Say a Little Prayer

The same driver as last week greets me cheerily as I roll with my signature move onto the bus. He is just as chatty as before, though all he wants to talk about is the weather, which leads to him talking about global warming (thankfully he is not a denier) then nuclear power, and then of course the risks of annihilation as a result of said nuclear power, at which point I let my attention drift off, leaving him to carry on by himself about Fukushima. “You know they have lots of like wild monkeys over there, so they had a chance to test the effects of radiation on primates that are, you know, not that much unlike us…” As he had noted, it’s a deceptively chilly day.

On a whim, I take a different route to get upstairs. I roll past display cases filled with plush animals from the gift shop, past the mysterious Blue Elevators, which perhaps lead to some secret part of the hospital, perhaps where they do animal testing, or keep horribly mutated patients. I pass numerous signs pointing the way to the Heart Center, then speed through the heart of the Heart Center itself before arriving at the familiar Green Elevators. 

I press the blue button and roll in, and immediately I’m told to have a seat in room one by Tim, the only male nurse left in the office, so competent and invaluable that other departments keep stealing him away. Aside from an occasional glimpse, I can’t remember the last time I actually saw him. I take off my post-op shoe and sock and he raises the chair. 

“Well this looks all healed up,” he says, then looks at the computer. “Oh, I guess it was last week too. Well, I guess this is it then. It looks beautiful.”

Lena comes in and asks if I want another watercolor animal card. I say no thank you, though I love the one I have. Once again she asks if I mind if she records our conversation using AI. I ask if this is for her podcast about secret lives of the wound care patients. “Because I would listen to that.”

“Also, this is Melissa,” she says. “She’s interning with us. Is it okay if she joins us today?”

Melissa smiles. She is pale, raven-haired, and absolutely stunning, with piercing blue eyes that hurt to look at. Lena cuts away the callus and seems very happy with the results. Vicki slips in to sit at the computer. 

“Did you get hold of the shoe people?” Lena asks. I lie and say yes. I already know what they would tell me, which is the same thing all the diabetic shoe instructions online have told me. Wear the shoes at home to begin with, starting with a half hour, then an hour, taking them off regularly to check for redness or swelling. After that start wearing them outside for increasingly long periods of time until your feet are perfect and you want walk around like a regular person and live happily ever after, the end. 

I tell her all this but she seems skeptical that the instructions are not more elaborate. “What did they tell you to wear in the meantime?” she asks. 

“They didn’t tell me anything,” I say, feeling like we’ve been through all this before. “I’m wearing the post-op shoe when I’m at work, because I can walk on the heel. I haven’t worn the shoes outside yet. I’m taking this very, very slowly. I’ve learned my lesson.” She seems okay with this and gently presses the area where the wound is. Karen and Jenny pop in to gush about how good the skin looks.

“Did you get to the beach?” Karen asks. 

“I did,” I say. She asks me how it was and I say it started out good, but I got food poisoning. “Luckily it didn’t hit until the next day.”

I really was incredibly lucky. I’ve never had food poisoning before, at least not to this extent, and the idea of being stuck on the bus as an apparently endless stream of liquid fecal matter pours from my body is too horrifying to even contemplate. As it was, I felt disgusting, and took the day off from work. Today I felt a lot better, and had managed to eat a salad for lunch with no ill effects.

“They have one of those mats that leads down to the beach for people with mobility devices,” I tell her. “Not all the way out to the water, but still.” I had sat on my scooter at the edge of that hard strip of blue vinyl for a long time, staring out at the waves crashing in on themselves. Everything was gray: the sky, the sea, the sand. There were no other people around, just huge piles of driftwood scattered about. 

I go to Seaside once a year, during the off-season, because it’s cheaper. I always stay in the same crummy motel facing the ocean. It’s become a ritual for me; there is something magically healing about waking up in the morning and looking out over the water. However, this trip I didn’t feel any of the usual comfort and well-being from breathing in that salt air. I couldn’t relax, and took little pleasure in visiting the usual little shops. I had been good and used my scooter the entire time. Even without the mobility mat, Seaside is the most accessible of all the beaches, with a paved promenade running all the way along the coast, though it wasn’t as smooth as I hoped, and everything I did required a lot more concentration than usual. Maybe that was the reason for the disconnect. Or maybe I’m more of a mess than I want to admit.

