening. He noticed and eased himself up, pulling me into a warm hug as my eyes spilled. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, pressing my face against his chest till I could feel his heartbeat.

“Don’t be,” he kissed the top of my head. “He was a dear friend of yours. You have every reason to cry for him.”

I let my tears fall onto him, running waterfalls down my face that turned into rivers across his chest. My cheeks were scratched and burned, and every drop cut across me with a slicing sting. He held me silently for a while, smoothing my hair and kissing me softly until I felt I didn’t need to cry anymore.

“Where will we go now?” I asked after a time. “We’re finally free. And together.”

“Yes. Together,” he repeated, unable to suppress the smile as he tasted the word, and I could almost feel him glowing. He squeezed my hand. “A stone cottage by the sea?” he asked, leaning down so that our noses almost touched. “Italy?”

I smiled, the scars across my face cracking. My heart leapt, my whole body tingling with something that could only be happiness. “I hear it’s beautiful there,” I breathed against his lips.

Within the week, we had left Latvia. I sold the jewelry the Prince had given me to wear to dinner, and we were soon on a train with nothing in the world to call our own but each other.

At first, we hadn’t the money to reach Italy. Our meager funds would not carry us all the way there, so we instead began our life together in small town in the hills that border Austria. The Prisoner obtained employment as a blacksmith, a trade he had learned as a youth from his stepfather, and I began work in a small hat shop, both of us forced to quickly learn as much German as we could in order to communicate with our employers and customers. We decided to postpone marriage until our finances were more stable, and so we lived apart for a time, seeing each other as often as we could while we struggled to obtain adequate funds to press forward in our lives. The days were full of long days, extra hours, and brief kisses shared beneath streetlamps as he walked me to my door in the shade of a waxing moon. There was nothing soft about our lives; we shared no blissful happiness or fairytale moments, but we didn’t need to. Our life in Austria was a period of transition and rebirth, a time for both of us to slowly shed the scars that the Latvian revolution had left, and accept the memories that would never be erased. Not only did I slowly find myself able to look back without shame, heartbreak, or pain, I realized how grateful I was for every difficulty along the road, for it had led me to the Prisoner. In Austria was where I grew to intimately know who he was, and where I realized that with everything I learned, I only loved him more.

When war came to Austria, the Prisoner enlisted, enticed by the promise of a stable salary and an advancing career. For nearly two years I waited for him, alone, living on his letters, praying each morning that his life would be spared, drowning in worry each moment he was not at my side.

Just before the news reached our village of the end of the war, his letters suddenly ceased. I knew not whether he was alive or dead, and each day I grew more and more stricken by worry. It was a day in early September that a cry went through the town that the soldiers were home and marching through the main street. I flew up from my workbench at once, racing from the shop and out into the road, already packed with women and children, searching the faces of the soldiers marching in formation through the main street, breaking away from their ranks as they spotted their loved ones. I fought my way through the crowds, repeating over and over in my heart a silent prayer, pleading with God to deliver him safely home to me.

I searched the face of each marching soldier that passed, wishing each scraggly private that passed me by was him. All around me the air was filled with the cries of happy reunions and miraculous homecomings, and my heart panged with bitter jealousy at the reunited families that were not me. When the last of the soldiers had passed and I still had not seen him, my eyes began to fill with tears. Perhaps he was not coming home. Perhaps my fate was to love and lose.

“Belle.”

It was certainly a delusion. Or perhaps it was his voice calling me from heaven. I turned quickly, searching the crowd, but could not see him. I dismissed the call as my own grief stricken mind playing cruel tricks on me, and turned to walk slowly back to the hat shop.

“Belle!”

There was his voice again, laughing, joyous, bursting with relief. I turned wildly, and there he was, not among the scraggly, dirty soldiers, but dressed in the striking uniform of an officer, dismounting from a midnight mare, his chest gleaming with medals.

I have never known joy like I did at his homecoming. I fell into his arms, sobbing, laughing, kissing lips I had thought may never touch mine again. I clung to his neck, unwilling to release him, letting the crowd surge and fall away around us, oblivious to anything but the touch of my soldier. Even after the streets had cleared, we were still there in each other’s arms, and I felt safe and whole like I never had before.

“We’re going to Italy, Belle,” his whispered, and suddenly he was falling away from me, sinking down to his knees and drawing a small ring box from his pocket. “And when we arrive, will you marry me?” Though the moment had been years in coming, my heart still soared with a new found level ecstasy I had never thought I would be lucky enough to reach. There was no doubt that this was love.

He was given a discharge from the military and a substantial salary for his time as an officer. With this small fortune, we moved again, this time to the Italian coast, and five years to the day of the fall of the Latvian Revolution, we were married in a sea side church with the sun gleaming off the Mediterranean and dancing through the stained glass windows, illuminating his eyes, as crystal clear as I had ever seen them, blazing like fire as his ring encased my finger and his lips parted in a impassioned “I do.”

We live now in happiness. My heart is wholly his, and not a day goes by that I doubt his devotion to me. He is my greatest joy, my second self, half my world and all of my heart. I love him in a way I once thought impossible, beyond the capacity I thought I could love, and though we are both imperfect, together we find our own version of perfection. That is not to say that our life together is a dream; we have our days of fighting and fury. But we never count those days without also numbering the glorious ones, in order to appreciate just how many more of them there are. Life is never easy, but we love each other completely, and side by side there is no challenge we cannot meet.

But sometimes there are still nights that I dream of the Prince. I see his face at all the ages I knew him. Sometimes he is young, alive with the buoyancy and shining eyes of our youth. Other times he is cold and shrewd, his face unmovable stone and his eyes like a bleak version of eternity. Other times we are dancing, and he is soft and familiar like a warm summer breeze. Sometimes I see him die, watch his final moments play out in a small American town or the grounds of his flaming palace. I never mind these dreams, and I know he will always haunt me; his handprint was too deeply imprinted into my heart to ever truly fade away.

Some days I will miss him unexpectedly, reminded of my dearest friend by a verse of poetry or the shape of a starry sky. I never miss being in love with him. I never look back with longing. I never wonder what I could have done differently.

I never kiss him in my dreams, but I can still remember what it felt like.

I never love him in my dreams, but he is always smiling when he sees me.

In every dream, I am chasing him.

But I never catch him, and I always wake grateful that I never did.

Burns ; for Helen and Bertha

2010-06-18T22:54:00.002-06:00

It took all night before she knew

That she’d be shaking till she died.

Something roused her from her nightmares

With a prophetic hush that

Squinted past her ear,

Tangling in her prayers

Until she couldn’t hear them apart from each other.

The rocking bird clock

Cast a milky shadow shock across her

Spider web bones,

Her hand rippling across the blueberry sky,

Skipping across the clouded wonderland

Of satin brocades and air raids

Haunted by all night storytellers,

And ruby red curls

That don’t cut.

She never questioned why the only feeling left

In her breached, parched body

Withered from cathartic insomnia

Is a fluttering butterfly

Trapped like against her ribcage

And choking on the congealed blood drizzling off her doubts.

Her heartbeat is a string of

Jarring harmonies that

Scream through her evanescent dreams

And she somehow knows she won’t live long enough

To feel the first time a breath trembles against hers

In a something called a kiss.

She will be gone before the summer,

Fade with the moon,

And though she’d love to shake the nation

She can’t cry that loud.

She ripped spotted pages from the bible

Rather than let it catch the candle as she fell,

Never wondering if

They prematurely cut her name from Genesis

As she licked it with a purging flame,

The same way they cut out her heart

Before it had a chance to

Unbutton her wings

And fling itself from the bleeding battlements

Of her burdened epiphany.

She walks symphony streets in silence

Until the streetlight shines out her eyes,

And under the dappling midnight

She stretches out her tongue to catch

The beads of sweat that drip from her pours in a swoon

And taste like a crimson Caribbean moon

Waxing over a lilac laden veranda

Where their skin melts like

Honey and chocolate

Twirled in their intertwined adrenaline

Until it’s almost twenty years ago

And she remembers the days

She was the most beautiful thing in his world.

The days she didn’t need a reason to live.

She is a martyr, a ghost, a caged lion with looking glass wings,

And she knows when morning sings the sky

They will remember her

As the fine line between reality and happiness

And adorn her tomb with a rosy bloom of pity

Which stings more

Than burning ever did.

She will die her mother’s daughter,

Her father’s shame,

Her husband’s secret,

Her own cold nemesis,

Unblemished by agony,

Only consumed.

She dies each night

Drowning in pneumatic gasps

And soiled sheets,

Where her heart beats

Meet the other side of heaven

And sometimes she swears

She sees gothic angels

Whistling at God’s violin fingertips,

And across the bleeding orchard

And the blooming petals falling off her fingernails

A sandy haired boy reads Paradise Lost

To a paint stained, salt hard graveyard.

Mother Mary, if they bury me tonight,

I hope there’s someone there

To care that I fled one hundred years

Before my dying day.

She fought, they’ll say,

And had a heart that cut like forgiveness,

So let her tombstone be branded by the

Epitaph of endurance.

She loved too hard, that wild child,

And when there was less than a

Thread of the hope of heaven left,

She still held on with both hands

Blistered blue

Until the night she slipped

And there was no one left to catch.

She never sleeps alone.

He is a ghost with a forked tongue

That spits cacophony into her

Bleeding eyeballs

Until she scratches them out,

Leaving only muslin shreds

Dangling from her strangled dreams

Mangled by the memory

Of scorching Jamaican nights

And breaking like white rain

Against his pale skin in the dim beam

Of his sunlight.

It was only darkness after him.

If there is to be no light,

Then tonight, perhaps, I only need more fire.

Veiled by insanity,

She paints her name in a ruby inferno

Across the shattered shards

Until she isn’t sure if she’s still bleeding

Or if it’s poison dripping out her veins,

Why can’t she grip this elusive pain

Just once before her sense turn watercolor

And he’s lost her forever?

Let her dance one more night in her favorite dress

Before she rips it from her body

Because it pinches her heat.

She stalks the twilight,

Scorching everything inside her,

Searching her vocabulary for release

Until she stumbles upon the word

Burning

And she flames.

The Last Prince of Latvia pt XXI

2010-06-16T00:05:00.002-06:00

Author's Note: Thanks for reading and leaving comments! :) I do need to make you aware though, what you are about to read, as with every post that appears here, is a first draft. that means, I know it moves fast. I know it needs expansion. This is a skeleton before it had been extensively edited. Read more for plot than anything....also please be sure and inform me as to any lines that make you shiver ;)

With a click of the latch that reverberated around the silent room, the door suddenly flew open with such force that it slammed against the wall behind it. On the other side were two burly men and several women behind them, dressed in shabby, tattered clothes, and had an air of wild triumph and pulsing adrenaline about them. The Prisoner and I were both startled by such an unexpected group, none of which remotely resembled executioners. “Do you serve the Prince?” I asked hesitantly.

“Certainly not!” the first man through the door replied, barging into the room with his companion as the women huddled in the doorframe hesitantly. “We’ve come to drive him and his new regime out.” My heart skipped, both from fear for the Prince and joy borne from the certainty that we would now be saved. “We heard that he kept a few prisoners being held down here, and we didn’t want you going up in flames like the rest of the palace.”

“Up in flames?” I repeated anxiously.

“The whole place is being torched,” he explained, drawing a pistol from his belt. “We haven’t got much time. Stand back!” he instructed, and the Prisoner retreated to the farthest corner of his cell as the man pointed his gun at the lock.

With an ear splitting bang, the lock split, and the door swung forward with a moan. Without wasting a moment, the Prisoner leapt out, limping to me as quick as he could. His lips were against mine as soon as he reached the cell door, somewhat hindered by the bars between us, but warm and welcoming just the same. The man with the pistol approached my cell, but suddenly stopped, gazing me up and down suspiciously. “You’re the Princess, aren’t you?” he asked.

I tore myself away from the Prisoner and faced the man. “I am no longer,” I proclaimed, almost proud of my liberation from the title. “My name is Belle. I am a citizen of Riga. My mother was a washwoman here. I am no princess.”

“But you belong to the Prince,” the man accused. “He loves you.”

“I don’t love him!” I cried. The smell of smoke was growing stronger, and I was desperate to get free. “I left him!”

The man stared at me critically, his gaze harsh. “I don’t believe you.”

“Please!” I cried. “I am telling the truth!”

“She’s my intended,” the Prisoner explained desperately, taking my hand through the bars. “We’re to be married. The Prince sentenced us both to death because of our love. I love her!”

The man shook his head. “I wouldn’t feel right about letting the Princess’s beloved go free. I’m sorry.”

“But you feel alright about letting me burn to death?” I cried, shaking the bars in frustration. Tears leapt to my eyes; we could not have come this close to freedom only to have fate cheat us again again. “I beg you, please! Let me free!”

The man shook his head, backing slowly toward the door.

“No! Don’t leave! Help us, please!” The Prisoner called, chasing after our retreating rescuers, but the man turned suddenly and jerked his head and they quickly spilled out of the room and into the smoke filled stairwell, slamming the door roughly behind them with the sharp snap of a lock echoing behind them.

“No!” the Prisoner shook the handle, but the latch would not give. “No!” He slammed his fist against the door in fury, then rushed back to me, weaving his hand against my cheek and kissing me feverishly. My tears spilled on to his face.

“I love you,” I whispered, my mouth still against his. The air was getting thick, and it was difficult to breathe. “And I wish—”

“Don’t,” he interrupted feverishly. “You are not allowed to say goodbye. I will not let you die.” He kissed me again, hard and fast like a promise.

Behind us, the door to the prison opened a crack. We both looked up as smoke poured into the room. The thick billow gripped my throat and I coughed, my lungs shaking desperately in a plea for fresh air. There was a clatter, then out of the smoke, a pistol skidded across the floor, stopped as it knocked against the Prisoner’s foot. Almost in unison, we looked down at the pistol, then up at the cracked door.

“Thank you,” I called out, my voice choked, unsure if our rescuer was even still present.

There was silence for a moment, then a familiar woman’s voice called, “I couldn’t let you die. You are the best girl I have ever served. Even if you aren’t a real princess.” And she was gone.

The Prisoner scooped up the pistol and I scrambled to the back of my cell as he aimed at the lock. I closed my eyes as he fired, my heart racing with relief at the metallic snapping that signified my freedom. I leapt forward, burst through the open cell door and threw my arms around his neck for a brief embrace.

“We need to get out of here,” he said urgently, and I nodded. He seized my hand and together we ran to the door and into the stairwell, only to see the glowing flames already tracing the edges.

He began to pull me upwards, but I cried out, “Wait!” He reluctantly halted. I turned quickly so my back was to him. “Undo the buttons of my dress!” I instructed. Not only did the cumbersome garment weigh me down, but I knew I’d be aflame in seconds if I ventured up the fiery stairs in such a wide skirt. He obeyed quickly, ripping at the seams of the lovely gown until it fell away and I was in nothing by my corset and petticoats. Feeling suddenly light and free, yet simultaneously lamenting the loss of such exquisite craftsmanship along with my modesty, I took his hand, and together we dashed up the flaming stairs, feeling them collapse beneath us as we dashed upwards to freedom.

