howthcastleenvirons

[howthcastleenvirons]

“Come Here”

It’s raining. She would’ve hated that. I can only think of her in terms of her “likes” and “dislikes” now. Anything deeper and I’ll lose it again.  She would’ve hated this rain, but loved the bagels and vegetable cream cheese I’ll bring to her parents’ house when they start sitting shiva. The rabbi finishes the Mourner’s Kaddish and picks up the shovel. I don’t want to do it, but I have to. I get in line, and when it’s my turn, I scoop a bit of earth and tip it over the hole. I can’t look down. The dirt lands on the casket with a thud and my whole body shudders. I can’t stop the sobbing now. I step aside and wobble into her sister’s arms, squeezing my eyes shut as the tears stream down my cheeks. Her sister and I are supporting each other; if one were to let go, the other would crumple to the ground. I open my eyes and, looking over her sister’s shoulder, I notice a man.  He’s apart from the group, partially hidden by a tall gravestone, a few yards away. He’s standing very stiffly with his arms down in front of him and his fingers laced together. He has no umbrella and no raincoat, and the rain has matted his hair. He’s staring straight ahead at the hole, not making eye contact with anyone. He looks so familiar. I know that I’ve never talked to this man, but I know him. Then, I realize. She had shown me his photo. Finally the last of the dirt is piled on. She’s gone and there’s no getting around that. The edges of umbrellas catch on each other as everyone shuffles towards their cars. People are still offering their condolences, but I have to get away. I catch him as he fumbles to get his key slick with rainwater into the driver’s side door of his beat up car. “What’s your name?” He looks up. He had gotten the key into the lock, but he hadn’t turned it. “No one. I’m sorry for your loss.” He turns the key and opens the door. “I’m no one.” He gets in, closes the door, and turns on the key in the ignition, but I come around and bang my fist on the window. “What’s your name?” I demand. He hesitates for a minute and then meets my eye. I am not giving up. He exhales and leans over to unlock the passenger side door. He motions me around and I make my way back to the other side of the car and climb inside. He turns off the engine and the wiper blades stop in mid-swipe on the windshield. Other cars drive away, departing for the buffet that awaits them at her parents’ home. “I know who you are, but I forget your name,” I say, “What’s your name?” “You know who I am?” “Best friends tell each other everything.” He fidgets, running his fingers through his sopping wet hair. The dark strands now stick up at odd angles. It suits him more than the matted look. He looks older than he did in her photo. “Do you want to know what her favorite thing about you is?” “I’m surprised she found something to like.” “Do you want to know or not?” He looks down at his lap and flicks the button at the cuff of his shirtsleeve. “Yes, I want to know.” “It’s the way you say, ‘Come here.’” “‘Come here’?” he asks. “You would say, ‘Come here,’ and she would go to you and you would wrap your arms around her. She said she had never met another person who could make a single phrase sound so commanding and so tender at the same time.” He watches droplets of rain streak across the windshield. “That was her favorite thing about me.” “What?” I ask. “You said that is her favorite thing about me. It was her favorite thing.” My cheeks flush. “I don’t want you at the house.” “I wasn’t planning to go.” We sit in silence. I should get out of the car but I can’t seem to make my legs move. “Jack. My name’s Jack,” he mumbles, “Do you want a ride to your car?” “No, thank you,” I say as I open the car door, “I’m soaked through anyway.”

#writing #creative writing #original writing #short story

[howthcastleenvirons]

This is the weather that makes me think of us. Of years ago when the heat of the summer whittled us down, but the anticipation of a new school year swept in with a cool breeze and a clear sky. This is the weather that reminds me of trying to get a seat near you on the school bus. This is the weather that makes me recall touch football in your front yard and hoodies zipped over t-shirts. This is the weather that reminds me of carefully picking out Halloween costumes, canvasing the neighborhood, and artfully sorting our spoils on the carpet of my family room floor. This is the weather the reminds me of years later, packing up my material life for the move back to college, parting with you until a possible reunion with the gang over Thanksgiving when we’d find an open bowling alley, buy up pitchers of cheap beer, and wobble up to the alley, careful not to step a toe over the line.  This is the weather that reminds me of the first time we slept together, on the strawberry blanket in our other neighbor’s backyard.

