Kat's Kradle

When I loved you, the birds died. They fell right out of the sky, out of the trees, out of their roosts. Their tiny bodies littered the streets and the sidewalks, covered the roofs of suburban houses and the tops of the tallest skyscrapers. Children ripped off their useless wings and taped them to their backs, pretending that they could fly. Worried mothers swept them off their porches with brooms, picked them out of their rain gutters with rubber gloves and chucked them down the sewer until it overflowed with delicate bird corpses and the city had to find a better way to deal with the disaster. Men with shovels and cold, uncaring bulldozers cleared them away with impassive efficiency. Doomsayers predicted disease, famine, death. Scientists marveled at the occurrence, made headlines calling it “a fascinating opportunity for study”. Politics was much the same, and no one was very surprised. But the question was on everyone’s lips, “How did this happen? Where did this come from?”

I knew why; it was you. The shift of my heart, your place solidified and grounded into my life. A name instead of a vague pronoun, a face to fill the empty space that had been waiting for you. I knew that it had plucked every flying thing from the sky, stilled the wings of starlings and sparrows alike and subjected them to the same intense force that pulled me to you. The power of the birds sucked into my soul as it took flight for the first time. I knew, but I kept the secret to myself. I let them wonder. I let them pass me on the street and go about their lives never knowing that an average girl’s fluttering heart was capable of changing the laws of nature. 

Today, cars on the road sounded like the ocean. And I felt the concrete beneath my feet turn to sand. It covered my toes, and my feet sank into it until the sand kissed my ankles. Salt on my tongue and seagulls calling over the din of crashing waves. If I close my eyes I can imagine the wind tugging at my hair has the tang and the bite of an ocean breeze. If I close my eyes, I can imagine a lot of things. I imagine I can feel the tide coming in, the water rushing around my knees. I can feel it lifting my dress and taking my weight until I am free and floating on its surface, borne by waves as tall as skyscrapers to an island I don’t know the name of, or maybe to nowhere at all. The sun burns my face, my arms, my legs. It burns my flesh away until I disintegrate like a mermaid to become sea foam. I am the water, the bubbles you feel tickling your cheek when you exhale and sink. I am the water and in this state, I can see others who have become the water too. The ocean is merely a pool of swirling souls. But you can only see them when you are one of them. I am one of them.

Except I’m not. I open my eyes and I am grounded again. Feet on concrete, not sand. That sound is just a line of cars passing by, not an ebbing shoreline.  Limbs, body, mind, still intact. At least, as much as they ever were. I still have lungs and I’m sucking in air… and I feel so heavy. So heavy I don’t know if I can take a step, if I can move. But I do, somehow. And I keep moving like nothing ever happened. But if I get distracted, if I look away for just a moment, I can smell salt again.

I hate my kids. I would die for them. Take a bullet, jump in front of a bus, lay down on a set of railroad tracks. But I hate them. I am no longer me, but “Mommy”. Every day their sticky little hands reaching up for me and greedy little mouths pleading for “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”

Yes, Mommy’s here. Mommy will feed you and wipe your faces and read stories at night and give you bedtime kisses. Mommy will cook and clean and clothe and Mommy will not complain even once. Because you are Mommy’s children, gifts from God, I’m told. And Mommy loves you, even though she hates you with every bit of her neglected soul. Mommy will stroke your hair when you have nightmares and make you soup when you’re sick. Mommy will take your yelling and your whining with a stoic face and an even, firm voice. Mommy will tend to your every need and never will you hear Mommy say, while she’s rocking you to sleep, that she wanted to be a painter once. Had an easel and a canvas and a plethora of colors to play with. Mommy was going to follow her passions and make it big, but then Mommy met a man she thought was beautiful and ended up pregnant with two children she thought would be just as lovely. And the beautiful man turned out to be not so beautiful, the lovely children only parasites, even when they had finally escaped her womb. Paintbrushes were laid aside, works of art stowed away in the attic to rot silently. A life stolen, very suddenly, by a twin pair of fertilized eggs. Children are more important, she convinced herself. The miracle of life embodied in this tiny promise of a person. But these miracles are demanding, always wanting, wanting, wanting. Mommy will bear it. For you.

