The Projector

          The plunk of a small stone hitting the pond is all it takes to attract an emerald-headed drake and his dainty, tan hen. Like synchronized swimmers, the two ducks slice across the murky brown water and into the concentric circles of expanding ripples. Both birds swivel and bob their heads in a frantic, fruitless search. Timberline’s waterfowl had long grown accustomed to being fed by townies. So certain of receiving handouts, a growing population of mallards never even bothered to migrate. The second delicate splash brings them closer to a darkly dressed man seated on a rusted park bench. His lips twist into a terse smile.


          “Stupid ducks,” Tyler mutters while flinging a final stone. He flinches involuntarily, taking a quick intake of breath as the rock leaves his hand with more velocity than intended. The projectile splits the couple, barely missing both birds, and splashes them with shimmering droplets of water.

          “Sorry,” Tyler offers as the ducks, somewhere between flying and running, splash across the pond’s surface towards the opposite bank. Their strong wings slapping the water feels like a noisy intrusion in the otherwise calm, warm air of late summer. Again displaying their harmonious instincts, the birds touch down at the exact same moment and settle in at the pond’s far edge.

          “Where is she?” he wonders aloud, experiencing a momentary envious pang for the mallard’s natural ability to find a lasting partner. “Bet you never have to put up with this crap.”

          Renae is supposed to be meeting him for lunch. Hell, it was her idea. Tyler checks his watch for the third time in the last two minutes. Seven minutes late. Scratching his patchy blond facial hair, Tyler’s eyes narrow. “It’s just rude,” he mumbles. “I don’t make other people wait for me like I’m some goddamned king.”

          Their last phone conversation had been thick with tension. Ever since she spent Labor Day weekend with an old sorority sister in Seattle, Tyler had felt a growing chasm in their relationship. He hadn’t been happy about not being invited, and suspected something was amiss when she didn’t respond to his messages until the night she returned. When Renae had finally touched base, she seemed distant. In the back of his mind Tyler wondered if she had met someone, or even rekindled some old college flame.

          Tyler’s attention is drawn from his spiraling thoughts as the ducks suddenly dart across the pond towards another rusty bench. A frail, hunchbacked man appears from an overgrown, tree lined path and gingerly pulls up a seat. He looks to Tyler like a sack of bones held upright by faded jeans and a torn flannel shirt. In his gnarled hand is a plastic bread bag. Expressionless, the ivory-bearded skeleton scatters white chunks across the water and the mallards gobble up every morsel before the bread can sink.

          Things could be worse, Tyler thinks. At least I’m not that guy. The thought escapes his mind before he can channel it through any kind of politically correct filter. Tyler feels guilty for thinking that way but can’t help acknowledging the brunt assessment. Stealing sideways glances at the depressing scene, Tyler feels like he should try to be a little more patient with Renae. The younger man wonders if the elderly gentleman ever blew his chances with a possible soul mate, or if he’d ever experienced a genuine connection with another. Maybe the old man once found the love of his life and she had died leaving him in this wretched state. Who knows? Tyler looks away, unable to bear the thought of feeling so miserable. So all alone.

          Tyler checks his watch again. Nine minutes late. Surely, anything over ten begins to push the threshold of understanding. It’s not like she could blame traffic, not in the tiny mountain town of Timberline. A bear attack would come off as a more believable excuse. Maybe her battered Datsun had finally given up the ghost. The oxidizing piece of purple shit had been running ragged for months. Still, her cabin was a half mile from the park; she could have walked by now.

          In the corner of his eye, Tyler detects movement on the same path from which the old man recently emerged. His slumped posture straightens and Tyler feels the swirling doubts creeping back into the corner of his mind. He begins to stand and instinctually brush the hair from his face when the figure comes into view. The new arrival is a woman, but certainly not Ranae. This lady is hunched over and supporting her slow, shuffling steps with a cane. Her wild mop of curly hair is even whiter than the man’s beard.

