An Excerpt

An Excerpt..

I was six years old when I learned how a man reacts to his own regret. My younger brother and I, were watching cartoons on a Saturday morning while we sat with bowls of cereal on the living room floor. That's what most kids did on those weekend mornings in the 70's; tuned in for the three to four hours of animated wonderment watching our favorite characters like Bugs, Daffy, Tweety and Sylvestor.

My brother would tune the entire world out when watching cartoons. A bomb could detonate right outside our window and he'd never hear a thing. That's exactly what happened that morning. An explosion ignited behind closed doors that began with a low rumble. I recall, dropping my spoon back into my bowl with a splash of milk when it began and I looked up at my brother. He was just smiling his usual way at Daffy Duck's beak being completely spun around from the bazooka that Elmer Fudd had just shot at his face.

My mother was holding her own kind of bazooka at my father that morning. And when the yelling became so loud that I nearly ran to see what kind of catastrophe had happened, the door to the bathroom sprang open with my mother charging her way out of it.

"I'm sorry! I'll change! I can change!", was all that I could hear being wailed from my father. I was certain, that behind the towel he was using to hide beneath as he cried, he was suffering from a broken beak, too.

The first time you see your father cry like a child is the moment you realize that no one is ever safe. We all break. All of us.---------------- ©Heather Johann

9 Minutes



2:18 PM

     "What are you doing?"
     "What was that noise?
     "Mom, look at me. My hat's on backwards."
     "I thought that noise was a scurry. Is it gonna scurry, today?"

     "I got both my hats."
     "Mom, look it."
     "I got two hats for me. Look, Mom."
     Joey runs to the other room and becomes transfixed by the Disney channel.
          . 

2:22 PM

     I should do something worthwhile today. 
     Clean the house, again. Visit my mother. 
     I haven't seen her for weeks.
     That hosta plant needs to be moved. I've been meaning to get to it all summer.

2:23 PM

     Hmmmmmm. The humming of my bedroom fan.
     The lights are down.
     He's transfixed in the land of animation.
     This seems just as worth the while after the week I have had.

2:24 PM

     I've ignored my fingernails again.
     I am a woman, aging into her 40's.
     The 20's and 30's had their way with my body. 
     Least I could do, to feel pretty, is paint my nails regularly.

2:26 PM

     When did I lose that energy to run outdoors all day?
     Climb the branches of the apple trees,
     Embrace an entire day of swimming in Grandpa's pool,
     Outrun mosquitoes with hours of flashlight tag after dark?

2:27  PM

     I need a nap.

---Heather Johann Hawes





   

Tilt

It's an insane paranoia when you feel something
that shouldn't be there.
That didn't used to be there.
Wasn't always there. Or ever there.

Like that pebble in your shoe.
No.
It's not like that pebble in your shoe.
You can take the shoe off and whip the bastard stone away.

Look in the mirror, you know it's there.
Feel it when you  are trying to sleep away the darkest thoughts.
You can clothe it but it's not going away.
It's like a bomb. Tick tocking in your chest.

And in all the madness of worry, everyone else carries on.

He's still watching hockey and playing hand-held strip poker.
She's still selling flowers and falling asleep to t.v. shows in her recliner.
My coworker is still snoring through her shift in the cubicle next to me.
Tick. Tick. Tick.

And all I feel. Is a fucking lump.

---Heather Johann Hawes

Tonight's Thoughts

The gloaming sky. One bright wishing star flying on the warm breeze.

Cottonwoods dancing a waltz. A hungry bat soars through tree branches to find the mosquitoes who linger in wait for their own feedings.

Cars hurry passed. Head lighting the potholes and occasional dead critter.

Two minutes in..."Mom!?"

The dog is barking at a teen guest leaving. Music is thumping through the windows of another child's bedroom.

The dryer is doing its job.

My autistic son is humming in growing annoyance with his days end, like yesterday..and all the yesterdays he has ever had.

The town siren is whaling for volunteers to help with someone's chest pains, or an accident or maybe a campfire gone wrong.

The fireflies twinkle in the midst of my own little chaos.

"Mom!" 

My God,..I know,  I will long for that sound one day.

But not right now.

--Heather Johann Hawes

DUSK

I miss the sunshine. I used to feel it wrapped around my shoulders 
like a child who sits happily amused on the couch with her favorite blanket. 
Dandelions, popped all over the yard. Bursts of sun.
They didn't represent a reminder to mow, back then.

Makes my temples throb trying to pin-point the moment
I lost that Hallmark card idea of life.
It doesn't matter, when, how, why...but still, it seems 
so important to remember.

Coffee used to taste better. Everything,
tastes better in the sun.
It's bitter now, bites my tongue and is always
too hot or too chilled.

You don't realize how you've caverned yourself up
over time.
You adjust, get acclimated to a constant dusk.
Even the blind can find what they need if they need it badly 
enough.

So, I keep stumbling and knocking over things of cluttered insignificance
in my world.
Tripping on blankets that slipped from my shoulders long ago.
Searching. Running toward windows..smeared with my longing from
yesterday.

Fall out of the creaking doors of my past...to find the sunshine 
in the dandelions again.
To pluck them up and gather and bunch them together to make the sun 
fill up my hands.

 I set down my gelid coffee on the deck rail and squint
away my tears. To kneel in the manicured, freshly mowed lawn.

--Heather Johann Hawes