“When do you see your podiatrist?” Lena asks

“I need to get a new one,” I say. “I’ve had trouble finding one who doesn’t suck.” They all nod and mumble in agreement. 

“Well they might be able to do x-rays and see what the underlying cause of this is, if there’s a bone spur or something. We’re just here to patch you up, we can’t tell what the underlying cause is.”

I tell her I’ve had the knobby ends of my metatarsals sanded down four times now, but it only helps temporarily. They continue to calcify and eventually break through the skin.

“Dr. Taggert said she was going to recommend someone,” I say. “Do you know who she uses?” 

Vicki says she thinks it’s Dr. Glazier, though he’s not certain. I tell her I can send Taggert a message to ask. 

“Yeah, I think she’s back next week. She took her son to Panama.”

“Is she helping to broker Trump’s deal to buy the canal?” I ask. No one laughs, all of them looking grumpy at the mention of that dreaded name. 

“Her son wants to be a doctor,” says Vicki, as if this explains everything. I try to imagine what it’s like to be Dr. Tagger’s son. A lot like being her patient, I imagine. 

“So do we see him in a month?” Lena asks her.

“No, that’s it. He is done.” Vicki turns to me. “Call us if it opens up or if you have any other problems, but other than that you’re done with us.”

“Really?” My chart had listed me for weekly appointments for another month, but it was probably just automated. 

“I’ll tell Dr. Thompson, I’m sure she’ll be pleased,” says the nurse practitioner.

“She’ll be pleased to have me out of her hair at last,” I say. 

“No, she likes you. You’re one of our favorites. We’re all going to miss you.” 

It was all over so fast, it feels like a blur. I didn’t get to chat or catch up with anyone. The gorgeous young intern vanished almost instantly; what was her name, Melanie? Michele? Was she even there? Who’s writing this show, anyways? Why would you introduce an intriguing new character right before the series finale? 

“So that’s it,” I say, as Tim wheels in my scooter, complimenting my makeshift padding. “I’m really done.” 

“Not quite,” says Jenny. “You still have to ring the bell!”

They all start chanting, “Ring the bell! Ring the bell!” And this time it’s real. The baby bird is finally being booted from the nest to try to fly on his own. I feel a mixture of feelings so overwhelming I can’t think or say anything. But I know this isn’t really over. I’ve been here too many times before. The shoes will start to rub and I’ll develop a new ulcer and…

No. Don’t even think it. Just ring that damn bell. 

 All three of them sit on the counter waiting for me, beside the Oscar statue, which still doesn’t have KC’s name etched on it yet. I wish she was here to see this. Stupid Thursdays. I pick up the town crier bell and ring it, not too hard hard. It makes a high, sweet peal. Everyone cheers.

“See you in a couple of weeks,” I yell. 

“Nooooo!” they all cry. I hit the button and the door swings open and I roll off into the sunset.

In reality it’s only three o’clock and the sun is still high in the sky. I’m still in kind of a daze when I hoist my scooter onto the bus. I have plans to see a movie in a couple of hours, so instead of heading home, I decide to get something to eat, since my stomach seems to be back to normal. 

I transfer to the streetcar and two women get on after me, dragging a pile of huge bags of cans after them. They are both dressed in skintight gym outfits and are shaking their enormous booties and laughing and jabbering over one another. They are obviously very, very high and their merriment has an edge to it, like they might suddenly start biting people. One of them asks me what stop they should get off for Goodwill. As the streetcar moves one of the woman starts singing, 

This morning I wake up

And I put on my make up

I say a little prayer for you

They both belt out an approximation of the chorus before breaking into hysterical laughter. 

Together forever you’ll stay in my heart 

and I will love you 

forever and ever is how it must start

you always bring heartache to meeeee

“This is your stop, Dionne,” I yell as the doors slide open. The women cackle and dance out the door, then go back in and get their bags, then go back for a bag they forgot, then for yet another one. As we pull away I see them in the bus shelter, arranging their bags and wiggling and waving their arms in the air wildly like those inflatable figures in front of car dealerships. 

