One morning, I think it was late November, I had just finished reading a young adult novel and it had literally transported me squarely back 20 years. It was my Madeline cookie, cheesy as it was. I felt suddenly frantic, hopped in my car and drove to the antique store to clear my head. Reclaim my brain. I know from experience when my head starts spinning dizzy on it’s orbit that the best thing to do is look at old Pyrex and gaze lovingly at wooden sewing tables and notions. It didn’t work. It didn’t fucking work!!!!

What to do. Driving. Clarity comes with concentration. My damn heart had taken up permanent residence in the attic where my brain lives. Think of arrows, think of lines…straight things…even steady hands…okay, okay. Got it! Write it out of me. Put it on paper, well glowing paper that resides on a computer screen but…semantics. And I wrote some beautiful poem that only touched breathlessly on the tip of what my heart was feeling. It didn’t work. It didn’t fucking work!!!!

Something else. Quick. Quicker! Painting, that’s it! A newish medium to me, something that requires painstaking concentration and extreme focus with steady hand. And I drew and I painted a masterpiece that only bucketed a thimble from the well that housed my ever growing heart/head hybrid. It didn’t work. It didn’t fucking work!

The clanging, thumping, rearranging that is going on in my head with it’s brand new resident moving in has to stop. Evict my greedy heart back to where it belongs and give me my straight little mind! And then ahhh sweet silence. But to have the silence is torture in it’s own way. A trade of fuzzy indirection and insanity for breathless squeezing throat closing pain.

Surely there is a medium between…surely I can paperclip everything together and file it neatly away? If there is an anwer I have not found it, or maybe haven’t looked…because I don’t want it to go away yet…as much as I complain, letting my enlarged heart take over for a little bit is really secretly something that I need right now.

Amalthia Sparrow

Baby put your mind at ease
Though there’s trouble up ahead
The nighttime calls for you to rest
Dreams beckon from heavy seas
Closing weary eyes in bed

For now is time to forget our cares
Until tomorrow creeps
The darkness keeps away the beast
The snarling grizzly bear
The thing that bares its teeth

We have each other held so tight
And nothing here can harm
A pillow made of moonbeams
The blanket of the night
Our love to keep us warm

Tomorrow let us face together
What neither can begin
With the rising of the sun
Make nothing heavier
Two cannot win

Dear _____________,

I had always waited for something big to happen. I finally decided to make it happen…force it, like some indignant child…when it failed I was lost…wasn’t that what all the movies told us? That it was supposed to work out? Guess I should have stuck to Shakespeare, huh.

At least now I know what that lump in my throat is; it’s not my heart, though it fights for space…it’s you. Well, every fleeting thought I’ve had involving oblivious bliss with you, my dearest love.

I can’t even see the path to move forward…no, I move sideways like a crab…sidle, that’s it. I wish for inertia, so I could at least dull the pain…fling my hands out and catch it like a butterfly…stick it in a mason jar and put it forgotten on a shelf somewhere.

But damn it…my heart still beats fast for you…fluttering, floundering, gasping for air…always moving like some poor bird caught in a gilded cage…constantly flapping, nowhere to fly.

I don’t know how to end this.

Started without an end and I’m struggling for a witty last sentence, pulling up only fragments of thoughts…nothing to do any real justice.

How about just…goodbye.

No, to basic…

Ah Fuck it…

goodbye.

Absolutely,

___________________________

The shower is my friend. In her warm caress I can let go of all the composure I have laid out for the day. I can let the fear out there, safe in my steamy cell…tears mingle with the stream of water and wash down the drain…into oblivion.

I love the barren trees of winter…betraying every beautiful curve in their nakedness…daring me to look unblushing at their majesty and depth…even the most crooked has a serene sense of strength that I can’t tear my eyes away…

“Fingers crossed?”

“Yes.” I replied tugging on my lip with my teeth.

When I walked through the clearing I really had no clue as to what I was going to do. James and I had seen the light from the craft swan dive out of the sky and into the woods below, but we were unsure if we should follow up with an actual exploration. In the end I won the fight, my sense of adventure taking over his sense of get the fuck outta here, and that was why I was forging my way through what could be some really nasty poison ivy in my flannel PJ’s.

We had been camping for most of the week out in Table Rock, and this particular night we were laying out in a cozy clearing watching stars and talking about our dreams. When it dropped we looked at each other and knew it was something insane, but we still couldn’t talk. Then the sound of it crashing hit us like a ton of bricks and we flew into our words like birds to a window.

James wanted to flee immediately, babbling about abduction and anal probes, I even heard the name Whitley Strieber. He suggested we haul ass to the nearest ranger station and radio for help. At the same moment I was talking about ET and how we could be part of something bigger than the universe or some such shit.

