The First Time I Heard My Voice

It was just the other day. There is a distinction between the voice one hears in his or her own skull and the one others hear as you speak. It’s like listening to a recording of yourself talking, or laughing. There is detachment there, suddenly, the rejection of your own voice upon hearing it. It’s foreign to your ears, but why? Why is it not the same: how the world listens to the sounds that emit from your mouth and the reverberations within flesh and bone?

Friday night permit me to one place only: the Archibald S. Alexander Library‘s front desk. At any given moment, my eyes were glued to the shining screen at several photographs of potential apartment spaces Kyle and I could share in Japan, or teaching programs where I could spend my time and effort helping very young children speak English, while I learned Japanese.

The future blossomed for me in an instant. I was filled with light and lightness. One could say it was pure, unadulterated hope. Potential laid out its path for he and I.

My shift ended at midnight. I was ecstatic: Kyle worked at the computer lab down the street, so I walked in my quickened pace towards the Student Center to meet him. We walked home together: I noticed the trees, blooming in the night to be blessed by sunlight in the morning–and being the only sober human beings wandering the streets.

It was the first time I heard my voice:
we were in his basement and I was bra-less in a big sweater and I told him about our future in Japan. Our futures felt like engorged fruits upon the fragile vine of time above us. My voice, as I spoke, materialized before me in the shape of his smile and I knew, at that moment, that I had heard myself for the very-first-time and I must have been consumed by it because what my voice told me was that finally, here stands the only other human being on this earth that has happened upon my path in life, who shares love, who grounds me at the same time allowing flight and freedom.

{ My voice,
I heard,
her speak,
sudden alignment. }

Kyle Mezzacappa, it’s been six months of exploring each other’s worlds. Everyday I look forward to traveling the length of your existence, to cherish, to love, to appreciate. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I KNEAD you!

alive, breathing

The color-blind boy stared at the brittle, fleshy remains of his left arm, crushed among the roadside. Ten minutes earlier, a fifty-something truck driver with a disgusting sense of humor pushed harder on the gas pedal. Whiskey-mouthed and balding. I don’t know what became of him, but in this story he got away, clean and guiltless. Dark, grey liquid coated the boy’s pale arms, his lanky legs. The sun had just set over Fort Dodge, Iowa. He forgot how to blink, the poor thing. If the boy could see colors, he would have seen a blood-orange sky. Did he smell his mother’s apple pie or seared skin? He counted to five in slow intervals  in his head the pain swelled up swarmed electrified his torn flesh ran up through his arm forced its way into the pain receptors of the brain; shrieks shook the thick, grey branches, or so he wanted to think. He wanted his pain to cause the grass beside him pain, the trees, the clouds above him. He wanted everything in his world to feel what he felt. His eyelids began to shut. The flowers in his mother’s garden still smiled at him as he was dying. Yes, the young boy understood that he was dying. How dare her flowers smile at my pain!  So, he cried silently and began to disappear;  forgetting compassion, forgetting bliss, forgetting time.

Spring Awakenings

Dahlia’s skinny knees bend as she swoops to the floor. She grips the bronze painted handle of a small cabinet. It pops open. Her right hand searches the dark interior and stumbles upon a single bar of soap, forgotten. She grips it tightly. The old man who lived down the hall smelled of olives and old leather. Outside, pigeons with turquoise eyes wobbled among the white cobblestone.  She unscrews the crusty white cap of the powdered bleach canister and sets it on the marble counter. Sighing, she rises and wipes a persistent strand of her brown curls behind her left ear. Her footsteps carry an unfamiliar sound as she walks to the closet. The glass knob turns.

He lived alone.  “And he’s blind,” her father told her another time. “He hasn’t been sober for years,” her mother said, “Don’t bother.” He never left his apartment. Did he have any friends? Dahlia wondered. Dahlia picks up the yellow handle of a bucket with her left hand and a tall, blue mop with her right. Harsh sunlight scars her eyes when she enters the bathroom. Her fingers turn the faucet knobs. Water gushes downwards. Each Monday and Wednesday at precisely 8 a.m., a young boy accompanied by a large, white dog delivered a tall, brown bag of groceries to his door. Two, frail and wrinkly hands emerged from his doorway. The door shut without a sound.