Mommy will wait until her house is quiet again, until she’s done her job and sends two full-fledged people out the door, who will not look back even once as they venture into brand new lives. You will call only on Christmas and when you need money, and I will always be Mommy, will always satisfy your needs before my own. Mommy will always love you… and loathe you just the same.

katskradlexx:

“God dammit, Curtis!” my mom screamed, her face going all red. She grabbed my arm, her nails like claws as they dug into my skin, and dragged me into the kitchen. I told her it hurt, but she just told me to shut the fuck up, god dammit. She threw me into a hard wooden chair. My feet still couldn’t reach the floor. My mother dug franticlaly through her purse, finally coming back up with a red BIC lighter and a fresh cigarette. Her fingers slipped on the lighter a couple times, frustrating her even more before she finally clicked the mechanism right and got a flame. A long drag and she closed her eyes. A brief moment of piece as smoke blackened her lungs.

And then he eyes snapped open and again and she looked at her cigarette as if it were the most repulsive thing and she came stomping towards me and waving the thing so close the smoke wafted up my nose and I could feel the heat from the burning tip threatening to scorch my cheek. “Look at what you make mommy do, Curtis! You make mommy fucking smoke when mommy told daddy last month she was quitting. Look at what you did! This is all your fault!” Her voice was harsh and grating against my ears and made me wince. She shoved the cigarette back in her mouth and her hand twitched like she was going to smack me but then she remembered herself. Shoulders back, stray hair tucked behind her ears. She was a lady, after all. She couldn’t slap her son. But some discipline was in order. Yes, yes. Definitely discipline. So she grabbed my arm again just as hard as before and hauled me to my feet before slamming my hand down on the kitchen counter. My eyes still couldn’t see above the edge. “Keep your hand there and don’t you dare move a fucking muscle.” Her words were garbled around her cigarette but her eyes made me nod in complete fear.

She was gone for a few moments and, looking back on it, I wish I could say I thought about running or calling a neighbor or grabbing the next bus out of there, but I didn’t. I was a scared little boy and she was my mother, and scared little boys always trust their mothers. So when she came back with a wooden ruler in her hand, I was still there. Not a fucking muscle moved, as requested. “Now Curtis,” she said. Calm, cool, yet somehow more threatening than before. “You have been a very bad boy today. You made mommy angry and you made mommy do things mommy isn’t supposed to do. So you have forced me to do this now, and you should know it will hurt me more than it hurts you. Because I love you.” And she smiled. And she slammed the ruler down on my hand with that smile still on her face. 

I screamed and yanked my hand back, but she took hold of my wrist and pinned it back down on the countertop, all hints of sweetness gone now. She wailed on my tender hand no matter how much I cried and shrieked. The ruler hammering me until I could barely feel it anymore and just heard the sickening smacks. I don’t know how long it was until she let me go and my hand fell to my side twice as big as it had been before, knuckles bruised and bleeding with the rest of my abused appendage grotesquely swollen and glowing a bright red that would soon settle into purples and dark blues. She stubbed her cigarette out and sighed. She was sorry she had to do that to me, but I shouldn’t be such a bad boy. Put some ice on that and for God’s sake, open a window to let the smell of smoke out. Stop crying. Daddy will be home soon. 

katskradlexx:

I knew that town like the back of my hand. Returning to that place, I wasn’t very surprised to see that nothing had changed. An intersection, a water tower, and a corner market that always smelled stale and stayed stubbornly covered in a fine layer of dust. Cracked streets and railroad tracks and gravel driveways that led into the woods. Never learned the names of all the roads. Never had to; they were burned into my brain. The houses all still looked the same as they stood in their neat rows. Beyond the two pretty neighborhoods, trailers rusted quietly with broken bottles and ripped screen doors, old bicycle tires and grimy children’s toys littering their lawns. It was a sad place, I thought. The air was always still. I swear a breeze hadn’t blown through that town since 1982. Even in winter, it felt like you would choke. Whenever someone walked down the sidewalk, they had their shoulders hunched, head hung low, hands in their pockets as they scraped their feet against the ground.

