old and fictional
He used to tell her, to make sure she knew, that his love songs weren’t always about her. Sometimes they would be, he said, and he’d tell her which ones were. But it wouldn’t be all of them. You didn’t have to be in love, he said, to write a good love song.
Claustrophobia
This one was for a contest. I won ten dollars. Good for me. I have not decided whether there is anything good about it.
Today I looked around
And knew
That I live in a series of Russian dolls –
Nesting boxes
(each slightly smaller than the next)
The rooms with low ceilings
Beneath low roofs
Beneath the low-slung skies of here
Filled with air that smells of soap
The clouds oppress and smother
The artificial light a pale, cheap imitation of the sun
Necessary, but shameful
Completely and horribly stuck
I long for places I have never seen
The breathing-space and elbow-room
Of someplace big and free and great
The biting air and sun of mountaintop
The shimmering heat and utter distance of desert
The terrifying thrill of only water, sky, and sun for miles
(Always/ You See/ The Sun)
The feeling of solid road under the tires
and a full tank of gas and no one around
and faster, faster, escape!
Our greatest fear is that the world is too small for us
(Gasping air, it wakes us in the night.)
So we escape. We go on the road.
Not just to get away. To find.
Shades of Blue: a Ballad.
I wrote this a good while back. I hope it is enjoyed a little.
I first met Layla Blue when she was seventeen. I was at the store looking for sparklers, having thought about them for the first time in maybe a few years, and there she was, lying flat on her back in one of the aisles. I went over to see if she was alright. Up to that time I had helped a total of four people in need of first aid, so I considered myself the next best thing to a paramedic.
When I got closer, I could tell that she didn’t need any help. The first thing I noticed about her was the romance novel in her hand, her elbow resting on her stomach so she could read. Attached to the hand and elbow were, in the order I noticed them, a head of hair the exact shade of peanut butter, a cotton t-shirt on which she had printed the words “I have supersonic hearing and you’re hurting my ears,” and the most engaging face I’d ever seen. It was at once old and young, hurt and hopeful.
It was also wrinkled in concentration over whatever harlequin she was reading. Without thinking, I nudged her with my foot.
“Hey!” She was genuinely angry.
“Hey.” I pretended it was a greeting. “Anyway, that’s what you should expect, lying on the floor like that.”
I sat down next to her.
The arm with the book flopped down and her knees drew up toward the ceiling, but she made no move to sit up. She looked at me.
“Who are you?” she asked without sounding too interested. I cleared my throat.
“I’m Andy,” I told her. She shook her head, but didn’t say anything more. “What about you?” I asked.
“Well my name is Layla, if that’s what you want to know.” She sounded pretty angry about that, as though she didn’t think Layla were any kind of name at all, as though if I’d asked her directly what her name was, she would have said, “Layla, I guess.”
I didn’t think it was a bad name at all. I told her so.
I bought the sparklers and some matches and asked her to light them with me in the parking lot. We did. She let each one burn all the way down without ever moving it.
And so our relationship began.
Sometimes we would play a back-and-forth question game to get to know each other. I asked her once if she planned to go to college. She didn’t answer. I knew what that meant; Layla never answered if she wasn’t sure. I followed up with another question.
“Well, are you smart?” I asked.
“What do you think?” she asked back. She wasn’t offended.
“I think that I learned a long time ago that there are a lot of different ways you can be smart. What I want to know is if you are academically smart.”
Again, no answer. I asked her if she did well in school and she asked me what that had to do with it. I said a lot, if you’re a college. She shrugged.
It finally came out that she had a learning disability, a problem with remembering things she’d read. It explained the pained look on her face in the store. Stuff like that, the really irreversible personal stuff, took a long time to get out of Layla.
As a rule, we didn’t talk on the phone. She thought it was dumb and told me so. I asked if I couldn’t even call her to make plans and she said no, not when we lived in so small a town and I could just walk over to her house so why wouldn’t I if I wanted to see her. I guessed that was alright, but gave her my number anyway, on a big green paper she couldn’t hope to lose with the caption “just in case.” She did not give me hers in return.
I had not seen her for two whole days, which was uncommon, when she called. It was late.
“Andy.” It was a whisper and not a question.
“Yes, Layla.” This was not a question either. “Give me a couple minutes to put on some clothes.”
I rang the doorbell and knocked, but got no answer. The door was unlocked. I went in. It took me a while to find her. She was sitting on the floor of her bedroom closet with the door open. Her eyes were red and her hair, usually shiny and straight, was matted. She watched me as I sat in front of her.
“Do you want to tell me?”
“No.” Her voice was soft. She didn’t move.
I scooted into the closet beside her, my back pressed up against the side wall. I turned her stiff body and pulled her head and shoulders down to rest on my lap. We sat like that for a long time. I felt her body very slowly relax, one muscle at a time, as I pulled most of the knots out of her hair with my fingers.
I got up once, to make her macaroni and cheese spirals, which I knew were her favorite meal. She didn’t smile or get out of the closet, but she ate everything I’d given her. I asked her where her parents were and she shrugged.
When it got dark again, I gathered her sleeping body up and lifted her into her bed. I tossed a pillow onto the floor and lay down.
When I awoke in the morning, she was lying next to me.
We never spoke about that time again.
“Hi, Layla.”
“Hi, Andy.”
“What’s today?”
“The birthday of M. Night Shyamalan and Elliot Smith. The day Anne Hathaway died. Jamaican Independence Day.” She knows this list for every day. I don’t know where she gets it.
“Ask me!” This is my indicator that she is happy today, that today her head is clear.
“Ok. Layla Blue, where is your soul today?”
“In my feet!” She takes off, half dancing, half running. I catch her, knock her down, grab her by the ankles.
“I’ve got your soul,” I say to her.
“Of course you do.”
She was impossible not to love, but loving her hurt. Her favorite place, she said, was “fields.” When you asked her a question, she either lied quietly or told the truth defiantly. She was easy to read but hard to understand. Her memory problem was comical and annoying at once. She cried whenever she saw a dead animal. Once she stopped talking for a week, and I realized how much I loved her voice. She was completely disconnected from the world, as though she had dropped here by accident. That’s what made things so hard for her.
When I told her that I had to leave, that I was going to go away and probably not come back, she just nodded thoughtfully. She looked bored when I explained about college on the East coast. She didn’t look sad.
The day I left, she kissed me on the cheek. She tied a homemade bracelet around my wrist, next to my watch. She turned and walked away.
As she walked, she sang.
“I love you, Layla,” I called to her.
She kept walking, kept singing. Sometimes I wonder if she heard me. But I had called pretty loudly, and she did, after all, have supersonic hearing.
