A Cloud in the Light

What happens when the mood changes? Do you walk away from me and smile for the sake of that person on the other side of the green, whose eyes study our love as though it were some absurd bloom in the worst of the dry season, or do you hold your mouth firm as the light glances up from the bleached concrete of the walkway?

What happens when the mood changes? Does everything you once believed return? Do the old values faithfully answer all your needs? Do you leave me, as I stand like a forgotten maypole, my ribbons and flowered wreaths breaking toward the ground? The words can say this. The words can say anything. The words can describe the white grub which chews the soft roots of grass.

What happens when the mood changes? Do the words assume another kind of light or hue? Your face does. When you stand at the morning window and a cloud blocks the low sun, your face changes.

Perhaps your thoughts do not change. Perhaps it is only the light. Perhaps nothing changes at all. Perhaps it is always the same. All the time. Everywhere.

*

Kate Reilly peers out the kitchen window and wonders about the black and white stray. There is always a cat fight in the middle of the night. The noon hour is hot. It is her sweetest time alone. The morning chores are done and the afternoon holds open a book and sun. She stands at the window of the bright kitchen. There is nothing out of place, except the fresh beer bottle, sweating a circle on the counter.

Last week the flowers in the beds sprang hot. That gave Kate a renewed attentiveness toward her garden, after having slowed the pace of her vigilance since the tasks of spring. Now she pulls the unwanted growth that besieges the maturing plants. As she pulls, she makes notes about how she will rearrange and replant for next year's garden. She studies the path of sun and the tendencies of wind.

The noon hour is hot. She stands at the window of the bright kitchen and thinks of whether to wait until the late afternoon before watering the plants or whether to venture out and spray the cold tap water now. The kitchen is bright and hot. She decides to read in the sun.

Kate finishes one of the small stories in the book and takes the last sip from her third bottle of beer. She lights up a menthol. The sun covers her completely. She is sweating. The menthol tastes great. She began to smoke when she was fourteen and found menthols to be the most fun.

The back yard is tiny and tidy. Some bees or wasps move back and forth over the growth at the garden edge. A bright blue bunch of delphinium seems to grow taller, slightly and slightly taller, as shadow crawls onto Kate's feet. Radio softly breaks into the small plot from somewhere down the street. Kate closes her eyes and decides that when the shadow reaches her knees, she will go inside and clear the broth and finish the soup.

*

What happens when the mood changes? You stand on the bridge and stare into the water. You consider the great height of the bridge and its vast span. The light shifts and you consider the shatter of skull after the first kiss of water. The top of your head splinters in, then apart. The forehead plate crushes your eyes. The roar of collision changes to a quiet emptiness, as you soar in the dismay, as the neck twists oddly from your sinking remains.

You stand and you look up at the steel rigging of the bridge. You notice that some cloud is temporarily crossing the sun. You imagine the wings of angels ablaze.

*

He closes his eyes to the rising light and tries to collect moisture in the back of his mouth. His throat is swollen and sore. He cannot breath through his nose. He figures it to be about seven and hopes to sleep another two hours. Another two hours just might be enough to erase the physical pain and to overcome the certain depression that always follows a night of fast whiskey and self-centered talk. He turns in the bed, away from the window.

"What makes you believe this?" She asks the question and holds out her hands, palms up. It is night and there is just enough light to see the skin on her face and on her hands. It is late fall. She has decided to leave him. She stands in the night and her face and hands almost shine. "What makes you believe anything?" she asks.

"My heart," he says. "My heart makes me believe things."

All around it is dark. They stand in the middle of a city green. He looks at her hands and at her face. He cannot figure the light. She drops her hands to her sides. In a series of even breaths she tells him she is getting out. "I have no alternative," she says. "I have to leave you. You don't trust me, and now I don't know what I believe about you. I never imagined you like this."

"Like this?"

"Yes. Like a villain."

*

Chester says, "The thing is you have to keep going. No matter how bad you feel, you have to keep going. And it will get better. Believe me. Keep working. It'll all pay off. Time will heal the wounds."

Chester has been a cabinet maker for most of his life. I always figure him as honest. He is hard-working and he takes good care of his family. He is happy and healthy, except for his dry skin. The skin on his finger tips is always cracked open and this makes his work more difficult.

"Chester," I say to him, "the only thing time will do is make me old."

*

Below them, the crowds gather on the square to catch the sun during lunch. The glass of the observation gallery is thick and surprisingly smudged.

They met less than a week ago on the bus to the city. They sat next to each other and talked. Their shoulders and legs often touched during the sweeps and turns of the long highway.

Now, the elevator has just departed, taking away the other sightseers. The two of them are unexpectedly alone in the gallery. The sun is high and hot. The city vapours up and around them. They stand close to each other and stare out over the blaze of the midday.

*

What happens when the story takes a nasty turn? Do you feel set up? Do you feel misled? Do you feel that the warm breeze is part of the trap?

"The well, before it was filled in, was almost two-hundred feet deep. Can you imagine that? And he stood right there, up against the side of that shed. And the well was just there, really close. You can still see a part of it. And in his arms, all tied up in a blanket, was the baby. I was pretty young then, but I can still see it all as clearly as I could then. That look on his face. And the baby was so quiet. I still can't figure that. Maybe the kid was already dead. Maybe."

*

What happens when the mood changes? Do you walk away from me and smile for the sake of the audience, maintaining composure, maintaining everything that is sure and clear. Or do you hold your mouth firm as tears well up in your oversize eyes?

What happens when the mood changes? Does everything you had believed before, now suddenly return. Has nothing changed? Was your story in some kind of holding pattern, while the chaos of my story or our story occupied the available ground. And now, do you leave me, as I stand like a forgotten maypole, my ribbons and flowered wreaths breaking toward the ground? The words can say this and the words can say that. The words can describe all the reasons why the grass is dry and brown and sparse. Or why things change.

What happens when the mood changes? Do the words assume another kind of light or hue? When you stand at the morning window and a cloud blocks the low sun, your face changes. Perhaps your thoughts do not change. Perhaps it is only the light. Perhaps nothing changes at all. Perhaps it is always the same.