The scene was familiar: a graveyard wreathed in shreds of fog; a woman weaving lightly around the stone markers; the man following slowly in her hurried wake. Whether her speed was from flirtation or nervousness, neither could say.

“Water,” he’d said earlier when she asked about the bottle, “I normally carry a canteen, but they’re not exactly romantic.”

His grin was crooked but gentle, stubble and wrinkles and sun damage fighting for space on his heavy jaw. He even poured a bit out for her to see: clear, not even the yellow tinge of a white wine. She pushed away the echo of regret. Wine had been one of the few pleasures she’d had while alive and now all alcohol had to be avoided. No one knew why ghosts couldn’t tolerate the stuff, and the priests with their hulking silence and chrome eyes weren’t saying.

“It’s not as if I can hurt you,” he reminded her, which was true. She’d spent countless lonely days pushing a knife through her arm, marveling at how the skin closed over. No blood, no pain. Once, she tried to hang herself, using the necktie noose she’d left hanging from a rafter in the basement. It had been a struggle to get down once boredom set in, so she didn’t do it again.

And then, on a sweet April morning, the yards still soggy and the grass half old, half new, this man approached her. He’d passed through town a few times before, always walking, always tipping his sweat-stained hat to everyone, even to the dogs dozing under porches and the cats chasing birds on the roofs. He was slow and precise, not handsome, not at all handsome, but his intensity…

“Good morning, miss,” he said, staying a respectful distance from her lawn chair.
“Good morning, yourself,” she replied, “can I help you?”
“Just waiting for your mayor to wake up.”
“What business have you got with Gottlieb?”
“Confidential,” he winked, “I’m a courier. Beautiful, beautiful day, isn’t it?”

He turned around once, slowly, eyes lifted to the mist-draped trees, the sun peering over the ridge of green foothills.

“If mornings are your thing,” she said, “and they aren’t Gottlieb’s, or anyone else around here.”
“You’re up.”
“I’m always up. Now what can I help you with, sir?”
Her tone was crisp and he fiddled with the toggles on his coat.
“I was hoping you’d like to take lunch with me, perhaps show me the sights. I could say it’s that you’re lovely, since you are, or that you seem lonely like me, but that’s all rather presumptuous, isn’t it? A compliment isn’t a dollar. And, oh Lord, this’ll sound even worse, but… you’re not like other folk, are you? You’re the kind that everyone fears.”

She clenched the worn wooden arms of the chair.

“But that makes it worse, like I’m some ghost hunter or thrill seeker and you’re a three-headed monkey, and none of that’s true.”
His eyes swept upwards, always skirting the outline of her, curiosity tempered with an exaggerated insistence of respect.
“Or it’s all of them? I come across a lot of people in my work, miss, and you, you’re someone I want to talk to.”
“You want to talk with me and won’t even ask my name?”

His hands slowed their ferocious fidgeting.

“I don’t know which one is right to ask for, the one that’s your spirit or the one that belonged to your body. Whichever you want me to use.”

A smile parted her lips; it was a subdued, tight smile; the sort given by one unaccustomed to strong emotion, but it was there.

“Has my kind become common enough that you know how to deal with us?” she asked.
“Call it a fascination, Miss…?”
“Lila Hedley, once called Chastity Wisk.”

He held out an arm as she rose from her chair, but she passed him before turning, nearly pirouetting. Her motion was all one thing, as if strung on fishing line.

“You may call me Lila.”

Hold for a moment. Let me tell you a secret.

Happiness is being uncomfortable.

The tiny fears, tiptoes across a new line: the joy singing in my bones as muscles ache, as truths are spat against this screen, as I smile at someone new. Trumpets, all. The wild riot of the world is in the gravel under my bare feet, kisses are concealed in teeth, what you think is my effortless sailing through ways and words is hours on days of barely failures, alone and honest, grit in my grin, blood on my lip, pushing until the love breaks through. It is love, isn’t it? Toughening dreams with dialogue, leaping a little higher. I’m king of the world, as are you. Did you forget the fumblings in the pre-dark when we swapped crowns?

Torn and shorn, rebuilt, I am not quitting. I am not quitting.

