imaginationtigers

Gold with a few green stragglers, the short tree under my fire escape was almost ready for my neighbor’s art project. Once the leaves were gone he planned to affix small yellow, orange and red envelopes, mirroring fall colors, filled with the problems of strangers. “Not a giving tree,” he said to me bouncing up and down slowly on the balls of his feet, “a problems and complaints tree.” I couldn’t help but smile even though I knew this was a serious art project. “A whining tree,” I suggested.

Grant, my neighbor, had a man-bun, a new fashion where even men with hair that was just shaggy, rather than long, scooped up the top part into a ballerina’s bun. He also smoked, another must-have accessory of the downtown New York City hipster. I kept my back to him, resentful of the poisons he forced on me, second-hand. “How do you think it looks?” he asked, taking out a box with the empty envelopes ready to go. “I don’t know,” I said. “Until you put the cigarette out, I’m not turning around.”

He laughed and laughed, a combination of guffawing and shallow high-pitched chuckling, as if he was calibrating something inside himself. “OK, OK,” he said. When I couldn’t smell the cigarette poison anymore, I slowly turned around. “You know,” he said, “we’re outside—it’s all diluted outside.” I shook my head and felt my irritability rising. “Not true,” I launched in, ready to debate, “if you’re in close proximity, it doesn’t matter whether you’re outside or inside. It’s equally poisonous.”

Grant was ignoring me now and riffling through the envelope box. “Actually, these have problems in them already,” he said. “I have two boxes now—one full of problems waiting to be picked off the tree, once it’s bare, and another, empty, waiting to be filled by additional problems.”

“Sealed or unsealed? If the idea is for people to pick problems, do they pick the problems seen or unseen?” I asked. I didn’t mind exchanging my long-term problems for another person’s, as long, of course, as it wasn’t a terminal illness, horrible disability or psychological malfunction worse than I already suffered from. Basically, I was looking to exchange with someone who was just having trouble finding the right hairdo, or a person who couldn’t afford the $5,000 “it” jacket.

“I think it would be better for everyone to pick at random, unseen,” he said. I laughed and moved away from the sealed-up problems.

“And I was so close to being able to have foresight in my life, almost got to choose the perfect problem for myself!” I said.  Grant didn’t find that overly funny. He looked at me with an implacable face and then smirked. He thought of this project as a serious psychological study, I guess. “Well, it won’t be long now,” I said. “Another couple weeks and the tree should be free of all leaves and ready for problems dressed up in fall colors. Since it’s going to be in fall colors, maybe a lot of people won’t even notice that it’s small envelopes instead of leaves, and they’ll just walk past.”

Grant didn’t seem concerned. He was one of those types who assumed people would be interested in everything he did. The idea that he would be disregarded was beyond his belief. “No, they’ll notice,” he said. Problems will be blowing in the breeze.”

“You mean ‘in the wind,’ like the song,” I said, laughing. Grant didn’t laugh. “Yeah, sort of,” he said. His man-bun needed tidying, so Grant patted it repeatedly and sighed, as though the burden of maintaining a proper man-bun while readying an obscure art project was too much to ask of one person. “I think it will be well received,” he said.

A few weeks later, after a windy rainstorm, the tree was bare, so Grant brought in a few friends more burly than himself to affix the envelopes with a hammer. Each envelope was secured to a large nail with durable string and then the nails were hammered into the tree.  The envelopes were red, orange, yellow and brown, and really looked a little like droopy autumn leaves from a distance after they all were in place.

Grant was having the equivalent of an art gallery opening that night. He had invited everyone he was connected to on Facebook and Twitter to come by and pick off problems. “The only question is whether there will be enough problems for everyone,” he said.

I laughed as he looked mystically upward as if he had just made a divine proclamation. He didn’t seem to hear me. “Yeah, well, I guess some people will just have to do their best to get by without problems,” I said.

At first the problem tree had only passive visitors—people who lived in the neighborhood curious to see why there were multicolored envelopes hanging from bare tree boughs. But by the end of the tree’s “opening night,” a few had begun to pick off problems. The surprise came when a girl with a polka dot umbrella, a miniskirt, and what looked like combat boots, pulled one of the golden envelopes down and then reached into her purse for a pad and pen. After scribbling for a minute or two and re-reading whatever she had scribbled, the girl pushed back her long dark bangs, walked over to Grant and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, is it OK to leave problems, or do we just have to take them?” she asked. “You don’t even have to buy more envelopes, see?” she said, stuffing her scribbled up piece of paper into the same golden envelope she had taken from.

Grant spent a good minute patting his man-bun and looking upward. “Well, I don’t see why not, but we won’t be making any progress that way—the problem tree will never be emptied. It’ll turn into an ongoing project—old problems getting taken and new problems being added. “OK, well, I guess, if it’s important to you. Maybe you’ll be one of the few,” he sniffed.

I couldn’t resist jumping in then: “Actually, she probably has the right idea. It’ll be more interactive and interesting that way.”

“It’s possible,” Grant allowed. “Like I said, we’ll see.” He turned away from me and took out one of his cigarettes, cupping his hand over it to light it without the wind interfering. I turned away and began walking in the other direction. “What a disgusting habit!” I said loudly before holding my breath and leaving.

It didn’t take long for the tree to catch on—it seemed that anything free—even problems—moved fast in New York. I wished the envelopes weren’t sealed so you could shop for your problems. I hated the idea of having to choose a problem unseen. I also couldn’t decide which of my own problems to give away. I mainly had resentment and anger to give away, more than problems.

I resented the bicycle riders who rode the wrong way on streets, ran stoplights and then were babied with public service announcements about how we all should be concerned for their safety. I also resented smokers, as I mentioned. I was tired of having to run around them, or even cross the street, to avoid being downwind of their cancer smoke. “Have you heard the news? Smoking causes cancer, emphysema, and heart disease, and even causes your teeth to rot,” I longed to tell them. But of course they had heard the news. They just believed it wouldn’t happen to them, or that they were “living in the moment.” Or better yet, this response: “Well, there are just so many ways to get cancer.” That was a classic smoker line.

I wondered if resentment and anger counted as problems I could pass on to an unsuspecting art project participant. I also had anxiety to give away. The next day I finally decided to chance it at the problem tree. Instead of exchanging my anxiety and anger, I thought it would be more humane to choose an easier problem to pass on. So, I was offering up my lack of closet space. Now, I just had to hope I wasn’t exchanging my lack of closet space for a rare disease or the problem of being pursued by a psychopath. After all, when you gave away a minor problem, you never knew what—how much worse—you were going to get in return.

I was standing under the problem tree, glowering up at it, my resentment again the issue—resenting this time that I felt compelled to participate in an art project. I didn’t like to not do something I said I’d do—and even encouraged—so now I was stuck on a cold day looking up at orange, gold and brown envelopes fluttering in the breeze, each one promising a chance at bad karma—being so unappreciative of one of my own problems that I end up with a much bigger one. I had never taken the time before to savor my problems. Now, I felt regret that I had to choose one to give away.

“You’re thinking about it too much,” Grant said, sneaking up on me from behind. “Be in the moment; it’s not about choosing—just tear one off.” I smiled, but my heart wasn’t in it. It seemed like just another depressing chore, rather than an exciting artistic experiment. Why would you want to give your problems to someone else?

“Well, I was thinking of my closet space problem, and I never have enough quarters when I go to the laundromat. Does that count as a problem?” I asked. “Or how about how much I loathe smoking?” I wondered that out loud as two girls, who looked like they were in high school, lit up near me. “Or how about how I lack the willpower to dust properly and weed out the old clothes in my closet?” Grant wasn’t listening to me anymore. In one hand was his lit cigarette, which he puffed on about once a minute, and in his other hand was his phone, which he was scrolling through looking at text messages or e-mails, head averted. “I think you just have to choose a new problem,” he said finally. “Then, whatever your own problem is, will become apparent.”

Already a few others had snapped problem-filled envelopes from the tree—almost with glee. I was the only one hesitating. I guess I was taking it too seriously, I told myself. So, I treated it like buying shoes and decided to just go by color. Gold goes with everything, I said to myself, so I snapped off a low-hanging branch with a gold envelope: “My roommate steals from me, but just small things—little fold-up umbrellas, cigarette lighters, hand towels, books. But I’m afraid to say anything because she’s my favorite roommate ever. I’d rather live with a thief whose company I enjoy than with an honest person I don’t like.”

This problem giver didn’t register any resentment as far as I could tell. The simple fact of anyone—let alone someone I trusted enough to live with—stealing from me would have created such resentment that I couldn’t have gone on living with that person. And yet somehow the problem giver didn’t seem to care. She (or he?) seemed more troubled that she continues to like this person and doesn’t want to have to ask him or her to move out.

“What a waste of an excuse to get rid of someone!” I said out loud. Grant turned around and laughed. “What? What are you talking about?” I considered lying to save his impression of me as a nice person, but ended up not bothering. “Well, this problem giver says her (or is it his?) roommate is probably stealing stuff, and instead of using that to get the roommate out of the apartment, the problem giver is looking for ways to keep the thief in spite of the stealing. She figures it’s a shame to lose a roommate you like just because he’s stealing stuff,” I said. Grant kept laughing at me and shuffling around his pack of cigarettes—even though he knew I detested being around smoking. As if he were doing it to spite me. “She’s a people person, I guess. She doesn’t like to cut out people from her life over small stuff,” he suggested.

I decided no longer to look at him. “’Small stuff?’ What are you talking about? He’s stealing from her—and he isn’t a stranger off the street. He’s her roommate.”

“But she likes this roommate—you can’t under-estimate that,” Grant said, fishing around in his pockets for his lighter. I was ready to get rid of him just for the smoking, so a roommate letting stealing go didn’t make sense to me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snapped. I decided to turn my back to him again, like I so often did during our conversations, to avoid his poison exhalations. “Well, anyway, so now what do I do with this thing?” I said snapping the golden envelope in the air.

I still needed to come up with a problem of my own to “share”—to pass along to a poor unsuspecting stranger. That’s what you get for being open minded enough to participate in a weird outdoor art project. I tucked the stranger with the thieving roommate into my purse and began obsessing over which problem to force onto someone else.

At home that night, the disarray of broken was stunning. The shades no longer could be pulled up and down because the pulley had long since broken. The small lamp with the cute miniature shade in the bedroom (on the windowsill I used as a nightstand) was broken for unknown reasons.  I had dropped it while making the bed last week, and though the landing had been soft, the cord had gotten muddled somehow, and now it wouldn’t work. The outlet closest to the lamp no longer worked, either, because when the previous lamp broke, a fuse was blown and I didn’t like tampering with the fuse box, so it remained blown.

A cabinet over the stove was missing, and had been missing for about five years, when it nearly toppled on my head. My landlord’s son said he’d get me a new one, but never did, and since I wasn’t using the cabinet for much, I just let it go. The bedroom window no longer locked for reasons unknown to me, but I was on the second floor, and an intruder would have to drag a ladder into an alley and then precariously balance it, so I was taking my chances (knock wood). The soap dish was gone from above the tub in the bathroom. Two times the landlord attempted to affix it, and two times for unknown reasons I had come home to a shattered soap dish lying in pieces in the basin of the tub. How did that happen?

The light on the ceiling in the kitchen was out, and had been out for years. I kept having the bulb replaced only to find it burn out just a month later, so I figured something was screwy with the wiring, and it was safer to just ignore.

The oven and stove didn’t work, but that was by choice. After returning from a business trip and finding a note from my cat sitter that my orange tabby Springles had turned the stove on (I guess she was getting tired of cold meals or it could have been her toys and food, which I left on top of the stove), I was so scared, I got the gas turned off. I wasn’t using it anyway, so why bother? The white paint looked like curdled milk in an upper corner of the apartment due to water damage after a leak sprung through the floorboards of the apartment above mine. The leak was gone (hopefully), but the water stain remained.

I sat in the disarray like the owner of an avant-garde one-of-a-kind dysfunction capsule. Who else had this particular mix of disrepair? It was the home living equivalent of a fingerprint—it was my disrepair print. The rent was stabilized and hadn’t been raised since I moved in ten years ago, so combined with the subconscious affinity I must have felt for the disrepair and dust (easily taken care of on my own—if I weren’t inert), I lounged on the couch considering my anxiety, and, now, the problems I could share. Was disrepair my problem, or just a symptom of a problem?

I was surrounded by long-time Village dwellers—people who had lived in this building for 30 or 40 years, and due to rent stabilization, only paid a few hundred dollars a month, while I paid $1,650. Should I resent these people—another thing broken in my life? As far as I knew, they weren’t even stealing from me, and I wanted them gone. I felt I was paying their share for them (so maybe they were stealing from me). I could hear NPR on from the room across the hall, which its owner kept ajar at all times, and If I listened slightly more closely, I could hear the Hare Krishnas down the hall ringing a bell and chanting. Grant’s apartment wasn’t in the few-hundred dollar range of old-time stabilization, but he was about $500 behind me, and unlike the old timers in the building, he didn’t have to endure a bathtub in the kitchen.

He was probably still tending to his problem tree, cigarette in hand, gazing up at the branches weighed down with the submissions of strangers. Puffing cancerous smoke at those who paused to hang a problem—as if they needed another problem like incidental poisoning.

No need to speculate when you have a problem tree under your window. I pushed the shade back just enough so I could look down without anyone seeing me—I wasn’t in the mood to be cajoled into coming down “for a few.” Grant wasn’t smoking, but was shaking the envelopes and unhooking some of them and holding them up to the street light, as if he could see through the sealed paper to the problems beneath. He then grabbed a red envelope, and with a letter opener in his pocket, delicately pried it open. He concentrated intently and then began laughing, and not even soft, embarrassed laughing, but loud, careless laughter. It wasn’t that late at night, but I guess he thought that, as the master of the problem tree, people would assume he was securing the envelopes rather than prying. Grant had come prepared. He had a glue stick that he used to reseal the envelopes, so, he must have assumed, no one would notice that they had been opened. It seemed no different to me than reading another person’s mail, or even a private diary entry. I opened my window and stuck my head out, prepared to resist coming down to “talk it out” with him. “Hey, hey,” I yelled as if I were trying to shoo away an unwanted stray animal. “Hey, there, Grant!”

He looked up and smiled. “Yeah, what’s going on?” Always so casual and in the moment. Smoothing his man-bun. “You’re opening private messages,” I shouted down. “Not private, intended to be shared by whomever happens to choose them,” Grant said. “Right, ‘whomever happens to choose them,’ not you, prying with your gratuitous inspections,” I said. He probably thought I was joking because he just kept smiling, and even started laughing. “Have you figured out what your problem is yet?” he asked.

I had to control myself from also laughing, but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. “Well, I think my main problem is intrusions like yours into places they don’t belong—having the people who live around you overstepping. I’m not as nice as my problem-giver,” I said. “I don’t think it’s OK to steal from a person you live with, or near, just because you’re friends and like each other. I feel like you’re violating the people who stuffed their problems in the sealed envelopes and were naïve enough to participate in your art project. It’s disrespectful.”

Grant shuffled his pack of cigarettes, and drawing one out and lighting it, blew smoke generously into the air, to spite me, I thought. I turned away and let him address the back of my head. “Nobody here seems to mind except you,” he said.

“Some of them—maybe even a lot of them—probably do mind, but they’re too embarrassed to say anything, or they just haven’t figured out yet what you’re doing,” I said.

“That’s your presumption,” he said.

I turned then and shut the window to the apartment and drew the shade down, not wanting to see Grant’s arrogant perusal of others’ problems—as if he was window shopping for problems while the rest of us were forced to choose sight unseen. The sounds of dog claws scratching the ceiling and clomping human feet sounded as the man who lived above me got home. The chiming of the Hare Krishna bells down the hall was at it again, and the man across the hall was blaring a jazz show on his radio. I thought I could even smell Grant’s cigarette smoke sneaking in through my windowpane.

Maybe my problem was insulation—if only the windows were better insulated and there was no smoke from friends’ or strangers’ cigarettes that could pass through—no incidental poisonings from others. And the door frame could be insulated, too, though I wasn’t sure how. Maybe I could find a cloth towel to shove around the corners and underneath to make the noise from my neighbors less noticeable. I grabbed my phone and began shuffling through the white noise options in an app I had recently added. Would I prefer to pretend I was at the beach, on a train, on a camping trip with crickets, lying under an industrial strength fan, or locked inside a vacuum (one option was a whooshing air sound)? The vacuum was appealing, but I chose the beach for now. With the waves up at full throttle I could barely hear the voices outside, and couldn’t hear at all the Hare Krishna bells.

Next, I retrieved the plastic Ziplock bag of flesh-colored foam earplugs that I kept by my bedside. I rolled them up and squeezed them as deep inside my ears as possible. The waves sounded muffled now, but I kept them as fail-safe aural barriers to others. My problem-giver could live with a thief she liked, but I wouldn’t have it. Even the idea of stealing the silence I owned, or stuffing my empty air full of cigarette smoke, would result in a sealing off, an enclosure against trespassers.

It seemed the only way to have the freedom to make everything just the way I wanted it was to seal everything off. As long as others could affect my environment, I wouldn’t be able to have everything exactly the way I wanted it. I felt they were stealing from me the ability to make things the way I wanted them to be. With this epiphany I rushed to the window to see if Grant was still there snooping through strangers’ problems, opened the window and yelled down sharp enough that he jumped and his lit cigarette fell to the pavement: “Hey, I figured out my problem—other people are interfering with the way I want things to be—they’re stealing the way I want things to be from me!”

Nobody was paying attention. Grant looked up, smiled and nodded. “Yeah,” he said, his voice rising at the end of the word, “that makes sense.” He laughed and began picking up trash around the tree. I was being made fun of. I turned back inside my apartment and resumed the insulation. No need to open the window any longer, not even in summer. I had a strong window air conditioner, and it was too cold during the winter to open the window, and now I could see no reason to communicate to anyone on the other side anyway. I didn’t want to be laughed at, or have poison smoke blown at me, or have to see a poseur unsealing sealed-over problems and conducting inspections of his “art project.” I didn’t want to feel any more like I was being intruded on. “Intrusions,” I sniffed to myself.

The problem was I could still hear the murmurings of interest and excitement over that stupid tree, even after all the measures I’d taken not to. I would have to talk to the landlord about getting Grant and his project removed. Maybe the tree, which hadn’t grown too big, could be transplanted to a pretentious experimental art space somewhere nearby. A place friendly to smoking, smirking man-buns—who presume to know your problems.

“Yeah, the tree right under my window,” I told Lester, the super, as soon as he called me back. “Grant Edwards has this art project where he’s stringing envelopes from the branches and it’s causing a disturbance—it’s keeping me up at night.”

Lester said he couldn’t do anything because the tree was on public property, and Grant had gotten a permit for his project from the city, so I would have to live with it. I could complain to the city, but by the time they got around to reviewing the situation and making a decision, the project would be over. The problems hanging under my window, tended to by a man-bun hipster-poseur, would remain.

The problem was the problems were self-perpetuating. No sooner had one envelope been taken down, then another was tacked on. Apparently, there was enthusiasm for this project. The word must have spread, and there were endless participants. So, I decided to add my problem to one of the tree’s branches. The project wasn’t going anywhere, so I might as well get something out of it, I reasoned. “I’d like to find the best kind of insulation to seal myself into my apartment and into my peace. My problem is intrusions from others,” I wrote on the note inside my sealed envelope. “Where or how can I seal myself in better?”

It was raining slightly, and I had my dome umbrella out to catch even the tiniest droplet. Meanwhile, others at the problem tree were umbrella-less, with their hoods up, at best. They didn’t seem to care about getting cold mist on their faces, or their hair getting humidified. Even a few man-buns were letting the rain trickle into them. “Do you think I could exchange my problem of not being able to find an affordable apartment with someone else’s problem?” a twenty-something woman in glued-to-the-bone jeans asked a friend, who laughed. “That’s your biggest problem? Hey, I’m 31 and still single.” Then they both started laughing and reaching up to hold a potential problem for a second or two before reaching for another, as if just briefly holding the sealed envelope could transmit through their fingertips the best problem to choose. Even worse, there was a bantering, amorous couple also under the problem tree, exchanging kisses and nudging each other in baby talk as they looked up at the hanging envelopes. “No, that one,” the woman said. “Oh, no, the low hanging ones are the ones for you,” the man shot back. They laughed and laughed, though who knew why?

I sidestepped, like I once saw a crab sidestep on the beach. I wanted to evade detection, though anyone who was interested could see me standing right there. “Care to share?” I heard a loud voice chirp. I looked up to see the amorous couple. I tried to laugh casually. “Share what?” I asked.

“The problem you’re leaving behind,” the female half of the couple said. She was chubby but wearing the skin-tight jeans that were the fashion, along with a black close-fitting jacket with a hood with a fake fur trim. “I’m looking for ways to better insulate myself,” I said. She smiled, nodded and laughed. “Right!” she said. “I get that. These Village apartments are really drafty. We can’t seem to keep the wind out.” I smiled as kindly as I could and continued my sideways crab crawl. I sighed and looked up at the roofs of the nearby buildings hoping to indicate that the conversation was done.

I heard footsteps and the rustling of jackets while I kept my eyes fixed to the periphery and uppermost borders of the buildings. After a few minutes, I glanced carefully down—inconspicuously in case someone was still around—and saw the couple had moved on and I was alone again. It was about 9 pm, and the problem tree’s traffic had slowed. Sometimes a passerby would pause for a few seconds, or a couple would stop and make a few comments, or laugh to themselves, but other than those brief interruptions, it was pleasantly empty—for about 10 minutes.

