Door

Before walking down the steps she turned to close the screen door outside the house. He turned the doorknob of the thick oak door on the inside of the house and pushed it closed. There was pressure between the two forces, as if the house was resisting its sealing. After a brief fight the oak prevailed. Its heaviness was too much for the thin metal and weak mesh of the screen door. All night the wind brushed up against the losing side, perhaps trying to help it close. The sound was a faint knocking, keeping him up, making him wonder how he ever let her go.

Sky

The setting sun tinged the sky with ripped blister red, the day's skin peeled back and left raw against the scratch of the hawk claw and rub of the wind. 

Exhausted

Stale taste of fatigue in the mouth. Words wheezed out in asthma gasps, sparse and struggling to say much of anything at all. Sedate tongue lying limp. Stagnant saliva, a murky film. The hard rub of teeth against teeth. Kiss into me your lusty flavor, and lick away the grime.

Prairies 2

Snow, tall against the shoulder of the highway. The secret of the prairies gathering strength behind the cold blockade. Will anyone stop and climb the ridge, if only to stare at the sweep of unmarked land and wonder why they cannot cross it? Soon the walls will melt. Water will flood the road and the grass will puncture into view. And we'll drive past, able to see again, still feeling unwelcome, and struggling to define why.

Beach

He lay on the sand, his eyes closed and focused on the clutter of questions crawling forward from the back of his mind. When the movement became cramped, his sight unfurled to rest on the sky, today a placid blue, yesterday grey and storm wrought, though no less easeful. And he begged for the day when he could live within the eddy of his thoughts without struggle.

Spring

My dad told me that when he was a kid, every spring after the snow had melted he'd walk through the field of his elementary school and scour the grass for coins dropped in the winter by weak, shivering hands. Each time I come up my driveway I look to the right at our lawn. Snowbanks piled four feet high, the square space of the lawn untouched for months. Come the thaw there will be no wealth revealed under the vault of snow in front of our house. Nothing will have changed. The drowned grass will gasp back to living and the water will dirty the streets. And while no bronze or silver will glint in the sun, there remains the treasure of seeing something so familiar, after having been hidden for so long.

Prairies

I've driven through the Canadian prairies for years. I'm familiar with the sand coloured fields of wheat, the yellow of rapeseed, the abandoned shells of barns and houses speckled across the hardened sea. I've always wanted to walk into one of the wrecks. It's as if sunken ships have come to rest somewhere that they can be found. Something keeps me from stopping the car and stepping out into the intimate unknown of the land. A privacy felt in its humbling quiet. A respect for it's generosity in letting us see the sky stretched out like nothing else could be. So for now I drive on past, a curious observer of empty spaces hoping one day to walk across the divide into this great possibility and that I'll know where to go, and what to do. 

First

The candlelight shivered as she walked past. He watched her walk towards him, the flame casting shadows of the room's items on her skin like thin layers of patchwork clothing that peeled away as she got closer.

Magician

When he made her sad, and she cried in his arms, he felt his love surge. It was an awful thing he found in himself, this need to feel that he could make things better. A need to make mistakes. He'd construct situations where he could shift from being the villain into the hero in a matter of minutes, happy to apologize and fix the problem, his heart warm from knowing he'd done good. He ruined for repair. But soon the wounds would be too worn down to heal, and he'd remain the cruel magician that he always was.

Sky

The evergreens hang like icicles looking to dip into the swamp of sky below them. A gull in flight over the murk. The reflection of our world in shallow lake, a smear of colour in somersault view. If only it could hold us as we tried to walk across. It's a place for a bird's eye, for those who live above the truth. Each wing flaps a secret for us to parse.

Photo by Kristian Jordan

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dawntraitor/8387669469/in/photostream/lightbox/

Going

Wondering how to get to where I'm going. Like looking at a jet-stream and trying to follow it. A soon vanishing trail teasing all of us too slow to see where it leads. Knowing there's somewhere to go.

Time

As he watched the long hand of the grandfather clock move lap after lap at a permanent pace he wondered why. Why sixty seconds, sixty minutes, twenty-four hours? He was sure there was an explanation, an educated answer to his question, but he doubted the relevance of the response. The sun rises and sets, but why must this describe a day? What if two days were one instead? Forty-eight hours. We'd get more done. The good days would be better and the bad days worse. We could stay up later and sleep longer. There would be more time to decode our feelings and fears before the day ends and they're put aside in a pile that we say we'll deal with later. Our lives will be the same length regardless. But maybe there was a way to experience things at a more focused, gradual pace. It seemed so simple.

Middle

Transfixed under the delicate exchange between night and day, she stood on a path of trodden oak leaves. Usually she found uncertainty frightening, but not now. It wasn't an uncertain light that murmured across the sky, but instead, a sureness in the embrace of the in-between. A meeting in the middle, a daily union of beauty. She too wanted to find that balance, a place where disparate things met and forged a love that was never as strong alone. Until then she waited for day to undress night, for night to stretch its body over day.

Daytime

When he napped during the day he untucked the sheets and left his bedroom door open. He didn't want to be hidden when the sun was out, when people were around. Even though he wouldn't see the faces or hear the voices or footsteps in the house while he slept, he wanted to be available to them. The lights were always on, the curtains drawn. There was a loneliness to being asleep during the day when things were easier to observe. He felt he was missing things, and so he did his best to have his life continue in warm and vibrant sights in front of his failing eyelids.

Guilt

We're both four or five. A movie is playing in the basement that we shouldn't be watching. I remember a scene where one of the characters is thrown into a forest and mauled by a lion. Somehow he survives and lives vicariously through some kind of robot. I wish I knew what the movie was called, or if I'm just dreaming the plot. That same night I asked my friend to take off her clothes. She did and stood there naked with her hands behind her back with her legs crossed, posing for my curiosity. I sensed guilt for watching the movie, but not for that. When do we begin to feel shame, to be contrite?