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.”