We burst into the smoky palace hall, and a wave of unbearable heat struck us. I felt sweat immediately leap onto my brow, and I clapped a hand over my mouth to try and ward off the smoke, choking on every mouthful of burning air that flooded my lungs. The hall was awash with people, some the Prince’s men fleeing, others the citizens of Latvia driving them out or running themselves. Some were wounded soldiers in grey, struggling to escape the fiery inferno, while still others had already fallen victim to it, and ran by us screaming with clothes aflame. All around the palace was collapsing.

The Prisoner paused, and I knew he did not know which way to run. I knew that the front doors would be jammed with a mob of people trying to escape, and we could easily be trapped in the burning palace. I pulled on his hand in the opposite direction and he immediately followed my lead, tearing down the hall behind me.

We turned down a perpendicular hallway that ran along the side of the palace and leapt through the first open door we saw. I dragged him through what was once a sitting room, now melting into charred, ashen remains. At the end of the room was a set of French doors leading out onto a small veranda, and we ran towards them. I felt a burning against my leg as the fire lapped at my ankles. Halfway across the room, a burning bean snapped from the ceiling and plunged down towards us. The Prisoner pulled me out of the way, but a trickle of flame caught a piece of my hair and it ignited, singing my neck. I reached up quickly and closed my hand around it, burning my palm but extinguishing the flame. The Prisoner was similarly working to smother a small fire on the shoulder of his shirt.

“Come on!” I cried, and we clambered around the beam with difficulty. I reached the French doors first and gave a sharp tug on their handles, only to find they were locked. The Prisoner released my hand, calling to me to get out of the way. Obediently I retreated, raising my petticoat to my mouth to shield the smoke from my lungs, my eyes streaming from the burning heat. The Prisoner heaved a sizeable chair onto his shoulder with a grimace, then charged forward and heaved it forward through the doors, shattering them easily. He turned, extending his hand to me, which I seized and together we burst out into the night, smoke and flame chasing us.

My lungs eagerly collected glorious mouthfuls of fresh night air as the Prisoner and I fled the palace grounds. I did not allow myself a glance back to watch my childhood burn; I kept my eyes forward, forcing myself to put one foot before the other in spite of the weakness in my knees. As we rush through the front gate, it was to find the streets packed with people screaming and cheering, confused whether they should be celebrating their triumph or lamenting the loss of so many dead. The entire city seemed to be awake. The Prisoner and I fought our way through them, pushing roughly against the unmovable masses, our hands still clutching one another.

I knew he could not run far. The pain from his wounds had been all too evident in his face before, and I was surprised he had even made it this far. When began to stumble, and I pulled on him gently, encouraging him to stop, but he dragged me forward just as hard. We both knew we were not yet safe.

We ran until his legs gave out, and he collapsed to the ground with a moan of pain. I fell to my knees beside him, cradling him against me in a fierce hug, savoring every breath we took that meant we were still alive. While masses of running people swarmed around us and the cacophony of battle surrounded us, I stroked his hair, pushing it off his forehead and kissing him again and again. “We made it,” I choked, unsure if he could hear me. My voice was so hoarse. “We’re safe.” I could feel my hair tumbling in a wild mess from its once extravagant pile down my back, and was certain that my face was as filthy and soot-stained as his. My lungs were still struggling to capture every mouthful of heavy air, and I coughed violently, unable to draw a deep breath. I knew we should keep running or hide, but I could not bear to move from my knees in the middle of the street, clutching him to me like he was the last thing in the world I had to hold on to.

I cast my eyes upward, watching the screaming torrent of flames writhing from and engulfing the palace, a stark contrast to the bleak sky behind it. I felt the corners of my vision beginning to blur, golden flames chewing at the edges of my eyes. I struggled for consciousness, knowing I needed to protect my Prisoner, that we needed to flee. But the blazing tongues of fire seemed to be rushing forward towards me, calling me into them, as my whole body was wracked by each cough that tore itself through my throat. At last, I succumbed, letting the watercolor of darkness and flame envelop me, and I collapsed beside the Prisoner.

The Last Prince of Latvia, pt XX

2010-06-13T23:05:00.002-06:00

Cunningham came to collect me for dinner only a short time after I had finished cleaning up. He was visibly taken aback at my transformation from a scruffy soldier into a graceful and elegant princess, but hid his face with a low bow and an offer of his hand. With a last genuine word of thanks to the women who had aided me, I took his hand and he led me down the palace hall.

“Did you have a chance to speak with the Prisoner?” I asked almost as soon as we had left the room.

He nodded. “Yes. I apologize I did not come to you sooner.”

I waved that away. “No matter. Do you have a message for me?”

“He says he’ll have you anywhere,” Cunningham recited. “The only thing he will not have is you giving up your life for his. He says that there can be no greater testament of your love than choosing him.” He glanced sideways at me. “That is what he said.”

I nodded, feeling my heart sink. Why had I expected him to give me any other answer, or say something that would suddenly make my decision easy? For a time, I had been able to forget the choice ahead of me. Now it loomed above me, seeming even more dark and ominous than before, and I cowered in its shadow like a frightened child.

Cunningham walked me down two flights of stairs to the main floor of the palace. I had not realized it had grown so late, but through the windows that lined the hall, I could see the sky fading to a rosy twilight, the first faint stars speckled between the wispy clouds, stained a fiery pink by the setting sun. Cunningham paused at a door at the end of hall and turned to me briefly. “You look marvelous,” he said, and I smiled.

“Thank you.”

His hand rested on the door handle. “Good luck.”

I nodded, then leaned forward and kissed him quickly on the cheek. “Thank you for everything. You have never been anything but kind to me.”

He smiled warmly. “Every moment has been a pleasure. Are you ready to go in?”

I nervously smoothed the front of my dress, then nodded. Cunningham pushed the door open, and escorted me into the room with a simple announcement of, “The Princess.”

The dining room bore the same faded glory that enshrined the entire palace. The once brightly colored pastoral murals that lined the walls were faded, the paint cracked and peeling. The stubs of lit candles cast a flickering light over the coat of dust and cobweb that adorned the golden lighting fixture atop which they sat. The maroon cloth and greenery that adorned the long table in the center of the room seemed the only things to be new and fresh, and they looked out of place amongst the antique décor. The back wall of the room was entirely glass, casting a pale beam of light against the Prince’s figure, silhouetted against the dust frosted pane.

“Thank you, Mister Cunningham,” he said crisply. “That will be all.”

Cunningham gave a quick bow, then with one final glance of encouragement in my direction, disappeared back the way we had come.

The Prince turned. He was dressed in a shinning blue frock coat with matching vest and cravat, paired with dark trousers and knee high boots so polished that they cast a glimmer against the wall as the dying sunlight caught them. His face was clean, his hair tidy, and his improvised crown from earlier had been replaced by a thin silver circlet glinting amidst his dark curls.

He made no effort to hide the surprise in his face as he saw me. He looked me up and down with a mixture of awe and delight blending on his perfect features. I could not help but smile. He walked towards me, slowly took my hand, and kissed it gently. “You look incredible,” he breathed, his lips against my skin.

Wasting no time, I interrupted, “You need to pay the woman who made the dress.”

He looked up. I had obviously caught him off guard. “Excuse me?”

“The woman who made this dress. And the other two you sent to aid me. You need to see that they’re paid for their services.”

“They are my subjects,” he argued gently.

“That’s no excuse,” I countered. “They need to be paid for their service.”

He laughed at my vehemence. “Of course. If you wish it.”

I nodded. “I do.”

“Alright.” He slipped his fingers between mine. “Now no more talk of business tonight, love. Just you and me together. That’s all that matters in the world to me right now.”

His fingers felt so comfortable and familiar, laced between mine, that I almost melted. “Yes,” I replied. “I like that idea.”

He smiled. “You must be hungry.” He laughed at my enthusiastic nod. “Let’s eat.” He led me to a seat at the table, pulling out my chair gracefully, then seated himself across from me once I was settled.

I no longer recall what we ate. I know it tasted exquisite and rich, but to my starved taste buds any meal would have seemed a feast. We were served each of the five courses on silver platters by men I did not recognize, clad in dark smocks. I do not know if they were of the Prince’s guard or if they were citizens of the city who, like my ladies in waiting, had been forced into servitude.

Then they eat…much too boring to actually write….especially right now…and then they go into a sitting room with a piano. Sorry, I haven’t written this bit yet and I don’t want to ! : )

The mahogany finish of the large piano was coated in a copious layer of dust. The Prince seated himself on the bench, motioning for me to join him as he lifted the lid, revealing the black and white smile of the pearly keyboard. I stepped in timidly, hovering over his shoulder and watching as his fingers ran a jarring scale up the keys.

“Needs tuning,” he commented with a forgiving smile at the piano’s dissidence. “But then I suppose that’s to be expected.” He rested his fingers against his knees for a moment, then glanced back at me. “Will you sing for me?”

I laughed. “Certainly not. You know I have no musical talent.”

“You singing is lovely!” He protested. “Please. You may choose the song.”

“If you sing first, I will follow,” I offered lightly.

“Alright,” he slid over on the bench. “Then you must play for me.”

I hesitated, then seated myself beside him. He stood, allowing me to sit comfortably in my wide skirt. “I only know the one song,” I replied, glancing over my shoulder at him. “Put Vejini.”

He smiled. “I know. I shall sing if you are able to recall it.”

I flexed my fingers, struggling to remember the first notes. I let my hands rest against the keys for a moment, then struck gently. As soon as I began to play, a small box of music inside my memory opened, and my hands suddenly seemed to know which notes they were to play without my assistance. Behind me, the Prince was humming along softly. I could almost feel him wince each time a jarring string was struck.

I did not truly expect him to sing. He rarely had for me in the past. Though he had always sung with a genuine enthusiasm and a disregard for any flaws, his voice was far from excellent, and occasionally out of tune. Yet behind me, he began to sing, and he startled me with the softness and maturity of his voice that suddenly made me feel old and grown.

“Put, vejini, dzen laivinu, aizdzen mani Kurzeme,” he sang, his voice never faltering, rather weaving its way gracefully through the still air until it dropped gently upon my ears, the sound of home and childhood, tainted with a dark and unfamiliar ring that had been hollowed by the years that stretched between the last time I had heard this song and now. “Kurzemniece man solija,” I could feel him drawing closer to me as he sang. Goose bumps dance up my arm as his breath flitted across the back of my neck. “A woman from Kurzeme,” he sang, his voice falling out of the tune and into a tender whisper. “Promised me her daughter as a bride.” I hadn’t realized he was touching me until his hands were already sliding down my arms, his fingers intertwining with mine along the pearly keys. I stopped playing, struggling to breathe properly through the heart pounding against my lungs. Part of me did not dare turn, the other part could not resist.

Slowly, I turned to look at him. I only had a moment to drink in the familiar sting of his enigmatic eyes before I was plunged into them, as the chasm between our lips closed with a crushing familiarity that I had been certain I had felt for the last time.

And it was everything I remembered. The drowning, the tumbling, the flaming agony and blissful escape, the intoxicating joy that his kisses had never been anything but. I was alive when he kissed me, breathing in life against his tongue as the world exploded against my eyelids in a plethora of colors that were never so vivid as when I was in his arms.

If I stayed with him, this could be mine. I could be his.

But I could feel my exhilaration catching in the back of my throat, my thoughts of him disrupted by the shadow of another face, the pinching recollection of another man’s mouth. It was the Prisoner I wanted here at the other end of my kiss, the man whose destiny was now so tightly woven with my own that they seemed impossible to untangle. Which fate could I condemn him to that would haunt me less?

The Prince’s lips traced mine, framing the familiar path of my name as he breathed it into my mouth, sweeping me with an involuntary shudder as it passed down my spine and plucked at my heartstrings. His arm was around my waist now, pulling me onto my feet and clasping me to him with the fervor that I had forgotten I missed. I had forgotten how much I had once loved him.

But if I was his, what would happen to the self I had spent the last few months carefully shaping? I had existed long enough without relying on his love to define my life that I was beginning to grow comfortable with who I was. I doubted that the Prince would allow me to live beyond his dictates of who he expected me to be, and perhaps the independent woman I had begun to become would die, suffocated behind these palace walls. But love is sacrifice. Perhaps my own soul was simply the thing I would have to relinquish. But was he worth losing myself for?

His lips strayed to my cheek and I rested my chin on his shoulder, twisting my hands through his dark curls with a sigh. He raised our tangled hands upward and slowly began to rock from side to side, a slow waltz to silent music. I wrapped my arm around his back, letting him dance me in slow circles as the world seemed to burn silently around us.

“I must know,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “Will you stay?”

I closed my eyes, my lungs shaking as I tried do draw breath. Here was the moment, and I had no words. I could not speak, could not force a sound through my closed throat. Instead, I merely shook my head, disrupting a single curl that slipped across my forehead. “No,” I choked at last, my voice painfully tight.

He stopped his slow dancing, and drew back to look me in the eyes. I struggled to meet his gaze. “What?”

“I said no,” I repeated, strong for a moment before I crumpled and cast my eyes down to the buttons of his vest. “I’m sorry.”

He did not move for a long, uncomfortable moment, then admonished gently, “What about your dinner, and the dress, and the servants? Didn’t you enjoy that? They could be yours. Forever. I could be yours. You would be happy here. We’d be happy.”

I shook my head again, the stray curl catching on my eyelash. “We came so close to happiness once. I don’t think we could do it again.”

“But we could!” He tilted my chin up to meet his gaze. “It would be wonderful. To be here again, and in love, and this time—”

“It isn’t that,” I interrupted, unable to bear his voice so tender.

“Then what?”

I bit my lip, casting my eyes heavenward to stop the tears. “I just don’t want you anymore.” My words seemed to startle him, and his cheeks grew slightly pink. I pressed on relentlessly, desperate to speak before I lost my nerve. “As long as I have known you, I have defined myself by what you felt towards me. My whole soul has been crafted and shattered by the degree of love you felt towards me, and it took me nearly till this moment to realize it, but since you left me, I have been forced to create a new definition of myself and who I am, isolated from you. And I like who I found. I like who I have become. I like who the wake of your heartbreak made me. And I don’t think I’m ready to lose myself again to you.” I felt no regret. Only liberation. “And I could never share you with another woman. I could not spend my life worrying whether or not I was pleasing you, whether you were ready to get rid of me again. I couldn’t live like that. And not only that, but what you’re asking me to do goes against all my definitions of right. I already sacrificed my morals for you once, and I have regretted it nearly every day that has passed since then. I will not make that mistake again.” The tears had dried. The sparkle that had pricked their corners seemed to have leapt to his instead. “I truly do love you,” I whispered, “But I cannot spend my whole life letting you decide whether or not I am worthy of being loved.” I wanted to touch him, but my hand faltered before it reached his cheek, and instead rested against his neck. “Please try to understand that.”

He bit his lip, and I felt his hands unwind themselves from my waist. “I don’t think I can,” he replied bitterly. The heartache in his voice struck me to the bone, but I tried to pretend I could not hear it. I wondered if he had similarly ignored this same note of anguish in my voice so many months ago.

“Please don’t punish your prisoner for my choice,” I said gently, reaching out to him, hoping for one last embrace that meant we parted as the friends we had always been.

He swatted my hand away furiously, a vicious gleam suddenly replacing the tear I had thought for a moment I saw in his eye. “No!” he cried. “Guards!”

I hadn’t time to turn before I felt strong hands closing on my arms, wrenching my wrists behind my back and rendering me helpless. I shouted out in pain and protest. “What are you doing?” I cried to him desperately.

