Laura Kasischke

Someone smashed last



week through the neighbor’s



glass back door



and stole his electric guitar.



 



Or the mouse in the trap:



Sweet crumb still sweetening



between its teeth, and the whole



history of its species, in



attics, in grain sacks, in



 



the golden ideal of the golden field.



 



The way the sad child returns to his



sad seat



after sharpening his pencil.



 



Or the newlyweds’ rowboat



at the bottom of an ocean.



 



And the woman on the front porch



who keeps discarding things from her heart:



 



The deathbed.  The divorce.  The friend



in the restaurant



in the booth near the window. The glass.



The glare.  The impatience



 



on her friend’s face as the friendship ended.



 



Somewhere tonight a thief



is attempting to play



an electric guitar.



The wolves have already worn



a dark path in the grass around his house.



They’ve



 



not yet



begun to howl.



But they will howl:



 



These great ambitions, slinking



back one day



through the mess they’ve made



to return



the infernal thing.

Because some of them crawled on broken



hands and knees to save me



with their poems.



 



Because I was only



wretchedness at the edge of an abyss



of fashion magazines, and that



 



trickle of water down the side of their mountain



into my empty cup, which I refused to drink, they



were offering that to me.  Because



 



I washed my face in their blood.  Because



I tossed my hours in their coffins.



Because I was otherwise just dust rising off



a lampshade.  My



tatters in rags without them:



 



A girl blinded by her own hair



riding her bike somewhere—



stupid, dying



for want of what



was written there.



 



A glittering starvation, forgiven.  Willing



to burn their hands for me



to deliver it, burning



while I denied that it was burning.



 



I was like a child outside a cave of snow



that had collapsed on her fathers.



I laughed, wildly, for a little while.



 



And then I screamed.



 



And then I pouted.



 



Then I grew older, and had to begin



to dig my own pitiful little



hole with a teaspoon to get to them.

Their poor mothers’ white gloves on the waters.  Their desperate fathers, too.



Their unborn children dressed



in little unlaced shoes



being read to from unwritten books in undecorated rooms.



 



Shovelful of unfathomable. Crumbling castle of could have been.  So many prayers hanging from so many hooks.  So many unconscious flowers engulfed in hours



 



swaying, saying pardon-moi, wearing



fleshy halos, breathy crowns.



 



And the butcher’s bloody little heaven



in a hole.  The nurse unwinding and unwinding bandages upon bandages until



 



nothing but bandages are left.



 



A little gasp of laughter after that.



 



An hourglass washed up by the sea.



The soapy light of a late June afternoon. And the doves in the hedges



like plans for the future.



 



Those doves, such



gentle, nervous guests, and—so polite.



 



So let me ask you.  Now



that we know what happened



next:



 



What did they have to hide



and where did they hide it?

My best friend since second grade.
Same diner, same schedules, same uniforms, same day.

This friend, I used to boss her around (“You be the sick
one now.
Get on the ground and pretend you’re to vomit.”
I’d draw
on her face
with Magic Marker while I held her by a pigtail
while she begged me to stop. Which I didn’t

until she had a face full stripes and stars and pox
and names of boys she liked and boys she hated and
the rides at the amusement park was afraid to go on.
Rolling Thunder. Tower of Screams.
A diner. Her

single mother told her she needed
to make some money and no one cared how she made it.
My parents told me that if I ever planned
to find out if I was any good at anything
I’d better start trying
to find out now. They

had no idea what a list I had of things I knew I could do
better than anyone else. These things had to do
with stealing clothes—from

anywhere: locker rooms, department stores, friends. And
a few other things for which the word
entrepreneurial had surely been invented, although
I hadn’t heard it yet, and even if I’d known
the word and told them what I could trade
between classes
in the staircase
for cash from the middle hollowed-out book, they
wouldn’t have been impressed.
“Get a job,” they said.

And, yes. Just
as they’d known I would, I learned
everything I’d ever need to know about the thing
I was best at then. And

so did my friend.
She’d pass me with a tray in her hands and a French
fry in her mouth. My

friend, the weak sister in my fairytale, in her uniform. Which
was mine as well. Something
pink and short, which she
turned it into the centerfold
of a Playboy magazine
without needing
to take it off, with no need
for nudity or pornography or four staples down its center, no
glossy paper. She

just walked over, wearing it, to some guy, and spilled coffee
on him, and
he laughed. She got a rag. She
blotted him up all over before she brought him
another cup of coffee and his burnt toast—and

oh my God, her tips. At
the end of every shift. She crammed the wad of soft bills
in her purse along
with the cloudy weight
of all those quarters
and heft the strap of it over her shoulder.

I learned
how cold the walk-in refrigerator, where
the ice cream dreamed in the dark could be. No
hurry. We

could dream in there forever, those
frozen tubs, and me. I learned

how it felt to be
solid, and then to thaw, and then
to be consumed, and then—

how hot it was in the kitchen. I
could linger there, being
splattered with those scalding micro-
droplets of grease blown
off the grill by the breeze
of a short-order cook’s sneeze. Never

once did I say, Ouch. But, as if I had, how

many times an hour
the kitchen staff would say to me, Get
the hell out of here
if you can’t handle the kitchen.

I learned
that if I stared
out of the window
of a diner at night, I
could see straight through myself, and I
was a shadow
waiting to happen.
On the other side of me
there was a salad bar. The lettuce

had already browned around the edges. I
was the one who had to toss
those pale leaves around until
the browned ones were on the bottom. And

it was my job to refill the chilled ceramic thing
that held the shredded cheese. She
wasn’t going to do it.

Or in the window, looking
at myself in it, I could see not only
the salad bar behind me, but

the salad bar inside of me, which
stretched into the distance for a million miles
or years, with
its bowls of coleslaw
and it plastic squeezer-bottles
half-full of orange salad dressing. It

was lined up in the past and in the future, like
years of insomnia—my
ancestors’ insomnia, and the insomnia of my children’s
children’s children, all
of us waiting for generations, not
so much for sleep, but for a shift
in the whole idea
of sleep would, for the day when sleep would be recalled
as quaint, and sad. That
salad bar suggested I might be
the first living creature on Earth

who wouldn’t need it.

I learned that.

And when the manager
brought us together said
that one of us had to go, I nodded as
I’d seen my father
nod his head. I cast
my eyes down to the floor
the way my mother did
when she picked up the phone and someone asked her a question
to which she had no answer. “I sure

wish I could turn the two of you
into one girl and keep
you both,” said. Clerical

work, to me, he suggested. I left

my uniform on a hanger in the bathroom.
Before I left, my friend
ran into my arms, sobbing—or
at least pretending to sob. “I

personally thought you were
wonderful,” she said, “at your job,” in

a way that made me
want to die.
That night

I tried to kill myself
by swallowing an aspirin
without water. But it slid

right past my tongue, down my throat.
I was relieved.
I wanted to live. There would be

brownish oceans
in my future, with brownish waves
washing up
on shores. There was

the purity of wolves devouring
the purity of rabbits. And

birds to scribble
all over the sky. Also
bored children and dense thickets, full

of a thousand members
of an audience
standing up and clapping
for a band.

Concert finally over. Everyone
deaf, dazed, just
wanting to get out of there, go home, wishing
they’d never come.
I’d be one of them. But

I’d wait in my seat until the rest had left. Then
I’d see
the lead singer
(too famous to be named) come
back on stage to find
a guitar pick he had dropped. He’d
scowl and wave at me, friendly
and full of hatred. I smiled
and shook my head, which

seemed to startle him. He said, “It
sucked.” He said, “We suck. But
at least we know it, don’t we?”

My reply: it
was perfect. It

changed both our lives. We’d

go on together, forever, and never
need to speak again. We

knew what we did best, both of us, after that, and
we’d do that, exactly—although

in order for you to believe me
I must never tell you what I said.

Be brave today, thing made of flesh as you decay.



 



Be kind and try



to spend less money.  Try



to avoid



conflict with a Pisces



 



in a parking lot



at night.



 



He might have a knife.



 



Or, if you are not the type



to find yourself arguing in a parking lot at night, try



not to complain to the neighbors



 



about the noise, for



you may need those neighbors



when the water heater explodes.  They



 



may arrive with towels



and buckets in your basement, just



 



as you may find yourself



on their front porch, bearing



death’s casserole one warm morning in July, after



 



the unthinkable.



The Pisces.



The parking lot. Their



 



beautiful teenage boy, who



 



even as a baby



seemed afraid of nothing, listened



to music too loud



 



and to no advice.



 



A whole



sky full of stars



reflected in his eyes



 



as on the cool blank edge of a knife.