Cat Burglar

He steals in through the summer door,
walking lightfooted past my porch light,
and slinks onto her porch to lick his paws.

He's waiting for the lightbulb that was once on ,
a cartoon style halo over her head,
to go out again...

To flicker for just a moment...

So he can steal her blind again.

"Will you be my friend?"

I layed belly to the sky, toes draped lazily over the edge of the yellow vinyl raft, fingers air drumming in the water....drifting....in circles. I never opened my eyes, pretending to know when the clouds passed and exactly how they were shaped by the heat on my eyelids.....rubber stamps of sunshine in the cool negative shape of angels, elephants on their hind legs, horses with wings.....

I listened to the wind. To the trinkets in the sky. The natty faded towels on the clothesline; a sudden parade of American Flags....exactly the same size, the same color, as my kindegarten year.....hand over my heart ....the fabric billowing, the chain clanking hauntingly against the pole. Squirrels, or rats maybe, I don't know, ratatatted back and forth across the crooked fence line, racing madly to nowhere. There was traffic in the distance, and then close. Boom boxes rattling. Gears shifting. A siren. Still, I didn't open my eyes. This was my peace. And I was gonna live it.....

I don't remember dreaming. I don't remember the 45 minutes I disappeared from earth forever.

But I remembered how I got there. Comfy cozy in the lazy round river. Waiting on the boys. Floating round and round and round....saying thank you......

Butterflies and Hurricanes......

I twisted and twirled the same strand of blonde hair over and over again, weaving a pretend dreadlok back and forth between my fingers. My eyes were sun heavy, and each time I blinked, I did it slowly and savored the moment, my lashes like lazy palmetto fronds fanning me into summer sleep. I was bored with the conversation.

.

She babbled endlessly. A thousand words strung together like a macaroni necklace.... And she fidgeted. To the right, the left, under the table, across the table....A chihuahua frantic for table scraps....

.

She was making her move. Chasing Prince Charming. I blew smoke rings and watched them hover, transluscent doughnuts disappearing when they framed her face. She didn't notice. She didn't see his blue eyes flit from the right to the left and then settle on the pile of paperplates and pastic silverware stacked in front of him. She didn't see the sun falling into the river or the shadows from the giant Cypress trees turning into Gargoyles on the water. She was too busy bustin' her moves.....

.

The band came on and for just a moment, I thought she was going to leap onto the tabletop, Tom Cruise in high heels..... but she just yanked him, snatched him off his feet and swirled him out onto the floor. I took one last swig of cold beer and watched. Skinny arms flailing, legs up and down, spinning, and still.....she babbled on and on and on......"Me" language, her native tongue...

.

Silly girl.......

You lost him at hello....

The Butterfly Bar....

I'm the welcome wagon. The Go~Go girl. The cheerleader. I laugh, sway, twirl, spin...and never miss a beat. A face. A voice. Oh, I might trip sometimes, go splat on the floor, but I never miss a beat.....

And so I noticed them right away. Seven and a half weeks ago. Elbows on the bar. Boy's night out. And I watched them. They leaned in and tipped Roxanne. She smiled. And that's a good sign. From my side of the bar I knew they weren't being obnoctious, weren't spilling silly pick~me~up lines at the beautiful soul filling shot glasses and popping corks. Miss Macey settled down next to them, stirred her steaming coffee cup, luring the good stuff up from the bottom. She gave them her "One eyebrow up, one down" cursory "I'm watchin' everything you do, boys" glance. And she watched them well. Listened. Smiled. Smiled with them. And then I knew it was O.K. to make my move.

O.K. to walk over and meet my two new best friends.

They laughed at my peddler's bag of bottle caps and bought the next round. We've been no~touch dancing ever since. We've been to the ocean and the river and barbequed at 2:00 in the morning. We spent Saturday night at Kimbies, clanging cymbals, canastas and spoons. We've serenaded the sky, raspy voices and guitar strings wooing the stars....We've traded secrets, and dime store dreams, and happy ever afters. We've played follow the leader, catch me if you can, and "let's dance like Joe Cocker".....

