3.26

A hundred feet below me, the wall begins to slope away, a soft red dirt littered with debris from above. Where I am, though, every surface seems to be in a race for heaven, each angle stretching its way upward, no curve out of place. Slickrock. It's not an apt name, to be fair to my fingers. It's sandstone, a ruddy aged iron color that compliments sunsets. Russell is behind me, Weston is behind me. They're negotiating the five-strand cable bolted into the wall, bolted above a four-inch ledge that leans away from the vertical surface above it, leans at an angle I would not describe as friendly. I look down, but not far. My finger has left a spot of blood on a resting boulder, a dot of true red on a pretending surface. I shudder. Russell and Weston are engaged. They don't see me, can't know the sanguine explosion that just ran through me, the premonition of the color of my death on the rocks below. I shut it out. I'm in the crevice now, in the chimney, in the ropes. I pull. They stretch and don't return. I pull the looseness from them. I pull my feet off the ground. They don't snap, but I can see where the cords are rubbing on the rough rock above. These ropes are meant to save my life, the knots in them left by friends I'll never meet who know I need something to pull against. I'm five feet up from the safety of the larger ledge, my hand wedged into the rough grit of the fissure, and I stop. Weston is still calling back to Russell. I don't know how he's doing with the height. Twenty minutes ago, he was having trouble negotiating a ten foot scrabble up a pea-scree slope. Now he's suspended above a fatal fall. I can hear the calm in Russell's voice. He's been up this way before. I'm very glad they can't see me, because I can't move.

I've climbed unceasingly for an hour and a half now, and I've just crossed the ledge, my left arm wrapped twice around the cable even though I know my footing is sure. I've overbalanced in the wind, tipping toward the endless sloping tumble behind me. But this thirty feet of vertical wall is somehow an impossible task. I press my body into the wall, listening to the shifty sound of the grit against my breathing chest. The wind is flying around the mesa top, carrying my friends' voices just beyond hearing. I look up. I'm not sure I can actually climb this. I look down. Shit. Mistake. Blank. Blank. Blank.

I curse when I'm stressed. I curse more on this wall than on the rest of the mesa. I curse more on the mesa than I have for a year.

I pull on the rope. There's a foothold there, a handhold here, and slowly I'm gaining on the rock. I piece my way up ten feet, fifteen feet, and then I'm at the crux, a pinch in the rock that flutes out smoothly, a round hummock topping the left and a flat shelf uncomfortably high on the right. The shape of things have left my torso and arms nothing to cling to but the ropes, and my legs nowhere to go. My arms are getting tired. I can feel the fatigue I get when the kite pulls too hard for too long, and I let go and it floats lazily to the ground. I don't want to float anywhere. I jam my right leg and hip into the crack as deep as they will go, and I try something stupid. Flipping my left leg out and away, I kick back up towards my butt with my heel. I feel the toe clear the ledge, and I silently praise the wasted hours of bouldering videos for saving me in this moment. My beta is clumsy and terrified. What should take thirty seconds puts me in a panic for four minutes. I am shaking by the time I pull my body up the final foot of rope, scraping against the sandstone, afraid to leave the wall lest I overbalance and tip away, here at the cusp. On my hands and knees, water bottle and binoculars clattering against the clifftop debris, I crawl to where I can see Weston and Russell, just stepping off the tiny ledge, just shaping up the chimney for a climb, and I scream. Catharsis rips the air from my lungs in a wild pitch of high-flying echoes. And then—it occurs to me they might think it was my last sound as I fell from the wall, I follow it:

"I made it!"
I had new holes in my pantslegs, sweat seeping through my shirt, and a heart rate entirely too high, but I made it.