It was a place where nothing happened and no one ever went anywhere. A void that people just happened to stumble into when they misstepped in their lives. The Devil himself couldn’t have designed a better Hell. Everyone vowed to get out one day. Go somewhere, do something. Carve out a life in a city where there was hope even in the gutters. But somehow, some way, this little damned town sucked them back in.

It reeked of broken dreams and broken lives. Broken people.

It was home.

katskradlexx:

I don’t know how to french braid. Or knit or sew or cook anything complicated. I can’t mend clothing and I don’t care enough to separate my laundry and I can’t walk in heels without my ankles wobbling. Yet people still address me as Ma’am instead of Miss and I don’t get carded very much at bars because somewhere along the way, the world decided that I am no longer a girl but a woman. Something about the way my cheekbones shape my face and the silhouette of my body makes me deserving of the title “woman”. I feel like I’ve conned my way here. Worked around the system and cheated on the final exam and now I’ve been promoted to a level I do not belong in. I’m still that kid who snuck into her parents’ liquor cabinet while they were dreaming and choked down sour wine like it was medicine, vowing that someday I would be able to drink it like my mother: in a tall, pretty glass with elegant sips and flushed cheeks afterwards. Yet to me wine is still swill and I continue to force it down my throat with a smile on my face because alcohol along with proper makeup, short dresses, and sharing a bed with someone for a night are things that my stolen womanhood has earned me. No one suspects, I think. No one knows that I am not meant be here. That I am a child who has hijacked an adult’s body. And every day I see them: confident, put-together women who stride down the sidewalk in their sky-high heels with their gaze set straight ahead, staring down their future and their life and daring anyone to get in their way… and I know. I will never be one of them.

katskradlexx:

In this day of battery-run digital clock faces with neon green numbers, Nicholas Humphrey still held on to his wind-up pocketwatch, an analog friend to soothe him with its soft ticking. He wound it every night and set it on his dresser with a newly emptied scotch glass before going to bed at 9:03 on the dot, and wound it again when he rose with the sun at 7:15 in the morning. Checked the time around noon, again at three, once more at five. That watch knew his habits like no other. It was no stretch to say that after so many years together, the watch was a part of him. Its weight was familiar in his pocket, the chain rubbed smooth by his fingers over time. Without it he was a stranger. Stranded. Alone in a world where he was obsolete, something to be pushed to the side or placed in nursing home where burdens go to relieve their children’s shoulders and be forgotten. So many other things to worry about than him. So little he had to offer this new age.

But with his watch, Nicholas Humphrey was no longer alone. His pocketwatch was his partner in crime, the glove to his hand. Two outdated things resolutely ticking on and shunning the gentle hum of computers. Its springs were starting to get tired and he could feel his old body creaking and groaning just a little more each day, but they stood together, letting time decide when they had finished their run. And when the day came that Nicholas Humphrey’s heart finally stilled in his chest, the ticking of his watch that he had always dutifully kept going suddenly stopped.

9:07.

Four hundred petals had now fallen onto the ground from the garden.

Four hundred exactly. I had been counting. Delicate petals floating in cold tea and littered over the wrought iron table with matching chairs. Tiny, pink nothings skittering over the patio bricks and whirling away in the air to fall on some other part of the garden. Even in this small way, nature was reclaiming its territory. A soft reminder that it allowed us to live here only while we were able to beat it back, but that it was always waiting. Patient. Just waiting for when we turned our backs for only a moment, thinking we were safe. Then it would pounce and the trees would grow their roots right through our floorboards and ivy would snake its way up our walls. Birds nesting in our rafters and insects making colonies in the dark corners of our room. 

A breeze shook the trees’ thin limbs.

Four hundred and one, four hundred and two, four hundred and three…

Credit to Anonymous for the first sentence.

