Your name is a silent space between stars

A lot of people say I tend to lie. I know I exaggerate a bit. That’s how I see it. I want you to believe me, because I’ve been through more than I want to talk about here. The last time I stood before a judge, she told me “Honesty is the path to stability and peace.” I keep thinking about that.

I’ve done a couple short stints in jail. Both times on drug charges. I lived in a half-way house a year or so ago. I’m only telling you this because I want to be honest, and I’m trying to get better. Then the other night, Marcie brought home some crazy shit she picked up from some other girl at the club where she works. It kept us up for 2 days straight. I tell you this stuff made time blur. We mostly drank and listened to the radio. Smoked about 400 cigarettes. Anyhow, If you’re willing to just go along with me here, I will try to stick to the straight path and tell you about what happened the other day with Jeanie, our neighbor.

There was a package dropped on Jeanie’s front step early on a Tuesday while she was sleeping. Two hours later she was drinking coffee in her kitchen and scribbling a poem on a piece of scrap paper. She tried to write poems as soon as she felt them moving through her. Sometimes, it felt like losing her breath for a minute; her scalp would tingle and she would try to get the fleeting images within her written down on paper. She liked to turn those pictures into words. A lot of her dreams became poems.

A half hour later she was stepping out into the yard to water the phlox before it got too hot and then she saw it. Wrapped in brown paper and knotted with twine, a package sat on her front step. It was still quiet outside. Birds sang in the pines out back. A dog’s bark echoed from over the hill. Dew glistened on the little patch of lawn outside her trailer.

She looked down at the package, and then looked around. No writing on the box at all. She picked it up gently, carried it back into the house and set it upon the kitchen table, next to the little poem that read “..my petals fade slowly/your name is the silent space/ between the stars and my soul.”

She wasn’t sure she should open it. It might have been meant for the couple next door. Their place looks almost the same in the dark. On several nights over the past few months there had been cars pulling in her driveway mistaking her place for next door. They were party people. Sometimes she would hear yelling in the middle of the night coming from their place.

She poured herself a second cup of coffee, sat down at the table, and stared at the box. Curiosity moved through her, and it felt like the poem feeling. She decided she would open it after a hot bath. She started the water, turned, and looked at herself in the mirror. Her auburn hair fell just beyond her shoulder, and her light green eyes were the color of a spring pool in forest shade.

Jeanie moved out here about three years ago after leaving Pittsburgh and the drunk, possessive asshole who had been her fiancé. One night while he was at the bar, she grabbed everything she could fit into her little Corolla and sped through night. She drove 80 miles an hour down the highway, glancing in the rear view, convinced his headlights lurked somewhere behind her.

After six hours, she pulled off the interstate and got a room in a small hotel. She parked her car around the back. Although she knew better, she called her momma back in Erie. She cried and talked. It was all received with long stretches of silence and “Uhh-huhs”.

After Jeanie quit talking, she heard her momma draw long on cigarette and with an exhale said “You aint planning to come back here again, are you?“

Jeanie hung up. Her momma had always been a bitch.

When she got out of the shower she put a long t-shirt and a pair of socks. It was her day off and she had planned on staying in all day: listening to her new records, maybe doing a little water color, and then going over some poems she had been working on.

She undid the twine on the box and unwrapped the paper. A deep earthy smell floated up as she opened the double sealed plastic inside. She knew right away what they were: mushrooms. The fun kind. She had done them a few times before with friends back home. Beautiful nights at the lake with campfire and skies expanding black. The dank smell made her salivary glands come alive a bit. Yeah, this box was definitely for the neighbors.

Now this is where I have to step in again and talk, cause I’m Jeanie’s neighbor and there was supposed to be exactly two ounces of mushrooms delivered to MY porch that morning, I am not exaggerating about that. When it comes to drugs and money, I don’t lie. My boy Tommy was swinging by on his way to Virginia, and I texted him and told him just to leave it on the porch cause I was crashing after three days of being up with Marcie on that good stuff she brought home. Holy lighting. We were both edgy and confused and I told her that the last line was the LAST line.

I wanted Tommy to leave it on MY back porch, but he he told me later that he had eaten about half an eighth before he set out, and by time he was getting near my place, he said his steering wheel was feeling like water and stars were reflecting off the hood of his car. He was feeling a bit paranoid with his headlights on as he pulled up, so he parked down the road and walked up and put the shrooms on my porch before the sun rose.

Wrong porch.

