Candicewalsh
It was exactly how she imagined it: blue-capped towers perched cliffside, stairways leading between caves, the glimmering Mediterranean seeming to be everywhere at once. And yet here she was, surrounded by dozens of chatty faces, unable to stop the tears from overflowing.
On the way to floor 15. In the elevator a man is standing next to me wearing a tweed jacket and one of those cab hats. He has an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, and every time he breathes, it quivers. Moves up and down like on a wave. We stop at each floor and other people get on but I can't stop staring at this man. He catches me, tips his hat. Sparkling green eyes and freckled lips.
Driving across the Icelandic barren landscape, plumes of steam shot up from the horizon. They reminded her of factories, those lumps of industrial metal always on the outskirts of town. Except here, in this big lonely land, there smoke was steam and the cause was geology. She felt peace because of this, for no reason whatsoever other than the idea that the earth still reigned supreme leader above all humanity.
I am too tired to think about vapors. Or vapor. What about Vick's Vapor Rub? I hated the smell of that stuff but its coldness was rather soothing whenever I had a chest cold. Which, come to think of it, seemed fairly often in my childhood. Probably because I swam in the tepid, sewage-infested waters of the bay. But I stand firm by the fact that such play helped boost my immune system later in life, even if I do have that nervous twitch.
Love bloomed. Flowers bloomed. Cliches bloomed. Blood bloomed. Everything bloomed in the age of the 20-somethings. Devastation and hope and extreme happiness. The kind with hair blowing in the breeze and sunflowers dancing in the fields, and PEOPLE. People everywhere. Just fucking blooming.
Love bloomed. Flowers bloomed. Cliches bloomed. Blood bloomed. Everything bloomed in the age of the 20-somethings. Devastation and hope and extreme happiness. The kind with hair blowing in the breeze and sunflowers dancing in the fields, and PEOPLE. People everywhere. Just fucking blooming.
Jetson died years ago. My old, surly tomcat. The one who had been shot at by the neighbours. Every time I return home, I still expect to find him sleeping on the front patio. He'd see me and let out a pitiful "meow." He was ugly. But he was my ugly.
I put my book down and smile. A chickadee flutters around to my left, bird friends calling somewhere behind me. To my distant right, an accordion's tune driftinf over the hilltops. It smells like roses and fresh air. And then, the unwritten: the alcoholism, the poverty. My uncle's loud belch as he slams shut the door to my deceased grandmother's house.
I hadn't seen Della in eight years. We used to listen to The Doors in the cafeteria on our lunch break during high school. "We've got the house and we've been together three years, but nobody understands why we're not married or have children. I guess we're behind everyone else," she joked.
"I'm still single," I pointed out. The one left since graduation.
Jessica was a soft-spoken, doe-eyed kinda girl with a big heart and small feet. She lingered around the periphery of most peoples' vision, dangling on the edge and smiling when necessary. Sometimes she'd bake chocolate-chip-banana muffins and bring them to her colleagues at the bank, where she worked as a teller. She said "please" and "thank-you" and "sorry" when necessary, as most young Canadians women do. When she returned home from work in the evening, she kicked off her shoes and boiled the kettle. Steeped teabags and petted her cat, Charlie.
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