First comes the phoenix, then the historian--I don't see much difference in the two of us, as we both transcend the actual occurence. We just appear at different times: while you're burning out, I'm stalling. I pick through the ashes once you're dead.
This time, they're waiting in the car for me as I pick through the debris of some forgotten church off the Interstate. This is my game, now, and I belong to any broken building across the state. I've been digging for two years now, been lying for the same.
This chapel has its name spray painted out, leaving only the simple announcement of "baptist church" against its white wooden sides; poison oak chokes away at the pillars and stone stairways out front. It's not as though there'd be any doubt, though--it screams Baptist, from the gaudy red-carpet guts to the two front pews that appear never to have been utilized. That's all over now, though. Nobody meets here, not on purpose. The roof has ruptured, leaving the ceiling tiles coughing out the remnants of hymns, scriptures, dead saints, and insulation--the remnants of the worship of an awesome God. The pulpit is just a podium now, commonplace with common names carved into its rotting wood. Lucky churches end up like this one, all honest and broken; all the others just let the cancers eat away at them silently until all the members have turned to dust. I shudder at my own sacrelige.
The piano is in decent shape, though its keys have been well-played and are missing the occasional ivory. I sit down to inspect it closer, resting my fingers upon the cool white tiles. They're sticky with spilled beer now and the guilty can on the bass notes is still overturned. Ants teem in and out, in and out. I strike the keys again and again, a simple hymn to anyone who may be listening.
The first real poet of the twentieth century died not long ago, but the newspapers didn't notice her... Every day I visited her sickbed, every day for a year. I watched the eloquent, beautiful belle wither away into a pallid child incapable of speech. I watched her dig her fingers into her curls, repeating the same word over and over as she rocked herself to sleep.
I know it hurts. I'm sorry.
But none of my sorrow could fix it. Nothing I did could kill the pain or bring back the late nights of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune on her television as we ate frozen blueberries from the previous season. There'd be no more sweet tea, no more sweet dreams after she tucked me into the spare bedroom's too-hot darkness.
I always waited until I couldn't hear her stirring in the kitchen outside that door before I kicked the blankets off and flung my young arms and legs across the sheets in a desperate attempt for coolness in the face of that Mississippi heat pounding on my window. I wanted to learn her trade, her grace and splendor; I never wanted to give in.
I never did. I was there when the morphine wore off, when they told me to say goodbye, when she died. There wasn't anything beautiful or spectacular about it--I lost someone important to me, but the pain stopped for her. They told me I was too hard, too honest, because I didn't pretend that the body that I saw before she died was the same one that held me when I cried as a child. She'd died a few months back, but everyone was too busy watching her chest rise and fall to notice. Everyone's sorry, but nobody's sorrow can fix it. It's human life, the circle. It's brutal. It hurts.
Still.
As I sit in this church, playing the piano for the ghosts and the saints and anyone else who will listen.
My feet itch from the stupid plants outside the door and my eyes sting with stupid tears.
I want to burn this place down, destroy everything beautiful I've found within it. I want someone to notice how bad things have become and how rotten to the core this place is. My heels creak against the floorboards and I stomp them out. I carve obscenities into the paint with my keys. I throw hymnals through the stained glass windows, out into the underbrush. I hope they rot like bodies and the ants find their way to them
down between the ivory slats
to eat them alive, leaving nothing but a memory of a song we used to sing on the front porch as the sun set behind the hills.


Only sleeping, sweetly sleeping,
While the angels vigil keep;
Jesus gives to His beloved
Rest at last in peaceful sleep.

Labels: ants, church, hurt, old buildings

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I'm not impressed with this yet. I think that it's harder to write about things that have actually happened because you get into this mindset of getting things exactly right, making sure to capture every detail, every feeling. It never really happens, no, but it's worth a try.
This is probably too many words to say too little. I'm not displeased with it, but it's most likely up for another revision soon.

Jenny and I are laughing in the backseat at nothing in particular. I can't see her and she can't see me and there's a boy sitting between us, but we're laughing. We're cruising, the five of us, down some old Delta road into the blackest night I've ever been a witness to. The rain is pounding on the windshield and the only break in the monotony of darkness is the Service Engine Soon light that's flashing on the dashboard. There's no key in the ignition, but we're still coasting down the gravel far too quickly. There's no music on the radio. It's raining small domestic animals.
Just an hour before, I'd complained about Jenny's arrival. She's dramatic and overcompensatory for her lack of grace and traditional beauty, but she's good at kissing boys and they like her for that. I figured I'd hate her, but I didn't. I wasn't jealous of her like I'd expected to be. Now Jenny's alive like the night, telling us about the man she'd been seeing and how he'd broken her heart and we laugh until we cry until we laugh again. I'm enjoying her company.
We sling gravel as we pull into the parking lot of the old school. The car halts and the solitaire of orange light flickers twice and disappears. We slide across cracked leather seats and slip into the tall grass, hearts pounding in anticipation and perhaps fear. The school once believed itself white, but is now pock-marked with wounds in its paint and mangled with tendrils of multicolored graffitti. Someone is a tramp, someone's a whore. Someone sucks some boy's dick, but ain't that commonplace in these parts? Something moves in the tall grass and I yelp louder than I should. Jenny bounds through the grass and places one hand over my mouth. I smile behind it as she takes my hand in her own.
"I'm scared, too, but be quiet, girl. They'll call the cops."
She removes her hand from my mouth, but continues to embrace my left. We traipse through the dew-laden weeds that choke the school, searching for an entrance. It's there, behind stairs and doors and piles of debris, but we're in now. Tony leads us in, his eyes wide and stride secure. He's been here, he's the pack leader. Our driver falls in step behind him, and the boy from the backseat. Jenny lets go of my hand as we climb the stairs and my heart pounds in rhythm with her footsteps.
A spider crawls over my foot. A spider, or a roach. I reach for Jenny, because I know she's terrified. Not because I'm scared, and not because she can help me. Not because I need her. I found the driver instead. His nerves are rattled by the cars passing, by the spiders and roaches and spirits in this place. He puts his arm around my waist. Backseat boy holds my hand opposite the driver. I feel like a trembling little coat rack in a restaurant downtown when it rains and people flee in for coffee, when they really just want a dry place to sit until the storm passes. My body is confused by all this contact. I exist as a solitaire, like the Service Engine Soon light--throwing out energy on an unreliable schedule. Like the school, chipped and vandalised but still strong on its foundation. I'm not made for teenagers to ramble through. Call off this false support.
Tony hesitates a few steps in, then we know it's time to go. Lights are flashing outside, blue and white. We break into a run, bounding over hurdles of ceiling tile and forgotten beer cans. We crunch spiders under our vintage flats, our expensive loafers. We're screaming like little rich kids, but the sound floats above us and gets caught in the rafters. I get my feet tangled in something and my knees hit pieces of glass and gravel and concrete. My jeans rip and turn dark with my blood, my palms rip apart like poorly-stitched cloth. I'm back on my feet, my heart pounding in my ears and wrists and knees and not in my chest--then I'm safe, sliding across the leather seats again, right beside Jenny.
Back in the car, my knees keep pouring out black blood. The Service Engine Soon light casts its light onto the backseat and bits of glass half-buried in my skin twinkle a combination of blue and orange, blue and orange. I feel them throb in time with the lights as Jenny pushes me down below the backseat. The police pass, but I remain below. I am fossils, or a mummy, or a child forgotten at the supermarket. I don't know what I am anymore.
We turn on our headlights and weave back through the old path, slinging gravel again as we hit the pavement. My stomach is a centrifuge, twisting and spinning as we take every curve. I feel faint from thinking of the world buried inside my kneecaps and palms--all the shards of things that could kill me. The roaches and the spiders. The boys who don't love me. Jenny.
When we get back home, everyone falls into the same bed, the one right inside the front door. They're laughing now--everyone, and Jenny. Not me, not anymore. I limp into the bathroom and press the old-fashioned lever lock on the door. I turn on the cold water in the bathtub and let it run as I peel off my bloodstained clothes. I sit on the edge of the tub, my feet submerged in the rising waters. I see my face reflected, shades of black and red and white, tainted with blood and spare makeup. I'm picking the glass out of my knees, drowning the spiders inside me. I ease into the chilly water until I'm in up to my neck. I inhale the sweet, pungent smell of the weed they're passing in a circle, and nausea hits me again. I take a breath and hold it and as I go under, I pray that I won't ever see Jenny again.

Labels: bayou, hurt, injury, jenny, old buildings, pride

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