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Icicles
Hung in Moonlight ~
by Leonora Record
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Three
A.M. words aren’t a string of pearls: they’re the shit of
the day you’re trying to flush. Bright as the stars of winter,
he won’t get out of your mind and you can’t sleep. Camomile
tea. Hot milk. Cinnamon toast, melatonin, a scotch and a
warm bath - what, what!?!
Deep breathing, progressive relaxation, counting sheep.
What the hell’s he doing in your mind; and what the hell
are those sheep doing?
I
think of her in the future - growing strange, old - yes
older than middle-aged, wearing peculiar bright clothes
and sitting alone in the Sylvia Hotel with the daily special
and a fat pot of Earl Grey tea. But she’s not old yet and
last Friday night her hair was freshly coiffed and there’s
little that makes a woman feel sexier than hair that’s just
been done. Goddammit, of course she feels good after spending
$150 to have an attentive gay man compassionately massage
that best of erogenous zones with finger-skating spirals
and twirls.
Think about it, for that price, maybe... |
So, off to celebrate that night’s feeling with a drink -
not Earl Grey. She sat alone in the bar with her freshly
uncapped beer and eyes glazing out on English Bay, deciphering
the visual morse thread of lights. No one had been in when
she rang to ask them out for a drink and there was no one
she wanted at home. With uncertainty she had stood at the
pay phone, a sleek reminder of a time when all phones were
black, distinctively curved, the weight of something definite
in your hands, with rotary dials that whirred round with
an affirming sound. She thought about it, thought about
it, walked in past little clutches and cliques of coziness,
sat down before the window, facing the window, like kneeling
before a shrine. This is the only thing she prays to any
more - the Corona and the lime and the holy ghost on the
water of the bay, and the shiny window, distracting her,
reflecting light, and throwing the deep black water into
the room back at her face. She fished for the lime in her
beer to squeeze it hard again, sure there was nothing left
in the wedge but three drops trickling slowly, like the
laughter from the blurs behind her, like serious dialogue
dribbling down their chins, politics and dinner and nothing
really, nothing at all, just thin reflections shimmering
inside the wide wavy stretch of glass, as she was, stuck
in the luminosity between dark quiet sea and hushed reality
rushing in, cracking rubies on waves, draining toward this
odd muffled shore, trying to string it all together between
gulps, the velocity of passing lightly, getting by and just
gallantly being.
Later that week she saw the film “Ladri di biciclette” -
“The Bicycle Thief”. After she couldn’t go home. For hours
she drove round and round looking for it - the cycle, and
the sense and the middle ground rapidly shrinking away.
Hunting beside the dumpster, down the railway line, maybe
down here where the cops huddle, where little warm squares
cluster geometrically up this brick walled grille-clenched
building, or here nestled beside a glossy fresh washed limo
and restaurants named after memories and respectful longings,
or here caterpillared beneath bushes huddled and wounded
like clumps of restrained fear shivering for warmth in the
dark peat of unspoken parkland.
Of course in the morning this bay’ll cup sun in its hands,
generous, warmed round the curve of the coastal scree wrapping
this fine city securely. Yet tonight all I can think of
is how I can’t seem to connect with him, and the cold won’t
put it down, so it burns the night long. Stars so bright
they’re like diamonds and like neon and like clear lonely
words strung out late in our spiral galaxy, a womb inverted,
a gutted world spread, hung inside up. Brightest of all
stars, Sirius panting and Orion of Winter naked and hunting,
flashing his silvery sword, white white and so blue. Stars
shoulder and heel, and on his torso linking Mintaka, Alnilam,
Alnitak the zenith, their filament lined up 60 light years
from each other. There’s no sleep tonight and no sense of
it. All we know is clear red Betelgeuse dying in Orion’s
left armpit, Bellatrix balanced on his right, blue Rigel
in his foot, and no satisfaction. Winter stars are bright
hot and blue and no sense in this, hot and blue and 900
light years away from you.
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