Ben reflected on the flames licking from six chunks of maple he’d split that morning and pulled from the truck bed that evening. If he looked to his right, he may have noticed how Lissa’s brown eyes reflected the flames, too, only doubled.
He just stared at the fire and sighed over his disabled truck, stuck there just off the old Adirondack logging road near Oven Lake. A less practical guy might think it looked like it was kneeling there in the brush, its headlight eyes peering into the dark like it was searching for something.
But Ben was anything but impractical. Lissa told her sister that Ben had one direction – forward — and two speeds – fast and stop. She’d almost learned to accept him missing the right and left of things, like how Lissa’s heart beat twice as hard since her accident.
“I doubt you planned getting us stuck in such a mess. Too out-of-the-blue, even for you. Too many moving parts,” he said.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. But now that it has, I’m kinda glad it did. You know, we haven’t cuddled like this since…”
“Are you cold?” Ben said.
“Nope. I’ve got you and this fire to keep me warm,” Lissa said.
She kissed his cheek not facing the fire and noticed how it felt almost as cold hers was hot. She pressed her cheek against his.
“So what are we going to do?” he said. “Why can’t you make a call?” Lissa still didn’t understood Ben’s refusal to carry a cell phone. How he said he felt uncomfortable being tailed by some invisible overseer. Maybe, she mused, like an electronic conscience. But that was Ben.
“Tomorrow morning we can walk out to where I have coverage. For now, I just want to snuggle under this blanket, the fire crackling, moon smiling down, the loons looning by the lake.”
Ben broke her cheek-to-cheek link and stared into her face glowing in the firelight.
“Looning?”
“Sure, like how they’re being in the moment and dealing with things as they come.”
“Like large rocks hidden in the brush?” he said.
“Like nature revealing itself in its own time and its own way.”
“Like broken axles on an F-150 loaded with firewood and other unexpected…”
“You said you thought I’d be okay. And is it really so bad?”
“Hell, yeah, you need to be careful.”
“I thought I was. But I guess I was looning.”
“In the moment, eh?”
“Yes. You know how when things are too heavy and the momentum builds and you just can’t stop in time and…stuff happens. Right?” she said.
“Yeah. But look what your being in the moment got us. So when are you gonna…”
“Call? Tomorrow, soon as I can. Tomorrow.”
“Jesus! Wish you were more careful,” Ben said.
“Me, too.” Lissa said. “I’ll fix it all tomorrow.”
“Get some sleep, will ya?”
But Lissa’s stinging eyes already were closed tight as the wind shifted away toward the lake, carrying away the fire’s smoke with it. But not thoughts of the loons on Oven Lake and the accidents that got her there.
Here’s a double-sized version of my 250-word super-short story I drafted for Siobhan Muir’s weekly Thursday Threads feature. I had to use the phrase “you need to be careful” in it. This story started in one direction and then got Hemingway’d in an entirely different one.
We’ve waited so long
to hear the other say it,
dipping a toe here,
not finishing a sentence there,
looking into eyes that
stare back with the same
hopeful glint. Or is it
a hopeless glimmer?
“Just say it,” you say
without speaking.
“Can’t you tell me?”
I sigh into a tackle box full of
flashy interrogation marks.
And still neither of us bites.
Is it really that big a deal?
We’ve each heard the other
say it about this song or
that ice cream or something
so small it only merits a
“um-hmm” in response.
But what if I said it?
What if you finally told me?
What would really change?
Especially since we’ve already
told each other without saying
one word, let alone three.
I think it would be nice
to spend an evening together.
We could wax poetic about
the waning play of light
behind the trees, the houses,
the curve of Earth, while watching
the sun take its leave of us.
There’s a lot going on in that word…
evening. We say it and understand
it means sunset, dusk, gloaming,
but also when twilight balances
in its hands those even shares
of day and night and the golden hour
takes the field, but gives you a gift
I’ve seen only in my imaginings.
It would be nice to see you
resplendent in such a setting,
of place, of sun, of gold,
a sunlit echo of days spent together,
nights apart, and moments when you
were the jewel in evening’s crown.
We share this physical world,
but have always really lived
in different ones our own.
They run side by side
so closely, almost intimately,
in a metaphysical cosmos,
we've almost touched -
even feeling your breath
grace my atmosphere -
but we never really have.
Most likely never will.
There have been times, though,
I’ve thought of jumping
the rails of my world,
leaving behind its polished
orbital monotony just
to touch yours, only to envision
the resulting train wreck
such a conjoinment might
ignite. But for a moment,
maybe longer, what a bright light
we’d give this woeful world
we already share.
The words string out before you
with my message from within.
And sometimes they’re just for two.
But those? They’re hard to begin.
Written words are simply that,
black squiggles on a white field.
As deep as a sailor’s tat,
and yet they’re supposed to yield
a linkage of two minds where
we exchange gifts all year ‘round
with colorful wrap we’ll tear
revealing our thoughts, sans sound.
Communication, I feel,
the give and take between us,
on paper’s not quite ideal
and doesn’t take a genius
to wonder if other ways
might someday be allowed,
where we could meet face-to-face
or hear our voices out loud.
But if that’s not to happen,
I guess I can only say,
this keyboard I’ll be tappin’
and hope to touch you that way.
I used to see it wherever I went
and now dream to see it if only once more.
Even in pitch dark it’d shine in its own way,
on the ceiling as I lay alone on the floor.
I could see it in shadowy memory, as well as
in the memory of shadows we’d cast.
I’d see it even with my eyes closed, as if
it were the sun-bright thing I’d seen last.
Yes, now it’s gone, like an imaginary friend,
that a child learns one day to ignore.
But I can’t ignore what my imagination describes
some days, which I think is what my imagination’s for.
And so this, another dream in winter daylight,
whose vision grows longer as each week goes by.
Even as the number of my days grows shorter,
so too my vision fades no matter how hard I try.
I guess then we’ll not see its like again,
unless your sore heart and my mind's eye reconcile.
But what I wouldn’t give once more to see,
through the twilight of my words, your true smile.
I don’t really know you, just like
you never knew me. You assumed,
ever since once I opened my mouth,
and out came some impermanent impertinence,
as I spoke the thought of a moment.
True, here and there I’ve expressed
myself embarrassingly in black and white,
that more enduring medium with which
I’ve abased myself.
I can’t change who I am, though I can
always change my mind. If you
don’t believe that, then I guess
that’s proof perhaps you’ve
never changed, either.
That’s fine, though, I wouldn’t wish
to change you. Well, maybe just
one opinion.
I’m not…
I’ve broken so many
of my promises to you.
In all honesty, I didn’t mean to.
I hope you didn’t think I broke them
because they have all been lies.
I’ve never been able
to keep a lie very well, either.
You need a good memory
to be a competent liar.
And that is a talent I lost
through years of falling and
breaking myself, like a promise.
In the end, what does it matter
the promises one makes
or the one’s one cannot keep?
A promise is but a wish
not yet fulfilled.
Kind of like all those you wished
I’d never made and
all the ones I wished you had.
I’ve learned the unfortunate lesson
life’s too short to make many promises
and it’s too long to tell many lies.
All either do is let you down.
Just like me.
A Thing for Words 