The steam rises. Dahlia’s skin becomes moist. With the flick of her wrists, she turns the knob and lifts the bucket out of the tub. She shuffles to the kitchen with slow steps. One cloudy Monday morning, Dahlia decided to peek into the Old Man’s grocery bag. She hid around the corner and listened for the boy and the dog to descend the stairs. She scampered over to the bag and pulled it open. One baguette, two red apples, a small jar of lemon marmalade, sugar, a bar of soap and curiously, a single, red poppy. She smiled at the treasures. The bleach flakes flutter down into the bucket of water. She churns the mop up and down, watching bubbles surface. She hears a thud just outside the kitchen window and gasps. Hands shaking, she pulls the curtain aside. Another bright red apple falls past the window.

Dahlia heard the sound of locks turning. Her legs would not move. The door of the Old Man opened and she looked up at him while he looked down at her. For the quickest instant, she cherished that moment of contact. She stared into his eyes; one blue with a cataract and the other, hazel. Dark lashes. Crevices in flesh. Shiny white hair. The mop hits the floor with a slosh. She mops the filmy floor tiles in a circular motion. Dahlia swallowed her voice, but muttered a ‘hello’. “How do you do?” He said to her in a deep, but soothing voice. He offered her an apple. She nodded.

The mop head traces the horizontal underside of the kitchen cabinets, pushing peeled vegetable skins and breadcrumbs into a corner. Her brown hair falls from behind her ear. Dahlia could only stare at the myth of a man. She noticed a long, deep scar that encircled the underside of the Old Man’s neck. She traced it with her eyes. The apple was crispy and sweet. He noticed and without transition, began to tell her the story of his wife. He tried to hang himself the day his wife died—but failed. The mop prods the spaces between shapely wooden chairs at the kitchen table. She moves the chairs one by one out of place, and then into place. The Old Man told her that God should have taken his life instead. “Something was growing inside her,” He said.

He showed her Arienette’s chair; the one she used to sit in when she sung songs to her full moon abdomen. It was an occasional chair, one with marigold yellow cushioning that swirled outwards at the arms and curved at the top. French words and the smell of coffee wafted in through the open window. Poppies bloomed at the windowsill, flourishing in the white sunlight. They were her favorite flower, he said. Like a slug, the mop leaves a shiny, wet trail across the tiles. Dahlia slowly walked around the room, gazing into the faces of the woman in the photographs. Long, brown, graceful curls like her own. Emerald green eyes upon pallid skin. Pale pink lips, slightly parted. Arienette stared off into the distance and forever would. She was twenty when she died, he said. At the far end of the kitchen, Dahlia stands with her hands on her hips and heaves a sigh of relief. She treads over the wet tiles with bare feet, leaving nearly-transparent footprints. She heard the cries of her classmates outside and realized she was twenty minutes late for school. Dahlia looked once more at the Old Man, backed away slowly and scurried towards the door, nearly tripping over a sleeping, orange cat. His faint smile was pleasant but melancholy. It lingered in her mind as she flew down the staircase. She carries the bucket to the bathroom once again. Her fingers begin to slip and she rushes to drop it into the tub. The next day, Dahlia noticed a minor headline in a newspaper discarded on a bench. The caption read: The Poppy-Colored Suicide. Elderly man jumps to his death. Sitting at the edge of the tub, she watches the bittersweet smile of the Old Man bleed and fade away into the unknown recesses of the drain.

charred counterparts

I trace the faint memory of Annie behind my dark eyelids, her blazing silhouette pressed frantic against a burning glass window. Had it been sunset then? Or were the flames mimicking the dying light? With the flick of my wrist, I spin the hot water knob to the left. I run my fingers under the rushing stream, feeling the slow growing fervor. From the kitchen window I watch the sun descend the horizon as shades of rose and marigold diesel spills into the winter sky–perpetuating a momentary inferno.