A procession of cancerous smoke snailed around my head and then: “I thought you were trying to get rid of this.” It was Grant, of course, with his ever-present cigarette. I winced and turned my head. “I tried really hard, I called Lester—you probably heard—to get rid of it, but since you got a permit for it and no one else seems to have a problem with it, yada, yada, whatever, he says there’s nothing that can be done about it, I’ll just have to stick it out.”

Grant laughed and turned his head up, blowing his smoke up out of his mouth and nose like a whale blowing spray through its blowhole. “Poor thing, so sad,” he said. “Have you decided on your problem yet?” he asked. I wondered whether I should just ignore his question, or even walk away since that was the question that set me off the last time we talked, but thought it would only make him laugh at me again if I stomped off. “Insulation, to be apart from things that could hurt me, like that,” I said pointing to the smoke drifting up into the air. Grant smiled and sighed. “Well, it’s not that bad, is it?” he said. “Are you kidding?” I nearly shrieked. “Second-hand smoke is even worse than first-hand smoke. It causes cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and even limb loss—“ Grant had dissolved into laughter and was nearly doubled over in hysterics. “No, really, people loose limbs from it,” I shouted. “It causes constriction of the arteries—really I’m not making that up.”

“I believe you,” he said, continuing to puff. “But I don’t think that’s your problem.”

I kept sidling away, crab-style, sideways, just like one of those little animals skirting along the shore, just out of reach of the water, but close enough to slide back in if necessary. “Well, you’re right—I mean that’s only part of it—it’s bigger than that. It’s the Hare Krishna bells down the hall, the man with his dogs stomping around on top of me—above my apartment—the man across the hall with his forever open door and his pile of books pushing up against my doormat. It’s all the whistling and humming and people singing to themselves—I just can’t stand any of it. I try to be considerate, and it just seems that nobody reciprocates,” I said.

“They don’t because they don’t see it as being inconsiderate,” Grant said.

“Well, I can’t help it if people have bad manners,” I huffed. “I just have to try to protect myself from them.”

The man-bun was wispy that night with many stray hairs escaping. In fact, it was more the idea of a man-bun that night than an actual bun. Grant noticed me staring and winked. “What?” he asked. “Something wrong?”

“No, it’s just—just, why do you bother with that thing?” I asked pointing at the top of his head. He smiled and reached out to where my hand lay against my side and brushed over it lightly. “You don’t really care about that, do you?” he said, “Or about the smoking?” He had grabbed hold of my limp, cold, moist hand, and was pressing his fingertips into my palm. I tried to wriggle free, but couldn’t.

“What are you talking about?” I stammered, looking up at the tops of the buildings and turning my head to avoid the stench of cigarettes.

“Why you won’t spend time with me,” he said.

“We’re very different,” I said. “It’s hard—I don’t think we’re on the same schedule or like a lot of the same things. And the cigarettes—I really can’t tolerate them—I can’t spend time with anyone who would smoke around me.”

Grant dropped my hand and stepped a few paces back, looking up at his art project. The problem-filled envelopes were weighing down the small tree. “So, it turned out pretty good, didn’t it?” he said.

“I’m surprised anyone wanted to bother—people are so lazy and inarticulate, I’m surprised they were able to think of a problem and then write it down and tack it to the tree. If you hadn’t supplied the pens and paper and envelopes, I bet nobody would have bothered,” I said.

Grant and I both started laughing and surveying the weighed-down tree. “Are you sure you don’t want to try out my cappuccino maker?” he said, seeing an opening, I suppose. “Thanks for asking,” I said quickly, “but I have a lot to do before tomorrow—I have a morning meeting to prepare for, and I suppose you’ll be smoking, as usual.”

“Probably,” he said, “but I always leave the window open.”

The stairs always seemed inadequate to my weight. I wasn’t much more than 100 pounds at the time, but the wood would creak, and usually a shred or two would pop off on the side. “Myrtle, you need to get those stairs fixed,” I kept telling the florist. “Even if you don’t care if someone gets hurt, you could get sued—and lose money. I know you care about that.” Myrtle laughed in the hoarse way she did and smoothed back her thick silver pageboy hair cut. It was luxurious, nice-looking hair, which I always thought was unusual for a woman who just let it go gray. Other than the gray hair, in fact, she was still vibrant looking, if not young. She wore fitted jeans that showed off her figure and blouses that weren’t revealing, but were often in bright colors and tailored rather than a size too large or frumpy. “I’ll take my chances,” she said. “The stairs aren’t too high—if someone falls, I bet they won’t get hurt, at least not bad enough to sue me.”

I rolled my eyes and turned away from her and stuck my nose in the peonies that had just arrived. I wanted an assortment of white, light and dark pink for the vase on my desk in the office, but Myrtle wouldn’t allow it. “Why can’t we make our own bouquet with the peonies the way we can with the roses?” There were certain flowers that only came in ready-made bundles, while other flowers, like the roses, came both in ready-made bundles, as well as individual flowers that you could mix and match. “Well, they’re more expensive and I don’t get as many of them in,” she said. “I don’t want them being handled as much—the roses aren’t as expensive—I get them in bulk, so I can afford to have people picking through them, and have enough both for the pre-made bouquets and the solitaries.”

She wasn’t going to budge—I had been trying for years—so I settled on a bundle of three dark pink peonies. As I paid, I noticed a man loitering outside, peering in and then looking away when I looked back at him. He was short, maybe 5’4, and had mousy brown hair and eyes so small I couldn’t tell what color they were. “Who’s that, Myrtle?” I asked counting out my change because Myrtle often short-changed (accidentally, probably). “Oh, him, he’s nobody. Just some weirdo—maybe homeless or with something wrong with him—he stops by about once a day and goes away after I give him a flower. He had his hand out like he was asking for money and when I told him ‘no,’ he pointed at the flowers. So, at the end of the day, I give him a flower I would have to get rid of anyway.”

As I walked out the door, the man had seated himself crossed-legged on the sidewalk and was still staring intently inside the shop. Whenever anyone passed by, he gestured at the flowers on display outside the shop and murmured “please.” My apartment was just a few doors down from the floral shop. I tried envisioning where the flowers could go in the apartment if I didn’t take them to the office. My roommate was allergic to most flowers and my cat, Hogarth, wouldn’t leave flowers alone, sticking his nose in the vase and batting it with his paws. Plus, I had heard a lot of flowers were poisonous to cats. Gertrude, my roommate, was on the sofa with a hand upraised, painting her nails. Her brown hair had been ironed straight and highlighted to give the impression of being sun-kissed. But to me it had a harsh, bleached look. “Hey, what’s up?” she said not bothering to look at me. “Peonies,” I said. “But don’t worry, they won’t be anywhere around you. I’m taking them directly to my room.” Gertrude grunted and looked away from me. “I guess that’s OK, then,” she said. I picked a spot at the top of my bookcase so high even Hogarth couldn’t reach for the flowers. Avoid poisoning the cat and aggravating the allergies of the roommate. So many not to disturb with a few peonies. Now or never—the last week of May—if you haven’t gotten your peonies by now, you’ll have to wait until next year.

After the peonies were arranged up high, I ventured out to face Gertrude. I knew she wasn’t mad; I just didn’t feel like seeing or talking to anyone. I had a roommate for financial necessity but would have been infinitely happier with just Hogarth and the peonies. To keep things pleasant, I realized I had to interact with her a little, rather than just going straight to my room and closing the door, like my instincts told me to do. I plopped myself down on our red, faux velvet couch watching Gertrude as she blew on her nails to dry them. “So, what have you been up to today?” I asked.

She smiled socially, but not that interested. We were more elevator-sharers than roommates. Talking to her always felt the way making polite conversation in the elevator with strangers or new acquaintances feels. “Well, not much. Just work and I got take out on the way home from that new Italian place that opened up on Third Avenue last week. It’s pretty good.”

“Did you happen to see that strange guy at the florist’s down the street?” I asked. Gertrude was now just watching me sidelong with her eye corners as she flipped the channels on the TV from reality to show to reality show. “No, I didn’t notice,” she said. “Actually, I don’t know why you stop in there at all—you know I’m allergic to most flowers. If you have a roommate in a small apartment who’s told you like a hundred times she’s allergic to most flowers, why do you keep buying them? I can already feel my sinuses closing up.” She sniffed loudly to make her point.

So, she wasn’t that interested in her reality shows after all. She was skipping through the channels fast and looking at me from the corner of her eyes because she was pissed. “Well, they’re all the way in my room, up high on a shelf and I passed through here as fast as I could,” I said. “I don’t need to have them around all the time, but once in a while, I think it’s OK if I buy a few flowers. Up until now I’ve just bought the silk and polyester kind, so I thought it might be nice to have a few real ones for a change.”

Gertrude sniffled dramatically again and rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” With that she got up from the couch and stomped toward her room, slamming the door. And all because of a few peonies, imagine that. I wasn’t going to let Gertrude’s sinuses interfere with my love of peonies. I laughed at my silk flower attempts to replicate the real thing, stuffing the apartment full of cloth instead of forcing the point. My room was my own, and despite Gertrude’s discomfort, I intended to keep it fully stocked with genuine blossoms from then on. “Hey, Gertrude, I yelled angrily after her, unrestrained because I didn’t think she could hear me (I suspected she had her ear buds over her ears and was listening to music), “I’m decorating with real flowers from now on. I don’t care about your allergies. All the things you can’t tolerate aren’t worth enduring fake flowers for.”

The next day I decided to get more flowers—the peonies may not have had that much longer to go, so I needed another bouquet to take their place. Myrtle was up on a ladder, pointing out needed ceiling repairs to an assistant when I walked in. So, it gave me extra time to decide among the blooms in peace, wandering into every corner and sniffing around. I wondered whether I should double-down on peonies or look into another flower like maybe an orchid or a lily. Myrtle must have noticed my deliberation. “Variety is always nice,” she said. “Why don’t you try a different kind finally? How many times are you going to refill your vase with peonies?” I laughed but wondered if she was right. The peony season was so short—just about a month—so I wanted to fill my vase up with them as much as I could, until the vase couldn’t have any more peonies. “Well, the peonies won’t be around much longer. Don’t you think I should choose them while I still can—you know savoring the spring and all?” When I turned to look at Myrtle, she had descended from the ladder and now had her back to me instead, as she arranged flowers in the window and glowered at the same man I saw the day before, standing, palms outstretched in front of the shop. Begging for money and settling for day-old roses, it seemed. “I’ll make it a mix then,” I told Myrtle. “I’ll take three peonies, a few lavender and a couple lilacs and I’ll donate a tulip to that man always hanging around.”

Myrtle wrinkled up her short nose and laughed. “I wouldn’t waste my money. I just give him the stuff we’re done with at the end of the day. Really, don’t bother. He’s probably got mental problems—I don’t know even know what he does with the flowers. I think it’s part of his mental problems—like an obsessive compulsive—he compulsively collects flowers.”

It didn’t really matter to me what he did with the flowers. I just wanted to distract myself from the pressure to overlook the peonies. The homeless man had averted his eyes from us and was looking down at his hands. It looked like strangers had given him coins throughout the day, and he was cascading them from palm to palm, staring at the movement. It was his own experimental art show, right in his hands. It may have meant more to him than the money. The shapes, feelings and sound of the coins moving from hand to hand was apparently what mattered. I betted by the looks of it that he never would use the coins for anything other than the joy of playing with them as smooth metallic objects. “I don’t care what he does with the flowers, I’m still going to give him one or two—just because I want to,” I told Myrtle. She nodded and looked away, shuffling things around the checkout counter. “Whatever. Your money to waste.” Meanwhile I noticed the window display Myrtle had just put together—small animal sculptures of cats, birds and rabbits with flowers twined around their necks. “Myrtle, do you realize you have a predator in your window?” She looked up confused from her phone. “What are you talking about?” she snapped. “Well, cats eat birds and rabbits—in your window. You have two vegetarian animals and one animal that would like to eat the other two.” She finally laughed, but just a little—more like a guffaw than anything else. When she rang up my flowers—the final selection of three peonies, two orchids, a few lavender and a couple lilacs—she admitted that she hadn’t noticed the predator advertising flowers in her window. “Well, they’re all so cute, who would notice?” she asked.

I left Myrtle with the two of us laughing, and stepped onto a sidewalk newly smudged with rain—with dog poop smudged and stinking, and Myrtle’s onlooker grasping a few daffodils tightly in his left fist with his head turned up to the rain, mouth open, catching droplets. He didn’t lower his gaze to me, so I kept my flowers to myself, thinking if he didn’t notice me, then so much the better.

When I got back to my apartment, the door was partially open, which I hated—I liked my doors closed so as little outside noise could get in as possible. So, upon entering, I closed it without a thought. “Gertrude, are you here?” I asked wanting to be sure the open door wasn’t due to the presence of a workman or intruder. A melodramatic sniffle announced her presence. “Oh, you’re back,” she said in enhanced nasal tones, coming into the living room from her bedroom, in her usual at-home attire of yoga pants and sorority t-shirt. “And you’ve bought more of them! I was just keeping the door open to air the apartment out of all those allergens, and now you’ve got more!” I hated to be mean, but couldn’t help laughing. “Well, I have a room of my own, so I figured I may as well have flowers, as long as they stay in isolation there. It’s not like I’m finally getting the garden I always wanted. All I’m doing is making a place for a weekly bouquet from a florist’s shop.” Gertrude just kept sniffling ostentatiously as if the melodramatic sniffling exceeded all of her vocabulary. “It’s just—I mean—the thing is,” she stammered. “Pollen travels, the things I’m allergic to don’t stay where you put them. They’re in your room, but they’re going to reach me wherever I go in the apartment. Things you’re allergic to like pollen follow and stick to you when you’re in a small apartment. You can’t just hide it in your room and think it won’t ruin my sinuses.”

“Well, I’ll put them on the side of my tall bookcase closest to the window and keep the window open a little whenever I’m home. Maybe that’ll help.” Gertrude looked away and then back at me rolling her eyes. “Whatever, do what you need to.” Well, I knew I didn’t need to; I just didn’t want to live without a piece of the garden I was missing. I felt bad bringing discomfort to a person I had to share space with, and realized I was disrupting the peace of my home, but that slice of garden was something I felt entitled to—I couldn’t have the whole, so the flowers around the edges at least were meant to be mine.

The next morning I awoke to a sound I couldn’t place—it wasn’t just the typical clomping around the apartment that Gertrude did early in the morning as she assembled her things for the gym. The door to my room didn’t open at first, and so I figured for a second that Gertrude had put a chair or another piece of furniture up against my door to prevent it from being open. But when I pushed a little harder, I heard a scurrying back of feet. “OK, OK, I’m moving, just give me a minute,” Gertrude said panting. I had caught her in the middle of taping some sort of tarp in front of my door, to seal in allergens from the flowers, I guessed. “Don’t worry, you’ll still be able to get in and out of your room. I just thought having this extra shield might help.” I laughed and pushed through the plastic tarp. “Well, do you think it might provide a noise barrier? I wouldn’t mind that.” Gertrude looked disappointed, gazing down and then around the room as if thinking of something that would really upset me this time, since the idea of being symbolically sealed in my room didn’t seem too bad to me.

She also had purchased three “air purifying” fans, and handed me the receipt. “I talked to my allergist today, and he recommended I purchase those,” Gertrude said, sweeping her hand at two thin, though tall, freestanding fans. “So, since I had to get them all because you refuse to stop buying flowers, I thought you should pay for them.”

“Sure—depending on how expensive they were. How much?” I asked trying not to be offensive by laughing again.

“They were each $300,” she said. Gertrude was now the one who laughed, stroking her dry, bleached hair and tapping her fingernails on a nearby wall sconce. “When do you think I could have that?” Of course she knew I wouldn’t pay it. “That’s a rip off,” I said. “I think I saw the same thing for sale at Kmart for about $50. Maybe whenever you move out I’ll think about reimbursing you for that, but I don’t think it’s worth that much money—and I don’t think having flowers in my room with the door shut most of the time should be doing anything to your allergies. I think it’s all in your head.”

She looked up—at God, I guess it was supposed to be—but since we were on the third floor of a six-story apartment building it ended up being two men in their 20s always in workout clothes. “I just can’t believe this,” she ranted. “My doctor even wrote me a note about how I need the air purifiers so I can submit it to my insurance company.”

I decided at that point to get out of the apartment and take a walk. The stairs leading downstairs to our “lobby” looked damp, and an old man who lived upstairs, who had been living there since the 1950s, mumbled to me, looking down from the next floor up. He only had a few teeth left, which seemed to affect his speech so that I could never understand him. “What? What was that?” I asked. “Watch it,” I thought I heard him say. As I slid my fingers along the banister, I smelled paint, and my fingertips were tinged in white. “Oh, shit!” I shreaked, my voice echoing up and down the stairwell. On the sidewalk I looked for one of those short Mexican men who stand outside the shops with a hose washing away the dog poop from the cement outside the shops’ entranceways. But none were around.

When I got to Myrtle’s shop, the homeless-looking man who coveted—and then seemed to hoard—flowers was sitting cross legged at the edge of the sidewalk, his rear end practically hanging off the edge into the street. He was looking down at the pavement where five wilting white roses were laid side by side. He also had a few books with him making me wonder whether he was collecting all these flowers as keepsakes, feeling like it was his duty to preserve the flowers Myrtle otherwise would have thrown out. I thought maybe he was doing that trick where you press flowers inside a book to preserve them. Myrtle was on her stepladder again arranging the latest flowers twined from aft to aft of the ceiling. I didn’t want to spook her off her ladder, so I opened the door as noisily as possible and cleared my throat a few times. She turned around slowly and half-smiled. “You’re back. Did they die already?”

“No, not yet,” I laughed. “Actually, I just need to use your sink. This senile old man in our building painted the banister on our stairwell and I touched it. Now I have paint all over my fingers.” I moved toward the sink at the back of the shop without even waiting for Myrtle to respond. “The truth is,” I said through the running water, “the flowers are not only still alive, but tormenting my roommate.”

“She has a phobia of flowers?” Myrtle asked. I wondered myself if maybe that was the case more than allergies because I had never heard of anyone having a generalized case of flower allergies, but I passed along Gertrude’s story. “No, actually, she claims she’s allergic to all flowers. I was trying to be nice about it, but I’ve given up. She got to the point where she wouldn’t even be nice about me having flowers in my room on occasion. So, now, guess what I’m doing? I’m constantly having flowers.”

“It’s good for business,” said Myrtle with a half-smile. “But why would she continue living with an allergy tormentor?”

I wasn’t sure I cared whether or not she moved out. In fact, I kind of hoped I propelled her out of the apartment. I was tired of her already. “Now, Gertrude, don’t make me bring in the daffodils,” I dreamed of taunting. “Well, so be it if she moves out,” I said. “I have some money saved up, and I can go a few months or more without a roommate. I never like having one anyway. On top of everything else, she bought an air purifier she now expects me to pay for. She deserves more than just daffodils, she deserves tulips, lilies, orchids, lavender—and just for spite—lilacs and daisies.”

Myrtle laughed, but had her head cocked a little. “Huh, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard of anyone buying someone flowers out of spite.”

“Well, technically, I’m buying it for my own enjoyment, but at the same time, I think I’m buying it to upset Gertrude,” I said.

“Well, whatever,” said Myrtle. “I don’t care why you’re buying the flowers, that’s for sure. Like I said, good for business.”

We had gravitated to the hydrangeas, with our noses nearly burrowing into the bouquets, when we heard a strange squeaking sound. The little squirrel of a man who had taken up residence outside Myrtle’s shop was running his right index finger up and down the glass. Myrtle shook her head, tossing her hair back. “Oh, no, that’s where I draw the line,” she said, knocking on the glass where the finger traced. “Don’t touch my windows—I don’t want any smudge marks—and you’ll scare the customers away.” He smiled, showing teeth that were yellowish with the two top teeth gapped. He had stopped squeaking his finger along the glass but was still standing there, just smiling and staring. “Why don’t you just call the police?” I asked. “Isn’t what he’s doing considered loitering?” Myrtle didn’t say anything, but grumbled. “Oh, I don’t know,” she eventually said under her breath.

All the while Myrtle picked through the bundles of flowers, making a small pile on the counter where the register stood. “Don’t tell me you’re giving those to that man,” I said. She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, what else am I going to do with them?”

“Why not donate them to the hospital? That might be a nice thing to do,” I said. Myrtle furrowed her eyebrows and smoothed her helmet of hair. “Don’t they have enough flowers already? Look, I feel bad for him—whoever he is. He just sits there all day and the flowers seem to mean something to him—God knows what, but who cares?”

I was irritable and didn’t want to see Myrtle giving carefully chosen flowers to the bum. I felt sorry for him, too, but other than passing him a stray flower here and there, I thought he should be ignored. I laughed to leave things pleasant and headed out the door. Myrtle, as always, was quickly diverted to something else, scrutinizing whether the Georgia O’Keefe prints on her wall were hung perfectly straight. “See you later,” I said over my shoulder as she fixed her eyes into a bright stamen.

I decided to put the homeless flower-mongerer permanently in my peripheral vision, making my eyes go out of focus whenever he inched in. The problem was when I heard him, too. “Why won’t you? Yes?” he said, reaching up, grazing the bottom of my pants with the stem of a calla lily. “Why don’t you?” I smiled and laughed. “That’s OK, thanks, but I’m all set,” I said. In the past it always seemed that he asked for flowers, but now that he was amassing a collection, he seemed to want to give them away. “Free,” he said. “Free, no problem.” I pulled away the hem of my pants from the edge of his hands and looked away. “No thanks,” I said, quickening my step.

