Walking into the forest,

my goal is to embrace isolation

Disgusted by the rat-race

I’m leaving society’s congregation

Because of its intrusiveness

it’s difficult to remain private

I leave the city with no remorse

as Nature has become my surrogate

Deeper into the forest I push

continuing my search for seclusion

Getting away from society

with its unwanted obtrusion

Far from the filthy city

I live as a happy recluse

Along with disdain for people

I need no other excuse

Traveling further into the woods

yearning to live where it’s remote

People and society are the poison

While Mother Nature is the antidote

End time has come.

Final escape from being numb.

Throw me into the sun,

ashes to ashes I shall return.

‘conquer your mind’

‘chase the wind’

it’s all the same

suppress the emotions

fake a smile

ignore the pain

but the brain

is one fearsome

monster to tame

you may as well

tell me to light a

match in the rain

I knock on your door, knuckles soft against the wood. O, Eriana, open the door.

I knock again, and look over my shoulder in case someone from your village walks past. It is a small village, even for the north of Spain, with a single shop for bread and meats around the back of the church. Everyone knows you here, would recognise me in an instant. Knowing what I did, they’d chase me away and forbid me from ever coming back.

O, Eriana. I knock again. I know you don’t want me to leave. Open the door, tell me it isn’t too late. 

Thankfully, you live on the edge of the village, up in the mountains where your house is shielded by forest trees. I was sorry to hear your father passed away. He was a good man, a brave one, who hid soldiers and political refugees.

I knock again. I’m so sorry I left. Are you there? Can you hear me?

I hear the floorboards creek, from the back of your house, past the staircase and into the hallway. I close my eyes, imagining you are behind the door, inches away. To be in your presence again, Eriana, to pull you to me and feel your perfect body pressed against mine. To just smell your hair again, o Eriana, what I wouldn’t give. 

I knock again.

‘Mama,’ I hear a little voice say. Our son. 

The floorboards creek. You rush to him. Tender woman.

‘Escuché tocar a la puerta, Mama, I heard knocking.’

‘There’s nothing to worry about, mi corazon, es solo el viento it’s just the wind.’

‘Is it the forest ghosts Mama?’

‘Yes,’ I hear you laugh, ‘son los fantasmas del bosque it is the forest ghosts. They are very friendly and want to play.’

‘Cuéntame una historia, por favor, tell me a story’

‘No puedo mi amor, a otra vez.’

‘You are tired Mama?’

‘Yes’

‘You will still take me to see Papa tomorrow? I can wear my green jacket?’

My heart soars. I will see you tomorrow. I feel foolish, almost, for not being able to stay away.

‘Por supuesto que puedes,’ I hear the smile in your voice.

‘Will he like it?’

‘Your papa will love it. You know how proud he is of you. You know he loves you very much.’

‘You still love him, don’t you Mama?’

I hear your silence, that momentary hesitation, before you say that you do. I’m not sure whose heart you’re trying not to break by lying. His or mine.

O Eriana I’m so sorry. I wish I had never left. I sit down on the steps of your house, and wish I had roll-ups to smoke. It would be something to do with my hands, with my mind. The light in our boy’s room goes off. I hear you go into the kitchen. I want to knock again.

I knock. Take me in o tender woman. We can drink the wine I bought last Christmas and talk it over. Take me in for heaven’s sake.

I know you can hear me, that you’ve heard me every night. I never meant to hurt you, it breaks my heart that I did.

You tell the boy it was an accident, make him honour me with flowers and weekly visits. You’re trying to protect him, or perhaps you’re concealing the truth from yourself as much as from him. But soon he will five, then six, and he will know. His friends at school will tell him if he doesn’t guess. He’ll know what every person in the village hasn’t had the heart to tell you, that no man falls off a bridge by accident.

Forgive me, Eriana, and open the door.

Even when you don’t see me, when you scream out at the wind and fall down to the floor, I am here. I cannot stay away.

I won’t leave, won’t stop knocking until you open the door.

I am six and too young to know better,

all laughter and curiosity and youth,

balancing on my tip-toes as chubby fingers grasp

at the wooden box on a bookshelf,

gazing in awe at the butterfly tucked within.