And now we're an army. Of angels.

"Let's hear it for the boys......."

And the butterfly effect......

Blue Vinyl Sea.....

It was $218.00 three summers ago. Chey and I lugged it, rolled it over end to end, pushed it, shoved it. We lifted it onto the truckbed by the grace of strangers and once back at the little pink house, we started the ritual in reverse....lug, roll, push, shove. The vinyl dream was home.

As we grow old, we recant our childhoods in memories....time stamped by little houses and crooked sidewalks, by schools and the color of bicycles. In my new life, the rubber date stamp is a blow~up pool.... The first to arrive was just eight feet wide and a foot and a half deep. My grandbabies and I spent 7 days and 7 nights camped on the deck, rolling in the mammoth make believe waves.....dripping grape popsicles down our chins....and sun~ining our hair. We made boats from bars of Ivory soap and bathed in the pool, shampooed in the pool, and then ran in circles splashing.....kicking up foamy waves. They learned to hold their breath and let go of their noses. To float belly up without their bottoms sinking. Stone went home a week later, a "surfer dude" and Kyle, a bikini clad blonde bombshell. They had snorkel mask tans and swimmer's ear. We had the summer of love......



I finished off the last of the lazy months plopped up on the blow up ring, water dancing belly button high, reading favorite books with crumpled pages, dreaming......



And the next summer, Chey and I hauled home the Mother of all blow~up pools.



The lazy river.
The blue lagoon.
The vinyl sea.



Two summers kissed by dreams come true.....


Sleeping toe to toe....
Treasure diving.....
"Party in the middle of the pool!"....
Candlelight waves....
"Just how many people can fit in a blow up pool?"
Juicey bottle water wars.....
The marathon float.....Daytona 500 and two coolers of beer....
The courtship of the neighbors.....
Bottled margaritas.....
A real live pool boy....
Accidental Love.....
Hippie hammocks......
A bouquet of tiki torches....
A broken foot
and
Rollin' Stones on the stereo......



There was always gonna be another. From the moment, the blue lady sighed, curtsied to the sky and took her last breath, spilling 3800 gallons of blessed water cascading, there's was always gonna be another. I said it. Meant it. Believed.

But there wasn't. $218.00 grew. And this year, it would be a million dollar dream. The dusty space between my back door and Little House became the laundrey field..... tattered white clothesline swinging over last summer's shoreline. Towels and T-shirts, sails from shipwrecked stories of another time.

And then, the butterfly effect....

A giant blue box on my porch.

Tonight, she's three inches deep and rising. The grandlady of all blow up pools. And suddenly, I'm a millionaire.

"Let's hear it for the boys...."

Rickety Tickety Tock

It's an old door. Crooked from birth. And the hinges wail....whine....shriek, if taken by surprise. The inside frame is notched from an endless parade of hook-n-eyes screwed in at every level, in a futile attempt to keep her tethered, and later lost to wayward windstorms, escaping dogs, and hissy fits.

She's a great door. Her melodic night time creaking, whispers to me when there's company. Her rusty morning yawn, the tell-tell sign it's time for coffee with the neighbors. Her "enough is enough" random slamming....my wooden meterologist.

The handle is way up high. Hippie Mom's answer to the baby gate way back then....I look at it now and wonder what I was thinking.....Boogie men and seven year olds could never enter without bellowing at the gate first?

She's old. And tired. And sitting in the Sunday grass with the neighbors, I wondered at her longevity. How long can a screen door last? Blowing in the wind, knocking about in storms, opened and closed a thousand times, covered in a lifetime of fingerprints.....arms wide open.....

