The Bend
My head feels heavy when the world goes upside-down. The tree that’s puffy like thunderclouds, like the way they rain down streaks on the faraway—that tree rains green up. The actual, real clouds in the garden pond are like upward sky and my arms over my head drag my hands muddy on the skyshore where frogs play at night.
With garden’s lamp lights and stone walls and their tangly ivy like sweaters, Grandma’s porch comes off the ceiling. It creaks, squeaks when Mom walks head-downward down up the steps.
“Grandma’s making cobbler,” she yells. “Be in in a minute, okay?”
I nod but my head’s still heavy.
“Miles? Okay?”
My legs hooked around the seat board, I grab the ropes on my swing and pull myself up so I’m up—and everything spins and color goes away. I blink until my head un-heavies.
“Before, can I go around the garden?” I yell.
“For a minute. Don’t go far.”
I roll my eyes, rolling my head, rolling my word with my hair rolling till it falls down by my ears. “Ohhhkayyy.”
Mom makes her face. She goes in the house.
I drop my head, my body back down so my back bends back and everything dangles—and a bird dolphin-dives through the popcorn cloud ocean so far down. Something sparkles. A silver line waving through the sky ocean. Grandma’s seashells clink, clink on their porch strings and the silver line floats through wind that’s like water on my cheeks.
I hop onto my feet and the world turns up, my head un-heavying so fast, I almost don’t see the black spot—the six, seven—eight legs twisting on the silver line. He twists and twists toward the lamp that holds the line but the wind swings him all over.
“This one’s funner.” I point to my swing.
The spider spins and swings.
“I’m on vacation,” I say.
He pauses. He looks at me with his bowl of black beads and says, “Are you really?”
“Yep yep. I don’t got school or nothing for a week.”
“I wish I could go on holiday, but alas, upper management’s cracking down on us grass-dwellers. Quota’s been pushed to twenty webs a day.” Spider snaps his pincers. “Can you believe it?”
I drop my mouth open. “No!”
“If you follow my line east, just around the willows, you can peruse my portfolio. Never has it failed to impress the females. Only the finest silk—”
“I like you, guy.” I slap my legs. “I’m so far from my home. Will you be my friend?”
Spider goes back to spinning. “Young sir”—he scoffs—“I’ve much to do and so do you. Working classes to raise, gossamers to lay. We’ve a bend to tread.”
“Bend to tread?”
“The way’s not straight, see? It’s remarkably curved actually. Don’t tell me you’ve no globe at your academy?”
I nod. “Tend to bread.”
Spider twists around his line and I walk by it, to the lamp, then to a tree, where the silvery silk goes.
“Trend to bread.” I nod and nod and hop along the line. “Beard to thread.”
The shininess goes over the cobble-wall and I remember cobbler and look back at the house. I look at the line. I climb over the wall, over ivy that climbs like spiders do inside it. I follow the thread into the woods.
I skip until the line goes on for too long and I get tired. I droop under droopy branches. One catches my hair and doesn’t let go. I grab my hair; the something sticking it sticks to my fingers; and it’s spider webs.
“Ew,” I say.
“You’re telling me,” says the tree.
I purse my lips and look up at white fluff spotting green dangles. “Are you a willow tree?”
“The kind that’s like raining thunderclouds?” Her hair shimmying in wind, Willow stretches her trunk tall toward sun shimmying on my face. “Yeah. Don’t call me Grandmother, though. She’s still pummeling eight sticks of butter into a peach topping.”
“How do you know everything?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“You know”—I bob onto the tips of my toes and reach up my arms—“everything. What am I going to be when I grow up? Will I get married?”
Her leaves sigh. “I don’t—”
“How tall am I?”
“Like three inches. Better get yourself some height, squirrel. Start collecting degrees, join the military, get a desk job—something so you’re not so short. Coniferous,” Willow shudders, “that—you—frankly, it’s disgusting to look at. Get climbing. Journeys make people grow up fast.”
“Like Simba.”
“Grow before you’re long outgrown, person—short, stunted shorty. What’s your name?”
My face falls. “I thought you knew everything.”
“The moment you admit you know nothing is when you’ll finally know something.”
I nod three times, looking her up and down, but I’ve no clue what she just said.
