The Go-Away Girl

It's what she called herself as she walked away from the group of boys that had just shown up. Mark had punched her in the jaw for effect this time, but it didn't bother her. Philbert was in from the service and was the meanest bastard she knew. He was a Marine, and at nine years old all that meant to her was "asshole". Every time he came home, the temperature of the neighborhood changed.

She climbed her tree as high as she could get, and felt the summer breeze sway her gently. She listened. The boys all played war games and Philbert told wonderful and horrific stories that those boys believed. She didn't. But that didn't matter. None of it did, really. This wasn't new.

She closed her eyes and made impossible wishes, just like she always did when she was told to go away. Not once was she asked to stay but she wasn't bitter. She just accepted it as life. Unhappiness never occurred to her, not even as she rubbed her jaw.

It would pass. Philbert would go away. The rest of the boys would go home and she would be a part again. It wasn't that she didn't fit in, or that she wasn't the toughest kid around, or that she could throw and hit a baseball farther than the rest, or that her hair was just as short. It's that she was a girl. And she turned that hatred inwards, at her gender.

She could cut her hair, she could wear her bother's hand-me-downs, and would never correct anyone who called her a boy, or son. Sonny. It felt good. Like she belonged somewhere. But she could never change what God gave her.

Regardless, the boys were her best friends. Singly and sometimes in groups, but there were always hidden places she was never allowed. Not ever. Go away, girl. Boy stuff happening.

Understanding and acceptance would come much later (long after her body betrayed her and did what girls' bodies do), but in that tree with a sore jaw, she knew she had to wait til it was safe to come back again. Eddie would come looking for her, and they'd dig in the dirt and have rock fights, and play cars and blow up Barbie dolls with firecrackers again. Eddie was her favorite; he knew when to defend her and when to back off. And that nothing would buy him a rain of her fists like protecting her.

Besides, she knew when it was time to go away.

Lockdown

It's where she goes when the world gets to be too much. When too much outside gets in, stretching tendrils around her insides, squeezing until the slow burn rises in her chest and in her throat.

She shuts them all down and out, closes open doors so she can sort the wheat from chaff. Self from Other. She grants menial tidings--now and again. A promise that the distance will close again. Eventually. When the grip loosens and she can draw a breath...any breath at all beyond the shallow pant of survival.

She feels the searching. Reaching. Seeking. But she coats herself in an oily cocoon that lets them slip past; faint wonder where she went rather than confusion as to why she's gone.

Eventually they will learn.

They have to.

Some pieces are meant to remain in the darkness, where she hides in this lockdown place. Pieces that broke off long ago, edges worn by time and nervous caresses of fumbling fingers...and eventually care. Love, even because darkness grants contrast, shade and shadow. The greys, where all the interesting stuff lives.

She flirts with that grey. Walking the razors edge, balancing the Darkness and the Light. Hips swaying gently side to side as she moves in sensual rhythms, never so far she falls. But close. So close. Sometimes too close.

And just before the fall.

She locks herself inside again.

Stay the Night

Hold on as tight as you can. Enjoy my taste and scent. Wonder if this is real and dance that line between. Feel the moments as though they are true; me reaching so deep you wonder if that heat beside you is mine.

I whisper the promises you hold in your heart and they feel so real in your chest, that I can distort your reality; make you create love where there once was none. Make hate where there was love. Ambiguity, my enemy.

Then.

Sit up in a halo of morning. Wonder. Feel what I leave behind; heat on your face, weight on your chest, those promises that taste like the sweet nectar of a lover's kiss.

But I am gone. Air once silver burned away with sunlight and those empty promises I will never keep. Soon enough you will forget me, like a fist loses water.

I am, after all, just a dream.