Showered

Charred letter fragments wafted into the tree canopy. Good riddance.

Vee smeared the ash residue on her hips while waiting for the outdoor shower to warm. She stepped in as a cloudburst spattered the wood deck. Cool rain mingled with scalding water. Never good at finding a happy medium, the truth was the torture of contrasts made her feel alive. Like ash on pale skin. Wrong and right.

Was this right – “You will love again the stranger who was yourself”? Could this sparkling stranger beaded with water be her? Maybe?

The shower erased the ash smudges.

Cattle and wind shushed through purple loosestrife and between clouds the sun winked at her. Cows’ lowing harmonized with grasses stroking their hides as they ambled to the adjacent field. She stretched out on the deck, sky-scoured, tuned in to their hymn.

“Hi. Nice to meet you, stranger.”

**

Written in response to a prompt from dVerse to use a line from a Derek Walcott poem called Love after Love. The line is “You will love again the stranger who was yourself.”

“Doubt truth to be a liar”*

Part II (The first part can be found here.)

The scrap of paper browned and curled at the edges and a faint blue flame ringed the words “I don’t want starbursts and marble halls. I just want you.”

Kip Hofias

Between lovers a little confession is a dangerous thing. – Helen Rowland

“What kind of name is Kip Hofias,” Harry asked Vee, handing her the envelope noting the return address in Vancouver.

“A magician’s name.”

Vee held the letter at arm’s length pinched between her white knuckled thumb and index finger.

“I used to love his magic.”

Can you please not do that?

The human in the white jacket, white socks, blue Bermuda shorts and pale blue shirt threw golden twigs into the water. Puffer the mermaid peeked around the limestone  rock poking up near the beach at Tobacco Bay and watched her friend William the parrotfish and Gillian the Wahoo snatch them from the surface. No blood, thank goodness but a ribbon of shiny stuff swirled like a swimming eel.

Kenspeckle

I don’t want to be front and centre, Harry. You know how I feel.

Vee, your kenspeckle head is famous.

No one in Kootmacs knew Vee before the scalp fire except Harry. Infamous Vee, Lady Mexican Hairless, she thought. Bald as an egg.

#

The hunt started. The grounds of Twist of Fate were a cat’s cradle of yarn threaded from trees to fence posts, scribbled through the bars of the fence, down the hill to the llama pen and back again. Wool rainbows hung from branches.

50 shades of pink

I imagined Valentine sex would be different than regular Sunday morning sex. Spunky, fragrant as plumaris, a dianthus supurbus experience.

 

Three weeks ago, I made a date with Vee and insisted she block time for us in her calendar. She agreed only when I promised to stick to the schedule.

Long and winding

I’m staring down at the old bag when she sticks out her hand for me to shake. Except it isn’t a real shake – she just offers me her fingers like she’s reaching to pat a dog.

Christ, her head is a mess. The old fart who brought me to the interview warned me. He said just focus on her pretty green eyes but I can’t help staring down at her. I’m 5’ 11”, everyone looks short to me. When she says she’s five foot three I hold the snort. Unless snootiness is measured in inches, I’m thinking – and there’s lots of that coming out of her Mexican Hairless-with-psoriasis scalp.

Spin-off

Rose Laine was a performance artist. While the audience watched, she knit herself into a dress made of acrylic, chunky-weight, cream-coloured tweed flecked with red, constructed on 12.75 mm needles. Occasionally the needles doubled as weapons.

Don’t sit under the apple tree

The ferry door clanged shut. Harry stood on the bow and let the wind dry his eyes as the vessel pushed away from the dock. Everything solid disappeared behind a wall of steel. Ahead he saw water fortified by saw-toothed mountains on the horizon.

“Lady, why did we have to come so far?”

Dogged

Forest fires had crisped the mountains on the long drive across British Columbia. Ashes blessed the car as they drove through scorched hills quilled with trees that looked like blackened toothpicks. A funeral pyre of their former lives.

The town of Hope sprung up under sharp blue skies irrigated by a bustling river, so they stopped. Lawns were green and Douglas Firs tickled the clouds. They could have lived in Hope, but then they saw the dogs.