He glared at me defiantly, his eyes swallowed by dark justice. “You die with him tomorrow morning,” he whispered, his voice shattering against my skin like ice. “If I cannot have you, no man ever shall.”

“No! Wait, please!” I cried, struggling against my captors but their strength and number was far superior, and I was dragged out into the hallway, barely catching final a glimpse of his stony face before he turned away.

I pulled futilely against the guards’ iron grip, crying out in protest, begging them to help me, but they all stared ahead coldly, rendering my pleas for freedom futile.

They dragged me down a long, rickety stairwell hidden in a dark corner of the palace I had never before visited. Every step creaked beneath our feet, and I ceased fighting, afraid that my struggles would result in the collapse of the entire staircase.

At the bottom of the stairs was an ancient wooden door which one of the guards unlocked and entered, holding it open for his companions as they dragged me in behind them.

I had been brought to the palace dungeon. There were no windows, and the light from the single lantern swinging from the ceiling was too weak to make out much of the sparse furnishings. The walls were lined with empty cells, their crisscrossing bars casting frightening shadows against the bare stone walls that made the prison seem to envelope the entire room. In the cell closest to the door, a figure huddled in the corner suddenly leapt to his feet and raced to the front of his cell, reaching through the bars towards me. “Belle!” It was the Prisoner.

I cried out, lunging towards him, struggling to break the grip of the guards and grasp his hand, but they held me firmly. “Put her in the end cell, the one farthest from him,” one of them grunted to the other two, jerking his thumb at the Prisoner.

“No, please!” I pleaded. “Please let me see him!”

The guards ignored me, one of them unlocking a cell at the opposite end of the room and standing back as the other two threw me in roughly. My feet caught the hem of my skirt and I fell to the ground, splashing in a small puddle of muddy water that had dripped from the ceiling and pooled between the cracks in the stone floor. The guards were gone before I even had a chance to stand, filing quickly out of the room and slamming the door behind them with a harsh snap.

“Belle!” The Prisoner’s voice rang through the empty hallway.

I struggled to my feet and ran to the cell wall closest to his and pressed my face into the bars, struggling to make out his figure through the darkness. “Yes! Are you alright?”

He nodded, though I could see there was a copious amount of blood on his uniform, and his face was bruised. “I will be.” He paused then added, “You look incredible.”

I smiled, my eyes watery. “Thank you.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked anxiously.

“The Prince has condemned me to death,” I replied, breathless. “Both of us are to die tomorrow.”

“That’s absurd! I thought he loved you. Why is he killing you too?” he called back, his voice desperate.

I smiled. “Because I chose you.”

He was silent for a moment, then said softly with a choked catch in his voice, “You are a prize among women. Do you know that?”

I smiled, my throat closing around tears. “And you are a king among men.” I grasped the bars, my knuckles white, wishing I could break them if I held on tight enough. “And I should have known from the moment I met you. I should have told you every time I saw you from that first time you kissed me that I love you. I can finally say it because I truly mean it now. I love you, and only you, and I love everything about you. I love your voice. I love your laugh. I love the way you sometimes lick your lips before you speak, I love the way you smile when you sleep, I love the way your eyes look right before you kiss me. I love that you love me and respect me and want everything about me, even the things I can’t face myself. I love that I am lucky enough to spend the rest of my life loving you, even if I only have one night left. I love you. And I’m sorry it took me so long to say that.”

“I love you too,” he whispered, his fingers closing around the bars. “I wish we had more time.”

“We don’t need more time,” I replied. “We know we love each other now in this moment, and we hold onto that forever.”

He sighed, wincing in pain. “So now we are to die. The both of us.”

I nodded. “So it would seem.” I glanced up from my hands to his pale face. “You look so sad and weary,” I said, wishing I could reach him with my hands as well as my eyes. “I wish you would smile for me. I don’t want us to spend our last hours in sadness, grieving for ourselves.”

“It’s not me I grieve for,” he replied, looking up. “It’s you. You should have had one hundred years more. You should have lived.” He sighed heavily. “I’m sorry,” he said miserably, one hand pressed against his side as he leaned back against the jail wall for support. I felt my body strain, wanting to run to him and ease his pain. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. And I’m sorry I got you into this.”

“It’s hardly your fault!” I countered.

“I asked you to run away with me.”

“But I said yes,” I countered gently. “Does it matter? There is no point in laying blame.”

He paused, then replied, “I suppose not. I don’t want to spend my last moments like that.” He looked up, and our eyes embraced like we could not. “I wish I could kiss you,” he breathed.

I smiled. “I’ll just close my eyes and pretend you are.” I sank down against the wall of my cell and pressed my hand against the iron bars. He pressed his own fingers against the corresponding square in his cell, and we held our hands in still silence, pretending that the space between us did not exist, and our skin was prickling together.

“Perhaps dying won’t be so terrible,” I said, as much to calm my own beating heart as his. “And at least we will be together.”

He nodded. “That will be my consolation.”

We were silent for a time. I could not explain the sense of calm that had suddenly settled over me. I was peaceful and free, liberated from regret and lifted heavenward by certainty in my love for the Prisoner and knowing that he loved me in return. I recalled the last time I had been held in a cell like this one, with the Prince beside me spelling out heartbreak. How curious that I had walked from my first cell with the world ahead of me, yet feeling my life to be over, and now I would be walking out towards the end of my life, feeling like there was only dazzling sunlight shining on a new beginning.

“I don’t want to spend our last hours in silence,” he called out suddenly. There was a note of barely hidden desperation in his voice, as though the silence would separate us.

“Alright,” I replied gently. “Then we shall talk about whatever you wish.”

He pondered for a moment, the said slowly, “Perhaps….you’ll let me ask you a question.”

I looked up. Through the darkness, his eyes were shinning.

We talked that night of death and dying. It somehow made it less frightening if we placed it before us and examined it. We talked of things we wished we done, people we wished we had forgiven, goodbyes we wished we could have said. This being the second time the Prisoner had faced the certainty of death in such a short while, he had already pondered extensively on the end of life. He said that this time it was more difficult, only because he was not going out alone, but watching someone he loved dearly fall beside him. I replied that we should look at sharing this moment as a blessing; we could hold each other through the final moments we had. He told me that he wanted to think of death not as an end, but merely a pause. I told him I hoped he was correct. I savored every moment, the sound of every syllable he uttered through the darkness. If death was simply a passageway to the next chapter, I wanted to be sure I took him there with me. Even if I could not have him at my side in the flesh, I vowed I would never forget a single thing about him.

The jail was windowless and we had no way of knowing how much time had passed since I had been brought down. When we began to hear voices on the stairs above us, we both hushed, standing slowly and fixing our eyes upon the doorway that led into the jail.

“Do you think they’re coming for us?” I called to him.

“Most likely,” he responded. His voice sounded very dry. “Do you smell smoke?” he asked suddenly.

I sniffed the air tentatively, and the familiar perfume reached my nostrils. “Yes,” I replied. “How strange.”

“Perhaps they’re already stoking the fire with which they shall burn us,” he said grimly. I glanced over at him, his face drawn and anxious, looking a thousand years older than he was. And I knew nothing in the world except that I loved him.

A peculiar sense of calm and – even more absurdly – happiness settled over me. There was a peaceful joy in just being alive, in knowing that I was loved and he was here with me. I was not afraid and I did not look back; I knew my choice had been right. My only prickle of discomfort came from the anticipation.

Thundering footsteps were beginning to crash down the stairs now, hard and heavy. I edged forward, peering at the door in anticipation. The Prisoner tensed, gripping the bars at the front of his cell. “I love you,” he called out suddenly, the words sounding torn from his lips as though he could not restrain them any longer.

How my heart melted anew every time he uttered those words. “I love you too,” I whispered, my throat tight.

There was a heavy hammering on the door, the scrape of the latch. I held my breath. The Prisoner turned to look at me, and when he spoke his voice was weary, but not defeated. “It would seem your Prince has come to part us,” he said, his voice ringing with a slow sadness and a hint of dark humor.

I closed my eyes, holding as tight as I could to my last minutes of life and the sound of his voice.

“I’d like to see him try.”

The Last Prince of Latvia pt . . . 19?

2010-05-21T22:12:00.001-06:00

I can't count this high in Roman numerals!

Still numb and reeling, I allowed Cunningham to lead me upstairs and let me into a spacious bedroom. A large four poster bed was nestled in a corner, the hangings in shreds and the mattress devoid of any furnishings, and a vanity was pushed against the wall beneath a large window, its mirror cracked down the middle. The drawers had all been pulled out and over turned, their contents emptied. Sunlight was spilling across the faded carpet, and as Cunningham and I stepped in, a puff of dust rose around our knees.

Cunningham released my arm, and we surveyed the room together. I walked forward slowly, then pulled out the stool beneath the vanity and sat down heavily on it, running my fingers through my tangled hair. I looked up from the thin layer of dust upon the mahogany surface to my face, reflected in the mirror. I was startled by the woman staring back at me, so much older than I remembered her. Her face was scratched, cracked by tracks of blood smeared by her tears. Her eyes seemed to droop at the corner, saddened and weary, and her hair formed a greasy, matted frame around her face. The only word I could think to describe her was ‘lost.’ There was hardly any beauty left in her; only scars.

Behind me, Cunningham let out a short sigh. “This was the youngest princess’s room, when the Prince’s family lived here, I believe,” he said.

I nodded, still staring at my own reflection in the mirror. “Do you hate me, Mister Cunningham?” I asked softly.

In the mirror, his reflection looked up. I could tell my question had startled him. he fiddled with the pockets of his vest, then replied, “No…no, I don’t hate you.”

I nodded, swallowing hard. “I would hate me.”

Cunningham shuffled his feet, staring down at the carpet. “You chose a side and you fought for it. And even though I don’t agree with you, I can respect that choice.”

“But I didn’t choose!” I argued, feeling a tear slip down my cheek. “I can’t choose! I have to sacrifice someone’s life by tomorrow morning and I don’t know whose it’s going to be. I can’t let the man I love die, but I don’t know if I have the courage to give up my own life.” I dropped my head into my hands, pressing the heels of my palms against my eyelids. “I’m too afraid.”

It was silent for a moment, then Cunningham said, “I don’t think the Prince’s victory will last…if that helps at all.”

I looked up, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “What do you mean?”

He ran his fingers through his hair, still staring at the carpet. “I like to think we’ve won, but this is barely the beginning. There are soldiers stationed all over the country; they’ll be here soon, and when they arrive the best we can hope for is negotiations, which will likely not go well. And there’s the governors and mayors in local towns, they’ll certainly put up a fuss. And what about all the senators and politicians? We can’t imprison them all. All we did was capture the capital, and even that’s a shaky victory. We lost a large number of our men, and if we have to deal with an uprising or another fight soon, we may not have enough to keep it under control. It’s very likely that we’ll all die.”

I was startled by his confession. “Are you certain?”

He laughed dryly. “Nothing is certain, Princess. My opinions are merely speculation.”

“So why are you still here?” I asked incredulously. “If you are so certain that failure is inevitable, why not run?”

He smiled sadly. “Because I’ve fought for this for so long. I can’t give up now.”

I bit my lip, tracing the shape of a heart in the dust on the vanity. “What would you do,” I asked. “If you were me?”

He thought for a moment, rubbing his chin pensively. “You’re in a difficult spot. And the decision before you is hard and unfair.” He thought for a moment longer, then concluded, “If I were you, I would make a choice, and then I wouldn’t look back.”

I nodded, wishing his answer had been less abstract.

He seemed to sense my despair, for he said softly, “I can’t give you an answer, Princess. Only you can do that.” He rested his hand against the doorknob. “The Prince has requested that you do not leave this room until you are sent for. There will be some women along shortly to see to you.”

“Mister Cunningham!” I called him back as he began to exit. “Will you do something for me?”

He nodded. “Anything, Princess.”

I stood and faced him. “If I am not allowed to leave, will you go to the Prisoner for me? Will you give him a message?”

Cunningham nodded. “What would you like me to tell him?”

I wet my lips. “Ask him…ask him if he’ll have me here.”

If my message puzzled Cunningham, he did not manifest it. Instead, he nodded, then bowed, backing out of the room slowly and shutting the door behind him.

I collapsed backwards onto the vanity stool again, letting my head drop into my hands wearily. I was suddenly aware for the first time of the gnawing hunger tearing at my stomach, and how incredibly weary I was. I closed my eyes, pressing against them with the heel of my hand and blowing a heavy sign through my nose. My head was spinning, pounding with the heavy rhythm that seemed to repeat over and over in my mind.

The Prince or the Prisoner…

I loved them both. I wanted them both; The one because he was young and innocent and loved me, the other because he was shrewd and cold and I loved him. But was it even a question of love? Regardless of my feelings towards the Prisoner, I could not bear to condemn him to death. And yet I was reluctant to sacrifice my own happiness for that of a man I barely knew, and perhaps hardly even loved. Perhaps what I felt for the Prisoner was the same infatuation I had always held for the Prince. Perhaps if we had known each other longer, if would only be a matter of time before I could not tolerate his faults either. Perhaps no man possessed the ability to selflessly love a woman, to hold her without bruising her and be only hers until he died. And if that were so, was I not better off to save both our lives and simply stay with the devil I knew?

The Prince or the Prisoner…

I let my head sink forward onto the dusty surface of the vanity, my cheek smearing the heart I had traced. I could not recall ever feeling so helplessly lost.

I must have nodded off, for I was startled awake by a knocking of the door. I staggered to my feet, wiping the dust off my cheek with the back of my hand, and opened the door. On the threshold stood a tall, middle aged woman, her hair wrapped in a scarf, a small little girl peering at me curiously from behind her. She was carrying a large knapsack.

“Good day,” I greeted her.

“Good day,” she repeated, surveying me critically. “Are you…the Princess?”

I nodded. “Yes, I suppose so.”

She nodded curtly. “The Prince,” her voice collided against the word with a barely controlled bitterness that disturbed me. “Has requested that I help you clean up before dinner this evening.”

I nodded. “Yes, thank you, please come in.”

She brushed past me, her little girl trailing after her, still clutching her skirts. I watched as she retreated to a back corner of the room and pressed against a door I had not noticed before. It opened with an ear splitting creak, and she ducked inside. I peered in behind her to find that it was a large bathroom with a claw footed porcelain tub situated in the center. The woman lay down her knapsack on the floor, then twisted the knob at the head of the tub. There was a grinding, followed by a low rumbling, and then water began to tumble from the tarnished gold nozzle. After a moment, steam began to rise from the crystal water, and my skin prickled in anticipation. I seated myself on the stool of the vanity, my situation temporarily made light by the thought of a warm bath.

I watched the woman as she pulled from her back a bar of pale soap, two glass bottles filled with a thick liquid, several thick towels, and a gold robe, which she laid out across a bench in the corner. She then uncorked one of the bottles and dribbled a portion of its contents into the bathtub. Immediately, thick, frothy bubbles began to spill over the porcelain sides. I could have cried with joy.

It seemed to take an eternity for the tub to fill. I could hardly contain my anticipation as the room filled with warm steam and the sweet perfume of the soap reached my nose. At last, with a grinding squeal, the woman shut off the taps and called me in. I quickly dashed into the bathroom with her.