Now, I woke up about 4 in the afternoon that day. I grabbed a beer and called Tommy, and it seemed he was still tripping pretty hard. He had eaten another handful of those things. He told me that he was standing by a lake somewhere in Virginia, and the clouds were dripping like ice cream cones into the water. He said he was lying on his back in the grass . I asked him about our little package.

He said,” I put it on your porch”

“Like hell you did," I was trying to be quiet. I knew Marcie was listening.

He laughed a little.

I got to admit that pissed me off a bit. I can’t just throw around four hundred dollars without getting nothing for it, ya know?

“Dude, your Corolla was in the driveway. I put it on the front porch.”

“Tommy.” I was trying to control myself, and as quietly as I could , said “I drive a Sentra. And it’s goddamn blue, Tommy! My neighbor’s Corolla is fucking red“.

Silence on the other end.

“Tommy?”

I heard him make some kind of grunt.

“Shit man… I fucked up.”

I couldn’t get mad. I could tell he was feeling those shrooms big time. Then he said, “We’re gonna work this out… no worries, man!”

“How are WE gonna work this out?,” I said. "I'm the one that has to fix it."

There was a little pause and then I think he forgot what we were talking about because the very next thing he said was, “ Damn,....birds are pretty cool… ya know?”

“What?”

Through the phone I heard him whistle lightly. Turns out he was whistling to a bird.

“There's this robin over here next to me and he keeps scooting around like he wants to say something to me. You think birds want to talk to us…maybe once in a while? What would you say to a bird, Larry?”

“I gotta go Tommy.” He was out of it. There was no point.

I knew Marcie was gonna get entirely twisted if I didn’t get those shrooms. Three hundred of that four hundred we paid was hers. It’s kind of mine, too. But I owed her brother some money. It’s complicated.

As soon as I got off the phone, she was on me.

“Where are those shrooms?” Her face was rigid. Her eyes narrowed at the corners.

I cracked another beer. “I think Tommy left them at Jeanie’s by mistake.”

She threw her hands up. Sometimes Marcie seems a bit dramatic to me.

“FUCK-ING Tommy!” She was shaking her head. “You serious? Jeee zus!” She lit a cigarette. She started to pace and her slippers looked real dirty.

“I got this, babe”, I said.

“You ever want to touch me again, you better”. She was pretty serious. Her moods can turn on a dime, sometimes over nothing at all.

I threw on a shirt, scooted out, and walked down to Jeanie’s place. There were little pink and white flowers outside her trailer. I was thinking that Marcie and I ought to fix up ours a little.

Jeanie answered the door in a t-shirt. I could tell as soon as she opened the door that she had eaten some of those shrooms. Her pupils were huge and she had this smile-- like the ones you see on the people handing out the Jesus pamphlets outside the Save-A-Lot.

I couldn’t be mad. She couldn’t have eaten too many of the shrooms in one day.

“Did you get a package here, Jeanie?” I was trying to be casual. I didn’t want to bum her trip out.

“OHH! Yeah!! she said. “was that for you?” She paused, “ I have to tell you right away. I ate a few.” She was looking me right in the eyes but it felt like she was seeing through me.

"Yeah, my boy got our places mixed up."

“I can give you money," she said softly. Then she smiled as she lowered her voice and smiled. “I didn't eat much. This morning I had a cap and a few stems with peanut butter. I wrote for two hours straight. Then a little while ago, I made some tea with three little caps. The tea is coming along nicely.” She smiled and was looking over my shoulder.

“Please don’t be mad.”

I could only smile. She was glowing.

“I ain't mad, Jeanie. Hell, were only keeping half anyway. I'll hook you up. ”

She came back from inside her place and handed me the box, and the twine.

“You can keep the twine,” I said.

She began to twist the tiny piece around her finger. “ Okay…maybe I could use it to lasso one of those big white clouds over there.”

She pointed with her eyes toward the sky over my shoulder.

I turned to see. Huge long clouds- like purple freight cars- were drifting over hills on the edge of the fading green valley. Everything felt still. I wanted to eat some of those shrooms.

"Those clouds look like purple bulls running across the plains," she said gently.

We were both quiet, and when I turned back to look at her, she was moving back into the house. Her eyes were radiating.

She said, “I have to go write a poem.” She smiled, and shut her door.

I tucked the box under my arm and started walking back to my place. Marcie was sitting on the front step, smoking and looking my way. She might have been smiling a little. I figured I'd get her some new slippers.

I looked over at the horizon again, but it had already changed and wasn’t nearly as pretty as it had been only moments before.