I thought a walk in Washington Square Park might be a good cleanser to the flower-mongerer experience. The sidewalks on the way there were full of sidesteppers, people who jutted out knees and elbows at me on foot and bicycle, and scooter, even. Sometimes, ridiculously, a child—somewhat cute—would scoot by and then a few seconds later—not at all cute—would come the parent scooting. Usually they skimmed the outskirts of my clothing or feet, never bothering to excuse themselves. They assumed I would excuse them, but instead I scowled or made a human-animalistic growl in exasperation. And the smokers blew back their leftovers at me and some facing each other looked up at the sky and blew their smoke upwards as if to be polite. But why should it matter if smoke gets blown in your face if you’re already smoking yourself? “Oh, just swallow each other’s smoke already,” I snapped, though nobody listened. “You’re already poisoning yourself. Who cares if your friends add additional poison?”

The afternoon garbage run was underway. Garbage in the city is an all-day event, unlike the suburbs where you just see the garbage trucks in the early morning. I jogged forward to be in front of the stink rather than behind it. It always seemed—between the toxic smoke and the dump trucks—that I was always downwind of discomfort. I noticed the cigarettes getting crushed underfoot, along with gum and the stray dogwood petals falling from trees. I didn’t understand why it was acceptable to crush cigarettes on the sidewalk and then just leave them there. People frowned on throwing litter on the sidewalk, so why didn’t cigarettes count as litter? The crushed petals didn’t deserve to lie among a butt’s ashes.

“I told you 9 o’clock, so where were you?” a fat blond, with oversize sunglasses and a flowered dress with no waist, complained to what appeared to be her skinny, sharp-faced husband. “I waited here for over an hour,” she whined. She was tall on top of being fat and had to stoop to avoid a magnolia tree bough. Nevertheless, a few petals fluttered to the ground grazed by the top of her ponytail. She spun around and angrily slapped the branch back.

I was walking behind the angry branch pusher, so I held back, trying to stay more toward the magnolias than her. The children and adults on scooters were still there, but as I got onto the periphery of the park, skateboarders were added. I felt like an orange cone or hurtle placed in their path—a challenge for them to skirt.

The beds of flowers along the edge of the park were filled with tulips, but they were just temporary tenants, like a flowerbed timeshare. After they died, what looked like overgrown weeds would take over and then by the middle of July there would be mounds of long-stemmed daisies. They would look dry and close to the beginning of the wilting process, but would end up enduring through August.

A child who looked about four was running toward the remaining daffodils and pulling at their stems. The mother’s back was turned talking to a companion. She would glance back at her daughter stampeding the daffodils’ bed and then back toward her companion to resume the conversation. I longed to scold the child, but didn’t since it’s considered socially unacceptable to yell at other people’s children. Part of the privilege of having children was the freedom to yell at them. “Iris, no!” the mother said. “We have to get going. We’re going to be late.” She finally walked over to the child, scooped her up and carried her off.

The amazing thing was, while the children now and then stampeded the flowerbeds, the dogs were mostly well behaved—even the ones left off leash were better trained than the children to stay off the daffodils’ territory. “Such a sophisticated dog,” I said admiringly to what looked like a golden doodle. I talked directly to the dog, overlooking the owner, who was typically the human-dog-human translator. Couldn’t I just talk directly to a dog once in a while? “I like that you respect the garden. If only more children were like you,” I said to the golden doodle.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the park, people who looked like volunteers were clearing and raking the dirt of a garden that had been covered over with port-o-potties while nearby construction was taking place. Released from latrine duty, the ground was being readied for a planting of some kind.

“What are you planting?” I asked. “What kind of garden?” The volunteers looked at me, but none answered. They were mostly women who looked in their fifties or sixties. Their hair was short and either mousy brown, gray or white, and they were nearly all wearing baggy pants with t-shirts that said “Park Conservancy” on the back. I asked again: “What type of garden is this?” They continued for another few minutes raking with their backs to me, and then a short, chubby sixty-something with short gray and white hair turned slowly. “We don’t know. We’re just clearing it.” I laughed, wondering how you could labor with no concern as to what would grow in the plot you were readying. “Maybe you’ll be lucky, and they’ll be perennials,” I said laughing. They were ignoring me again, so even the one who had turned to answer my question earlier didn’t bother to look up.

On the way home I passed by tons of dandelions and those weeds where you blow and the fuzz gets scattered. I started counting these “flowers” to pass the time back to my apartment, and to keep from losing my temper thinking about Gertrude. I thought about picking the dandelions and white fuzzy weed flowers to present to her, but didn’t want to make any special effort—though that added assault to her allergies would have been funny. I also watched and purposely stepped on the cracks in the sidewalks. I figured a weed eradicator had probably been used to get rid of the dandelions that grow in the cracks, and I felt resentful. Why can’t dandelions be considered a serendipitous garden? They weren’t wildflowers, too?

I watched the flowers rimming the trees and found the “please curb your dog” signs mostly observed, but found a couple beagles on leashes sniffing suspiciously at a mixed bed of daffodils and tulips.

As I ambled away from the park and back toward my apartment, there were no longer dandelions or flowers with fuzzy white tops. In their place were carefully cultivated mini-gardens surrounding the trees with the warnings to dogs. But then again maybe we should at least let the dogs pee someplace nearby. If that’s the way they mark their territory, then it’s like they’re sending love to the flowers—a love that might kill them, but still. I was wondering what kind of accommodations could be made to allow dogs to mark the flowers without killing them when I saw Myrtle coming toward me.

She was dressed the same as always—the fitted jeans, a bright turquoise fitted button-down top and, since it was a warm day, brown Birkenstock sandals, her pink-pedicured, pale toes sticking out. Her thick bobbed gray hair swung back and forth with her fast stride, a barrette of some sort held the top strands from billowing in her face. She was carrying an empty vase tucked into her left elbow. Her red handbag was slung over her right shoulder. She nodded and smiled slightly when she saw me. “What’s the vase for?” I asked. “I’m donating it to the park,” she said. “Apparently, they’re creating a potted border to one of the flower beds they’re clearing and they said they might like a wide vase like this—I ‘ve got a ton of them.” The volunteers must have considered this confidential information because they didn’t share any of this with me when I asked.

“That’s weird,” I said. “I was just over there and asked them what they were clearing the bed for, and they just said they didn’t know.”

“Well,” said Myrtle, “They probably don’t. They’re just volunteers for the day—they just do whatever park management tells them. They’re not the ones making the plans.” Something about this bothered me. “If I were them, I’d be insulted—toiling away at a flower bed for hours and no one thinking I’d like to know the plan,” I said.

“Well, think about it—you’ve seen these people—do you really think most of them have any better way to spend their time? They don’t care—they’re just excited for something to do, whatever it is,” Myrtle said. “By the way, did you say something about your roommate being allergic to flowers? I could have sworn you keep telling me that.”

“Yeah, that’s right—Gertrude at least says she can’t be around any flowers. Why do you ask?”

“Because just before I left to come over here, I saw her parading down the street with her arms full of flowers,” Myrtle said. I had a suspicion of what was going on, but didn’t want to sound crazy, so I just laughed. “Well, that’s Gertrude for you, always up to something weird,” I said.

The rest of my walk home wasn’t as leisurely. I felt the flowers I had lined my small space with were being pulled away from me. I stopped seeing the plantings around trees, wondering why they suddenly dwindled, and then stopped altogether the closer I got to home. In fact, I saw no flowers of any kind except a young woman carrying a box out of an office building with a small green plant tucked inside. It had the look of a move-out box on her last day on the job. I then passed by the building where I used to work and saw people one after another passing through the automated security gates in the lobby. They reminded me of bees coming and going through the opening of a beehive. Every four or five of these people paused on the sidewalk outside to light a cigarette. I turned away to avoid taking in their smoke leftovers—carcinogen leftovers, actually.

The air seemed fresher locked up indoors. Sprawling indoor gardens were starting to make more sense than outdoor ones. “What a disgusting habit!” I said out loud as I passed by the smokers, turning my head and fanning my hand in front of my nose. They ignored me, figuring probably that I was just talking to someone on my cell phone. I also made the “tsk, tsk” sound and shook my head at some of them. They always ignored me, but I kept hoping at least one would see me and feel ashamed to be smoking. At the very least, shouldn’t they keep their smoke to themselves?

Every light holed me up on the way back to my apartment. I didn’t try to walk without the benefit of the red light, even when no cars were coming because I had a bad feeling I would turn my head for a split second and get slammed. Bicycles sped around me, running lights, skirting my heels, and I always seemed to be just in front of or just behind someone, as if I were part of a parade of marching circus animals. If I stopped short, the person behind me would crash into my back and I would bump hard into the person at the tips of my toes. I would be harassed forward if I kept going straight, so I veered off onto another street. It would take longer getting home, but at least I wouldn’t be part of the crowd. That crowd was too conjoined for me—I didn’t want to be one of its middle dominoes.

The rest of the way home, I ran around people blowing toxic smoke back at me (cigarettes again and the occasional cigar), sidestepped even on the sidewalk bicycle riders interspersed with scooters and a wad of still-sticky bright pink gum. I ducked to avoid a low-hanging branch loosened by a recent storm.

There was something soft, malleable and broken into bits I began feeling about five blocks from my apartment. I couldn’t tell what it was at first under my feet. It looked like shreds of bright pink, red, yellow, orange, purple and blue paper. I thought it was some kind of confetti or the remnants of a child’s art project. It was sticking to the bottom of my rubber-soled sandals. I picked up my foot and it looked like smudges or soft chunks of blood. But when I looked closer, I could see it wasn’t that either. I ran the outside of my index finger along the edge of these soft blots of red. They were flower petals, but most were not in tact—they were the shreds of petals. “And they’re just the colors I love!” I said out loud, though no one was listening. “The same colors I like to choose for my own flowers.”

The density of petals on the sidewalk grew thicker as I moved closer to Myrtle’s shop and my apartment. Other people were curious about it, too, and some were bent over picking up a petal and holding it to the light to inspect it. “Isn’t that weird?” I heard one older woman say to her husband. “I wonder if some trees in bloom got cut down near here so the petals blew over.”

As I walked further up I saw Myrtle outside her store talking to a few of the other shop owners in the neighborhood. She was laughing and shaking her head and pointing to a spot on the sidewalk where an old beach towel and a bottle of water had been left. “I’m telling you, you should have seen him go,” she said between peals of laughter. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Like what?” I said gently, trying to push my way into the circle of people she presided over. “Like what?”

“That weirdo who’s always sitting outside here,” she said, pointing to the spot where the beach towel and water bottle lay. “He just got up all of a sudden—with all these flowers—and started marching up and down the block shredding them, shredding them, I’m telling you.”

“Shredding what?” I said. Myrtle looked at me like I was dumb or being facetious. “Shredding what? Shredding flowers—look around you—they’re everywhere. All those flowers I brought him that I was going to get rid of anyway and gave him—he shredded them. Oh, and your roommate, that ditz helped him out, I should tell you.”

“Gertrude? What could she do?” I said. “Well,” Mytrle said, flipping her hair and acting like she was re-telling a story on a comedy show, “She gave him a ton of flowers to shred. They didn’t all come from the end-of-day flowers I gave him—nope, they weren’t all end-of-the-day flowers at all.”

I had a sinking feeling, but at the same time, I wasn’t all that surprised—as if I just should have known better. Gertrude wasn’t such a nice person that she wouldn’t get back at me for carving out a garden in my room—with the door kept closed, no less. I saw her then coming up the sidewalk, in her home-on-the-couch look—yoga pants, t-shirt, dry, bleached hair pulled into a pony tail and long acrylic nails curled under into her palm. She was smiling, but looking down. I kept walking toward her, but she kept looking down and then up toward the roofs of buildings, that same smile remaining and then moving to more of a half smile or nervous smirk. “Gertrude,” I said as I got closer to her, “Gertrude.” She finally looked directly at me, squinting like the sun was in her eyes, though it had become cloudy. “Oh, I didn’t see you,” she said. “I was just taking the trash out, and thought I’d get rid of some things—“

“Like my flowers!” I said. “You gave that bum my flowers!” Gertrude looked off again at the tops of the buildings and then down at our feet. Eventually she looked sidelong at me. “Actually, I just threw them out—in the dumpster, here, she said, gesturing behind at the small white dumpster with garbage cans inside, which our building used. “He must have fished them out of there.” This made me even angrier than if she had bequeathed the flowers to the beggar. The thoughtless dumping of the flowers was far worse. “Well, the thing is, I asked you this morning to get rid of them, and then if you weren’t, to get me the humidifier my doctor recommended, and then I didn’t see you until just now, so I didn’t know what to do. My throat was starting to get sore,” Gertrude whined.

I couldn’t stand looking at her anymore, and thought a donation of her furniture and keepsakes to the dumpster, or maybe directly to the flower beggar, would be a good idea. He had resumed his post among the shredded flowers, yet among the bounty of his shredded collection, he asked for more. The people who had congregated to marvel at the petal-covered sidewalk had dispersed, and Myrtle was back inside her shop. The beggar sat cross-legged opposite with that hand of his still extended to those who passed within or without.

I forgot Gertrude for a moment and stomped over to the flower beggar. “Stop asking for flowers!” I nearly screamed at him with passersby turning around for a second, probably thinking I was his fellow mentally ill homeless person. “Why are you asking for them anyway? I felt bad for you at first. But it looks like all you want is to shred them, so why should anyone help you?” He just smiled and cocked his head like a dog at me. “Please,” he said, pointing at the flowers in Myrtle’s window. “Please.” He either didn’t speak English or he was mentally impaired—maybe even a little retarded. “Is it an experimental art project? Is that what all this is?” If it was art, I would accept it, but waste with no art was intolerable.

It was then that I got my idea. I ran into Myrtle’s shop and asked to borrow a vase, and then began collecting the petals from the sidewalk. I wasn’t an artist, but maybe I could glue them to a board of thick paper and create a collage of some kind. Attention diverted from the beggar to me, and I heard laughing and saw people turn their heads toward me even as they walked away, as if they couldn’t get enough of the strangeness of a woman collecting shredded flowers from a sidewalk. Was it that strange? “What are you doing?” Myrtle asked me, nudging my shoulder. “What are you bothering with those for?”

“Just my own personal salvage operation,” I said, trying to laugh to seem casual. “I thought maybe I could glue them to some kind of artsy paper and make a collage or abstract design somehow.”

Myrtle started to laugh, full-throated and even bent over because she thought it was just too hilarious. “I didn’t know you were an artist!” she said, “I guess we better call MoMa—sounds like something up their ally, you never know.”

“Ha, ha,” I said. “It’s just something I want to do—as long as they’re lying here on the sidewalk going to waste.”

But Myrtle kept laughing and the beggar even started smiling, while keeping his hand extended. “I got more for you, don’t you worry,” Myrtle said to him. “You can shred all the flowers you want—I can’t keep them forever—I have to trash some of them eventually anyway.”

I fixed my eyes on the bright shreds of my bouquet on the sidewalk, collecting it piece by piece—the beggar waiting, hand outstretched for more to collect and tear apart; Myrtle laughing as she bundled together out-going flowers.

I set aside the yellow chrysanthemums and wondered about the oranges, reds and purples. They were arranged one on each step to our house and I thought the colors should be coordinated like an outfit of clothing. Greg, my housemate, didn’t like the care I took with the chrysanthemums every year because he considered them out-of-season flowers—because they were flowers that bloomed in fall rather than in spring or summer. “What are you doing?” he would snap at me. “Didn’t you do enough gardening this summer?”

He didn’t appreciate the full growing season, thinking it should be confined to April or May through the beginning of September and then be done. I tried also explaining crocuses to him, which he saw himself every year in March but dismissed as weeds. He was on the fence about daffodils.

So, while he fixated on changing all our light bulbs to ones he called “energy efficient,” which I called less flattering and more garish, I arranged the chrysanthemums wondering how best to show them off.

Just as I decided to place the purple up top, then the orange and then maybe the bluish followed by the pink and yellow, Greg appeared at the top of the stone steps in a t-shirt and track pants. I always wondered why he didn’t just wear jeans. Was it to give the impression that he was fitter than he really was?  He wasn’t fat, but maybe he liked people thinking he was either about to leave for the gym or just back from a rough workout. He blamed me for liking Hershey bars better than gyms, though I have no idea why. I wasn’t fat either—and with much less effort than he exerted. Why blame me for having a smarter way of living?

“The chrysanthemums again?” he said. “I thought you were done with those and were going to help me change out the light bulbs.”

“I don’t like the light bulbs you bought—and I don’t care about whether they’re better for the environment or more economical. I think the lighting tones they give off are less pleasant than the old bulbs. So, since you’re taking away a little beauty from my life I thought I would concentrate on the beauty I still have control over.”

When I agreed to be Greg’s housemate a few years ago I had no idea he thought efficiency was a good idea over comfort and that he wasn’t tuned into daffodils, tulips, peonies, lilacs, lilies, roses and, especially, chrysanthemums. The whole season built up to them and they were such a soft-spoken, unostentatious, flower. I appreciated that they didn’t take advantage of their end-of-season status to flaunt themselves like a rose. They were outside nearly every shop door and many houses by the middle of October, but they weren’t glamorous. Nobody chooses chrysanthemums for their wedding reception.

Greg laughed and began pointing at dandelions left over from the summer. “What about those?  How do weeds fit into the ‘beauty?’” He liked to look me up and down while he talked, but not in an admiring way—more like an insurance rep who visits a house after a disaster and eyes everything up and down affixing costs here and there.

“Actually, I don’t consider dandelions weeds. I always thought they were misclassified,” I said.

He snickered but I pretended to ignore him and just smiled in return. It was unfortunate that three years after agreeing to share the house (he the first floor; I the second with shared access to the kitchen, living room, garage and outdoor spaces) we still lived alongside one another. I commiserated with the dandelions. They were called weeds because they found themselves growing on the outskirts of someone’s doorstep. They were like flowers except nobody planned for them. My big hope was Greg’s love of adhering to society-approved timelines and the fact that he just turned 36 would mean he’d finally propose to his girlfriend and move out.

“How’s it going with Stephanie?” I said. “If you don’t speed it up and claim her she’ll find somebody else.”

“I don’t know—we’ll see. I’m thinking about it.”

It wasn’t like he was a treasure—balding with glasses and on the short side—so I couldn’t imagine what was keeping him from asking his kind, decently attractive (though admittedly not beautiful) girlfriend to marry him. It’s not like he had a line of girls waiting to go out with him.

“If you think about it for too long, she’ll find somebody else,” I snapped.

He laughed as if to say he didn’t care, and walked back into the house leaving me with my chrysanthemum companions. Stephanie would be over later so I thought I might plant a seed in her mind about leaving him. His lack of appreciation of chrysanthemums and dandelions and the whole growth cycle indicted him as a person who didn’t appreciate wildlife and nature. Did such a person deserve to be given a mate and probably children? That would put him fully in synch with the natural cycle of life, death and reproduction.  He didn’t recognize the beauty of the natural world, so was that something he deserved?

On the other hand, a conventional thinker like that could hope for nothing more than marriage. I imagined marriage as a locked tree house from the male perspective. The roaming bird, haphazardly dropping seeds here and there, seemed the true male mentality. If you have that mindset, what could be worse than being tied down to one place, one person, one garden?

As I heard Greg pattering around the kitchen opening his energy drink-in-a-can, I wondered if the chrysanthemums regretted their pots. It wasn’t like I put them there—I purchased the chrysanthemums already in their golden brass-looking pots. But maybe energy-wise they counted the pots against me. I also wondered whether I was receiving bad energy from the chrysanthemums for not planting them myself—enjoying them without having grown them.

The chrysanthemums only had about three weeks left before the first serious frost would come and shrivel them up, so I thought the right color arrangement was important—like a dying person dressing up to her best since she would want to look good for whatever time she had left.

“I thought you were going to dust,” Greg yelled from the kitchen.

“The chrysanthemums are more important, and I don’t have time to do both,” I said.  “I suppose when this latest blooming season is over, I’ll have no excuse so I’ll have to take care of the dust so it doesn’t interfere with your energy drink regimen.”

“I’m allergic to dust,” he said sniffling dramatically enough that you could almost hear the phlegm going down his throat. “It makes me sick.”

I laughed not to be spiteful but because I really thought it was funny that he was that weak and prissy-ish that he couldn’t stand a little dust. And that he was so petty that he wouldn’t then just pitch in and take care of it himself. When we first became housemates we decided on a division of household chores. Dusting was in my column. He would rather sniffle and choke on his own phlegm than deviate from our assignments.

“Oh, that’s a shame,” I said. “It’s awful not to feel well, isn’t it? I think I’d like to spend more time with the chrysanthemums. I’ll let you know when Stephanie gets here.” His girlfriend was due to arrive in the next hour or so for their weekly Saturday night date.

Stephanie usually wore the same thing every Saturday—tight skinny jeans with an animal print top of some kind. She was a girl who loved efficiency and since she liked animal prints she decided her days-off outfits should be comprised of nothing but designer skinny jeans, various animal print tops—leopard, zebra, giraffe, even cow—paired with a selection of $400+ designer high heels. She said it simplified her life to have this animal print-skinny jean-designer shoe algorithm that she could just plug in to quickly put together an outfit for her leisure hours. Her work hours—as a financial consultant—were spent in pants suits in various colors—red, navy blue, pink, even purplish—with the same high heels she wore during her leisure hours and a variety of decorative silk scarves (paisley, floral, striped, collage, etc.). Her goal was to eliminate the need to think about anything other than what she considered the substance of her days—her work and her quest to get married by the age of 30. She had latched onto Greg because, because, because—well, I’m not sure. I suppose because he was her romantic equivalent of what college seniors call the “safety school,” meaning a man who fit the general profile she was looking for, and was acceptable even if he wasn’t her first choice, or even her second or third choice. Who had time for all that choosiness anyway?

The Chrysanthemums’ petals retained their color. Until they shriveled up after the first deep frost, they would keep it pretty well. At that point, you could still see their colors but their ends would be tinged with brown. It was mid-October, so I thought they might have another month. After the shriveling would come the potpourri stage, when I would collect whatever was left of the colorful petals and throw them in with other petals I had collected from earlier blooming cycles of the year and add pine chips.