I get a burger at a place I like down the street from the theater. I sit in the sunshine and watch the passerby as I eat; hipster families and dog walkers and couples of every size and race and gender. Before I leave I use the lavatory and while things are still not normal down there, I feel okay, and I roll off to sit on a bench before the doors open. As I sit there, my stomach starts to gurgle loud enough that I can hear it. It feels uncomfortable, but I tell myself it’s going to be fine. 

When the cinema opens I immediately roll into the restroom. Things are once again not normal, and I don’t feel any relief when I’m finished. I take my seat and start to hear the gurgling again, but then it settles down and I’m able to enjoy this sweet, silly film for a while. But when Parker Posey is accosted by her asshole ex in the stairwell of her apartment, I start to feel stomach pains that don’t abate. It feels too complicated to quietly extricate my scooter in the dark, so I stumble up the aisle and once again jettison a stream of slop, feeling greatly relieved afterwards. I obviously wasn’t ready for solid food, but instead of dwelling on my folly I once again tell myself it’ll be okay, I’ll make it through the film and get on the bus and go home and sleep through the night and feel better in the morning then go to work and then it’ll be the weekend and I can relax, having learned a valuable lesson about the hazards of food poisoning. 

I return to my seat and fifteen minutes later I feel like I’m going to throw up. I breathe deeply and close my eyes but the urge grows more and more insistent, and I start to cough in what is obviously a prelude to something much worse. I make it to the restroom as fast as I can. I have barely shut the door when vomit begins to spew, and feeling the muscles of my sphincter start to unclench, I make a fatal error in judgment and instead of pulling down my pants and turning around, which might give me a chance to keep the damage manageable, I decide to face the basin. 

I explode from both ends, a twin fountain of sour slop. Everything I’ve been holding in, everything I’ve been ignoring and avoiding and shoving deep inside over the past year, two years, hell, probably my entire adult life, it’s all gushing out of me in as violent and disgusting a way imaginable. I have no control over it so I just let it happen, my conscious brain shutting off temporarily so I can get through this. It feels like it goes on forever but the whole ordeal only lasts about five seconds.

When it’s done I drop my trousers and squat on the can but nothing more comes out. Most of the shit is liquid, which means it doesn’t smell all that bad, but also means that I am thoroughly drenched. If this is all some cosmic warning about the dangers of getting cocky and taking things too fast…. then message received, I guess. 

But I don’t have time to dwell on it, and my brain flips into damage control mode as I try to assess the least painful way of extricating myself with the minimum amount of humiliation. The catastrophe has ended, everything else is aftermath. I wipe the beige puddles from the floor with toilet paper, then struggle out of my shoes. I strip off my underwear and run it under the tap but quickly see the futility of this and throw them in the trash can. The thought occurs to me that I should just throw open the door and walk out naked and dripping. For a brief flash it seems like a reasonable thing to do. 

Instead I wash myself off as best as I can, but there’s really nothing I can do to hide the fact that I am a sopping mess, so I just pull up my soaking pants and buckle my belt and head out to the concessions stand to start making my apologies, praying my stench will be masked by the smell of popcorn.

*   *   * 

When the bus crossed the river, I felt myself starting to vomit again. I couldn’t hold it in, so I took out a plastic bag I happened to have wadded up in my coat pocket and coughed some wet chunks into that and pulled the cord. As soon as I got off I once again started ejecting from both ends, and I just let it, cautiously rolling along the unfamiliar terrain. I was twenty blocks from home but I couldn’t bear the idea of getting back on a bus in my state, so even though I was exhausted, I just rolled on. I felt the pressure building again and thought about crouching in the bushes, but figured what’s the point, and just let myself go. Let the few dog walkers think I’m just another bum soaking in his own filth. It was freeing, in a way, not to care, to be released from any of society’s expectations. I was just an animal, albeit one dressed in wet clothes and balancing on a rickety contraption through the streets. The wound care clinic, that oasis of cleanliness and compassion, of cast saws and wound vacs, with its endless rolls of gauze and sterilized scalpels, seemed thousands of miles away. A brief montage of faces and images flashed before my eyes, like in a clips episode of a TV show, but the whole experience was already starting to fade in my memory. The hole had vanished, the wound had healed. Would it open up again? Of course it would. But for now it was closed and the night air was mild and the city felt gentle. I didn’t care that I was soaked to the skin in my own feces, all I wanted was to be home. And unlike the unsheltered people hunched in the shadows around me, I was fortunate enough to have a home, with a hot shower and a soft bed and a sweet ball of fur who hopefully would not find me too repellent after my misadventures. Between the buildings, I could see the moon, a bright blob suspended in the darkness. Cutting through the park, my wheel hit something small and sharp at just the wrong angle and I started to pitch forward. I hung there, balanced on two wheels for what seemed like an eternity, then jerked back and steadied myself before I could topple over. I rested there for a moment, breathing heavily beneath the trees and the sky, and continued on.

