weigh anchor in the harbor of my thighs

 

 

I was searching for the tall green-and-white subway stop markers, that indicate a stairway that descends underground, while a few MTA workers screamed 'NO' and pointed. Flustered from the noise they made, I moved anxiously - and nearly stepped off into an abyss. What I had thought were subway markers were actually the top of a roller coaster, its steel bracketed frame fell steeply away from me, plummeting to a depth I couldn't gauge in my surprise. Stepping back to glance around for the true subway, the MTA workers yelled and gestured wildly to my right, across the park towards ancient semicircle concrete steps. I decided to take a few minutes to explore the area, since I had visually located the correct subway entrance. One of the MTA people close to me misunderstood my body language, assuming I was still lost (or stupid) and started pointing as he hollered in my face. He fell silent with shock as "Leave Me The Fuck Alone" fell out of my mouth. No one was going to tell me when and where I should go, I was distracted by something, and it was MY life and MY time to wander and explore. It was their noise and violent hand motions that had caused me to almost step off a dangerous path in the first place, I was not going to let them rush my process, my curiosity or when I chose to arrive at my destination.

As I descended the stairs, I realized that they wrapped around a forgotten, overgrown public pool. Thick trees grew along the sides and reach out across the water to caress each other from opposite sides, and the water was cool and blue as my grandmother's pool when I spent all my summers brown and smelling of chlorine, even though scum floated on the top, in the deepest shade of the trees overhead. I waded in towards the cool darkness in the bright of day, to the woman I knew was waiting for me, chest deep, her long hair swirling around her, like when my hair was long, long and golden, when I used to pretend I was a mermaid in my grandmother's pool. My short, dark bobbed hair now seems like a symbol, the contrast is so highlighted. My conversation with the long haired young woman is knowing and familiar, she is like a sister to me, though she looks more like me when I was still fresh faced, than my sister ever did. She had warm, encouraging things to say to me, about my direction, assuring me in the face of my chagrin at my circumstances, but her face expressed no emotion, her eyes have no pupils to make eye contact with. The sweetness of her words hit me so sharply it almost felt like pain and my arms wrapped around her for a farewell embrace, a loving embrace. The cool skin of her arms hug me back, though her face does not. The intensity of moving on, for her forgiveness as I said goodbye filled me with so many points of sharp bright feeling that I couldn't hold back sobs that wracked my body so fiercely I woke up in bed, tangled in the sheets, still sobbing.



Years and years ago, a psychic who used symbolism to communicate her visions told me she saw me wade into a pool of water, and before I got waist deep, I stepped on something incredibly sharp. I backed out of the water the way I came, and for a long time only circled the outside of other pools of water, never getting past my ankles in any of them.

For years I have not dreamed, as far as I can remember, and the deep, dreamless sleep afforded me by doing physical labor have felt like a gift. But recently, dreams are surfacing. This was not the first time I have seen my subconscious draw parallels between subway trains and roller coasters, and they always involve MTA personnel directing traffic in some frustrating/distracting way. I have been in pools of water before, and for some reason, I find direct or indirect references to my grandmother floating in the fabric of the dream. As I notice images manifesting over and over, maybe it is important to pause and study them a little bit closer.


We can only ignore ourselves for so long.

 

when meaning shifts, meaninglessness follows.

  

  

Combusting rage and sexual tension as a power source, blind to everything but conquering inefficiency, filled with steam, purpose. Equal parts fuel and intoxication.

'Do you even cry?' He asked at the bar later.

Feet pounding on pavement, my feet. Screaming at the muscular man that just got out of his graffiti covered box truck. Not one of ours. Blocking my trucks. In my way.

'He doesn't like a single thing about you.' He told me. I grinned my Cheshire grin, remained as still as possible and disappeared from the bar as soon as I could. Descend into the subway station, radiating the kind of stillness that signals a building storm. Silence on the train.

Handsome work partner, all silver hair and tanned skin sprawled out next to me on the forklift, melting under my hands as I pressed my fingertips into the sinew of his back, chasing the emotional tightness down his spine. Stories hang from his lip like his cigarette, wry, sometimes silly memories from being locked up mixed with ashes picked up by the wind. They swirl around us like snow, like lost time, remains of the fire as it dies down. Silver hair catching the afternoon light.

Some of them love me, and some of them hate me, but I can't bring myself to care, feet too busy pounding the pavement, barking at the truck drivers, using my body as a physical barrier to modulate traffic. My presence spills down the street like sunshine bursting from behind a cloud, as big as the buildings, it smells like fumes and tastes like ashes.

A cold rage takes over me towards the end. It followed me offsite, startling me and my work partner while grabbing coffee. 'It must be from the barbeque I had for lunch...' I tell him, thoughtful. This isn't my normal foghorn power, it's cold and nasty and reeks of low energy.

'Dumbass.' I said to someone I love dearly when they missed the corner of a box with the forklift. Shut myself down immediately in secret horror. No one else saw my mother come out of me in that moment, but the awareness filled me with the stone cold weight of shame. That was always her word. Not mine.

'See you never.' I told him as I left, since I never know when I will see him. He wrapped me in the deepest, sweetest embrace, and I was barely aware of my arms struggling to pull him into me.

Not mine.

Sitting at the bar letting the beer kill the burn in my belly, the one that could eat a man alive, no one would know since I radiate stillness, seem sturdy and dependable as a stone, but I'm starting to wonder if, instead of wielding it, it will eventually wield me.



"They are mantic creatures like the Sphinx with whom they have much in common, knowing both the past and the future. Their song takes effect at midday, in a windless calm. The end of that song is death."

siren                    

Meaning "device that makes a warning sound" (on an ambulance, etc.) first recorded 1879, in reference to steamboats, perhaps from similar use of the French word. Figurative sense of "one who sings sweetly and charms" is recorded from 1580s. The classical descriptions of them were mangled in medieval translations and glosses, resulting in odd notions of what they looked like.

 

noun

1. Classical Mythology. one of several sea nymphs, part woman and part bird, who lure mariners to destruction by their seductive singing.

2. a seductively beautiful or charming woman, especially one who beguiles men

3. an acoustical instrument for producing musical tones, consisting essentially of a disk pierced with holes arranged equidistantly in a circle, rotated over a jet or stream of compressed air, steam, or the like, so that the stream is alternately interrupted and allowed to pass. 4. an implement of this kind used as a whistle, fog signal, or warning device.