pre-April flash catch-up, #8, #9, #10, #11

The following are prompts/stories from Amygdala:

# 7: Ironed pajamas; washing down vivarin with cold coffee – 9 minutes

I knew it was going to be one of those days when it was impossible to keep your eyes open. I brewed a pot of coffee, blurry-eyed and sleep deprived, wondering where the time had gone between going to bed and having to get up. I made myself a cup, then scuttled off to the laundry, wondering what kind of person walked around in ironed pajamas – I must have slept like the dead, although it hardly felt like it – the creases were still in them, still crisp like bleached new dollar bills fresh off the mint. The peppermint of my toothpaste didn’t even revive me and didn’t mix well with my new creamer. I set down the cup, attempting to dress and get a jump start to the day but found myself, feet up, lounging on the couch instead. Before I knew it, I was washing down vivarin with cold coffee, choking on the lump in my throat and cringing at the bitter taste. So many things failed to go down well these days. So many changes. The sky was a brilliant but cloudy shade of blue, obscuring the sun that was poking through in parts and pieces but never really making an appearance. On the other side of the house, there was a mid-day moon still shining. I wondered how dark that meant the other side of the world was. I was a fan of the darkness, so the prisoner sun was a welcome relief. When the day shone brightly it was like it could see right through me like some kind of brainwashed scientologist – I didn’t like the way they looked at me. It was creepy. Sometimes I didn’t like the way I looked at myself. My reflection in the mirror was hair-wild – one side of my head was flattened down like I had been visited by a dream world steamroller, the other side was sticking up in every conceivable direction, and some that I didn’t even realize were possible. I washed my face with shampoo, failing to discern the difference, and I think the bar soap made even more of a mess of my hair. It was a backwards day. Somehow my arms fit through the leg holes of my jeans, and my tshirt made an interesting pair of shorts. I laughed at my reflection then, undressing and then trying again – going for a button down instead, mis-aligning the buttons precariously. I looked lopsided, half-cocked and decadent. This early morning routine was a chore of the best kind, lazy days and streamer sunlight, the flashes of distant lightning illuminating a world full of courage, connection and permanence. Everything changes, and falls apart, just so better things could come together. The outside world was a mix up of dreamscape/reality and I just wasn’t ready to face it today. I poured myself another cup of coffee, dumping creamer into it haphazardly and reaching for the arsenic instead of the sugar – no, wait. Sugar is above the sink, not under…one of these days, I was going to be the death of me, and I could see the headlines now: “sleep deprived girl loses way in own house…accidental poisoning due to a lack of attention”. That made me giggle with the seriousness of it – but I was always irreverent, looking to the obscure to find humor. I curled up on the couch, turning off all electric devices by which anyone could find me and force me to be productive, focusing instead on a good book, a warm drink and a day full of hope, hermiting, knowing that tomorrow would be a clean slate, a new start, and maybe, just once, the outside world would seem less scary and more alive with possibility.

# 8: black, filthy claws, vanilla ice cream; toes under a blanket – 21 minutes

She always was a blanket hog. Probably always wood be. Mornings found me curled underneath a protective covering of just a corner of the blanket I always started out with, wrapped up like a spill-over burrito in my tiny corner of the bed. For such a little thing, her presence was huge and demanded attention. From the time I got her, she went after my toes under a blanket like it was world’s greatest toy – hours of entertainment on hand whenever sleep was around the corner. My toes had the scars to prove just how deadly her black, filthy claws could be. Whoever thought domesticating cats was a good idea surely had never met mine. She was wicked and brilliant, from the time I got her she was barely big enough to fit, stretched out in the palm of my hand, and mischief should have been her name. I settled for Devil. Her black fur stood out against the whites and greys of an otherwise plain apartment, and she made it her own in no time at all. I tried to lock her up some time, to keep her destruction to a bare minimum, but even at that size the cat was resourceful. I caught her one day, jumping in earnest at the doorknob, convinced that if she hit it just right, she could make that thing open. The lack of opposable thumbs sometimes worked to my advantage – sometimes not. When she couldn’t make the stubborn, sticky doors of that old building work, she found a way to crawl under the gap between the door and the floor – no matter how hard I tried to keep her out, I’d awake in the middle of the night to claws, teeth and mewling on my feet. It usually meant I woke up bleeding and cursing loud enough to wake up the neighbors. But I couldn’t help but laugh. The cat ingratiated itself to me almost instantly, attaching itself to me like a shadow. Fitting, due to the color. But she followed me around more like a puppy than a cat. She romped, convinced she could tackle and tame my real shadow as it trailed along the floor behind me, leaping over it like dolphins over waves. It’s a wonder I ever spent any money on toys at all – she hardly lacked in entertainment. She sat on top of the tv, staring down at the screen like a furry gargoyle, swiping at anything that caught her fancy.

