Rebecca Gaffron

Of Matter and Antimatter

Faces emerge. My attackers still exist in the coruscating chaos of nightmares. You, accessory to horrors I have learned to live with. And her. Perpetrator. Biting the hand that fed her. Painting my body blues and greens with her teeth. I wake already scrambling from the bed, reduced to fear, intent on escape. This has become my reality. I tried to wear the bruises she gave me, that you let her give me, like medals, a reminder of how much I was willing to do. To erase the snap shots of watching as you enjoyed having her. I tried to scrub the sleazy feel from my skin and soul. Resigned myself to never completely healing. I struggled to be strong, the way you told me to be. The kitchen variety wouldn't work, so I got myself a good quality drywall knife. I started with the marks closest to my heart. Stood naked, blade in hand, ready to slice away the filth. Bleed myself clean. But oh, lucky me, turns out I was strong. I dug deep and suffered through.

Arianrhod

Will you still love me when I'm no longer young? Or beautiful? I am so much more now than years ago. More waist, more jiggle, that's true. But better booty and fuller lips too. Can't you feel the power in my laugh and the way I move? I have learned to rage. I have learned to weep and wail. And to shine. I have grown so full of difficult, delightful, engaging luminosity that slim simply won't contain me. I know the value of my bitter-sweetness. Embrace these curves sculpting pleasure's songs. My creases spill genuine feminine – a strength of softness. See truth in my eyes. The girl is gone. Woman now, lovelier for my broken, imperfect places.

CP

Rebecca Gaffron is part Appalachian mountain girl, part chalk roads journeyer. Either way, she has a habit of playing with words and spinning tales. Her writings can be found in a variety of journals and books including her first collection, Honest Lies and Imaginary Truths, and at her web site rebeccawriting.com.

Rebecca Gaffron

 

Gravity

It’s midnight. What’s stopping me from jumping in the car and driving three and a half hours to pick up a book of short stories written by some guy I’ve never met?

Nothing.

No one to miss me, no job to be late for, no pets requiring attention. Even the house plants are long dead. And he’s fun online.

I exchange hot-pink tights for my best ass-hugging jeans and grab the car keys.

I’m almost on the highway before it occurs to me that Chris might stop by. See, someone would notice. I ease my foot off the gas. Then reality checks in. Chris won’t show. The Chris thing is over.

The road’s empty. I use my phone to post on his FB page.  Tell him I’m on my way and leave my number. A few miles later I feel vibrating in my pocket.

“Are you fucking serious?” His voice is strange. Not odd, but unknown. It makes me think the whole idea is crazy. Then I notice his enthusiasm.

“You’re really driving here? Tonight?”

“Yeah.” I sound breathless.

“Fuck.”

“You offered.” I turn breathless to confident.

“I know but….” The pause is long. “I never thought you would.”

“I don’t have a clue where I’m headed.” He misses the broader implications and gives me directions.

We meet at a diner around 3:45am. Conversation in person isn’t as playful. But he insists on buying me breakfast. We finish as the sun peeks over the eastern horizon.

“You could come back to my place…”

It’s what I’ve been waiting for. Going home with a stranger, in a strange city. Gravity pulls. The force makes me shiver.

CP

Rebecca Gaffron is fascinated by sea-green spaces, words, and men who behave like cats. She is a sometimes writer and can be found at her virtual home, rebeccawriting.wordpress.com.

Rebecca Gaffron

Somewhere Inside

Somewhere inside there are words for you, hidden like March crocus beneath the snow, unseen but known, waiting to burst out in riotous colors that speak of dirty smudges on your fingers and black arcs under your nails. Details of a man who works for a living.

Nods in the direction of some forgotten noble quality, like the wool vest you wear. And I could trace the tear in your faded jeans in my sleep, how it stretches over the thin, white pocket-fabric, hinting at your hidden skin.

Somewhere just out of reach lie the elements of a dark poem. Your love for her, lost. And lost again. False accusations of trysts that exist only in imaginations. We embrace our previous commitments, but you have a weakness for redheads and I have a history with men with your name.

And we are drawn back in again and again to a story about a man who pauses to give a stray tripod cat an affectionate pat. A man who smiles, while his world crashes in pieces around him, and works to the tune of his own whistling, while I imagine the melody is meant for me alone, a sign that he is nearby and I am in his thoughts.

CP

Rebecca Gaffron is fascinated by sea-green spaces, words, and men who behave like cats. She is a sometimes writer and can be found at her virtual home, rebeccawriting.wordpress.com.

Rebecca Gaffron

A Sort of Homecoming

There is something about the kitchen that makes me uncomfortable.

Not overtly. Not an obvious disturbance I can pinpoint.

Even after I've swept up the scattered mouse droppings and despite sanitized assurances provided by the lingering scent of bleach and lemon cleaner, some little disquiet tugs at the back of my mind. I can't place its reason, but it acts as a catalyst for my doubts.

Maybe this isn't the right place. Maybe we should have gone somewhere else.

I ignore these thoughts. After all, we've paid the deposit. And boxes of my life are waiting to be opened. The items inside need to be unwrapped, sorted, washed and placed in the freshly scoured cupboards.

When the hand-carved Celtic plaque emerges from a ragged dish towel cushion, it's like an unexpected gift. My breath comes sharp—almost a gasp—that I could have forgotten something so dear. I turn the golden wood over and run my finger across the grooves of Claidhbh's name. I return for a moment to the golden sunshine of a warm spring afternoon along the Boyne and the sound of my middle son speaking a few Gaelic words—Cad é mar a tá tú ?—and Claidhbh's delighted smile.