3.23

There is a terrible calmness about his face. I say terrible because why should he be so calm when he causes me such agony.
"Do you know why I pulled you over?"
I eye the road in front of me, wishing to break and run. "No, officer. I was going the speed limit."
"That's not why. Local ordinance requires the use of a seat belt. Can you step out of the vehicle for me?" He stands up from his stooped posture and hooks his thumbs through his belt loops.
I pause.
"Well?" He's impatient. It's not difficult to tell. There's a small crumb from his lunch caught between his belt and his pants. I can feel a bead of sweat slide down my back.
"No, sir."
"I'm sorry?"
I do one of those cartoon swallows, the exaggerated ones from Popeye, where his Adam's Apple flicks up and down and even so I still can't talk. My mouth is dry and my pits are wet. At a dull rasp, I manage a weak "I said 'No, sir;' I can't stand up."
The officer leans back down again. His face is very close to mine. I can smell the lunch that left the crumb. What is that, an everything bagel? He is extremely patient. Too patient. The muscles in his neck stand in sharp relief as he quietly says "Why. Not." It's not a question, but he wants an answer.
I hold up four empty crazy glue tubes. He blinks quietly. I lean forward and my shirt remains stuck to the seat.
"Pants too?"
I nod, meekly.
He breaks eye contact and stares into the field over top of my car, perhaps considering a career change. After a long, wordless moment, he spins and practically staggers back to his patrol car.
My butt is itchy. He drives away.

3.21

The first day of Spring:
You whispered to me of shadows and lantern light,
A soft full moon and a lingering night,
A sigh, a gasp, a shaking breath,
An altitude and a little death.

3.20

I hold council, war council, in the innermost chambers of my heart.
The fight has broken out, and you have launched first strike.

Will, adamant and valiant, stands guard.

(You are by no means a perfect combatant)

Peace, a word spoken in a silent room, has no place.

(You have irreparably revoked his reign)

Fear, a friend no closer than a wary man's enemy, asks if

you are truly a cogent choice.

Groaning, a nameless warrior wishes to close the distance.

(You wait for him, knowing too well his lust-ache and self hate)

And just when the marshaled forces of my fortified mind

are clad in crystalline armor, shining glint of unrivaled poise,

Just when the bristling barricade has caught the lurking shadows

and wrestled them into shapes fantastic and obscene,

Just when the war is placed upon my head

and the fight upon my brow,

Trust, last loosed and least loved of my captains,

opens the door

to let you in.

I owe you to Trust, and my kingdom with you,

for in him is balm to soothe any sin.

Wherefore do I deserve such treasure?
No, it is none but Trust--a shared virtue.

3.17b

[I think that last one was too dark. I'm feeling penitent today even though I don't suppose anything wrong happened today. Just . . . searing loss, I guess.]

A guide for blowing your nose on a bicycle:
Pull your glove off even though it's very cold and the air is wet after the rain. Be careful not to drop it. Be careful not to steer into traffic. Keep pedaling: this is for some reason very important. Pinch the bridge of your nose to increase air pressure as you expel a strong breath through your nostrils. Be careful not to blast nose juice onto your pants; you only have one pair. Pinch hard and pull your fingers down the nose until they squeeze all the thin mucous (please hope it's all thin mucous) out, leaving it all attached to your hand. Flick away from yourself like you're dismissing a servant you don't particularly like. Wipe the rest on your pants. Hope no one asks to shake your hand. Using your teeth alternatingly on front and back, pull the glove back on because it's cold and the world is full of things so disgusting that your snot doesn't even register. Good luck.

3.17

I once owned a porcelain cat.
It was about three feet tall and white, and I didn't own it exactly. But it was mine. I used it to terrify my friend, Karla, when she was out at night for security check. It became a running joke. She told me she hated it and I sort of let it stop.
But not forever.
I'm sorry, Karla, that I didn't actually listen to you. Maybe I should have. Maybe I was a bad friend. Maybe you were being overdramatic and playing into the joke and still having a good time and maybe it doesn't matter because even so you asked politely for me to stop. Maybe I'm not as good at communicating or understanding people as I thought I was.

