Written with my Thursday group with the prompts: you’ll wonder why, shoot for the moon, balsamic vinegarette, ceramic wine glasses, dread, warning, tree trunk across the path, this way please, she buzzed the door open, hearing thunder when you were a child, the white swan stared intently at the black one, the conference of the birds, you must believe one of two things, she was eight years old, if her eyes could talk she’d be screaming, find love, were they happy or sad times, Sunday market
Analise buzzed the door open and almost instantly she could hear eager footsteps thumping up the stairs. Suddenly she was a child again, anticipating the arrival of someone at the door, her grandfather maybe, or the letter carrier with a packet of valentines or a bouquet of lilies. She was eight years old. “What are you waiting for?” her mother asked.
“Someone’s coming,” Analise said with an expectant giggle but her mother shook her head.
“It’s only thunder,” she murmured as if annoyed. “Come away, girl. Come to the kitchen now.” So they went to the kitchen and sat by the stove till spring.
Her mother insisted that we must believe in one of two things: yourself now or yourself later. “No one is coming to save us, Analise. We have to save ourselves.”
She taught her to make a spicy lasagna with lots of garlic and roasted red peppers, and a hearty balsamic vinegarette with a touch of anchovy paste that would make a salad of thinly sliced cucumbers as memorable as a hot kiss. “This is how you find love, Analise.”
Her mother warned her there would be obstacles, as big as fallen redwoods, stretching dead across her path. “You can’t go around it. No, you need to go over it. You go right over it!”
“Shoot for the moon,” her mother would chant, not playfully, but with an ominous lilt. Analise pictured herself: sometimes with bow and arrow, other times with a pistol. She used to sketch the scene in the margin of her geography text book—her small self with her weapon of choice, aiming at the moon. She wondered why it was necessary, but she knew she was up for the task. She would shoot the moon if she had to, gosh darn it. She’d give the big chunk of rock no warning, she’d just take aim and fire. She might dread the outcome, but she’d do what was required.
Decades later she met Trevor at the Sunday Market, selling bottles of red wine and heavy ceramic wine cups. “Is this a happy time or a sad time?” he asked her and she realized she didn’t know. She’d never known.
“What’s it to you?” she blurted.
“Your eyes,” he noted. “If they could talk, they’d scream.”
He invited her into the conference of birds. “It seems you’ve been looking over your shoulder for a long time now. But you could be a songbird. You could be a swan. He wove a story of two beautiful swans, one white, one black—just as they were—a perfect complement, each to the other.
Analise stared intently at him, knowing she was neither swan nor songbird. One of us is naïve, she thought. A part of her hoped it was her. But she knew herself to be a hawk, a meat eater, a bird that will do what is required.
He came on a stormy day, a day of rain without thunder. She knew the sound of feet on the stairs were his. She had baked her lasagna, she had marinated the cucumbers. She had opened the red wine he’d given her, was waiting as it breathed. She stood near the open window and when Trevor came through the door, she brandished her knife.
He saw her step toward him and he slipped through the air, his wingspan as broad as a city bus. His underbelly and the underside of his wings were black, fringed with ivory. He dove through the window and sailed toward the skyscraper across the way.
She saw he was a vulture, a scavenger, and at that moment she understood he had come for her because he sensed she was dead inside. She sat stunned, watching him circle the sycamores and streetlights, finally lighting on a high branch to stare directly at her through the still open window. He had fooled her, it was true, but she knew he had much to teach. She pulled back the curtains, pushed the window pane higher, put down her knife, and poured the red wine. She gestured in welcome. “This way please,” she whispered.
Photo by Sholmo Shalev on Unsplash