          As the old man notices the woman’s arrival, Tyler folds his arms and sits back on the bench with his shaking head cocked sideways. Slowly, the brittle fossil twists in his seat, and by placing one hand on the backrest while the other pulls against the arm support, manages to drag himself to his feet. Despite the effort it takes to stand, Tyler sees the worn countenance transformed. The old man’s weary, blank expression has been replaced with a broad grin. He bows slightly and offers his forearm to the woman. Returning his smile, the old lady accepts his gesture and allows herself to be seated at the bench. Her partner hands over the plastic bag and then rests his palm on her thigh as she begins to feed the impatiently circling mallards.

          Tyler turns away so that he no longer has to witness the ancient couple’s public display of affection. Or the pitifully domesticated ducks. He checks his watch once again. Eleven minutes… almost twelve. “Seriously,” he hisses. “What the hell is the wrong with people?”

Divine Grifter

I dare you to exist
And put right
Your miscalculations
I dare you to gaze upon
The blossoming stains
And tell me
You wouldn’t have stopped
Eden’s destruction
When you still had a chance

I dare you to strike
Me down
For suggesting you couldn’t
Have left your house
In the hands
Of a worse caretaker

Who could have foreseen
The end results
If not you
But I suppose
If you are the mold
From which
We sprung forth
I can take some comfort
In the fact
We were fucked
From the get go

Gray's Catacomb

          Abandoned Silver Streak mine served as Allan Gray’s private escape from the alcohol fueled madness of his childhood home. By age ten, the gaunt, dark haired boy could smell the sickness and defeat seeping from his parents. Their sweat reeked of vodka, and they sat, day after day, in the mounting squalor of their den sharing spiteful barbs as their skin turned to leather from chain smoking. In the hazy, fetid air of their nearly windowless cabin, Allan could almost taste the metastasizing tumors that would eventually claim their lives.

          Left unsupervised from an early age, Allan made it a point to keep his distance from home. Rather than check in after a day of the torturously self-conscience nightmare known as school, Allan would vanish into the dense forest surrounding his mountain town, fishing streams, climbing trees, spying on strangers, and slaying squirrels with his wrist rocket. His parents never questioned his absence, not even when he began to stay out overnight, alone in his pitch black maze of tunnels.

          Allan found Silver Streak after following an overgrown jeep trail deeper into the mountains north of Timberline than he’d ever ventured. What a first appeared to be a small avalanche where the road came to a dead end against the mountain side turned out to be the collapsed entrance. Splintered support beams jabbed out of the pile of boulders and dirt like lopsided grave markers. Someone must have used dynamite to collapse the main shaft. After poking around, Allan realized the rockslide had covered the opening except for a narrow gap between two wedged railroad ties. A cool wind blasted from the crack indicating that somewhere, another opening to the outside world had to exist. Allan decided his mission was to return the next day with a flashlight, squeeze through the hole, and locate the other entrance from within the mine.

          Allan came back the following afternoon with a battery powered lantern quietly removed from his dad’s truck. His parents wouldn’t care about the condemned mine, but Allan would be severely punished for touching his father’s tools. Not that his old man needed any of the equipment. While most of the former loggers in Timberline had long since packed up and moved on, Allan’s dad hadn’t done anything but sit in a creaky old recliner splitting his wrath between family and television news since the sawmill closed.

          The young boy's heart thundered in his chest when he first squeezed through the narrow opening and showers of dirt rained down on him from above. Fearing a collapse, he had launched himself through the opening after getting halfway inside and slid down an embankment of gravel to the passage floor. A dust filled cone of light shone through the gap and Allan could make out rusted ore cart rails leading straight down a rocky tunnel seemingly carved through black granite. His lantern’s feeble glow revealed the passage ahead at least partially buried underwater. The air smelled musty despite the breeze and the temperature was noticeably cooler. Allan had pulled his light jacket tight around his neck as he first made his way into the unknown.

          The water on floor of the cavern was barely tolerable but after long stretches of freezing agony, the ground would emerge and he could walk on wooden ties between the cart tracks while his toes came back to life. In places, he could balance on the rusted rails and keep his soles just above the waterline. The damp walls of the mine possessed sporadic deposits of some milk white mineral; a kind of shimmering albino coral staining the otherwise black stone. To Allan it looked like walls of pearl set off with sparkling diamond flakes.

