WHO?
Contrary to everything I said last time, I’ve decided to not post past stories, there’s less joy in that for me. I want to give you the immediate ones, the imperfect ones that carry a sort of fucked up beauty I hope, accompanied by grammatical tics and messy audio and excessive enthusiasm and birds in the background when possible. It’s 6:41 on a Sunday morning in September and I just wrote this. Thanks for being here.
Who? by Sherry Cassells
Are owls birds? You’d almost certainly answer yes to that one until you felt the weight of one and then you’d reconsider. Is there a category for more meaty flyers? Owls are the whales of the night sky, and the who who who is you you you.
I'm back in the town where I grew up. It's been twelve years.
I heard the first owl around midnight, solo for a long time, and then another, and a while later, a third. I waited for more, I was sort of building the Big Dipper one star at a time in my night-head but it stopped at three and I closed the triangle. I could have slept, I caught myself rolling from slumber's ledge a couple of times, but I got up instead, and for a moment I didn’t remember where I was. I only got here yesterday.
When I opened the door to the back yard it felt like I was breaking a seal.
I stepped onto the cool concrete, felt wet but wasn’t, my eyes rode the horizon like watching the needle go across a record – there was no distinction of colour but a barely there thread of pale – the involuntary scan I do for my mother’s ghost.
Wait. I'm not even sure I believe in ghosts, it's what I do to catch a trace of her that's all. I was young when she died and I forget things, not sure what I am scanning for exactly, maybe it’s a shape like something on a clothesline, maybe it’s the owls ‘triangle or could be the release of another kind of seal.
Whatever it is, I am always on the prowl.
So you’re nocturnal too?
I turned and she was standing there smoking. Auntie Jane. I didn't know she smoked. She used to hassle my mother so much about it, I’m shocked she took it up.
I didn’t answer – all questions are rhetorical at night, just ask the owls – but I went to her and leaned against the fence beside her, I could see the moon, I purposefully do not know the rules of the sky, the moon is always a surprise to me, I see no consistency, nothing precise, only fickle stars, I don’t trust the joints of the star-shapes for which there are names, I mentioned the Big Dipper earlier as if I were imagining it with accuracy but I wasn’t, just the open scoop part hovered at a questionable angle, I only said it to explain the moment so you’d maybe understand the way the who who who landed.
We hadn’t said much during dinner, much of importance I mean, we talked about vegetables, the lamb sort of glided down my throat, I told her I’d never had anything so delicious, we talked about my mother but it was in a forced way, I suppose we were clumsily breaking ice, she said I looked like her and I said so do you.
But that night in the back yard darkness we had plenty to say, we enjoyed a lengthy and intricate weave of conversation, much of it without the weight of words, it was a pulsating exchange of truth and relief, one of us said twelve years is a long time, the other said what took you so long. I don't know how many times we repeated those two lines, it became a sort of row row row your boat round during which we switched lyrics seamlessly.
Plenty of background birds in a slideshow sky.
We talked about how I’d been searching without searching, wanting without wanting, trying without trying, and ready finally ready.
I went back to bed in a moment of purple, what’s that poem? – and miles to go before I sleep – that’s how it felt, the distance between the back yard and my bed felt immeasurable. People say I went to sleep the second my head hit the pillow but I went to sleep somewhere at the edge of a forest I think, as soon as my head hit the earth.
When I got up in the morning Auntie Jane was in the kitchen. I took her by surprise when I hugged her, she said my goodness! And she took me by surprise when I saw that she cried a little over the stove.
Sit sit sit, she said and I did did did, twelve years ago I would have loved pancakes, as it is I am a 30-year-old with a weight problem, I am a meaty bird, I ate the edges and left the three fraying moons on my plate, Auntie Jane ate her moons and left the edges.
As I already told you, my ghost talk is metaphorical, mostly, but who hasn't hoped for the odd ghost?
Auntie Jane said she'd take me to all my mother's old haunts, that she'd tell me everything, but at that moment something settled in my head, a familiar pattern of stars, and I felt I already knew.
Where would you like to go first? I'm full of energy, she said, took a sleeping pill last night so I'd be able to keep up with you today, slept like a log, eight hours straight just like the bottle says.
My head did a full 360.
I stared into the back yard, and although I suddenly knew, I still said Who?
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
from Stopping by Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost