The difference is they'll never know I'm different

The space of the stairs has always accommodated me, holding me in between the wall and bannister. Reminding me how old the house really is with its ghosts of pasts and memories. Even mine have joined, locked in ghostly form wedging in next to me, sad and pensive. Scared of the anticipated loud noises. But SHE is not a ghost yet. She is still here. Playing solitaire. She has always played solitaire, especially when she is angry, and she's always angry. Tho' that isn't always true, the tepid and heavy air engulf every inch of space magnifying every sound. All so quiet, I strain my ears for silence. The terrifying moment when there is no sound, when you can't pinpoint the threat any longer and it can swoop upon you in a moment. There is less panic while the soft snap of card on card as they show their faces only to be discarded.
I'm different, in that the clumsy and forceful hands that pried my fingers from the bannister were left without power, except in my nightmares. And the painful and humiliating words never even break the skin, except in silence.

K moves

To the last load of her laundry she had been cleaning our room for weeks. All of her clothes were in the dresser drawers or hung up. Her books were in boxes and we had smuggled a couple pots and pans in. She was ready and had every one lined up. She was 18 and leaving home in secret. Running away was more like it. It was the most organized runaway she had ever done. Since the time she had packed up her little red wagon and our mother had tempted her back with a game of Cootie she had gradually been more organized. From shushing me from her hiding place under a neighbors porch to me packing up all our coins and taking a sweater to the garage, where out mother soon found her and locked her till the cops came. Usually quickly, always found. But not this time.
The adrenaline made me giddy as the thought of leaving did her but that thought to me was... We waited silent in our room looking out the window. Waiting for the heavy tread of out parents coming to be, or the headlights, which ever came first.
She had mad up some industrious story about re gluing, or refinishing her dresser. The heavy lifting waited on the enclosed porch. We leaned out the screenless window together waiting and smoking. Then we saw the headlights and her friends get out of the car waving up to us. Her whisper holler said she'd be right down. She tossed her cigarette over the roof and snuck downstairs with a drawer. From above it was a circus act. The mimes oversold sneaking back and forth from the porch to the street. A dresser supported between to sneaking theater members has so much potential for humor. Then one by one she hustled the boxes and drawers away.
Her last trip back was to remind me of the plan. If the check on us tell them shes asleep. This ran the risk of getting me busted, but then I had been a willing and glad participant. Right up until this moment, the moment of her leaving me. And leaving me all the repercussions. I was sad, and jealous, and knew the only way to survive was to get away.

addendums

Sitting in a cafe listing to 2 guys make a big deal over a spill most people would have walked away from. A girl begins to appreciate the way men move around her. Almost in time too. I spin out, like the wheels and watch the rain roll in. My blood pounds thick, hot, heavy like lava. Slow yet surging. My body waves. My spine waves. body spine rolling like a conversation that will never be quoted. Not because they were unnotices, but because they were innane.
Becoming overly attached to one person to the exclusion of all else only promotes the isolationist tendancy.
Love in a spiritual sense may only mean seduction to a higher leverof consciousness.
Don't be so asured of the importance of your message that you forget the fine art of delivery.
Nothing is by chance, everything happens because it has to.

Passion shows that all humans are fataly flawed.
When passion over powers reason evilness comes forth leaving paths of destruction bringing paths of pain and when all goes quiet you hear nothingness.
The eyes of those watching burn with madness and desire turns, running wild into the darkness leaving a flaw within reason.

Never put butter on a burn
it keeps the heat in and the salt is bad for it.
Someones mother use to put bacon on a burn. NO, bacon on a cut to draw out the parisites. She'd learned that from a lover, who learned it from a different one, but not the one with the great parisite face.
All the doors are monitered.
I suppose it's so you can't sneak in or out. No walking along un-noticed here, thats how the parinoia begins or is the parinoia why they moniter.
Chicken or the egg - chicken or the egg
ticking of the clock the mind begins to beg
waver on the edge with butter on the burn cause the bacon is on the radiator and the doors are monitored.
(and you are here)
butter is bad for blood pressure but melts so lovely on the tongue. Bad blood to give into pressure
so hard when temptation spreads wide
having slunk along un-noticed pulling dark hunger from the mind
All the doors are monitered
And you are HERE

Coffee House Revolution

In the land of the small cities, in a time before Starbucks or Caribou Coffee shops there were only diners. The diners of your parents and grandparent’s day where the exterior walls had the unfinished interior rock decor of a cabins fire place and the bright orange vinyl booths matched the nondescript orange and green carpet. Where you went out to breakfast on Sundays after church. Where the cost conscious family went out to dinner occasionally. Where the “Open 24 hour” large booths would see the hidden life of the city as it passed out and woke up for more coffee. This type of place was also the last refuge of the young or those refusing to grow up.
The late night/early morning cast was the best. It seemed to change about 10pm. That was when the older ones, who should have been in bars but were cruising for youth, entered circling for prime booths. It was when the high school kids who would bring their books and study or go over their lines would begin to pack up their trappings. Rotating around the guy who had been there for a record 72 hours straight. When the groups of girls would tell their friend to give up waiting for “that” guy to show up. When the gang of guys would show up: loud and wild and full of themselves. There was always safety in numbers. And anyone alone was mocked. It was the time and place of meetings, of social butterflying from one table to the other, of relentless and hopeful flirting. It was the microcosm of life in this city.