          During his initial expedition, the young boy was intrigued by the nearly translucent bodies of baby mice and leathery bats bobbing in the slow, frigid flow. He lifted one of the soggy rodents by its long limp tail, held the corpse in front of his face, and tried to imagine what it had been like to drown. The frail creature’s eyes had yet to fully develop, dark blobs behind a pink veil mercifully blind to the ugliness of the world. He pictured the thrashing of the damned gradually giving away to hypothermic resignation, water filled lungs, and ultimately, a sense of peace. Something about the idea made him happy.

          After passing the third intersection of branching tunnels, Allan had returned home knowing he’d need chalk if he hoped to find the other entrance without getting lost. After a month of nearly daily visits, he had mapped out a considerable portion of the tunnels by leaving notes and directional arrows on the mine walls. There were even numbers accompanying the various signs indicating approximately how many steps he could expect before the next branching passage.

          In spite of his mapping techniques, and venturing deeper and deeper into the elaborate labyrinth, Allan had yet to find the other entrance. Some tunnels eventually reached a gradually narrowing end, others seemed to branch forever, and the young boy quickly realized there were passages he couldn’t reach. In several places, the tunnels shot straight up into the mountain overhead where Allan could see even more passageways branching off.

          The corroded remnants of wooden ladders to the upper levels were still bolted to the walls, and the skeleton thin boy had tried climbing the sturdiest of the bunch, but the first damp rung crumbled in his grip before holding half his weight. One day, Allan thought, he’d be strong and brave enough to scale the sheer rock walls, reach the higher tunnels, and no doubt, the other opening.

          Despite the elusive nature of the second entrance, Silver Streak quickly became the only place Allan felt comfortable in his pale and dirty flesh. The anxiety of being in his parent’s presence, and the discomforting scrutiny he felt so intensely at school, all but vanished in those dark passages. Within the mine, he became a cave troll hunting heroic adventurers, a mad scientist living beneath an active volcano attempting to trigger an eruption, a deformed outcast, exiled from the village below and lurking at its fringes while plotting his revenge.

          Allan’s imagination ran wild, spurred on by a growing collection of graphic novels purchased from the spinning comic book rack in Ray Lynn’s convenience store. He had moved the hidden stash from his bedroom to a central chamber of intersecting tunnels nearly a mile into the mountain. The spacious cavern had become his central base within the mine. Despite rarely eating a home cooked meal, Allan never spent his lunch money at the school cafeteria. Instead, every penny went towards another gruesomely illustrated tale, flashlight battery, or slow burning candle.

          Unlike the other boys, Allan didn’t gravitate towards super hero comics; he had no interest in square chiseled jawlines, sculpted muscles, or goody two-shoes in ridiculous spandex saving the world. Allan preferred tales of horror and supernatural happenings. Zombies and ancient curses. He loved the idea of evil ghosts and salivating monsters most of all. The thought of being stalked by blood-dripping fangs, or glowing red eyes, especially while alone in his dark mine, was an adrenaline rush of pure terror he could endure and overcome. Hell, he could fall into an untroubled sleep afterwards. He laughed out loud when imagining the older kids at school attempting such a thing.

          His mother so despised the grotesque, bloody artwork she had gleefully burned his collection the previous summer after a report card showed him barely graduating fifth grade. However, with his stories of macabre safe in his mine, Allan no longer worried about his parents. They still flew off the handle every time the wind shifted, slapped and berated him at every opportunity, but he no longer kept anything within their reach that he was afraid to lose. He owned his own home now, and he kept his possessions in a cleaner, more organized manner than anything his folks had managed in years.

          One autumn afternoon, indistinguishable from any other day below the earth, Allan was making his way from the mine to find something to eat when a familiar sound caused him to freeze in his tracks. Standing in ice cold water, Allan could hear voices just outside Silver Streak’s collapsed entrance. What was worse, Allan recognized the young men gathered outside. Despite his eternal efforts to maintain an aura of invisibility at school, the three Steele brothers always whispered and snickered as Allan slunk by, burning cheeks concealed inside his hooded sweatshirt.