Don't Chase

 I spend July 4th in the apartment, alternating between cleaning and sleeping. I didn’t have too much to drink at the barbecue but I still feel sluggish and worn out. I have a pretty pleasant day regardless, and by evening feel perky enough to head down to the Goose for supper. 

There are Lost Dog posters plastered all over the neighborhood, showing a moppy little mutt with the typical admonition “Dont chase will run.” The Goose is busier than I thought but most of the crowd is settling their bills and heading out to watch the fireworks, leaving only a few of us. 

As usual, nearly everyone on the deck is coupled up, but when I walk over to the water cooler I see an attractive woman sitting by herself. I smile and she gives me a big, warm smile back. Well that’s nice, I think, but she’s probably waiting for someone. But when I go to sit down with my drink, I see her start to talk to a guy sitting by himself a few tables away from her. He has a full beard and a baseball cap. He also has a dog. 

By the time my food comes they are laughing and chatting like old friends. His dog barks wildly at every other dog that approaches the deck. “She’s just saying hello,” the man says every time. I can’t make out much of their conversation but I hear him say that he’s in real estate. She’s new to the neighborhood, and fairly new to Portland. I hear them talk about paddle boarding. They look like a good match. Even if I had a dog, I can’t compete with real estate and paddle boarding, not to mention that beard, which is full and lustrous. I can only hope that the cap is hiding a case of male pattern baldness, though I know that wouldn’t make a difference at this point. 

I take my trusty sketchbook out for company but my heart’s not in it. I tell myself this is a good opportunity to practice not spiraling down into self-hatred and misery about how alone I am, how long I’ve been alone, how the older I get the chances of this changing grow ever slimmer. It’s so easy to chastise myself for my cowardice. I should have gone right up to her when I got my drink, talk to her before that irresistible canine spell could take hold. But I couldn’t do it. I am convinced that no woman wants anything to do with me. While this might not be true, it has been many years since I’ve seen any evidence to the contrary.

“I need to get a dog,” the server says to me.

“Same here,” I say. “But I like cats better.”

“Me too,” he says. “But, you know.”

The new friends order another drink and I finish mine and head back up the hill. In an empty parking lot, a gorgeous young woman and a man who looks like her father are fiddling with an automatic ball-throwing machine that their dog is nosing warily. The girl is twitchy and holding her limbs at odd angles, like she’s on something. Dog toys and balls and various bits of throwing apparatus lie scattered across the parking lot. 

At the top of the hill, the lost dog signs grow more desperate, hanging from every telephone pole. The sky is nearly dark. Soon the fireworks will start and all the dogs I saw tonight will be whimpering under their owners’ beds. I wonder where the lost dog will hide, who will comfort him as the world around him explodes.

Clean Towels

        It’s the day before Independence Day and the second Revolutionary War has been won. After decades of fighting, the noble rich have finally thrown off the shackles placed on them by the filthy poor. For us huddled masses, it’s all pretty disheartening, but I have the day off tomorrow and am on my way to a backyard barbecue. As I sit on the bench at the bus stop, I look at the arrival time on my phone. It keeps leaping around, getting longer and shorter as some unseen force impedes the vehicle’s progress. A man on the corner shows a cardboard sign to the traffic. I don’t bother to read it. I used to be interested in these signs, in all the different ways people ask for help, the various kinds of lettering they use, but I can’t look anymore. 