Just then I heard Stephanie’s SUV coming up our gravel driveway. She was driving the way she usually did—tentatively. She was going at exactly a mid-range speed for driveway travel, careful not to so much as skim the grass at the perimeter of the gravel. It was a snow leopard day as she emerged from the car with the white and black pattern of the cardigan offset by a red-pink silk scarf and silver stiletto heels beneath her weekend skinny jeans. As she came closer to where I stood on the cement steps, I pretended to be paying most of my attention to the chrysanthemums. I hated that long interlude between the time you see someone walking toward you from far away and when they get to within the zone of hearing and communicating right in front of you. I never know if I’m supposed to wave at them from afar and then continue to stare at them smiling and seeming interested or whether I’m supposed to smile, nod and ignore. So, I just pretended to labor over chrysanthemum decision-making until I heard her heels click close enough for us to talk.

“Hi!  How’s it going?” Stephanie said as she made her way to my chrysanthemums on the steps and me hovering over them. “Oh, hi there, Stephanie! I like that you’re a snow leopard today. Gold and black leopards get all the attention. It’s time the snow leopard had his day.”

Stephanie laughed, but mostly just to be polite. Greg told me that she thought I was strange and didn’t get my humor. I didn’t worry much about that because I couldn’t bear to make small talk. So, I just tried to be nice, but as myself rather than as a person she wouldn’t find strange.

“Is Greg around?” she said. “I’m a little earlier than usual so I wasn’t sure.”

“Yeah, he’s brooding over his energy drink because he’s angry that I’ve neglected my dusting duties in favor of the chrysanthemum tending and color coordination you see I’m involved with. I guess that’s something to look forward to—the luxury of staying on top of the dust if the two of you eventually move in together.”

Stephanie laughed again and looked past me into the house. “Yeah, I guess I’m kind of a neat freak. I thought the two of you had worked out a shared housekeeping schedule for the common areas,” she said.

“We did, but unlike you, I don’t owe him anything so if I happen to rather spend time with chrysanthemums than with a dusting rag or a sponge, that’s what I do,” I pointed out, smiling proudly. I got lonely sometimes but liked that I wasn’t beholden to anyone except the gardens I created.

Stephanie continued her perfunctory social laughter. “It’s not that bad. I like to keep things tidy, too, so I’m not doing anything I wouldn’t do on my own.”

“I guess you could say the two of you came together over your shared love of the tidy,” I said. I looked at her and giggled and then stooped over the crysanthemums again tinkering with the arrangement of colors, wanting each color to set off perfectly both the color above and below it. I knew they were the last of the season’s flowers, so I wanted to make the most of them. I kept thinking how awful it would be to be a crystanthemum and have colors that didn’t suit me surrounding my pot on all sides.

“Yep, I guess so,” she said. “You know, I think I’m going to go in if you don’t mind and see if I can find Greg.”

“Sure, maybe you can help him with his energy drink,” I said. The chrysanthemums seemed to be aligned properly now color-wise, so I started futzing with each of the flowers in each of the vases. I didn’t want any to be twisted, with chrysanthemum stems tangled. Integrity of the stems was important to me, with each stem set apart from the others even as they all shared the same pot and the same colors within that pot.

I thought maybe each pot of flowers would last longer if the bounty were even side-to-side rather than lopsided, though I knew there was no scientific evidence to back that up. One idea I had that I thought I might follow through with that afternoon was mixing colors within the same pot. So, instead of having orange crysanthemums on the top step, followed by purple, then blue, then pink, I would bleed some orange into the purple pot and some purple into the blue pot and some blue into the pink pot, and then mix things up even further by, say, taking some blue and putting it in the orange pot along with the orange and purple and just keep mixing everything up. But to do that I would have to start ripping up the stems from the roots and turning the pots into vases rather than planters.

“I think you can still go out without your gray pants,” I heard Stephanie say from the kitchen. The screen door was drawn to take advantage of the mild autumn day, so it was perfect for eavesdropping, or impossible to escape private noise, depending on how you looked at it.

“Well, the only other pair of pants I have that’s clean are my jeans, and I don’t feel comfortable going to that restaurant in jeans,” Greg said.

“I’m in jeans,” Stephanie pointed out, laughing. “What difference does it make?”

“Yeah, but it’s different—women can get away with it. Besides, those are designer jeans. Mine are working-in-the-garage jeans.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Stephanie said. “Of course you just don’t want to go. It’s like last year when you said you couldn’t go to church because you didn’t have the right kind of dress pants, and that you didn’t want buy cheap dress pants and so you wanted to wait until you got your end-of-the-year bonus to splurge on a designer suit. The end of the year came and you never got the suit and finally admitted that you just didn’t want to go. If you don’t like the places we go, why don’t you just say so?”

“I like the places we go—I’m just not able to dress for those places tonight.”

Luckily, the chrysanthemums were always dressed appropriately, so I was glad I didn’t have to worry about their wardrobes. I had friends who fretted about what they would wear, but what do you do with a man who uses wardrobe deficiencies as an excuse to get out of things you feel like doing? I admired the chrysanthemums’ colors. They only had one season but they always were attired perfectly. Their colors went well with the oranges, reds, yellows and the remaining greens of mid-October and November and if the season was colder than usual and the leaves just turned brown or fell off early, the brightness of the chrysanthemums offered a colorful counterpoint. Greg, on the other hand, was Stephanie’s stripped tree—a tree that night that had lost its foliage and had nothing else charming, like, say, a fresh coat of new snow, to compensate for its barren offering.

“Oh, alright,” Stephanie snapped. “Just put on your jeans and we’ll figure out someplace else to go.” With that she stamped outside and came to sit on the steps with me and the chrysanthemums. I decided to just admit I’d heard everything because it would be phony not to, and, plus, she knew I was right outside the screen door. And on top of that, she and Greg knew one of my favorite pastimes was eavesdropping.

“It’s hard when there’s a shortage of gray slacks, huh Stephanie?” I said hoping to make her smile, though kind of enjoying their argument.

“Yeah, right,” she said, smiling and giving one of her social laughs. “He’s absolutely ridiculous!  If doesn’t want to go someplace why doesn’t he just say so?”

“That’s Greg for you,” I said. “I don’t even like sharing a kitchen, dining room and livingroom with him, so I can’t imagine spending a life with him. I shouldn’t say this, of course, but to be entirely honest—and I’ve told him this directly already—I think he’s awful,” I said.

Stephanie grinned but didn’t bother with her social laugh this time. She was just trying to meet her age 30 deadline and time was running out. It was pretty much the same as having a week before a big splashy affair you’re obligated to attend yet have no dress or partner for. Now it was a week before the big party and she was racing around forcing herself into whatever “gowns” she could find. I would say she was at the stage where she was ready to just start dialing names out of an alumni association directory along with squeezing herself into a gown that didn’t fit, but she showed enough reservation that there seemed to be still a chance she would decide not to attend after all.

“Well not that bad,” she said staring at the orange chrysanthemums. “He can be insensitive and maybe doesn’t think as much as he should, but he’s not a bad person. Remember the starving raccoon he fed?”

I had to control myself to only chuckle at that one. Greg had discovered a skinny raccoon late one night in our driveway, so he crept into the neighbor’s driveway (a neighbor he couldn’t stand) and opened up the neighbor’s garbage can, scattering empty or half-eaten cartons of food out toward near where the raccoon was wandering so the raccoon would encamp in the neighbor’s driveway for a feast. The raccoon was still wreaking havoc on the neighbor more than six months later. I told all this to Stephanie.

“Huh, that’s strange,” Stephanie said after I told her the true story. “He told me how sad the skinny raccoon made him, and how he just wanted to do something to help. I thought maybe he was becoming more sensitive.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” I said. I wondered why Stephanie was so intent on the orange chrysanthemums, while she could see how I toiled to coordinate the colors on all the steps rather than fixating on one pot. If I could have pulled up the chrysanthemums by the roots without killing them, I would have interspersed the colors, cross-coloring all the pots rather than leaving each one with just one solid hue.

“I know you’re about to turn 30, but who cares? You could pass Greg by and keep on looking,” I said.

“You don’t understand,” she said, rubbing her fingers along the stems of the chrysanthemums and keeping her eyes away from me. “My mother won’t leave me alone about this. She just keeps hounding me about making plans to get married. She even roped me into asking Greg along on a cruise I was going to take alone with my her and my dad.”

“I never understood why some parents care so much about their children getting married by a certain age,” I said. “Is it because they’re worried about passing on their genes, or is it more because they’re worried their children will be misfits if they don’t get married by around 30?”

She looked at me with an annoyed expression and rolled her eyes. “Well,” she said irritably. “I think they’re just worried about me. They don’t want me to miss out on anything.”

The chrysanthemums next to us were now perfectly color coordinated and were flourishing in their individual pots. They didn’t have knowledge that it was mid-October and if they did have that knowledge I don’t think they would have done anything different. Was it because they didn’t have to worry about finding a mate, or because they had knowledge programmed into their stems that they should just grow according to their internal selves while taking whatever they could from the climate surrounding them to thrive even more?

“Too bad you can’t just be like chrysanthemums,” I said. She laughed probably thinking I was just joking. But, actually, I saw chrysanthemums as a good model for Stephanie, and especially, for her mother. They needed a reminder from beings in tune with the environment as a whole yet unworried about the growth patterns surrounding them. They grew unto themselves, not caring how I color coordinated them or whether they bloomed too late or too early this year to serve as decoration.

“You think so much of flowers and animals, but you know the only reason they don’t do the things you don’t like is because they don’t have the power of reasoning,” Stephanie said.

That was funny to me. The idea that if chrysanthemums could reason they would worry about getting invitations to cocktail parties or be consumed with worry that the right honey bees weren’t coming around or that the trees and shrubbery surrounding them weren’t pruned in a stylish way. Or, in the animal world, that my cat, Halgar, would be embarrassed because he was caught eating a cheap brand of tuna fish.

“I think the peace of chrysanthemums and other plants and animals like Halgar has more to do with a deep-seeded, intuitive synchronicity with the natural world. They’re oriented strictly toward what’s inside them and what comes naturally to them. They focus on whether they want to lie in the sun or, if they’re a flower, which direction to turn their heads to face the sun. Or they focus on whether they’re hungry or tired. It never gets beyond the primal with them, and that doesn’t make them less. It makes them more,” I said.

“I think wanting to mate and reproduce is very primal,” Stephanie pointed out.

“Well, that’s true, except you’ve said yourself that you don’t like children much and that you’re mainly concerned with your mother pressuring you.”

“I never said I don’t like children. I just said that I don’t go crazy for them and I’m not mainly concerned with my mother pressuring me. It just happens to be on my mind a lot lately,” she said.

“Well, whatever the case, I wouldn’t worry about an arbitrary deadline like age 30 if I were you—even if your mother threatens to throw you overboard on the cruise she’s forcing you to invite Greg along on.” I laughed and felt bad about it, but with the freedom of chrysanthemums before me, I found it funny that this girl sitting on the outskirts of my fall garden was consumed with deadlines related to her age and her mother’s opinion. The seasons speak for themselves and you can either tap into what grows during that particular cycle and look forward to the next growing cycle or you can glower about the flowers that either won’t grow that season or whose season has already past. In any case, it didn’t make sense to me to worry about forcing something to grow that wasn’t. If whatever you wanted wouldn’t grow, it wouldn’t grow. Forcing it would be like expecting a rose to grow in your back yard in October while overlooking the ease of chrysanthemums.

From the kitchen, just inside the screen door, we heard Greg fumbling around the cabinets, swearing to himself. Who knew making a peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich could be so frustrating? His deliberation of the dress pants complete, he decided that he would have a sandwich with his energy drink to tide him over until he and Stephanie could get to a suitably casual restaurant or find a place they liked that was willing to deliver.

“I guess I better go in there and show him where you keep the extra crunchy peanut butter. It’s funny. I don’t even live here and I know how you organize your kitchen cabinets. He’s been sharing a kitchen with you for the past three years and he still can’t get it through his head,” she said irritably.

“I guess that gives you a preview of your married life,” I laughed. Stephanie didn’t seem to find that funny. Not bothering with her social laugh, she got up and turned on her designer heels to break through the peanut butter and jelly impasse.

“To the right of the refrigerator,” I heard Stephanie say. “No, not the bottom shelf, the top one. You’ve been sharing a kitchen with her for three years now, how do you not know where the peanut butter is?”

Greg laughed a little in a quick, huffy sort of way, the way a person laughs when he only finds something funny because it makes him mad or bitter. But why be bitter over elusive peanut butter?

“It’s not just the peanut butter, it’s everything,” Stephanie said. “How do you live alongside another person for years and not observe their personal habits, likes and dislikes? After three years you don’t know her any better than a person would know a passerby in an airport.“

“Are you saying I’m stupid?” he said.

“No, obviously you don’t have a mental impairment—you’re better at a lot of things than I am. But when it comes to other people, you don’t seem to retain information.”

“I retain what’s important to me,” he said. “I know how much she spends on groceries every week, picking out the stuff I tell her specifically not to. In fact, I think I’m finally going to insist that we keep separate groceries in the kitchen—maybe we’ll mark off my milk from hers; my Cheerios from hers; my butter from hers; my Palmolive from hers with stickers.”

I had to cover my mouth at that point to avoid making my eavesdropping obvious by laughing. If it weren’t for my laziness alongside my love of the garden, I really would have left our shared arrangement a long time ago. On top of that, I was hoping he was one of those people in my life who would eventually remove himself with no effort required on my part. Unfortunately, I was learning that most of the people I didn’t like in this world outlasted me. So, we were really going to have duplicates of peanut butter; duplicates of jam; duplicates of orange juice; duplicates of rye bread. We couldn’t meld so we would duplicate.

Even Stephanie laughed—and her true high-pitched rolling laugh, not her controlled mono-chuckle. “Well, I think that’s taking it a little far, don’t you think?”

“No, I think I’ve tolerated her grocery preferences over my specific requests long enough,” he said, “and I’m pissed.”

I never knew, staring at the chrysanthemums and already anticipating the spring buds (even in late October) that my choice of dishwasher detergent was so upsetting, that maybe I was even causing an existential crisis over it or precipitating a fight between Greg and Stephanie that might blow the whole thing up.

“It’s really not worth getting upset about,” said Stephanie irritably. “And, actually if you paid as much attention as even I’ve noticed just coming over here on the weekends, you would have gotten by now that she has a system for where she keeps things that’s been exactly the same for the last three years.”

“We’re not talking about that now,” he said. “We’re talking about her buying things—brands—that I’ve told her I don’t want her buying with our shared kitchen budget because they’re too expensive.”

There was a long pause at that point and I could hear Stephanie’s heels tapping the floor. She may have been anxiously pacing back and forth trying to figure out whether to continue arguing with an ass for another couple of years—or a lifetime—or whether to cut her losses and walk out.

“I’m not sure what bothers me more—the petty cheapness or the fact that after three years you still don’t know this person you’ve been sharing living space with,” Stephanie said.

“I know the people I like,” he said.

“And what do you have against chrysanthemums?” Stephanie asked. “She said you don’t want her keeping them on the steps up to the front door and that you don’t think they’re legitimate flowers.”

“They’re alright. I just don’t see why anyone would want to bother with flowers in October. She sits out there on the front steps with those flowers like it’s May or June. It’s the fall, so why bother?”

“Flowers bloom all the way from March through the end of October around here,” Stephanie said. “It’s more than just the spring and summer.”

“Fuck the flowers” he snapped. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s dumb. You’re starting to sound like her.”

My coordination of chrysanthemum colors was nearly complete. I was satisfied that as Greg and Stephanie or Greg then Stephanie or Stephanie then Greg stomped down the stone stairs in a few moments they would pass by a perfect cascade of fall colors.

There was a long silence in which I wondered if there was crying going on that I couldn’t hear from my stone steps or whether the two of them had locked eyes, decided they didn’t care about their differences and embraced. The flowers’ colors in my peripheral vision were calming as I stared at the screen door wondering if anyone would pass through to me on the steps. I had anxiety about denouements. I seemed to prefer long, drawn-out, suppressed sadness to heightened bursts of emotion. Feeling in the middle of the fall was comforting because even if Greg and Stephanie had a horrible climax of emotion in which everything toppled, I was immersed in the seasonal, an unending cycle.

After a few minutes I heard the clattering of Stephanie’s heels followed by the lighter tapping of Greg’s sneakers and moved back from the screen door, pretending to inspect the chrysanthemums. They knew I was eavesdropping but I thought it would be rude to not pretend to try to cover it up.

Both of their faces were inscrutable, though I’m pretty sure they weren’t elated or relieved. They both had what I called stone faces on them as they brushed past me. I smiled feigning sympathy at Stephanie, but she walked past me without acknowledgement. Greg, on the other hand, stooped down suddenly, tore out a couple of chrysanthemums from each pot and with at least five of the flowers in hand snorted loud enough to startle Stephanie and I. “Now they’re good for something,” he said handing them to Stephanie and snickering at me: “Cut myself a slice of your garden. Oh, yeah, nice colors,” he added laughing, as he pulled Stephanie in the car and the two of them drove off.

The gilt mirrors surrounded Cynthia and the eight bridesmaids and one junior bridesmaid, a slight Asian child of around 12 who bounced up and down and smiled to her mother about her dress’s “tail.” The bridesmaids, an offset of the local Junior League, were clothed in lime green chiffon. The maid of honor was skeletal with the studded joints of her spine visible and her collarbone-length light blond hair turned perfectly under like a tight roll of toilet paper or the curled-under edge of a ready-made pie crust. The other seven bridesmaids were less coiffed but aligned enough to mostly remember the parts of their uniforms they were responsible for—short strands of pearls, pearl stud earrings and short silver heels.

The bride, Madison Powell, meanwhile, posed in front of one of several free-standing full length mirrors looking up and down again at a book cover in her hand. “On a scale of one to 10, how much do I look like her?” she asked. The book, “The Bridesmaids,” was the story of Grace Kelly’s wedding and featured a photo on the cover of Kelly with her attendants. Nobody had the heart to tell her that despite nailing the hair color and having about equal height, there wasn’t much in her face reminiscent of the Princess of Monaco. She had a similar complexion and eye color maybe.

“Oh, definitely, I can really see it,” Ashley, a chunky, olive-complexioned bridesmaid said, patting Madison on the shoulder. Ashley considered Madison her style advisor and may have been the only one able to believe Madison bore a small resemblance to Grace Kelly. She taught Madison how to cook and provided the steadying influence Madison’s mother wanted when she pressured her daughter to join the Junior League. Luckily, Ashley wasn’t secure with her figure and didn’t care about fashion, so Madison was able to play the superior role in at least one area of their relationship.

Then there was the bridesmaid, Lara, who had bullied her way into the bridal party throwing a tantrum when a month went by after the announcement of the engagement and no bridesmaid request was made. Cynthia, seated on a folding chair at the edge of the room so as not to disrupt the preparations, overheard Madison complain to Ashley that Lara had been tipsy and kept asking one of the other bridesmaids whether her husband had “jizz” on his tie. “Can you believe that?” Madison said. “She’s just so jealous of married people she’ll do anything to annoy us. If I had known this was the way she would be, I never would have asked her. I just felt sorry for her.”

Every once and a while Madison would pat Cynthia’s arm or shoulder in passing and smile. “It’s so great to have you here!” she would say. “Ashley, have you met my dear friend Cynthia?” She would smile then sympathetically in Cynthia’s direction and then return to her preparations. Her sisters-in-law had just arrived—also bridesmaids—one about 25 with black curlicue hair and at least 50 pounds overweight; the other a petite, golden-skinned college freshman with tidy straight brown hair. The groom’s mother accompanied them, and it seemed the older, more portly of her daughters took after her. “Do you mind, hon?” she said to Cynthia. “Could you spray my skirt with Static-Guard?” Cynthia smiled as graciously as she could muster and made a circle around the mother-of-the-groom spraying gluey-smelling Static-Guard as she went. “Thanks,” mother-of-the-groom laughed self-consciously.

Cynthia was off to the side in the folding chair, up against the wall, her back to one of the mirrors surrounding the room. But she was called on repeatedly. If not to Static Guard mother-of-the groom then to hold the bouquet or to hold a piece of a skirt’s train up while a shoe was put on or a tight corner was negotiated. She had come from New York City to Chicago for the wedding and had been asked at the last minute, the night before, if she would be interested in spending the morning before the wedding with the women of the bride’s side of the wedding party as they got their makeup done. She and Madison had been close friends for 10 years, and with the exception of two of the nine bridesmaids, she had never heard about or seen any of these girls before. If they were such good friends that Madison wanted them to stand by her side at her wedding, wouldn’t Cynthia have heard of them before?

Madison was now walking back and forth in front of one wall’s series of mirrors trying to imagine what the guests at the church would see as she walked down the aisle. “I look like a fashionable bride, right?” she asked Lara who was concerned with the assessment of her own rump. “Definitely! I wouldn’t worry—you look great!” Lara said.

Madison didn’t bother to return the compliment to Lara who kept looking at herself in profile and twisting around to try to see what she looked like from the rear. Instead, Madison began to make lunch plans. “Hey everyone, I’m going to order pizza for lunch, but not that thick Chicago-style pizza—I’m going to get skinny pizza—the kind with the super-thin crust,” she said. After all, she didn’t want to give the impression to her Junior League friends of a person who took didn’t take the dangers of deep-dish pizza seriously.

“Hey, Cynthia, come sit with us,” Madison gestured offering Cynthia a seat with the bridesmaids in the middle of the room. “I was just telling Ashley that you also spent some time down South.” Ashley was from Birmingham, Ala., and Cynthia guessed that Madison thought geography was the only thing Cynthia could possibly have in common with Ashley.