“You want to know something? I gained my knowledge inch by inch, growing in rain and sun, stretching roots when wind blows and blooming fruits when it slows. If you want to know what it looks like from above, see for yourself. You’ll grow taller in the climb.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll lose all that nasty naivety. Climb and climb or others will climb over you.”
“I just want a friend, Grandma.”
“General Sherman, you’re short.”
“I’m on vacation,” I say. “I’m so far from home. Will you be my friend?”
“Do you have assets?”
I shrug.
“Climb and maybe we’ll talk.”
I nod and push hand and foot into Willow’s bark. I grab her branch. I go up. My foot slips, arm gets scrapes, forehead gets sweaty, and I grab and push, knee bending and unbending, until I get lost in curtain flutters swaying the ground far, far down. I forget why I started climbing. I feel older.
A sparrow swoops to land on a branch near mine. I sit, panting, in the crevice between trunk and limb and watch him peck at his feathers.
“Hello,” I say.
He twitches to stare back at me.
“I’m Miles. What’s your name?”
He stares.
“Back home—everyone’s so far and nobody here will—” I frown. “Will you be my friend?”
The bird, nameless, flies away. Sleeves wrinkled up my shoulders, I cling to Willow’s trunk and grimace. My eyes burn. I bat them closed and wetness streams down my cheeks, off my chin, to the gnarled knots and spotted shrooms and dew-sprinkled dirt of ground a younger self wanted so badly to out-climb.
When I open them, sniffing, my eyes drop a glimmer onto a net I didn’t see. A few feet below, Spider’s boss spins swags of starlight into a tapestry. I overlook three dozen planes of webs interwoven into branch-bordered, skyscraping stories that snag setting sunlight between snagged dinner and feel older still.
My arms tire. I hook my legs around my branch and swing down my top body. My head goes heavy, hair falls down. Between sage petals, on the upside-down horizon, I see waters; and I ache to ground where frogs play on the skyshore.
I climb down, my scrapes scabbing.
My feet hit earth with a thud. I squint for the shimmers between willows and resume walking from Grandma’s, over a dirt bend, against breeze wafting some freshness, one that smells of summer sprinklers from a cracked bedroom window. I walk toward the waters I saw. Drapes of canopies shower shade over my bobbing back as I chase sunbeams gilding willows’ east.
I reach the path’s end. I slip my fingers through willows’ last strands, velvet blades clung to my knuckles still webbed, and draw back the curtain. I step onto new ground. Brine touches my nose. Lowering my arm, I bat my eyes in light unshrouded, shadow fleeing at my heels, scurrying behind willow branches and over the bend trod seemingly lives ago. Branches swing to settle closed, path closed, and boyish dreams of climbing trees and ice cream cones on Ferris wheels and flickers of thrusts of hot air balloons splattering sky sweep as fog from a fan down climbers’ garden, into the past, miles behind my turned back.
I look forward.
A bronze scape waves down to a shore. Sunset blush burns orange the sand and glows cerulean the seas a few dozen feet off; both masses crash to converge at a snake of white foam ever slithering.
The sand into which my sneakers dig lays its ripples, frozen, dead, as an effigy of the tides they precede. The land: the fossil. The waters: the life. Feet sinking into step, I resume forward over ghosts of the deep blue and meet their mother’s eyes—
The blue. The ocean so iris blue. It crystallizes my skin and presses liters from my lungs. I lift my hand to it.
“Hello,” I whisper.
She rolls down a wave’s crest; before splashing into shallows, its highlight smiles. A mist dances up my arms and jumps my heart when Ocean speaks. Her voice washes warm my chest and weathers its crags.
“Hello,” she says.
I step with wide eyes. “You hear me?”
She only smiles. Reaching shore, I crouch, dip my chin, and eye her through my lashes.
“For—for so long, no one has spoken to me and I’ve been—” I smile and grimace and gasp. “So far from home.”
“Miles,” she concludes.
I stretch my hand over her surf. It bubbles through my fingers. I open my mouth to say the words she steals:
“You’re beautiful.”
Heat shrinks my stomach. I shake my head. “Willows. Spider webs. Those are beautiful.”
“Look into me,” she says.
