Pink Dinosaur Dreams, Page 2

  He pushes me to the floor, where my body can mingle with its maker. He kicks me and there is the sound of crunching china, ivory, bone. Forty years he has not broken me. Forty years he could not choke me. But now in forty years he tries to squelch me. He presses his dirty boot to my face and my skull to the ground and its about to burst and its all about to burst and I am desperate like the butterfly pinned to a corkboard and I shout and push out my heart and I push out my shout and I push out my tongue and I... and I lick his boot.

  The grit of earth mingles with an unfamiliar tang on my tongue and I remember and I dare desperately to hope. Like starved vulture I descend to my feast and I wrench the man down to my ground and I scrape my tongue all along the grooves of his rancorous boot, pressing taste inside of me, seizing, begging that it will be enough.

  And then I am no longer shouting, I am laughing because it is enough and the world has burst into brilliant color. I see the moon, I see the thousands of moons, I see the moon for every night he has stolen from me, all dappled red and glowing pink in kaleidescoping sky. I am laughing and I think it has scared that man, and I vaguely remember that I want to scare that man, so I laugh louder.

  I laugh so loudly and so hardly that my fists bang the floor and come up bleeding and I lick the blood, blue blood and the sky turns a violent purple and my many moons shake with their uncontained glee. And I bang again and I cut again and I see that it is because of the shards of gilded china that chime and change and chink in a meadow of shards of gilded china. I fist one and the cut stings and I see that man cower in the corner and I decide that that sky is too achingly beautiful for anyone to be in misery. See, I am merciful. I am laughing and I am merciful.

  I bring the shard down and rake it into the white skin where that man has no heart and I yank it up and I thrust it down once again and I plunge it down into where that man medicated my stomach and I carve out my moon and then I'm breathing and laughing and I'm breathing harder as I lay back I realize that I am tired.

  So I go to sleep with a laugh on my lips and a restolen moon in my fist.

  Turtle Yearnings

  When I Go Bad

  I can't sleep.

  It's when the demons come:

  Crawling from my own brain cracks,

  Prying between my eyes,

  Clawing at my throat,

  Settling onto my skin...

  Like a heat.

  Like a lead blanket.

  Like a heavy pressing presence

  Of every lie,

  Of every face

  Sitting on me.

  Breathing isn't working.

  Each breath I draw,

  I stir the beast;

  I feel it fuzzying in my blood

  Growling through my veins.

  It rolls like waves.

  It is consuming me

  And I am screaming,

  But I am losing

  This battle

  Against my monster,

  My rage,

  Myself.

  At night, I am exhausted,

  But I can't sleep

  Because my dreams are the war ground.

  I lay awake,

  Fighting.

  Conquer

  Your Lips

  Forever Minus Seventy

  Paris is a beautiful city, the city of lights, the city of fashion, the city of timeless art [the city of striped sweaters, baguettes, and sensational mustachios]. But whatever else can be said about it, it is not the city of love. The city of love exists every ten years in a hotel on the banks of the Amo River, the indigo tear that slips like satin over the face of Florence, Italy. This hotel, "Blu Sogni," is nothing special, marble façade aged into a limestone green, slightly uneven steps, an aged porter with a smile and a thick accent. It has been in the family business for four generations now.

  I was only three when they came for the first time, and don't remember it well, but there is a photograph that we use in the brochure that captures their first moment: they are framed against the symphony of golden roses in the sky that showers The Amo every evening at sunset. He is immaculately dressed in a handsome tux, and she, in a scarlet gown, dripping silk like she'd been dipped into a vat of it. Their feet are blurred in the photo—he is twirling her and she is laughing, and in the crook of his arm, bent gallantly over her head, the picture comes to life. They are undeniably in love. And they've been in love every ten years since.

  When I was thirteen and beginning to question the entrenched playground beliefs of the cooties girls carried, they were vivid, vivacious, absolutely enchanting.

