Fairytwinkle Soup and Other Short Stories...

I remember when Skinny was little and she used to run away. She'd have on the same little dress she wore for years and a quickly swiped pack of gum, maybe a marble or sidewalk chalk ,and she'd hit the trail. Long legs flying, hair dancing in the wind. And she never looked back. Not once.

Eventually, we'd have to go and fetch her. Find her in the cubby of an oak tree limb...periously dangling over traffic, or squatting at the lake edge, stirring the brown water with a magic stick....

And so it goes that we all grow up, grow old, and forget how to runaway....We pack electric toothbrushes, cell phone chargers, cowboy boots and crayons. Bayer aspirin, cold packs, and dirty laundrey. We take it all with us....

And then some.

Next year, I'm going Naked.

Now....

It's 93 degrees on my porch and one by one, I shear off the legs from a stack of hand me down levis... These are for Skinny, this pair for Kimbies, a ratty tatty pair for myself. I reach down and wind my hair up into a knot, thread a bic pen threw it to keep it off my neck. I'm melting. And I smile. The broken AC is paying for how may nights at the beach?

I lug a giant tupperware box into the kitchen and start tossing necessary evils into it....salt, pepper, a cork screw, the camera, sidewalk chalk, a flashlight, paper fortune tellers, packs of no name cigarettes. We go without eating at home, we won't need much food at the beach....And I smile.

I wander through the house with a Winn Dixie bag and a peace backpack chocking random things in at will....the last bikini's I'll ever wear, magic markers and paper, little Love postcards for playing Pixies. I wonder for the last time where I left my little suitcases...what rendevous I came home from bagless...and what priceless pair of old jeans were lost in the leaving. And I smile at my makeshift luggage.

Less than 48 hours....

And we'll all be home...

Meet me at the Sandbar

Midnight.

It wll be 7 days...
Until we've waited 365 days
to pull into the coquina drive way
and
be free...

7 days until
the hum of the dripping little air conditioner
lulls me to accidental sleep on the rare occassion I give up and give in to motel logic...
until we're pretend skating around the Tiki Bar...
Couples only...
Backward skate...
Until the sun rises 10 mornings in a row to smile at us...over a blue, blue endless highway, or playing peek~a~boo behind the pink clouds of a fickle morning...
Until Jimmy has to run to the corner store to stock up on Michelob Light...
Until we have no clocks, no rules, no barefoot boots and
we laugh at
everything
that landed us here
yet
again...

at the Love Fest....

Lying in a hammock tethered by heartstrings....

The Crying Moon

"Watch your step" he bellowed as I threw one clutsy foot out of the truck door...the second fringed moccasin hit the parking lot floor before I could quip over my shoulder "I know"....

Of course he knew I wouldn't remember to be careful...
couldn't,
it's not in my nature....
And before landing at our last stop,
I parachuted out the door
and landed in a pile of pick up sticks on the gravel driveway.

He cringed. I laughed. And we called it a night.

In the morning, black and blue, and hobbling yet again, I remembered falling in slow motion... the click clack of the door opening, the billowing waves of wind as my ruffled and crumpled skirt sailed behind me, the smile creeping up fast, frozen laughter captured in polaroid color, right before I hit the ground.

In the morning I remembered,
that sometimes,
I just like to fall....

Face first into the moment.
Kiss the gravel goodnight.
Take chances.

And sometimes,
I skin my knees.

It was a crying moon,
And I could have cried,
but it wasn't in my nature.....

I needed to save that for a day I was steady on my feet....