Hearts

My heart stopped, literally stopped, when I saw you. I felt that all too familiar pressure in my chest and the bright, but not too distant, sparks in my vision.

How odd that this current pain nearly mirrors that old pain which was a result of our last meeting.

It's strange how the whole world can stop for an instant and I'm the only one to see it.

That one moment goes on for a very long time. While we are both here, (and with only one of us aware) we are also back there (both of us hideously unaware). The things we've learned since then make that last meeting's meaning opposite of what it really was.

Moving slightly backwards, I avoid your notice and am a little sorry for it. I would have liked to see the same reaction in you, to look in your eyes and see the deep realisation that everything was different. So different in fact, that it couldn't have possibly happened. Only that it did happen.

Empathy

One of the great failings of people is the lack of empathy. Imagining what others feel is such an unknown.

The casual disregard for others is all around us. Eventually we get so bogged down in overwhelming crush of crap that we to just go with it. Hurt others just because we can.

What if we could feel what others could? Or just an echo of that feeling. What if it did hurt us to hurt someone else? War would be out of the question. An argument would be something to avoid too.

The mirror of that - what if we could feel the pleasure we give to others? How would it feel to share in the joy of helping a neighbor find a lost cat? How would that basic relief feel?

Irony

Irony

Life is series of interrelated ironies.

What we think now will have a totally different meaning in some future time. Most of what we know now will mean something different in the future.

Our relationships turn around, seemingly every instant, disrupting what we think and what we see. Sometimes years go by and we find some small bit of information which casts every previous action into doubt.

Out past the edges of the familiar there comes the instant realization that the past in which we wrap ourselves is a dark mirror for the other person. Serious devastation caused by a moment's weakness. Our mistake caused the troubles. Hiding the mistake only made it worse as there were dozens of times in their past where one more open secret wouldn't have stood out of place.

Sadness is the only real companion, the most trusted friend. All of the unresolved thoughts, dreams, and plans stay close under the fold. Missed chances are so obvious in the waning years. Caught in a web we made, healing ourselves where we can, when we can. Peeking out through the shades and trying to move beyond the current irony into the next iteration.

Words in the Dark

"I'm sorry about what happened to Sandy." She said quietly from the corner.

I started awake, straining against my fresh stitches causing an involuntary grunt of pain.

"Sorry to startle you like that. I think I know a lot about Sandy from when I put those stitches in. You might not know it but some people get extremely talkative near death. Maybe it's the loss of blood or maybe the expectation of moving on. It becomes the central - or only - thing or minds are able to see at that moment. You weren't an exception to that.

"I remember another thread job in the prison where I was fixing up a guy named Joe Foote. He got stabbed trying to break up a fight. Pretty stupid if you ask me - you wait to see who wins and then move in. Most of the time the winner is in such a good mood that they don't mind being put into lock down. Anyway - they don't fight. Depending on who the lose was - you might or might not stitch them up.

"Joe though, had lost a lot of blood and I could feel him slipping away from me. Until he started talking to me about how he had loved me for the longest time and how he hid his feelings because I was married. Such romantic visions. Hard to listen to someone talking that way while you're trying to sew them up and while they are about to die. Somehow we managed. He survived

"He was one good affair. One of many I had, Poor Steve never knew about them, well until the last one that is. Hard to hide something when the dummy sends letters to your house."

I settled back into the bed which I realized late, was her bed. Wouldn't make much sense to have more than one for someone who lived alone.

"Tell me more about Joe. How was it?" I could get away with this as I was one wounded.

"Joe was a straight arrow - the type who doesn't even think of having and affair with a married woman. He learned quick though and was always aware of the game."

"What game was that Anna? What was the game?" I asked.

"That it was not only unreal but something I would forget in short order. He understood me in more ways than anyone else I had ever been with. No overlong breakups or various mis-jointed attempts at getting back together, just an end with him.

I was a little disappointed though. I like it when guys hang on the line so to speak. There is a thrill when they keep trying to make things right - whatever that means. I came to believe that the amount of times they called me after i said it was over would be a good measure of how the relatioship measured up. The more calls the more it meant to them.

"That's one Foote that I was glad to have in my mouth."

I laughed then. I felt sorry for her though. So many meaningless affairs that only mattered to her in the number of attempts to contact her after the affair had run it's course.

That's the thing with affairs - it doesn't matter - they never end well. The partner with the external relationship will often float the possibility of leaving that relationship for the new one. Added insult to the other person - I could imagine Anna turning up her delicate nose at such a thing as leaving her husband. Her voice echoes in my mind with an 'as if.'

Her marriage though - did it only matter as a social statement? The ore I learned from her only magnified the extent to which I didn't know.

Waking

I was surprised to be awake after the running as long as I could through the forest away from a warm jail cell that had to be waiting for me.

The room in which I found myself looked as if it could be from a hundred years ago. All the furniture looked hand made. Not in the way you might lash some branches together and call it a chair, but in the differences in the wood made it clear it didn't come from a factory.