As I paint my nails, as I pay my bills, as I pet cats, play with bits of twig, hum “The Calendar Prince” in the shower.

I run away from so much, not realizing it’s a trail of blood and stones. No birds will come and let me slip away into the woods.

Isn’t that how witches are made? The little ones who wander and like it? Whose sense of self grows to the clearing, the canopy of leaves, the sky; they don’t want to eat the children, but they won’t go away. Find your own forest to get lost in.

“I’m no good at any of this,” I say to my water bottle, “why do they trust me with more than words?”

The river, silt and sand, laps at the brush, broken shells, beer bottles. Waves are slapping at gulls, barges in the channel are sounding, a train on the bridge follows. Discordant thrum, Mississippi farts, I heard someone call them. The sun is setting and rain is coming, but I’m as far as I can get from the folding chairs, sorting pebbles and reeking of filthy water.

Erika, get in the boat.

I don’t want to get in the damn boat; don’t you get it? If you leave me here, this becomes something new. The world forces itself on me with a slap and a crash, and my thoughts spread out wide wide, as wide as they can go, barely disturbed by lighthouses and buoys, so self-absorbed in my wanderings that I fold in on myself, invisible to the ugly men who follow me from school, invisible to anyone who wants something of me. Just give me five more minutes, please, let me codify this experience, let me wrap words around the glowing shell-gray of the sky, pinhead toe prints in the sand, drying curls whipped into a halo. This is what I’m here for, to keep these memories, to find you later with them polished and lovely, to give you the gift of my heart.

Grumbling, I clean my office.

“Is the thread ready?”

“Yes, mother.” She squats, takes an egg from the basket. The needle glitters, in one end and out the other, pulling the waxed thread through. She cuts the string and holds a lighter to the wick. It hisses and then, warmed by the flame, the egg rises. After an hour’s work, the cloud of lights can be seen for miles.

Dad will come home. They’ll all come home.

“This doesn’t hurt too much, does it? I don’t strain my wrist this way.” He wiped the blood away, roughly.

What sort of stupid question is that? This from the man who watched me pant and tap out, fingers stammering against his knee, bringing myself back from the well of controlled injury, where who I am is far away and all the edges align. This from the man who said, “I’m enjoying this way too much,” and grinned at my slack-jawed expression, at my determination to not share. Are you tracking my behavior as I writhe and clench? Is your disappointment when I fail to confess and cry a part of your trick?

We’ve made a game of not playing games, sparse of word, fucked-up stories, everything honest, above the board. Everyone’s disparate radios are clanging on my OCD, my hyper-vigilance is screeching at the pairs of shoes that come by while I’m face down, bare backed, and the pain, oh the pain, my thighs are shaking, voice is hollow, and still I know better: I watch you, absorbing your broken life litanies. There’s no name for the miasmic clash of your past; perhaps mess, perhaps ecstatic car crash, and gratitude washes over me. I’m not of your tribe anymore, young man, although… the thought hangs in the air, smeared with violet ink… have I left? I am paying you for agony.

You put a hand mirror on the floor, to see me stare at myself. My expression is neutral; I’m an expert in sociopath and you’re a familiar animal, convinced you’re on the big side of a microscope. I also know you think the same fucking thing about the girl under your needle, so I laugh, with a ragged whisper and shallow breath.

He asks why I’m giggling.

“You’re very good at pretending to be human.”

Whatever it is, I’ll take it, she cries, and plunges her arms into life.

A car pulled over, or rather, slowed next to me, [there was no one else on the road so why pull over? It would have seemed threatening.] and a woman rolled down the window.

“Oh honey, you shouldn’t be out in this. Do you need a ride?”
“I… no, thank you.” It hurt to talk, to breathe. “It’s very kind of you, but I’m fine. I’m fine.”
“You sure? Is your home close by?”
“Yes, thank you. Thank you. I’ll be fine. Not the worst I’ve walked in.”

She drove off. What else could she do? I made it home, carefully tending my frostbite in the sink and tub for hours, locking the bathroom door and not speaking when he asked if I would help him write flashcards. I still paid him for gas that week.