“Yeah, I went to the University of Georgia, and really liked it. It was a culture shock, but really interesting to live in another part of the country.

“I’ll bet,” said Ashley. “But I wouldn’t know—I’ve lived in Birmingham my whole life—though I did help start a new chapter of my sorority at Ole Miss and so spent a few months in Oxford, Miss. I took a trip to Europe with my family last year.” Cynthia laughed socially and smiled. “Wow, that sounds great going to Europe with your family.”

The slow-going conversation was interrupted by a long-sleeved, bright coral thin figure. With a wan, drawn face and short feathery blond hair, Madison’s mother had arrived. A bottle of chilled Chardonnay was waiting for her in a nearby refrigerator because that was one of Abigail Powell’s expectations—that whenever possible chilled wine be waiting upon her arrival. She had a facelift and microdermabrasion 10 years earlier to un-crease and smooth out her face, but the 10 pounds she lost on an already slender frame left her face gaunt and hollow. “Cynthia, nice to see you,” Abigail said. “It’s been a while. How are you doing? How are your parents?”

Cynthia smiled, suspecting she wasn’t a favorite of Abigail’s. “Nice to see you, too. We’re all doing good. Just enjoying life in the Village,” she said.

“Oh, are you still ‘single in the city?’” said Abigail.

“Yeah, still living the life of the single girl,” said Cynthia.  Abigail shot looks to Madison every minute or so with raised eyebrows.

Cynthia excused herself back to the mirrored room’s periphery. “Sorry, but I have to make a phone call,” she said backing away. She looked directly at Abigail and smiled again while pulling back. Abigail and Madison continued to exchange looks with Abigail shaking her head and patting Madison’s hand. Cynthia looked away toward the periphery of mirrors and saw herself at the corner and the bridesmaid-strangers toward the center framed by yet another circle of mirrors—free-standing head-to-toe mirrors. Madison’s rotund, frazzled-gray-haired future mother-in-law and the younger, prettier of her daughters were getting primped by the make-up artist. The make-up artist was taken by the daughter’s smooth golden skin. “Not a blemish. Gorgeous,” the woman said. One of Madison’s aunts laughed knowingly and patted the mother-in-law-to-be’s shoulder: “You birthed that skin!”

Cynthia laughed to herself thinking how interesting an anthropologist would find the bridesmaids preparation room with an aunt congratulating the mother-of-the-groom for “birthing” the skin of her daughter. The daughter just smiled smugly and nearly winked at herself in the mirror. More bridesmaids had filtered into the room in the meantime—one a woman with the kind of vaguely brownish purple hair that can occur when a home hair dying job goes bad. This woman Cynthia remembered as Julie, an old roommate of Madison’s who she thought had done enough to wipe her name off the bridesmaids roster. She had borrowed Madison’s computer to send e-mails to her friends making fun of Madison. Cynthia, who happened to be living for free in another apartment pet sitting for a friend, had given her room next door to Madison so she could escape from living with Julie. Cynthia became anxious and began slowing making a circle around the room passing varying images of herself as the mirrors all seemed to have a slightly different shapes and were under slightly different lighting. There she was bright and skinny and here she was wide-set with shadows under her eyes and there she was washed out by a stray white light. The girls she passed checked out their rear views, how they looked in profile, how their calves looked peeping out from under their lime green chiffon and even how they looked side-by-side to gauge how they would look in group pictures and maybe secretly to see how they each looked compared to one another.

Madison and her mother were still seated at the center of the room talking in soft tones when Madison’s eye caught Cynthia’s. “Hey there, you!” she said playfully. “What are you doing walking around in circles?” Abigail frowned raising her eyebrows and pursing her lips. “Just stretching my legs, I guess,” said Cynthia. “Getting a sense of the scene so I’ll always remember it—it must be the writer in me.”

Madison looked sympathetically at Cynthia realizing maybe for the first time that her “dear friend” had spent much of the day as the sole observer rather than as a participant. “I’ve hardly had a chance to talk to you,” said Madison. “Are you having fun?” Cynthia smiled and nodded. “It’s been interesting watching everyone get ready,” she said.

“Well, actually,” said Madison, “I have a job for you—if you don’t mind. I’d like you to hand out the programs.”

“Sure, I would be honored,” she said. Cynthia stared awkwardly at Madison after that waiting for her to pick up the conversation.

“So, how do you like my friends?” Madison asked her.

“They’re nice, but—but, it’s weird, I mean, I’ve never heard you talk about them before,” Cynthia said. Madison smiled at Cynthia and cocked her head like a person talking to a slow child.

“The Junior League. I met them through the Junior League. We get together sometimes, we—”

Abigail cut in then: “They have a lot in common. Madison has a lot in common with those girls.” Cynthia smiled again and nodded.

“It’s funny. People used to say that we sound exactly alike,” Cynthia pointed out to Madison and her mother who looked back at her with blank stone faces. “Anyway, it’s just funny, I’ve never heard you talk about them before.”

Madison began fidgeting in her seat and her face became flushed while she and her mother kept exchanging looks. “Well, you’re one of my closest friends who doesn’t live in Chicago,” she said. “I never wanted to have nine bridesmaids, you know, I—“ Abigail reached out and squeezed her daughter’s wrist. “Remember what Dr. Samuels said,” she whispered. Cynthia ordinarily would have pretended not to have heard, but her feelings were hurt at having been suddenly pushed to the periphery of her once close friend’s social circle. “Madison, who’s Dr. Samuels? Is that your new psychologist?” Madison smiled and didn’t seem too embarrassed.

“How did you know? It’s like I told you, Mom, Cynthia can always—“

“Well, I know you like to see psychologists and I didn’t think anything was physically wrong with you, so I just figured when you were talking about a ‘doctor,’ that’s the only thing it could be,” said Cynthia.

Madison and her mother began exchanging looks again, wiping the smile from Madison’s face. “Well, maybe it might be a good idea for you to tell Cynthia what Dr. Samuels said,” Abigail suggested nodding her head and patting the top of her daughter’s hand.

“You’ve been a great friend,” Madison said, “but Dr. Samuels says that sometimes friends can be ‘unintentionally toxic’ because they don’t share the same life goals as you. So, they accidentally lead you away from the things you want.”

Cynthia could see the logic in theory, but wondered how it applied to her. “I know we’re different, but I feel like I’ve always been supportive of you,” Cynthia said. “I never cared one way or another what you wanted to do.”

“Actually, Dr. Samuels says that’s part of the problem—you’re not working toward the same goals—getting married and having kids—so you don’t keep me on track the way these girls do,” said Madison, waving her hand around the room at the nine bridesmaids straightening their skirts, looking at themselves sideways, from the rear and back again. “They’re good judges,” said Madison.

“And you want them to judge you?” asked Cynthia.

“No, it’s just—it’s hard to explain,” said Madison. “I do and I don’t. I mean I want to end up the way they are, I—it’s like we’re all on a diet together. And you’re not on our diet. So, we keep each other on track.“

“Don’t want to end up like me,” Cynthia said, completing her friend’s thought like she often did.

“No offense, but yeah,” said Madison laughing.  Cynthia again smiled and kept her gaze over Madison’s head focusing on the reflections of the bridesmaids getting ready and looking one another over. The inspections seemed endless.

“You know I think you’re great,” said Madison, “it’s just that I think we’re on different paths. I definitely wanted to have you here, though, to be part of the day, you’ve been a really good friend. I mean I wanted to include you—I never wanted nine bridesmaids, I had to include some of them and some of them were family. But I wanted you to share the day—I mean that’s why I invited you to spend time with us while we got ready.” Cynthia stared at her, mouth slightly opened.

“Anyway,” said Madison, “I’m glad you’re here—and—do you still want to hand out the programs? I understand if you don’t, but—“

Cynthia smiled. She felt backed into a corner having made a special trip away from home and having already spent money on airfare and hotel, but most of all, she didn’t want to embarrass herself or create “a situation” by leaving abruptly. “Sure, I’ll still do it,” she said.

“Good, would you mind holding this again?” Madison asked, handing Cynthia her bouquet. “What do you think of it? My mother thought these calla lilies would look good but I actually wanted roses.” Cynthia smiled and nodded her head, her eyes rotating around each of the mirrors. Each reflection was of a lime green-uniformed bridesmaid or junior bridesmaid twisting front to back and conducting a self-inspection. Madison also took another look at herself sucking in her stomach and looking at her profile again.

“I lost about 10 pounds. Can you tell?” she asked an unresponsive Cynthia. “Can you tell?” Cynthia nodded her head and smiled. Madison took an appraisal of the nine bridesmaids reflecting in every direction. “Oh, wait! Not everyone is wearing pearls,” Madison said. “Didn’t you all get my e-mail last month? I told you to keep checking your e-mail. Oh, well,” she laughed with humor. “Oh well, no big deal. See how easy I am?”

Cynthia, as it turned out, was wearing a short strand of pearls. She ran her fingers across it protectively. The battalion of bridesmaids were slowly prying themselves from the mirrored circle, lining up to march outside with Madison for a group picture of the wedding party. Madison’s mother-in-law and the prettier of her soon-to-be sisters-in-law were again the center of attention. “Look at you!” one of her mother-in-law’s sisters said to Madison’s future sister-in-law. “Your skin is just glowing!” The mother-in-law to-be smiled proudly. “I like to say I made her myself,” she laughed. The sister patted her on the shoulder. “Well, you did!  You birthed that skin.”

The wedding coordinator handed Cynthia a small box with the wedding programs and she took her place among the bridesmaids trailing Madison out the door of the hotel and into the street, across the way to a park where the whole wedding party would assemble, stretched out in long phalanxes on either side of Madison and her finance. There was construction work on the far end of the street but no dust, luckily, one of the bridesmaids observed. The bridesmaids looked at each other continuing their appraisals and adjustments. “Yeah, just push that strand off there”; “Sure, that looks fine”; “What do you mean? You look great?” Meanwhile, Madison fretted about the anxiety-induced red blotches springing out on her white upper chest. Her doctor-bridesmaid reassured her: “Don’t worry, that’ll clear up before the ceremony.”

Cynthia stared at the clouds and the tops of trees looking for birds or squirrels to concentrate on, and then, happened to glance down—maybe she wanted to check out the bridesmaids shoes to see what their selections said about them the way she checked out people’s feet on elevators and buses. And that’s when she caught sight of it—dozens and dozens of nails spread wide apart enough on the street not to be immediately noticeable. In fact, it seemed she was the only one who had noticed at all. The bridesmaids were still smoothing one another’s hair and dresses and offering reassurances. A few of the nails lodged into the ends of Madison’s dress and into a portion of the short train which her maid-of-honor had let slip from her hands. Cynthia reached out to tap Madison’s shoulder but then retracted her hand. She wrung her hands anxiously as if in a neurotic dilemma and reached out again for the bride’s shoulder. She did it again—reaching out for her friend’s shoulder—and then retracted her hand again, her eyes fixed on the birds at the edge of the park jumping from branch to branch and then settling.

Looking for a Door in the Moon

Drilling the edges

shy of center,

my saw carves off the corners

light trickling

from the periphery

catching

my hands

forearms

sides of my legs

but glancing away

from my face.

 

Moon Skewers

Skewer me moon

my cocktail party

needs thank you

favors and no one else

can offer

personalized moon

cut-outs.

A thousand dollars

here

and there

is all it takes

for my friends

to not find

moon skewers

any place

but mine.

 

Asking You to Stay

Dropping a hint

at the full moon’s

rising

I pulled

from the roots

daffodils

tulips

peonies—

spring’s best

in full light

of a full moon

hoping to hold

this phase

in place.

 

Failing at Forcing Waning

When it’s full,

screw the top off

see if you can force it

to be half

or less

than half

or waning.

When you don’t succeed

at forcing waning,

give up and invest

in night-blooming gardens.

 

Moon on My Fork

Similar to

a baked potato

I thought I could

stand on a tree

look through a fork

at the moon

and see through fine

slats

if it was done.

I knew I couldn’t touch

even the rim

but I thought

if I gestured

in the right direction

I could get a sense

of level

of done.

Up a tree

looking through

forked slats

the light is refined

and if I squint

the moon goes away

but doesn’t come

nearer

and doesn’t tell me

how close to done.

 

Moon In Search of a Day Job

Bored to be the moon

so looking

for a good cloud

or spare sun

to transpose with.

When you’ve got

a night job

everyone else

sleeps through

you prefer

the sun or just

to have a function

people are awake to.

 

Chip Off the Old Moon

Chip off the old moon

just finding rocky

scraps of unnamable

fragments in the garage.

You told me

they came from the moon

and you’re not

an astronaut

it’s true

but I like

to believe you.

Holding said

moon chips

up for light

I have to remember

not to turn off

the garage light

with the moon

you said

these came from

now, throwing off

no light tonight.

 

Gardening on the Moon

Gardening on the moon

little light

but no passersby

to interfere

with my nocturnal

blooms.

Working in the laboratory

I keep churning

hearty cross-breeds

planning a send-up

of gold folds

or pink layers

of earth bloom

fit for a replanting

with no sun

no water

but a long rocky

face to themselves.

 

Moon Police

Moon police

is that crater

approved for inhabiting

or just one-day

excursions?

Remember to declare

moon dust

at customs

try not to smuggle

moon rocks

not sold

by certified moon

vendors

and please

turn the light off

before you leave.

 

Lunatic Highway

Driving alone

through the moon

I couldn’t belive

how smooth

the cut of clouds

seemed to slice

the moon in two.

Setting my wheels

upward with nothing

filling my engine

to could get me

there

I attempted

the lift through

the lunatic highway.

 

Moon’s Solitude

Solitude

the moon

doesn’t mind saying no

to lingering on a phase

or allowing a tide

to stay longer.

Alone in its movements

the moon doesn’t mind

being the only

moon

among clouds

stray planets

being the only

one

who can move

the ocean.

 

Couldn’t Be Your Waitress

Couldn’t serve you

couldn’t be your

waitress

said the moon

traveling as I am

on high

forever monitoring

sky oscillations

I have nothing

I’m willing to

give you

as you are

so low

but I drop

in passing

light shreds

you can use

as you can.

 

Choices of the Moon

Inspecting your choices

you had none

but to endure

all the phases–

fluctuating light

and often insufficient

darkness to sleep,

but you knew

your favorite phase—

the one unseen—

new—

would be back.

 

Moon Climbing

Learning to climb

the moon staircase

wasn’t hard.

I just repeatedly

looked up, longed

for light

and sought the mid-

night solace

of alone with spot

light instead

of cocktail

party.

Looking at the light

alone

repeatedly

it was easy

to see myself

in the moon.

 

Moon with a View

To dine

with a view

from the moon

is to forget

the crumbs

on your plate

the howling

dogs at your feet.

Table set

the crumbs

howling animals

don’t matter

seeing through

blackholes

burned out

stars

abandoned space suits

flags

ripped apart

by errant astronaut

forays—

looking back

with a view

of home, far enough

away to appreciate.

 

Smothering a Moon Half

Sliced in half

I wondered

at the other half

I hid under

my pillow.

Half as a bright

for twice as long,

I slept well

atop smothered light.

 

Absent—Gone to the Moon

I forgot to count space

absences

the same as your others.

Suited in space

technologically advanced

gear

ready to explore

the universe’s largest

nightlight,

I stood by pretending

the light you traveled toward

was you.

The light in my lone room

I thought was you

as you kept trekking

away

the suited alien

from earth.

 

Dying Star, Full Moon

The star burning out

leaped past

in dying streak

the full moon

wondering if

brightness at its peak

so near

would diminish

its final showing.

 

In the Moon’s Hand

Poem written

on the moon’s face

the moon blushing

with harvest color

yellowish, a little

like a juandiced

baby;

the script of passing

clouds, stars dying out

winks at us

an inscrutable poem.

“I’d like not to see you again,” I told Marcy. She laughed and continued washing dishes she then loaded into the dishwasher. “Did you hear me?”  Sucking at my grape gum, and concentrating on the swirling of my saliva around the gum and the smell of the sugared-up grape and the sound of the chewing inside my head (I could only hear it because I always chewed with my mouth closed), I opened my eyes wide and glared.  I feared my glare would be wasted because her back was turned to me, but luckily Marcy turned around just as I was in mid-glare.

“I don’t like living together. I find you too cheerful,” I said without smiling. I liked to laugh, but this time I was humorless and ready for business. “I think you’re a nice person, but I don’t want to see you again.”

“Too bad,” she said in her insensitive way. She was lucky in that nothing much penetrated her skin. She kept everything she had on the outside of her skin like body makeup she could just wash off at night. Nothing stained her and nothing seeped into her skin with permanence. “We have a lease that I’m on with you, and you’d have to find another roommate, and I’d have to agree to move out.”

“That’s what I’m asking—for you to agree to move out,” I said. You’d be surprised how comfortable I was with this exchange, and even how good it felt. I enjoyed fighting it out once my passive aggressive default mode was pushed past its limit. I tended to erupt in such anger at that point that I needed the catharsis of a good fight. I even sometimes picked fights with strangers on the street. Most of those strangers were a lot bigger and nastier than me, too. I hit the jackpot in that none of them had yet raised a hand (or foot) to me.

I disliked a lot of the things Marcy was guilty of, like whistling, which happens to be one of the public offenses I’ve fought over with strangers.  There were these Cheese Whiz looking Midwesterners in town for the Thanksgiving Parade lumped in a sidewalk-tromping group with my mother and I. And the man was whistling that annoying non-harmony that people usually tend to whistle in varied, unmelodic tones.  I didn’t know where it was coming from, so I said loudly, meaning to be overheard, “Who’s whistling?  I keep hearing whistling coming from somewhere. Who’s whistling?”  Just then a big, burly corn-fed looking man, blond, and his also big and burly, also blond, wife or girlfriend strolled past and the man said, “I’m the one whistling.”  “Well, it’s bothering me,” I said. “Too bad,” he responded. Of course I couldn’t leave it at that. So: “You’re very rude.”  “Thank you,” he said, and then turning to his wife or girlfriend: “Did you hear that?  She thinks it’s rude that I was whistling?”  “Oh, that’s funny,” the wife or girlfriend said.  What I wanted to say looking back on the exchange, but didn’t think of at the time, and would have been dumb to say anyway is: “Go back to your cheese.”  They looked like the kind of people who put cheese on everything.  They probably thought I was a New York snob, though I didn’t actually have enough money or any connections (not even one) to be considered a snob.

I bring this up because I told Marcy this story to hint to her how much I hate her whistling, and she took the side of the cheese-born couple. “Those are just your crazy rules. Anybody is free to whistle on the sidewalk.”

Another thing that bothered me about Marcy was she had enough energy to clean properly. I was obsessive compulsive, but about troubling thoughts—like picturing bumblebees or car wrecks. Marcy, on the other hand, cleaned the apartment every morning before leaving for work and looked askance at the dust piling up on the dresser in my room. Some would consider it a benefit to have a roommate eager to clean, but it annoyed me because it connoted a person with so much energy she needed to expend it doing superfluous housework.  The reason she had so much energy was she didn’t take anything within her.  There was nothing inside her sucking at her energy, and I considered that a character flaw. Her happiness and bounding energy to me meant she didn’t have adequate inner anxieties.

“Why aren’t you more troubled?” I asked one morning after her vacuum woke me up.  “If you were more troubled I bet you wouldn’t be so eager to wake up early.”

“Yes, I guess I’m just lucky. I’ve always been a happy person,” she said.

One of the things about Marcy—happy or not—was she always had to be in a romantic relationship. She was a “people” person (I personally preferred cats and other fur-laden mammals to humans, but go figure). So, she treated her boyfriends like jobs. When one looked like it was winding down, she would look for another one to avoid time alone. The idea was an unbroken, seamless transition between boyfriends.  I suggested she come up with a way to find them and keep them in reserve—that she could can them the way you would can extra produce.

Steve Slumberts was the latest of them. “How’s it going with Steve, by the way?” I bated her, knowing she was keeping her eye out for someone new (I liked eavesdropping). “He’s good, but we don’t actually see each other as much as we used to.”

“You know, it might be good for you to spend some time alone,” I said.  I loved seeing her usually vacant face filled with terror.  She thought there was no worse fate than spending the day—let alone months—without a person whose function it was to be called on whenever she needed company.

“I’m a relationship person,” she said, quoting some woman she liked to listen to on the radio.

“But you don’t have a relationship with yourself,” I said.  I had already lost her concentration by that point, as she turned on her heel heading towards her room.  She often didn’t stick around to listen to me complete my thoughts, and sometimes would ask a question, like “How’s it going?  What’s up?”  And then shift on her legs back and fourth and dash off, too impatient to stay to listen to my response.

I suppose she was about to get ready to go out—to a place I would loathe, no doubt. Probably one of those dance clubs where there’s no place to sit down and no way to talk above the pulsating music.  For a person who claimed to like people so much it was funny that the music she liked best sounded like it was created by robots. Generally there were no words and no discernable instruments played. It was exactly like it would be if a computer were programmed (by a human?) to make a calculated succession of sounds, guided by a mathematical formula.

What if I were a missionary, I wondered.  I had no religious affiliation, relying for spiritual salvation on my sense that whatever there was of a God lived inside of ourselves instead of in a church or temple or through an appointed religious representative like a priest or rabbi. But I wanted both to get rid of my roommate and—more out of arrogance than humanitarian reasons—show her the folly of her ways.  I remembered stories of Christian missionaries who traveled all over the world “saving” the natives. I betted my vacuous roommate could use some help.