Yellowed wall paper hung on the walls, many times patched and holding some form of it's own identity.

"Oh, you're finally awake," a somewhat harsh voice spoke from outside the partially closed door. Not rough, but sounding unused and not at all used to speaking to others.

"Yes," I called out, "I'm certainly surprised to be here, wherever here happens to be."

She came in the room finally, looking embarrassed for some reason. Her gray hair hung down, parted in the middle and framed a pair of dull blueish eyes.

"You should be surprised, running around with a knife wound isn't exactly a smart thing to do."

Her voice changed a little bit as she pulled the bandages away to look at wound. It became magnitudes warmer as she said, "You were almost dead, all gray from the cold and blood loss. I stitched you up though."

Through the spots I was seeing in front of my eyes I whispered, "Thank you for that. Where did you learn sew people?"

"In prison." Came the reply.

I could tell she wanted me to ask the obvious follow up question, so I did, "Were you in prison?"

She liked the way I framed the question in that neutral way and not asking what she had done.

"I was a guard and the prisoners paid me to take care of them. It was an orderly process, a professional one, where they would ask about what you would do and what you wouldn't. Then they would get together and decide on what to pay you." She said all this while looking out the window, perhaps thinking back to those days. I didn't sense any regret from her over this though.

"You must have gotten a lot of practice sewing people up then."

"Sometimes them, sometimes other guards who crossed someone. We kept everything in house, well almost everything. We moved drugs in which made our jobs alot easier. Nothing worse than cleaning up after an addict half way through withdrawal. A cell phone means a lot there too. Too many of our 'guests' where locked away from distant family.

"The women's prisons are a lot different from the men's prisons. They aren't as hung up on race there and they tend to work together more. They are also much meaner when they have to be."

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked a little too quickly.

She pulled this big hammer from under the bed and yelled, "You aren't going anywhere!"

At which point I passed out, letting the spots in front of me consume the rest of me.

It was dark when I awoke again. Thirsty and hungry in some dim way. Suddenly I looked down at my legs recalling a scene from some weird movie I had seen. I was only mildly disappointed that there didn't appear to be any damage.

"That was a joke, sorry my sense of humor isn't so...sane."

I laughed as much as the stitches would let me. "Don't worry about it. Life has played some better jokes on me lately too."

"I heard." She said quietly.

"What exactly did you hear?"

"You know it's funny when people say 'exactly', they already fear what you're about to say."

So we waited until the mental tug of war could be complete.

"Bill Jeffers was the first officer on the scene in that motel room. Did you know that that was the eleventh time someone had been badly hurt in that room? Makes you think doesn't it?"

"I could tell from the person working the counter that the room had some sort of reputation to it. I didn't think it would turn out so bad though."

She leaned back a little and said, "Bill used to work for the FBI. He said he got tired of all the politics that where as much a part of the job as enforcing laws. Every decision he made came under review by different groups of people. So now, he just likes to patrol the highway that runs in front of the hotel.

"He could tell from the scene that her stabbing had been self inflicted and that there had been another person in the room. What he didn't find were any defensive wounds on her, even incidental ones that happen during a confrontation. Still all the 'extra' blood there got him thinking and he checked out the woman."

"She had been taking various prescription drugs. I didn't know her anymore." I said trying to hold back old emotions, ones that didn't fit me anymore.

"He checked you out as well, didn't find out anything much though. Divorced. No arrests."

Now, she looked closely at me as she asked, "Why did you run then?"

I closed my eyes to see Sandy standing there with the hateful look on her face which was far more destructive than any knife could have been. I said, "I've been to a few small towns and they were mostly the same. If you came in from outside, you were already nothing more than a criminal. You were a stranger and if anything happened it would be you to bear the blame.

"Plus, I knew Sandy all through high school. She was a good person. We never connected though, either then or recently.

"I guess I couldn't face what she had become. I couldn't see her anymore without drowning in the pain that old memories give.

"So I ran, knowing at the time it was a terminal choice. I had hoped in that final time I would at least gain some insight into why she had done what she had.

"I got nothing though."

Quiet

There's nothing around me now. Just the quiet and the cold.

I pause for a second here in the trees, wind swirling around me. I realize that in this instant I am truly alive. This place and this time are all that exists for me.

The only sound now that wind has died down is that of the blood hitting the ground beside me. I feel the slick trail of the warm fluid down my arm and the accompanying warmth along my chest.

I stand, surprised now. People really do change over time. That fact alone was worth all the pain leading up to this point. That's the only way I seem to learn anything - gut wrenching pain. Just seeing something is never enough. It's too easy to make the excuse for that other person, to easy to believe that I wouldn't do anything so stupid as that, but of course I did, and more.

I got off easy though. A simple stabbing was enough to wake me up. Too easy to stay there and take another blow than to realize that what happened before was more a dream than reality. So simple to lay down and give up. I couldn't do that though. The easy way was never my way, even when I consciously wished for nothing more than death, I still stagger forward.