The first time I yelled at her for opening the cabinet door and clawing out my entire stash of ziplock bags, I’ll never forget the look on her face. It looked like the face of ultimate betrayal, that I would chastise her so. Hours later, she had forgiven me, curled up on my chest and purring, her whiskers going up my nose and making me sneeze constantly, but stubbornly refusing to be dislodged from the place she had determined was her own. She was tenacious that way. When I brought home another kitten, thinking she should have a playmate, she took to it like white on rice – eventually. For awhile she pranced around like a princess on a power trip, designated to showing the new cat who was boss, and training her properly on the rules of the house. The rules of the house were simple – I was there as staff, living only to serve the needs of the two (but really one) masters of the universe. As long as their needs were met, I was allowed a moment of clinging happiness. They used to share my vanilla ice cream without my consent, sneaking slurps out of the bottom of my bowl when I wasn’t looking. Eventually, I just let them share it. What harm was it, when their rough, sandpaper tongues already licked the shower water from my head, grooming me as they determined I was incapable of doing a satisfactory job myself.

Devil lived a long time, and while she grew and lengthened, to me she was always that little kitten, curled up in the space between my chest and chin, purring away contentedly, thinking that the world was a safe and happy place, although I had moments when I realized fully how much she had grown – namely when leaping like an acrobat from the back of the couch to my stomach, or using me as a launching pad for cat adventures that mostly included pouncing, tackling and annoying her sister. That cat kept my secrets till the end. To this day, whenever I see a bowl of ice cream, or a claw mark in a ziplock back – or wiggle my toes under the blanket, I still see those glowing yellow eyes, staring at me from the tangle of inky black fur in the dark. I think she’s chosen to teach all my new cats the toe trick, and while I’ve rarely had a peaceful moment of sleep since, at least whenever my feet twitch or show the slightest signs of life – I’m grateful for the reminder.

#9: scalloped potatoes; fertility, sovereignty and war; golden sweepers – 18 minutes

I loved the way the sun set on those city streets –the rays would light up the faux-cobble stone, paved streets like golden sweepers, shining a light past and through the dirt, grime and unmentionable filth that was sure to linger. None of that seemed to matter. I lived far above it all, my 4th floor apartment acting as a mirror to the sunlight on the street below, filling the whole room with a warm glow. It turned into an oven around sunset – the light pouring into the windows, disregarding the shades, curtains, whatever else I tried to place up to protect my eyes against that brilliant glare – but I didn’t mind it really. Speaking of ovens, though, the girl and I sat on the floor that afternoon, arguing over the consistency of scalloped potatoes, being Irish and all, debating movies, world politics and religion. When I bent across the coffee table to introduce my lips to her ear before checking on the cooking food, she told me I wasn’t fair. The truth was, as we had both agreed, all was fair when dealing with fertility, sovereignty and war – love. And we loved each other deeply that spring, the winter melting into a glaze of sunlight – days at the beach, footprints in the sand. She said she was joking about liking the long walks, but we did them anyway – leaving memories like sandcastles scattered all over this once-familiar place, now tainted with a new texture and new remembrances. She imprinted me with the taste of her – the scent of saltwater on the air, diving into crystalline pools covered over by moss and pollen that never seemed to dissipate, no matter how often you cleaned. She picked stray hairs off of my shirts in the morning, and made herself a blanket of me at night, curling her back into me, warm and sweating after an evening’s worth of teasing. This spring would blend slowly into summer – the swelteringly hot days and muggy nights, overrun with rain, some stormclouds on the horizon – but far, far off in the distance, far too far away to take seriously. And summer would fade slowly into fall – all the leaves would change color with the idea of traveling north – we’d be two in a flock of aluminum birds, making our migration towards a would-be home, returning south for the approaching winter. I looked forward to the change in tides this year, one season, one truth, one reality fading into the daze of another, with no fear lingering in the future for these dreamers. What was I waiting for? The solidity of hope to liven under my feet, firmer than the clouds I was floating on, like a kite – and she held the string of my tail tightly in a careful fist, curled around her fingers like it was kissing the palm of her hand. She held my whole world in that lightly clenched, but not constricting fist and she knew it. There was so much more to this to come. So much more to dream of, to hope for, while maintaining the heady rush of what was. I could taste the future on the ocean breeze, even though we sat on the bay, sailboats passing by as weary travelers, ripe for adventure, full of chance. Where we went from here was anyone’s guess, and I had no predictions for the outcome, as long as it continued. As long as it meandered and lingered on my bright horizon, lighting up my world like that sun on the concrete.