I once fell asleep in a canoe.
I was sick with a cold I caught on a plane, and I was exhausted after paddling for so long. Russell was all alone for an hour or three, and he canoed thirty miles by himself in the dark on an unfamiliar river because it was a race and there was nothing else to do.
I shouldn't have been asleep.
I'm sorry, Russell, that I let you down. Maybe it's human frailty. Maybe it's bad luck. Maybe I shouldn't have shouldered so much of the burden of navigating the river and calling the turns because when I failed you it was more than just having someone to distract you and keep you awake and talk about dumb things while the stars roved ahead. Maybe I didn't understand that I was underestimating him.

I once followed suit.
I was about ten or twelve, and I only had one sort-of friend. I don't remember why we were at the church school, but it wasn't for school or church. There was a vast expanse of time in which we were unsupervised, and my friend started a hurtful game with David, who was new.
I kicked him, too.
I'm sorry, David, that I kicked your shoes, because I was trying to kick you. Maybe it didn't hurt your feelings. Maybe I didn't know what I was doing. Maybe the whole mess is just one small incident in a long lifetime of relatively good deeds spent trying to make up for the next time I misstep and hurt someone's feelings. Maybe I'm not as good at understanding myself as I thought I was.

I once made an inappropriate joke.
I once cursed a dead woman.
I once punched a future friend.
I once stole.
I once manipulated a girlfriend.
I once shirked on the job.
I once invaded a privacy.
I once lied.
I once misrepresented how many times I have done something evil. And I've done it more than once.


[The short story writer in me cuts this here, on this punch, for the dramatic reason that it accomplishes something artistic. But because someone might read this, I think an addendum is necessary. Because I'm not a work of art, I must expound. Because.]
[I feel nasty today because I couldn't have stopped it, I think. Do you know how people go to a priest and confess their sins? I think they do so because it resolves their larger issues. It's not about how many times they've envied their neighbor's truck and the subsequent Hail Marys. It's about having someone to listen to the dark parts of you, someone who won't turn away. This is my catharsis for a guilt I won't speak to you because I don't know its name myself. Good luck.]

3.16

[Happy birthday, Katy]

I've been reading about things that make me feel inordinately lucky. I have all my limbs. I have all my senses. I have my mind. I'm lucky in a hundred thousand ways, but the first thousand were decided before I was even born. I live a charmed life.

3.15c

I sent you an email. It is now a quantum state of read and unread, and you are in a quantum state of knowing and ignorance, and I am in a quantum state of all things, emotions assaulting not singly or in pairs but all in a rush, a vichyssoise of heartwrench pureed so fine that each unnamed feeling has been broken further than its atomic, animal state, and each felt simultaneously until even the tenebrous reaches of my shocked and shaking skeleton are crammed with emotions fresh and incomprehensible--------------
And once you've read, dear, what will you say? Pray, be kind.

3.15b

I wish I could describe the circumference of time using nothing more than this string and a felt-tip pen. I would plot your life with proficiency and grace, long sweeps of taut cord guiding an ever-loosening line until all the ink had run out and I found myself back at your start to find you waiting there to begin. And what would you say to me if I told you what became of every ambition you ever had? Would you shudder and despair, or, pulling up your breath and filtering your look through a thousand steely stares, would you shoulder your burden and walk? I hope I never find out.

3.15

I remember looking up from the grueling chore of paddling your broken boat, Weston, and seeing the storm rolling in over the lake. I mean, we all three knew the rain was coming, but we hadn't seen such a thing perhaps in all our lives, and we stopped paddling and stopped counting minutes and stopped worrying about getting out as the whiplash cloud thrust the air aside and broke upon our small piece of sky with increasing apparent speed. There were occlusions in the cloud that caught different aspects of light, and I'm sure you remember that. You pulled out your phone, used the last four percent of battery to record the screaming wind and the static ripple-edge of the cloud. Your pitiful camera would never be able to capture the deep magnetic purples of the cloud's interior world, the cracked and porous grays of the adjusting space at the edge where the water droplets formed a clean line with the outside world, a wall against invaders. And then everything turned to water as the assault of the sky began. We thrust the boat hard to starboard, paddled with everything we had, and lost a quarter of a mile of hard-driven progress just making it back to land. And I remember looking up from the rush of blood in my ears and seeing nothing.

