if i ventured in the slipstream

written in thirty minutes, using these prompts and trigger words: "a man receives a letter in the mail"; the color green; smooth gesture; a dumpster.


The mail arrived earlier than usual. Henry slowly rose from his chair and shuffled his feet across the faded carpet. It was a beautiful day. His cat Francis raised his head from his usual spot on the antique table in front of the picture window and watched him as he made his first big move in hours. These things didn't come so easily anymore: simple movements, daily routines. His back ached and his mind was aware of what was missing. His overcoat hung limp around his shoulders; he had shrunk within it. How many years had he had this raggedy thing? He couldn't remember. Marie was still here. He knew that because she bought it for him.

He undid the lock and opened the heavy wooden door. He could hear a woodpecker in the trees, and spring was obviously on its way. He stretched his tired arms to the mailbox and reached inside, grasped a bundle of paper, and pulled it out, careful not to strain his side. He closed the door behind him and made his way back to his chair. Ungracefully, he sank into his chair and began sifting through the mail. After moving a couple of cheap catalogues and coupon booklets, he noticed it. A green handwritten envelope. It was the first piece of interesting mail he'd received in months. There was no return address. He opened it, and inside were a few sheets of folded paper with a familiar script. He was almost afraid to remove the papers, to read them, as if he would be invading her privacy again. He was always invading her privacy, though he had no idea what was so important that she had to keep so many diaries, or why each diary had a little lock on the side and there were no keys to be found anywhere not even in her bureau drawers! What young girl doesn't hide things in her bureau drawers? he always asked himself. He never did find out where she hid those keys.

He retrieved the letter and began to read. Like the loyal man he is, Francis leapt down from the table, crossed the room, and joined Henry in his chair. Henry's eyes gradually began to water. He never did understand why his daughter hated him, and she was all he had left. They could never talk to each other. She never liked sports, and she always kept to herself. He couldn't understand that. And for some reason, she always blamed him for Marie's death, even though she had cancer. If the doctor said there was nothing that could be done, what was he supposed to do? He held Francis. Francis looked up at him, so serene and silent, with eyes big and blue. For years he had waited for his daughter to write, and now that she had, he felt nothing but bitterness. Still, he could never pinpoint what it was that had happened. He knew what he had to do. Without giving it a second thought, he dropped the letter in the trash and turned on the television.

prompt: steal the first line of a book you haven't read before. keep writing.

i chose isaac bashevis singer's the slave:


A single bird call began the day. Isaac reached over his wife, sleeping flat on her stomach, and picked up the phone. He fell lightly back into place on his side of the bed and looked at Sophia. How she could sleep with her face so deeply buried in her pillow, he had no idea, but she was impossible to wake. He wondered why he took so much care in staying quiet through the early morning hours, when he couldn't find his rest between the cawing of the crows and the distant rattle of tractors and chains. The light rested on his face as he dialed the phone.

"Hello?" he said. "It's Isaac. I know it's early, but I need to see you."


She was wearing a dress of dark blue that fell gracelessly over her slim frame. The pale skin cradling her collarbone held two tiny freckles near her throat. They seemed to move as she talked, following her words like the bouncing ball on a karaoke screen. "Isaac, you know I can't do this all the time. I'm married."

"So am I," he answered.

"You know what I mean," she said. And he did. He had seen them together. Her husband was tall and always wore blazers. It was only around men like this that Isaac ever took notice of his own appearance. His tattered corduroy pants and too-loose sweatshirts, always adorned with tiny stains of coffee or pizza sauce. His hair that looked disheveled no matter how short he cut it or how often he combed it. His muscular hands and dirty fingernails. His country-boy walk. It was horrifying. Linda looked at him with a sympathy so sincere he couldn't bear to meet her eyes. She loved him. For some unexplainable reason, she loved him before he could even try to impress her, which wouldn't have worked. She loved him before he had the chance to convince her that he was, in fact, unlovable -- so unlovable that even his unattractive, unmotivated wife couldn't care less whether he returned home within the day. The nights came faster and faster, and he found himself losing himself on long drives whose only purpose was to gather his strength. He had meant to leave Sophia and this loneliness behind, but as Linda looked at him with that great sympathy, he realized that what he was now feeling was a loneliness greater than any he'd felt before.

Dad and I are watching This Boy's Life, a movie about step-parental domestic abuse. DiCaprio is getting the shit beat out of him by DeNiro when we hear a gigantic thud from the kitchen. I already know what we're going to find, but no mental image could quite prepare me for that disgusting position my grandmother is holding. Her right leg is resting sideways under her round frame, which is propped up on the hideous 1970s yellow tile floor. Her blue nightgown is mis-buttoned and twisted from the fall. Her face is vacant, her mouth mostly hanging open, her dentures removed. She is old and worthless. Someone should put her out of her misery.

