the backyard is missing something -
��������� �����(prescript, at some hours later : i really wish my name was orion.)tonight i imagine it's a man, a tall man with dark hair and steel-formed eyes. he stands in the corner dressed entirely in black, impassive, staring at me, waiting for me to fall asleep. insomnia racks your brain on nights like this, becomes a living virus, drilling holes in the kuwait-areas of your cerebellum and setting fire to the oil wells of your hippocampus. for a minute, i'm attracted to the black-clad man who is to be my lover in a dream. there will be no contact, just nearness. "to be in bed and sleep not; to want for one who comes not; to try to please and please not; these are the worst things." an egyptian proverb.
there are some other vague words from lara flynn boyle and even john steinbeck, but i don't care about them in a lazy sort of fashion. on the drive home i kept shaking my head vigourously and blinking a lot, to keep awake. exit after exit flashed by, numbers whirring like newspaper dispatches in movies - "DRIVER FALLS ASLEEP AT WHEEL - DOZENS KILLED!"
some relatives over today. my aunt, my cousin. a neighbour. her kids. some cards, some laughs, some pizza. pizza with everything on it. my mother forgot that i don't like everything-on-it. it unnerved me. "i forgot," she said. "sorry, honey." my grandmother couldn't come. "she's so tired all the time lately," my aunt explains. "always so exhausted." sleep withers away the marrow of the beautiful. my grandmother is beautiful. she has white hair that is never in order. she wishes it was curly. when she sleeps, she dreams it's curly. she walks slowly and laughs, and reminds me a little bit of a gentler, quieter edith bunker. she used to always wear housedresses, but now it's a shirt and some comfortable cotton pants. "do you want anything to eat?" she would always ask. it was her who would first give me a taste of ramen, which she called ramen pride.
there is so much love in her house. it nestles like pigeons and finches beneath the eaves, mothers with their wings protectively over newborns.
at one point there was a swollen tumour of a hornet's nest nestled beneath her eaves. the house is a small two-story on south street in new britain. number 515. a small driveway, some chain-link fence. a newly cut-down apple tree with only the stump remaining. a sad pear tree. and oh the gardens of cosmos and black-eyed susies and rock paths and daylilies. chinese lanterns without any lambency to brighten the nighttime. i used to wish they'd glow. lupines. oriental irises. purple-bearded majesty.
a small, withering garden. unkept. next door, a boxer named otis and a deserted birdbath. the ghost of a huge, sprawling oak draped in creepers and vines. all of this in the city. not far away, a dattco bus station, a maaco car repair centre. the loud rap music of puerto rican families down the street, the back-drop of many an independent film celebrating ethnicity, cracked sidewalks ...
and the one thing that makes me cry. "DEB <3 DAVE 1979" inscribed with their fingers (or a stick) in the setting concrete outside the house.
a small red maple feverishly shoving up from the browned grass of the "front yard".
the chainlink fence in the backyard on the right side of the house has a lock on it. next door, music. in the backyard, i see the blurred form of smoke rising from the grill. it is memorial day. i am playing with a hose, and the hollow sound of a basketball with not-enough-air is thudding weakly against the concrete slabs of a makeshift court. it hits the old backboard, misses the hoop and net, and vanishes into a clump of proud peonies.
not too far away lies the very last bite of a hot dog. right now, it is covered with small black ants.
the screen door slams. my grandmother has entered the house. she'll return shortly with a bag of jumbo-puff marshmellows. i'll eat too many and be sick. the sun will go down and i'll be eaten alive by mosquitoes while the adults play hand-and-foot (a form of canasta) in the house.
and the chinese lanterns still refuse to glow, but bob in the caretaker wind.