Hammock

This is an older piece I did, unrelated to the Lake

Her bed was a hammock hung on hooks she had hammered into the walls. I'll always remember that about her. How her walls were painted with spray paint murals and written on with plain old pencil. The words I can't recall, but all I know is that they seemed to matter at the time. She'd let me read them, finger to the wall to keep my place, and ask her their meanings. They ranged from angry, heated scrawlings to soft cursive script. I had read the same passages over and over trying to beat the answers out of cryptic sentences that she wouldn't talk about. There were days when I finally understood, like I had finally found a word I missed. She would smile softly, tilt her head in a shrug, bite her lip nervously as if pleading me not to leave her. Her knees would touch her chest as she let her bed become unanchored. I'd bring her back down to Earth. The secrets on her wall were like her ultimate sins, her greatest days, and her worst. The wall was a journal with tattered, dog eared pages and a broken spine that I left a dollar, book store, holographic bookmark in to keep my place. It should have been a ribbon, but I only had a dollar.

We met in the middle of a particularly dry summer. She was having what I would come to know as her painting days. I spotted her drawing on a park bench, intent on observing her subject. I was so intent on observing her I tripped over a tree root invading the sidewalk I was jogging on. I skinned my hands and knees just enough for them to bleed. She saw me fall and ran over. Not exactly the smoothest introduction, but it got us talking. I learned her quieter tendencies and she was happy to listen to my ramblings when I took her out to dinners. She let me see her apartment after being with me for five months. It was a delicate matter and I took it seriously. I had learned things about this girl that left me wanting more. I still found myself wanting more answers after three years.

I remember one day I found her in the middle of writing. She was in the far corner where there was a little space to write on. She had tear stained cheeks, her breathing coming in racking sobs. I wanted so badly to comfort her, but I was frozen. She brushed away her own tears, much more roughly than I would. Her hiccuping breaths were on a short leash with a choke collar that she yanked hard enough to cut off air all together. She'd get the mad dog under control and write then a word would bring back the tears and sobs. I could see the anger racing in her eyes. Brows furrowed in anger, eyes dilated in anger, her calm blue iris was being overtaken by the emotion in the black. She'd scream curses, scream insults, she'd just scream. She'd never throw that pencil. That damn pencil. I had watched her for too long like this. So angry. I had never hugged her tighter than I did that day and she still fought it. I sat with her on the ground holding her tightly as she cried. With her back turned to me and still within my grip she finished her writing. She didn't object when I wiped her tears gently.

I liked her painting much better. She was peaceful when painting. Paintings were done on good days. She wouldn't be home when I arrived, out buying cans of spray paint. I'd read while I waited for her. She'd arrive and wordlessly begin painting. For the next two hours you could only hear the dull sound of her spraying, like a static tv. Soon enough that sound blended in to white noise. Laying on her hammock, I could look up at the ceiling and imagine shooting stars. She deserved the wishes from them. If I closed my eyes I was at the beach listening to the endless waves crashing on the shore. She'd finish and step back, the white noise would stop. She'd join me on her hammock and rest her head tiredly on my chest. I would let her, though my curiosity was nagging at me to look at the painting. It could always wait.

I never left her if she had fallen asleep with me there. She told me it scared her waking up alone when she had fallen asleep with me beside her. She had a nasty fear of losing me. Usually it spells out disaster, things like that, but she wasn't suffocating. I wanted to be with her. Nights where she fell asleep beside me and I would measure time by her even breathing, or she'd drift off just before me and I could watch her for the moment. That stray strand of hair hanging across her face, I'd brush it behind her ear if my arm was free. I would try not to move too much, the hammock rocked at the slightest shift.  Sometimes she'd clutch onto me in the grip of a nightmare, I'd shush her trying to comfort her and stroke her hair softly. Sometimes she'd go quiet and relax once more other times she would start screaming or crying out and I had to wake her up. She always held on tight until she fell back asleep. Dreams were better, they incited a brow furrow or a few disconnected words muttered over time. Whenever I asked her what she was dreaming about she never told me. I would offer up bargains of me telling her what my dream was, or buying her new paint, but she wouldn't fess up.

I felt I was always asking questions that never got answered. Normally you find these things out in time. I knew her from the writings on the walls and not much else. I knew she hated the sun because it set on her good days and rose on her bad ones. I knew what she wished for with her dandelion wishes. I knew that she wanted to go to school for writing, but she got kicked out of some schools before. I don't know why she didn't hate the moon since it brought her nights with nightmares. I don't know why she wished for the streets to turn into rivers. I didnt know why she didn't just write like she did on her walls. I barely knew the whats and knew nothing of the whys. I wanted to know why she liked the feeling of wool so much, or why she made hot coffee and waited until it was ice cold, or why she always laughed with her eyes squeezed shut. I wanted to know why she felt like she needed to be perfect when she had superseded that standard. Perfection at its best doesn't begin to touch her at her worst. She was better than words.

I wished to know her secrets when we blew dandelions together. When there were days I could convince her to read her own words it was as if those wishes were trying to come true. Just like when she wrote them down a certain word would make her voice catch. The rhythmic intonation would break with emotion. That's when I could glimpse inside her mind. The way she read them out loud gave me a better insight than the words themselves. If I couldn't speak the same language I'd know her thoughts by the emotion in her voice. It was pure rapture.

We never formally broke up. If you were to ask me I'd tell you I'm taken. Maybe one day, when the bitterness and cynical thoughts set in I'll tell myself that she's moved on and so should I. She had to move to care for her mother and seek out college. I had a job here and I couldn't follow her. She left me a set of spare keys to her apartment, telling me she still had a week left in the month she paid off. Like an idiot I didn't go for three days, I couldn't bring myself to. In my mind it was as if she had died. I opened the door to a room covered in painters tarps, littered with paint cans and half of one wall painted. Half of my literary classic gone, the dog eared pages ripped from the first draft journal. I feverishly began to document what was left, hoping maybe I could tell what passages had been covered, what masterpiece had been lost. I brought a camera with me, I even tried to write down what was left. I was never able to recover the missing words. Her hammock still hung on the wall. I pried the nails out and took it with me. I know I'm crazy, but it seemed to matter at the time. In the dead of summer it all seemed to be so important.