I had to run from the motel room. That little bit more imprint of violence on the shady room was more than I could stand. At once, I saw all the little things that made up the substance there. The small beatings and random heated hatreds all stacked up and this minor thing was simply too much.

Small town police are only good at finding the obvious. Sure, they could call in the state people but, honestly who would call in someone to take the credit for something anyone could figure out.

You find the stabbed women and the wounded man in the dingy motel room and you can only come to one conclusion - he stabbed her and she, in some sort of heroic last stand, managed to wound him. Nothing else matters.

I never should have let Sandy into the room. She was unbalanced by the amount of prescription goodness she was getting, but I let her in again anyway.

After saying she was sorry for all she had put me through I sensed more than felt the knife sweep up into my chest. A cold pain followed by an immediate warmth as the blood spurts out.

I was aware in an instant of how it would look to the young officer I had seen patrolling the area. He looked as if he hadn't seen more than a dead animal on the side of the road. I could see, instantly, how his eyes would look when he came into this room. The shock and eventual easy understanding of what had gone on would dawn on him in a moment.

So, I ran. No driving away now, I had to feel the cold on my face. Not knowing where I was or where I was going was par for the course. I simply had to move, to feel something. I had to make some form of offering to Sandy after seeing her plunge the knife into her chest. The light going out in her eyes demanded something from me in a way I didn't understand.

Nothing mattered now. I could feel the cold grabbing at me as the blood flowed away from me. Here in the woods I knew the blood would find a home somewhere, helping something grow unlike when it was within me.

I hear a dog bark somewhere close by and know it's time to move again. I take a deep breath in preparation of the pain, but there is none as I push myself up. That is only a distant worry to me as the fresh face of a young Sandy forces it's way to my mind with it's own sweet pain. That girl I remembered wouldn't have hurt anyone. I preferred her to the replacement Sandy with the knife. She had killed so much more than herself. Every dream I had ever allowed myself to have died with her. The dumb animal lumbered forward now, perfect in it's unknowing.

Life seemed such a waste to me. Marriage was so overblown in everyone's estimation. It ended, and often not well.

Only questions remain now, ones I'm sure that won't get answered.

That is the one comfort left to me.

A Phone

He stared at the cell phone for a moment. It had been a central part of his life for so long. The phone was like a living thing, it spoke to him and showed pictures from time to time. It had, by itself, become an almost indispensable part of his old life. Everything he was could be found, totaled, examined through a single piece of technology.

That was the key there - old life. All the pictures and sounds could do nothing to bring that other existence back again. Just seeing it in his bag made all the hurt and worry return to him. He was afraid that the old life would somehow catch him again. He worried that in all the fear he lost the ability to just let go of it all.

Now it was speaking in a different voice.

"I'm not happy about you laughing at me," Sandy said in a listless, petulant voice.  Again, the first words of the conversation were not about what was really important, just some mindless chatter.

"After three days, what did you expect?"

"Don't change the subject, why is this all my fault anyway?"

"It's always someone else isn't it? Your ex-husband did this or an ex-boyfriend did that. It was all you wasn't it?"

"Is this some sort of defense mechanism of yours? You laugh and leave to make me feel bad? Well, I don't. It's your loss"

I wasn't exactly worried at this point. We weren't together anymore (if we had ever been) and now I saw how pathetic she was. How she would never be able to realize what she had done or even care, did she know. It was always going to be someone else's fault.

"I would ask you where you were for those three days, but I know you'd just lie about it or just continue to try and blame me. Why don't you settle in that town? All the people have dead eyes like you do now. You belong there and as long as the pharmacy stays open you should be numb enough to survive.

"Can you hear me laughing at you now? Can you imagine how ashamed I am that I actually cared about you when you care nothing for me?"

"All these questions, and you think I am the problem? You should take a long look in the mirror"

"I have Sandy, and not only have I looked hard at myself, but at my life and our time together. We were never really together, you were always evasive and manipulative, even when we hiked together so long ago I saw you and knew inside that you weren't thinking of me. You dropped that stone I found after holding it by the edges for a second. Now, here we were with a chance to start over and we just took up where we left off, except this time I'm the stone to be tossed aside."

Sandy sensed the goodbye coming and decided to backtrack a little bit, "Listen, we still have time and no one is going anywhere today. Why don't we just set everything aside for now and just talk?"

"Sorry, I just can't imagine spending anymore time with you. Talking to you is like talking to an escaped mental patient - you just never know where the conversation will lead, but you are certain that in the end, you'll be worse off for it.

"Try to wean yourself off the drugs - they don't help you. They're just an invisible crutch that other people run into."

The line went dead then and everything started over. The people here had dead eyes as well. They too seemed shackled to a life that none really understood. He knew that they would accept her, her life, such as it was, would be a novelty for a time.