But even as I place the carving on a window ledge, a prominent bit of me imposed on this new place, the unease lurks. I shake it off and remove plates and bowls from other boxes. I begin to order our new space. Pots by the stove, tableware close to the dining area, pint jars we use as glasses near the sink; my husband's teapots won't fit anywhere.

Boxes are emptied and jumbled together like some cardboard monster, trailing tails of packing tape and leaking newsprint innards. My sons tell me it feels more like home now, surrounded by familiar things. What they mean is familiar piles of chaos. Most of the stuff has not found a place due to the lack of shelves and furniture. Only the kitchen items can be put away.

I find a box of keepsakes from my Grandma Hilde and put her resin fairytale castle on the counter. For a split-second I'm no longer standing in a grotty, rented house, one that will have to do until we find the perfect place. I stare at the castle. I've seen it before, in a place exactly like this. I look around. The curve of the back splash, the oak grain cabinets with brass-colored pulls like ones I've touched a thousand times, the rounded glass light fixtures. Again I find myself amazed by what we forget.

I smile at my oldest son standing by the counter. "Do you recognize all this?"

He looks at me with cool teen confidence, waiting.

"Grandma Hilde's kitchen was just like this one," I say. "The cupboards and the...."

Recognition and wonder change his face. He smiles. "It is," he says and reaches over and squeezes my shoulder.

I begin to feel at home.

CP

Rebecca Gaffron is a sometimes writer, sometimes procrastinator, and hopes she will be forgiven for both. She can be found here.

Rebecca Gaffron

Leaving

That was how it felt to fall in love:
Hawthorn hedges dripping lip-red berries
Cider and chips
Blue-bell bowers

And this is how it feels to leave:
Cloud kissed beacon weeping mist
Stomach wrenching
Nettle stings

Smile:
Better to have loved short than not at all
Wipe away sea-spray tears
Say goodbye

CP

Rebecca Gaffron is a sometimes writer, sometimes procrastinator, and hopes she will be forgiven for both. She can be found here.

Rebecca Gaffron

Lysander: an apology to my wife

I confess,
wrote my fantasies down in a journal
me and your friend Lettie
wet and wild, like kids
who think they’ve got it so good,
not knowing what it feels like when the earth shakes
and two really do make one,
or four.

And I’ve been
like Lysander. Lost
without a trace
or explanation, here but gone,
while you wait
for someone you thought you knew to reach out his hand,
to forge ahead,
not escape into printed page
or glowing screen.

CP

Rebecca Gaffron is a mother, former teacher and writer who recently traded the lush valleys and rolling hills of her native central Pennsylvania for a wind-swept barn in Britain. Her work has appeared in The Cynic, The Salt River Review, SNReview, Literary Tonic, Sniplits, among others.

Rebecca Gaffron

Demons

Embrace your demons,
if they’re the only ones
who bothered to stick it out for the long haul.
But even as their sturdy arms
cradle your broken self,
remember they take another piece each time.

And they will never make you whole.

CP

Rebecca Gaffron is a mother, former teacher and writer who recently traded the lush valleys and rolling hills of her native central Pennsylvania for a wind-swept barn in Britain. Her work has appeared in The Cynic, The Salt River Review, SNReview, Literary Tonic, Sniplits, among others.

The Broccoli Incident
Rebecca Gaffron

It's not surprising that she paints her fingernails neon colors.

Colors. Plural. Each nail a different shade. It is absurdly flamboyant—almost gaudy. She carries it off with aplomb. My sister loves color, bright splashes everywhere. Her paintings are collages of abstract color. They pull at you.

We should have known she'd be like this. The broccoli incident gave it away.

I watch her now, no longer a child. You'd never know it from her impish grin. She sits drinking from a two-liter bottle of Mt. Dew, using a piece of licorice as a straw. She blows bubbles in the soda, raising an eyebrow at me. It's an unspoken challenge to the older, responsible sister. I laugh in spite of myself. She's old enough to know better but I don't make her stop. Truthfully I don't even want to—like the broccoli incident.

It happened when she was very young, maybe four.

An urchin-like child with wispy curls and huge dark eyes stood on a chair in a yellowing kitchen. She was helping. She watched as our mother dumped quart after quart of freshly steamed broccoli into the sink of chilly water. Her job was to help bag it, once the tender florets were cool enough to handle.

She waited. She said nothing. She didn't want to bother her busy mother or older sister. She waited. She wanted to be useful. The sparkles sat with the other art supplies on a shelf above the sink, beyond the reach of small hands, unless the child happened to be standing on a chair. She watched, fascinated by the mesmerizing emerald green bits floating in a stainless steel pond. She waited, the broccoli still too hot to handle.

Purple and silver sparkles caught her eye. Her small fingers reached for them, her big eyes gleamed. She shook the sparkles, tentatively at first, and watched as shimmering patterns formed, coating the bushy jade trees. She put the sparkles away, never uttering a word.

Mom gasped in disbelief when she saw it, quarts of broccoli ruined. Those sparkle things never come off.

"I made it beautiful, Mommy."

She still does.

CP

Rebecca Gaffron is a mother, former teacher and writer who recently traded the lush valleys and rolling hills of her native central Pennsylvania for a wind-swept barn in Britain. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cynic, The Salt River Review, SNReview, Internet Review of Books, Literary Tonic, and Sniplits.