#nonfiction #just had to get this out somewhere #creative writing

[howthcastleenvirons]

Palimpsest

Just drops from air conditioners on a simmering summer afternoon, but when the sky starts crying, I head underground. The tracks always end at Court or Church, and every body is packed in to make the trip, arms rigid, jutting like spokes on a signpost.

There are hundreds of quiet, young traumas here,  blistering under the strain of white knuckles and uncertainty. They may trickle, they may ooze, but mostly they burst: The man who kissed me on the platform asked, “Do I owe you an apology?” He forgets there is no disappointment in the barter system.

We rise to the street now, but it is a place transmuted− buildings razed, foundations exposed. Yet, the streets remain for me to follow and I can forge a new blueprint with the light that breaks from the settling dust.

#poetry #final draft #creative writing #poem #original writing

[howthcastleenvirons]

1951 was a strange year in Chicago.

#potential first sentence #creative writing

[howthcastleenvirons]

When I was eight years old I often swam the 25 m butterfly for the township swim team. I was not fast, but I was strong. You have to be strong to swim the fly – arms out of the water making a wide arch, gliding down under the water to form a keyhole shape, and then back out into the arch toward the sky and legs together, pulsing through the water in a powerful dolphin kick. Unlike most of my determined teammates, I was not in it to win it. My goal was just to finish the race and avoid embarrassment. Yet, in my short career as a swimmer, I did have one traumatic experience.

*

The varnish of the guest chair in her hospital room was worn away.

*

It happened during a 50 m freestyle race against Middletown – a team revered in the Central Jersey amateur swimming community. I had only half a lap left when I choked. The chlorinated water entered my lungs, burning, and I went under. I managed to bob up and out and tread water, coughing ferociously to get air into my lung. As I finally drew my first clear breath, awareness washed over me. Every other swimmer had finished the race and I was alone in the middle of the pool. Panic-stricken and still struggling to correct my breathing I forcefully doggy-paddled to the end, unable to execute the motions of the stroke. I was not upset about coming in last. I was not apprehensive about my coaches’ lecture or my teammates’ wrath. My sinking stomach was a product of the imagined disappointment of my parents. Of course they only wanted me to try my best and have fun. They did not care if I brought home ribbons, but I wanted to make them proud – to be the party responsible for putting broad, toothy smiles on their faces. If I felt any embarrassment it was in not succeeding for my parents. This delusional hang-up was responsible for a sacred, pre-race ritual.

* 

The “Family Lounge” was painted a calming sea-foam green. 

*

At every swim meet, before my heat approached, I left the swimmers’ area and scoured the crowd for my parents. Each swim club had its own unique layout that I had mastered by the end of the season. The Freehold YMCA pool was out behind the main building with a covered patio full of chairs framing the pool in an “L” shape. Arrowhead doubled as a summer camp so the pool was high on a hill surrounded by trees. The only two common features of any swim team site were the standard Olympic-size pool and the concession booth. Nailing down the whereabouts of my parents before my races had me running mad, but they had to be watching. It was a compulsion. I could not line up at my lane unless I knew my parents’ eyes were on me. It was all they could do short of jumping into the water and putting their hands underneath me as I swam the backstroke.

#creative non-fiction #creative writing #essay #unfinished

[howthcastleenvirons]

There are hundreds of quiet traumas here, bubbling under the strain of white knuckles and the weight of uncertainty. They may trickle, they may ooze, but mostly they burst: The man who kissed me on the platform asked, “Do I owe you an apology?” He forgets, there is no disappointment in the barter system.

#poetry #draft #stanza #untitled #creative writing

[howthcastleenvirons]

His drink of choice is amber ale. At least it was that summer when I made the trip to Cincinnati to visit him. He showed me how to climb out of the bedroom window and onto the roof to enjoy the setting August sun, all with a beer in hand. I was getting the grand tour of the city by car when he made a decisive turn toward the bridge to Kentucky. “We’re going to The Source,” he said.

What was The Source? He wouldn’t say but he promised it couldn’t let down.

            “Do you remember that first party with all of us in Oxford?” I asked, “The one for Carl’s birthday? You had the beard.”

He fiddled with the C.D.s, finding the mix I brought for him, along with Jersey’s finest saltwater taffy, as ‘thanks for playing host’ gifts.

            “Scott?”