Annie. She is forever seven years old. Forever trapped in the charred wood of the Victorian house across the street. I retract my hand suddenly from the scalding water. Holding the dish soap upside down, I wait for the golden liquid to ooze to the top. I thought about the strands of hair that seemed to be weaved from gold that fell to the small of her back. Each morning, she demanded her mother to tie her hair into high pigtails. Perfect, her azure eyes would say when she came to greet me at the front door. I lather the red sponge through a tall, clear glass, carefully scrubbing each oily lip print. That day was the first day she ever let me hold her dolly. For reasons unknown to anyone besides herself, the doll remained unnamed. Wherever she went, the doll with the clear glass eyes and red plaid dress went too.

Tiny soap bubbles float around the sink. I scrub furiously at the bottom of a pasta-encrusted pan. It never occurred to me how incredibly quiet she was. Come to think of it, I never heard her speak. I don’t recall the sound of her voice. She would merely mouth words to her mother, or smile at my parents when she came for tea-time.

A tiny piece of hardened pasta impales the soft spot under my thumbnail. I bite my lip and pull back in pain. A bead of blood pools under the soap suds. I rinse it quickly then pick up a metal lid. Annie always let me do the talking when our dolls played together. That afternoon she insisted that she poured the imaginary tea for once. I smile as I run the water over the lid. My reflection is imperfect and skewed on the shiny metal.

Annie, in some ways, was my reflection. She was the quiet one while I was the agitator. She always folded her hands while I played with my food. In the evenings before naptime, Annie and I would wave at each other from our bedroom windows. Hers was at the very top of the house; the attic. Two windows were crafted on the east and west of the room. Each evening, the setting sun would shine red through both windows.

The clogged sink gathers water. The sky outside colors the murky pool of dirty silverware a rusty red. That glowing scarlet hue from Annie’s window managed to reach over and graze the walls of my own bedroom. I thrust my hand into the water and pull out two spoons. Delicately I run the sponge along its silvery curves. Before my daily nap on that crisp, winter day, I remember hearing the echoing thud of an axe falling upon the logs behind Annie’s house. The cold, dry air blew westward that night. The faintest smell of burning wood made my little nose crinkle.

I dip my hand into the sink and pull out three knives. I make sure not to cut the delicate flesh of the sponge as I run its rigid length. I was awoken from my nap by the sound of wailing sirens and incessant shouting. My bedroom was bathed in sanguine red, but not from the setting sun; ravaging flames consumed Annie’s house. From my window, I watched the black smoke smear charcoal into the sky above her house.

With a flick of my wrists, I turn off both knobs. The pool of murky water remains still. No, I do not see my reflection here.

Firefighters with blackened faces ran left and right in her yard waving their arms. Neighbors and cars slowed to watch the spectacle. I saw all their fingers point to the attic window, heads turned, mouths agape.

Pulling out the sink drain basket with two fingers, I watch a small whirlpool form at the sudden gulp of the sink.

I pressed my nose against my window and squinted my eyes. There she was, standing at her window like a black angel, trapped in the burning fury of the fire. Her silhouette remained, traceable with the point of one’s finger but in an instant, became engulfed again in my all-consuming memory.

So is this it?

This was it. I sat in the passenger seat of a car with no heater and thought about being cold. About me being cold. How my skin was tingly and my breath gave color to the air and how my fingers contorted in such a way, like ten little bodies intertwined.

I thought about the night before and my mind sketched the half-lit faces of the people in a house. I strained and squinted to see his face. I couldn’t tell what he wanted. I didn’t know what I wanted. So I spat numbers at him and forced the whirlwind away because I didn’t want to be vulnerable. But he said nice things, like, “You’re the first girl I can actually hold a conversation with,” or “You’re so cool.” What do you mean here, when you say these words? When you say, “I think your friend likes you because he said that.”

Freezeframe. Rewind. Pause. Play.

I don’t want to see this anymore.

Stop. Fast-forward. Pause. Play.