[I wrote this yesterday and just . . . forgot to publish it.]

3.13

You know why I shuddered, just then, but you've asked me anyway. Why torture me like this? I saw it again, the haunted place, just through the trees and away across the creek. Sometimes I think you drive this way just so you can ask me about losing him. Of course it hurts--loss always does. And I know it's been years, but that's just how it is. I might not think about him for weeks, and then you drive past it again and ask, and of course it's painful. And then you think it's my every day. And then I explain so carefully, setting up the explanation for every little thing I feel until I think it must be impossible for you to hear any more words from me about how marked the difference, how profound the effect, the dizzying variation from moment without to moment of grief, and just as I've finished my long monologue, you turn my work into a soliloquy with a simple question:
"So, are you not over him yet?"
I'm burnt up, now, shaking and rattling inside my sedate exterior. How could you ask that question? Unless you've never lost anything, which I know you have. I can't help giving you the side-eye, wondering if, actually, you didn't feel your loss (somehow inured or even inoculated) to a dull sub-state of grief that bites once and lies down at your feet beside the fire ever after, a faithful companion. Well, I know that's unfair and I can't ever be inside your head, but it brings me no comfort when you thrust such pointed barbs beneath my skin, opening me with smooth precision and peering at the throbbing grief within.
And now I know you've done it on purpose because, on our way back home, you've driven five miles out of your way to shift us past the copse of trees again, the soft light of an unknowing evening filtered down through the small new spring leaves to strike the spot where I lost him most, loved him best, and knew him least. I keep my eyes screwed hard against the dash until the last possible moment, throwing my head lightly over my shoulder (I can't see anything that quickly anyhow, but you notice) and you sneer. I can hear your lips peel back over shining teeth as you say the second most hurtful thing you've said to me in the two years we've known each other.
"You don't love me like you loved him."
Of course not. He was, after all, a monster. I can't look at you for about thirty seconds, maybe a minute or two. I'm not sure. When I finally do steal a glance again, you've got the cold mechanical look you had when I introduced you as my friend at the work Christmas party four months ago. I feel very small. How am I supposed to react when you feel like this? If you can't understand me when I explain it, more words won't help, though I'm willing to pour words into you for hours if it meant anything. If you can't trust me after the midnight ride in the ambulance, more time won't help, though I would hold your hand through all of it. If you can't forgive me for weakness, even after all this time, then you can't forgive me, really me, under all this bald-faced strength, this imposing visage, this calculated style. Because the underings of my unarmored nature are frightfully weak, and I was looking to you to hold them up. I don't want you to protect my outside. I didn't need your strength at the party, in the ambulance, at the beach, or in the play. I needed it now.
I turn away. The car is uncomfortably warm. As we wind up the mountain, the night opens up and a few forlorn flakes, the last of the season, cease to fall.

3.12

Kassia hated his smile, actually hated it. He walked into the bar every night and sidled up to another woman with that same face, as though it were painted on and not thin motile flesh over a demented skull. Sometimes it was her friends, sometimes girls she'd never met other than to pass them a Long Island Ice Tea across the countertop. And for some reason, it seemed to work, this face. Most of the women were regulars--they had to know him. They had to have made the same connections Kassia had made, seen the same pattern, and yet he consistently rounded second base in the dark booths in the back.

Sultan of Smarm.
Crown prince of Corny.
Grand duke of Trying too hard.
Kassia hated his smile for what it meant, and maybe because he never thought to smile at her.