“What she needs,” I thought as I heard the shower droning, “is an in-house religious retreat.”  When the water switched off and I heard her bedroom door click shut, I slipped off my sneakers, and crept in my socks to her door. I was the one who asked her to move in rather than the other way around, so I knew things about the apartment we rented that she hadn’t heard about. She wasn’t one for history, so I doubt she would have been interested anyway. The apartment dated back to Victorian times, and came with keys that locked from the outside of the rooms. If you locked the doors from the inside, they didn’t require a key and locked just by pushing in a button. The thing was, the keys the landlord gave me just as a point of interest, or a novelty he thought I’d enjoy, overrode the internal locks, so that you could lock a person in her room!  The landlord told me the family who lived here years ago had unruly children, and the parents were such Victorian disciplinarians, they had the peculiar locks and keys made to lock the children in their rooms when they misbehaved.

Marcy hadn’t misbehaved, but she could learn a lesson about self-reflection and meditation.  I bet she hadn’t spent more than 10 minutes alone her whole life. Imagine preferring people to quiet reflection!  At the very least, she needed to know what it meant to spend time with only herself.  I would be doing her a favor.  I retrieved the key from my room as fast as I could (as fast as I could, that is, on tippy-toe), and, as quietly as possible, turned the key in the lock, shutting her in—for as long as I felt she needed to experience solitude.

I felt no ethical qualms about what I did. My only regret was she had a clock in there so she wouldn’t lose track of time. I felt sure a person like her not only needed a dose of first-time-in-her-life aloneness, but also that she needed to divorce herself from the clock and its connection to her “activities.”   Why are people so consumed with filling their days with activities?  I’m happy just dreaming with my eyes open out the window.

Now the fun began.  I heard her bare feet pad across the wooden floorboards and try the doorknob. “What the heck!” she said. Marcy didn’t use swear words, so “heck” or “Oh, fruit” was about as bad as it got. “Hey, Amanda,” she said to me. “I can’t seem to open this door. Can you help?”  I stifled a laugh and, leaving the key in my pocket, twisted the knob vigorously. “Huh, that’s strange. I can’t open it either.”  I heard her laughing, and knew the right thing to think was “Gosh, I really admire how she always keeps her spirits up.” But, instead, I thought it was time she learned how not to be cheerful. Could I lock the shallow laughter out of her?

“Well, unfortunately, I guess you’ll be stuck there a while. It’s Sunday, so the super isn’t around, and it’ll be hard to find a locksmith,” I told her, making my voice serious and somber even as I smiled broadly. “It’s a shame that you’ll miss your date tonight.”

At that point, it seemed as if her laughing, which continued, morphed from that grating social laugh of hers into a nervous laugh.  That suited me fine. It was time she experienced a little anxiety.  “No need to panic, of course, I’m sure since you have a half-bath in there you’ll be fine. I can always slip you some thinly sliced cheese or cold cuts under the door, I suppose.”  Now I was having fun.

She laughed, of course. “Well, I’m sure we’ll get in touch with someone soon who can help.  Or, I mean, you will. I just realized I don’t have my phone in here.” Another piece of luck for me.  This could go on quite a long time indeed.  It’s a rare opportunity when you get the chance to cordon off a troublesome person in your life, so I meant to make the most of it. “Oh, yes, I’ll be sure to do that. I wouldn’t want you to have to stay in there too long.  I think I’ll go now and see if I can find someone.”

I had no intention of finding anyone to help, so I took a walk around the block, looking for popsicle and ice cream sandwich vendors. I wanted something I could eat at her door, but which I couldn’t slip under the door, so I wouldn’t have to offer her any. My chocolate and vanilla ice cream sandwich in hand, I felt empowered. The only wrinkle in my plan was Marcy’s sure request to push some finely cut vegetables under the door. I have no idea why cheerful people usually like fruits and vegetables, but they do. I’d take a plastic roll of Hostess Cupcakes over roughage and apples any day.  Apple pie and other dessert tarts was the closest I got to health food.

Returning, I heard the word-less, rhythm-ful, bass-heavy music she liked reverberating from her room.  I forgot about that. Since she moved in I had been tortured by the pulsating throb of robot communications she called music.  The worst part was when I put my head on my pillow at night, I could feel the vibrations of it beating against my head, even after I dulled the sound with earplugs. I had spoken to her about the need to turn the music off at some point during the night, but to no avail, so I gave up trying, and, instead, used earplugs and the whirring of a ceiling fan to blunt the disturbance. But the officious beat she projected, I could do nothing about.

I knocked on her door several times as loud as I could. “Hi there, I’m back. Unfortunately, we have no vegetables, but I have some cold cuts—all red meat, unfortunately—that I can fit under the door.”  Oh, yes, so unfortunate, as Marcy tries her best to lead a healthy lifestyle. She says red meat gives you a greater chance of having heart attacks and cancer. Though I say her brain has been shriveling up for years, so why worry about it?

“Do you have anything else?” she asked, giggling. “How about some of those thin wheat crackers?  I bet those would slide under the door OK.”

“Yeah, alright,” I said.  After I retrieved the crackers and slid them to her, I thought about unlocking the door, but came to the conclusion again that it was for her own good to stay put. A person needs to find out what it’s like to be alone. I had spent my whole life alone, so why should she get away with never experiencing solitude?

“It must be a change of pace for you to have so much time to yourself,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s kind of sad. I don’t know how you spend so much time hidden away in your room, as if you were locked in there yourself. What do you do in there anyway?  I’ve been going crazy in here,” she said.

“I think of my room with the door locked as my sanctuary,” I said. “It’s the rest of the world that makes me feel crazy.” I felt as if I had done her a great favor locking her in her room, enabling her to experience what it’s like to have a sanctuary, but she wasn’t capable of appreciating the experience. True, the loneliness was a part of the experience, and it could be difficult, but what you gained in exchange for the loneliness—the richness of an inner life—was worth the discomfort.  One thing I hadn’t considered before occurred to me—what if Marcy was incapable of having a rich inner life? Were some people born without an inner-self, so that when left alone, they had nothing inside themselves to draw on?

“I just like getting to know new people. Whenever I meet someone new, I feel like I’ve just discovered a new TV show,” she said.

I would have laughed except it was touching that she knew herself well enough to describe what “new people” could be most accurately equated to; but, on the other hand, she wasn’t conscious enough to feel embarrassed about the analogy. She didn’t realize there was anything funny about new friendships seeming like TV pilots.

“Are these people generally good new shows?” I asked, “Or the kind of shows that go off the air without getting picked up for the regular season?”

She didn’t laugh immediately as I expected—since she was one of those people with a tittering social laugh that was similar to the canned laughter of a stage audience. I think she was puzzled that I thought her metaphor was funny. “Yeah, mostly good,” she said. “They’re company anyway.”

“You know what’s funny to me?” I said, “The way you need someone to study with you at the library. If you’re studying, and you’re studying for different classes and different subjects, what’s the other person there for?”

“I like knowing someone is going through the same things I’m going through even if their version of it is a little different,” she said.

I had always looked at suffering as a solitary trial, and even though I knew about “support groups,” I didn’t think they made any difference—at the end of the day, your suffering was your own. If a thousand other people felt the same pain, what difference did it make to your own pain? I could see if by gathering enough co-sufferers together you could dilute the pain or make a deal whereby you all share the pain by taking different shifts, or signing up for different months or years to endure it. But just knowing of the shared pain wasn’t enough for me.

“You’re never going to figure anything out on your own,” she said.

“What are you talking about?” I snapped. “If you’ve got a problem, the last thing you want is a group of people arguing with each other about the right thing to do. You need time for quiet reflection—especially since, in the end, you’re the one who’s going to have to make up your mind about it.

It sounded like birds outside her window, rapping against the glass, and I could smell fresh air seeping from under the door. I felt my planned casement threatened. Her window was too high up for anyone to scale in, and even if it were possible, her cell phone was sitting on an end table in the sitting room, so she had no way of alerting anyone but me to her problem.

“What’s that funny sound I hear?” I said. “It sounds like in desperation you’ve put a bird and squirrel cocktail party together.”

“No, nothing that creative,” she said. “Remember, I don’t have an inner-life or creativity, so I can’t do stuff like that.”

“That’s true,” I agreed. “And animals don’t seem to like you too much.”

“Yeah, but Jasper, Susan and Igor do,” she said.

“Who in the world are they?  Let me guess—you couldn’t restrain yourself, and became friends with homeless people living below your window.”

“Kind of. Do you remember the fair I went to with Chip last week?  And how Chip got me the puppets?  Well, I just put them on the shelf over my desk and forgot about them, but with all this boring alone—that is, self-reflection time, as you call it—I’ve gotten to know them better. I hung them from my window pane and we’re having drinks” she said in an even voice.

I always thought Marcy lacked enough self-awareness to understand irony, so I felt certain it wasn’t a joke. I had never known her to make any jokes outside of repeating lines from sitcoms or comedy club shows her latest boyfriend took her to.

“Yeah, Jasper was just telling me the funniest story about this bar, The Sacrosanct, he went to last week—the bartenders were all male models and there were free Jello shots,” she said.

“Was it Puppets night?” I asked, laughing. She stayed silent. “You know, like ladies night, where bars think they’ll get lots of women for men to hit on by offering the women free drinks? So, I guess there’s a new puppet fetish I didn’t know about.”

Marcy often had little intelligent to say, but she usually offered up enough vacuous conversation to avoid silence (a thing on her list of most dreaded), so I found it odd the way her long pause just kept continuing.

“Well?” I said.

“Of course, Igor and Susan have been going out for a while, so they’re not really into The Sacrosanct,” she said.

“The Sacrosanct isn’t for everybody,” I said. “I guess you have to know the right people—or puppets—to get in.”

“Igor has an in, and, of course, he got Susan in, who begged him to then get Jasper in, too.”

Hmm, talking puppets heading to nightclubs, getting their puppet friends in past the velvet rope. This sounded like an endeavor for me. I fished the key to her bedroom door out of my pocket.

“Well, what do you know?” I said, opening the door, “I found the key, after all. Turns out it was at the bottom of the draw near the sink in the kitchen, Marcy.”

I expected her to run to the door like a puppy released from a pen (to think of her more kindly I usually needed to pretend she was a cat or dog), but she didn’t acknowledge my entrance or the opened door.  She didn’t bother to turn around to look at me. Instead, she stayed in a crouched position over her puppets, making them dance over the floorboards under her. “Looks like Jasper’s really having a good time tonight,” she said. “I’m so glad they came to visit me tonight. I hate being alone.”

“Well, it’s your lucky day, Marcy,” I said. “Did you hear me? I found the key, and was able to unlock your door. You can go run around town now, the way you like.” I snickered at that, thinking of her continuous, thin conversation as she trotted from one trendy club to the next, partly soothing herself, partly social climbing.

“It’s just that Jasper isn’t ready to go yet, and Igor and Susan want to dance some more,” Marcy said, turning to look at me, but only peripherally, looking more to the side of my face than directly at me.

She seemed enthralled, and even happy, similar to how she seemed when I ran into her on her way to her room after a coming home late on a Friday or Saturday night. I would be turning over on the sofa with my book, and in would come Marcy exhilarated about all the stuff I couldn’t stand being around—masses of people jumbled up together in a relatively small space with “music” so loud you couldn’t have a conversation.

Now the puppets she dangled in each hand enthralled her. She was socializing with them.

“So, you’re really enjoying their company, ha?  I guess they’re not so different from your other friends, right?” I laughed, and walked over to her side to see if she heard me. I was waiting for her (irritatingly) good-humored reciprocal chuckle.

“Igor, Susan and Jasper aren’t ready to leave yet, remember?” she said.

It was the oddest thing the way she didn’t seem to hear me, or that she heard me but didn’t care now to escape from her room and her animated puppets.

“The door is open, Marcy. You can go about your business now. Isn’t that lucky that I finally found the key?  It was in the back of one of the drawers in the kitchen. Isn’t that funny?”

Well, it was the oddest thing, but the little twit didn’t seem to care. Should I have felt horrible about continuing to think of her as a little twit?  I didn’t think so.

“The door’s open, Marcy. It’s wide open. You can leave now. I’ve managed to unlock the door.”

You Mean You’re NOT a Dog?

Dog ears

secure

you were surprised

people forgot

you were human

and believed

you to be a dog.

You ate

with fork and knife

sat upright

at the table;

you even

tucked a napkin

into your collar.

But we all

just kept looking

for your leash

and canine teeth.

Glad I Don’t Have to Give You Anything to Hold

Your paws on the glass

look like hands

but I’m happy

they can only tap

the glass

and not grasp.

I would hate being

responsible

for giving you

things to hold.

Your paws

dig holes

nudge and tap

but can’t secure.

Your Head Held High; Mine Tugged

The collar

you’ve asked me to wear

isn’t comfortable—

at least not when

attached

to a leash.

Strolling through the park

your head held high

you didn’t notice

mine

tugged to the side

and straining

to lift up

as we walked together.

Why the Clock and Not Our Hunger?

The clock

the humans

pointed to

as I waited

for under-the-table

scraps

didn’t make sense

to me.

I knew time

by my hunger.

How or why

did they refer

to a clock

to dine?

You’re in the House with Me, Unseen

Deft with my nose

I can smell you

sense you

hear you

in the house

with me—

before you ever

reach my floor.

Alone with my

allotment

of water

and dry food

I hear

smell

nearly taste

you

on the the floorboards

above

and below

me.

Who’s Sleeping in My Dog Bed?

Sleeping

in my dog bed

again?

While I was

out walking

I returned

to find you

in my bed

having pushed

my bone

out of the way

sidelined

my chew toy.

I went back

out the sliding glass door

hoping you’ll be

gone

when I return.

My Water Bowl Saves, but Doesn’t Satisfy

My water bowl

isn’t up-to-the-top

full—

not exactly empty

but not full enough

not to be

thirsty.

Repercussions of Cheap Dining Service

Good to know

you’re economizing

on my behalf.

The half-price

kibbles

aren’t so bad

and neither is

my burglar-present

nap.

I Know Bones

Definitely

a bone

you pushed

to the side

and covered

with sweet potatoes—

but my eyes

and canine teeth

know a bone.

Edging Near Your Tablecloth

The teacup

the saucer

the tablecloth

the gently pulled

chairs

the guests

nicely dressed

with appropriate

gifts;

my teeth

latching onto

the rim

aiming to pull

tablecloth

place settings

hors d’oeuvres

out from

under you.

Competing with the Astronaut Dog

The astronaut

dog

makes me feel

bad about myself.

He’s been

to space

and I’ve only

been

to the park.

Salvaging a Posey

Always angry

about forsaken

roses,

the tulips

or peonies

I dug up

may have been

salvaged

for your posey.

You Can Have My Bones; I’ll Have Your Pasta

The Roman dog

only ate

pasta

but his owners

kept feeding him

bones

thinking he’d finally

be convinced

he was a dog.

But he stuck

to pasta smuggling

pushing his bones onto his human

companions’ plates.

A Tranquilizer for You, Too

The tranquilizer

for the flight

worked but

I wondered

why you didn’t

knock yourself

out too.

Your conversation

is much worse

than my barking.

The Cliff’s Turn—Unheeded

The horses

paid no attention

to me scurrying up

the mountain

alongside them.

Passengers

on their backs,

they didn’t hear

my barking

nipping at their

heels

as we rounded

the cliff’s turn.

Taking a Pass on Your Sausage

The hanging sausage

doesn’t tempt me

because I’d have to

come into your store

to jump at it.

The idea

of wagging my tail

begging

on hind legs

cocking my head

so you’d think

I was cute

doesn’t appeal enough

to jump for sausage.

My Pet Human

I take you on

your walks

though you refuse

to wear a leash

like me.

I trust

you’ll heel

come when I bark

and eventually

play dead.

Put a Trace on Me

My paws

in sand

and snow

can be traced

but my paws

tapping with

unclipped claws

across your kitchen

tiles

to your buffet

leave no trace

except

missing pork chops.

My Wolf-Kin

I feel bad

for my wolf-kin

you hunt—

it’s me

in the wild

with fiercer

teeth

silver fur

and greater abilities

to hunt.

You’re killing me

because I don’t

fit on your

living room sofa.

Focus on the Black Birds

Eating my kibbles

still eying your

steak,

you keep telling me

to focus on shooing

the black birds away

to get my eyes off

your plate.

But my kibbles don’t

taste good

and all the black birds

ever on our lawn

won’t distract me.

Happiness I’ve Ripped Up

The daffodil

bed

I don’t respect

so have dug up.

There’s nothing

I won’t dig up

creating a dirt pile

for my bones,

taking happiness

in the garden

I’ve ripped up.

I Got Dirty Because You Dragged Me There

Itchy ears

a tail that drags

in your backyard’s mud

doesn’t mean I’m only

fleas and dirt

trailing through

your home.

The dirt and pests

I bring to you

came from where

you dragged me to.

When You Turned to Ask for the Butter

The scraps

are satisfying

but only because

they’re scraps

you don’t know about—

your pork chop

sliding off the side

of your plate

as you turn

to ask

for the butter.

Microchipped Home

The way home

is encoded

in my brain

and by rote

in my paws

but you’ve microchipped

it under my skin

even though

yours may not be

my home forever.

I’ll Stop Barking When You Do

You told me

to stay quiet

in your purse

at the bank

because I wasn’t

allowed

and to stay quiet

under the table

at the restaurant

where I also wasn’t

allowed

but meanwhile

you never

shut up

yourself.

I’m Not Graceful; Just Your Companion

The cat’s been let out

for the night

so why am I left

neutered

to sleep on top

of your slippers?

If you could only

catch him

you say you’d neuter

him too

but he wails

to be let out

climbs so well

hunts

de-mouses

and creeps along

windowsills

with grace

while I’m just

your companion.

King’s Dog

The king says

I have to abide

by his side

as he sits

on his throne

walks along the beach

the people we pass

asking if they can

pet me.

I’d like to sneak off

and be one of their dogs

but they always

cluck their tongues

saying how lucky I am

to be the dog

of a king

and move on.

Tracking my Owner

My owner

wears a cologne

that makes him

easy to track

on the golf course

his easy chair

the backyard

the toilet.

I try to ignore

his scent

(hard for a dog)

wishing he’d go

someplace

more exotic.

Your Belongings Are My Chew Toys

The dump truck

towed the belongings

I gnawed at

as if they were useless—

a chewed up armchair

the toys

I ravaged

but I could still have used them—

your belongings

to you

my chew toys

to me.

Civilization of Talking Dogs

Will the people

of the future

finding my bones

leash, collar

and water bowl

suspect

21st century humans

were talking dogs?

Panting at the Base of the Tree

The birds sing

and I bark

to keep up

with the cat’s

track up their branches

swiping at them

making a noonday

meal of them

while I circle

the base of the tree

panting.

Splashing Back

Getting de-fleaed

the bath stings

and the water

is too hot—

so I splash it

in the eyes

of the one

who plunged me

in.

Picking Up On Your Crap

Doing the walk

with you

is laborious

but I’m the only

one who picks

up on your crap.

Can’t Find the Moon

Howling but can’t

find the moon

so digging deeper

because I can’t

find the sights

in the sky

my wolf relatives

handed me,

or at least

howled toward

themselves.

Shadow of a Bat

The shadow of a bat

on the stairwell

had me leaping

and barking

at 4 a.m.

which disturbed you,

but you brought me hunting

so often

I thought it was a bird

to retrieve for you,

stumbling out of your room

in your underpants.

Invisibly Fenced In

At the edges

of the gate

my nose tapped

the electric fence—

pushed back

by the invisible

current,

fur bristling

while the other dogs

in the park across

the lawn

played without me.

My Second-Grade Meat

The pot’s on the stove

and I smell stew

and see a cake

waiting to be placed

under rich icing

and I see my kibbles

and second-grade

meat in a can

on the floor.

Gardening with Dog

The basket

you pushed me off from

happened to include

your bulbs

for next year’s

crop of dug up.

Extensive Fur

The vet says

I’m too fat

but how does he

know it isn’t

especially

full-bodied

fur?

My tail is looking

bushier than usual

and my paws

are robust.

My belly is all

muscle

under extensive

fur.

Garden for You

Sitting on top of the tulips

my tail up

a daffodil,

I’m taking the spring

garden in.

The mud on my paws

tracked over your

new carpet

my way

of bringing the garden

to you.

“I’ve always thought extraverts were dumb,” Cynthia told Vikki, who had just gotten back from five hours at Ice and Dogs, a combination ice cream parlor and hot dog eatery that hosted its annual Friend-a-Thon that day.“Why do you have to talk to people all day?  Don’t you have anything inside you?”

Vikki wasn’t offended because apparently she wasn’t offended by anything. “It’s all good,” she said turning to her pot of steamed vegetables and rice. “You like cupcakes and moping around; I prefer human beings to Chocolate Fudge Royale. Your real angst with me is I only go to Ice and Dogs once a year, and it’s not with you (though I always ask you if you want to come), and it’s one of your favorite places,” she pointed out.

“Well, if you ask me if I’d rather eat hot dogs and ice cream in peace or listen to a person I just met tell me about her children, I can tell you I prefer the former,” said Cynthia.  I’m all for charity but can’t local businesses sponsor me to meet and greet a hundred cats let loose at a butcher’s shop rather than ask me to circle around humans who seem only to have two questions: ‘So, what brought you to New York?’ and ‘Why are you still alone?’   Well, I’d like to tell them I was looking for a place with people who don’t have time to talk about things they don’t care about, and I’m alone because heaven is the newspaper and two jars—one of fudge, the other of peanut butter—on a Sunday morning.”

Vikki laughed, and began spooning her vegetable and rice concoction onto a glass plate.  “Well, you never know who might be better than the Style section that you could meet at the Friend-a-Thon.”