        A teenage girl sits next to me, thumbs skipping across the screen of her phone. There is suddenly an explosion behind us, followed by another, and another. It seems early for fireworks –the sun is still high in the sky. I turn around to look and see puffs of smoke in the air above the bridge. The booms go on for a few minutes. 

        “What was that?” the girl asks uncertainly. She doesn’t have an accent I would guess she’s Pakistani.

        “Oh, somebody getting ready for the fourth,” I say.

        “But that’s not until tomorrow,” she says, sounding confused.

        Just then there is a crash right in front of us. An old hatchback truck crammed with junk has spilled a pile of metal shelves out of its open hatch. The truck speeds through the intersection then pulls over. Fortunately, the car behind it brakes before it hits the shelves, and I walk out in front of it, holding up my hand up. The girl runs out after me and we both gather up  the shelves. The words CLEAN TOWELS are written on a piece of masking tape on one of them. We carry them to the sidewalk and the driver of the truck comes and grabs them without a word. 

        

        The girl and I sit back on the bench. 

        “Lucky that didn’t go through somebody’s windshield,” I say. 

        “Yeah. Pretty scary,” she says. The bus comes and I gesture for her to get on first then she does the same to me and I insist and she says no then we both try to step on at the same time and laugh. As we drive off I look at the guy on the corner and finally decide to read his sign. He’s crayoned an American flag next to the words WAR VETERAN ANYTHING HELPS. I wonder if he knows that the real war is just beginning. 

The Lew Welch Memorial Expressway

I wake up beside the highway. Above it, rather. Over the past year I’ve learned the rhythms of its traffic the way someone living beside the sea learns the patterns of the tide. The traffic never stops on the 405 and its many arteries, though it does slow down at night. The poet Lew Welch ranted about the insidiousness of highways in a letter he mailed from a house one block from here that a few years later was razed to build this very road. If it was still there, I would be able to see the roof from my bedroom window. Despite all the changes to the city, I like knowing that many of the buildings he would have walked by are still standing, including this one. 

The sun has not yet crept around the corner of the building so I’m a little chilly as I sit on the balcony with my coffee. The sparrows vanished last week; I miss their frantic chirping, though I never caught more than glimpses of their beaks. I do my puzzles and read the news, even though I know I shouldn’t. I should be protecting myself from the constant barrage of horrifying updates to the story of our country’s plummet into madness. It’s  rush hour and the traffic light on the ramp is helping to stagger the traffic speeding toward the tunnel that cuts through the hills. 

Last week my mother and I drove through that tunnel on the way to the zoo. She was in town to visit and she said the two things she wanted to see were my new (to her) apartment and the baby elephant. Tula-Tu is four months old; I’d never seen an elephant so young, and while it’s always depressing to see animals in cages, my mother and I were both captivated. It’s a strange experience to stand next to the woman who gave birth to you and watch a baby elephant tuck her trunk into her own mother’s armpit to suckle. 

We had a nice week together. Growing old has not made her bitter and crabby like it did to her own mother, who never was all that nurturing to begin with. I didn’t plan a lot but we managed to pack in a lot. I dragged her along to a program dedicated to the work of a local video artist, which wasn’t great, and a production of Assassins, which was. Assassins is a Stephen Sondheim musical about the people who killed or tried to kill the president. It’s hard to believe there has only been a single botched attempt at eliminating our current president, but the show repeatedly urges us to follow our dreams.

The production was put on by a small local troupe of self-proclaimed marginalized  individuals, all of whom were terrific. They performed in the black box theater at Reed College. Lew Welch went to Reed, along with his friends and fellow Beat poets Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen. I wonder what they would have thought of the play, its usual carnival barker narrator replaced by an imposing drag queen Lady Liberty. 

We spent a few days at the coast, staying in a motel in the sleepy town of Rockaway Beach. It was shabby, but it was clean, and it was right on the beach. We had lunch in Manzanita, which is a bustling metropolis by comparison, then went to my favorite spot on the entire coast, Short Sand. I don’t get there often because you need a car. From the parking lot you follow a creek for a mile through old growth forest, where trees sprout from other trees, their roots forming twisted structures that look like portals to the faerie kingdom. It all looks otherworldly. The path ends at a gorgeous cove rimmed with pines and beloved by surfers. 