I am eleven when I open that box again

all cartwheel and sticky summer smile-

a smile that fades when I see the pins.

Needles thrust through my butterfly,

crucifying those gentle wings to a corkboard cross.

I am fifteen when the butterfly's corpse is moved to my bedside table,

and at night I whisper to the box's macabre contents.

We are the same, you and I,

all pins and pain and appearances.

And as I walk out the door I pin up my smile-

for what am I if not a decoration in this box we call Earth?

I am twenty when I throw the box to the ground,

all freedom and broken glass and rage.

There are holes in my wings,

stiff from being pinned to corkboard for too long,

and a dull grey has replaced the blue.

But my worth is not defined by the color of my wings

and one day

I will fly.

~

starving

the soul

of

emotional need,

bandaging

wounds

without

stitching the vein,

transfusing

blood

before

stopping the bleed –

might as

well

light a match

in the down-pour

of

pain.

You ever notice how

You spend time

Planning a life

That's already passing you by?

The kids at school called him “Lurch.” The worst part was, she saw it. He was a tall kid, all arms and legs, who walked on his toes with a forward lean, as though there was a forever wind against his sail. He was growing so fast. She couldn’t afford to keep buying clothes at the rate he was growing, so his sleeves and cuffs were going to have to ride up for awhile, but what was she to do? Her clothes were not nearly new either.

They weren’t beating him up yet, but that would probably come. He was one of those gentle kids who was so easy for the others to pick on. All he had going for him was that his height was somewhat imposing. What would she do if they did start beating him up? Again? A single mother in a strange town? God knows she would do or give anything to make the child happy, but he seldom was, following her lead. And he was still such a good boy despite all that! He did all that she asked, which was quite a bit, while asking for nothing in return. He wore the shirts with the too short sleeves, and the high-water pants without complaint. His grades were good. He helped around the house. There was only the one thing she had ever seen him want, and he never even asked her for that.

But she saw him looking at that one thing. She saw him at the store, reaching out a gentle hand to touch it. He had touched it lovingly, as a woman touches her baby. That was how she’d known. Seeing it had brought a tear to her eye. She vowed then and there that he would have it. She knew a way.

~

The man behind the counter at the second hand store would only give her $200 for her $2,000 engagement ring. Benjamin had given her that ring directly after her pregnancy, and directly before his accident. The ring was all she had left of him, but Benjamin wouldn’t mind it; back then he wouldn't have minded, and certainly not now.

She took the money for the ring from the clerk and immediately set it back on the countertop. There would be missed meals in his future, but she would give her boy this. The rest of the money she had gotten from Adam. She didn’t love Adam, and he did not love her, but there were times when Adam needed a woman, even a pear shaped woman like her, so she gave herself to him during those times. In return he helped her with bills, and such. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement that wasn’t so terrible. Adam hopped on her quickly and hopped off as fast, like a rabbit, as though he was afraid someone might see him on top of her. She had stopped dressing up for Adam, stopped trying to be pretty for him, but he did not seem to notice either way. It was not prostitution, she told herself. They were just friends helping each other, only they weren’t friends in any of the other ways that people were friends. Still, it was not prostitution. She was not a prostitute. She would marry Adam if he were to ask, but he wouldn’t ask.

It was a bright red Gibson Firebird. It's fret board was worn. The paint was scratched up pretty badly, and the neck had been repaired. There was a name scratched on the back that she couldn’t make out; the name of another boy with another dream, no doubt. She knew from her research that the Firebird was a really good guitar, even if it was old. The man behind the counter threw the amp and pickups in “cheap.” Even so, it had not been easy to take the money out of her purse, knowing what she'd had to do to get it.

~

But all of that was only memories these many years later. She had not been with Adam in ages, and no one called her boy “Lurch” anymore. He was rich now, that son of hers was. He wore only the most stylish clothes as he climbed from the backs of the limosines, or down the steps of the jet planes, and those stylish clothes always with a tailor-made fit. The way the quiet, defenseless boy had turned out was a miracle, is what it was!

And he still played the old Firebird that had cost her so much, the one whose sounds she knew so well. That old guitar never failed to break her down to prayer whenever it's soulful wail sang from out her radio.