# 10: green fireflies; I want chocolate milk so bad right now; anyone can walk in to a labyrinth – 13 minutes

Anyone can walk in to a labyrinth. The trick, once in, is learning to find your way out. That summer was like a giant maze, it was a summer of becoming – in the distant memory of youth to young adult to maturity. It doesn’t all happen at once, but patience was never my strong suit. I wanted to catch the world by the tail, to swing it around and release it at will, knowing that like an Australian boomerang, it would always come zooming back to me. I learned a lot that year – I learned the nature of loss, along with the purity of love, joy and peace. We had traveled north, by car – venturing from the smoggy haze of L.A. through the lush green, wet grass of Oregon, past Washington, where I lost track/count of the hippies that lined my path, where I learned to stop the car on the side of the road in order to frolic and run wild in a field of wildflowers, regardless of who owned them – if anyone did. Wildflowers, like me, were not meant to be owned, but enjoyed, like shared, communal property. I didn’t belong to anything that year. We crossed the border into Canada – the land of bitter cold in the winter, transformed to plains of lush greens, fertile browns and empty, wide-open spaces. I sat for a portrait in some quaint little town, not far from Alaska, where we reached our final, intended destination. But destinations are funny, that way – they never lead you where you end up. It’s like hopping a stream from one pebble, one stepping stone to the next, and once you land where you thought you were going, there’s another stone along the path and the distant bank glimmers in the twilight glow, and beckons you ever onward. Alaska was like that. It was cool enough in the higher elevations that snow still lined the mountains, but down in the valleys with the wildlife and nature, it was warm. It stayed light for 22 hours a day, and we’d play tag in the fields of grass, get lost in the wilderness of forests, explore at midnight, while listening to the howls of animals in the not too distant real. Alaska was my labyrinth, my becoming.

“It was so easy to get lost here” I remarked to you, much later – the age lines had creased our once overtly youthful faces. We were sitting at the kitchen table laughing about how we had almost run into the rear of a bear while walking one day, and it was a miracle that we weren’t eaten for dinner. Or the time that we were right in the way of a moose who was trying to cross our path. And I could hear the howl of wolverines – nasty little creatures – while we rode a hay bale at 2:30 in the morning across open expanses of fields. In the middle of our remembrances, you turned to me and smiled.

“I want chocolate milk so bad right now”. Your eyes were twinkling, and I remembered the quest for milk, straight from a cow, as it turned out – and you laughed as the warm, white liquid bubbled in the bottom of the pail, claiming that chocolate would make everything all better, that if we had a bottle of hersheys, where we only had the flask full of Burbon and a pocket full of travel-sized bottles of Vodka, then the world would surely taste that much sweeter.

I didn’t realize I was lost that summer, until you found me and lead me home. You showed me what it was like to be an adult, but to never quite grow up, and your emerald eyes shone like green fireflies, lighting up my night sky and twinkling like shooting stars in the far distant horizon. I told you then that the shade of your eyes, moving slowly from green to blue and back again reminded me of the northern lights – and how we used to lay on our backs in some empty field, no doubt smashing wildflowers in our wake, and watch them light up the night – the two hours of night that there was. I realized then, at that cracked, faded and well-worn kitchen table where so many meals, stories and hopes had been shared that that Alaska summer was what life was supposed to be like. Long stretches of happy, mixed in with a few moments of darkness, gone before you know it – not the other way around. It was the dark that made us remember to be grateful for the light. And it was the hope that gave us courage in the midst of that darkness. We wandered there, for years. And I realized that while I had unwittingly wandered into the labyrinth of happiness and you, my way out was never marked on any map – while everything changes, not everything has to come to an end, and an eternity of tomorrows was just beginning to unravel before me like a patchwork quilt, carefully sewn by the hands of time, like the crinkled laugh lines around your eyes that you were embarrassed by, but what really defined you – and made you beautiful.

Prompts: use any/all – anywhere:
Swimming in paper
Drowning for a drink for years,
Equinox awakening
Count your blessings like rainbows,
Fire and ice
Lava heat and central air
Pinprick of a light in resident darkness
Swimming the void