To The One Who Knows Who This Is From: A Love Letter

At the very end of my life, perhaps I will regret all of the moments that I spent in pursuit of you. It was only those scant few decades, those April months spent staring at the moon: inhaling the scent of newly blooming flowers. Perhaps, upon my deathbed, I will recant all the days of my life; hoping that the seconds stolen with you will not weigh against the lonely years.

However, now that we are both in the prime of our lives, I cannot even hope to smell another scent than that of your hair. I cannot even dare to dream of another caress than that of your fingertips running up and down the inconsolable length of my arm. In the darkness I shiver at the memory of your touch, and my lips swell with hope in dreams as they gently devour yours in passionate sunlight.

Now, in the growing shadow of my youth I realize that I am wasted by those seconds of love. I am ruined by the impossible heights of passion, and the inconceivable depths of sorrow that our affair brought me. If only in a different time. If this or that hadn't happened, then perhaps now, you would wear something of mine, and I, your heart; would walk boldly in the streets. Alas, alas, alas, this or that was not meant to be.

Do not weep at this missive, for it is just that, a thing that may be dismissed. However, even though this letter is granted a brief nature, it reflects a sentiment that I hope is deeply missed. Instead of sorrow, know that I do not expect that my life find harbor in any distant port of love. Know that I only intend to travel upon the river of memory that flows from our fleeting love.

Yours,

Forever.

From The Desk of The Editor

Dear Reader,

Exciting news! The staff, by now you should get that joke, of this soiled publication has decided that it is in the worst interests of everyone they know to put out this publication in a physical format. What we're talking about here is a book. You'll be able to find it on Amazon.com in the coming months, and some discrete private distribution may happen as well.

Regards,

MJK

Dogwood

The best Swamp Magnolias in Powesheik County grow along the banks of the Deep River, just north of the town that shares its name. There is a grove, if you can call it that, which is split in half by the river. Their branches reach out to each other, straining to touch. In late spring their flowers fall into the river.

At that time of year a man by the name of Warren Guthrie used to sit on the muddy bank and watches as the petals drift lazily down the small shallow river. It wouldn't be right to describe Warren as a smart or happy man. He spent his life avoiding such things. His youth was wasted smoking marijuana in abandoned barns, and drinking stolen liquor in the darkness of Deep River's only movie theater. It didn't matter what movie or what barn, just as long as the whiskey was strong or the smoke was thick.

When he dropped out of High School he joined the military, and spent three years of the Korean War on a military base in Virginia, smoking dope and drinking beer. He was discharged, dishonorably, and he returned home.

He spent the better part of his life working as the worst mechanic in town. The cars he fixed usually came back months or even weeks later in worse condition. If word had gotten out at how poor of a mechanic he was the good people of Deep River would never have patronized Earl's Garage and Auto-Body Repair. Earl was a shrewd business man though and kept Warren on, he would rotate Warren from customer to customer, never letting him work on the same car twice. Earl explained this to his wife Sylvia saying "That boy doubles my business, it is getting to the point where people around here think their cars just fall apart." It was true.

Warren rarely talked when he smoked or drank, he just sat there with the same blank look on his face, as if he was watching the magnolia flowers drift slowly down Deep River.

When Warren died, of cancer at the age of 78, the county had to come and collect his body. He hadn't married, and there was no next of kin. These were unusual circumstances in Powesheik County, most people there had enough cousins to make dating a treacherous endeavor. It isn't unusual to find couples on their first dates reciting their family trees, looking for the branch that overlaps.

In his will Warren asked to be cremated and to have his ashes spread among the grove of magnolia trees. The county sent Glen Carrol out to search for the grove. It took three weeks of looking up and down both sides of Deep River before Glen realized that Swamp Magnolias don't grow in Poweshiek County, the winter kills them before they have a chance to take root.

So Warren's remains were spread under the branches of a stand of Dogwood trees. Now during the summer months Glen Carrol thinks of Warren Guthrie when he sees the white flowers of Dogwood trees.

We should all be so lucky.

The Consequences of Split Pea Soup

In the early afternoon a man in a grey hat sat at a table drinking a glass of iced tea. The beverage was an un-seasonal choice, it was mid-november, and snow was falling gently on the man's grey hat. The staff of the small cafe had abandoned the man to his glass of iced tea an hour ago. He was innocently waiting at his outdoor table for a simple bowl of split pea soup. The cashier told him it would be brought to his table. His request of a table to be placed outside was unusual, but somehow the manager had been convinced that it was the only rational place for this man to sit.