"Oh, good one, Ma," Dad says. "You've really done it this time."

"Billy, can--"

"I hope you're not expecting me to pick you up because there's no way in hell that leg is going to support you."

"Billy," she slurs. "Get over here right now."

Dad grabs the phone. For a family of three, you'd be amazed how many times we've dialed 911.

"Don't call the hospital! I don't need no doctor!"

Holding the phone, Dad says, "Christ, Mom. Can you see yourself? I knew you'd kill yourself some day. I'm surprised it's taken this long."

"Michelle!?" she croaks, waiting for me to come to her defense as I'm halfway down the hall. "Michelle, get back here!"


In the quiet of my room it is dark and unlike the rest of the house, with its outdated furniture and cigarette stench. Posters of musicians and photographs cover the dreary white walls. I hit play and the music blares, filling the house with youth. I collapse onto the bed. Tears glue me to the sheets and my stomach dances. In what seems like an impossibly short period of time, an ambulance arrives. Out my window, I see two young EMTs enter the house.


"When did she fall?" I hear.

"She got drunk and toppled over."

"Billy!" she screams.

"How long--"

"Just a few minutes ago," Dad answers. "I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. She does this every night."

"Okay, okay. Ma'am, we're going to have to pick you up, okay? Just hang in there."


The music helps. It really does. Not because it's angry. I never saw it as angry. Because it's reaching. It can reach me even through the shriek of the ambulance rushing down my street, the too-slow crawl of my grandmother's jibberish, my father's gently persistent knocks on the door, this separation, a slab of wood, blankets pulled over my head, the darkness. It reaches. And I feel like I might not be alone in feeling alone surrounded by people and noise -- the sound of a body hitting a cold linoleum floor and cars revving up and the television speaking to me even when I try to shut it off; it's always on and her room is only one over from mine. My music cries. I reach for the telephone but it is off the hook, always left off by accident, or on purpose, and she leaves her door closed; this desperation to keep me here, to stop me from reaching. One more quiet knock and my father enters carefully, always carefully. He turns off the music and walks toward the bed without making any noise. He sits without creasing the sheets and places his firm hand on my hidden head.


"It's just us now, kid."

I want to speak, but my lips are glued shut. He slips the blankets down from over my head and runs his fingers through my salty hair.

"Want some tea?"

Silence.

"I'll make you some tea," he says without getting up.

Finally, I speak. "Shouldn't I be going to bed?"

"I don't know," he answers honestly. "Should you?"

I don't answer because I don't know what to say.

"It's just us now, hon, and we can do what we want. You hear how quiet it is here? That's the sound of freedom. The sound of a TV turned off. The sound of an 11pm where you can do whatever the fuck you want. C'mon, let me make you some tea."

I left him in the afternoon. He was never expecting me to give up on him. I wish there were a better phrase to use, but that is exactly what it was: giving up. I gave up and I didn't realize it until I was in my car and halfway down the street. I didn't feel guilty. That was it, really. I didn't stay to hear him out, to see if he was going to be okay by himself, and I didn't feel bad about it. He had never been okay by himself. The first time he was left alone, he was twenty-three - the age I am now - and living with his three best friends -- his girlfriend of two years, Rose; his best male friend, Tom; and Tom's girlfriend, Cassie. My father's girlfriend had been sleeping with a mutual acquaintance, and he felt it; he felt the emptiness in the bed they shared. She wasn't there. He felt it while he drummed, at times when he always felt her eyes pressed against his temples, the only part of him that ached while he played. He couldn't concentrate. His wrists were moving; he was perspiring; the noise filled those hollow spaces in his mind, but he wasn't thinking. He was thinking about how he wasn't thinking. She wasn't there.

Trying to focus, his vision cleared. Andrew was touching her sides with his massive, masculine hands. His motions seemed playful, but he wasn't laughing. Cassie looked at him. She wasn't laughing.

My father's feet were carrying him across the room. After a moment, the blaring of the band came to a stop. He stopped in front of Andrew. Again, his wrists were moving, but this time all was silent. Now everyone was looking at him. Andrew fell to the floor, his face contorted and red. He was looking nowhere. Cassie's face was red, too, and streaked in tears. She was screaming and everything was silent. He couldn't concentrate. His feet carried him home.

