Tiny Vipers

Photo credit: David Belisle 

A Light in the Window

When I was a little boy we lived in a house by the sea. It was an old house. It was a tall house. It was a white house. It was a tired house.

It clicked and clacked and talked in it's sleep. It sagged and sighed and shrugged it's stooping shoulders. 

Across the street lived the gardner and his wife. Summer days revealed bony arms and spindly legs. Brown leathery skin and bare shoulders bent over good earth and greenery.

They said he played the piano for a small-town church down the coast in Camden. I could see his narrow shoulders hunched over the keys. I could see the earth just beneath his finger nails. The sweat and soil mingling on his brow. His calloused fingers picking out 'Come Thou Fount', or 'Amazing Grace', or 'Be Thou My Vision'.

I liked the Gardener and his wife. 

When I was a little boy, I was afraid. I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of what lived and breathed and feasted in the dark. Of crows perched high in trees with no leaves. Of creeping things, crawling things, spiders and snakes and centipedes.

I was afraid of being buried alive. Slowly suffocating under six feet of loose earth. In the dark. There would be creeping things, crawling things, spiders and snakes and centipedes. And no one would mourn me, no one would mourn me. And no one would know, no one would even know.

This kept me awake most nights, but my greatest fear was this:

being alone. 

When I was a little boy, I shared a room with my brother. It was a cozy room. White-washed walls, strings of lights that looked like christmas-time, and ancient wood floor-boards that we painted grey. 

We slept in tall bunk-beds crafted by strong Norwegian hands. 

Our room was situated snugly above the front of the house. There was one window. It gazed out over the street, across the street, it fell upon the Gardener's house. 

I liked the Gardener and his wife.

I didn't like going to bed. I didn't like it at all.

Going to bed meant being alone.

When I was a little boy, I shared a room with my brother. My brother was a fast sleeper. This meant five to ten minutes of side-splitting laughter, and then, silence. Cold, dark, silence. I was alone.

Sleep is a frightening concept, when you pause to consider it. Countless families, scattered across the countryside, completely unconscious. Breathing corpses. The living dead. Zombies. 

This kept me awake most nights. 

Being the only person awake was a lonely struggle. Like I was the last living person left on the planet. These are things that reminded me I wasn't alone:

Late-night cars rolling by, headlights filling the room with the sweetest kind of relief. I would wonder where they were going.

Passenger jets passing overhead, every seat filled, every person heading to a different destination, a different home.

A clearing of the throat or a rustling of the blankets as my brother turned in his sleep.

And a light in the window.

Off the porch, over the lawn, across the street. The Gardener's house stood proud. Interrupting the night with a solitary light burning through the kitchen window. Many nights I was laid to rest by the knowledge that just across the street, the gardener and his wife were living and breathing. Maybe they were doing the dishes. Maybe they were sharing a glass of wine. Maybe they were wrapped up in the dog-eared pages of some well loved book. Maybe they held each other close, making their way through the house, as the record spun around, and around, and around.

They were living and breathing, and I was free to go. To close my eyes and join my family. To enter that sweet relief and to wait there until the breaking dawn cried out "come forth! Rise up!".

When I was a little boy, I was afraid of a lot of things. I'm grown now, some might even say I'm a man, but I'm still terrified of being alone. So, as night settles over you and your home, think of me, and leave a light in the window. 

Saami

Leaf

You open your eyes.

2:43 AM.

Hospital parking lot.

Drops of rain collect and collide, finding their way down your windshield. Tiny members forming bodies and running, fast, away. They're swept through the grass and cracks and meet with the soil. They call the worms to the surface.

There's a soggy leaf caught in the left wiper. No longer crisp and dry like it was when it flew from it's home and lodged itself there.

It's been there a long time.

You've been watching it.

You've been there a long time.

Rustle, crackle, crunch. You move your feet among the empty bottles and trash strewn over the floor and under the pedals. Ramen and Poland Springs, mostly. But the occasional Baby Ruth wrapper rises to the top as your restless legs churn, churn, churn.

