LaoTong

A hybrid of Alice and the serpent,
she came slithering from the limbs of the
Oak tree, book in hand, when I first arrived,
shaded by the thick, early autumn leaves.
Old Victorian fireplace mantles
littered with beheaded roses, dried up
and collecting dust. She's been raised up with
the sixties as her soundtrack and tarot
as her catechism.
"Heathen," the old
church ladies would say before they sent her
away from the basement of the North Main
Slovak church.
"Too many questions, that one."

We spent our earliest years driving the
camels from diner to diner. Caffeine-
our water in the desert, fueled our shared
verse. That dirty valley fueled perspective.

Half her face once hid behind that parted
sheet of brown hair. All these years later she
hides behind a more subtle veil. Somewhere,
though, in the years between then and now, that
shy girl came out and danced with an apple
in her hand. Reaching back to hand me the
fruit, her voice rising above the canvas
and drum,
"Bite down real hard and suck all the
juice out," she'd said, her feet pounding the Earth,
dirt in clouds around her ankles, skin brown
and shining. Eyes closed, I smiled, thinking of
those old ladies and that lost First Holy
Communion. She is her own creation
story, this one.

By then we'd outgrown coffee, she and I,
and by that time, the valley too. Though the
verse and the music and the highway lines
provided ample fuel. Then instead of
hair, she'd hide in bathtubs or in bottles
of brandy, her words slow, spilling out in
sticky sweetness from lavender teeth and
blackberry breath. She would smell of sweat and
summer and song. Her penmanship like egg
whites. The milk of her pointed fingernails like
calligraphy, like the folds of her skirts
falling on hips she hardley knew she had.

We found comfort in lovers and laughter
and as always, we'd disect it all by
fireside or waterside. By bridges
we had yet to walk across.
We live on
opposite sides of the highway lines now,
she and I, and occasionally the
geography of our busy lives finds
us, brushes in hand, painting fresh new lines,
feet in step, hips rocking rhythms now to
lull one or the other's daughter to sleep.
And still she smells of sweat, song and mid-day
sun. The rocks move themselves, still, from beneath
her graceful feet.
I draw what I can from
the easiness of Early, disrupted
by the growing up, by the dissection
of mystery and by bones scattered like
fossils from our digging - bleached and brittle
from time and weathering.
I make my own
mantle now from those old bones and song and sun,
from old bottles of brandy and Oak leaves
and coffee beans. I now make my own slow
geography and in that making I
am sure to always draw my highway lines
back to Her.