Drawers

She worked every day in, day out at the office. But her office was not so much an office as her own personal, working office supplies store laid out in a museography of beauty. It was something about her passion for the organization of forms that allowed her to feel totally and entirely fulfilled - even elated - by the properly signed and filled boxes of her countless forms, allowing others to do actions untold at the destination marked in box 5, subline 2.1.

When clients called at her shining workspace, it was to find a neatly arrayed set of pens, pencils, papers, forms, and files. File folders were comfortably labeled with an antique handwriting, when she opened drawers, it was to survey fields and fields of files, each one with a separate name and character, each one holding its contents eagerly. When she slid the lefthand top drawer out, it was to see a veritable ocean of different colored pens, all aligned perfectly as if they were placed together in happy families of vibrancy, each with a row of their own, each nestled carefully in place, at the ready if she should feel the need to draw one swiftly to mark, in red or black, a form destined for scanning and the photocopy machine.

It was a symphony to watch her work, and to watch her read back with efficiency, the boxes filled by clients over days and days. Each form familiar, each step an easy rhythm. She captained the ship of her mahogany-like workspace.

In the morning, she arrived at work as usual. But her hair was not neatly tied up, and she looked haggard. And she went to her desk, and laid her head on her hands, and sighed a soft, snuffling sound. Slowly and tentatively a drawer opened. Slowly, carefully, it slid to nestle against her side. She looked down at it, in dim surprise. It opened wider. She looked at her softly laid out pens, her tape refills glistened in sad understanding. She leaned closer, and as she did the drawer seemed to broaden until she could lay her arms, her head, her shoulders inside. And then she rolled herself into it, and it enclosed her, a warm place, where she lay on a rather lofty pile of printing paper, and cried her heart out. A small packet of tissues proffered itself. She accepted numbly and looked out on the beautiful world she had created. The forms rustled below in anxiety, and a small paperclip came to lay by her side.

Perhaps today wouldn't be so bad.

Nerves

Nerves so nervy that they make themselves nervous. Running around like light sockets waiting for a lightning flash. Nerves that tell me the next decision just might be the most important in my whole life. Nerves that are strung like popping lightbulbs around a light-bright fair. Oh nerves. Oh nerves. They wear and tear like violin strings, popcorn strings, celery strings, like the strings on a guitar, the strings plinked on a piano. They are playing me. So crunchy with a deep deep fear. Oh nerves. Oh nerves.

All Saints/All Sinners

It's All Saints day today. The saints are wandering around like wraiths. But who knows what lies beneath the shadows? The saints exclaim in ecstasy, proclaiming they know the way to heaven, but the truth of it is, they just deny it all and transcend into the pain of denial and self-flagellation. I know because I was one. And I know because today I am a sinner.

It started a long time ago, in Ephesus. The days were long and I was alone. A long day, a long finger of sunlight hit the floor, and I realized among the marbles of my house I was entirely alone. And I felt a stirring in my bones, a call to something I didn't understand. So I got up, and I followed the apostles and the anchorites and I gave away all my possessions and made my home in a small cave, my neighbors scorpions, my friends the bats. I welcomed the cold of night to fill my soul with something besides the vastness of an empty land.

And so I found a peace in all the rigor of it, in the practice of it, and the stillness of it. I exorcised my rage, the rage and the stirring in me, by wrestling with my demons in the night, denying my desires in the day, by calling them all by name and cursing them.

One day she came upon me though. I was not welcoming, but she starved and needed a place to lay her head. I offered her my pillow, and wrestled with my blackest thoughts when I saw the graceful turn of her ankle. Quelling them, dwelling in them. I offered her my meagre fare, and she accepted with the humblest thanks.

She bore a boy that winter. Her reason to come to me at first, as I had assumed. She was a lone girl in a hard country, she tried to tell me how she had made herself so, but I would not listen. I refused to touch or help her until the final moment, when I held her fast and the boy came to the world. She nearly died, and I nearly let her. My saintly creed let me not offer her help, and but lay words of condemnation on her, and so I did, but my heart was heavy and the words softly mumbled, like words of love.

It was a year past, another, and still she would not move forward. Every day I prayed God to remove her from my side, to remove her warmth and all that I desired. But she persisted, and I cursed her presence as a devil, cursed it throughout the night, with soft remonstrances of wrongdoing in the tones of a father cooing to his child.

Then one day, the boy fell ill. And it was with a heart rent from top to bottom that I watched him writhe in pain with fever, struggle for breath. We had nothing for him. Only in my other world would I have been able to save him, this devil, this angel, this blessing, this curse. And I watched him all the night, telling God in total prostration that it was for him, for him, for him to decide. Until in one moment, a finger of morning light touched me and the silence told me that it was not for him, it was for me.

I rose and I took my purse of gold, the one I had laid aside for a final offering to the church with my burial, and I took the girl and the child, and we made our way back to the city and to the medicine that could cure him. And I chose to turn away from a life of saints in that moment, to instead tread the harder path, the path of offering love and life and joy to those about me, to offer it to myself. I opened the shutters of my anger and let it escape into the daylight, mended the roof of my home, and lived there with the waves of fortune buffeting me as they do so many others. I hid no more.

And so I sit upon this steeple top, a spirit on All Saints day, watching the flitting saints run hither, thither, bringing judgment, bringing miracles, while I myself enter into a family's small room and make their fire burn a little higher. Today is the day of All Sinners, too.

A New Day

And so I write for a new day.
A new day, a gray day, a day of cat and cold.
I write for the moments I've lost with the ones I love, for the moments I've gained in the light above.
I wait for you on precipices of thought and dreams, and wonder if you'll enter into them.
The day above is gray and black, I'm black and blue and white all through.
And so I write for a new day.
A new day, a gray day, a day of coal and stripes.
I write for moments I've lost with the ones I love, for the moments I've gained, and for the light above.
I wonder in the stillness if I know the way home,
and I wonder if I'll get there and what I'll say.
I think of all the memories I thought I was sure of, and the way they've all been wished away.
I think I'll go down to the sea and see monsters,
I think I'll go and I'll control the waves.
But today is not the day I thought it would be, and I'm wondering wildly as I wait.
And so I write for a new day.
A new day, a gray day, a day of old and new.
I write for the moments I've lost with the ones I love, for the moments I've gained and for love.