The heart dew’s break.

As a small child, before the many different things they diagnosed her with, there was only one thing that could calm her down.

She would go into these fits. These loud, uncontrollable, maniacal, feverish fits. They were scary, intense, and I remembered in the midst of, wondering if they’d ever come to an end. To watch her during these times created some of the most intense griefhoney that I’ve ever experienced. No amount of cradling, or coos, or song, or rocking could tame her. Leaving her put to let her ride it out only made it worse.

She didn’t speak a single word until she was 4. The noises that came out of her mouth were strange coos and gurgles. Not unlike the sounds of certain parts of  French pronunciation. I was the only one that was able to find a pattern within these vibrations. I knew her language as an involuntary reflex. I was her translator, her advocate.

And then there was this one day…
When finally in the midst of an episode she started speaking in her broken language.
Red ball, she said. Red ball. Red ball. Red ball.

I knew the ball she wanted… It was my twin and I’s favorite ball.

I ran outside and found it. Rushed back in to show her.
Still screaming, still crying, Mother falling apart holding her in the rocking chair,
I waved the ball around… “Ama! Ama! Look! Here’s the red ball.”

Nothing.

I sat the ball on the floor. I ran to my Mother, grabbed my little sister, set her down on the floor near the red ball. Her legs were spread, forming a V. I sat across from her in the same position, our feet pressed closely together… She always had to have physical contact.

I grabbed the red ball, and rolled it to her.
Instantly a deafening hush filled the massive house.
She stopped.
She rolled the ball back to me.
We played that way for hours.

The little red ball, the only thing that worked.

A clown’s nose.
A cherry on a sundae.
A bull’s eye.

Last night, as the doctor’s predicted, she had a psychotic break.
Chances are, she won’t be coming back.

And all I find myself doing, is searching for the perfect little red ball.

All and nothing girl.

On Thursday I was Alice.

As a child, like so many, I adored those books.
I gobbled them up. I felt a kinship.
All magic, mystery, and fear.
Things that unite.
Untie.

I drove, quite literally, down memory lane.
And it wrecked me.

The appropriate and wretched things happened.
The things that always do to me.
So real, it seems scripted.
Serendipitous, ironic, and surreal.
“Cut!”

And by the time I finally made it back to the place where I was guesting,
Agee’s words were circulating through my mind.

We all know it’s true.
But at some point or another, we all try anyway.

Because it used to be a home.
Because people used to live there.
Because it used to be beautiful.

And then,
I turned the wipers off.

I’ll give you a pendulum to swing from.

When a girl really needs a motherfucking drink it’s when there is no beer in the refrigerator.
When the liquor cabinet is empty.
When the wine fridge is un-stocked.

Save for a fucking bottle of vermouth, and who the fuck likes that?

Granted, timing has never been a good friend of mine. You’d think that after a history of having an estranged relationship with something that may not even exist, you would be comfortable with it because you’d know what it does. Or rather, does not do.

This is in fact, not how it works.

Timing is a whore of a child birthed in a fish alley. Putrid, amongst the decay.

Something overlooked, but creating the stench that permeates and clings.
Something that exists long after the moment occurred.
A reminder.

Yes, time is a whore.
Working for free.