She barely looked up from the towels she was laying out as I stood dutifully beside her. “Take off your clothes,” she commanded. If I had not spent so long living with men, I perhaps might have hesitated. But I was so eager to be clean and so excited to be in the presence of another woman that I stripped off my filthy tunic quickly, dropping it at her feet. She extended a hand, which I took, and she helped me step into the tub.

The water was scalding. I bit back a cry as the heat filled the scrapes and cracks in my skin. It was an exhilarating agony. For a moment I stood up to the waist, struggling to catch my stolen breath, letting my lower body adjust before I let the rest of me slip beneath the surface with a shudder.

I allowed myself a moment to forget. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of the warm steam perfumed with lavender soap, focusing on the tingling heat engulfing my body. I let my head slip under the water, my hair splaying about me like dark seaweed in a frothy ocean, working my fingers through the tangles that seemed to melt once submerged.

When I ran out of breath, I surfaced, savoring the feeling of dripping water on my cheeks that at last wasn’t tears. I shook my head, dislodging the water from my ears, and opened my eyes. The woman was standing beside me, pouring a flowery smelling shampoo onto her hands. A moment later she was working it through my hair, massaging my scalp roughly, working through the matted knots and disentangling the grease. I took a deep breath, leaning my head back against the rim of the tub with a deep sigh.

After the shampoo came another sweet later that rubbed into my hair, and then a heavenly smelling soap that I scrubbed against my chaffed and dry skin until the dirt and blood had washed out of the cracks. When the water was beginning to grow chill, the woman opened to me a wide, feathery towel that was even softer than I imagined. I enveloped myself in it, running it against my skin and feeling clean in a way that I could not remember experiencing before. I was breathing in the own scent of my skin, a foreign flowery smell that made my head swim in delight.

When I was dry, the woman extended to me the golden dressing gown, which I slipped over my shoulders. It fell all the way to the floor, and encased my thin shoulders in its folds of material as I tied its sash at the waist.

The woman was pulling a wooden handled hair brush from her bag and gestured back into the bedroom with it. “Go sit down there and I’ll brush out your hair.”

I smiled at her. “Thank you.”

She cast her eyes down with a mumble. Her little girl was seated on the vanity stool, studying herself curiously in the mirror. The woman chased her off with a sharp bark that sent the little girl cowering around the side of the vanity. I seated myself, and the woman began to comb through my hair with slow steady strokes.

The little girl was staring at me intently, her middle to fingers stuck in her mouth. I didn’t look at her at first, thinking she would grow disinterested, but when her gaze did not falter, I smiled and said, “Hello.”

She didn’t say anything until the woman chided, “What do you say?”

The little girl removed her fingers from her mouth just long enough to ask, “Are you a princess?”

I smiled, struggling to avoid thinking of the Prince. “No,” I replied. “I’m just an ordinary girl like you.”

The little girl nodded. “I didn’t think you were.”

“Really?” I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Why not?”

“You don’t look like a princess,” she replied. “You don’t wear dresses. And you aren’t pretty.”

“Mind your manners,” the woman snapped reproachfully with a tug at my hair.

“She’s alright,” I reassured her, then turned back to the little girl. “I’m not very pretty, am I?” I asked. Timidly, she shook her head. “Well, hopefully your mother can help me change that.”

The woman gave a yank at a knot in my hair that unexpectedly jerked my head backwards. “I’m not her mother,” she said, her voice suddenly sharp with bitterness.

“Oh…I apologize,” I said, feeling my cheeks flush.

The woman gave another tug, keeping intently focused on her work on my matted curls. “Her mother was the lady in waiting to the youngest princess. She was killed the night the royal family was overthrown.”

“Oh,” I was suddenly uncomfortable, unsure of what to say. “I’m so sorry.”

The woman shrugged with an unintelligible grunt. She laid the brush down on the vanity, then twisted my hair, letting the water ring out of it as the damp curls relaxed back into their customary spirals. I sat for a moment, struggling with the line between polite conversation and intrusion, then remembered that, for tonight at least, I was a princess.

“I don’t mean to appear insolent,” I began, staring at the woman in the mirror. “But it would appear to me that you don’t seem to want to be here.”

She glanced into the mirror, and her eyes met mine for a fraction of a second before she turned back and began pinning my hair in spirals against my head. “Your Prince has caused my family enough trouble already, and I thought we were rid of him. Now he’s suddenly back after we all thought he was dead, and expects us to bow down and worship him again.”

“You don’t have to stay,” I said, turning around to face her. “I’m the princess as much as he’s the prince, and I wouldn’t mind if you left.”

She looked down at her shoes and shook her head. “I can’t leave,” she replied. “My husband’s in the army, and the Prince has him hostage. If I do what he asks, he’ll let him go. Now turn around and I’ll finish your hair.”

I faced the mirror again, my heart twisting with sympathy for this woman fighting for her husband’s freedom in the only way she could. “It’s not fair,” I said softly, looking down at my hands.

The woman gave a sharp burst of laughter. “That’s government, darling. That’s life under a monarchy.” She wound the final piece of my scarlet hair around her finger, the secured it just above my ear. “I apologize if I had been too bold.”

“Not at all!” I replied hastily. “You have been very kind, and you have as much right to speak your mind as anyone else. I’m very sorry about your husband.” She nodded, still unwilling to meet my eyes.

A knock interrupted our reverie. The woman quickly turned and headed for the door, the little girl chasing at her heel. She opened the door to two more women, both tall, one with a shock of dark hair, the other with thin, fair curls, both laden with boxes and bags. They looked to be just a few years my senior.

The woman stepped back, allowing them to enter the room. Upon seeing me, they both gave deep curtsies. I stood quickly, my cheeks flushing at the formality, and smiled.

The dark haired woman set her stack of white boxes down on the vanity stood I had just vacated. “From the Prince,” she informed me timidly. “He wishes you to wear these tonight.”

Curiously, I opened the first box. Inside was a pale blue gown, accented with cream colored lace. It was an exquisite garment, with seed pearls inlaid along the neck line that would undoubtedly plunge off my shoulders, and a layered skirt of material so smooth that it could only be silk. Along with the dress, the Prince had sent white, high heeled slippers, a pearl necklace, and a hair comb inlaid with opal.

I was overwhelmed. “Did you make this?” I ask the dark haired woman. She nodded nervously. “It’s absolutely beautiful!”

A faint smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. “Thank you. It’s one of the finest pieces I have ever created.”

“I hope he paid you well for this,” I said teasingly, but as I turned my smile to her, hers faded. “He did pay you, didn’t he?” I asked, dreading her answer.

She shuffled her feet. “It is an honor to be of service to the Prince whether or not I receive compensation.”

“That’s absurd!” I exclaimed. “I’ll speak with him. Skill like this will not go unrewarded.”

She bowed her head with a nod.

“Will you come get dressed, Princess?” the fair haired woman asked, extending to me another box, this one slimmer. I nodded and let my gold robe fall to the floor as she removed an ivory colored chemise, which she slipped over my head. It was followed by lacy pantalets of the same color, along with knee high stockings and several thick petticoats. She then drew form the box a bone corset, and pointed me over to the bed. I took my place, wrapping my hands firmly around the post as she encased my narrow waist in the corset and began to tug until it was tightly cased around my stomach and chest. I took a deep breath, feeling it catch in my chest and struggle around the tight garment. I was unaccustomed to wearing my corsets so tightly laced.

Then came the dress. It took both the young women to slip it over my head, while the first woman and her little girl watched from the bathroom as she tidied up. “I hope it fits,” the dressmaker murmured as she began to do up the clasps in the back.

“If not, just do up the corset tighter,” I teased, arranging the lacy neckline on my shoulders. Neither of them even smiled. I began to sense that they, like the first woman, were here against their will.

The dress fit almost perfectly. I marveled at myself in the vanity mirror, swishing the silk backwards and forwards, marveling at its shimmer.

“If you would sit down, my lady,” the fair haired woman was pulling pins and powders form her bag. “I will fix your hair.”

Sitting still was difficult. I wanted nothing more than to dance in this dress, to feel it move with me, kiss my shoulders and sing against my skin. I tapped my toes up and down anxiously as the woman unwound the pin curls and fixed them in an elegant pile on the top of my head, fixed with the comb which I had a feeling the Prince had no right to send me either. She then dabbed a light sheen of powder across my face, rouge across my cheeks, and a sprinkle of gold dust across my eyelids. I hardly recognized my own reflection as she fastened the pearl necklace at my throat. The girl that now stared back at me could not be more different than the one I had studied earlier with dirt smeared cheeks and bloody ears. This girl was a woman, elegant and refined. The only similarity was the sadness that still lingered around her eyes. I still had not made my choice.

I stood, and the three women all curtsied with whispered compliments of my exquisite beauty. I smiled as the little girl followed suit.

“Do I look like a princess now?” I asked her.

She looked me up and down, her fingers again stuck in her mouth, then nodded. “But you aren’t….are you?” she asked hesitantly.

I laughed, surprising even myself with the musical sound so uncharacteristic of me. “No,” I replied warmly. “I’m not.”

Faux Punk; for Molly

2010-05-15T15:36:00.001-06:00

Once,

When we were young,

You drew a picture

In crayon

And gave it to me with a smile.

And I hid it at the bottom of my desk drawer

And told you it was ugly

Because I had never drawn

Anything that good

And you were only six years old.

Once,

A little later,

You skied a black diamond run with me

Sliding clumsily down the mountain

With your skies in a wedge

And when you got to the bottom,

I lied and said it wasn’t hard

Because with four years more experience

I could barely make it down.

What I’m trying to say

Is that

My whole life

I’ve been mean to you

Because I was always scared

That you were too quickly

Replacing me

As the family wonder,

And I was terrified of losing my place

As the best

And I had to assert my authority over you

In whatever way I knew how

To prevent you from staging

The inevitable coup

Before I had a chance

To safety pin my crown to my eyebrows.

This is an apology letter

For everything I ever said

And a lame attempt to say

Everything I never did.

So here we go with a

Revolutionary idea;

The truth.

Consider everything else a lie

Because its

For real this time.

So here it is.

I think you are the best.

When we were kids, that was the scariest reality

I could never face.

Now that we’re older kids,

It’s the most exciting part of my day,

The feeling that someday, you are going

To be amazing,

And you don’t even know it yet.

Do you know that every moment

You astound me,

With your charcoal smeared fingers

Etching the untouchable into your leather bound soul

Stamped “SECRET,”

Or poking at ivory stumps

Until you’ve coaxed alternative rock

From the classical mahogany.

Or when you dream in

Electric guitar riffs

And turn down blueberry cheesecake.

You are the only person

That makes me

Laugh until I glow, steals ten years,

And then shares that smile prefaced

With the word inside,

Who will ride in my car with the windows

Rolled down when the heat is on,

Who slouches through the hallways of growing up

With a book of presidential pets

Tucked under your arm,

The only person I know who is

Honest enough to tell me when I suck

And not afraid to tell me

When I don’t.

You don’t cry in the movies,
You sing when you think I don’t hear,

You lock yourself in your room

And let your heart explode

Until you’re ringing drops of artistry

From your still beating veins.

Honestly.

You are my favorite faux punk,

Broadway blasting, cartoon quoting,

Tag along, schemer, uncoordinated

Argyle laced closet Jedi knight

With the headphones

Glued to her eardrums,

My favorite voice on the other end of the phone,

My favorite kind of disappointment,

The best kind of resentment

And it feels amazing on the days

You still like me.

I can’t tell you what it’s like

When you pretend like you don’t care

And don’t want me around

Because you already know.

It’s horrible to think

I was like this for years

And you kept coming back to

Stand at the edge of my keyboard

And extend a pocket sized Yoda figurine

With a dopey smile,

Looking at me with those cloudless eyes

Like you trusted me.

And I know we’re years past

The days when I was the

Best thing in your world

But maybe some day

We can slip back through the threads

And pretend that I’m still

The only thing you want to be when you grow up.

If I was to tattoo

An acrostic across my arm

Y would be for you

Because you’re half the heart

With a screaming echo inside me,

Because every sort of trouble you are,

You’re worth it.

You’ll never let me call you beautiful.

How about just

Awesome?

The One Day Reign of an American King

2010-05-03T10:46:00.000-06:00

Three days after the cherry blossoms bloomed

In east Tennessee

William Walker packed his courage, an army,

And three dollars and twenty five cents in an antique carpet bag,

And walked heel to toe in silver tipped spurs

Towards the southern horizon,

And within the year of that morning had fallen

The one day reign of an American king.

He was no giant among men,

With sand colored hair and eyes like a bleak version of eternity

That they had to press against his cheeks

Before they deposited his tongue tied corpse,

The coagulated blood dripping from

His eardrums and staining the pale desert

With scarlet, cream, and navy streaks,

Which is just another way of saying patriotism.

It was prophetic,

The way he dreamed his name out of the history books

Like a filibuster fortune teller,

It was touching, his certainty that he was born to be some sort of

Leader of men,

Preordained by mutinous angels.

I was drawn to him like he was the kind of

Rippled skipping stone I collect,

Maybe I saw in him a kindred spirit

Because he was incredible and forgotten,

A stalwart dreamer with a ridiculous fascination

And an absurd amount of time on his hands.

I wanted to write a novel about him

But I only had forty-nine minutes before

I was due at Appomattox for surrender,

Armed with soggy flannel and a good excuse.

We fought together that day;

William Walker for a crown that wasn’t his,

While I scraped underneath the desk

Because maybe somebody cheated once

And left it there.

I should tell you now, I’m not that kind of woman;

The one who leads the revolution,

Or cries in church

Or dances with her eyes closed.

I’m not going to hold your hand

Because I’ve never fallen that far

Without breaking.

I’ll only know what to say when you don’t want to talk,

And as hard as I try to imagine you

With all your clothes off

I can’t.

It only makes me more aware of

What a virgin candle I am;

Never burned before.

William Walker was a man

Who had a woman

And left her on the border because he loved her

And wanted more than anything else

A world in which she could be proud of him

So he won a country and had her name stitched on the flag

Before the sun had set on their

Seventh wedding anniversary

And third unborn child.

He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t that man,

The one who’d sit at home

Or read books

Or wear her knitted Christmas socks,

But he’d love her like a fierce shade of violet,

Like a wild fire with nothing to burn

And he’d break against her like a fever

If she could close her eyes

And pretend she was half way to the moon.

Three days after the cherry blossoms

Melted off the trees in the summer rain,

Seven men planted an unmarked grave

Across the ocean of America’s bloodiest days,

And one hundred years ahead of

The girl who couldn’t sit still

Until she told his story.

The Last Prince of Latvia pt XVIII

2010-04-29T13:34:00.003-06:00

So it's almost finals week, and I've hit a wall. I'm burnt out, exhausted, and not feeling too good today. So I needed to blow off some studying steam. What better way than venture into Latvia for a bit? The first part is a bit choppy, but once I got going, it got much better. Anyways, I'm anticipating there is going to be two more chapters after this one, plus an epilogue. So we are almost done! And this one's a big one....much is revealed......read on!

I do not recall how long we were forced to stand with our hands behind our heads, faces pressed against the blood stained stone wall. I do not remember how many soldiers collapsed beside me, dead from wounds received in battle, nor do I remember how many were shot by the Prince’s men when they tried to run. I do remember clearly my own churning stomach, sick with waiting, and the feeling as though I was leading the line waiting at the steps of a scaffold.