  When I was twenty-three and just shy of proposing that first time, they brought their children, two daughters and a son. She wore motherhood like a tattered straw hat—it was messy, frayed, falling apart and more often than not she looked like she'd rather cast it off and pull her hair out, but it was still something treasured, something timeless, something that completed her outfit. And if she wanted to just bask in the sun, damn the UV rays, without protection, well then he was happy to don the hat.

  When I was thirty-three and timid—scared of life and absolutely terrified of the enchanted life I'd helped bring into this world— their lines were starting to show, laugh lines around their mouths that never ran out of things to say to each other, crows feet around their eyes that never stopped shining.

  When I was forty-three and simply going through the motions, forgetting and trying so hard to forget to care about forgetting, age had colored out of their lines and he needed a new tuxedo, and she a dress with maybe not so much a plunging neckline. Yet despite these faults, he still twirled her with the grace of forty years ago—they'd aged like a fine wine, and they'd helped me remember.

  When I was fifty-three, they weren't speaking to each other. Well this didn't suit my granddaughter— when she wanted something, she went after it; she took after her mother that way—and so she stuck out her lip, puffed out her chest, walked across the floor of the lobby and tugged on the woman's dress. She asked to please see their show that they put on every ten years, the one that Granddaddy always talked about. Sometimes that's what it takes, and they laughed and they danced under the glittering lights.

  When I was sixty-three, he arrived in wheelchair and a stunning tuxedo. She, in a scarlet dress with sleeves that covered the varicose veins, pushed his chair around the lobby in a tight circle, much to the applause of the crowd they'd attracted over the years. It was slow, it was clumsy, but it was sunset, not yet nightfall, and we updated our brochure with a new photo.

  I am seventy-three now, and I am waiting in the lobby along with some fifty other people, young, old, white, brown, black, veterans of the event, or curious tourists whose interests were piqued by the crowd. I am waiting and I am wondering and my stomach is sinking. It's foolish to harvest hopes in something so impermanent as human life, as human love. Nothing gold can ever stay. And yet...

  And yet, I need this. I need this because my wife passed away this year. I need this because my daughter has just gone through a divorce. I need this because my granddaughter has suffered a miscarriage, and so much more terrifying than new life is the untimely absence of it. And we are all gathered here in our bits and our pieces and we waiting and wondering why everyone else may need this. And we are wondering how we can begin to take the next step, the step away from this crowd and this hope because it was too much to hope that maybe this wasn't gold, that this was scarlet, that suspended sinking fireball over the Amo.

  Just as I am about to turn away, there is a collective gasp. It is the whip and prodding chair—my heart leaps and roars, then quickly backs away, yearning, almost fearful to pounce. The sound of liberation, that painful burden of hope, is a collective gasp.

  The elevator dings open and out they come. She is wearing a scarlet dress that sweeps the floor and he has decorated his wheelchair with his bowtie. They take their place in the center of the room and just as she is about to start twirling his chair, he stops her. He asks for his nurse, a
nd it is a tense moment as she bends over him. But in a minute, he is standing, leaning on his nurse, his feet underneath his stout body for the first time in over ten years.

  He takes his wife's hand and pats it gently, then holds it over her head, and slowly, she turns underneath the crook of his arm. "Babe," he smiles, "Here's to another seventy years." He is unstable and about to fall, but his nurse keeps him standing and he keeps his wife twirling and they are twenty again, toasting their honeymoon, toasting a type of love that we've all been hanging on to, more radiant than any picture in a glossy brochure could capture. And his wife dries her eyes and hugs him around the middle and eases him back into his chair. She pushes him out to the terrace where their usual table is waiting as we walk out, back into the city and back into our own lives, silently wishing them a happy anniversary.

  A Requiem for Albus Dumbledore in "An Impressionist Sunrise"

  Synesthesia: as Inspired by Ed Sheeran's "A Team"

  When you pluck at your guitar strings, you thrum the telephone wires on their high wooden posts at wintertime, when the fresh snow muffles all sound.