No matter what you started out to do, you always ended up at Perkins surrounded by overflowing ashtrays and over caffeinated people.


Perkins 12:49pm

Cheese Sticks!

RUFUS, NIGHTMAIRE, SPIDEY, RAMROD, SLATS, THE TOASTER
And an order of Jimmy Buffett on the side.
Cheese sticks
The smoke of a clove in the air
And Nightmaire getting tense waiting for the job
Rufus is shifting back and forth Spidey’s conducting!
We’re chillen’ waiting for the word.
Slats and Ramrod have eyes red with rage as their blood,
thick like day old coffee, begins to boil waitin’ for the kill.
Jimmy B. and pantomime horse
Had me over for cheese sticks and coffee
Waiting we discussed chaos theory
And the significance of a “Wings” episode appearing in dreams.
But now we’re waiting for a plan
For our cheese sticks,
And our wings.
Spidey waiting for the deal
Toaster heading to cool off in the car
Nightmaire getting into the feel
Ramrod and Slats fighting like it’s a bar
What’s the deal man
This place ain’t got no spam.
The Toaster glows
Fidgeting, finicky, frivolous
Stomach growling with tension.
It’s always like this before a big job
Tara has been stirring up trouble again
Or is it terror
Nothing is for sure in a world of deception.
We have unfinished business.
I can remember, if you can believe it, the whole club gutted by the blast
Spidey’s communist rhetoric
Plays upon The Toasters anxieties.
I smell the nitrate on your rubber gloves
Maire is placid as the sea.
Some things we plan, we sit and invent, plot and cook up
Other things are works of genius like poetry.
Tonight’s the night gang.
They all gather together, huddled close like children
These are the plans
They are not the first, nor are they the last.
Nightmaire turns her back as Spidey
Gathers her darkness around her and cools The Toaster to a mere few degrees.
I’m glancing side to side
Watching the isles as we synchronize our watches.



6 of us is enough to win us the most coveted booth, the big one in the corner.
It was a coffee house. You drink coffee and you smoke. What else was there to do: Swing the lamp and bounce in your seat pretending it’s a train, use a fork and a creamer and make it look like you popped your eye out, flip creamers and see how many times you can get them to land right side up, snort sugar and salt? Yeah, okay we did all that, but someone was always writing so we always had paper and we’d all take turns writing several lines. It breaks up the monotony of coffee. And that was the Coffee House Revolution.


Not quite the real or imaginary point beyond which a person or thing cannot go

Perkins
(one cup of coffee den I go)

Shaken not stirred
the old grey mare she ain't what she used to be.
I didn't know kitch could clash but they've done a lovely job here. Every room induces you to order something different.
I blame the violent youth on youths violence, he blames it on the parents, the born again ex-gay blames it on being saved. He didn't remember me because he kissed me once or twice and with salvation he got selective memory. But we still remember the rock wall hidden under layers of remodeling.
We talk of parents and lovers and coffee getting punchy earlier than we use to but you've got to be on the road by 4 cause pop is a military man. We stand in doorways alternately clinging to each other and tugging on our cuffs.
We don't talk about it except to say 10 years is a long time.

Sharon Olds - The Clasp

She was four, he was one, it was raining, we had colds,
we had been in the apartment two weeks straight,
I grabbed her to keep her from shoving him over on his
face, again, and when I had her wrist
in my grasp I compressed it, fiercely, for a couple
of seconds, to make an impression on her,
to hurt her, our beloved firstborn, I even almost
savored the stinging sensation of the squeezing,
the expression, into her, of my anger,
"Never, never, again," the righteous
chant accompanying the clasp. It happened very
fast-grab, crush, crush,
crush, release-and at the first extra
force, she swung her head, as if checking
who this was, and looked at me,
and saw me-yes, this was her mom,
her mom was doing this. Her dark,
deeply open eyes took me
in, she knew me, in the shock of the moment
she learned me. This was her mother, one of the
two whom she most loved, the two
who loved her most, near the source of love
was this.

My Mothers Daughter

I am my mother’s Daughter

When I break into song for no reason
When I knit or bake or plant because its the season
When left-overs become a gourmet meal
When I talk about the way colors feel
When nothing has a recipe
When I automatically say, “Her name is not Bea”
When I revel in the rain
When I drive my family insane
When I wait to break down till the crisis is done
When I face the battles that must be won
When a stranger is just someone I haven’t met
When the unknown is something I haven’t mastered yet

The compliments I receive are reflections of all this
Something, in youth, daughters seem to miss