He popped my mix into the player to discover Jack White’s childhood reminiscences echoing through the car: “Fall is here / hear the yell / back to school / ring the bell.” It was all part of the plan. I crafted a combination of songs, which, when played in order, would suggest to his unconscious mind that he should fall in love with me. It opened with The White Stripes’ “We’re Going to be Friends” and closed twenty tracks later with Billie Holiday singing “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Even if my implantation failed, he would still appreciate the music and that mattered.

            “I want it back,” he said, “I want to grow the beard back.”

Scott turned into the parking lot of a giant warehouse. A red carpet was rolled out in front of the entrance and a matching red awning jutted out overhead. It could have been a dance club except for the shopping carts neatly lined along the front wall.

            “We have arrived,” he said.

Dwarfing other emporiums, The Party Source boasted rows of wine, spirits, beers and ciders coupled with decorations to make an intoxicating backyard luau or a graduation party laced with enough booze for you to tolerate Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Ted who have told you twice about cousin Kevin’s internship and are coming your way for rounds three and four.

            “What do you drink? I’m making salmon and vegetables for dinner so I was thinking we should get some white wine.”

           “Sounds good to me,” I said.  

We had complemented each other so well in Oxford until that night, the one with the confrontation. Once we were stateside, innocuous e-mail exchanges of stories for the other’s notes rebuilt the connection that was founded during those crucial first weeks of the Michaelmas term. And then I won some money at a casino one afternoon and he said I should use it to visit Cincinnati. To see him. I had to tread lightly on this second chance.

Scott compared bottles of white while I poked around The Source. I soon stumbled across its crown jewel: a wall that ran the entire length of the store, stocked with beer I’d never heard of. Obscure international brands and domestic microbrews. The whole section was then replicated in an adjoining, refrigerated room. Scott sidled up next to me.

           “Isn’t it wonderful?”

                                                                    *

It’s not that he felt the only things worth having are things gotten by hard work. He could take or leave the work. It was that he believed he had to suffer for what he got. Jesus did it. That was his dad’s favorite example. Even though he was now in his early twenties and dismissed organized religion with aplomb, the vestigial thought of the Passion gnawed at him. So as we walked along the gravel path that ran parallel to the Thames, lit only by patches of light from the moon, when he told me Jay and Mara had been saying things, and he noticed that they had been arranging for the four of us to see a lot of each other lately, and I confessed, that was the moment I lost my shot. There was sort of someone waiting for him back home and flings were not his style, even while studying at a glamorous and ancient university. Did I understand? Yes, I understood. The lie lingered in my mouth like burnt taste-buds after swallowing steaming soup.

#creative writing #creative non-fiction #draft #essay #unfinished

[howthcastleenvirons]

Just drops from air conditioners on a simmering summer afternoon,

but when the sky starts crying, I head underground.

No matter where we stop in between, the tracks always end at Court or Church.

Yet, every body is packed in to make the trip. 

#poetry #draft #stanza #untitled #creative writing

[howthcastleenvirons]

First post, old (silly) poem.

"If I could go to dinner"  

If I could go to dinner

with anyone I know

dead, alive, or fictional,

it’d be Edgar Allan Poe.

  I’d take him to a bar

I know he likes the drink

and a dark and dingy place

would likely help him think.

  In a booth for just us two

with two pints we would start

and over beer and chicken wings

I would climb inside his heart.

  “So gambling?” I would say,

“Aye, I was caught in its vice,

but as for ale… [he’d lick his lips]

That vice is twice as nice!”

  “Your writing is bent

on opulence and gloom.

Why is it your characters

always meet their doom?”

  “There is no amount of worth

in happy ever-afters.

Pain is what goes to print,

so say the finest crafters.”

  This would lead me to ask:

“Is your gloom a fiction?”

“Of course!” He would shout

with the utmost conviction.

  “But Virginia?” I would offer

for she I surely know

is topic for poor Edgar

on which he’d likely crow.

  Then, as I would expect

after tossing out that curve

Poe would throw down his pint

because I’d struck a nerve.

  “My poor, sweet girl!”

He would wail out in pain,

“Her life was so fleeting

like a gentle summer rain!”

  A genius’s mind

like that of Mr. Poe’s

has never been immune

to sentimental woes.

  Into the night he’d storm

playing up his part

leaving me the raconteur

of his telltale heart.

#poetry #edgar allan poe #rhyme #creative writing