“God dammit, Curtis!” my mom screamed, her face going all red. She grabbed my arm, her nails like claws as they dug into my skin, and dragged me into the kitchen. I told her it hurt, but she just told me to shut the fuck up, god dammit. She threw me into a hard wooden chair. My feet still couldn’t reach the floor. My mother dug franticlaly through her purse, finally coming back up with a red BIC lighter and a fresh cigarette. Her fingers slipped on the lighter a couple times, frustrating her even more before she finally clicked the mechanism right and got a flame. A long drag and she closed her eyes. A brief moment of piece as smoke blackened her lungs.

And then he eyes snapped open and again and she looked at her cigarette as if it were the most repulsive thing and she came stomping towards me and waving the thing so close the smoke wafted up my nose and I could feel the heat from the burning tip threatening to scorch my cheek. “Look at what you make mommy do, Curtis! You make mommy fucking smoke when mommy told daddy last month she was quitting. Look at what you did! This is all your fault!” Her voice was harsh and grating against my ears and made me wince. She shoved the cigarette back in her mouth and her hand twitched like she was going to smack me but then she remembered herself. Shoulders back, stray hair tucked behind her ears. She was a lady, after all. She couldn’t slap her son. But some discipline was in order. Yes, yes. Definitely discipline. So she grabbed my arm again just as hard as before and hauled me to my feet before slamming my hand down on the kitchen counter. My eyes still couldn’t see above the edge. “Keep your hand there and don’t you dare move a fucking muscle.” Her words were garbled around her cigarette but her eyes made me nod in complete fear.

She was gone for a few moments and, looking back on it, I wish I could say I thought about running or calling a neighbor or grabbing the next bus out of there, but I didn’t. I was a scared little boy and she was my mother, and scared little boys always trust their mothers. So when she came back with a wooden ruler in her hand, I was still there. Not a fucking muscle moved, as requested. “Now Curtis,” she said. Calm, cool, yet somehow more threatening than before. “You have been a very bad boy today. You made mommy angry and you made mommy do things mommy isn’t supposed to do. So you have forced me to do this now, and you should know it will hurt me more than it hurts you. Because I love you.” And she smiled. And she slammed the ruler down on my hand with that smile still on her face. 

I screamed and yanked my hand back, but she took hold of my wrist and pinned it back down on the countertop, all hints of sweetness gone now. She wailed on my tender hand no matter how much I cried and shrieked. The ruler hammering me until I could barely feel it anymore and just heard the sickening smacks. I don’t know how long it was until she let me go and my hand fell to my side twice as big as it had been before, knuckles bruised and bleeding with the rest of my abused appendage grotesquely swollen and glowing a bright red that would soon settle into purples and dark blues. She stubbed her cigarette out and sighed. She was sorry she had to do that to me, but I shouldn’t be such a bad boy. Put some ice on that and for God’s sake, open a window to let the smell of smoke out. Stop crying. Daddy will be home soon. 

There’s a casket on the side of the road, lid half open. The morbid side of me glances for a moment to see if there’s a hint of bloodless skin, but the light changes and I have to look away. Kind of glad but I can’t think about that because her hand is on my thigh and warm through the denim and my sparking, live wire nerve endings tell me that is more important. Eyes on the road, hands on the steering wheel. Can’t look at her or I’ll run us into a ditch. Her hand creeping up and her fingers searching. Can’t breathe and God I want to grab her. Right, right. Eyes on the road. Around a corner and there are headlights in my face just as she finds what she was looking for. Almost jerk the car into the light but I straighten out. I try to tell her we can’t do that now; it will have to wait. But my lungs are heaving and my tongue’s gone thick and dry and good lord her hands… Drive, drive, drive, but I can’t and start to pull over. Oh no, sweetheart. None of that, she says in my ear and gently eases my steering wheel back to the left. I love her and I hate her and I try to keep my cool by thinking of the casket on the side of the road. The half-open lid instead of her feather-light strokes. The patch of corpse I’m now sure I saw instead of her skin that I know is glowing pink and warm. My brain is sending wrong signals and they become intertwined in my mind and the hand around me is simply a skeleton’s bones and the smell of sweat and sex filling the car has a faint perfume of decay. And then finally we’re at a stoplight and I am coming apart at the seams, and I don’t know whether the girl next to me is alive or dead.

katskradlexx:

My father’s in the hospital now.
Old and weak.
Fragile.
They tell me he doesn’t have much left.
“At death’s door,” a nurse said to me.
Cheery.
My mother’s scratchy voice on
the telephone telling me I should go,
I should see. I should keep him company.
It would make him happy.