I do, head horizontal. I see the world upside-down. My reflection waves, stares back, back at my arm scars of branch scrapes and crow’s feet born of squinting and stubble spotting my shag-brushed jaw. “I’m just a boy.”
“In a world of towers.”
My inner brows lift. “I want to go home, go back. Why does climbing up make me feel so down?” Her ripples glazing my pupils, I burst the breath I’ve been holding for years and shiver a whisper. “Why does the world feel upside-down?”
“Because everyone’s forgotten. We can’t reflect sky when we’re above it.”
I cast my gaze over her horizon that glitters candy lands sailing into sun. Ocean softens her voice to the breeze kissing my cheek.
And says, “Will you be my friend?”
I choke. “Yes.”
She slips her tide around my toes, soles, heels. She carries it up my ankles.
“Yes.” I blink over my own puddles brewing. “Always, yes.”
Ocean whispers for me to come closer and I wade between sand dollars, into her depths rocking me back and forth. She spills up my back, soaks my skin. Arms outstretched, fingers splayed, I sink into her sighed swift that curves to cradle my every inch. I release my weight, lift my feet, close my eyes; sun sets and Ocean closes hers. Wet to the core, I breathe to her rhythm. I recline and my friend washes over me.
***
“Miles, where have you been?”
Cheeks flushed, I burst from the woods. I run toward Mom, who stands on Grandma’s porch, her hands on her hips. Her face’s covered in dusk, so I don’t see its meanness right away.
“Around,” I say.
“It’s been hours. Do you know how worried sick I’ve been?”
“I know. Sorry.”
Mom breathes like she does over my report cards. Then she makes herself smile like she does when hearing about my rides on the bus without anybody next to me.
“I know this trip hasn’t been the easiest for you.” Mom touches my shoulder and turns me toward the doorway spewing warm light and sweet smells. “We’re heading home soon, a new school year coming up. You might make a friend.”
I walk under stringed seashells clinking in the wind. Against my side, I squeeze my jar of Ocean water and smile.
“I have already.”
Wokespeare
I’m gonna compare you to my Samsung.
But your bod’s less square and you don’t update—
Like, you’ll live longer ’cause you’re pretty young,
As long as Paleo keeps off that weight.
I’m T-B-H totes bingein’ on Netflix,
All night, so bright on my ’droid so clutch, bae;
It’s got T-Swift, Uber, glam swimsuit pics,
Surfin’ Instagram’s cloud forev like cray.
Actually, my data’ll def outlive you,
’Cause your on-fleek bod can’t even upload.
Should I compare Samsung to yo tissue,
When your bad tan’ll wrinkle and this stay code?
Sorry not sorry, these eyes just got woke;
This tech ages like Depp but you’ll one day croak.
The Man at Your Door
You’ve seen him before. You’ve seen him before. That man who stands at your door, his boots’ shadows streaked on your floor.
You curl your hand around the doorknob and wait for a knock; but father’s grandfather clock ticks as you count to six and winter wind whistles bristles up your chin when you pull the door on to find the man already gone.
You’ve seen him before: that thought you can’t ignore as you tear your eyes off bedroom ceiling and groan slipping out of bed, slipping on your coat, slipping through the black that slips bobbing past your back catching blinds’ each moonlit crack. You click on the heat with fingers weak and sit under striped window glow—that window you know, that window you curl before thinking thoughts before of the man you can’t ignore.
You know this view and that comforts. You know twilight’s fog that gathers insulation around streetlamps’ drizzled beams that hold your fixation, calm your frustration, burn a flirtation with otherworldly dreams bursting at the seams. You know this window, know that fog, know that insomnia that takes you from dreams you know—you know, when you glance at the ticking you know, you’ll find father’s clock he gave you last September to remember your nest when you sit at your window depressed. You know this view, vent’s musty humming on your lips, furnace wafting their blush you knew.
“But do I know you?” you whisper with a shiver.
Your breath fogs the fog through the glass playing the past in your reflection. You breathe into mind’s reflection of the man you thought you saw before, think you see now in your eyes and your brow till breath’s fog fogs out your reflection.
You stand. You stretch. You yawn, waiting for dawn, pacing through window’s light show, thinking of the man you think you know:
Not because he stood at your door, not because you await a friend’s visit,
But because you felt his being without seeing, without hearing a toe on your forty-year-old patio, the same you very well know.