3.11

Corey wakes up with a soft elbow in his gut. Where is this? Three blinks to establish sight in the dark. Corey breathes deeply. The air smells like you. Oh, right. That's your elbow. This is your place. This is your couch and your blanket. He's cocooned in the trappings of unfamiliarity. Why have you brought him here, exactly? If he's merely curious, I'm ravenous to know. You did make dinner, but honestly—he and I agree on this—that was mostly a plot to get him to stay so late. And then there was the conversation. I mean, Corey was dazzled, yes, but not overwhelmed. He didn't actually learn anything about you or get any closer to knowing who you really are. I can see the distance you hold him to. He can feel it, even if it's instinct and not cognition. And then, without you really asking for anything or telling him your heart, you played your way into this unbelievable closeness. Who falls asleep holding someone without discussing it or asking permission? Corey is sliding off the couch. You've rolled, a little, and it's pushing him slip-wise across the velour. How can it be that you have this power? Not . . . no, not to push him off the couch. The power to control his situation so effortlessly. Your head is right next to his, now, and the smell of your breath isn't awful, but to Corey, it's certainly unkissable. This is a mess. Things were never supposed to advance to this moment. He's uncomfortable, I'm uncomfortable, —I think the only person who's really happy in this situation is you. And you're asleep, so you don't even get to have it. You got everything you wanted, didn't you? You got this intimacy, this underserved golden filigree lacing that most couples can't even enjoy for what it is because of the work required to get there, the inherent risks to their self-esteem, happiness, hearts. And you've now got it for free.
Corey turns back. There's crud in your eye.  With his free hand, he ever so gently wipes it away with his pinky finger. I can't understand how he doesn't shake himself to pieces. Who manufactured this duet? What unbridled gall of harmony worked its way in you? Why have the timbres of your souls mixed so closely without framework, without fear, without cost?
Corey pulls his arm out of the blanket and fumbles for his phone in the half-dark. It's five forty. You won.

3.9

Today, I saw a sunset and exclaimed, audibly, in a public place.
Just now, I saw my own hands and cursed them for their sloth.
Yesterday, I saw you, and I gasped at the clean quiet of you.
In a moment, I will see my words again, and sigh for how little they can do.

3.6

If you pour vinegar over baking soda, the acid reacts strongly with the base, releasing clouds of hydrogen in a rising foam matrix, quickly outrunning the container you put on the countertop, spilling out into the hardwood floor.
If you say such things to me with such overwhelming emotion, what reaction could you possibly expect? And now I'm soaking into the oak. And now who will mop me up?