At first I was restless and unable to stand still. I fiddled with lose threads on my hat and lone strands of hair that had fallen around my face. I rocked from my toes to the balls of my feet. I chewed on my lip. Then, the pain began to set int. The cuts on my face and hands began to sting painfully, the dried blood on my skin cracking with each grimace. My head began to pound, my whole body crying out from hunger and fatigue, and I thought for a time I was going to faint. My legs hurt the worst, stiff and aching from so long standing. I leaned my forehead against the wall behind me and flexed my knees, hoping to relieve some of their anguish. One of the Prince’s men noticed, and brandished his gun at me. “You! Stand up!” he barked. Gritting my teeth, I pushed me self back up wearily.

We were allowed to turn at last, just in time for the Prince’s men to lash our wrists together with a long cord of rope. I seized the opportunity to search the faces of the other soldiers lined up beside me, but couldn’t find the Prisoner among them. I scanned the room, numbering the men left to guard us against the Latvian soldiers, realizing after a moment that the Prince was no longer among them. The sick feeling of dread already settled in my stomach intensified.

The sun was high in the sky, glimmering against the tips of my boots, when the doors to the ballroom opened at last. All heads in the room turned as a single man, clad in the darkness of the Prince, strode through briskly.

It was Mister Cunningham. I recognized his ginger beard instantly, though his once jovial face beneath was now devoid of any happiness. He was stoic and smeared with the grime of the morning’s fight. One shoulder of his shirt was stained by a dark smear of copper and crimson. The leader of our guards approached him, and the two men exchanged a whispered conversation for a moment before the captain nodded, then called two guards forward to accompany them.

The four men approached the end of the line of soldiers and began walking the length slowly, Mister Cunningham in front, carefully examining each captive’s face. My heart quickened. I knew he was looking for me. I kept my eyes forward, resisting the urge to pull down my hat or drop my gaze. There was little hope of my identity remaining a secret for much longer.

When they four men reached me, Cunningham held up a hand to stop them. His eyes narrowed, searching my face with careful scrutiny. I struggled to meet his gaze without guilt.

Abruptly he reached out and tugged my hat off my head. A wave of matted red curls rained down across my shoulders, falling in front of my face. The two soldiers tied beside me gave an audible gasp of surprise.

“Princess,” Cunningham said stiffly.

“Mister Cunningham,” I replied. I was uncomfortably aware of every eye in the room being fixed upon me.

Cunningham pursed his lips with obvious agitation, then snapped to the men beside him, “Cut her lose. His majesty wants a word with her.”

I couldn’t restrain a derisive laugh. “His majesty?” I asked. “Is that what he asked you to call him now? The Prince isn’t good enough anymore?”

Cunningham’s face flushed agitatedly and he fixed me with a frightening stare. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage already without insulting your new king?” he whispered, his voice tight, and I thought for a moment he might strike me. He turned away sharply, shoving one of the other guards towards me. “I said cut her lose.” The man stepped forward quickly, drawing out a short knife with which he sawed at the ropes around my wrist until the fell away. He grabbed me roughly by the arm, and his companion seized me on the other side, then together they dragged me forward and out of the ballroom, following Cunningham’s footsteps down the hall.

I had never been in the throne room before. The only time I had ever spoken to the Prince’s father, I had met him in his study, for he wanted to keep his warning to stay away from his son off the record. The room must have been magnificent at one time, but the once bright walls were now faded to a muted, dusty shade of brown, and the drapes were moth eaten and the carpet riddled with holes. I suddenly found myself wondering if this was the room in which the Prince’s family had been murdered.

The room held no furniture anymore, except a few free standing lantern holders and a towering throne that had been dragged into the center of the room, glowing with new polish. It looked odd and out of place, gleaming amidst the dusty shadow of the room.

Atop the throne was the Prince. He sat upright, rigid, his fingers curled around the golden armrests. His clothes were tattered and bloodied, his face bruised and dirty, and I could see a deep weariness hidden behind a gleaming exhilaration in his eyes. As we approached, he stood, and I realized that he was wearing a makeshift crown, fashioned from what appeared to be thick iron wire and a gold chain. I almost laughed. He looked like a child, caught in make believe, king of his own little world.

Cunningham and the other two soldiers dropped to their knees at the feet of his throne with a murmur of “Your majesty.”

He ignored them; his eyes were only for me. He approached me slowly, each step spanning an eternity, until his face was inches from mine. “Do you not bow before your king?” he asked coolly.

The corners of my mouth involuntarily perked upwards. “I see no king,” I replied with matched frostiness.

I expected him to lash out or strike me, but instead he smiled, then laughed, which frightened me more than his anger would have. “How clever,” he said, his voice ringing with bitterness. “I’m beginning to wonder if it’s even worth asking what the hell you were doing fighting with the Latvian army. I’ve given you so long to come up with a lie that I’d just rather not indulge you at this point.” The moment before he clasped his hands behind his back, I noticed they were shaking. “Of everyone fighting for me, Belle, you were the last one thought would betray me.”

“I didn’t betray you!” I replied firmly.

“Then what do you call it?” he snapped. “You freed and then ran away with our captive.”

I was caught off guard. “How did you know that was me?”

He let out another caw of derisive laughter. “You left my coat in the tent! The coat I lent you that night. Come now, sweetheart, I’m not an idiot.”

“I did not betray you!” I retorted stubbornly.

“Then after you two ran away, you joined up with his army, and now I find you fighting against me in battle.” His voice was rising with anger. “Care to explain that?”

I knew the truth was fantastical, but pressed on relentlessly. “We never planned to meet up with his company! It was just a chance. They recognized me as your Princess, took me captive. He freed me by disguising me as a soldier, but before we had time to run you decided to storm the castle like some sort of damned knight in shining armor.”

He smiled at me like I was a child, oozing a sticky sweet condescending air that suffocated me. “Come now dearest, surely you can do better than that.” He reached out and touched my cheek. I turned my head sharply, and he dropped his hand with a laugh.

“Stop it,” I whispered.

The doors behind us opened, and we turned in unison. One of the Prince’s men, silhouetted in the doorway, gave a bow. “Your highness, we found him.”

“Bring him in,” the Prince replied, and the soldier nodded, darting from the room. The Prince turned to me with a cold smile that made my stomach drop.

The guard returned, this time with second, dragging between them the limping, bound, and bloodied form of the Prisoner.

A cry tore itself from my lips before I could stop it, and I tried to run to him but Cunningham and one of his companions caught me by the arms, dragging me backward. I struggled against the as the Prisoner was dragged forward. “Let him go!” I cried, pulling has hard as I could against the hands that bound me.

The Prince surveyed the Prisoner coldly for a moment, then turned to me with a deliberate slowness. “I was going to ask if this was the man, but after that little outburst the question would seem rather rhetorical.”

“Please!” I cried. “He’s got nothing to do with this!”

“He has everything to do with this,” the Prince retorted harshly.

I stopped by struggling and, in desperation, dropped to my knees before him. “I beg you…please,” I whispered.

The Prince stared at me, his eyes a mystery. “Do you love him?” he asked softly.

Startled, I looked from the Prince’s face to the Prisoner’s. “He loves me,” I replied.

“That’s not an answer,” the Prince said.

The Prisoner raised his head, and as his clear eyes found mine, he smiled. My heart melted. I wanted to run to him, wanted to kiss him, wanted to tell him all the wonderful things about him and how I would give anything to see him free, because his pain was my fault. I remembered his face, his words, the first time we kissed the way his hands were shaking, the shooting wave of warmth that swept my entire body every time I thought of him. How he looked at me like I was the most beautiful creature in the world, how he smiled when my name passed his lips, how he treated me like the queen I would never be. How he wanted to know every part of me, wanted every part of me to be his. He wanted everything about me that was wonderful and good, and even every flaw; he wanted those too. How he loved me for everything I was.

“I think I do,” I replied softly.

The Prince pursed his lips, turning away before I had a chance to read the emotion that swept his face. “How blissfully romantic,” he whispered, his voice tight with inexplicable pain.

“Don’t mock me,” I snapped.

“So you love him,” he said, his voice rising. “It’s beautiful. Ideal. I’m happy for you, truly.”

“Stop it!” I protested. “You’re acting like a child! What’s it matter to you if I love him? You and I have been through for a long while.”

He paused, then said slowly. “So we have. But if I said I would have you back…would you still love him then?”

His words struck me like a blow. “You would…what?”

He turned slowly. “I want you back. I love you Belle. I’ve always loved you.”

“And you’re saying this after all the hell you put me through these past few months, after telling me you wanted nothing more to do with me?” I snapped, appalled and taken aback by his sudden confession.

The Prince gave a heavy sigh, pressing his fist against his lips. “I’m sorry for all that…I didn’t know what else to do.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice rising in pitch. “And what are you talking about? You ended our engagement! You cast me away! And now all the sudden you love me again?”

“I didn’t mean it!” he cried, and suddenly he was on his knees beside me. “Did you really think I could ever stop loving you?”

He reached out to take my hand, but I pulled away from him. “Is this some sort of trick?”

“No!” he replied desperately. “I love you Belle! Please believe me when I say that.”

“Why on earth would I believe that after everything else you have said to me?” I asked. Tears were falling from my eyes before I could stop them, and he reached out and brushed them away, his fingers lingering against my check.

“I’m sorry for all I put you through,” he whispered. “And if there had been any other way, believe me, I would have taken it.”

“What are you talking about?” My words were blurred by a sob that escaped, tearing itself from the painful mass of confusion and betrayal twisting inside of me.

He stared at me for a moment, and I knew he was gathering his courage. “There’s something I need to tell you,” he whispered. “Something I should have told you a long time ago.” I nodded, my throat to clogged to speak. He took a deep breath, then said evenly, “I’m engaged to be married.”

“What?” I whispered, my voice trembling. “To who?”

“The youngest daughter of the Russian Czar,” he replied wearily. “A princess.”

“Since…since when?” I stammered, my voice catching.

He let out another heavy sigh, his eyes straying from mine guiltily. “Since I was three years old.”

My already cracked heart burst. “All that time? And you knew? You knew and you never told me?”

He nodded, still unable to look at me, his fingers against my check straying, twisting a lock of my hair. “I never told you because at first it didn’t matter, and when it did I was too frightened that if I told you, you wouldn’t love me anymore.”

“So you lied to me?” I asked aghast. “You let me believe that someday you were going to marry me when really you never had any intention to?”

“Of course I wanted to marry you!” he cried, his hand slipping behind my neck. “Everything I told you, everything I felt for you was real! I spent every waking moment trying to find some way around it, some way to get out of it. My best fantasy was running away with you.”

“So were you going to tell me as you were walking down the aisle with her or me?” I asked bitterly.

“I didn’t want to tell you. Just in case I could make it work and it didn’t have to happen. But my parents would have none of that. That’s why they threw you out after we—”

“But regardless of this, you still broke off our engagement!” I burst out. “After your family and your crown were overthrown and when your promise with the Czar obviously didn’t hold up any longer.”

“Let me explain.” This time when he reached for my hand, I didn’t pull away. “When I began to realize that I had an army and a restoration of the monarchy may actually have a chance of happening, I knew that I was going to need allies. So just before I left for America, I wrote a letter to the Czar. I told him of my plans and said that if he would still recognize our engagement, I would marry his daughter once I was on the throne. I didn’t expect to find you, and when I did I was so completely overcome that I forgot all about my letter and my offer of marriage. I only wanted you. While I was away, the Czar responded, and his letter was given to me by one of my men once you and I reached Europe again. The Czar told me that his oldest daughter, the one I had been engaged to, was already married, as the world thought me dead. However, his youngest is still unmarried, and he said that if my revolution was successful, I could marry her. If I consented to this engagement, Russia would not only ally with Latvia, but he would fund my revolution. All our money came from him.” He ran his fingers through his hair, obviously uncomfortable. “And I didn’t know what to do. Now that I had you back, I couldn’t think of letting you go, but I knew that we could not succeed without funds, and once on the throne Russia would be an invaluable ally. So I wrote to the Czar and told him I would marry his daughter.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“Because I thought it would be easier to lie,” he replied bitterly. “I knew I couldn’t bear it if I told you and you left me, so I thought it would be easier if I was the one to cast you off. I knew nothing else to do but call off our engagement before I was in too deep.” His fingers tightened on mine. “But believe me when I say that you are all I have ever loved!”

I looked up from our intertwined hands, feeling broken and weary. “I remember once saying those same words to you…but if I recall correctly they also fell on deaf ears.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, staring down at our fingers. I shook my head, and another tear spilled. He looked up at me. “But I thought that perhaps, we could make things right.” This time it was not the Prince that I looked up at, but the Prisoner. “I have to marry the Russian Princess; I have already sent word to the Czar with news of my triumph here. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still be together. I want you here with me. For the rest of our lives.”

I was startled. “You mean stay here as the royal whore?” I asked flatly.

He cast me a reproachful glare. “Don’t say it like that.”

“Well that’s what you mean, isn’t it?” I tried to pull away from him, but he caught both my hands pulling me towards him.

“I love you Belle. I have always loved you. And life here would be but a shadow without you. You would stay here with me, in the palace. We’d be like children again.”

“Except we’re not children anymore,” I snapped. “We’re grown and responsible. And now you’re asking me to sacrifice all my morals for—”

“For love,” he interrupted.

“Oh is that what you call it?” I asked, disgusted.

“You love me. I know you still do. Some things run to deep to ever be forgotten, and deep down in your soul, I am one of those things. Please remember.”

I had no answer. Yes, I loved him. I had always loved him. And I knew that for as long as I lived, there would always be some part of me that did love him. But for all the things I loved about him, there were a dozen things I hated, and I knew that if I stayed, they would only get worse. The lies, abuse, and neglect would run as deep as it ever had, and I wasn’t sure I had enough love in me to forgive anyone for that, even him.

“We would be happy,” he whispered, pressing a hand to my cheek. “We’d be in love.”

“We wouldn’t be happy,” I shook my head, looking desperately from the Prisoner to the Prince. “I…I don’t know! I don’t know what to say.”

“Say yes,” he breathed, caressing my cheek with a familiarity that made me shiver. “Say you’ll stay with me.”

“I can’t!” I gasped, struggling to breathe.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“I don’t know anymore!” I cried desperately, and the tears began to tumble in waves. He reached out and pulled me to his chest, holding me in a tight hug.

“Have dinner with me,” he said suddenly.

Surprised, I looked up at him. “What?”

“I want you to have dinner with me. I want to show you what it would be like if you stayed. Then you can give me your answer after.”

I hesitated, then nodded. “Alright. I will.”

He smiled at me, then stood, extending a hand and helping me to my feet. I kept my gaze down; I could not look at the Prisoner. “Mister Cunningham, please escort the Princess up stairs to clean up,” he instructed, and Cunningham took my arm with a curt nod. The Prince reached out and took my free hand, bowing low and kissing it. “Until tonight, Princess,” he said softly, his breath tickling my palm. I nodded, my throat still choked, and allowed Cunningham to escort me from the room.

As we reached the door, I heard the Prince behind us say, “Take the prisoner down below to the dungeons to await execution.”

My heart leapt, and I turned sharply. Cunningham struggled to maintain his grip on my arm. “What?” I exploded.

The Prince met my gaze evenly, the lover in him suddenly transformed into a shrewd leader of men. “Oh, my apologies. Didn’t I tell you?” he strode towards me briskly, hands clasped behind his back, a boyish smile on his lips as thought we were playing a game. “If you stay with me, he goes free. If you won’t have me, he dies tomorrow.”