Street lights line the nearly vacant lot. They storm the windows and flood your car with orange light, they cast about their erie shadows, they flicker and they twitch. The sun will rise soon, and they'll hide and wait for mother night to pull them from their sleep.

You rub your tired eyes and struggle to bring your tiny world into focus. You feel around on the floor for your glasses. Normally, you'd be worried. Worried sick. But now, as your fingers rake through the trash, you're just angry. 

"Fuck 'em", you say. You don't need them now. Never really needed them. 

Just to drive, and sometimes watch television, you used to say. But you haven't driven in over a week.

Anyway, you don't need them now. You know this car like the back of your hand. you know that somewhere to your right, stacked neatly in the passenger seat, are three cases of water. Poland Springs. Twelve bottles in a case. 

You know that directly behind you, rationed and piled on the floor are your noodles.  Nissin Top Ramen. 8 packs of 24. shrimp, beef, chicken, and oriental flavors. 3 ounces each. Oodles of Noodles. 

You know that the center console contains a Mag-Lite, two packs of Dr. Collins Pre-pasted disposable toothbrushes, 12 in a pack, and an MSR Pocket Rocket Camp Stove. Boils a liter of water in 3.5 minutes. Weighs just 3 ounces. 

You bought it 2 years ago. You were planning a solo canoe trip. The Allagash Wilderness Waterway. You would start at Indian Stream and paddle North nearly 100 miles to where the river spills into the St. John. You would rise with the sun and let the river pull you through the day. Through rapids and through quiet-water. Swept past luscious copse's and funneled through high banks lined with tall Pines. 

As the sun leveled with the horizon, you would allow yourself to be eased onto the shore. You would lay there, quiet, still and listen to the forest breathing around you. You would let the water sing you to sleep...

You shiver. You pull your blanket tight over your shoulders. 

You roll your head left, your warm breath fogs up the window. You lift your index finger to the glass. Drawing. Slow. Lazy.

Left Eye. Right Eye. Smile. You smile. Your window grins back at you.

You close your eyes.

Your heart skips. Stops. Starts again. Sharp breath. Adrenaline. 

You remember why you're here.

you open your eyes.

2:44 AM.

Like honey on my lips

Land of the Free

There's a long smoky train grinding it's way deep into the heart of the American

West. Rusty tracks stretch for miles, upon miles, upon miles. An industry built upon the broken backs and burning shoulders of 100,000 underpaid and overworked individuals. The sour smell of that black oozing tar and slowly rotting flesh rise from the gaping wounds cut deep within the tender side of a land that never really begged for industry.

The old men bent double, heavy hammers hanging from arthritic hands. Cheap cigarettes held tightly between yellowed rotting teeth, the growling beast rushes blindly forward, deaf to the calls and cries of 100,000 underpaid and overworked individuals. Those lonely tracks will be their lonely graves. Sprawled in a ditch or left naked under the cruel gaze of a sun that knows no mercy. Bleached bones and broken fingers bent back and disconnected at the joints, like some sad southern banjo player plucking out 'Dixie' on the last lonely string attached to the broken headstock of the last lonely possession he still holds dear.

And so the growling beast rushes blindly forward. And there's a forest growing through the minds of it's passengers. Starting at the base of the neck, scratching along the top of the skull, then bursting forth from the eye sockets in a fury of bloodied leaves and branches, scattering the only remaining vestige of knowledge about the first class compartment in a swirl of birch bark and brain matter. They'll scrub the walls, but the stench will remain. And they'll beat their chests and tear at their satin waistcoats, but the iron horse they fashioned rolls deeper and deeper still into the bowls of a land that never really begged for industry and over, and over, and over the rotting corpses of 100,000 underpaid and overworked individuals.

