Connective Cube

Connecting the hard edges

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Quite memoir, Quite fiction.

Fiction

  • Play tones

    Any performing art, really, would have to forgive my ability to completely forget the difference between right and left on command. In space and voice.

    Yet on a screen, or a flat surface, the difference is clear.

    A hug, it hurts when I realize I squeezed extra hard on the shoulder where gramps needs surgery.

    A collision with a dancer, going the right direction.

    I left home, only to wander around, pinning right to east and left to west. The subway direction helped me do the flippy-floppy north to south.

    Still, tell me to hold out my right hand; oops, that was my left hand.

  • Restless, yeah

    I need a nap most days lately. My naps aren’t for sleep.

    A mental sigh from the current moment of zinging from climate change, the multiplicity of wars, inflation, and Roe vs. Wade.

    In my naps, my mind wanders, and wonders.

    I drive, shell-shocked by all the re-movement. It is a continuation of stillness over the past couple of years, one where even seeing large groups of people or sitting in moving vehicles feels strange, unsettling, where our breath intermingles. To share a breath, how intimate is that now?

    Initially, it wanders into the relief of sunset ovaries, and a momentary justification for my proclivity for sugar.

    Kids. I knew I didn’t want them when I was 14 and was the oldest of parents who married young and had me and sis, divorced soon after, and had more kids. Kids are a lot of work. Going to a lot of baseball games is even more work, gymnastics meets for sis, grandma care, sometimes I helped, sometimes I resented sitting in the car so much, going here, going there, in transit between my parent’s emerging worlds.

    I wonder why my dog can get sterilized at ease, and I have to beg.

    ***

  • Words people

    How does the word look today?

    When I see an assemblage of words that carry me back to the thrilling loneliness of my 21st birthday on a mountain ridge.

    What voice does color have?

    Silver, mountains, even though in reality, those mountains were the usual leafy bark.

    Do you feel what you are thinking?

    All alone, far from home, with a bandana of painting Bears, but a more industrious Care Bear quality with a McDonald’s palette rather than Jerry’s bears. I got it at the fair.

    Tone is expansive, right?

    Toner for the face, Tone the body, Atone your sins, Visceral tone of lemon cake happens when I see true mustard or even smell lemon peel, and not staring at the color of the sun. Attempts at sweetness, for sure, even if my tone feels self-muted, ambient, at most times. At times.

  • Surprise!

    Sun Ra, Space is the Place, 1979

    My shadow, long in the trees, casting over homes from the first world war post-era.

    What memory conjures as I stare at this long shadow?

    Right now, none, all I can do is appreciate the long contours
    the odd middle part of my hair, poofing up towards the sky,
    electric blue headphones don’t show in the shadow, nor do my teeth.

    A twirl blob, indistinguishable in motion, enters the surface of each house with a few pounds of pavement.

    Plop plop plop

    If I knocked on your door, you would wonder what sweaty mass of wide-eyed middle hair parted would bother you at such a quiet moment, make your dog bark, interrupt a mid-afternoon snack on a day of rest.

    Plop plop plop

    When I make a right turn, the shadow enters back into me.

  • Nope

    Here we go
    again

    The dance where I avoid talking to
    anyone
    today
    if I can help it.

    There are at least 5, maybe 20 others with their headphones on, faces soft behind florescent glows.

    I find comfort in our mutual silence:

    Why would I want to talk to people who think they know me so well?
    With their comments that I have nothing to say, that I lack ideas.
    Well, they come, but not to y’all, ones who point the finger at an easy target
    Day in, and day out.

    Forgetaboutit. Is all I have to say in my head to you, as you mistake my silence for lack of passion.
    I don’t want to share it with you
    until
    maybe
    you stop telling me how much you can’t stand someone
    that is more similar to me
    than you will ever know.

    I wonder how often you say the same about me, to others.

    Until then,
    I will keep the sensory channels down, my appearance aloof, and do my best to
    not think about any of you at all in the natural glow.