Welch famously disappeared into the California wilderness with a rifle when he was 44, leaving behind a note.

 

I never could make anything work out right and now I’m betraying my friends. I can’t make anything out of it – never could. I had great visions but never could bring them together with reality. I used it all up. It’s all gone.

 As I sat next to my aging mother, looking out over the Pacific, I felt grateful that she was still in good enough shape to visit me, to drive to the beach, to walk through the woods to get to this beautiful spot. It has been a hard year, as was last year, as was the year before, as was... The losses keep building up and the planet seems to be spinning faster and faster toward apocalypse. My foot is still fucked up, and as usual I’m aching with loneliness. To cope with it all I’m drinking too much, which, oddly, does not seem to be helping. I’m not ready to give up on this world yet, but if I was, this would be a good place to do so. To let go of this world with the protective arms of the cove encircling us. Juncos twittering in the branches. The sun sparkling on the water. The waves crashing against the sand like the sound of rushing traffic on the freeway. 

For the Cause

It has to be done, I know that,

but God is it boring. Unsavory, of course,

but it’s the boredom that eats away at me.

I stare out at the flies crazing

beneath the ceiling fan, feel like my eyes 

are going to start circling and looping like them 

if he doesn’t finish soon. I’m jerking as hard as I dare;

too fast or too slow and he’ll gripe.

It’s small and flaccid, but I do my best  with the material

as I wait for that final spasm so I can finally 

get some work done. In the meantime, 

I stare at the flies and think about the diagrams,

the lists, the maps, all the scraps of folded paper 

outlining the plan to bring down this gang of rejects

from Monster Island. Some of the information 

is vital –lists of potential allies,

the heights of buildings along various routes,

seating arrangements in the chambers and halls. 

Some of it is more esoteric. Secret sauce recipes

for various fast food items. Sources for exploding

seat cushions. Theories on how to keep a head alive 

once it’s been separated from the body 

so it can still watch and feel as a razor-sharp, 

many-pronged dildo is rammed repeatedly 

into the rectum. Is that really a necessary part 

of the overall scheme? 

There are various schools of thought on this. 

Some fear we will lose focus, as I am right now, 

letting my weary mind daydream about a day 

when a never-ending series of handjobs 

and blowjobs won’t be necessary 

to appease and distract these slobs. 

That day seems so distant, 

but at least this current state of semi-hardship 

is close to coming an end, his cheeks having gone 

from orange to cherry to grape 

as he puffs and groans, sweat matting 

linty cobwebs of hair against his brow. 

Finally, with a little squeak 

his whole body shudders 

and a greasy comet of spunk 

streaks across the room

to splat against the portrait of his daughter 

eying us from the end table. 

Milky tears run down her face 

as he struggles to extract his ass 

from the deep plush. 

It won’t be long now, I want to tell her.

He totters and tugs on his trousers 

and flicks a few bills at me.  

As they flutter to the carpet, 

I go to the bathroom and wash my hands. 

One of the flies follows

and I snatch it from the air with a soapy fist 

and drop it into the sink

where it swirls and swirls before 

being sucked down into the darkness.

I Thought We Were Talking

Sunday morning I wake up and look out the window. On the street below, a figure in s black coat is standing nearly doubled over, frozen in place. This is a common sight these days; dealers have taken to cutting fentanyl with an animal tranquilizer called Xylazine, or tranq, which extends the length of the high and paralyzed the recipient. 

I spend the afternoon riding the bus around. I am sickened by the nastiness of the anti-homeless rhetoric, but today is one of these days when everyone I come across seems fucked up on something or other, and it’s pretty depressing. The ones who aren’t huddled in doorways pace back and forth, muttering and twitching. The city’s once clean streets are now always filled with garbage and food wrappers. Tents are everywhere, but they don’t stay in the same place long. The cops keep doing sweeps so people are always on the move.

As I’m waiting for one of my buses, a man paces back and forth in front of the shelter. It’s a large shelter, with four seats, only one of which is not covered with globs of various liquids. He finally asks me if I saw twenty dollars under my seat. I tell him no but do a cursory check. He walks away, screams something at the sky, then returns and quietly asks if Ive seen twenty dollars. 