I left him and now i’m walking with another one and I bare all because I don’t know what I think about him, either. But linked arms don’t mean anything when it’s cold out. I asked him if he would kiss me and he said he would. And somehow, we’re home again.

A Lullaby for He Without Dreams…

This is the beginning of a story I am composing. Is it so strange that it is sort of about my Algebra teacher? I am writing it in a series of Vignettes, “bite sized chapters” Mr. Alcindor called them. [Oh and to Halli: If you are reading this, don’t be freaked out, hahahaha, I just thought this one aspect of his life seemed interesting. You’ll read it later.] Anyway, enjoy:

[I am telling this story on behalf of a man I know, a teacher. He is secretive, intelligent, and playful. I do not know a lot about him, but from what I do know, I can fill in the blanks. This shall be a story about being young and careless; a story about walking blindfolded into the warm darkness of life.]

B for Blue, B for Beautiful

Her head fell slightly to one side, letting her blonde hair fall behind the auditorium seat. She shifted, and continued to listen to the college counselor whose tummy rippled as he walked across the stage. Sometimes she would throw her head back and laugh silently at the witty jokes, but her eyes were closed most of the time, head rested on her left palm. Her white, soft cheeks cushioned the slight smile that grazed her lips. She looked like was daydreaming about something wonderful.

My notebook lay bare across my lap, my pen ready to vomit—but I left them untouched, and continued to examine this beautiful creature. I am not one to be easily infatuated, but one morning I happened to pass by her; the angle of the streaming sunlight was just enough to illuminate the azure infinity that floated in her eyes. I was instantly captivated by that never-ending sky and gravity was no longer an issue for me.

Unlock the Voice box

My University’s cafeteria was unnecessarily gigantic. There were large windows displaying the apple pie-colored trees of Boston’s campus. Its immenseness drove me to my two-seater in the far corner, closest to the door. I was happy here of course; the trashcan was to my left, the door to my right. You could say I was a sort of loner, but I did have friends from my fraternity. I preferred my lunch in solitude.

I noticed a large group of students enter the cafeteria that I didn’t usually see. It was very likely that they existed on the other side of the cafeteria. I stood up to throw out my crumpled sandwich wrapper, when I saw her swiftly enter the cafeteria, passing me, creating a luscious and intoxicating breeze.

This was the point in time when I decided to explore the rest of the world.

So I, not wanting to leave just yet, purchased a large hazelnut coffee and walked on, proceeding to enter the unbeaten path (well, for me, at least.)

I stood at the boundary, paused the song “Californication” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and stuffed my I-Pod into my bag. It was not difficult to find her.

She sat alone, surprisingly, with a thick notebook and a chemistry textbook on the chair beside her.

Go on. Just ask to sit with her. I knew I couldn’t do it. Not like that.

Then, the most peculiar thing happened. As I was about to quickly walk past her table, she turned to pull something out from her purse, when her elbow pushed her coffee and it toppled and exploded on the floor. My black shoes did not anticipate the incoming tidal wave of hot hazelnut coffee.

“Oh God! I’m so sorry!” She frantically got up and threw two napkins onto the puddle.

I told her not to worry, and stepped out of the brown pond upon the blue floor. “I needed to wash these shoes anyway,” I laughed. I walked to get more napkins and helped wipe up the mess. Nobody seemed to care, anyway. She thanked me and smiled, this time showing the place where her words took refuge.

“This is the second time this happened to me this week. Last Monday no one bothered to help. It was really nice of you to do that.” She said, softly. I smiled.

“Here. Take my coffee—it’s hazelnut too. I promise I didn’t drink it yet or anything, in case you’re grossed out by stuff like that.” I ranted a bit and felt embarrassed.

“Aw, thank you! It’s too much, really. Thank you.” A hint of tiredness floated in the air between us, soon to be whisked away by laughter and the forging of a friendship. My coffee stained shoes squeaked as they faced her white-laced flats; we talked and laughed about the unfunny fat man. I realized she held the key to my voice box.

TO BE CONTINUED…