| How many places can I be at once ? There's a switch inside my head somewhere- not just a simple one like the beige flipper on the wall by the door. My little switchbank is wired up with all this interdependent circuitry and its trigger has always eluded definition. Active switching patterns are randomly nondeterminant and can do some bitching multi-tasking. Daughter Emi says I'm a 'fazer'- maybe she got that term from Capt. Kirk and made the word fit something else alltogether. It's not like 'phasing out' or daydreaming or wishing myself somewhere over the rainbow- that might be a pleasant diversion. It's more like a silent finger snap and a gentle breath on my cheek and an eye-blink. I have good legs. I thought so and then one day an invisible C-clamp screwed down on my knee. It started to hurt while I was riding on a bus. I stood up to shake off the pain but it wouldn't stop. I looked at other riders to see if they were hurting, but they were all seated so I couldn't tell. I looked out at the street and watched all the walkers. I saw canes and crutches and elastic bandanges. I saw fluid joggers and loping crabbers. My stop came up and my connecting bus was two long blocks away with it's handicap ramp out- waiting for the guy in the wheelchair. I would have to run but I could barely stand. I dragged myself to the door hitting the street running with that dizzy hope you get seeing split jacks on a green felt table- the first blacked with an ace from heaven &RUN! and then it was indigo starlit night damp with salt- sea wind rustling palms on a road paved with crushed oyster shell reflecting moonlight and ahead were flickering brakelights of a battered pickup and I ran with hope- pain splitting and searing and flopped into the bed where a wheeled angel was grinning at me- strapped to an old wooden armchair, bolted to a handtruck that was chained to the pickups rusty bed. The angel had maybe ten years. Her legs were withered stems. She wore a blinding white linen frock with a lace bodice and a string of pearls- Her skin so luminious black it shone deep purple in the moon. Primped and perfect and smelling of honeysuckle she laughed with resplendent pealing grace and when I fell into the enormity of her black eyes the wheelchair was bumping over the ramp into the bus and I was blind with sweat and gasping in pain lurching into the seat next to the wheelchair guy. I thanked the man who could not walk for coming along right when he did and rode in silence remembering her eyes and the padded straps that held her safe. The bus stopped. I limped home wondering where she was and... |
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