Capricious (15 page)
Slow motion.
Her head rests in
The long grass.
She stares up
While the last glow of day
Leaves the sky.
I watch her
And wait
Expecting
Something
Crucial.
I don't speak
But for the scratching
Of the blue pen
Tracing her life line
Her love line
Her fingerprints.
If there's one thing
Marika has taught me
It is the value
Of silence.
UNDERNEATH
Do you know how breast cancer kills?
It's not the cancer in the breast.
That doesn't matter.
It gets into other things.
The lungs. The liver.
My mother's brain.
In the end she didn't know who I was.
I'd tell her that I love her.
“What?” she'd say.
Once she said,
“Where's my daughter?”
I've never told anyone this before
This is not an excuse.
Reasons aren't excuses.
Samir broke my heart.
Sarah was my best friend.
You have everything.
It wasn't my idea to leave you.
It was one of those other bitches
But she was just trying to impress me
As if that will make a difference
In her pathetic life.
I hate those girls.
I hate all girls.
Especially myself.
Our parents look at us and wonder
Why we are the way we are
The moods and tears
The bullying, the jealousy.
But what do they expect?
Surrounded by rivals all the time
Like jackals fighting for a bone
Failure shoved in your face
Teachers looking at us
Like we're shit on their shoes.
They've forgotten what it feels like.
Maybe we will forget one day too.
I sure hope so.
I heard your mom had bulimia.
Of all the things to be jealous of.
That's fucked up.
I want a mom with your mom's disease
Instead of the one I had and lost.
MY OFFERING
I join her
Lying back on the grass
Looking up through the branches
To the drifting silver clouds
The black sky above that
And beyond
The ozone layer
The orbit of the moon
The sun and planets
The Oort cloud, the heliopause
Space, the galaxy
Nebula, stars
The entire universe
And everything beyond
And everyone
Who has ever lived and died
Every atom of them
Goes on somewhere.
As beautiful as that seems
It is also terrifying
So precarious
A delicate balancing act
A fragile house of cards
An infinitely complex machine
That can never be understood.
No wonder I hide inside myself.
I cried, I tell Genie
The day I learned
How big the moon really was
And that it didn't float
Around our sky
Like a lost balloon.
I used to let balloons go
On purpose
, she replies
And pray for them to come back
How stupid is that?
Like God would care
About a balloon.
Like there even is a God.
Like he helped
The football team
Win the regionals
But ignored me
Begging him
BEGGING him
To let Mom live.
What an asshole.
A swarm of bats flies
Across the moonlit
Silver sky
Gross
, Genie says
And somewhere
So far away in time and space
That maybe only I can hear
The coyote howls.
INVERSION
I lock the mudroom door
Behind me
Because my mind and me
Need some time alone.
Pulling all the hands down from the wall
I lay them on the bed
Then, starting with the coyote paw
I grow a tree of hands
Back on the wall
The wild furry paw
Part of a sturdy trunk.
I flip the hands upward
The fingers bent or straight
Curled, waving, pointing
But not at me anymore
Not pushing down
Grasping
But branches
Lifting
Growing
Into the open
Sky.
Genie's hand tucks in
Like all the others.
There's nothing special
Or magical
Or dangerous about it.
It's just a hand
With a scar more visible
Than anyone else's.
I throw away my own hand.
The dripping sponge doesn't fit
Somehow
It's like a storm cloud
In a blue sky.
Instead
I coat my hand in red lipstick
I never wear it
And press a print right on the wall.
At the top
Perched there
Like a vibrant tropical bird
Poised to fly
Away.
TRUST
Then I make a secret plan
A vow for grade twelve
I will become Genie's best friend.
What could be more audacious than that?
Maybe together we could use our powers
For good instead of chaos and heartbreak.
I'm probably an idiot.
She's screwed me over twice now.
But there's something about the idea
Of friendship with Genie that intrigues me.
Like the wild, wiry coyote
The vibrant bird and me maybe
She lurks on the fringes of civilization
Waiting for someone to tame her
And after all, if I can make a coyote sing
Maybe
     I
             Can
                   Do
                        Anything.
Sometimes I think editing a book must be like psychoanalyzing someone. If this is true, then Sarah Harvey knows me better than almost anyone in the world. Without her gentleness and rigorousness, this book would never have been finished. Thanks go to her and everyone at Orca for being so fabulous. Thank you Aida Bardissi for invaluable help with Arabic language and culture. Thanks to Kris and Carolyn at the Carolyn Swayze Literary Agency for making it possible to complete (continue?) Ella's story.
To my patient husband and tolerant daughterâ I know it's not easy to live with a writer in the house. Thank you for understanding. Mum and my beautiful sistersâI could not do this without your unconditional love.
GABRIELLE PRENDERGAST
is the author of the acclaimed verse novel,
Audacious
(Orca). She holds an mfa in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and is a writing teacher and a regular contributor to blogs about verse novels. Gabrielle lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband and daughter. She can be found online at
Angelhorn.com
and
VerseNovels.com
.