* * * * *

I don’t want winter to be my nightmare time; even the art goes away, muffled by snow, lost in the spiral and unable to find the sun. You would think my night bird self would love the long, silent hours, under the brightest stars of the year [the lens fogs over, the hands shake the charts], sipping warm drinks, wearing sweaters as much pelt as decoration, but these are landings on the stairway down. I become my own long shadow, scare my heart into beating, watch my fingers turn yellow-white. Winter is when the world leaves me, when it tilts its face in shame, won’t share my joys, won’t send a sweet wind for my words, sends me ugly memories of men and myself.

But… comes the pulse, but…

It starts again, a low thump, far away footfalls of muddy feet, distortions of a branch’s silhouette. Diffuse, pearl-coloured clouds stretched over a pale sky and the smell comes, of ozone and stone, water and loam. The shivers shake me, full body, clenching and sensing, itchy and orgasmic and I’m grabbing your hand, not wanting to be the cliche of myself but shouting, “Spring! Spring! The chinook is coming; the world is waking up!”

The world is waking up. The world is waking up.

You sent me a message, then another, and all I knew was the scattered clumps of my life were finally going to be out from under your shadow. You have no idea how much you hurt me, do you? How much of my time is spent trying to grasp something that might really be mine?

Nothing is mine anymore. I’m a clatter of plastic parts, a transparent slob, and this pain makes me want to scream and scream until your brain bursts, until your heart explodes. Despite how much I’ve hidden, there is nowhere safe, and you keep coming and ruining what I have with your insensitive bullshit, with your trite consideration. You taught me that the best of me was a lie, that all I wanted was wrong, that I’m going to pay and pay your price because you feed on being a handsome landmine and I dared to tangle myself with you for a time.

You will never get it. Never. You will never understand that you fucked my soul, you broke me worse than anyone has, that I trusted you, prophesied for you, shared my secret dreams. You’ll never get that I paid every second to be with you. You’ll never comprehend the hate I leash every day, know that I’m worse than you’ll ever be, and that blood vengeance will never be mine since one of us must be noble, one of us must be honest and true, one of us must be better than the other.

I should take solace that you caught a glimpse of the well of stars, that the wind throws my name in your face, that every morning you lie there and hate your falsehoods and empty words, that you were offered the chance to be a real human and you took the coward’s way. Traitor, comes the voices. Traitor. I should thank the grindstone of your smile.

But I don’t want to live in anger anymore and I don’t know how to conquer this anger. I want to scratch your name from the lips around me, and I scream because this hurt has nowhere to go.

I will win. Not against you, not against anyone. I’ll find my dusty way back to the cathedral, back to my strange dreams, back to my familiar pain and steady progress. You’ll wake up and everything will be flowers and green, and none of it will be yours.

Snow smears across my vision, the wind whipping crystals away before they melt. I stare over a muffled world, suspended between gray and blue-black, touched by winter, rolled in winter, its marks left on my pale arms, my crisp smile, my funeral carriage. Across the landscape of myself, I follow half-remembered markers, wet scarf slapping against my lips, muting a chant of longing. What we hunt is here, buried under banks, dropped in gloved fists, alive and not alive, slippery with hope. How long have I looked? How many times must I shame myself with this forgetfulness? There are hints in you, trees are carved with fingertips, the sap is slick on the tongue.

Why can’t I bring myself stars?

The still, solemn child stands up and says, No. She stares at my pain and understands; life has always been pain, someone has always extended a hand to hurt her and aid the storm, to scour the words she writes across the world.

I’ll write them in fire if I have to, and larger, bigger and bigger until they stay, until my words are stars and can’t be ignored, until these strange dreams and right-angle realities, this rainbow heart and these corkscrew curls are driven into the rocks and whirl in with the spring winds. Who I am is not going away, I will not go away, I am alive and you can’t take that from me because once that’s done, it’s done, and I’m not done. I will never be done and when I am just an echo, I’ll be an echo in your bones, and the still, solemn people will see me in the dance of their cells, in the joy that sustains us all.

Knocked back to myself, I set the phone down, rub my tears on the blanket, put on makeup, finish dressing. The clock ticks onward and I worry about being late. I’ll be thinking for a long while.