The only thing that was remarkable about the man's attire were the sporadic burn marks that mottled his grey suit and hat. His tie was straight and black, and his shoes were somehow darker than black. The shoes were obviously polished with care, yet their darkness swallowed any light that came into contact them, as if he was standing in two puddles of darkness.

Passers-by chortled and snorted to each other. They laughed at the mans burned, out-dated, clothing. One brave soul asked the man "Where did you get your hat?" and then quickly answering his own question "A fire sale?" It was not a good joke, and the man in grey gave a cold stare that removed any sense of mirth from the passerby. The young man scurried off into the falling snow, giving periodic glances over his shoulder.

When he finished his iced tea, the man in scorched clothes, stood up walked slowly into the cafe, took out a book of matches, and busied himself with the task of setting the building on fire. As the fire took hold, and began to climb the wall the man grabbed the nearest waitress and repeated his request for a bowl of split pea soup. Unable to comply the waitress screamed for her life.

No one died in the fire, but on the other hand the man in the grey suit could not be accounted for. Police sketch artists made attempt after attempt to capture the likeness of the man. Each sketch was a failure, when the witnesses was given the chance to examine the portraits, they invariably said that the sketch looked nothing like the man in the grey suit.

Never make arsonists wait for their soup.

What I Think About When I Hear Glenn Miller

The last time I saw my Mother she was already underground. She hated everyone and hated herself for hating everyone. Towards the end she would write me these letters about how I didn't brush my teeth right, or how I never put the bottle of ketchup back in the fridge. The letters were about the childhood she gave me. I like to think they were her anger at how short that time was. It was only fourteen years before I got a job and started helping to pay the bills.

I hated her too, or I hated what she had become. It is hard to love someone who is filled with bile and rage. None of the nurses in the hospice wanted to treat her, or even get near her bed. She would scream out at them, yell at them for stealing things she never owned, or even wanted. The hospital called me when she bit a nurse who was changing her i.v. bags. My mother was yelling at her because the nurse allegedly stole her water pick. My mother didn't even floss. She had never owned a water pick, let alone an electric toothbrush.

The doctors barely touched her. Towards the end they only graphed her downward spiral. The charts were filled with vitals and statistics, all shrinking and decreasing, as if the woman I knew, the mother I loved had already left and the remains were evaporating. The only evidence was the charts. They wrote everything down on the clipboard that hung from the foot of her bed, and they wrote it in duplicate on the clipboard that hung on her door. Other than that they told me how slowly she was dying every time I asked.

When the hospice called me for the last time, to tell me mother wasn't going to make it through the night, I tried not to go.

Let me explain.

She wasn't always like that. I remember when I was little and she would put her favorite records on, and we would dance together in the living room. We'd flip the coffee table over onto the couch, and then she'd go and choose a Glenn Miller record, and put it on the turntable. She taught me how to swing dance, how to foxtrot and keep a steady jazz square going. She would turn me and spin me, and then we'd slow dance. She'd hold me close like only a mother could.

Sometimes she would cry and tell me she loved me, and that nothing else mattered. At the time it confused me, why was she crying, we were dancing and having fun. As a child I never made the connection between tears and laughter. At the time, I didn't understand that you could recognize how quickly the most beautiful moments in your life flash by, and how even when you are in those moments you can mourn their passing.

Her illness took all of that warmth away. She lost that part of herself that made her care about moments and people in her life. She'd been in the hospital for the better part of the year by the time we moved her to the hospice. She called me names, and told me how disappointed she was in me. She told me I was a mistake, told me that the day I was born was the worst day of her life. How I wasn't worth the nine months of effort, and the eight hours of painful labor.

When the hospice called, I was listening to music alone in my own empty living room. It wasn't Glenn Miller, I don't even remember what it was. I only remember the silence between the notes, and the how wrong it felt for the singer to mourn their unrequited love. The voice on the phone sounded worried and practiced, and finally relieved when I told her I was coming. I wondered how many times a day that person had to make that call, and how many times no one came to watch their next of kin die. I thought about how horrible it would be to die alone knowing that there was someone out there who once loved you, but couldn't bring themselves to hold you at the end.

I made every stop I could. I was hoping that the nurses telling my mother I was coming would be enough, and she could die in peace, knowing that I still loved what was left of her. I was hoping I would come and find her lying on her bed, looking like she was asleep and at peace, and that maybe I could hold her limp figure and cry, and wish away all the years we spent apart.

