Leslie Cairns
Wild Berries
Go away, the woman who gave me life, decreed.
Slush spilling out her blended drink. The drink looked slippery, red,
ice-filled.
My car waited up for me; I scratched my fingernail in the space where the keys should be.
Floor, moss, the back
seat of the Oldsmobile that stubbornly ran, but the gas gauge always looked like it was splayed toward infinity.
Of those three, which would be the safest place for me,
To sleep,
Perchance to devour lilacs as I dreamed.
We were always told that people who sleep in cars are made for it, as if backseats won’t hurt spines, or as if you could find a way to read at night. I’d always loved flashlights, but in a car they just looked sinister. Looking for bodies or names that aren’t yet delivered. That these spines, cradled away from street lamps, somehow deserved it. Now, I’m standing there with my ripped jeans –still in college – and my blouse is from the clothing store downtown where I work, to save money for learning. I look upwards at the sky, thinking about how cars get towed. Sent to remote locations to be picked up.
Scatter the remains of my name, burn the sage around the car, so no one knows. I’m
A maze, carved out by unrelenting gatherers of disguises, bobbing apples, the snap chilling between safe summertime and winter.
The route that no one’s given you the answer to,
The corn stalks with no exit, found in Halloweens of past, are now my roots.
There are no towing companies for discarded humans, and so where would I go?
I wondered if the boulder on the culs de sac near my house would work, instead.
If the suburban town would even notice that I slept near the beavers who swam and the turtles who laid eggs, but the mothers would soon leave them.
As I drove, I’d start to look at landscapes as places to rest:
Maybe that shed. Our backyard had a treehouse, but no, I’m an adult. The pine tree that is splayed open from wear, maybe there, I could
Place my tendrils. They’re splayed out from lack of washing, and she would almost mistake me for one of her seedlings. She would let me sprout there, like mildew, cobwebs, wild berries.
Lucid Dreaming
We went out past meadows, the meaning of my name.
My name means gray wall, a fortress, I say.
How evocative, she says.
I’m an English major, I say.
She cups my breasts as she pulls over, and I let her steam my vowels, while it rains.
Gray/ wall / meadow / fortress describes me: melancholy notes, not dating unless someone won’t touch me for awhile, first. Then only slowly, and only with curvatures,
stilettos, and crescendos.
But she prepared college snack picnics with candles, what we could do on low budget,
And her placement meant more to me because she starved herself, collecting floral between her ribcage.
She didn’t want to but she’d dream to place a tulip near her belly button, and so she’d just concave
A little bit more, a little bit longer.
So, her spread made even more of an offering.
Starchy Ritz crackers, cellophane wrappers, sprinkles and flashlights… we took them
by the autumn, cherry blossoms of Western Plains, near great
lakes that were polluted but still siren-songed our names.
We went to the meadow at night, to look for the squirrels draped in astute, inky black.
Native to Canada, and the first time I saw one,
I thought I was lucid dreaming,
For I only knew them in gray, and amber, and tawny.
I saw the being running towards the clearing,
And I thought that she was brave.
They’ve existed all this time, she says, as she puckers her mouth, sweating. Putting her hair up in a cascading bun, even though she feels best when dressed
in masculine: pocketed suits, plaid to cover up her elbows, well equipped. She’s so well equipped for anything.
I follow her with my dress, and my scuffy knees. & we turn the car off, together, both holding the keys.
Do you think we’ll find the lovely near the holly berries over there? I said.
She unpearled my blouse, kissed it until it became blended in strawberry from her lipstick,
Cooed softly to me, and I think I heard it said:
We’ll find our bereft love near the great lakes, near the animals that always existed,
with the floral. We’ll never have to move a muscle,
They’re right here.