“You can’t be serious,” I whispered, my body swept with numb shock.

“A king doesn’t joke about life and death, Bella,” he said, his smile widening as the word ‘king’ passed them.

“You know, I think I liked you better when you were a just a prince,” I whispered. “Not a king.”

He laughed. “I can’t say I agree,” he whispered, his voice dropping with a deadly seriousness. “So think about that before I see you again tonight. It’s your life, or his.”

And now I want to know what all two of you reading thinks she should do! Not that I'll listen...I already know what she's going to do....I just want to see what you think :) XOX M

Old School Radicals

2010-04-27T15:11:00.004-06:00

The first time I knew Alyssa was going to be

That kind of girl

Was the day she turned nine,

When she applied a layer of scarlet lipstick

Without a mirror

And it was flawless.

By twelve she had bleached her hair

And now she’s sixteen

And shows palomino horses

While wearing pink rhinestone studded cowboy boots

And six layers of rouge.

I never really knew her,

And what I knew I didn’t like,

But we were friends when I was young enough

That happiness was sucking on a twenty cent gumball

And clutching my father’s hand as we walked through Home Depot,

When there was no question in dreaming,

And no doubt in the existence of God,

Or wonder when he didn’t answer my prayers,

The days that made me the stumbling theist of tomorrow’s April

My ears are bludgeoned with evidence to the contrary,

Struggling to crack through my obstinate faith,

Because if I’m wrong and he’s up there

That’s gonna be one hell of an explanation

On judgment day.

And even if he isn’t, I like to think he is,

Because it feels good to have someone who likes me

Even when I suck.

I was raised in the shade of permission and pretending,

With boxes of antique jewelry

Cracking along my jawbone

And scraping past my knees,

And I wore my mother’s high heels when she couldn’t anymore

And sang Evita before I knew what it meant,

Because Argentina was crying for Madonna and me

And from deep within the subwoofing stereo that

Shattered the porcelain tile of our basement,

Trapped in the ugly part of the eighties,

Something sang to me like a scream

That someday I would change the world

With that music.

I put on plays before I could read,

Wrote stories when I couldn’t sleep,

And thought I was an anomaly

Because my parents went to two different churches,

And I couldn’t find God in either one.

Sometimes I would cry when they fought,

Then I would run through the neighborhood

Without knowing what door I could knock on

If I wanted to find understanding

And eventually just ended up home.

Like Dorothy, my dad would say

And we’d go back to pretending we were still speaking to each other.

My best friend cut off all her hair

The summer before my first kiss

And never went back,

So we mastered the art of French braid

To keep the tattered tomboy tattooed on her lips satisfied into submission,

The year I slept with the queen of England under my pillow

And a flashlight between my teeth

Every night to keep from dreaming about

The one hundred and seven things

I didn’t like about myself.

I didn’t know I was a socialist

Until the night Obama was inaugurated

When I held hands with a boy who wasn’t mine

Before I’d broken up with the one who was,

And we cried confetti tears and converse shoes

And screamed about hope and change

Because we were cardigan wearing, old school radicals

And we were gonna change the world even if it killed us.

The first time I tasted a pretzel

Was on your tongue,

So maybe I only like them

Because they were like listing the days of the week

With my shoes untied: impossible.

And in the corner of a spot lit room

At thirty nine minutes to midnight

I grew up, and my Achilles’ heel

Was my hunger to be the girl

With the motorcycle diary and the nose stud,

Because nothing says “I love you”

Like a plate of stale peppermints and a half finished novel.

My whole life I have been young.

Maybe that’s why I think

I’ll stay this way forever.

Wielding Andy Worhol

2010-04-20T12:34:00.002-06:00

Under a scarlet sky of anarchy

I learned how to count your freckles by twos

And discovered that side walk chalk is the best way

To declare your love in a thousand

Stinging hues,

Because for a few days, everyone will see it

But it washes away

The first time it rains fire or tears

From the salt grey sky

Just a few shades heavier than the

Epitome of your eyes,

And smudged liner alone

Is never enough to turn

Crowded heads in a dark room;

You have to paint your face

Until you’ve sealed all the cracks

For your heart to shine through

And glow upon your cheekbones

Like the illustrated illumination

Of everything terrible that adds up to form

A sort of turbulent beauty about you.

My father was a wordsmith

Who taught me how to dip every syllable

In gold plated honey in complete silence

And raised the hammer and sickle with pride

Because war is only peace

When the people forget how to cry out in protest

And premature infants no longer

Slip from the womb

Tangled in strands of abstract sentences,

Their first words already glittering on their tongue.

And in ninety thousand novels

I have yet to find one

That makes me feel like humanity has a fighting chance

To pass around the conch shell

Because we’re all told there’s an inherent evilness

In all of us

That we can only fight for as long as

We keep playing musical chairs with God.

And maybe if it takes a tragedy

To remember our creator,

Who stares down through the veil with glassy eyes,

Wishing all his children weren’t so damn stupid,

Then it’s worth losing a few fingernails for.

Blood spattered spectacles

Were the only heartbeat

Lifted from the arsonistic ashes,

A molten heap of a muffled memory of

Chocolate chip banana pancakes

On a molting August morning

On the last day of my childhood,

Before my world was invaded by a

Man in burnt orange trainers,

Wielding Andy Warhol

And the Communist Manifesto,

And I told him I wouldn’t write about the moon,

So he kissed me until I bled

Champagne.

A Word from Buddy Wakefield

2010-04-19T13:37:00.003-06:00

Disclaimer: I did not write this poem. Oh how I wish I had, because it is borderline genius. My current artistic obsession is the poetry of Buddy Wakefield and Andrea Gibson, a.k.a. Awkward While Airborne. They are both INCREDIBLE spoken word poets. The following poem is by Buddy Wakefield. PLEASE read it. It is gorgeous. Love, M

Hurling Crowbars at Mockingbirds (Hope is Not a Course of Action)

By Buddy Wakefield

If we were created in God’s image
then when God was a child
he smushed fire ants with his fingertips
and avoided tough questions.
There are ways around being the go-to person
even for ourselves
even when the answer is clear
clear like the holy water Gentiles would drink
before they realized
forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past.
I thought those were chime shells in your pocket
so I chucked a quarter at it
hoping to hear some part of you respond on a high note.
You acted like I was hurling crowbirds at mockingbars
and abandoned me for not making sense.
Evidently, I don’t experience things as rationally as you do.
For example, I know mercy
when I have enough money for the jukebox.
You know mercy whenever someone shoves a stick of morphine
straight up into your heart.
It felt amazing
the days you were happy to see me
so I smashed a beehive against the ocean
to try and make our splash last longer.
Remember all the honey
had me lookin’ like a jellyfish ape
but you walked off the water in a porcupine of light
strands of gold
drizzled out to the tips of your wasps.
This is an apology letter to the both of us
for how long it took me to let things go.
It was not my intention to make such a
production of the emptiness between us
playing tuba on the tombstone of a soprano
to try and keep some dead singer’s perspective alive.
It’s just that I coulda swore you had sung me a love song back there
and that you meant it
but I guess sometimes people just chew with their mouth open
so I ate ear plugs alive with my throat
hoping they’d get lodged deep enough inside the empty spots
that I wouldn’t have to hear you leaving
so I wouldn’t have to listen to my heart keep saying
all my eggs were in a basket of red flags
all my eyes to a bucket of blindfolds
in the cupboard with the muzzles and the gauze
ya know I didn’t mean to speed so far out and off
trying to drive your nickels to the well
when you were happy to let them wishes drop
but I still show up for gentleman practice
in the company of lead dancers
hoping their grace will get stuck in my shoes.
Is that a handsome shadow on my breath, sweet woman
or is it a cattle call in a school of fish?
Still dance with me
less like a waltz for panic
more for the way we’d hoped to swing
the night we took off everything
and we were swingin for the fences
don’t hold it against
my love
you know I wanna breath deeper than this
I didn’t mean to look so serious
didn’t mean to act like a filthy floor
didn’t mean to turn us both into a cutting board
but there were knives sstuck
in the words where I came from
too much time in the back of my words.
I pulled knives from my back and my words.
I cut trombones from the moment you slipped away
and I know it left me lookin’ like a knife fight, lady
boy I know it left me feelin’ like a shotgun shell
you know I know I mighta gone and lost my breath
but I wanna show ya how I found my breath
to death
it was buried under all the wind instruments
hidden in your castanets
goddamn –
if you ever wanna know how it felt when ya left –
if ya ever wanna come inside –
just knock on the spot
where I finally pressed STOP
playing musical chairs with your exit signs.
I’m gonna cause you a miracle
when you see the way I kept God’s image alive.
Forgiveness
is for anyone who needs safe passage through my mind.
If I really was created in God’s image
then when God was a boy
he wanted to grow up to be a man
a good man
and when God was a man
a good man
He started telling the truth in order to get honest responses.
He’d say,
“I know.
I really shoulda wore my cross
again
but I don’t wanna scare the gentiles off.”

Vanilla Scented Self

2010-04-18T20:04:00.003-06:00

I like my poetry to have order.

Because usually it’s my life in disguise

And if I systematically divide the verse

I can sometimes convince myself

That my soul isn’t thunder and chaos, rather

The picture of obsessive compulsive.

I like it when there are lines between stanzas

And every section has an unalterable start and stop

Because it makes me feel like there’s always an end

To every bad day that turns into a week,

And week that turns into a month

And month that turns into a year, and then years,

And that you can’t possibly sit passively

And watch your life play before your own eyes

Without realizing you’re missing the misery of the only

Thirty five seconds of fame you’ll ever get.

I like to hide myself in my poems,

Behind a nameless woman

Who I usually call julia in my own head,

A name that makes me a rhetorical literary reference,

And I spell it without a capital J

Because it makes me feel rebellious and artistic

And nonconformity creates a sort of faint beam of purpose

That trembles inside the deepest corners of

Me. Me who is

The obsessive list writer who can’t remember

When to change the sheets unless it’s penciled in before Monday,

The fledgling artist, easily distracted,
Who doesn’t have the courage to cut her hair short,

And wears black like that makes some sort of statement,

Less about who she is and more of who she’d rather be.

The easily inspired with tears in her eyes

For every starving orphan with no legs in a third world country,

Still unsure in which way she wants to change the world

But knowing she won’t leave it without printing

Her name in loopy handwriting across the sky a thousand times over.

The woman with too much soul she can’t always squeeze from her pen

Into the one page limit she places on herself

As she writes poetry alone in her first apartment on a Friday night.

The writer, the realist, the poet, the actress, the artist,

The woman who can’t be moved

The woman who falls down

The untouchable woman, unbreakable because she’s already been shattered,

The woman who is still coming to terms with the fact

That that word – woman – now applies to her.

The woman who is still getting over the milestones

That were only supposed to ever be talked about,

Too scared to stray from the path that she’s been sprinting since her first morning,

Even though it feels all wrong,

Because what if it’s the right one and doubt is just another affirmation

That she doesn’t know what she’s talking about?

Woman in the third person who writes poetry with order

To tries and smooth the wrinkles of a life

That’s been shoved to the bottom of an empty suitcase for weeks now

And remember why she even bought it to begin with,

Awash with cliché lead females who always die in final chapter.

Who is slowly understanding that she will probably never be

A vanilla scented beauty with perfect skin,

But rather a self labeled free spirit

Spending all her life fighting her inherited perfection

And losing herself in varying definitions of normality,

Lost in the beauty of capturing the absolute ordinary

Of a would-be life.

The Last Prince of Latvia pt XVII

2010-04-13T15:12:00.003-06:00

I know it's short. Too short. And it moves to fast. But at least I have a skeleton of a chapter. Please give me ideas in your comments as to where it needs to move faster. Also, we're almost done! Can you believe that? I set a goal to have this thing done by the end of April....which was dumb because this is the craziest month ever, and will definitely not happen. But we're on the home stretch! And we should be done before the end of May! ....then what am I going to do with my life?

........and for some reason the formatting went all wonkey.....

There were barely twenty of us in the ballroom. The army of Riga was reluctant to station too many soldiers at the palace for fear of giving away the location of the Prime Minister, and they didn’t expect the Prince and his men to make it that far.

But they had underestimated the Prince. He knew almost before they did that the Prime Minister would not be kept in the legislative building, and he focused his attack there only long enough to find out where their target was hidden. Then, after making just enough of an appearance for word of his arrival to whisper through the soldiers of the Latvian army, he had taken a small band of his most trusted men, and they were closing in on the palace.

The fatal mistake of the army was keeping the Prime Minister in the palace, a location that harbored secrets known the Prince that the army was unaware even exited. It was no chore for him to break the perimeter created around the palace walls, and he and his small band were on the grounds before anyone had even realized they were there. While the majority of Prince’s men began the fight as decoys with orders to shift their attack to the palace only once they had defeated the army at the legislative building, the Prince himself slipped a small number of his men soundlessly into the stony halls of his childhood home and into the dark passageways, once used by maids, butlers, and two young sweethearts, without detection.

But we knew none of this at the time. We were waiting upstairs, silent and apprehensive, milling about the dusty ballroom with uncertainty and apprehension. As the soldiers waited, the air hanging heavy with the unknown prospects of battle, I walked the perimeter of the room, trying to inconspicuously search for somewhere to hide. When I found nowhere suitable for concealment, I placed myself in a corner at the back of the room behind a pillar, sinking to the ground with my back against the wall and resting my elbows on my knees with a heavy sigh. I knew not what to do. If it came to battle, I did not want to fight, both because I did not know how and because I was unwilling to harm any of the Prince’s men, who I had once considered friends, but in the uniform of a soldier of the capital I knew I would be a quick target for the Prince’s men, and would certainly have to shoulder a weapon, if only in self defense. Perhaps, I thought, I will be lucky, and the Prince and his men won’t come here at all. But my luck would mean his downfall, I realized, for if he never came that meant their forces were defeated.

The minutes ticked by with an agonizing slowness. We all waited uncomfortably, staring at the large entrance to the ballroom, unaware that through the walls beside us stalked the Prince and his men, creeping through the passages once used to inconspicuously refill goblets and whisk away half eaten plates during state events. With my ear pressed against the stone, I could hear the soft patter of their footsteps and the occasional whisper of hushed voices, but at the time, I dismissed as merely the ghosts of my past blowing through the walls, so even I did not expect it when a small door at the back of the ballroom, half concealed by a moth eaten tapestry, burst open, and suddenly the Prince’s men were pouring through it, clad in black cloaks and tunics. The Latvian’s soldiers turned, frozen for a moment by surprise, barely able to raise their weapons before the Prince’s men were upon them. Many fell dead before they realized the battle had even begun.

My heart thudding, I scrambled on my hands and knees behind the stone pillar to my left, squeezing myself between the wall and column. I jerked the Prisoner’s knife from my belt and unsheathed it, clutching it to my chest with a sort of helpless desperation, struggling to breathe through the fear clouding my throat. I peered around the side, grimacing at echoing gunshots and the death rattled screams puncturing the air and reverberating around the enormous room, feeling lost in a world I didn’t belong in and caught up in a battle I had never intended to fight, as the scarlet and darkness collided before my eyes. I was transfixed by the grotesque slaughter unfolding across the floor, unable to look away from the blood speckled bodies littering the ground, unsure whose victory I should be celebrating and wanting nothing more than to be anywhere else in the world but here.