          Allan was awarded ample time to think about his reaction, his instantaneous decision, and never came to a definitive conclusion as to whether he would have handled it any different if given another chance. For the first time in his life, Allan truly felt alive in his fortress of darkness, and it was a sensation he had to preserve. The mine was his and his alone. Best case scenarios still involved the young men claiming the mine for their own and looting it of all his treasures. He refused to think about worst case scenarios that would, no doubt, come naturally to these hateful savages. If they couldn’t control their naturally vicious tendencies within the “safe” environment of school, Allan could only imagine what humiliation he would be forced to endure in the sanctity of his own house.

          Just as a pair of hands thrust inside to pull a scoopful of dirt away from the opening, Allan reached the sideways support beam, precariously lodged above the remnants of shaft entrance. The young boy had noticed the shifty looking wedge upon his first departure from Silver Streak and always gave it a wide berth. Even gently sliding through the gap on his belly caused slight tremors and sprinkles of dirt from the loose wedge above.

          As the noise and dust settled, Allan breathlessly wondered if anyone might have seen his lantern light before the tunnel collapsed. He imagined his parents being informed of his whereabouts and heard their smoke ravaged voices seeping through the wall of rock, promising punishments for such a pathetic attention grab. Allan smiled in the dim light of his familiar stone hallway. Nobody was going to violate his castle. If his dead-eyed father had imparted any wisdom from the collapsed springs of his moth eaten throne, it was that men had to defend their freedom. They had to be willing to sacrifice. Once again, Allan could see and hear nothing of the outside world. He was alone with the patiently waiting darkness. And something about that idea made him happy.

Dancing Over Graves

Know now
What it means when
Lavender salamanders
Milky earthworms
And whiskered moles
Push their snouts
Through the earth
To tickle and
Massage these toes

Grass blades sprout
From a field
Of abandoned follicles
Bugs and grubs
Feast and fornicate
In the bone meal
While a deflated heart
Sparks wild nests
Of black rose

To no end
And for too long
Sought a rebirth
Divine revival
Or common reincarnation
Without the solace
Of first dying

The Boy Who Cried Godzilla

The snort of a great beast
Awakening
Casts its churning tide
Of obliterated occupation
Over a subjugated landscape
Freeing one coast
From manicured shackles
And goldfish gardens

Another warning
Riding waves
Of things to come
As the monster
Inches ever closer
To a fattening feast
On every shore

Plugged into
Warm power lines of
Apathetic destiny
Eyes glow nuclear
Burning scales
From fallout cancer
A hideous
Breathing aberration
Stomping through the city
Coming for us all
While we sit transfixed
Sleep deprived
Collectively doped
And in denial
That something
May have gone wrong
With our best laid plan
Somewhere
Along the way

Another Grave

The ghost cat
Is dead
Headlines
Always certain
Decades removed
From the last sight
Officials
Made it official
Declaring
One of our
Native icons
Extinct
East of the
Mississippi

Like this country
These lands
And those remaining
I get by
With half a heart
Still tapping
One lung collapsed
The third eye lost
Another closed
Until
The last thread
Collapses
And somebody
Finally cares
About it being
Too late

Between Stars

     Lying face down with legs splayed wide, I press my belly flat against the cold, rocky trail. With chin tucked to sternum, my head is cocked sideways; face buried in one armpit. I can practically taste the overpowering reek of sweat, blood, and fear. My fingers are interwoven, clenched protectively behind my neck. I am afraid to move… to make a sound. Despite my efforts to calm down, my ragged breathing echoes like thunder in my ears. It has to hear me. The creature has to notice my slumped form rise and fall, however slightly, with each breath.

     I hear nothing. The sounds of the forest seem to fade with the dying light of day. Maybe the beast has moved on... for real this time. There is no way to be certain. I’d rather not risk a repeat performance of the last time I thought it was safe to move. During the second attack, I had sustained real injuries; the moment my dire situation had become exponentially problematic. A six day shift of permit checking, answering questions, and trail maintenance had started just yesterday, and like a bad employee, I was walking an overgrown, long re-routed trail where select few still travel.