3.5

He was standing in the chaos beneath bare bulbs at the track, the only man not screaming and waving money at the bookie. He calmly walked though the crowd and up to the window, the sharp shadows cutting his features with chisel-edges. He was dark in the dark. The men outside seemed to know him and treat him with a reverence I had only ever seen in the eyes of reformed sinners at mass. He leaned in to whisper to my Tío at the booth, almost sensual. He handed over his money and only then looked up to make eye contact with me. I felt it. Then, he turned, the crowd suddenly swallowing him in a press of bodies and noise.
I slipped off the desk at the back of the booth. Tío Francisco, hawk at heart, said "And where to now, Rosa?" He didn't even turn to see me, that is, until I told him—to watch the race. He held a broad palm up to the man pressing money into the grating, and gave me a curious eye. "Make sure to come back right after. I need your help to close, mi bella." I scoffed and stepped out into the warren of scrubby hallways under the stands. Down and through, passing out into the gathering dusk and the hammering field lights, I took a deep breath.
I walked the noise and stink of spilled beer for fifteen minutes before I saw him sitting alone in an unfavorable alcove twenty rows up in the stands. I walked straight to him, and I knew he had spotted me, knew I was coming, knew there was nothing he could do to dissuade me. I stood at the end of the row, taking him in, unmoving, until he shifted so slightly, his body posture relaxing. I slid into the space next to him, our bodies tense from the anticipation of unfulfilled contact. Then, he looked at me. He was so close.
I could see it in Leon's eyes, that infinite despair of close-held loss. It hadn't been fifteen minutes and I knew what had happened to him better than he knew it himself. Just under the sleeve of his guayabera, I could just make out the raw-looking finality of a new tattoo, a black koi artfully covering Maria. It joined the menagerie that flocked up from his wrists, a coterie of old animals and even older names. Gloria, a hare, lay close upon the eagle Kalina. An ostrich for Anna. A tiger over Linda. And on the refined underside of his left wrist, a thin snake curled around a name so old it was sun-faded to a beautiful blue.
He folded his hands and turned back to the track. I watched the ripple-shock of the starting gun wash through the crowd and break against Leon's shoulders. His head must have been somewhere else. Screams of the crowd tangled around us. I lost a multitude of minutes trying to absorb the terrible aching shapes of him. I could see the thin translucence of the skin on the back of his hands, the beautiful shape of his long, thin fingers interwoven. I could watch his chest rise and fall to the strong rhythm of his breath. I could just make out the bristle breaking through the shaved-smoothness of his chin, his jaw, his cheek. His guayabera stuck to his broad back even in the dying heat of the evening and showed the knitting of his muscles under the skin.
I was suddenly too aware of my body. I could measure each breath, a shallow panting through my softly parted lips. Deep in the muscles of my thighs, I felt an insistence, a rush of movement. My own shirt was so thin and close, and I felt it move against me. I was an agony of sensation, and here he was innocent and still.
A sudden settling in his shoulders released a tension I hadn't known was there and drew me back into the moment. The crowd was roaring, rising like a cresting wave. The races were over, the full night wrapped around us, only broken by the faraway lights. Leon took a pen and scratched something onto a scrap of paper against the back of his knee. He stood, and I found myself up, panicking. I tried to say something, but it caught in my throat.
Leon reached up and pushed back hair behind my ear, and I couldn't help myself but lean in to kiss the inside of his wrist. I could feel him twitch, to pull away, but he let his hand fall to the back of my neck instead. He looked down, then back up at me. I felt as weak as ever. Then, he pressed something into my hand, a stab of something too complicated in his eyes, and he left.
I was dazed and dissociated in a quiet way so I didn't notice walking back to my uncle's office under the stands. I stopped and came back to myself when I heard him from inside.
"Don't worry, Martes. The night is still good. We can make back the take tomorrow, next weekend, next month. It is not the end."
"Francisco, if we can't cover his bet, who will take us seriously to bet against us again?"
There was a cold quiet from the other side of the thin door. I stood, blinking heat and man-made drowsiness from my eyes. The reality began to sweep into me from the sudden coldness in my stomach.
"Don't you get it, Francisco!?" I heard coins scatter on the floor. "Stop counting! There's only one bet to pay. Nature or God or some evil force has smiled upon this man and conspired to end us."
"Maybe," my uncle began,
"Maybe, maybe, maybe!" Martes screamed, panic gripping him. "What could be maybe?"
"My Rosa, she knows him, and maybe for that friendship he will give us time to pay down the debt . . ."
Whatever magic had bewitched me in the stands was settled into a frightful twist in my stomach. I pushed open the door, and the two men inside turned to look at me, fear I had heard, embarrassment evident on their faces. I pushed out a trembling hand, the hand holding a small slip of paper, the gift from Leon to me, a gift he understood the meaning of, a ticket for a bet too incredible, too improbable. And there, on the back, I could see a thin handwriting I recognized with a visceral memory.

"Unlucky in love—" it said, "Lucky in life. A mi serpiente, Rosa."

3.1

In the bucket at the bottom of the well, wrapped tight in careful folds of sopping fabric, the oldest urn from the old home, an antique so aged and new-to-me lay not discarded but protected. Once the four or five black-masked men finally left, me bruised and bloodied, house aflame, contents ransacked, I crawled out to the ancestral well. The well house was protected on two sides by hemlocks whose laced branches built a roof no ray could pierce, and even so the wood of the walls was sun-bleached with age. I ached as I dragged myself up over the stooping floorboards, shuddered as I pulled myself up to the winch, gasped as the torn flesh of my arm stabbed new when I slowly levered the bucket higher. I held my breath, hoping against hope.
And there it was. Dull cloth against dull bucket, all aflame with the light from the house. Carefully, reverently, I pulled aside the cloth to show the shining ivory-azure pattern, the softness of the patina, the translucence of the ceramic. I lift the lid, find the contents still inside, and heave a bone-deep sigh. Three heartbeats, a soft inhale. I roll the urn from my fingertips and take two shuffle-steps toward the door before I hear it splinter and splash, disgorging its contents, dying its last death.