It would make him happy.

Funny.
Because if there’s anything in this
world that makes my father happy,
it sure isn’t me. A disappointment
of a son. Wasted flesh and bones.
After all the smacks in the face,
the shoves into walls, the kicks
on the shins, my nose broken against
concrete, blood the color of love.
No, I don’t think I make my father happy.

Yet here I am, like a good son. Next to
a bed with a blue sheet and a tiny figure
in the middle. His hair’s gone and his
skin is sagging. Atrophied muscles
and knots for knuckles. But his eyes
are still the same. Blue. Like mine.
Empty. Not like mine. I hope.
“C’mere,” he says. And I am eight
instead of twenty-eight. He points
with the hand he scarred my cheek
with to a chair with 70’s print. Retro
but not cool. I sit. Because I am a son
and he is my father and you listen
to your father you little fuck. You listen
or I’ll make you listen. And he says things
that I don’t hear, because I am still
looking at his eyes and his chin and his nose.
Things that have been copied from his
face into mine. I wonder if I will look in the
mirror and never be rid of him. If his
features brought his poison too.

He barks my name and I look up. He knows
I haven’t been listening and for a moment
there’s that familiar purse of his lips, a
twitch in his jaw, a flexing of his fingers.
But then he remembers where we are and
just shakes his head. I’m still just as much
of a disappointment as I always was. He
figured as much. Time for me to go now.
Time for me to leave. Time to feel the
sun on my face and the wind tugging
at my hair. Time to feel a sick pleasure
in knowing that he can’t feel this feeling
anymore.

Grandmother and a younger me laying on fallen flower petals, the branches shedding their blooms to make way for yellow berries. She picks one of these, rolls it in her fingers and cradles it in her palm to show to me. “Poisonous, Netty. Poisonous for us to eat.” She smiled at me and tucked a sprig of chinaberry flowers behind my ear, stroked my soft cheek with her thumb. Her skin was like paper. A bird tweet tweeted down next to us and hopped over dead leaves to gobble up a tiny berry. I asked Nana why the bird could eat it. She said that birds were special, that it wasn’t toxic to them. “Chinaberry trees grow for the birds, Netty. Nature gives some things to certain animals, and this one isn’t for us.” She looked up at the swaying branches, the leaves casting lace shadows on her face so much like my mother’s. “We can look but we can’t touch… unless we are birds. Do you feel like a bird, Netty?” She glanced at me and I didn’t know what to say so I just twirled my blonde hair around my finger and stared at my knees. “I think I feel like a bird,” I heard her say. “We could fly if we tried, Netty. We just never do.” And she tucked her hand under my chin and pulled me up to face her. Her skin was like paper. Her skin was like paper. She smiled and brought the berry to her lips. “I think I am a bird,” she said and popped it in her mouth.

Some people would call what we do at night fucking. Hopeless romantics would call it something like making love. Writers would call it the Earth and the heavens and everything in between or maybe something deep and animal. They might wax poetic about how there’s that little bit of instinct in us that comes with this that we’ll never get rid of, turn us into metaphors or paint us with too much flowery imagery or some shit. Truth is, it ain’t none of those things. It’s me getting off with a woman underneath, and tonight that woman’s you. Ain’t you lucky? And you’ve been that woman for some time and I think you’ll still be that woman for a while, because frankly you’re a good lay. And I could dress that up and say it nicer, but I won’t. Because it would mean the same thing so what’s the point? Just more wasted breath and God knows there’s enough of that. So if you don’t mind, sugar, I’ve got some things to do, namely you. And don’t expect the planet to shift or the stars to quake cuz I ain’t aiming for that much tonight and for the bastard I am, I don’t want to disappoint you. No delusions of love or connections with our ancient ancestors. No, not tonight. I ain’t nothing if not honest, and this ain’t nothing more than you and me getting what we need out of each other between some bed sheets.