[This is today's product from my meeting with the Creative Coven, in response to the prompt, "What Brings You Here".]
Maggie walked into the kitchen wearing the kid-size
nose glasses that had been her part of the family Halloween costume, and the
little fedora she had bought at a yard sale the week before. She walked with a
heavy tread that meant she was imitating an adult.
“Hello there,” she said in the deepest voice she
could manage.
“Why, hello, Mister,” Venus said to her daughter,
smiling broadly. “What brings you here?”
“Well, I’m a grown-up, so I came by myself.”
“Oh, I see. Well, what’s your name?”
“Thomas Chicky.”
I suspected that “Chicky” was derived from Thomas
the Tank Engine’s being notoriously “cheeky”. If so, it was an interesting
derivation.
“Well, Mister Chicky, have you seen Maggie anywhere?”
When Maggie had been the Green Hornet the other day,
she had done a poor job of explaining Maggie’s absence. I wondered if she’d do
a better job this time.
“Uhhh…I think she is in a hole with some lizards and
they are biting her and their bite is poison and she is probably dead.”
“Goodness,” Venus said. “Bad things seem to happen
to Maggie when strangers come around. Maybe we’ll have to start locking our
door to keep people from walking in and keep Maggie from walking out.”
“I know I’d be a lot happier if I heard that Maggie
was safe wherever she is,” I added.
“Uh, yeah, that’s right. Maggie is, uh, at the park
playing in the oatmeal pit.”
I recognized the oatmeal pit from stories I’d told
Maggie about the goblin town directly underneath our town, where instead of a
sandpit they had a giant bowl of oatmeal that the goblin kids played in.
“Oh, the goblin park underneath the regular park!
Yes, I know she likes that.”
“Yeah, uh, the goblin kids are playing with her.”
“Oh, good, I’m glad she got away from the lizards,”
Venus said.
“Well, uh, I guess I’ll be leaving, now.”
“Okay, ‘bye, Mister Chicky.”
“Say hi to Maggie if you see her.”
I heard Maggie’s heavy footsteps on the stairs. Even
when shewalked normally, it was surprising how heavy her footsteps were. We
often commented on “the wham-wham-wham of little feet”.
Cedar Koons
Our first appointment late
on a Friday, the therapist
ought to be tired. Instead she’s honed
like an old knife ready to skin
us cleanly out of our marriage.
She offers a couch or separate chairs
and you choose the black chair near the door
while I settle in a dark corner
where a plant has recently died.
“What brings you here?” she begins,
and you shyly open the bandage
for her to probe. I wonder did she
see our X-rays, how’d she know
the perfect place to stick the knife?
Once, I watched a country neighbor
expertly skin a squirrel. The fur slipped off
like a glove. “Done one, you done ’em all.”
Are all of us alike? Small stunned mammals,
unable to go on, afraid to let go,
a slice and a tug and the bond tears loose
with very little blood? We paid our money
and walked out shivering.
The Magic Eight-Ball says: "Courage does, and a desire for progress."