And when I look in the mirror
It is easy to see
I am my mother’s Daughter

Mission from God

She hurried down the ally holding her perfumed scarf against her lips and nose to filter the stench of the garbage, urine and stale sex. The hard soles of her boots made a hollow clack-smack sound, echoing until it sounded as if she lead an army of vigilante ex-girlfriends. I should have worn softer soles she muttered looking around to see what shadows she might have roused from the sleepy piles of garbage. The buildings all looked the same from the back, except for the originals, the older looking gothic ones. Was it 34th or 36th? She didn’t remember, she had lost count but there was another break up ahead, she’d just look for landmarks. If it was 34th there would be Jimmy’s bar and that ramshackled fruit and vegetable stand. If it was 36th Willmores huge store front would stare her down with its big blank eyes.
The clack-smack sound suddenly changed with a sickening sloop. Marie looked down at her leading foot half covered in a mixture of what she hoped was feces and rusty water. She shuddered shaking her foot free from the mess, Gross, gross, gross She looked up at the sky As if it wasn’t enough already, I have to go through this. She looked around the corner. 36th street. Two blocks from Tim’s. She fingered the gun in her pocket hoping she’d be able to manage it. The lit advertisement flashed, laughing and mocking her. Willmores vacant look mirrored her own as the lights across the street stabbed into the darkness of the windows. Horn’s blared and car alarms wailed their redundant warnings like rabbit screams from when she was six and her brother took her trapping. Futile but loud all the same. She covered her ears with the scarf and shook her head to clear her sight. Aliens walking under the cities ever changing mood, red and blue, green and yellow, Red and Blue. A cops lights moved slowly towards her moving with a watchful and purposeful roll. She flattened herself into the wall for support feeling a slight gagging. I must not throw up. They’d think I was on junk, they’d find the gun, they’d know, they’d stop me. The lights grew bolder searching out her shadows spinning them as they tried to escape, pinned down by garbage cans, buildings, boxes, feet and bodies. She covered her mouth with her scarf
breath
As the lights passed and the shadows became less desperate she relaxed a bit. She ducked her head and hurried across the street leaving herself open and exposed. She was identifiable, an easy target in her over zealous attempt to be inconspicuous. Back to the safety of the tall buildings set close together to protect her. Two more blocks, and then just six back again.
Images swam in front of her, Tim’s face; garbage; a woman’s figure; police lights; the rabbit. The woman’s figure twitched and stayed before her, walking towards her. She moved almost hesitantly, staggering, dressed in shadows, approaching. The word slipped from her “Shit” and the figure echoed with an intake of breath. It was the first person Marie had run into in the ally. just keep walking. Marie clutched her scarf closer to her face. Twelve feet. The woman edged closer to the wall watching the ground. Seven feet. Marie fingered the bulge in her pocket, safety. The woman’s hand fluttered to her neck. Three feet. Clack-smack, clack-smack, they passed each other without looking up. Another moment of fear and wave of nausea passed over her. She released the scarf to hold the wall of the building, that was swaying in front of her, steady. What if the woman remembered her tomorrow? She straightened up pushing against the brick, fingered her safety and then began to move again. Faster now: clack-smack-clack-smack. The army of echoes followed at double time.
Tiny beads of sweat formed at her temples and at the back of her neck. Another open street before her. The things to overcome, one fear at a time, one risk at a time, one step-
She was in the middle of the street when the shadows began to pulse again, Blue-Red, a siren wailed, a plane flew by overhead, the rabbit screamed. She fled before the headlights, too late to turn back, into the ally. The lights passed looking for someone else’s shadow. One block left. More sirens, more lights.
They know
Marie paused gripping the bulge in her pocket. Then slowly again the clack-smack as her feet clack- began to move –smack.
She looked up the side of the building to the row or rooms on the fourth floor. His light was still on and she could see his shadow moving around almost frantic in its movements.
Maybe there is someone with him, maybe a woman.
She felt the gun press into her left thigh. She loosened the scarf, now around her neck, hoping that it would be easier to breath and swallow. The shadow passed by the window again. Four flights up and six blocks back.
She turned the corner suddenly facing three police cars and an ambulance in front of the building. One or two people wandered around the cars but no cops. They were prepared for her. They did know. He wouldn’t be alone. They would be waiting for her. As soon as she stepped through the door they’d haul her away. Maybe they would let her kill him first. She was on a mission from God. Clack-smack up the front steps. The army gone, no longer supporting her. Through the front doors. She could hear the radio voices communicating, floating down the hall, their thump-thud as they came down the stairs to get her.
They aren’t even going to wait
She stopped, holding the gun in her pocket. The shiny shoes peaked down from the top of the stairs, then the creased navy, the gun belt, the hands, face and hat. He smiled at her. He must not recognize me. Clack-thunk-thump-thud-clack-thunk the stretcher followed.
But I haven’t been up yet.
She reeled, swaying in time to the sound. It was Tim. She’d seen his form under sheets often enough to know.
Why is it getting dark in here? She felt arms wrap around her. He isn’t dead! She struggled up from the darkness, gripping the gun. A blue creased uniform held her. It’s over
You alright Mam? His smile was concerned.
Tim’s dead? Already?
His smile faded. You knew him?
Dead already. Someone beat her to it. No…Yes…Well, once.
Is there anyone to notify?
God knows.
Pardon?
No, I don’t suppose there is anyone left.