Cynthia rolled her eyes and shut the window, turning the air conditioner positioned in the apartment’s other window on high, partly hoping to drown out a stranger’s laughter and whistling outside, and partly to drown out her roommate. “True, I could meet a great hero and a genius at the Ice and Dogs Friend-a-Thon, but more than likely I’d be left with a balding accountant with dripping ice cream smeared across his tie and a stay-at-home mother who was there because it was the most sophisticated activity she could think of that day.”

Cynthia often wondered how she and Vikki came to be friends and roommates, and after much rumination, decided it all came down to beer. Cynthia had just moved into a newly developed apartment complex at the University of Florida called the Cancun Club, and discovered Vikki as her next door neighbor one afternoon a few days after moving in. The halls and stairs of the building they lived in were outside and constructed like a deck with wooden panels from wall to wall, and everything except the apartments themselves were open-air, like a large, flimsily built tree house. Vikki was carrying a case of beer, which Cynthia complimented her on since it always was a boon to her spirit to note evidence of unhealthy lifestyle in others. By the time she learned the beer had been bought for a visiting friend, and that Vikki herself generally stuck to a judicious glass of Chardonnay with a dinner of skinned, boneless chicken or grilled Atlantic salmon, it was too late. She had already been invited to her new friend’s apartment for a cocktail hour social.

“Well,” Cynthia thought to herself, “I have nothing to say to these people, so I’ll just ramble as much as possible about myself and see what happens.” She proceeded to tell the gathering of maybe six people about how she doesn’t drive on highways and how it’s a public service that she doesn’t because she doesn’t believe in “vehicular aggression,” which is exactly what you must possess to excel at highway travel. She then told her guests, half Southerners from the Florida-Alabama border of the panhandle of the state, and half Northerners and Miamians, that the national highway system, furthermore, should be done away with. Everyone laughed, but the greatest mirth came from Vikki, who liked her new friend’s lack of inhibition with words. She was inhibited physically, choosing to sit slightly apart from the other guests, and was conscious enough of her space to take a step back if you got too close to her, but her words were wide open.

“Well, you’d get a chance to talk to weirdos about weird subjects, and God knows you like to do that,” Vikki said, referring to the Friend-a-Thon, and smiling and winking at her friend. And better yet, you’d have a captive audience to listen to all your best stuff.”

Cynthia was only beginning to understand why people described her as being “out there” or asked “what she was smoking?”  But, in truth, she saw nothing strange about doing away with the contemporary postal service, e-mail, and fax. She had a theory that the level of communication and the quality of ideas and, by extension, actions taken, would improve if only people had more time to think. “Now, if we still had the pony express,” Cynthia began, “then we’d be onto something. We’d have a chance to think during long-distance communications, and have more time to ourselves in between answer and response.”

Vikki, who never failed to laugh at this idea no matter how many times she heard it, nevertheless found it thoroughly unappealing. “More time?  Why do you need more time?  When someone’s standing right in front of you there’s no time lag between question and response, and everything seems to turn out alright, doesn’t it?  The best part of new tech stuff is it replicates the experience of talking face-to-face with the person you’re corresponding with even if they’re on the other side of the world.”

Cynthia thought no more than a moment; then decided exactly why she could never appreciate modern advances in communications technology. “Why in the world would anyone want to replicate that?  Isn’t the real thing bad enough?”  She remembered her dread at ballroom dancing class as a child, pacing the Mexican tiles of her family’s kitchen back and forth trying to get a hotdog down because she felt compelled to eat dinner even while the thought of having to worry who, if anyone, she would dance with—along with all the rest of 10-year-old social politics—had swept her appetite away. Or how about what she endured as an adult before and during cocktail parties?  It wasn’t that she had to think of things to say. She could think of a lot of things to say. “So, how tall are you anyway?” she longed to ask the gangly woman who worked down the hall from her cubicle row. “How do you find anyone to date, and more importantly, how do you buy shoes?  Maybe if men from Mars finally land on earth, and it turns out that instead of being little red or blue men they’re gigantic red or blue men, you could sign up for space missions to go shoe shopping.” Or, she’d love to know how often the fat man who delivered her mail showered, and whether if it was a lack of hot water in his apartment that was the cause of the sponge bath he seemed to take every morning in aftershave cologne. Or how the dowdy lady she bought her lunch from at the corner deli decided which identical brown dress she would wear each day. If all your dresses look the same, and yet they’re different dresses for the sake of cleanliness, can you tell them apart as the owner, and if so, is one more favored than another?  Of course, all of these, she knew, fell into the category of the socially inappropriate, but it sure beat asking what the kids were up to, or where the man slurping his white wine had gone on vacation last.

“Some of us enjoy human beings,” Vikki said. Cynthia might have left it at that knowing they always came to this impasse in an otherwise enjoyable friendship, but decided it was time for a challenge. She had PMS, and with her PMS came a heightened loathing of the social animal. Cynthia remembered with a smile how she had strategized her day around human avoidance, deliberately taking the express elevator to the upper floor of the office building she worked in; picking very carefully a scarcely used ice maker to fill her Styrofoam cup full of ice in preparation for her morning Diet Coke; and, most inspired of all, took a circuitous route to her cubicle that bypassed all people (many) whose company she didn’t enjoy. “I believe I’m becoming a misanthrope,” she said to herself. “Or, have I always been a misanthrope and just called it introversion to turn it into something psychologically acceptable?  Is anything OK as long as it’s a documented personality type?  What other personality types can psychologists invent?  What about Elephant people?  People who are harmless but take up the space of others, and threaten the comfort and wellbeing of others via the unconscious swinging of their trunks?”

“What are you thinking about?” Vikki asked, laughing along with Cynthia, though she didn’t know what her friend found so amusing. Vikki was one of those people who Cynthia to herself referred to as a go-alonger, or what psychologists (like Cynthia’s mother) call “pleasers,” people who compulsively must make everyone and anyone they’re with happy, usually by doing or saying whatever is expected. “Just how unfriendly I’ve become,” Cynthia admitted.

“At least you’re self-aware,” said Vikki , pointing out one of the things she liked most about her friend. Vikki was used to living with people who reminded her of the personification of public relations agencies. It was as if their whole life was a commercial or public service announcement. She had found herself one afternoon going so far as to hide the wrapper from a Taco Bell burrito so her roommates wouldn’t make fun of her for eating fast food. Or she remembered the conversations with these past roommates when she couldn’t say she didn’t like a restaurant or bar because it was that moment’s “place to be” or “trendy eatery.” You had to endorse the party line when you were with those people, whatever and whoever’s party that line happened to be.

“Yeah, I’m aware of what I don’t like, and who doesn’t like me. Like Goldi-WASP,” she said dryly and without blinking.

“Who in the world is that?” Vikki said, bursting out laughing.

“A girl who works for one of my magazine’s sister publications, and who I have to listen to all day because she sits over the cubicle wall from me, in the next cubicle aisle over. Well, actually, excuse me, she now sits—ahem—in an office. The Golden Girl was promoted. I think that makes one promotion for every year of her seven-year career. The angels up there have to learn to spread the wealth around a little,” she said.

“The angels up where?”  Vikki didn’t believe in a spiritual world. She was too afraid to admit even to herself that she was an atheist, but she didn’t, in actuality, believe in any spiritual complex guiding society. Her philosophy was luck was an entirely explainable, man-made creation. Where you ended up in life was a direct result of your decisions and life’s work (or lack thereof). “I’ll bet Goldi-WASP worked hard. You know what they say about the work ethic of the WASP,” said Vicki, a self-described WASP, winking.

“No harder than the woman who was ousted from the very office she’s moving into. Tina had been with the company for 12 years, and then, a disagreement or two with management, and she’s out. Her magazine wasn’t doing great, but if Noisen had wanted to, they could have found her something else. They kept other people. And now Katie (Goldi-WASP extraordinaire) is setting up her meticulous rows of alphabetized hanging folders and lining up her pens, and finding a place for her fake sunflower.”

The fake sunflower was particularly offensive to Cynthia. Why not a real flower every few weeks or month versus a fake flower that was stationary?  It wouldn’t die, sure, but it also didn’t grow or have any scent, and the petals never fell off. What kind of person would choose a flower that lacks the capacity to wilt or shed petals?  Would shedding petals disrupt her folders and filing system too much?

“I like artificial floral arrangements. They’re more practical than real flowers,” Vikki said. “They’re always happy.  They never start drooping.”

“It’s normal to droop in life eventually. I’ve already begun to droop, and expect the wilting to begin any day.”

“You’re 30, Cynthia!  Everyone knows drooping doesn’t start until you’re 42.”

“Why 42 and not a nice, round number like 40?”

“Because at 40 you’ve just approached middle-age, but you’re not really in it yet. By 42 you’re in the middle of middle age because most people, statistically speaking, won’t live past 82.”

“Well, anyway, her fake flower is up, and all day long she sashays or bounces like a cheerleader back and forth from my cubicle row—where she also used to sit—to her new office. Do you have any idea how many times a day I hear her say “awesome!” or “Excellent!”?  She loves one-word responses. And to the dumbest things, like if a fax she’s been waiting for comes in, she’ll exclaim, ‘Yeay! My fax came in!’ Really, she does, I’m not joking.”

“Nothing wrong with a little enthusiasm, is there?” said Vikki, jumping up and down in her black spandex bike shorts, sports bra-like tank top and cross-country sneakers. “She just enjoys interacting with life, that’s all.”

“Here we go again,” said Cynthia, “Equating love of life with people like Katie—and you! I enjoy interacting with life. I just don’t happen to enjoy interacting with human life. I’m more into kitten, puppy, and rhododendron life. I’m a domesticated animals, wildlife, and book-life person, that’s all.”

“You can’t love life without loving people if you’re a person yourself,” said Vikki.

“Yes, I can if I’m a self-loathing human. If I’m that, then loving animals and plants more than people is the logical next step because I’m loving what I think is right with the world. If I thought people were right, I would love them, too. But, the thing is, they’ll never be cocker spaniels.”

“Well, at least humans are less likely to have fleas,” said Vikki.

“And that’s about the only thing they have to recommend themselves in a competition with cocker spaniels.”

“You realize, of course, that it isn’t “they?”  You’re one of us, too,” Vikki pointed out.

“Well, I’m an honorary cocker spaniel, or tabby cat, maybe. I relate more to them than to you.”

The truth was of the human species Cynthia thought Vikki was one of the few who were tolerable. Vikki was mostly self-aware, and could laugh at herself. Best of all, she was amused when Cynthia told her the truth about her feelings, even the misanthropic ones—especially those, actually. As a big-time extravert, she found it hilarious than anyone didn’tlike being around people.

“Okay, okay,” Vikki laughed. “You win. Go back to your lair.”

“I wish I had a lair some days.”

“Speaking of which, I need you to help me clean up a little,” Vikki said. “Graham is coming over tonight.”

“Oh, okay. But why do you care what he thinks? He’ll eventually find out you’re a slob. Why not just show him the slob you are right off the bat and see if he sticks around? It’ll be a test of how much he likes you.”

“He’ll find out soon enough,” Vikki reasoned. “We’re still in the illusions stage.”

“You mean de-lusion, don’t you?”

“Well, whatever, he’s coming over,” said Vikki, “so if you see something lying around, just sweep it under the nearest rug or sofa.”

Much to Cynthia’s consternation, Vikki went for the reliable ones, the ones who are entirely uninspired but make good on their promise to call you exactly at 5 p.m. every other day, fulfilling their obligation to do what Cynthia referred to as the boyfriend “maintenance call.”  Vikki was consoled and even excited by these calls and all the other exacting procedures she expected her boyfriends to deliver on, but Cynthia couldn’t see why. “You told them to do all that stuff. Wouldn’t it be more meaningful if they did it on their own without you forcing them?”

“Well, it matters that they liked me enough to follow my instructions,” she said.

Cynthia was un-enthused about Graham. He was studying dentistry, and promised to be either tight with money, a prima donna, or a Mama’s boy, or some combination of all three winning characteristics. Vikki said he enjoyed “the finer things in life,” which, as far as Cynthia could tell, meant a steep investment in hair gel, tanning cream, and coconut oil. He also was said by friends to wax his arms. “Yuck and a half,” Cynthia said to Vikki upon hearing the details of his personal toilette. “What’s there to like about that?”

“He’s a nurturer,” said Vikki. “He’s good about calling me, he’s always on time, and we like the same things.”

“By things you mean showing up in places you don’t necessarily like but are expected to be? The thing that gets me about Graham is his motives. He said you should belong to a church or some other house of worship, at least partly because it doesn’t look good not to!”

“There’s nothing extraordinary about that,” said Vikki. “Us social beings have a distaste for being ostracized.”

“You know, he wouldn’t try on my cowgirl hat for fear of messing up his hair the last time he was here.”

“Maybe it was just that he didn’t think it was a good look for him,” said Vikki.

“I think it was mostly the vanity of his vanishing hair that he was concerned about.”  Graham still had a mostly full head of hair, but the corners, where it was barely receding, were, maybe understandably, very troubling. He spent a good half-hour every morning greasing down (or up, if necessary) each dark coil for precise positioning. Cynthia joked with Vikki that he needed a GPS tracking device for doing his hair to ensure no strand was improperly placed. Luckily Vikki had only been dating him for about a month, so there was still a good chance something could go wrong. Cynthia was attached enough to her friend (her best friend, really) to feel about her new boyfriends the way a child might feel about a stepparent. They were intruders who stole her friend’s time away from her—that’s all they were. The few Cynthia found charming, Vikki was turned off by because they didn’t demonstrate good follow-through on the maintenance calls.

Graham, behind the wheel of his bluish purple pickup truck—a color Cynthia described as resembling Elizabeth Taylor’s eyes—tended to arrive a few minutes early. He apparently knew excitement wasn’t his draw for the ladies, so he emphasized the value-add of reliability, thought Cynthia. And, like the ticking of a clock, his style was a visual manifestation of a metronome. Khaki pants, collared Polo shirt, and brown loafers. All summer long he had been collecting teeth. His dental professor had instructed incoming students to collect as many teeth from dentists’ offices (or wherever you go to collect discarded teeth) as they could find. Beyond the tooth collection, maintaining his supply of hair gel, and waxing his arms and chest, Graham was into “healthy eating.” He frowned on Cynthia’s taste for Baskin Robbins’ brownie sundaes. “Fatty foods” were the enemy, so the sight of Cynthia behind the booth at Baskin Robbins at 11 p.m. on a Saturday stuffing herself with two overflowing scoops of vanilla peanut butter cup ice cream with hot fudge and whip cream, all atop a ready-made, amply-processed brownie sickened him. He and Vikki had stopped in for scoops of prudent sorbet and happened upon the scene. Laughing with the man working behind the counter, Cynthia was unabashed. “Well, I have a lot of deficiencies in my life to make up for.”

“Why are you friends with her?” Cynthia imagined Graham asking Vikki. “Because she’s funny,” Vikki probably answered. Funny and has the ability to keep her mouth shut long enough to listen to Vikki’s woes, thought Cynthia, though she knew her friend wouldn’t think to add that part, and maybe never noticed it herself. As the friend closest to Vikki who was the most introverted, she made an ideal lay psychotherapist. She was reflective enough to listen patiently in silence while Vikki cried to her about whoever or whatever had interrupted her comfort that day. That’s the trouble with people who described themselves as people persons, Cynthia thought. They like other people, but mainly so other people can listen to their problems.

Cynthia also thought then of her friend, Nancy, who called her at least every other day, sometimes with what Cynthia referred to as edge-of-the-bridge calls. As in, “I’m so depressed. On days like these, I don’t feel like going on. I just want somebody to tell me why I shouldn’t throw myself off a bridge.”  When she didn’t hear from her friend for more than a few days, it often meant she was in a mental hospital. Was this “people person” carried to its logical conclusion?  The person so reliant on others that the only thing that could break the attempt for contact was entry into a mental hospital?

Well, no use sticking around while Dip Shit comes over, Cynthia concluded, using the term of endearment she used for Graham when speaking to herself. The other she liked a lot was “Girly Man,” on account of his hypochondria and his favoring of many small, birdlike meals rather than the old fashioned, farm-fed three square meals a day ideal. He always eyed her cream cheese suspiciously. Also suspicious were the frozen macaroni and cheese and frozen pigs in the blanket she favored. He could use a few pigs under his blanket, Cynthia thought she’d advise him in as judicious way as possible. “How many pigs you got under there, Graham?” she dreamed of taunting him. “Have you checked your blood pressure yet today?  It’s the ‘silent killer,’ you know.” The last time she saw him was at the house he shared with three other men. Vikki had convinced her to help him write his paper. He kept asking Cynthia how he could return the favor, whether maybe they could all go out to dinner. “Well, you could just write your own paper and then you wouldn’t have to pay me back at all,” Cynthia had responded. “I don’t think you can ever pay someone back, anyway, for their lost time.”

“I’ll be in my room if you need me,” Cynthia called out to Vikki. Cynthia then settled in for a fruitful night of daydreaming, wondering at stars, counting the cracks in the sidewalk under her window, eavesdropping on the neighbors through the wall, racking up her mental list of those who had abused her over the years, and reading Vogue, William Blake, Mary Oliver, and Margaret Atwood, and tuning into The Doors, Neil Young, the White Stripes, Cream, and maybe reading a novel like Brideshead Revisited or Catch-22. Or trying her hand at watercolor painting via a children’s art kit. She was interrupted an hour into her lounging.

“Cynthia, I need you,” Vikki whispered through her cell phone. “I need you to get rid of Graham.”

“Get rid of Nutrition Boy?”

“Yeah. He’s in the bathroom now, but when he comes out, I thought you could come downstairs and revolt him.”

“Well, I won’t deny I’ve mastered the art of revulsion, but this is going to be particularly enjoyable. I have to ask you, though, why?”

“Oh, he’s boring me. I just want him to go away.”

“OK. That’s the way I’ve felt for a while. Glad you finally caught on. I’ll be right down.”

Cynthia didn’t bother to tinker with her appearance. All the better to be at her most ratty bohemian self, tie-dye ‘shroom tee shirt with stretched-out-of-shape and stained sweat pants and slippers. It was OK that she looked fit for a music festival or the mental hospital. That was the look she was going for. So much for middle-class cleanliness. She’d rather walk through puddles barefoot and greet her friend’s out-going boyfriend in what Cynthia referred to as “true-self attire.”

She took herself in her “true-self attire” down the hall to the livingroom, where she found Graham slouched on the sofa with his legs flopped lazily apart and a glass of Merlot in his left hand as his right hand worked at the television remote control, sampling yet another of his favorite idiot reality shows, this one about a group of strangers who have to work together to tame lionesses while choosing someone from said group to marry. It was called “Of Lionesses and Men.”

“Oh, hi, Graham,” she said grudgingly.

“Hi there Cynthia, what’s up?”

“Oh, nothing, just enjoying the full moon. You know it’s my time of she-wolfness.”  Vikki, who was in the little kitchen that adjoined the livingroom as she assembled a plate of strawberries, brie, and wheat crackers for Graham, stifled a laugh. She had asked for strange and strange was what her friend was delivering. She had rolled the strange out tonight like a welcome banner. And that’s exactly what she needed to get rid of this suitor her fickle taste had decided wasn’t interesting enough.

“Your ‘she-wolfness?’”

“Well, when the full moon is out, I project a facsimile of my inner self onto an open plain in the Midwest, but not as myself, but as a she-wolf with glistening wolfy-silver fur, and I  (as my she-wolf self) am joyously howling at the moon.” Cynthia had to control herself from cracking a smile. True, she adored wolves and often wondered what it would be like to howl at the moon, but the cliché of the full moon, and referring to herself as possessing “she-wolfness,” was too much to bear.

“Interesting,” Graham responded, uncomfortably fidgeting on the sofa. “Who knew part of you was a she-wolf?”

“Well, actually, there’s a more interesting story than that, and it isn’t about me.”

“One of the guys behind the counter at Baskin Robbins that you’ve bonded with over the years?”

“No,” laughed Cynthia, “but good guess. Actually, I was referring to my roommate and your special friend.”

“Vikki?”  Graham was not one to savor surprises. As a man who mapped out his lunch and hair gel needs two weeks out, the idea that there was anything titillating to be revealed about a girl he thought of as “safe” was not funny in the least. It was downright disturbing.

“As it turns out there’s more than there appears to our mutual friend.”

“Does she have a tattoo I don’t know about?” It was the only unseen thing Graham could imagine. That was the most shocking thing he could think of any girlfriend of his having. It both excited and repulsed him. The idea that there could be anything he couldn’t see that was a secret was impossible to consider. He prided himself on having a “scientific mind” that believed nothing existed until there was empirical evidence.

“No, it’s much better than that,” said Cynthia. “See that necklace?” she said, pointing to the chunky silver heart pendent around Vikki’s neck that almost had the shape of a lima bean. “It isn’t a regular necklace.”

“Did some other guy give it to her?”

“Kind of. If the FBI is a guy.”

“Oh, I get it,” he said, affecting a breezy laugh that was too forced to be breezy. “One of your ‘clever’ jokes.”

“Maybe and maybe that pendent has a microchip in it that she uses to spy on her peers with.” See, back in the ‘60s, the FBI became very suspicious of youth movements—the ones against the Vietnam War, the ones for civil rights. They were always talking about ‘agitators.’ Well, to combat these ‘agitators,’ they instituted a peer-to-peer spying program. Young people, about our age, would be recruited to wear listening devices on themselves somewhere, like on a dainty pendent around their neck, to track the goings on of potential agitators.”

“Well, Vikki wasn’t around back then,” said Graham, shuffling his weight back and forth, from one side of his body to the other as he wriggled around the couch. He was so neurotic, Cynthia thought to herself, that he was already starting to get nervous. She wondered if she should tell him the peer-spies were eating bacon while filing their reports to really put him over the edge.