  When you hum your humility you breathe a gust of wind underneath a sparrow's broken wing on the gray-blue days when the wind cracks the sky like ice.

  When you wink out your voice and your angels go to die you turn on the stars and shut of the street lamps and naturally I can see.

  In the flecks of your soul riding your voice like fallen mangos in the river, I can see.

  A Tribute to Adam

  Masks

  9/10 of What They Saw

  ColorMe

  Daddy came home crying today. Daddy, who is tall so that when he swings me up on his shoulders, I can cup the moon in my hands; Daddy, who is strong so that he can carry all the groceries in one load, even three gallons of milk; Daddy, who is tough so that he didn't even tear up he when he cleaned his cut from slicing mangos with an alcohol wipe. Daddy, who reads me a bedtime story every night and won't turn out the lights until he sees my smile, came home crying today.

  He tried to be macho as he slipped off his jacket and gruffly asked Mama for tea. He rubbed his eyes pensively; he didn't want anybody to know. But he didn't know that I saw. I saw him pull into our cul-de-sac and stop at the corner to get the mail. I saw the teenagers turn the corner, exchange glances, and giggle. I saw the look in their blue eyes as they took in my Daddy's brown. Brown shoes, brown skin, brown heart.

  "Brown scum," they jeered. In the afternoon sun, they lit up white like angels. "Whatcha hiding under the turban, old man? How 'bout you unravel it for us to see?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "Hey, we're just keeping the peace here, you could be smuggling something."

  "Please, I'd like to get my mail."

  "Answer us old man! Where'd you even get that scarf, your mom's soiled lingerie drawer?"

  "Please, my mother is in India, I just want my mail."

  "India? You are smuggling something! We've got a terrorist here!"

  "Please, I just need my mail."

  "No, dirty fucking Paki, what you need is to get out of our country! We don't want filth like you! Go back to Al-Qaida! America hates traitors like you!"

  "Please, no, I just want my mail!—Please stop spitting—"

  "America shits on your kind! I've taken dumps prettier than you, get out of here!"

  "My mail—!"

  "Get out of here!"

  There's a scuffmark on the back of my Daddy's coat. They threw a shoe at him.

  Daddy didn't read me a bedtime story that night; he sat on my bed and looked at me. I looked at him. He hadn't changed out of his work clothes. After a moment, he said, "Tomorrow, wear your hair in a ponytail to school, not these two braids. And pack a peanut-butter sandwich, not roti and dal."

  He was wearing the same shirt he wore to work. "Why Daddy?"

  Casual Friday, it was his favorite t-shirt. "Because this is a great country of equal opportunity where dreams come true. America is your home; don't let anybody tell you differently." He dropped a kiss on my forehead and got up.

  "Smile Daddy," I had to remind him.

  He turned back and lifted the corners of his mouth, "Smile sweetie." Right before he turned out the lights, I read the script on his shirt: I love the U.S.A.

  The Phenomenon of Something Permanent

  The storm was pink like flesh

  And gray like dust

  And blue, like so much infinite, insurmountable blue.

  The fourth of July,

  Colors popped outside

  But here lay bald white so that you couldn't look away

  Thin white, with just a hint of yesterday.

  Yesterday was thrumming, humming, throbbing

  Rich soil

  Good, brown, thick soil

  Pulsing just underneath the skin.

  Base, elemental sparks exploded into life in the unnoticing night.

  Here, in this cold room,

  Living breathing fighting cells gasped for sweet reprieve to an anguished audience.

  War raged in his bloodstream and smattered scars in the sky

  They prayed and pleaded and bargained and cursed

  But Cancer, unheeding, claimed him.

  Fire licked the air and licked out, the Ephemeral Dragon,

  And she stood off to the side and let that wall of Unreachable Permanence

  Slam her and ram her down.

  Then she got up and grew up and said goodbye to her little brother.

  thisclose

  The Last Confession of My Vans

  Pink Dinosaur Dreams