     With my face protected, I can see but a sliver of light between my arm and the ground, offering a narrow view of dry pine needles and trail’s edge just behind me. For all I know, the animal is hovering above me, saliva dripping on my backpack, waiting for a noticeable sign of life. Squinting for clues within my limited field of vision, I shudder involuntarily upon noticing a bloody mass inches from the bottom of my torn pant leg. I swallow a surge of panic as my already fragile mental capacities insist I must be staring at my own severed foot. Thankfully, the small portion of reasonable thinking still holding sway inside my skull, heads off the complete mental meltdown by looking past the grisly blood to what is clearly just my hiking boot. The mental reassurance nearly leads to a bray of insane laughter.

     Then again, I can’t see my leg below the knee, not without moving it and risking a third assault; maybe my foot is still inside the boot. Before I can stop myself, the absurd notion causes me to twitch the big toe for affirmation and a white hot wave of sheer agony pulsates from the area. The foot must still be attached. My once glorious, calloused appendage, half responsible for a million miles of covered trail, may look like a chew toy, but I can still feel it.

     “You idiot,” I think to myself. “You know better.”

     I hear the voice of another inside my head delivering the chastising message, striking me as odd as anything else I had experienced this evening. It is the quiet, comforting voice of a fellow ranger; a subtle, confident sound that had appealed to me since I first heard her speak. I can’t stop the corners of my mouth from curling into a slight grin. Here I am, possibly one wrong twitch from dying and I find myself thinking about a girl I barely know? Or, maybe the idea of companionship just burns brightest when faced with the possibility of dying alone.

     I know that to be bullshit though. Might as well be honest with myself. In recent weeks, I had been thinking about the raven haired ranger more and more, despite having never experienced much more than a passing conversation. I have always been shy around beautiful woman and she is certainly that. Below the dark eyes and high cheek bones I can picture so vividly, her lecturing lips turn to a gentle smile, “I can hear what you’d say about a tourist in the same situation. Serves you right.”

     She is correct. The trail has been closed for the last three seasons to backcountry visitors and park employees alike due to fire damage and the potential for mud slides in the narrower, steeper reaches of the canyon. Like veterans of any endeavor though, I feel there are rules that once understood, you can break, just so long as you stay true to the fundamental principles. I know the risks, but I also understand the terrain. Mudslides are of little concern at the moment. Of course, sometimes the confidence blows up in your face and you remember why the rules were established in the first place. I also know full well that dusk is primetime predator activity as the hunters look to ambush prey migrating to water.

     Despite the heart wrenching terror I experienced at the initial instant of the assault, and the fact I could be slowly bleeding to death through one foot, for some vain reason, the injury most concerning me is one of pride. I almost wish my unknown assailant would finish the job and spare me the mocking hell from every green horn and grizzled ranger in the park. What will Jaime make of the whole deal? It had been over sixty years since the last violent encounter between a park attraction and employee; my little misadventure is going to give the locals something to talk about.

     Despite ten years with the National Park Service, a lifetime of outdoor experience, and being mauled by the damn thing, I am still not certain what manner of beasty has me pinned. There are few options, but of the choices, I can only guess. One second I was picking my way across the poorly maintained shortcut, the next, I was thrown onto my face and driven into the earth by a writhing mass of muscle, hair, and animal breath. Beneath the considerable weight of my thrashing assailant and 50 pounds of hiking equipment, I could barely move as the creature ripped at my backpack with enough force to lift and shake my body.

     I had instinctively tucked my head while protecting the back of my neck with interlocked hands and let the animal tear at the dense pack loaded with clothes, food, and gear. The attack was brief, but every second felt like a lifetime awaiting the searing certainty of tearing flesh, breaking bone, and unimaginable pain. That moment never came, and as quickly as it had overtaken me, the weight lifted and the violent shaking ceased. The animal was gone and I was left paralyzed in disbelief with the lengthening shadows of dusk. I was eerily aware that neither the creature, nor I, had made any sound during the struggle.

     After the first attack, I laid there in silence, absolutely frozen for what felt an eternity. It was probably closer to ten minutes that I spent listening for any sound that might betray the animal’s location. I heard nothing and in that time, as my breathing slowed, and my scattered wits reunited, I began to apply logic to the situation. Although I realized my thought process was probably more a defensive reaction to prevent panic, I was all too eager to welcome the Boy Scout’s attempts to silence the shrieking banshee in my head.