“No, but that’s just when the program started. It’s been going on and on for years. And now Vikki is a part of it. All our conversation tonight has been recorded by a microchip in her pendant, and is going straight to the FBI.”

Vikki, who couldn’t help herself any longer, began giggling. “So, now they know you like Merlot better than Chardonnay, and all the big picture implications of that.”

“Well, Merlot is much healthier than Chardonnay. Studies have shown you’ll live longer if you drink one glass of red wine a night, but no such studies exist about white wine.” Final proof Graham lacked a sense of humor, or wasn’t very bright. Rather than questioning the story, he was already concerned about how he would come across to his FBI audience. God forbid any one think he endorsed unhealthy nutrition habits. Cynthia and Vikki exchanged winks as he rattled on about the superiority of red wine. And he continued to rattle on, in a way that suggested he might be nervously babbling. Who knows if he believed the FBI was listening to their conversation via Vikki’s pendant, but the story was making him uncomfortable. It seemed as if he was more scared of being around people who would make up a story than he was of the government eavesdropping on him in his girlfriend’s livingroom, using his girlfriend as a pawn. Fear of imagination factored into his unease, but more than that, he was worried the FBI wouldn’t approve of his food and beverage choices. What if an especially fit FBI agent overheard the recording, and thought he was unhealthy or gluttonous?

“Who cares whether Merlot is healthier than Chardonnay or tomatoes are better to eat than cottage cheese, but cottage cheese is better to eat than American cheese, but American cheese is a ‘much healthier option’ than French fries?” Cynthia asked, letting vent her frustration since her friend was about to get rid of Graham anyway.

“Well, naturally, a person likes to have his choices respected.”

“Why?”  Cynthia thought again about the problem with extraverts—their need to define themselves according to others. The expectations of others seemed to take the place of soul. If they lost the favor of “others” (whoever “others” happened to be at that moment), they seemed to believe life would lose its meaning, or that they would have failed it. How could you live your life eating cottage cheese if what you really wanted was Munster, wondered Cynthia, but you weren’t choosing Munster because your most frequent dining companions thought cottage cheese was superior, but only superior if finely grated Swiss were not available.

“Man is a social creature,” Graham began, imagining FBI agents listening in rapt attention to what he thought of as his intellectual ramblings, “And, as such, man considers what his fellow man thinks of him.”

Vikki and Cynthia couldn’t keep themselves from giggling, but Cynthia was growing angrier. “Who says man—or woman for that matter—is a ‘social’ being?  I’d still eat Chocolate Fudge Royale even if everyone told me they thought only devil mongerers ate it. And I’ll never go to the Ice and Dogs Friend-a-Thon. But I definitely would go to a Cat-a-Thon held at a creamery. “So how social am I?”

“Well, you’re obviously not normal. You’d be a happier person if you spent more time with others and less time thinking about yourself.”

“So, that’s what you’re doing, eh, when you go to bars at night?  Thinking of others?” Cynthia was annoyed, but forced herself to laugh as hard and loud as she could to get on Graham’s nerves as much as possible. “Your rounds at the bars are just part of your schedule of worthy philanthropies.”

Vikki, still behind the counter in the kitchen, seemed not to be enjoying the ruse as much. Could she be disturbed by the idea that her “social” self wasn’t entirely unselfish? She always chastised, like Graham had, Cynthia’s penchant for lonely nights with peanut butter ice cream and the New Yorker magazine for accompaniment. Cynthia would reply without hesitating and without embarrassment that no human being she had ever met equaled those two luxuries put together. “Well, I don’t know, bar hopping could be a philanthropy,” Vikki suggested. “What if you were raising money for charity while doing the bar hopping, or trying to cheer up a depressed friend?  Or maybe your philanthropy could be the bartender. He needs someone to talk to, too. And needs tips.”

“Yeah, I agree about the tips part,” said Cynthia. “Anyway, back to the FBI in the pendant. Well, you know, Graham, the FBI has told us you bar hop irregularly and choose bars with unhealthy liquors. They’re doing an investigation.”

“Ha-ha,” he said, catching on at least enough to feign a sense of humor (wouldn’t want to be perceived as not having one, after all). “How do they feel about your anti-social behavior?”

“They were worried about my activities involving Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, but decided against pursuing me. I cut a deal with them.”

“Vikki, do you also believe it’s your duty to humanity to socialize with it (or them?)?” Cynthia was getting that alienated-everyone-likes-people-except-me feeling, and thought her friend might throw her an anti-social bone—maybe she might admit that even an extravert can grow weary of people sometimes.

“No, I just like them. I think they’re funny and would rather watch TV with them than without them.”

“I prefer fictional characters,” said Cynthia. “They’re usually more interesting, and don’t take up the part of the couch you want to put your feet up on.”

“Well, all I’m saying,” Vikki said, “is sometimes you need people to open doors for you. When you’re carrying heavy packages, and the door you need to open is one of those kinds with the handle that needs to be turned at the same time you put the key into the lock, people aren’t that bad.”

Graham was delving into his cheese and crackers and sniffing his wine. He always seemed to enjoy wine and cheese more, he often told Vikki, if he took the time “to savor the experience.” Cynthia always laughed at his pretension, and thought it wasn’t the experience he enjoyed, but, rather, the experience of having others observe his culinary acumen. It was important to him to be viewed as an epicurean and sophisticate. Cynthia, on the other hand, was happy to announce that she loved nothing better than eating crunchy peanut butter straight from the jar. “That’s just the kind of sophisticate I am,” she would joke.

“Maybe if you sniff long enough your nose will get stuck in the glass, and that way the experience will last longer,” Cynthia said to Graham. “Can you see your reflection in there?”

Graham reddened a little, but didn’t say anything. He kept his face down, looked into the glass of wine, and swished it around, as if maybe hoping his reflection would appear.

“Actually,” said Cynthia, not bothering to wait for a response, figuring it would be banal anyway, “if you could see your reflection in there maybe you could get in a little introspection.

“I inspect myself all the time, ” he said, finally smiling a little.

“I guess so. I know that gym you go to has mirrors all around it, and I suppose you probably look in the mirror when you wax your arms.”

Well, she felt bad about that one, Cynthia had to admit to herself. Despite her dread of humanity, she didn’t like anyone’s sadness or discomfort hanging on her conscience. She was conscious enough of her own issues; she didn’t need anyone else’s weighing her down. His ways repulsed her, but she regretted embarrassing him before the words had left her mouth—well, maybe as the words were leaving her mouth. She did say them, after all.

“I take pride in my appearance, that’s all,” he said. “I hope the FBI takes that down.”

Vikki, who had finally stopped futzing in the kitchen, and had settled in an armchair to the side of the sofa where Graham was seated with his wine and cheese, laughed, apparently glad he had found some humor in the situation. She was slightly disappointed, though, that he was still there. The conversation had become strange and awkward thanks to the creativity and oddity of her roommate, yet he remained, patiently sipping at his wine and inspecting the cheese. She wondered if he had caught onto their ruse and was remaining out of spite.

“Sometimes I think the best boyfriend would be a dog without fur,” said Vikki, mimicking for a moment Cynthia’s take on the world. Maybe what Graham needed was to be repulsed directly by her to leave. “I’d like it if he would hide bones for me, and then dig them up as surprises for the holidays. It would be kind of different.”

Graham laughed, and didn’t seem to mind, but his eyes crinkled as if he were thinking of something very important. “Could I be a golden retriever? ”

“Why a golden retriever?” Vikki asked.

“Everybody likes them,” he said.

“So you don’t care if you’re a dog, as long as everybody likes you?” asked Cynthia.

“Yeah, I’d just focus on finding the best bones, and getting my owners to take me to the best dog runs.”

“You realize you’d have to sniff the asses of other dogs, right?” asked Vikki, in a last attempt to gang up on him with Cynthia.

“Well, mine would smell the best. I’d just be sure to get in with the dogs with the asses that smell the way they’re supposed to. You have to be careful when your ass is your business card.”

Dawn horse

mane in sunrise

the hooves

pound out light,

the tail

swishes at colored

clouds,

with obscurity

rising with an unseen

sun

with the dawn horse

kicking up dust

on her morning

stampede.

————————————————-

A horse can be confused

with God

dragging you along

on his stampede

raising dust

and having you

emerge on his back

from clouds

of earth—

and dust—

he creates

on his path.

————————————————-

A fancy horse

of a particular breed—

everyone knows

how my tail should look

everyone

remarks on my ears

pointed forward.

People like to keep me

in their farmed-in

fences

exotic and only having

one kind of blood

in me.

———————————————————

My mane

my mane

don’t abuse

my mane

in wind—

not to be used

as a pullee

or rein

or cord

to signal

stops—

but to be admired

for my

mustang self.

————————————————-

The owner of the ranch

likes to inspect me

every third Tuesday

of the month.

He likes to know

my hooves are clean

and my running

and hauling

capacity

are secure.

————————————————————

My tail swishing

keeps time

to the fenced-in line

I run around —

put through

my paces

knowing the riders

are waiting to circle

the yard again

rather than leave

the ranch.

——————————————————-

I’ll work hard for you

your chestnut mare

with hooves

raised up

tracking the race

waiting to be slotted

into position

to run.

———————————————–

Course oats

you expect me

to run this race for you

despite the absence

of sugar cubes.

—————————————————–

Dread of the saddle—

why do I

have to be harnessed?

I don’t mind

the riders

and the hauling

chores

but why do I need

to be weighed down

with accessories?

———————————————–

Good to be

in the pasture

but my stall mates

are calling me

back to the barn.

I share my stall

with some

non-horses

but I promise

not to let

their pig-selves

trouble me.

———————————————–

My head down

focused

on the trail

I barely feel

the whip

at my back.

———————————————

My carriage

bucked;

the parade

I let pass

me by;

I even evaded

the plowing

fields.

I stand upright now

against your fence

out the gates

of the ranch.

——————————————————

Crushing dandelions

tulips

pushed aside

our horse-selves push

forward

into the stable

locked inside

being readied.

——————————————

Green gardens

the fringes

of violets

lilies

the peonies

I can’t bend to smell;

the hog

at the fence’s edge.

My daily sustenance

is all I can

take in.

—————————————————————-

Halting

with your pull

the push

in my sprint

out horse

powers you—

wanting me

to guide you back

to the barn

for my grooming,

I think a jaunt

down the oaks

elms

pines

maples

and groves

is preferable.

——————————————————-

Death

to the rider

who went

to battle

on my back

using my strength

to puncture

an enemy

I never met

and using

my hooves

to trample

strangers.

———————————————————–

The path

you shed

your bouquets

down

I trot around

not forgetting

to step lightly

over the petals.

————————————————

My reins

pulled by an unseen

rider

my hooves

tired but continuing

on gravel,

I have no carriage

no place

for you to sit

on your journey

but you can accompany

me

on my side;

my companion

rider.

————————————————–

Dogs at our heels

I know my trail.

The nipping of hunting

dogs

doesn’t frighten me—

I step over brush

looking for sustenance

and tolerate

bridle and reins

when pulled

by friendly arms.

——————————————————–

I would relinquish

you

by tossing you off

my back

not caring

as you tumbled

into the woods

with copperheads.

But you held

the reins lightly

let me

stop to bend

my head to grass

to eat

all day

not caring

if we got anywhere.

So, I’ll let get you round

the mountain—

not down

the side on your own.

———————————————-

Why the trail

and not

the mountain

top?

Why trot the trail

and not

gallop up

the mountain

top?

The trails end

at the estate’s gate;

my galloping path

just leads up.

——————————————————–

Mad because

of the fire

and being forced

to go forward

in a panic,

I dream

of throwing you

abandoning

your trail

in favor of fleeing

the fire and snakes

and all the other things

that frighten me

that you force me

into.

————————————————————

Hope springs

but not like my eternal

hooves

marching past your ranch

back to the woods.

I may come back again

to circle you

but to leave you

again too.

———————————————————-

The balance

I struck

to carry you

on my back

I begrudged you—

uphill to a locked house

you had the key to.

You let yourself

in;

you made yourself tea.

You left me wandering

the ranch

in search of a barn

or a pleasant

field of grass.

——————————————————–

Skeletons

heaped in the wagon

you called me

in the Black Death

days

to carry you

to the burial grounds.

A horse

out-of-pasture

I’d still be

carousing open fields

traversing woods

but you set me

to this wagon

dragging the dead

from your parlor

to  the city

death pile.

—————————————————

Try to gallop

even if you’re just

asked to walk

around the farm’s perimeter.

The gallop

may force off

your rider

releasing you for a few minutes

from the circles.

———————————————————-

The season’s up

the vacationers

have taken me out

asked me to jump

hike

carry them

to sunbathe

and watch

the sea.

But now

I have other plans—

my hooves

stomping up and down

in my stall

I’m eyeing

the outer reaches

of the woods and plains—

NOT your ranch—

for my winter.

————————————————————

Trotting up

a thorn was in

my hoof.

My mane

was pulled

my ears

twitched in time

to the leaves moving

and the driver

on my back

didn’t hear anything

but my pace

ascending the mountain.

—————————————————————–

Glad to have

my mane

too bad

about your feet—

you could never

move

commensurate

with my hooves.

And your hair

is tidy

but doesn’t

flow as well

with the wind

as mine.

——————————————————

Be a horse

before it’s too late;

stampede

across the lawn

eat your neighbor’s

grass and apples

before he gets the chance

to pick them.

Be a horse

before you’re saddled

asked to ride

guided paths

and taken back

every night

to a closed stall.

———————————————————–

When your hooves

feel the too familiar

paths being pulled

into you,

and your rider is guiding

you around the mountain

in repetition

walk too close

to the canyon’s edge

and see if your rider

and your hooves

keep balance.

———————————————————–

My hooves

watch the hooves

of the horses

ahead of me

wondering when

the fence will appear

they can’t

jump

or think

they can jump

but not as fast

as me

with my rider

thrown off.

————————————————————-

A toy horse

isn’t the same

as me

even when you wind her

up to run a track

around your Christmas tree.

It’s only me

when I’m outside

the fence and given

the room to jump past

your ranch’s gates.

—————————————————

You had the nerve

to pull my mane

as though it were

an extension

of the reins

you force me

to wear.

Guided by you

I’d end up

in a ravine.

So that’s why

I like throwing you

so much.

A broken leg

an out-of-alignment

back

may eventually

teach you—

“learn you”—

to stop abusing

my mane.

—————————————————

You kick my sides

because you say

I’m a horse

but I think

you just like

to kick.

Kicking up dust

I hope to keep you

in  a cloud

of my making—

opaque—

so you can’t find

the reins.

—————————————————

The hurricane

that swept through

didn’t knock

me off your ranch

unfortunately.

Waiting

for the gates

to blow open

I stalled

stuck inside

the barn’s

allotted space

waiting

for the flood.

————————————————————

The saddle

feels

like it shouldn’t

be there.

The harness

doesn’t let me

find my herd

of mustangs.

I just keep

allowing you

to lead me

circling.

—————————————————————–

I’m a calf

but in the glass

I see only

the open landscapes

beyond your fence.

My young horse

face

my mother

the other

horses

I don’t see—

I see

the yellowing grasses

the moon rising

the dogs

gone to hunt

in the opening to the woods

I see

just past me.

—————————————————————–

That they gave me

a garland to wear

around my neck

was unimpressive.

I’m just glad

really really

glad

they remembered

to bring along

my stall-mate,

the pot-belly pig.

All they cared about

was that I ran

fast and well enough

to earn them money.

But I cared

about my friend

the pot-belly pig

in the stall

beside me.

—————————————————————

Your glass

didn’t tip over

as you rode—

thanks

to my smooth strides.

Did you enjoy

your calm

altitudes

in my saddle?

The way I kept

clopping

as you rudely

tugged the reins?

I kept to the set trot

to reach the top

of your hill.

But you’ll find

a shift—

a run downward

shaking maybe

the goblet

from your hand.

———————————————————

Touch the path

touch the path

with my hooves

but not your feet.

Why do you

expect me

to do

your walking

for you?

————————————————————–

Leprechauns

small trolls

tinier fairies

and a fat man

on my back

as I gallop

through the woods.

Seeing magical

creatures in the wood

despite the fat man

on my back.

————————————————————

The storm coming

I circled

the ranch

but you kept

pulling my reins

to move forward

while I circled

signaling you

it’s best to take

shelter.

——————————————————-

Dancing

my mane

rising with the breeze

I’m horsey

yet light on my hooves.

Your bulky frame

taking up saddle space

the cha-cha

mambo

tango

with one-

two-one-two

kick

will dip you

off my back.

—————————————————

Making the jump

I didn’t care

to look back

to see you

waving at friends

and feeling proud

so I didn’t notice

you fell off—

I just kept

running.

——————————————————————-

The closet

didn’t open

though I made it

inside

my hooves

straining against

the too-small

doorway

my girth

straining

along the halls

reaching

the closet

with the keys

to the stables

the keys

to the ranch’s gates.

—————————————————————

Why do I have to

take you to your

pilgrimage?

I long

just to sun

my mane

swish my tail

and look for oats.

I hate spending

the day

taking you to your religious

pilgrimage.

Pilgrimages

are so hard

on the hooves.

——————————————————————-

Destroying the hay—

the fire

destroyed the hay

so I’ve been

roaming around

the fence

looking

for weeds.

———————————————————————-

The nearsighted

rancher

decided I was

a thin, tall

cow

so he mis-herded me—

as I fight

for stray

patches of grass

with cows

my mare self

eyes off

the sides

of the proper herd

edging in.

—————————————————————

Sorry your ride

was unpleasant.

You confused the blue sky

with my back.

I threw you

creating

my own storm.

————————————————————————

My saddle isn’t

comfortable

today

and the fence’s

line

is giving me

a headache

or ache

of the mane.

The trees ringing

your property

don’t let me

see the sunset.

——————————————————————–

The dogs

follow us up the mountain

as if

they don’t trust me—

after I’ve been carrying

you

up these hills

for years.

The dogs

follow to ensure

I don’t get a piece

of the hunt.

————————————————————————–

I have a small

graceful

neck

but I am not

an Arabian horse;

I run fast

and am stately

but I am not

a race horse;

I walk upright

like equine

royalty

but I am not

a show horse.

I am just me.

—————————————————————————

Caterpillars

move out of the way

for me

the flies

land on me

and I swish

my tail

but can’t get rid

of them.

The pests remain

but the things

interesting

like caterpillars

birds

cats

racoons

and other land

animals

move away from me.

————————————————————————

Bending down

I can see my mane

wavering

in the stream,

the footsteps

of the rest of the herd

wavering too

as they stampede

past me.

——————————————————————–

Seagulls over head

stuck on the fenced-in

ranch

watching the gliding

sea

birds go to sea

waiting for my stall

to be cleaned

and to be led

back in

the bar

to the door

slung shut.

————————————————————————————–

The golden horse

with the sun

on the hill

galloping into

shadows

not sure

when I see him

if it’s his mane

or a ghost

on his shoulder.

————————————————————————

The dirt path

doesn’t contain

enough snakes

for my taste.

I’d like an excuse

to get spooked

to throw you.

———————————————————————

Why this horse

I have to share my path with?

Your hooves

move too slow

and the flies

you attract

swarm me

instead.

———————————————————–

My horse feet

stumble toward

the equator

looking for heat.

An ancient man’s

transport,

I’m the aid

on the path

to his destiny

or death.

————————————————————–

Riding home

solitary

no rider

but myself

taking the fences

for myself

deciding

not to

shut myself

in the barn.

—————————————————————————-

The devil

knows my mane

but I know

my tail.

I know the trail

follows behind

me

looking out—

as I take

good care

of the tail—

for my rear.

——————————————————————

The chrysanthemums

are under hooves

the last of the

blooming season’s

flowers

are under hooves.

Enjoying the colors

on my stampede,

I’m sad to see

you’ve scooped

a few, rider,

for your vase.

——————————————————–

Rain keeps

my riders

on their porch

which suits me.

Rain

beading my mane

my tail sloshing

against the trees

I broke loose

while the riders

lulled

on their porch

my hooves

crossing

impromptu rivers.

——————————————————————

You chat up

competing riders

I’d like to race past.

You insist

on riding side-by-side

with them

despite my

contrarian pull

to gallop.

———————————————————————

The white mark

on my nose

the patches

on my back legs

my mottled back

makes me

unfit for horse

shows

and unmatching

the herd.

Unfortunately,

I’m still

tapped by the obese

for riding.

—————————————————————-

The stars

twinkle on my ride

and I wish

my hooves

were on a moony

trek

instead of trudging

the dirt

to the stall and back.

—————————————————–

The rope

is OK

but not

when strapped

to my neck

by you.

I tried to enjoy

the mountain

and looked forward

to the view

but you kept

pulling me

to your path

instead of mine.

—————————————————————–

Compromising mine

I’ve chosen

to work against you—

finding ways

of sliding you

from me

down a crevasse.

—————————————————————-

My water trough

is empty

but I’d rather

go thirsty

than have you

fill it for me.

———————————————————–

The march

to get your gun

I’m asked to help you with

asked to carry you

to the kill.

—————————————————————–

The saddle

of my choosing

had little flowers

stitched along the seams.

The dirty one

you put on me

fits but doesn’t

suit me.

If I throw you

it’ll be

to get the flower seams

back in place.

——————————————————————-

If you’ve ever been

a horse

or the mountain

the horse

has to climb

or the stall

and the latch

shutting the horse in

or the man

keeping the horse

as animal-worker

or you’ve

even shared

the barn with

a being

asked to ferry

soldiers

or police

to the protest

you’d know

what I mean

about how it’s

better to spend time in the unclipped

grasses

wading

with the wind.

—————————————————————–

The rainbow

doesn’t frighten me

so why

does it dissuade you?

My padlock

key holder

rider

always drives me

into hale

storms

circling clouds

dust rising.