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Indigo Vales

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Indigo Vales

Tag Archives: story

Bedtime Story

30 Friday Jul 2021

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

mouse, pain, poem, story

I made a nest of her hair beneath the couch,
circled soft gray strands into a bed
Wove black threads and sock pills,
sea green that smell of aloe into the place I lay my head.
Because she is naughty there are bread crumbs
and cheese crumbs on the floor beside my bed,
what she brushes off becomes a feast.
It is never too warm or too cold beneath the couch,
though sometimes I fear she might squish me when she sits
but she stays on that end and I on this,
and we watch The Sopranos again.

One night late, before she wakes at three for a
swig of cold milk from the fridge to stave off the pain
I crept into her bedroom and a sneeze came upon me
unannounced, incidentally, nowhere to hide.   
She sat up wide awake and said, “Hello?”
I froze, astonished she could hear, annoyed I let myself be known.
She said again “Hello?” asking of the dark
and I think she wanted someone to be there.

27 August Morning

27 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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morning, ocean, story, sunrise, whelk

4:30. The sun is coming. Crickets are loud. I lean on my balcony in a t-shirt, listening.

5:30. The sun is coming. Crickets are loud. My neighbor breaks open a soda can. Her cat inspects the windowsill. Time to make tracks.

5:45  The sun is present, though its magenta globe has not broken the horizon. Crickets do fade. Bladders and udders need care, reptilian sleep begins to break, active glands send erotic messages to fingertips.  The world is astir.

The wind is 12 knots. Gulls work hard to wing into northeast wind. The wind drives the sand across itself. If I turn out of the wind, my dull ears barely perceive the sound of sand upon sand and it sounds like sleet on a windshield, so very faint and magical.

Middling clouds make canvas for a star we have not seen yet to become rose, magenta, blue and slate. Some believe this is an unremarkable sunrise because we could not see the chariot’s wheel rise behind the CBBT.

No crab boats motoring. Crab two-packs are rare at the deli the year, and we have the ignorant fishers to thank, oh but plenty of shrimp.

No dolphins. Or secret dolphins. Only they know.

Mr. Corgi man hasn’t come out yet. Cell-phone sunrise takers are here, gooseflesh hinders their portraiting. Will they return tomorrow in layers?

Tiny whelk blows onto my finger. She never made it to teenager, mother, or crone. She sits in a place of honor, a shield of mother-of-pearl, stunted, benign, but not without a story.

Tales From The Mattress

26 Friday May 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, brother, childhood, dragon, father, mother, sleepless, story

And there it was, through the struggle of the night, another long Goldilocks night where I’m too hot, I’m too cold, but oh, please, bring me just right….  I awoke in the middle of the night and remembered that story I used to tell myself when I was little.  Actually, I was telling my stuffed animals, for they were good listeners, but I am getting ahead of myself.

My brother and I went from cribs to bunk beds, nothing in between.  Brother got the bottom bunk which means I got the top.  It was so high up, though, and Mom was worried about me falling out of bed.  Dad had every Craftsman tool known to man (or at least it seemed that way to a little girl who liked following him around, wanting to help spackle or anything else he thought I was capable of doing.)  Dad brought home a ginormous piece of wood, longer than the bunk bed and thicker than a pizza box.  He drew lines and sawed the ends into curves, sanded, then he varnished the shit out of that thing which stunk to high heaven and set off my asthma, naturally.  When it was done, he fitted the smooth, dark wood piece over the edges of my bunk so that it would keep me from falling out during the night.

I accumulated stuffed animals over the years and I lined them up, just so, at the head of my bed.  They were my cabinet, my aides du camp, the only thing helping me through Godzilla / tornado dreams — or worse.  Mom used to read us bedtime stories like an orator on a stage, me high in the balcony.  I used to make up stories as I lay in the laps of my dear stuffed animals, and they listened.  And I remembered one of those stories last night.  You know.  It’s the one about the dragons.

My goal is to write the story today.  I don’t know what I will do with it when it’s done.  There are so many places I could hobble up to and beg they take my paltry thing and publish it.  But it all starts here. In my bed.  The place where I still sleep with dragons.

March 11 Dream

11 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

death, dream, journal, look, story, walking, writing

He is a nondescript man walking with a backpack, a day pack a college kid might use.  He is walking through desert terrain, my dream wants to call it Route 66, but there is no road here, just red earth. No mountains or trees, no creatures anywhere.  I can hear his feet trod the ground.

Then he comes to a place where some green grass is growing, it seems out of place.  He takes off his backpack and all his clothes, then puts on a dark blue suit and tie and shoes that he’d been carrying. When he is dressed a crowd of people come and take him by the arms and drag him away. They put him in a cage with bars, wide but not wide enough for him to squeeze through.  The people are just people, nondescript, but they are carrying large wooden poles and they begin to beat him through the bars.  They are beating him. He is on the ground, motionless, and they walk away carrying their poles.

The scene changes and I am in a brightly lit department store, standing between two rows of maybe the stationery aisle. I am looking for something, perhaps.  A man comes and puts a large, cobalt-blue journal down on a safe. I look at him and he looks at me and he seems to want to say (warn) don’t look in that book.  I know this book, I have one exactly like it, and I wonder what he wrote in his.  He walks away and I know I’m going to open his book while he goes off to look for a wall mirror for his wife.

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