     Most animal attacks are motivated by a protective instinct, I reminded myself, not a predatory one. Cougars and bears protecting their young, or a kill, or even when surprised at close range, might react violently, but humans hunted in the act of predation are rare. Statistics suggest that whatever attacked me had done so because it had been startled by my sudden arrival, or because it was guarding something. Either way, the animal probably didn’t wish me any personal harm; it just wanted me gone.

     Had the creature really wanted to eat me, it would have made more of an effort. Or… it figures I had sustained enough damage to let me bleed out and will return later for a more relaxing meal. With the exception of a pocketknife and a canister of bear spray pinned beneath my body, the only tool I carry that could be considered a weapon is an old oak-handled Pulaski I bought with my first pay check as a National Park employee. The dual headed instrument consists of a trenching spade and a honed axe blade. I dropped it when the animal had first propelled me forward and have no idea where my favorite tool now lay in proportion to my body.

     The sun dropped behind the western ridgeline as I finished composing myself from the first attack. I had to try something. I sensed the shadows grow thicker and felt a light breeze caress the bare flesh of my exposed shin where the pant leg pulled up when I had been unceremoniously dumped on my face. I imagined the concerned eyes of my family looking down from the darkening sky above. Using their presence as inspiration, I had jumped to my feet, both hands held rigidly out in front like some kind of half-ass karate stance while looking around frantically for my Pulaski. I remember spying it about six feet off to one side and having just enough time for a confident sneer to hit my lips before the creature rammed into my back once again, this time knocking the air from lungs.

     Silent as night, the animal again made no sound as it plowed me back onto the rocky ground, scraping my forehead across a jagged stone. I tried to fight back at first, but didn’t possess the leverage or upper body strength to lift the writhing weight from my shoulders long enough to reach my knife or bear spray. I felt a muscle or tendon stretch in my lower back from the strain. As the accompanying pain streaked through my torso, I felt the bulk of the creature’s weight shift from my shoulders to midsection as the animal spun around on top of me. My flailing boot connected with something solid and that’s when the creature went to work on my foot.

     Every instinct, notion, or intention of fighting back evaporated the second I felt those knife blades sink into my calf followed by incredible pressure and pain. It wasn’t the calculated decision to play dead that I’d been taught in basic outdoor survival, it was simply the unbearable agony of my lower leg being feed into a meat grinder totally paralyzing my body. Again, the violent shaking ceased, and the blades retracted from my flesh. Mercifully, the animal had stopped, but this time I was left not only wondering where my attacker had gone, but also knowing I had been seriously injured and not in a position to do anything about it.

     Adding another level of uncertainty to my predicament, I now face the imminent nightfall following my sunset attack. The temperature is about to plummet and I am afraid to grab the sleeping bag or tent in arm’s reach. I also need to reach the first aid kit and play doctor; bite wounds have a tendency to get infected even when treated. I feel the overbearing sense of panic returning and this time, my rational brain is too strung-out to fight it off. If I move, I could die in a horribly painful manner. If I don’t move, I could die… probably slowly and even more painfully. A slight shiver begins to take hold and I feel suddenly exhausted. At least some of the pain seems to be receding with the warmth of my body.

     “At this rate I’ll be able to walk by midnight,” I whisper in what faintly reminds me of a drunken slur.

     In the darkest recess of my mind, I hear a faint siren, and my vision turns red, like a blood colored lens has been placed across my vision. My eyes snap open. The forest has been swallowed by nightfall, and a remaining purple glow in the western sky is all that remains of the day. Did I fall asleep? How long were my eyes closed? A fresh wave of screaming pain tears up my leg and like lightning, penetrates all the way into my abdomen. The agony brings my senses back into focus. Something is wrong, I can feel it. I sense the presence of something living… and can almost feel the footsteps of something large reverberating through the earth beneath my cheek. I am cold but sweating, possibly feverish, and again it is Jaime’s voice I hear echoing through a mental landscape one breath from tearing itself apart.

     “Bill, are you out there?” Her voice. So real. So close.