Tonight when I came traipsing in through the dark and yanked, she didn't budge. I panicked. Yanked again. A little harder. Ka-bump! She gave way. I scooched onto the porch and she slammed. Yeah, just like her. But something felt funny. The way she resisted. Scrunched her toes into the sandy floor and wouldn't budge. I turned around and pushed her. Nothing. Pushed a little harder. Nothing. Shoved her! KA-BUMP!, I went flying back out into the blackened driveway
head first into my neighbor's smile.....

"We put magnet's on her!"

Cinderella, and then some....

"You gonna sit with me for New Year's?"
"Course I am"
"Dressing up again?"
"Yeah"
"Did you already get your dress?"
"Yup"



"Is it long?"
"Mmmmm....hmmmmmm"
"Pretty, huh?"
"Mmmmmm...hmmmmm"



"You wearing those boots?"
"Yup"
"With your dress?"
"Yup"
"Are you kidding?"
"Nope"



"Okay"
"Okay"



"Can I have the first dance?"
"Yup"

Sweet Friend of Mine....

It was a ten speed. Spray painted by thieves, and then, unclaimed, sold at the Sheriff’s Auction for ten bucks. We scooped it up and I had wheels.

They brought me here kicking, screaming, pouting, listening to “A Horse with No Name” on the staticky AM radio. I wasn’t impressed. The cobblestone roads, before I fell in love with them, were just bumpity and made the little Toyota we had inherited by chance, sound rattley and cheap. Piled in the front seat, with Skinny sandwiched between my legs, I watched the fancy yancy houses go by, the “isn’t it just beautiful?s” and cringed. I hated it here.

The evening of the Sheriff’s sale, I took off, spiked pedals piercing my flip-flops, blonde hair flying, cigarettes stuffed in the back pocket of the too-tight peanuckle cut-offs. I didn’t have smoker’s cough then, and I flew. Around Brewer Hill, and down, and down, and down to the water.

They were standing, shirtless, at the end of the drive-way,leaning up against a cheap little car, smoking. Just down below. Two guys with long hair billowing, lounging , blowing smoke rings, and laughing at the sky. Stoned probably. I fidgeted my fanny on the seat. The electrical tape wrapping the seat, transforming it from orange to black, stuck to my upper thigh. With my right hand I yanked the bent and crumpled pack of Kools from the thread bear pocket, poked one in my mouth, and dug deeper for the lighter.

Closer.

Faces coming into focus.

In the wind, flying, I tried to light the cigarette. At sixteen I was cool enough to do this, and maybe, even, flirt, on the fly by.

And so of course, I crashed. A mangled heap of stolen goods and a skinless chin at their bare feet. They barely even moved. “I’m Christian” he said. “Nice to meet you”…..

We spent years playing driftwood in the ocean, floating until we washed up, sun burnt and stoned. I giggled with him through his affair with the next door neighbor, Mrs. Robinson . I painted his bathtub in psychedelic colors and we planted fish there. We danced on tables and hung from balconies together. He taught me to drive a car, we traded poems back and forth and stuffed them in a manila binder…. “Our book”…….

He proposed to my best friend , beer-giddy on bended knees. We toasted. I stood by him when he called off the engagement and told the truth that sent her heartbroken, into the fast arms of a passing Navy Base Boy. I was there when his Father poured a scotch on the rocks, and his Mama, the one he gained by chance, stirred the drink she had been nursing since noon, and held her husband’s hand. I was there for the announcement, the Hush that blanketed the house, their hearts, their dreams. I was there, when in acceptance, they celebrated all he had become, the circle he had created…..

I don’t know how many years it’s been, I don’t know the date, the anniversary of his leaving me. But I know I miss him. And in the quiet of the walls tonight, I felt him here. Today, Orhan reminded me I had guardian spirits visiting ….And he’s not kidding…..

Rest in peace, sweet friend….
I hear you knockin’…..
And I'm listenin'....

Behind the gate......

