The Lazarus Effect

Picasso's Blue Period

If I drowned, so be it by war, storm, or sun. 

I was already treading water and the shore was not an option. 

Poseidon whispers out each wave in indifferent swallows of violence. Sink or swim, he spits. Follow the sun in the day and the moon in the night, Hermes whispered. Everything except the water you drown in is a mirage. No future correspondence between us was needed or invited. He was not dead, just in a realm I could not cross over and return with both of us alive. He could not even haunt me while he was still all flesh, bone, and beating heart. He flooded the connecting bridges between us. I waded until the sand bottom dropped out from underneath me. Poseidon could not drown me in his currents. For Gaia with her blades of grass for fingers always had a firm grip on my ankles stretching up toward my heart. You can have the faculty for language and nothing to say. He had never swum with his bait—just strung them up on his hook.

 I didn't reach out to him, unsure of what would reach back.

Red Riding Hood without a picnic basket, traipsed clumsily into the witches' woods—no matter about the wolves. I went to Ocean, as I often did when my wounds were exposed to air. 

The years did not ease our uncertainty with a seesaw between us. If one didn't pull their weight, neither party moved. "Hold still." My body twitches. I quieted the other stirrings that arose in me from the gentle embrace.

"You spend all your time with the dead."  

"I am a product of my time." 

Dorothy never owned a house until it fell on a witch. I created a step stool from every high place my foot could catch. I leave breadcrumbs at every other tree.  Our house was built on a hot spot. A house fire was a weekly, how do you do? 

I could let her go, leave her to the smoke, but him, to me, it was death do us part. No one loves you like when you are diagnosed as a dead man walking. I was a mother to none; I was a mother to all.  

I emerged from the char, crawling back to the bedrock of the river of blood flowing in us all. Women were never clean of bloodshed. Our tent was shredded. we took turns sleeping on the undesirable slope. he took me to Build-a-Bear and Lucky Chopstick.

The tent was never the same after that.

We could never wipe ourselves clean of our own two hands. I am stunned into silence by a woman asking me when my last period was. I should know by now, though leaving my body mostly a mystery suited me and most of my lovers. 

She paid for speaking out and learned penance in colors. 

Those who knew blue knew no other color. I move between the two houses. Between two doors. I peer out of seven windows curtained with white sheer lace. I look for the blue car and I find every other color, make, and model. Who knew how much coming home to an empty parking space was like coming home to a bed made of couch cushions? The kitchen sink storm was brewing in the clouds. A scale tips to the right. Then to the left, it tilts once more and finally settles in the middle. Bedlam. I am mourning a man who is not dead. That does not mean I am not haunted. I sure was checking my corners more than usual...The fallen understood it does not matter if you were pushed or jumped. 

The one who draws the chalk outline knows that's all that matters.

What was that old rhyme Ma used to say scream? "When you touch the dead, it takes your body but not your head?"

Oti would shout back, very much with his hands all over something, "I am not touching anything. I am hovering." He seemed to have an emotion for everything and everyone. Eventually, the Earth would swallow us both up, but until then, he led us. 

I carried my torch close to my chest to steady my flame. When either of our fires began to wane, we would dip the dimmer of the light into the fuller hand of fire.

Restlessness was a constant buzzing of forever. I was not sure why I went for the water—some adage about how the dead couldn't float.

I don't know how they get the bones into their bodies that fast. 

They acted as if I chose death. As if it was a fork in the road, and if I had just gone down the other path, I'd be spared from the swords.

"There is no bravery in the willingness to throw away your life."

"Isn't that what being a woman is all about?"

"You some type of traveler?"

"Something like that..."

The procession of women in black cloaks trampled down the cobblestone as if hooves replaced their feet. He would blow out my birthday candles and tell me to make a wish. 

Two swords pierce through the Black Madonna painting.  What a poor state I was always in, quite a marvel though, all the limbs you could lose and still walk?

Fairies are signaled by a chittering 'follow me.' Which meant, 'walk the plank.'

The fox was coy in turning the human mind back in on itself. Never projecting what wasn't first cast. Everything was attainable for her except the want in him to provide her a guiding hand. If we whispered too loud, she would shush us back into the darkness. Caring for Oti was nursing an underground fire.

'An angel stuck in a room with her would combust, my father said once.' Luckily, he wasn't from anywhere up high.

Unluckily for us, Pa was willing to pay Lazarus's price as long as it put Ma into debt. 

It was strange; the things we chose to carry when leaving everything behind. 

It took me till my twenties to realize my mother was the unluckiest of us all.

He scoffs, "Is this one of those conjurings?" "Doesn't feel like any I know..."

"You know what your problem is?"

"My favorite color is a beating heart and yours is human torches?"

I was back with him on the water, "Been to the docks lately?"

"You never said no when I offered you a share of my spoils."

 the sun and a steady tumble of fallen branches.

I try to heel at the Wanderer's feet like a stray dog given a leash and a doghouse in the backyard. I can never keep their pace, either I outwalk them, or they stagger decidedly further and further behind me. I don't bother to look back to know they're long gone. Back where they started. I work on intervention and invitation only. The host is always right.

Lightning does strike twice.  I am here. That has to count for something.