It was not long before I was spotted. One of the Prince’s men locked eyes with me from a short distance away, and raised his gun level with my chest. I ducked behind the pillar as a shower of pebbles rained down on me from where his bullet connected with stone. I peered out once more, only to see him running towards me with his gun again raised. I scrambled to my feet and dashed from behind the pillar with the intention of fleeing, only to smash head long into another of the Prince’s dark-clad men. I seized his shoulders, trying to catch my footing, only to have my own weight push him off balance, and we tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs just as a bullet smashed through the glass French doors behind us. I had inadvertently saved his life.

Both our weapons tumbled out of our hands as we fell. His gun flew over his head through the shattered French doors and crashed out onto the veranda beyond, while my knife slid only a few feet across the stone floor with a clatter. I struggled to untangle myself from him, lunging forward to retrieve my knife, but he was just as quick to stop me. No sooner had my fingers closed around the hilt that his own hand had locked around my wrist and twisted it from my grasp. I pulled, struggling to break his grip, only to realize with a sudden rush of cold that the familiar hand clutching mine was missing the ring and pinky finger. My stomach dropped with a sickening lurch of dread.

He seemed to recognize my fingers at the same moment I did his, for his grip suddenly slackened. Suddenly finding it impossible to breathe, I glanced up, and our eyes met for the briefest of moments, grappling silently before I tore mine away. I pulled my hand roughly away from his, struggling to climb to my feet again, but he grabbed me by the ankles, pulling me off balance so that I crashed back downwards, tumbling through the shards of the French doors and landing sprawled on my back on the balcony, feeling my skin prickle with pain as the razor shards drew blood from my hands and face.

He was on his feet now, tearing through the French doors, snatching up his gun and aiming it at me. I scrambled, rolling out of the way of his first bullet as it struck the ground where I had been, sending up a spray of glass and stone. I heard the click of his hammer as he prepared for a second shot, and I scrambled backwards again. His bullet cleared the top of my head so close that I felt its breeze against my forehead. Still on the ground, I struggled to get away from him, realizing as soon as my back struck the balcony railing that I had nowhere else to flee. I looked up at him, my heart lodged in my throat gaining speed at an alarming rate as he loomed over me, drawing nearer with measured, purposeful strides, until he reached my side and bent down with an agonizing slowness and pressed his gun against my temple, drawing back the hammer with a shuttering snap.

I closed my eyes, gasping for breath. “You wouldn’t,” I whispered, every muscle in my body clenched with anticipation.

We hung, suspended, existing in our own world, independent of the sounds of the fight around us. I waited as he battled with himself, the steel against my skin growing colder with each second passing like an eternity, barely daring to hope that he had one drop of mercy for me left inside of him.

Then I heard the clatter as the gun slipped from his fingers and he let out a heavy sigh. “I couldn’t,” he whispered, his voice painfully tight. I felt him straighten up, staring down at me with something like disgust. “Now get out of here, Belle.”

I opened my eyes slowly, hardly daring to believe I was still breathing, as he retrieved his gun and walked slowly away from me, back to his war. Something inside of refused to let him go so easily, and in desperation I called after him, “It was right here, wasn’t it?” He stopped, staring ahead sightlessly. “The first time we kissed,” I whispered, my words almost lost in the cacophonous melee raging on the other side of the shattered doors. “It was here.”

“Yes,” he replied stiffly, his fingers clenching around the handle of his pistol. “That’s all our relationship ever was; just a shallow, ironic cliché, just like this one. That’s all we ever had.” And he was gone.

I stayed curled against the balcony rail, my fingernails splintering as I clutched the stone, unsure if the burning pain inside my chest was the feeling of my heart healing or breaking anew, and I couldn’t decide if I was clinging tighter or letting go of him at last. I hugged my jacket tighter around my thin shoulders, praying to God for release, even if it came in the form of death. But no soldiers ventured onto the balcony to finish me, most very likely thinking that the blood running down my face and the way I clutched my stomach with a pained expression signifying that death would soon be along to claim me without their help.

I watched the battle with unseeing eyes, and my remaining shards of memory left of that bloody hour blurs in my own mind. I watched men falling in pools of their own blood, staring blankly at their stony faces, twisted in their last moments of life, watched as the remaining soldiers left alive surrendered, tossing their weapons on the ground and raising their hands heavenward with a cry of mercy that could as easily have been directed at God as at their enemies. The Prince was in the middle of the room, gesturing and shouting, distributing orders to his men with practiced authority, his face awash with the light pouring through the room’s high windows, looking every bit the king he was born to be. I saw him point in my direction, and one of his men jogged out onto the balcony and seized me by the collar, dragging me to my feet. “Get in there!” he barked, and I recognized him instantly as a dark haired Irishman who had been among the ranks of the Brother of the Latvian Revolution. I stared up at his face, soundlessly searching for words without knowing what I was about to say or why. He glared at me, unrecognizing, and shoved me forward through the French doors and into line with my face against the wall alongside the other scarlet clad soldiers. “Hands on your head!” he barked, and I obeyed, pressing my nose to the stone wall and knitting my fingers together against the back of my neck, counting the footsteps of several of the Prince’s men as they paced behind us, their guns raised and ready.

A roar of excitement rose from the men scattered about the room, and I could pick the Prince’s own shout from the others encasing it, pitched with a fevered excitement I had never heard in his voice before. I glanced sideways and from the corner of my eye I could see several men dragging a bewildered and terrified looking man who could only be the Prime Minister from his hiding place. I closed my eyes, struggling to sort out my own loyalties, not sure if I should be cheering with them or if I should sympathize with the frightened Prime Minster, who, just like myself, was soon to become another victim of a war he didn’t want to have any part of.

The doors to the ballroom flew open suddenly and with such force that they struck the walls behind them with a shattering snap. The scarlet clad soldiers around me all turned excitedly, expecting to see their own men rushing in to their rescue. Instead they saw their fellows bound, chained, and bloodied, herded in by a battalion of the Prince’s men, and I felt all their hearts skink with the realization that they truly were defeated. The new captives were pushed against the wall beside us as the leader of the Prince’s men strode up to his captain with a deep bow, proudly exclaiming loud enough for all to hear that the army on the other side of the city had been defeated, the legislative building captured, and most of the soldiers of Latvia either captured or killed. My heart skipped at the thought of the Prisoner, bleeding before the battle began.

The Prince was glowing with his triumph. He swept forward with a trail of majesty and pride shedding off his shoulders to where the Prime Minister was held, and proclaimed in a resounding voice that silenced the masses of chaos milling about the ballroom. “Gentlemen! My dear friends, my comrades, my fellow soldiers in the fight for truth, and restorers of justice to our beautiful nation, I give you victory!” The men around him roared with a voice far greater than their numbers, and from the corner of my eye I could see his face, radiating something like happiness. “Now we have before us,” he shoved the Prime Minister forward roughly, and he collapsed to his knees. “A man who helped fell our once great regime, a man personally responsible for the murders of my family and the destruction of the monarchy. A man who has corrupted our nation, ravaged our people, and spent years working to destroy a legacy thousands of years in the making. I ask you, what punishment befits such a crime?” A cry went up from his men, and through the dissonance, words of death could be clearly traced on every lip.

The Prince raised a hand, silencing them, then drew his gun and pressed it against the Prime Minister’s temple. “Sir,” he barked, his voice dark and deadly, and I suddenly knew that, once king, he would destroy this country with his own shrewd self interest. “You have been charged, tried, and found guilty on this morning of rebirth of treason in its purest form, the punishment for which is death, to be carried out immediately. Have you any last words?”

Suddenly overcome with horror and sympathy that left me trembling, I closed my eyes, turning my face away from the pale faced Prime Minister, struck down by the force he had spent his life fighting against. “May God show you the mercy you have not extended to me,” he whispered. “For the blood of the many young men that now stains your hands, but may he withhold none of his wrath against you for the death of liberty itself.”

His final breath was lost in the snapping gunshot that stole it, itself swallowed up by a resounding cry of “All hail the King of Latvia!” echoing off bloodstained palace walls.

Also.

2010-04-06T14:14:00.004-06:00

The Last Prince of Latvia officially hit 200 pages.

We should probably have a party.

The Last Prince of Latvia pt XVI

2010-04-06T13:55:00.002-06:00

Hello.....is anyone out there reading? :)
My last memory of Riga was watching it fade into the memory of a windswept, snowy landscape. My best memories of Riga all seemed to involved chasing a dark haired boy across the prickly grass of emerald fields surrounded by clear skies.
The city had barely changed since wither of these days. Perhaps there were a few spires that stretched higher than I remembered, perhaps there were a few new churches or offices, and others that had been knocked down. But to my eyes so long deprived of home that I had forgotten how familiar and comfortable it felt, the city silhouetted against the pink tinted sky stirred in me a cathartic nostalgia that filled me to the fingertips.
I sprinted beside the Prisoner, struggling to avoid eye contact with the other soldiers running along with us, instead gazing up at the crumbling memories chasing me down the narrow streets.
We met up with the Captain on the outskirts, and the rest of the men fell mechanically in to previously assembled battalions, creating neatly formed lines. I froze for a moment, unsure of where to go, when the Prisoner grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to his battalion. “Come with me,” he whispered in my ear, pushing me into the front of a line between two other soldiers. I quickly dropped my gaze to my own muddy boots to avoid their stairs.
The Captain pranced his horse before us, shouting commands at the top of his voice. “The prime minister is the main target of the Prince and his men. If he dies, it will be a swift take over for them. Currently they are concentrating their attack on the legislative building, where they believe the prime minister is. However, we are one step ahead of them, as usual. The prime minister has been moved to the old palace for his own safety. The Prince’s men do not know this yet. Thought they have yet to break through our perimeter, once they are in and realize their mistake, they will quickly switch their attack to the palace. They are more heavily armed than we previously expected, though they have yet to engage in hand to hand combat. We are trying to keep them at bay, hoping they will run out of ammunition before they have a chance to get inside both the legislature and the palace. Battalions one through three will be sent to the legislative chambers. Four and five will be stationed outside of the palace.” He gave a hard pull on the reigns, and his horse reared to a stop with a whinny. “Our main objective is not necessarily to destroy the army, but to protect the prime minister and kill the Prince. He is always your first target. Now move out!”
The Prisoner turned to his battalion. “You heard the Captain!” he bellowed. “Step lively!” He broke into a run, and the rest of the men followed suit. Not wanting to be left behind, I ran to catch up with him, unsure of where we were going.
We barreled through the streets just beginning to wake. On either side, people were leaning out their windows to watch us pass by. Some of them cheered us forward. I kept myself directly behind the Prince, feeling vulnerable and anxious and completely unsure what side I was fighting for.
We turned up a main street that I instantly recognized from childhood. As I looked up, the palace loomed above us, the gleam once given off by its walls dimmed by years of tarnish and creeping ivy. At the gates, I could see a group of soldiers congregating, and still more dispersing around the perimeter. My heart inexplicably doubled its already rapid pace.
When we reached the palace walls, the Prisoner turned to the men, instructing them to assemble their formation before the massive gates, which were about to be closed. As the other men moved quickly to fall into place, the Prisoner grabbed my arm. “Get inside the palace,” he whispered. “Find a safe place to hide until the battle is over, then get out as quickly as you can. Don’t speak with anyone if you can help it. Do you have anything to defend yourself?” I shook my head. He quickly dethatched a long, sheathed dagger from his belt and handed it over to me. “Take that. Promise me you’ll stay hidden until the fight’s over?” I nodded. “Good.”
“What about you?” I asked desperately. “How will I find you again?”
He paused for a moment, then replied, “At this time in three days, meet me on the steps of the Riga Cathedral. If I don’t come all that day, I’m dead.”
“Don’t say that,” I whispered, tears springing to my eyes.
“Don’t wait for me,” his fingers at his side tangled with mine, hidden in the folds of my sleeve. “Get out of the city. Get out of the country. Whichever side wins, you’ll be hunted. And I’m not worth dying for.” His clear eyes were shinning. “I love you.” My throat clogged, with tears, and I merely nodded in reply. His hand pulsed around mine, a silent admonition to run, but I found that I could not will my fingers to unwind themselves from his.
“If this is our last moment,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “I hope you know…” I had no voice to finish. A tear leapt on to my cheek.
He smiled at me sadly, my heart shattered. “I do,” he whispered.
“You are a prince among men,” I said, my words falling short of the tidal wave of emotions breaking against my ribs. Behind us, the gates were creaking, beginning to grind closed. I knew I only had seconds. “And if I could go back, I wouldn’t change anything. I would endure every hardship I have faced all over again so long as they led me to you. I wouldn’t give up a moment that has brought us to now.”
“Neither would I.” He reached up, and brushed his fingers against my cheek. “Now go.”
He pulled his hand from mine, and with a small push forward, I ran forward, slipping between the closing gates. I did not torture myself with another look back at him; instead, I sprinted forward across the palace lawn, still spotted with the overgrown remains of the once magnificent hedges that had lined it years ago.
I had not been to the palace since I had left Latvia nearly a decade before, and a strange sensation akin to déjà vu began to wash over me as I ran. I felt transported from the now to the then, and every step I took catapult me backwards into a world so deeply rooted in the past that I felt as though I had never lived it to being with. Memories I had forgotten were now surfacing before my eyes, triggered by the sites of my old home surrounding me.
I skipped up the front steps leading to the main doors of the palace. I yanked on the large, brass handles, only to find the door was locked. Wasting no time, I sprinted along the wall and rounded the corner, searching the stone until I found a door that had once served as a servant’s entrance. I tugged on the doorknob, but to no avail. I was certain all the other doors would be similarly barred and, reluctant to risk detection by trying them all in vain, I decided to peruse an alternate means of entrance.
I recalled a shed on the edge of the grounds in which garden tools were kept. I began to run again, circling the palace, my eyes searching until they stumbled upon it. Inside, as I had predicted, was a set of tools, untouched since the last time there had been royalty present to demand horticultural upkeep. I selected a long handled hoe from their ranks, then darted back to the side of the palace. I chose a window at ground level with a crumbling stone angel situated just below it, and planted my feet firmly beneath it. I raised the garden hoe over my shoulder, then swung it with all my might at the pane. The glass shattered with a resounding crash. I quickly discarded the hoe, then hoisted myself upwards with one foot on the statue and clambered through the frame, tumbling through the moth eaten drapes and landing on the carpet inside with a puff of dust.
For a moment, my eyes were overcome by the darkness of the room, lit only faintly by a pale beam cascading through the open door, and I was unable to see where I was. Then, as the world before me began to form from the gloom, and my heart gave an unpleasant jerk.
It was as though I had leapt into a museum of my childhood, where everything was perfectly preserved the way it had been the last time I had been there beneath a spindly layer of dust, as though I had never left. And here was the room which held the memory I had been running from my whole life, the only one intertwined with the Prince that I had ever struggled to forget. A familiar burn of pain and humiliation instantly bubbled in my chest, and all the what if questions that had chased me through my years away from home bombarded me.
It was the Prince’s study, and it was just as it had been the last time I had visited. The claw-footed desk covered by weathered parchment reflected through a large magnifying glass resting on top, the green glass lamp perched precariously on the corner, the shelves lining every wall full to bursting with antique volumes, the globe in the corner stuck with tiny pins that our hands had placed together, the moon-faced clock on the wall frozen, both its hands pointing accusingly at the floor. I walked slowly around the desk, tracing a line in the dust coating its surface with my finger, then sank to my knees at the spot I had stood so many times before.
My head was pounding as scenes from a lifetime past began to rise to the fringes of my memory, and suddenly my childhood in this room was playing out in fast motion in my mind, and I watched mutely as a red haired girl and a dark eyed prince danced through the door, seeming to grow from eight to eighteen in a matter of moments as I was drenched in a cloudburst of memory.
I was ten years old, seeing the room for the first time, admiring the finery the likes of which I had never known. Then suddenly it was a year later pulling books I could barely lift off the shelves and extending them to him to read to me. I was throwing rocks at the window the next summer, hoping he would sneak out to play with me, then running my finger along the globe as he spun it and we promised that wherever my finger landed would be the first place we would run. He was tracing my handprint on the inside cover of his book months later, and we were drawing hearts on rain-frosted glass and inscribing the center with our initials. And I was sitting on the edge of the desk laughing, hiding beneath it when his tutor dropped by to check on his progress, then kneeling at his feet as he practiced the violin, and kissing him behind the drapes.
And then the final moment of my youth formed vividly before my eyes; the wash of moonlight on the rug, the flickering flame shining through green glass, the soft moan of the battering wind against the walls coupled with my own. And we were old enough to know better, but young enough – how young we looked! – young enough not to care.
I could feel his muscles flex against mine as his fingers fumbled with the buttons of my dress, his body tense as he waited for me to stop him, but I didn’t. He shoved the heavy shroud of material from its perch upon my shoulders, letting it pool to the floor at my ankles, his fingers already hungrily engaged in untangling the lacings of my corset. And I did not stop him. His kisses faltered for a moment, and he stepped back from me only long enough to tear off his own clothes with a fevered haste, as though I could disappear at any moment, and dropped them at my feet like a silent offering to accept him.
I reached out and he seized me again, and we tumbled to the floor in a pool of burning flesh. I was on my back and he was above me, his hands clasping my shoulders, leaning in for a final kiss before he fell, his dark curls tumbling before his eyes, his unveiled skin gleaming in the thin sliver of moonlight. “I’ve never done this before,” he whispered, his voice tight with anticipation.
“Done what?” I asked, already shaking.
“Love,” he breathed, the word falling on my lips with his kiss.
It was barely a moment later that the door had been flung open, washing us with and exposing beam of light, and suddenly, illuminated, our actions were sin, and I was overcome with shame.
Kneeling on the very spot and I had once laid beside the Prince, the same emotions from that night struck me once more; love, passion, and sensuous desire that was quickly overturned into fear, heartbreak, and shame. In the days that had followed, I faced the king and queen, my mother, and what felt like the entire city, yet I had felt nothing compared to that cold moment of humiliation as a beam of light fell across my shoulders. There was no shame in being his love. Instead, it came from knowing that I was his downfall. He told me afterwards, before I left, that he had no regrets. But he didn’t look at me when he said it, and I knew he was ashamed of our love. Perhaps that was why it had hurt.
I pulled my knees up to my chest and leaned my head backwards against the desk, unsure whether finally facing the memory I had spent my life running from was a release, or if it only cut me deeper.
“Soldier!”
My head snapped up, and my eyes locked with those of the man, dressed in the same uniform as I, standing outside the door to the room in which I was hiding. Panicking, I scrambled to my feet and gave a clumsy salute, dropping my chin and weighing my odds of making it out the window before he caught me, and how likely it was he would peruse if I did.
“What are you doing here?” He took a few steps into the room. “All the men are upstairs in the ballroom.”
“I got lost,” I muttered, struggling to drop the pitch of my voice.
“And then you just thought you’d sit down and take a little rest?” the soldier mocked bitingly.
I purse my lips, praying he would leave but knowing there was little hope of that. He stared at me for a moment expectantly, then finally, with a sigh, said, “Well what are you standing around for? Come on.”
He stepped aside with an expectant glance, waiting for me to exit before him. I took a deep breath, then pulled my hat a little farther down and strode rapidly out of the room, struggling not to betray my nervousness in my quick gait.
The soldier fell into step beside me in the hallway, starting towards the stairs at its end with a brisk stride. I knew there was no chance of running. “What battalion are you with?” He asked. I shrugged, avoiding his eye. “You don’t know?” he sounded astonished, and I was sure my ignorance had given me away. “Who’s your captain?”
“Don’t know his name,” I muttered.
The soldier sighed, irritated. “Never mind.”
I trailed him up the winding stone staircase. Barely able to see through the shadows, I stumbled twice. The soldier didn’t wait for me or ask if I was alright, just let out a puff of air that could either have been a laugh or a sigh.
When we reached a landing, he veered off into another identical hallway. I paused for a moment, considering running back down the stairs and away, but before I had the chance he turned, waiting expectantly. “Come on,” he barked, and I had no choice but to follow again.
We turned a corner to find a cluster of about thirty soldiers standing before the large doors to the ballroom. They were milling about casually, chatting softly, but the air hung heavy with the tense knowledge of the inevitable battle approaching. The soldier strode briskly up to a dark haired man at the head of the group with a quick salute. “Captain. I found this gentleman,” he gestured at me, shuffling at his heels, “In a room downstairs. Says he was separated from his company, even though he can’t remember which company that was.”
The captain looked me up and down critically, and I looked down at his boots in return. “You’re just a boy. How old are you?” he asked me skeptically.
“Old enough,” I mumbled.
He stared at me for a moment longer, then instructed, “You’ll be with the men inside the ballroom. We’ve got the prime minister in an antechamber there for his protection. Hopefully if the Prince’s men show up, our men here will be able to keep them out of the ballroom.”
“Yes sir,” I mumbled.
The captain turned and bellowed, “Open the doors!” Then, returning to us, he instructed the other soldier, “Go with him, Corporal.” The soldier saluted with a crisp nod. I imitated weakly.
The ballroom doors were opened for us with the grinding crack of rusty hinges. Hesitantly, I fell into step behind the soldier, and followed him into the room, awash with soldiers dressed in our uniform. I halted in the doorway, staring in at the once magnificent ballroom, swearing that as my heart looked out my eyes I could see the ghosts of hundreds of couples dressed in faded pastel silks and satins waltzing their way between the scarlet clad soldiers, and in the centered danced a Prince and a slender girl with auburn hair, and his hand encased hers in such a way that anyone looking knew that he loved her. He loved her and he was going to tell her that night. He was going to kiss her for the first time, then whisper that he loved her, and would love her for the rest of forever.
And I could only watch, lost in the ghostly past, wishing nothing more than to run to my own side and warn her that he loved her in a way that wouldn’t last.