    “Way out there,” I whisper. My feeble voice sounds surprisingly loud and I flinch before wondering why I am so jumpy. Something about playing hide and seek with someone? The logic is reasonable, but doesn’t ring true. My brain is fuzzy. I can’t concentrate with this layer of fog swirling around my head. Again, I feel a footstep, or did I hear it this time… and the sound of metal clanking?

     “William!” Again her voice. This time loud and clear echoing down the valley.

     “Jaime?” I hear myself asking from a thousand miles away. I lift my face from where it has been buried, despite my instincts screaming to hold still. Standing above me, silhouetted against a violet sky with the evening’s first stars already glowing, is a slender, long haired figure leading a white horse by the reins. The person is wearing a wide brimmed hat that strikes me as comically familiar.

     “Bill! Jesus, Bill. What the hell happened?”

      I raise myself on one elbow, staring at the talking apparition in disbelief. A dirty, yellow light emanating from its hand pours over me, causing me to squint and feebly shield my eyes. I feel a moment of clarity wash over me; some kind of hope daring me to trust this mirage.

     “Princess Charming,” I stammer, “come to rescue… the dragon bit my leg.”

     “Something did more than bite you,” Jaime says kneeling down, bringing her angular face out of shadows and into the dim light. “I saw it tear out of here as I arrived. Didn’t get a good look but it was big.”

     Jaime touches my face with one cool hand, brushing my sandy blond hair out of my eyes. Even her cold fingers interject warmth into my body. I feel my thoughts begin to gel. She is real. I don’t know how or why she is here, but the woman commanding my daily thoughts is kneeling before me in the flesh.

     “How?” is all I can manage. “How…”

     Letting her index finger linger on my cheek, she says, “Had the night off… and wanted to talk to you about something. Rode Mr. Legs out to where you were supposed to be camped tonight and when I realized you weren’t coming, figured you crashed somewhere along the shortcut. I overheard you talking about this trail last year and use it myself. I know you like to buck the system, but I didn’t expect to find you wrestling the wildlife.”

     “Don’t tell the others…” I say with a weak grin.

     Jaime smiles, her faces lighting up with natural beauty. “Well, I have to get you back right now. Your leg is a mess, but you’ll live. Don’t worry, we’ll think of something. Besides, nobody is looking for us. I didn’t exactly tell anyone I was going out to find you for my night off. Might have raised questions. I’ll think of something to cover us both… and maybe make you sound heroic. Ok?”

     “Deal,” I say while looking past my gorgeous savior to a dramatically clear view of the sparkling Milky Way. “Did you bring any whiskey… or bandages?”

Stepping Forward Back

Hazy days
The nodding off
Merging
Moments of clarity
Well wishes
And conversation
Lost in the mist
Of time lines collapsed

Awaken
To the lurching reality
Of tide like pain
Throbbing within
Sawed bone and
Shaved tendon

Reshaping muscle
And gait
Into some clanking
Three legged cyborg
Terrifying
Cats and infants

Juggling the pills
And bottled beer
From one hand
To the other
While trying to hold
These crutches
I can't help imagine
A gazelle
At the shadow edge
Of an African watering hole
With a similar impairment

Trying to maintain
Its cool
Like nothing is wrong
While the whole world
Closes in
With slathering eyes

A Statue Toppled

Under the armor
It became impossible
To determine
How much it took
To fight
If a war
Had taken toll
When that will
Would surrender and
Let sands swallow
The swelling pool

Could never see a face
Behind the welded visor
Or recall a time before
Almost certain
It is a visage
Best forgotten

Unable to stomach
The sight of eyes
Twisted glee
Resolve or resignation

Like to believe
Somewhere beneath
The warrior stare
Was a vision
Overtaken
With tranquility
The dreamy gaze
Of a mystic
At peace
With tomorrow
Standing on your grave

Obstacles Unseen

Forever anticipating
The first intake
Of my own breath
Fighting for life
Without iron lungs
And having shredded
A lease
Once signed
With demons long dead

Still waiting
For the night lens
To lift with the dawn
And erase
The starless vision
I carry
Into the sun

Craving
The required kill
Yearning to touch
A skinning blade
Hungry
For a meal
Caught and cooked
Over the coals
Of a home
Set ablaze
And forgotten