I calmly told him if we went his route that we would both end up in the loony bin and that was enough to shut him up, pondering, while I started walking toward the sound we had heard and the light we had seen. He grabbed my shirt then, and when I looked back his face was frozen in shock. He knew I had balls but not that many.

So here we were, or here I was…James had sat down on his sleeping bag wanting nothing to do with my recklessness. So here I was leaving the clearing, biting my lip, fingers crossed hoping what lay beyond was friendly. I turned on my flashlight and beamed it toward the ground, walking slowly so as not to trip. After about 15 minutes I saw the light of the craft and realized now I couldn’t turn back, the sheer fascination was enough to keep my feet moving in the right direction. I boldly walked up to the triangular silver shape and for lack of something better to do cleared my throat. Loudly.

For a full 30 seconds nothing happened.

Then all of a sudden two men and a woman were right in front of me. Humans. They were dressed well and were good looking, to say the least. I was stunned. How? How could they be humans? This was clearly a UFO.

When the woman spoke it was in my mind. She told me they had come from another Earth in another universe. She explained that they were future humans of this Earth that had recolinized when a nuclear war had destroyed everything. She told me they made missions to the past to save humankind by choosing certain men and women to take back to their Earth. They had figured out a way to talk telepathically and a way to test souls for purity, they did not want any more war.

I sat there and listened to this and my heart started to beat fast…I could go and start a new life on a new Earth! James and I would be so happy there.

“Do you think I would pass the test?” I asked her.

“First we must repair our ship. Then we will do as you wish.”

I walked back to our camp to find James. When I told him about it all he just sighed. He didn’t believe me! But he saw the crash with his own eyes!

That’s okay, when they are done with their ship they will come. He would see.

James started packing up the camp.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting the fuck outta here.”

“You can’t! We need to go with them! I told you the world is going nuclear, we have to jump ship, we have to go! Nothing is holding us here, no family, no friends, it’ perfect.”

“To perfect Beth…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean this is the exact dream you just recited to me 2 hours ago laying beneath the stars. That aliens would come and take us to their Earth, a place where there was peace and we could be happy. You just told me this story and then you go off looking for a light I didn’t even see…”

“But you did see it James, remember! Remember, you asked if my fingers were crossed?”

“No, I told you not to hold your breath, that you should cross your fingers for something like that. I’m leaving, are you coming?”

“No! I’m not coming! They are going to take me away from here, far away, you’ll see!”

“Goodbye Beth.”

“James!” but he was in the car driving away, just like that, so strange.

I began to doubt myself. Was I crazy? Why would James just leave me without a fight? Was I that expendable to him?

Then they were there again. So quickly in front of me, silent and regal.

“Are you ready?” asked the woman.

“What about James, he didn’t believe me.”

“Well, we found your friends soul to be a little black for our world. He could not have come with us. You on the other hand is what we look for, pure and peaceful.”

As the ship left the Earth that I had once belonged to, taking me to a new Earth and a new life, I thought about James. I chose to save myself over staying and loving him.

I didn’t regret it for an instant.

I remember when we said goodbye
How it ended with a kiss
That everything I thought you said
To this point had been remiss
The dizzy spell you set me in
The fire in your eyes
Electric currents through my skin
My heart beating with the tides
Then just like that you let me go
Let me walk away
Never forgetting what we meant
Or that I really wanted to stay…

It’s not as easy as you think…the words come in short sentences, fragments, pieces…enough to make me feel a little ill…it’s frantic really, the way my mind works if I give it enough time to work the way it really wants to…No, instead I have to hold it down, hold it in a place where it is comfortable…lulled even, no jumpy flow to set me in the direction I do not want to go. It happened just yesterday you see…nothing to occupy…nothing to sate. It went running away from me and I had to haul the damn thing back with a steel rope..drained me…took everything I had to make that agitation dull.

I went digging through old treasures the ones with ribbons and bows…words on paper written long ago…looking for a girl I made up in my mind…a fucking GHOST…

She is just the kind of girl I could love, tragic and plain, pale and morose…so many times she pretended to be something she was never meant to endure. She never could just cry out…out with the pain, the anguish, the feeling of her own mind betraying her every second, to the point of feeling hollow inside. No. She wouldn’t, and if she did, if she let it breathe and become the monster it threatened to be what would happen then…

I know what would happen…I wouldn’t love her anymore, I would turn my back to her as if she never existed…I would treat her like that and she would call out to me her voice on the wind like some siren, but it would be to late…to small…and she would disappear forever.