When I entered her room she was crying weakly in the dark. Every breath was a sob that took all her strength. It took all of her strength to cry. I sat next to her bed and reached out to take her hand, and stroke her hair, but she pulled her hand from mine. She cowered on the other side of the bed. I sat with my hands outstretched for the better part of an hour before she started to struggle to breath. She stopped sobbing and started gurgling and coughing. Five minutes later she was dead. She didn't get any last words. There were no whispered promises of love, not even any last promises of bile. My mother simply died, her face still wet with tears.

Adam's Merciful Divorce

Adam arranged for the marriage to last only a short while. Now, let us not judge him. Indeed when he took his vows he meant every last one of them. There was part of him though that itched and chafed as he declared his love for Julia. He couldn't stand to look in her eyes when he said his vows. Everyone took this to mean that he was trying not to cry, and they thought he was a good lad for doing so, but Adam, and maybe the minister, and improbably Julia's kid sister Tiffany knew. They knew that he couldn't hold her gaze, because he was afraid she would see into him. He was afraid that she would see into that part of him that wanted to run wild in the streets and burn down civilization and howl at the moon as he tore meat from a bone. He was afraid of all of these things in himself and so he couldn't let her see.

It really was better the way things happened. Imagine if she loved a man who raped and pillaged along the coastline? Of course he had to sleep with his secretary.

He couldn't even explain it to her. Not even when the took him away for bombing the marinas, and laughing as he burned down the Arby's. He couldn't explain it to her, if he did then maybe she would forgive him, and then maybe his illness would spread to her.

No it was much better the way he ended things, on top of his secretary on the dining room table, rattling the china hutch.

After The Storm Breaks Pt. 1

In the east thunderheads were gathering, giant black and grey anvils, stacking up on one another. In the west the sun was setting slowly. Bantam cocks fought in the yard as my father and I filled the barn with bale upon bale of hay. With each toss and turn, the stacks grew higher and higher. Finally after hours of stooping and reaching and grabbing and tossing- we were done. Just as we closed the barn doors a crash of lightning announced the arrival of the storm.

My father and I ran, almost skipping, through the rain, thrilling in the wild downpour of the sudden storm. That was the last moment I want to remember. We stopped short of the porch when we saw the figure of my mother crying by the back step. Around her were all the dishes, every last dish in the house, lying broken and shattered in a semi-circle around her. At her feet lay the two Bantam cocks that fought in the yard. She had wrung their necks, and the blood that dripped from their beaks was on her hands.

Not knowing what to do I rushed inside. The kitchen was empty. There was nothing in the cupboards, in the pantry or on the counter tops. When I got to the dining room I found out where everything was. The kitchen knives were stabbed into the table and the seats of chairs. Everything had been thrown or stabbed, or stabbed and thrown. I had never seen anything like it. I almost laughed at the clever way my mother's madness arranged the knives, smallest to largest, except one knife was missing, there in the middle, taken away, like a man with a broken grin.

Things had never been this bad before. Even when my mother had her "that-sort-of-day" days, even when her medication ran out because she had been taking them and throwing them down the sink. I ran upstairs to the office to the phone to call someone, but when I got there I didn't know who to call. I thought about calling my siblings, maybe my older brother Ted who still lived in the area, only a twenty minute drive away, or maybe my sister Susan, she was down in Moulton though, a whole hour to the south. I sat there paralyzed by the phone, I knew that I needed to call someone, because my father was down there dealing with my mother, who would probably try to hurt him or me, or both, like she did last summer when she pushed my cousin James to the floor and bit him on the shoulder. But she'd been taking her medication and we thought, we thought things were getting better.

I ran my hand over the phone, I still didn't know who to call when I heard my father yell from down stairs. He yelled in pain. This was the man I saw lose a finger without flinching, he didn't bat an eye when the tractor engine sheared off his right ring finger. He simply grabbed a kitchen towel, wrapped it around his hand, and walked to the car. My father calmly drove to the hospital with his hand above his head. So when I heard him cry out in pain, I knew my mother had stabbed him. I knew she had done this because last winter we took her to the hospital and as the orderlies took her away she whispered in my ear "I'm going to get you for this you little shit, I can't believe you'd betray your own mother for Christ's sake." and then no longer in a whisper she yelled "I'm going to get you all, oh yes, you'll all pay, they won't get me." When the double doors slammed shut we could hear her yelling down the hall.

I was finally happy and free for about three months. Father and I worked the farm, and we even allowed ourselves to laugh sometimes. We didn't have to force pills down my mother's throat, we didn't have to wake up at three in the morning and drive along country roads to go find her.

And I didn't have to run to the phone to go call someone.