Indeed, it’s not a friend’s visit for which you wait, but a chill over window’s sill, at the foot of the doorway where stepped the foot of a man—that chill you await, hugging your chest, never knowing how late air’s bite might clamp down your fate on a date you’d never have guessed.
You drag your hands down your face, turn to the door, hunching to brace against winter wind because you can’t anymore—you can’t wait anymore. You can’t wait for the man to return to your door. You must see if you’ve seen him before.
You swing open the door and his name touches your tongue and cold fills your lung and you heard it! You heard it long ago! You think you know. You swear you heard it young—that name so unsung—as dying breeze rattles the door you swung.
Your brows tense. Your sister passed young; his name moves your tongue:
“Death.”
It saturates your breath. Death.
“He’s the stranger who came to the door.”
Tick, tock goes the grandfather clock, whispering from window light, sealing winter’s bite, joining your internal talk:
“Death’s the man coming ’round the block.”
He’s not so much a stranger as the danger you ignore till his croak calls no more for the pain you felt before. You’ve seen him before. You’d seen him before.
You choke back a cry and instead release a sigh as you step out the door and into dark dawn’s mist, balling a frostbit fist. You puff, you scuff asphalt you don’t feel, hard, hard earth beneath your heel, and tell yourself, keep telling yourself,
“This isn’t real.”
But your phone glows in your trembling hands: thirty-three missed calls of the croak again calling for the bawling you’ve curbed in your fist’s balling. You tap the first of the voicemails poured through the night.
“It’s your father—something’s come up—” chokes Mom. “Just call me, all right?”
Your phone slips through your fingers. You stop in the street, stop mid-stride. Your father has—father has—
All your life, your father had tried.
Your legs seize and you fall to your knees, road’s shock shooting tremors through your wheeze. Your tears splatter asphalt earthquakes, your ears between shoulder shakes. Chin to your chest, rocks in your breast, you rediscover all your breaks, as the stranger who came to your door steps his boots before yours.
They swirl air’s vapor around your knees where mists taper.
His boots. Your wide eyes gleam a reflection of the feet you’ve seen; but, this time, through doubt’s veil, beyond this temporal trail, you see more than shadow. Your phone sputters the second voicemail and you stare at the boots of the stranger you know.
He came, he came. You remember his name.
“Please call me,” says your mother into the ground, your phone face-down. “Your father, he’s burning up—”
You press yourself up, cast your eyes up, grimace looking up the silhouette of the reaper that came before and wonder if you’re too done for. The sun vaults horizon, squints your stare, Death’s face blocked by a glare.
The next voicemail plays.
“He’s passed. Around six—they say he went fast.”
“Six?” you mouth.
Six p.m. yesterday: seconds before that stranger came. Your breath bursts out your lips as the man, smiling down, softly grips your shoulder kindling flame. The fog dies; cheek’s tear dries; before a blazing sunrise, stands the man who shares your eyes.
You’ve seen him before, the man you’ve always had. The man who came to your door, that angel is your dad.
Lover is the mask the loved one wears himself. Through tinted lenses he watches her toss her hair and by the chosen slit he kisses her goodnight. She bleeds a hurricane and he sees her in a sundress; she bites lightning rods and he hears her laugh resound. The shades reverse—sky blue brews soot gray and twilight sags noonday only if he comes aground. Love is your wet clay and lover your stage play. It's he who takes the mask off when she lets him down.
Sparks break ajar the chipped plaster a foot from the hall;
I lie, mouth pouring subconscious,
Eyes glazed upon retrogression.
Flickers pry seven billion curls till a maw tears that wall;
Abandoning the self-conscious,
Forgetting the introspection,
I turn on the floor, toward sparks’ new door glaring my call.
It gapes dream worlds and all the realities in one,
Rips through sobs’ and drooling’s midnight,
Shuts my mouth soft, squints my eyes eased,
And soaks through grease my tingling scalp till I come undone.
My door, flashlight, birthright, foresight,
My white knight, holding my heart seized,
Dimension’s door rolls my bare feet to touch Somewhere sun.
I sprint among clouds that dress wounds of lingering shame;
No more tame, same, blame where Somewhere fogs the path I came.