It was ugly. A big box tucked in the corner of the yard. One window and an old splintered door. I peeped inside and fell in love. Rickety metal shelves lined the walls. Giant penny nails were hammered everywhere. A box fan was wedged into the one window, cranked open and crooked, it’s electrical cord dangling like a dead snake hooked to the windowsill. My studio.

The lawnmower fell in love with it too. And the leaf blower, the rocky horse, the old pie safe I’ve lugged around for years. My tile collection, scavenged by the truckload, took over the floor space, stacked precariously and dangerously high. Eventually my album collection, the old wedding gown I saved for ….(What child of mine would want to wear the gown gone wrong?) , Jonah’s baseball cards, the hand-made stilts, and the leopard skin couch I scarfed from an abandoned house, all took up squatting rights there.

The boys used to sneak cigarettes and the occasional Budweiser there, adolescent legs dangling from the stacks of tile, pretending most probably to be perched on Hooter’s barstools. From the graffiti on the walls, on occasion they got lucky. In the clubhouse.

Three summers ago, after the hurricanes pealed it open ,naked to the skies, I decided I really didn’t want a studio in the corner yard. But she lived. She got all new walls, concrete this time. A beautiful new roof to match the house. And we stuffed her to the brim with coolie cups and neon floats, giant inner tubes and coolers, and called her…..well, we called her The Shed. The little dream whose time had never come.

Tonight, the measuring, marking, making good things happen for good people crew is coming over. We’ll clink and take notes and knock heads. The Angel driven trucks will roll in and gift us with drywall, insulation, lightening fixtures, a sink, maybe even air-conditioning. We’ll light the fire and toast to love and when we’re done…..

The little shed will be called home.

To a friend.

And maybe, this is all she ever dreamed of….

Slammed....

It’s just a crooked screen door. Kind of Florida-like, kind of Victorian, kind of 50ish. One of those. It’s the rusty hinges that do me. The cheap haunted house sound they make. The way they pro-create their own tainted WD40, oozing like dirty glue, dripping down the door frame.

The hinges. My doorbell. My pit bull. The way I know if my next door neighbor, Maggie, is ready for coffee…sneaking over in her pajamas on Saturday morning ,hangover plastered on her face….if my Father has lumbered up the drive-way , "The beer-garden-fairy", on Friday afternoon, to have his “dearest darling daughter” chat, if my son has successfully stumbled past the benches and made it as far as the screened porch to make bodily noises and expel his Friday night at my feet. But, made it home Alive.

It’s the way I know if the mailman, who has had a crush on me since 1999, has left a package from SLB, loitering if he thinks I’m at home. The way I know if Daniel got my cut-off notices in his mailbox again, and is slipping them discretely onto the outdoor coffee table.

It’s the announcement.

Anyone that rings the real doorbell, stands on the front porch, and leans past the wasp nests, through the bouganvilla,to put their dirty little fingers on the front door button, is a stranger. God, I hate that sound. The ringy ding screams trouble. On the other side of that noise stand cops, Religious witnesses, pizza deliveries to the wrong address, men in uniforms selling fertilizer, frozen steaks, and serving subpoenas. I have furniture piled up in front of that door. Even in a fire, we’d have to run out the kitchen door, couldn’t be saved by the sound of the saving grace. We don’t do the front door. It’s the screen door that spells welcome. The screen door that is dressed in an old piece of oak, carved by Skinny , that says “This house believes…”, the screen door that I slam when I’m having a hissy fit, that I flit in and out of, creaking, squeaking, slamming…..

God, I love the noise we make

When we’re not strangers……

The Final Room

By Fate and By Chance....

I found a friend.

Sweet, soulful Baron.....
May the butterfly wings that carried you on this everyday roadtrip,
now grow stronger and mightier with everyday....
May the faces and the hearts you touched
smile bigger and ache deeper, live fuller everyday....
May the gifts you gave
be opened
over and over again....

Wishing you, hoping you, eternal peace in a place called home....The Final Room. Love you Man!