la chimera

and not saying Macbeth

A customer’s total was 444.

How do I seem to so graciously make the day for them and not have it for myself? “God bless you”, another one says.

He comes home from a long night of work in this hot week of monsoons and concerts. “I don’t like mirrors…. I like reflections,” he says dreamily, stoned from our couch. Mirrors bounce a trained idea of oneself. But reflections cannot lie.

He tells me to believe in this goodness that we have made, that we are making. So hard that I do. It’s contagious, this reflection.

Four of wands; flipped upright by my own resolute resolve.

/As a woman, I have no country/ I am materials. Silk, cotton and linen and scratch. New freckles on my shoulders and down my back he points out; the rakish fat squirrel on the roof. Chirping like a smoke detector on low battery. We love him, and I think he knows it.

Tarot cards; five of pentacles, once up, once reversed.

Dripping moonwax on the streets; my bitten nails and browned arms; the greys that catch in my rearview mirror like smoke signals.

A man crossing the street to catch a bus; leaning into a walker, his shuffle, eyes catch in each car waiting in our shame of youth. Later, a black widow on my bike wheel. Written words on a bay leaf to burn with three other women in the mountain somewhere far enough and near, laughing as I write Paul Simon lyrics from my mushroom head. Witchy shit; he laughs at me the next day. Yes, both.

/Why deny the obvious child?/

Lists and screenshots of books to front list order now that I have returned to the land of the living. Bath sweat on my lip; a bruise behind my calf, hard and quartered.

What to do in the heat of root rot? We cry so suddenly over new coffee and a quick friendship. “I learned to orient toward curiosity instead of fear”, she says with light in her contagious eyes. My silk shirt dripping in the morning sweat. Smiling.

The candle burning on the table at night; me and the moon and the candle, the pink light washing everything until nothing is nothing but cotton candy.

I am a theatre stage ghost light in July.

Patience Pollock

Chandler Castle