The ending is crap. I realize this. I just had to get something down on paper so I could move past this part. I've been stuck on it for weeks!

11 (Expanded)

2010-04-02T23:19:00.004-06:00

This poem is the product of an amazing night I had at the Beat Poetry Slam tonight. It was absolutely incredible and it made me want to write so badly! So instead of writing a new poem, I expanded one I had already written a while ago, called "11." So this is an expanded version of that poem in more of a poetry slam style. Enjoy!

There was the first time
In your blue vest and jeans
With the wide brimmed felt hat
That turned you into a strange, alluring hybrid
Somewhere between Edgar Alan Poe, Robert E Lee, and Prince Charming,
With your dark hair dipped in amber
And your eyes alight with the flame I once thought unquenchable
That dazzled me from the moment I met you
That blazed every time we stood shoulder to shoulder and talked about your dreams
Like we were already old enough to make them true.
And even an hour later I still didn’t know you would be
The first man that I thought was of my dreams
But turned out was a little bit less than normal
And less than as good as I gave you credit for,
And when I replay the moment in my mind I try to pretend
Like I could see heartbreak coming from ten million miles away
But all I really saw was the boy who occasionally stuttered under pressure,
Peering shyly at me from the corner of the blacksmith’s shop,
And sneaking his hand around the back of the bench until
It cupped my shoulder and sent a lightning bolt charging through my soul.

And then there was the next time,
In the drizzling beam of a moon by a sparkling pond,
That suffocates me which cliché when I remember it,
With our hands intertwined and trembling in tandem
Because you had to make the move and I have to wait for it,
The night I didn’t dare look in case I was dreaming you
And you disappeared when I dared to believe that this was finally happening to me
And it was you wanting to be here beside me,
So I only saw it coming when you leaned in,
Purging what my snow white innocence thought to be the final gap between us.
And it was better than I dreamed it because it was
Real and in the flesh and it was you and you were beautiful
And for one whole minute my body couldn’t decide
If it wanted to breathe or hold its breath.
And all I knew to do was dance all night
Because that’s what it felt like.

Then there was the every time,
In flannel and khakis with your signature aviators
On the days we would adventure just to fill a long afternoon.
Sometimes at your side, I was five years old again
And I cheated at checkers
And you were the last prince of Latvia,
With a star wars obsession when we camped out in bookstores
And read with our hands intertwined,
Alternately pulsing our fingers to remind the other
That there was no poetry in the world that could make me feel like you do.
Other times I was fourteen,
Awkward, gangly, wide eyed and curly haired
Tongue tied at your touch and afraid of everything
But nothing so much as losing you.
And then sometimes I was as old as the world,
And I knew everything about lust and romance
And the more we kissed, the more practiced my lips became
But there was never a day I wasn’t frightened
Of not living up to your expectations.
And you would walk me to my car after every day
Of completing another chapter of our fairytale together,
And I didn’t know that this was the best it would ever get.

And then there was that one time.
When you told me you were certain it was so undeniably love.
Love.
You were the first to say it, I was the last,
And we both consistently forgot to remind each other it was there,
Though for me it was more on purpose
Hoping you would realize what it felt like
To lie against you in my back seat
While the Beatles crooned “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” through the subwoofers
And I let your tongue roll candy round into my mouth without words
Never admitting that I never felt worthy of a jerk like you
And the security of your embrace only made me more unsure about
Which of us was a mistake for the other
And everything was doubt,
And I would race myself home on the highway
And time how long it took for the inevitable tidal wave
To slip from my eyes, then trace a self portrait in smeared mascara across my face.

Then there were the worst times
With your long hair and this new ambition
With your eyes straight ahead, fireless,
Lit by the glow from the dashboard lights telling you your gas tank is almost empty,
As I curl in your passenger seat, silent because there’s nothing left to say,
In the second maroon dress I ever dared to challenge you with
On the nights you only want to talk with your hands
Only want to touch,
And I didn’t dare refuse because I knew you’d be gone if I did.
So I’d close my eyes while you attacked,
Slipping your hand under my shirt and wondering why I shuddered
At your ice fingers on my bare skin,
And sometimes if I tried my best I could pretend I still saw
In you everything I did on that very first day,
And forget about the fact that you were vain and rude and self absorbed
And never understood the artist’s soul that writhed within me
That I never dared share, since you came and saw the plays
Without understanding why they fulfilled me in a way your kisses never could.
And my fingers were burning as I clutched the fire that you were,
But I couldn’t let go because I’d become so comfortable to being burned.

There was a last time. After a long time.
And an all night apology on the other end of the phone line.
An eternity of silence, a word, a sob barely snatched before it slipped past the edge of my lips and into thin air
And suddenly the only painful consistency of my life is melting against my ear
And I can’t pick up the pieces because there aren’t any
And thirty nine minutes to now later I’m sure you are
The only man that could ever love my flaws, even though you never did.

My father and I were once reading from a book without a title,
Or maybe it had one and I’ve forgotten it
And he read aloud,
“The heart is a muscle; no pain, no gain.”
And I was only thirteen and pretending to be grown
So I tapped my chin like Plato must have
And told him how I understood completely.
And I couldn’t fathom why he laughed,
And told me I would never understand
Until the first time someone tore my heart out and ran it through a shredder
Until it had been ripped into pieces so small
That you couldn’t even read the tiny words
Engraved there, words like love and kiss and burn and desire,
Words that three months later I had forgotten how to spell.
And that one boy who ate me alive
Still haunts my poetry because he was the first
And I still can’t convince myself he won’t be the last
And he was everything wrong and somehow I added that up to perfection
Because anyone who cuts you deep enough that you bleed until you're sure
Each coagulated drip is a bead of life
Draining from you
And killing you slowly
Is worth remembering.

julia

2010-03-30T20:32:00.002-06:00

Every night that there is no moon,
She has a reoccurring dream
Of sprinting barefoot across the ocean
While John Lennon crackles in the background on vinyl.
And she throws back her head and laughs shamelessly to the sky
Daring the earth to shake beneath her
And she tries to leap, hoping to release the ecstasy threatening
To tear open her chest if it explodes,
Only to discover that her toes are already slipping beneath the breaking waves,
And she’s already trapped, slipping her way down to drowning.
And she’s frightened by the fact that it isn’t frightening,
Merely cathartic.
It’s always then she wakes, knowing that the day will be
A dusky duplicate of the previous, except worst.
She dresses slow, in business professional attire with golden buttons,
Clothes she doesn’t want to wear because they pinch her
Soul between her ribs
And leave it pulsing against her lungs all day
Until she can’t hardly breathe through the repressed artistry,
The introverted rebellion screaming from so deep within her
That even she can’t hear it anymore.
On the subway, she reads Orwell on the slow descent of man
And by Thirty-Fourth Street is sure there’s nothing left
To look forward to,
Made hopeful by the knowing that
Perhaps she is not alone in her feelings of purposelessness,
Rather enveloped in a city bubbling with a similar theme
Rising among the proletariat.

She works all day in a six foot square box, cubicle, office, prison,
Call it what you will, it’s still a cage and it’s slowly spreading
So it’s inside of her, twisting down her spine and strangling her stomach
Until its captured her heart and compresses it to a mere
Fragment of the beating, living, independent organism it once was.
And she’s forgotten what it feels like to be burning, racing, throbbing
With a wild, untamed passion that used to leak through her fingers
Until she was living to the point of tears,
What it feels like to dance in patent leather heels until her toes bleed blue,
To be engulfed by music so loud that her heart syncs to the pounding bass
To count the freckles on his nose the morning after just before she slips away while he’s still asleep,
What it feels like to dream like there isn’t a sky to bar you from the moon.
From her fourth story window all she can see is the cloudburst of boredom,
And she dismisses her mediocrity as effort
With a defeated whisper of, “Where from here?”
Where is there left to go
When the whole world turns to a muted grey
Except the red of her bleeding heart
And the dazzling emerald grass
On that other side she can barely see, even when she squints
With her prescription glasses.
“Where do I buy my ticket to paradise?” she wonders.
“And how much father do I have to run before I cross paths with satisfaction?
Is there such a thing as perfection, or is life composed of constantly settling for less than you know you’re worth?
How long will I have to wait before I can stop looking
And start living without feeling less than I am?
Perhaps the only thing worth feeling comes from lying about being happy.”

She promised herself she’d be asleep before she was tired,
And with the day’s souvenir of a coffee stained sweater slung across
Her stone shoulders she can barely lift anymore,
She pulls back the veil and steps into the ocean,
Gazing sightlessly into the darkness between the fireflies
With the desperate hope of just this once seeing more
But there’s nothing there except similitude and conformity
And masses of faceless strangers with mediocrity tattooed across their foreheads.
Perhaps this is paradise, she breathes.
Perhaps this is as good as it gets.