The next day everyone was gone. Cassie had packed her bags in the night, and though my father was half-awake, he didn't stop her. He couldn't. He had lost the ability to speak. Tom and Cassie had gone with her, to help her find her way. My father drifted out the door sometime in the afternoon, got into his car, drove without a destination, and finally decided on the enormous oak tree in Buckland. Pieces of glass found their way into his face.

I came to a stoplight and all was silent. I had forgotten to turn on the music. Funny. I thought I had a tape in the car. I thought of the tape he left me when he was taken away. Even though the cops were at the door, he was rummaging in his room for a cassette. He gave it to me, sobbing, and kissed me on the cheek before he left. I thought I had the tape in the car.

When I arrived at the house, he wasn't waiting at the door. He was sitting in the silence of the living room, staring at his feet. I noticed the scar on his face that I never notice. He looked up and didn't say anything. We didn't say anything.

Time answers every flighty concern. With that familiar ding dong sound I hear every day, the café door swings open, and I am awakened from my momentary lapse into worrying about what the rest of the day brings: grandmother's shortened breaths, hastened phone calls from across the state, my father's medical bills, yet another death, another cry, clasped hands over an open casket, rosary beads. There are always rosary beads. His musty breath smells like that of the preacher who scolded us for talking a little too loud, laughing a little too wildly. He looks me right in the eye, and as if that weren't enough, steps a bit closer. I can almost taste the nicotine and alcohol embedded in his unkempt beard, the mixture that reminds me a little too much of my father. They called him The Ox, with his gigantic frame full of drugs that could have killed an animal much larger than him. He asks me what I want and I say nothing. He says he can tell there's something I want, and I tell him he's right: I want to get out of here. Out of where, he asks, the country? And I tell him no. Out of this café. After a while, every day is the same. They blend together and I see the same faces every day, and I can't tell you what day it is. Even though I've been seeing you my whole life, you are no more familiar to me. You are a question mark.

He says he spent three whole years of his life traveling Europe. It was his dream. He graduated from UMass and he wanted nothing more than to see everything he had heard about; before then, he'd never left New England. He hadn't done anything interesting in his life that didn't involve a mind-altering substance. So, totally sober, he took off for Norway, the village his family left to build a better life for their children. It was beautiful, and for about a month, he felt clear-headed and free. He played music on the streets, American folk and rock 'n' roll music that was so vibrant, he felt as if, there, he actually made a difference. People didn't just pass him by; they looked at him like he was exactly what they were waiting for, but then they got used to him. He moved to Sweden, and the same thing happened. Every day rolled into the next. He was doing exactly what he wanted to be doing, and it made no difference. In every city he saw remnants of the previous ones, and it eventually became ugly. Trash lining the sidewalks, drunks hanging out of bars with empty pockets and emptier souls. The water stretched out farther than the eye could see, and above it was a cloud of smog. He couldn't take it anymore, so he headed back to the States, where he was greeted with more indifference and friends who had become dealers.

He says he's made so many mistakes he doesn't even know what they are, where they began. He did so many drugs, he doesn't remember half his life; he didn't even remember I was the daughter of one of his closest friends, but I couldn't forget. The times he stumbled into us on the streets asking for money, not even recognizing us. The times we saw him sitting curled up under the bridge with no guitar and a voice marred by cigarettes and unforgiving winters. He says he's sober again. They sent him back to rehab and forced him to get a job and to take pills he doesn't want to take to stave his addictions. He doesn't want to leave the café, he says. Here, it's warm and inviting and someone else is playing the music. Do you hear the song, dear? ("Let us be lovers. We'll marry our fortunes together.") Do you hear that? ("I've got some real estate here in my bag.") Do you know how many times I've sang that song?

I do. I do. And in a flash I remember Dad hoisting me onto his shoulders in the park on a gloomy winter's day, a day just like today, and The Ox running beside us, singing, "We've all come to look for America..."

instead of sitting here with all these negative thoughts and bad music and boredom in the dreary fluorescent light all by myself i would like to be having sex in the quiet rocking warmth of our apartment with its old dusty radiators and cat hair and natural light, even in the gloom of a snowy march afternoon, your hair looks dirty blond/almost gray like your boyish blue eyes as you slowly descend onto me. darling, you don't know how hard it is to push these images out of the forefront of my mind. the warmth of this kettle is the smooth skin of your hips as you plunge yourself into that delicate part of me. this damp room cannot compare to the nights i spent shivering in the bathroom, where the heat sticks to the glass to blur our faces; everything is foggy when stepping from the heat of your embrace, your face dripping with sweat

