Second Thought

I was watching a snail crawl across the mud, and I coughed a little, and I saw its slow movements, the slimy grotesque grey body allocating each inch upon the surface. What are we to it? I kicked a rock out of its way, and wiped a tear from my eye. I hoped it would rain soon. I’d been studying Spanish all night, looking at the verb conjugations, and nouns, my horrible memory like lead tied to my feet drowning me in Lake Michigan.
Today would be a new day. No more lies from me. No more lies like a tongue fluttering in a different language, off into the air like a monarch butterfly about to be caught by a net.
Sammy was my lover, I thought. He was slightly chubby. Pale kid, shorter than me. He had acne, he was in my Spanish class, in college. We took the same observations. We tended to remark upon the same things, joking, laughing at the world, laughing at things as if they were rolling tires with monkeys in it.
We shared tongues, we shares noses. We touched teeth to teeth. We picked eachothers’ belly buttons. We were like two koala bears, or two monkeys, nurturing each other.
He loved throwing me on his back, and pretending he was saving me from a fire. But what he didn’t realize, was that, he was saving me from something. Entropy. He was drawing me out of rooms full of emptiness pulling me out of a void, that was about the devour itself, into the sunshine, where I can be on his comforting back, his laughing, his cheerful, his joking demeanor back I love his brown spikey hair, it reminds me of fresh mowed grass.
But the entropy was slow, sucking, pulling away at everything.
Not adventuresome like us.
“Julianna!” Sammy saw me near a tree, in my backyard.
“Hi Sammy hun.” We approached each other like two swans with necks outstretched. But we aren’t quite as graceful. We kissed, our tongues entwining.
He pulled away with a little of my saliva on his lips, and wiped it off.
“I can’t go with you to the carnival tomorrow.”
“why not? I really wanted you to go hun.” I looked at his diamond blue eyes, cut unevenly in his cornea. His face was like a bronze statue, emanating joyful calm. I was soothed and enthralled by it.
“Well, I’ll tell you why- I’ve got to make a phone call to purchase something special.”
Immediately I knew I would be like the snail, waiting for every moment, to slide across the mud to find out what it was he was going to purchase.
I wanted to unplug my ears- and hold his hands, and dance with him around the merry-go-round. But I knew that would be impossible. A rose was growing inside my brain and I couldn’t stop it. I knew the thorns would make people bleed, if I didn’t put a noose around it. But Sammy said he was going to buy something and I knew that this rose would represent our love, but the thorns, would represent each letter in the alphabet. I would have to decode it. I was seeing the snail, in my head through a microscope, in a tube that suddenly flashed in my mind’s eye.
What language was this? Was I learning Spanish for a reason? Was my mind’s eye connected by a super connector? Was my lover up to something? What was he going to buy?
I needed to know.
But the rose wouldn’t open. It was red and closed. The thorns cut against my memories. I saw my father cry as my memories bled. My dog got run over by a mail truck. I saw the thorns pierce thunder clouds.
But I knew the adventure started with my legs. I knew my Spanish teacher could help me. I could begin there. Because Sammy was keeping a secret from me.
It was growing like a rose, but the sun was shining down on it and something peculiar was happening. The image became clear in my brain- of a lilac blossoming, with a willow tree, and the bright sun shining down through the branches.
The water was still underneath the tree, and I walked over in my mind’s eye to see my reflection. I gasped. I saw a woman covered in vines growing around her head, with white eyes.
I snapped out of it, and woke up from the fantasizing, with Sammy staring at me. We kissed. We held hands walking along the river bank, joking about duct tape, and how the world wasn’t bunnies and rainbows, but those jokes seemed sad, compared to the distress of our lives now.
He walked me home, and I walked up the porch steps.
My mind was twisting with the visions I had just seen. I took my ponytail out, sighed, turned on some Toys Orchestra, and went to go make some coffee. As I approached the counter, I saw a rose, sitting on the counter. It was beginning to blossom.
I wondered how it had gotten there. No one had any keys. I wondered if it had anything to do with my visions. Life seemed so normal now except for that rose.
I made some coffee, drank it, it tasted like Arabian belly dancers.
Sammy and I had met through fencing. He had been watching me learn the steps, and he later told me that he enjoyed watching my clumsy yet determined attempts at mastering the technique.
We faced off often. We would face off, and I would try to hit his shoulder or chest, and he would always fake cut my arm off, then my leg, then my other leg, and then he would put the sword to my chin.
He was incredibly good at fencing. But whenever I tried to teach him guitar, he couldn’t get his stubby fingers to hold down the strings onto the frets.
I got a phonecall. It was my dad. He was drunk. I wanted to know why he drunk so early in the afternoon, and he said he couldn’t resist it anymore now that Mom was gone. I saw the rose out of the corner of my eye.
I wanted to hold him and tell him I was still here and so was she, but she was more here than she’d ever been.
But he was agnostic, like a tree in the winter, fading away and you don’t know if it will come back.
The rose bloomed, as the tree brightened, and I felt an impulse to walk upstairs, and I happened to look up. There was the creak to the attic trap door. There were so many lost memories up there probably. Perhaps I could feed the tree.
I brought the ladder down, and shone the flashlight through the cobwebs, as I poked my head above the hole. A spider ran across my hand.
I went to the corner, and tried on a pink flowered dress my great-grand mother must have used to wear.
I tried on straw hats, mum’s hats. I looked through chests hoping to find treasures. But I found none.
I heard a squeaking sound. It was coming from behind the wall. I thought it could be a mouse, but of course there are mice in attics.
But something about the squeaking sound reminded me of the language of the rose.
I wanted to ignore it, so I started going downstairs, intending to forget this second thought, and be on my way to visit with Sammy.
But I saw a light flicker into a corner. I looked out the window, and I saw a white van, and vines with roses grew all over it. I knew immediately, Sammy was in it.
The light flickered in the corner, and I walked over to the corner, ad heard the squeaking. I felt thorns squeezing my heart. I pulled away boxes and used a hammer to get behind the moldy wall.
Behind the wall, was a little mouse, trapped, by a rose bush, trapped by thorns. The rose, if it had blossomed, would have suffocated him.