An unusual chill was running through the silted leaves of the Douglas Fir's those early Spring mornings. There were no squirrels out, no birds in the sky; nobody about except me. The days before had been warm. I had been sleeping in nothing but my underwear and bra, a welcomed change from the snowsuit I had been snoozing in during the wintertime.
Living on the outskirts of Missoula Montana in a cabin with no running water or heat, Spring and Summer was a time I yearned for. The countless nights I spent in bed after a day of painting, shivering with fingers and toes frozen, were a necessary nightmare but the mountains were the only place I could truly work. Anywhere else and my hands became paralyzed.
But something had shifted in me when the seasons did not change for whatever reason. My eyes shuttered open were the first thing I noticed was that my hands could not move. I brought them up to my eyes and told them to open, to close but, they did not obey as they had done my entire life. Immediately, I thought about my work, my brushes, my painting. Luckily, my legs still worked and I popped out of bed. My chest was quaking, on the verge of collapsing. The wooden easel, the one my grandfather had bought me before leaving on my artistic escapade, stood against the window. My brushes hung from a cut in half bottle of bleach. The white canvas was blank. I had just finished painting the other day, a scene of a brook near a bees nest. Gazing at them for hours, I began to understand, almost empathize with their tight schedule of leaving the hive, venturing out for flowers, and coming back like clockwork. The solidarity in that work was a subtle theme I was hoping to capture. That morning, I didn't know what I was going to do, only that I knew something would come, as it always does. Yet, when rigid hands could not open to grasp the brushes, I screamed.
I had trained myself to wake up at 2ish in the morning every morning per the advice of someone in town advising me it was good for creativity. They probably heard it on the internet. I had no way of knowing. I never used it before. In some respects, waking up before the sun taught me what lies in the Witching Hour or devil's hour. It's a time of night associated with supernatural events. Witches, demons, and ghosts are thought to appear and to be at their most powerful.
I looked up and stared at the limbs of the trees spreading wide overhead. It was Spring, at least for us in Minnesota, and still, we were walking around with coats and scarves. Can you believe it? I heard a thousand times before there were soon to changes for the worse but, this soon?
It shouldn't be.
We were told we had more time.
How do we get more time?
If I walked anywhere, I had my long socks, long johns, and a couple of heat packs stuck into my sockets and crotch.
That's what you do, right? That's what you do when routine gets cold and old enough, right? That's what you do when you start loving your future self more than your older self, right?
I met her in a park and it was midday and more beautiful than I ever remembered. I felt guilty; I felt warm but, I felt I deserved to be there. So much time had passed.
I can't believe it, Care said to me.
Course you can, I said. We're here.
Course' I can, Carie repeated, What a luxury.
I picked at a piece of grass six feet away. I can't make a point of myself, I admitted. Like a real point.
A point for what and for who, she snapped.
Two kids rushed a soccer ball mid-green outside the stadium and pushed for it until they killed the other and that was it.
Do you know what I mean? she asked half-assed, knowing full well I did. She poured herself a shot of double-A in a thimble.
Last time I was this close to a person, she admitted. I said things I thought I meant.
And what was that?
Believed in storms, believed weather, believed in the better things far beyond the norms.
You remember the magic you used to spin around me, don't you?
No, not at all.
Course' you do.
Why would I remember my old ways of getting to you now?
A star turned over in the sky like an old dog. There's confusion here but, no fear. The one-eyed waitress poured the rest of her coffee *** in a near-empty cup. Outside, in the night, there are more snores than fates. If we were flowers, more would have thorns than not. Shakespeare never claimed power, only our future hours.
I don't know baby. I don't know.
Then let us get going.
To where.
Toward the new.