I get on the bus and sit down across the aisle from a young man who is talking as if engaged in a conversation, though he doesn’t have a phone or earbuds and no one was responding to him. He is clean cut in a tshirt and pair of shorts. His legs are very smooth, like they have just been shaven, or maybe he just doesn’t have any hair is his legs. From time to time he chuckles to himself, and keeps glancing over at me. I dont make eye contact and don’t pay attention to what he’s saying though I hear him say “The thing you got to understand is he really does love me.” 

I get off at the closest stop to my apartment. It’s a three block walk. At the last minute the young man leaps off the bus and walks beside me as I cross the street, talking the entire time. “You know what I’m sayin?” He asks, and looks at me as if expecting a response. 

“I didn’t know you were talking to me,” I say. 

He laughs and continues to walk alongside me. “I remember you from that place we lived in Milwaukie,” he says. (Milwaukie is a suburb of Portland.) 

“I never lived in Milwaukie.” I say. He seems confused then continues chattering about some upstairs neighbor. His speech is very difficult to follow; the sentences themselves make sense but they don’t seem to connect to form a narrative. 

Instead of continuing on straight ahead, he turns right when I do and crosses the bridge with me. I am starting to feel apprehensive; his demeanor is friendly and he seems harmless, but he obviously has some sort of brain damage, probably caused or exacerbated by whatever controlled substances he is on.

At the other end of the bridge I turn left and cross the street and finally stop. My building is just ahead and I don’t want him to know where I live. He takes a few steps then stops and turns to me, still talking. “Are you following me?” I ask, annoyed. 

“I thought we were talking,” he says, sounding confused and slightly wounded.

“I need to go home,” I say. He immediately turns and starts walking back the way he came. I watch him for a bit, then walk past my building and around the corner to go in the back way. It’s only then that I sheepishly notice how hard my heart is pounding. 

The next morning I look out the window and see a figure in almost the same spot as the one yesterday, standing hunched over with his head bowed, standing completely still as if time as stopped. As if he has turned to stone. 

Junebug

 A full year after the juncos made their nest in the eaves above my apartment, a pair of sparrows moves in. A few weeks later I hear the insistent chirping of the chicks, and occasionally spy the parents darting in and out of the crack that leads to the nest. It cheers me to hear them.

Though the night air is chilly, I leave the balcony door open when I go to bed, thinking it will feel good to crawl under the warm covers. I sleep well, though in the morning Olivia wakes me up a number of times meowing. She often does this when she’s hungry, but today she continues even after I fill her bowl. She keeps waking me up and I keep scratching her on the head and falling back asleep.

The sun is bright when I finally haul myself out of bed. I sit on the balcony with my coffee for a little while and listen to the tweeting of the hungry chicks. It’s still chilly though, and after a little while I head inside to get on the laptop. 

A few minutes later I hear a loud thump. It sounds like something heavy has fallen off a shelf. Then I hear Olivia scrambling around. Did she fall? I peer around the corner of my writing nook and see her lying on the desk, not moving. I leap up and see that she has something with feathers clutched in her paws. My first thought is that it’s one of the sparrows, but it’s much, much bigger than that. It’s a full-size pigeon.

“No!” I yell. She doesn’t move, holding the pigeon so tight it can barely move. “No!” I yell again, and try to smack her butt without touching the bird. She jumps off the desk with her quarry gripped in her mouth. I chase her around the apartment yelling but she will not let go. The bird is moving but I can’t tell what kind of shape it’s in. There’s no blood, and I don’t see any loose feathers. I finally lunge at her and she lets go and the bird flutters out the door and over the railing. She runs after it but I close the door before she can get out. I sit down panting and she scurries off to hide. 

After a little while I go back outside to finish my coffee. My hand is shaking. There is no sign of the pigeon. I close the door and Olivia peers through the glass and meows. My sweet little girl finally found a plaything larger than a Junebug and I ruined her murderous fun. The baby sparrows chirp madly, waiting for their parents to stuff them full of bugs. This is the life they have to look forward to. I don’t know how any of us do it.