He came back to suggest a seat switch so that they could be together for the five-hour flight.  Carol's eyes met his and she was aware of just this: she had married an angel.  

 

He was also a man with misperceptions and perceived shortcomings. To be angelic among all of our messes, she thought, was a worthy achievement. 

The airline had overbooked, and, otherwise a minor inconvenience, the fact that they were separated in flight seemed like one more little death.  

There had been so many reminders of death lately:  Grandmothers, dear pets,  Buddhist monks, principled students; chunks of insecurity, illusions of friendship, the red walls if that old bedroom. Besides the pain, all of these brought a special let down, each holding some proportion of relief and weight.  Resolution and grounding.

Her 38 years had led her to  believe the lie that she'd botched her life, ruined her chances for normalcy, children, actual fulfillment, or at least peace, often by going out of her way to demonstrate her own eccentricity.   She had separated herself from the people introduced her to by Fate and her own intentions, trusting neither. 

But his voice was soft and his eyes warm.    

It was an immediately ecstatic, maybe ill-advised romance.

All romance is ill advised. 

The union was not so careless, despite that to enter it required stepping over an abyss.  

The marriage was not so careless because to enter it required stepping over an abyss.  To enter it required intent:  scaling walls,  rappelling, the right equipment.  Spanning differences. 

She spent the hours apart reflecting. She always spent most of her hours reflecting.  

When writing, which she once promised herself that she would practice like brushing her teeth, she tended to default to poetry. This was as much due to a finely-tuned desire to dwell within the essence of things as to impatience laced with laziness. She had the desire to get to the point without the intermediate messiness, without so much explanation. 

Recently, it was becoming clear that she was going to have to get dirty. Life is dirty.  If you're not filthy, you're not living. 

As a kid, she enjoyed worms and anthills.   Daydreaming about the lives of ants became a summer pastime.   The Italian neighbor kid taught her how to make mud pies. Then to play soccer and, later, the thrill of getting thrown about under water by a boy on hot August days. 

Four years her senior, Catholic, and a private school boy, he was always on some shelf a few rungs above hers.  She let it be so, but not without some degree of longing.  But there was no energy for as much grasping as it would take to make her desire known.  Besides, explaining the situation would be too messy. So went off to school and, in a few more years, she did too, in the another direction. 

(as usual, to be continued)

Installation (2004-2005)

I once wore blame like bloody saran wrap,

adding layers until I choked

and stripped it from my tongue,

ears

shoulders

heart

back

intestines;

you were gone before I took you hostage

and patched it over your nose,

mouth

anus

urethra

eyes

and rented a bulldozer to bury you.

so I fashioned a voodoo doll

and the piled the shreds into a sacred mound in the den.

Ram-Sita-Ram

It was a means of control

arranging us boy-girl-boy-girl.

Schooled isolation.

Years later we would line up ourselves

in continuous boy-girl pairs

with desire to engulf, pacify, shut up.

We still squirm,

project paper wads,

snap bra straps, squeal,

pretend not to enjoy the diversion.

After all, we're cannibals primordially.

We seek flesh and souls to make us whole,

a husband to consume, a body to banish,

too frightened to know

that where there is Love there is no hunger.

A second away

Distance is measured in time, he said,

his soul leaning into her within one week,

ignoring standard logic.

Stop everything.

Well.

The rocky tube stabbed the mountainside about 100 yards from the chateau. The urban refugees dropped their bucket down, lower, to nothing, and came up empty. The Earth was at once God and Satan, or at least that's what Stefan thought.

He'd heard stories before, of obstinate frontiersman whose dreams of individualism transformed into the putrefied bodies of their children. Sitting at the dining table with is head in his hands, sighed horribly, then raised his eyes to Katerina's. He saw her for the first time clearly, who sat across from him in a ochre dress, silent, holding him up with her steadiness, her faith. She knew what to do. He turned to Clara, who was babbling into the mane of the wooden pony on wheels that he had crafted last Christmas. Katerina and Stefan hadn't eaten that day. Clara would be hungry by morning. He knew what to do.

The next morning, Katerina, who had no more milk, heated up the last of the water for Clara. She and Stefan each took a nourishing waft and a sip. There wasn't much to pack, and necessity required that they save fuel at any rate. They loaded up in silence and started through the fog-like dust. Rural smog.

Katerina did not see him as a failure, so he was not...

well

The rocky tube stabbed the mountainside about 100 yards from the chateau. The urban refugees dropped their bucket down, lower, to nothing, and came up empty. The Earth was at once God and Satan, or at least that's what Stefan thought...