Chapter 1: Sometimes Life Has Other Plans
Maggie Johnson sat sadly in the front seat of her blue Honda, Dad’s graduation gift, a tattered hatchback that was ancient then and much older now. The car was covered with leaves, having been parked on the curb as friends, family and hearse drivers had been the preferred mode of transportation in recent days.
The funeral was over, a somber affair, but uplifting, too, because, as families sometimes do, everyone heeded their better angels and behaved well. Goodbyes were shared. Hugs lingered. Kisses, too—one in particular that both blessed and haunted Maggie.
Every tummy was full because (if nothing else) the Johnson family knew a thing or two about putting food on a table, good food: from Aunt Rita’s seven-layer salad to Uncle Frank’s peanut butter-chocolate pie with the homemade whipped cream topping. In-between? Tomatoes, strings beans, baked beans, lima beans, peas, carrots, potatoes—mashed, baked, Hasselbacked—and, of course, meat: turkey, ham, meat loaf and chicken: fried, roasted, and baked.
“Daddy would have loved it,” she thought.
With Mother and Dad both gone, somebody had to do something about “The House”—the 3-bedroom, 1-bath ramshackle cottage that was more work than it was worth, but so rich in sentimentality that nobody—not sister Julie in Texas or brother Bobby in New York—really wanted to sell.
Of the three kids (Juliet, Robert, and Margaret) Maggie was the least sappy about the old homestead. Why? Two reasons: First, she lived relatively close, so—unlike her siblings who visited infrequently—“The House” was not a mystical haven. Second? Both Jules and Bobby wanted Maggie to move in, spruce things up, and make it available for their occasional family visits—especially at Christmas.
What to do?
If Maggie were happy with her apartment, the whole moving-back home scenario wouldn’t be an issue—but her lease was up, the monthly increasing and, besides, it needed work, though not as much as “The House.”
As she pondered her options, someone tapped on the window—a soft knock but so unexpected that Maggie hopped in her seat like a startled frog. She pushed the auto-button for the driver’s side window, eventually revealing the identity of the late-night tap-tap-tapper as Monroe Rawlings, or “Moose” as he’d been called since high school, more than a decade ago.
“Moose, you scared me!” Maggie squawked. “Thought it was an ax murderer, or worse, a Girl Scout selling cookies.”
“Gotta watch out for those Scouts,” Monroe teased.
For a moment, they stared at each other, awkwardly smiling.
“I thought you’d be half-way home by now,” Moose said. “What gives?”
“Thinking,” said Maggie.
“Lots to think about, I guess,” he responded.
"Yup,” she said, nervously opening and closing her hands on the steering wheel.
“Well, if you ever—I mean, if you want to talk about things,” he said, haltingly.
Her head nodded up and down, slowly, like an out-of-sync bobble-head.
“Nope, not now,” she said, suddenly shaking her head back-and-forth. “Maybe later.”
He walked away; she closed the window.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she said to no one in particular as she slapped the steering wheel.
“Monroe,” she thought.” Why, why, why? Why now?”
The two had been close for years, especially in junior high—but by high school he’d become a jock—“Moose,” the sports star, instead of Monroe, the sensitive blue-eyed boy with the fluffy brown hair who’d read her poems and tried to turn them into songs.
Sports changed all that—so she hated football and Moose, equally, ever since.
He was nice at the funeral. Supportive. Friendly. Why? Her Dad had followed high school football in general and Moose in particular. Monroe kissed Margaret after the ceremony. Not a real kiss, mind you. Just one of those little pecky kisses, like a chicken does with a kernel of corn. Like that. Still, innocent though it was, there was a faint hint of a glimmering flicker that she hadn’t expected.
Did that mean something? Who knew.
Maggie turned off the car. Switched off the lights. Pulled back the emergency brake.
“Maybe I’ll spend another night at The House,” she thought. “Get up early. Go out for coffee. Get an early start in the morning.”
Then an odd thought poked her brain: “I wonder if Moose still goes to the Crossroads Diner, the place my Dad used to take him for breakfast.”
NEXT: Coffee Mugs & Lumberjacks
Dear, Soulmate
My bountiful body sits unsettled.
Above the rafters sits my thoughts,
Miles away from my mind.
My heart dwells,
Descending into darkness.
Will the lights ever be on?
To Awaken my senses,
To open my eyes.
Needing help to lead my way.
Bringing all of me together,
Making my soul complete.
Even though for you I do search.
Right now I have
nothing to give you.
Is nothing enough?
My soul is all I have.
Is my soul enough?
Give me yours...
I give you mine...
Soul to soul...
The beautiful, the ugly.
The healthy, the sick.
Show me yours...
I will show you mine...
The good, the evil.
It's all the same to me,
Lay it all on me.
Soulmates set
each other free...
I should have stabbed you when I had the chance
The numbness overlaps the chaos of the day.
Back roads dissolve into the dusty
Remains. It's a tourist trapped in a tongue twisted version of love and lust
Just dropping by with poetic lines
Of nothing.
Empty and cold through the passion and fear.
Cursive letters bubble into tear stained ink
But the quill is drenched in the blood of my eyes. They are drawn and tired
Too far gone to face the weight of my sins. I fall silent. Knees bent in constant adoration.
Awed and unkempt.
The wait is too much for the liver and spleen
And so I beg, pathetic and alone
Dirt and mud have caked upon my skin
trickling down upon me as claw and scratch
Splintered fingers reaching for a surface they shall never find
I am buried here in a grave of your design
With cursive letters that bubble neatly into tear stained ink. Steeped from the blood of my eyes.
Vermillion
I remember the eyes of the stranger
our words that melded
our hands that stroked
as if we knew who we were as one
It was the numbness that made it easy, digestible...
In the sweat, in the heat, in the sway of our dance
It was the excitement, the pleasure of our skin
faced with our disorientation that made it even more terrifying
It was the beat of your heart
foreign, mocking, but of a great allure
that tempted me into an unspeakable madness
You were to let me die, then and there
amongst the filth, or maybe the beauty of
your ego...
It was our fleeting ecstasy
that made me fall deep
Deeper and deeper into the sea
of our climax
There was a flame that we made
A flame that still holds me
A flame that burns me, that hurts me
but one that embraces me as human
It is a flame that I dare not speak of today.