And someday that great beast will reach the sea, somewhere off the Western coast of the United States. And it'll plunge into the pacific ocean amidst a swirling cloud of steam and falling debris. The timber and iron will be plucked from the soil by their roots and fed whole to the wolves and to the owls. And grandfather will stare deep into his empty bottle and pull the few remaining leaves from his ancient tangled beard. The faceless corpses of animals slain will march their solemn way down to the rocky beaches, and they'll be shouting hallelujahs from their non-mouths, and tapping their tiny woodland paws in perfect time. And with one gesture the ghosts of 100,000 underpaid and overworked individuals will pick up their hammers and cast them to the deep.

So it Goes

I wasn't thinking about suicide. Well, I was, but I didn't really want to die. I could see it all reflecting quietly in my minds eye. Subtle, like the way the neighbors blue-eyed-televison-light bounces around their tiny apartment. Greg and Linda loved their reality television. Loved it. Some couples have kids. Some couples have cats. Some couples have lives. Greg and Linda had reality television. 

The blade would lay still, out of place on the grey ceramic tile. I would slide, slowly, theatrically down to the cold bathroom floor, stretching my arms away from my body, careful not to spill blood on my t-shirt. My favorite shirt. 

It was turquoise blue, with a hole in the left hem and a diagram of woodland creature tracks. Red squirrel, Wildcat, Fox, Deer, Porcupine, Raccoon, Black Bear, and Snowshoe Hair. 

I almost didn't wear it, but I wanted my roommates to see me in it when they came home from work and found me on the floor, barely clinging to life. And I wanted the paramedics to see me in it when they came to pick me up. And I wanted the nurses to see me in it when I arrived at the hospital. And I wanted my parents to see me in it when they came to visit me. They would stand there, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, staring at me and my favorite shirt, and they would wonder what they had done wrong.

My closest friends would come and visit me, even the ones living in different states, and tears would fill their eyes as they heard the news.

"What a shock, for all of us. I wonder how the family is holding up?"

"I never would have guessed, not in a million years, he was always such a happy boy."

"Have you seen his animal shirt? It's just adorable."

And every girl that ever said, "I'm sorry, I don't love you", would be filled with guilt, would approach my bedside, and while dropping tear after salty tear onto my turquoise t-shirt, would beg forgiveness for hurting me. And I'd tell them it's alright. Really, it's alright. And they'd shower my forehead with kisses, and everyone would marvel at how strong I was being, and everone would tell me how wonderful my shirt was.

Soon, I'd leave the hospital and enter counseling. They'd say I'd be fine, and I'd tell them I knew I would. I'd wear my sleeves rolled up, and show off my scars. And everyone I knew would love me. And even the people I didn't know would love me.

And so the blade lies still, out of place on the grey ceramic tile. I slide slowly, theatrically down to the cold bathroom floor, stretching my arms away from my body, careful not to spill blood on my t-shirt. My favorite shirt. 

It hurts a lot more than I thought it would, and I hope the guys come home soon so they can see my shirt and call the hospital.

Out of the corner of my eye I can see Greg and Linda's living room window. The familiar blue light tells me they're buried deep in someone else's life. Someone who does the things they want to do, and says the things that they want to say. Someone who embodies everything they've ever wanted to be. I wouldn't choose it, but I suppose it is one way to live.

"RING."

The telephone.

"RING."

I'm on my stomach.

"RING."

I'm dragging my face, my shoulders, and my favorite shirt through a pool of blood. This is my blood. This is my life. I vomit.

"RING."

I'm stuck. The hole in my hem is caught on a cabinet drawer. There's blood in my hair. I vomit again.

"RING." 

This isn't the way things were supposed to be. My shirt is ruined. I vomit again.

"BEEP." 

The answering machine.

There's a loft party at Megan's. The guys are going straight from work. Shelly's going to be there. I should come out. It would do me good. 

I'm on my back. The world is caving in. It hurts, and it smells, but I don't want to leave. 

I focus on the window, on the blue light. Dance. Dance. Dance. Dance.

Greg walks across the room and turns off the television.