but here i can be seen without having to clear the surface. i am naked in a wobbly wooden chair in the corner of the room and everyone knows my name, but today it isn't comforting
so i step into the office where your white sheet hangs limp and unused and i position myself in front of the bookshelves and it is so real, but here it is all john grisham and reader's digest. i don't know who reads this shit. and sarah mclachlan is on the radio, a song that always makes me feel lost. or found. for me it is nearly the same feeling. and the coffee drips and i am expected to appear there behind the counter smiling at people when all i feel is

she sat in the room thinking nothing but how could she just sit here and do nothing while they all died around her? in hospitals with tubes up their noses and into their hearts were her uncles, her favorite uncles -- jazz drumming and bunny cakes, gum drops, fancy french cigarettes, steaks on the grill and turkeys in the yard. she didn't hate herself exactly. instead she didn't feel like herself at all. when did the part of her that wouldn't be able to ignore this disappear? there was a time when she cared about the deaths of strangers and now she couldn't even summon the effort to care about those she loved the most, the ones who picked her up when she couldn't see and whispered condolences in her ear when it was clear that something was wrong.

now something is wrong and no one can help her but herself.

and i think of things that are never thought in the darkness i am lost amongst the trees and i see that we are stuck in a maze of intentions never discussed and we discuss things that don't matter while sipping our coffee, our tea, or our alcohol probably and never question our lack of depth. we look at one another and see that we are the same, though we feel so far away we can barely grasp hold of the last time we truly laughed together, truly made love. our love is violent sometimes, and sometimes it is like we are only looking to one another to find ourselves. our passions are reversed. our hair is messy, disheveled, like our lives after the summer days dissolve and cold air sets in. we curl up with cats underneath blankets and their eyes glow pennylike while ours are invisible as our compassion when we fight constantly and without reason, when we fight possibly just to feel something, to remind ourselves that this is real. that we have resigned to this, this love, and that we are no longer whole without it. we have resigned ourselves to this everchanging love with its varying degrees of passion and hurt. sometimes we hurt ourselves while trying to connect, while trying to seek out what it was that brought us together. but we are together. and though we sometimes halt, sometimes get stuck in the wrongness of it all, we are still growing. we are changing without ever knowing. we are wrong and we are right, and sometimes that is what gets us through the vast, sleepless nights. the warmth of a body, the brightness of a soul waiting to be rediscovered.

mother mother sang her songs in sweet honey and coughed till she exploded into thousands of flowery bits that were swallowed up by the mouths of flies in the sky filled with purple and pink and streaks that look like god in the early hours of summer evenings

she cried on the nights when he left her, alone and in her blue dressing gown she had since they wed twenty years prior. the fences were white then, not chipped to the wood. bodies swirled around that day, fluttering like wings in the moist air. the sky was filled with water, eager to spill upon them and wash them clean, pin down their hair and release them from their fears. make them children again. they laughed when, finally, the first drops fell upon them and they raced to cover the food. the old ones sought shelter under the patio while the young ones looked at one another, their expressions full of hope - "should we do this?" - and their feet found the way. their bodies hurled through the stream, holding onto one another then releasing, gyrating alone together in unexpected bliss

they were wed years ago and now she stood looking out the window at a sky filled with stars, cold and dry as ice. the snow still hadn't fallen and it was coming on february, the year her only daughter was born. the daughter who gave her life to save her, the daughter who never graced the world with her screams. she could still hear her newborn silence on nights like this, nights when the world was frozen with the deaths of a million children

now i do feel the need to write, probably because it's raining outside. maybe also because tonight i yelled at jared simply because i didn't know he was planning on going to bed so soon, and i miss him. he's been working a lot. maybe because i read about a hundred pages of extremely loud and incredibly close today, and i don't know how to express what i'm feeling. i never do know what to say about books, unless i'm writing a paper about them. unless it's emotionless and academic. i read and read and feel moved and changed, yet i know i cannot speak of how -- partially because others have not read the books and partially because i am embarrassed by how much i could say about them, how i'd love to point at something on every page and express my love for the words, for writers, for the world. how often i find myself laughing or crying in public, a book clenched in my hand, sometimes falling into my lap when i am so focused on my thoughts that i no longer have the power to hold on, the words spilling onto me as tears spill down my face and onto the library's plastic cover. maybe it's because my uncle died, and i can't seem to stop thinking about my aunt mary, sitting alone in her big house by the lake where her husband used to sit and watch the ducks on the water. he loved the water. he would swim in the ocean when it was cold outside, but wear sweaters in the house in seventy degree weather. maybe it's because i don't speak enough to do my thoughts justice, nor do i know what to say when i do open my mouth. and whenever i pick up a book, i am reading my mind more accurately than i can at any other moment, and i finally realize what it is that i'm thinking.