A Preview from "Miss Davis"

The sun was beginning to shine its first rays across the lush, green crabgrass that still showed a few droplets of dew trickling down the interior. A view of the ocean’s blue line was just a few steps away. The chaotic force that drove the water towards the shore, only to end in a calm whoosh of foam white could be heard from the edge, even though the strings of saw grass hid it from the naked eye. Sometimes she came out here to clear her mind. Other times it was to escape from the emotions that she was forced to keep bottled up. Here she could let them escape and ride into the wind, the same way the seagulls above flew without a sense of care. Miss Davis had lived here for almost twenty years, but it wasn’t until the last five that she had ventured out to the coast to catch a glimpse of the beauty that drew so many to her home. It was early, but she could spot a few runners making their own trail in the white sands that could deceptively burn you in minutes if you weren’t careful. She found a bench under the shielding shade of one of the cypress trees a half mile back from the shore. A sigh of peaceful relief escaped her lips as she stared out at the teal green expanse of the Gulf of Mexico. It was a peace she so desperately needed this morning and a peace she wouldn’t feel again for several months to come.

“Twisters!” “Twisters!”

The collections of screams were shouting with a mixed sense of urgency and fear, as they ran to find shelter inside the building. They moved together like a herd of animals wanting to outrun the source of inevitable danger. The screaming voices were an awakening to both her mind and weighted down legs, jolting them out of complacency into the fevered action that blurred its way down the sidewalk, up the stairs and through the peeling, painted brown doors. Dark gray swirls of uncertainty seemed to follow the herd past the doors into the room that they had haphazardly gathered in. No windows. No basement. No sure sense of safety. Only hope. Hope that somehow they would be spared the impending wrath of destruction that didn’t seem to care what or whom it took with it before dissipating back into the nothingness that it came from.

Scenes like these were beginning to become somewhat commonplace. Storm after storm, in an endless chain of devastation. Miss Davis couldn’t remember a time when she had witnessed so many. There had already been so much loss, so much chaos and confusion. People’s lives were in shambles. Homes destroyed; in some cases wiped right off the foundation they had once stood so proudly on. TV crews kept documenting the tragedies for the rest of the country to witness. But a few scenes of plywood, steel tin panels and street lamps being whipped in wind and rain aren’t the same as actually being the ones the cameras are busy pointing at. “Ivan” was the latest arrival. So many names and so much irony in the fact that they were essentially all the same unfrozen blizzard that kept returning as though it were seeking revenge for a past indiscretion. Though miles away from its center, Central Florida still had to worry about the effects the outer bands might unleash on the fragile land that merely floated on the underlying aquifer beneath it.

Miss Davis enclosed her arms around Muriel’s chest, shielding the top of her head beneath the cylinder hollow she created in an attempt to keep the young girl safe from any flying debris. She could feel the structure of the building beginning to sway with the force of the wind that was screeching like it was a runaway train trying to make a last minute stop.

Two sets of clouds were beginning to separate from each other, each edge still almost touching as the whispered fragments allowed a few rays of sunlight to shine through. Even though the ground was beyond damp, with the promise of mold and must, the slivers of yellow light against a piece of blue sky were enough to inspire hope. The wind was still blowing its cool swirls of animosity against the remaining droplets of rain that continued to fall from what was left of the mass of gray danger hanging above. The pain in her right leg was unbearable. Fighting back the urge to cry out in sheer agony was easier than wondering how she was going to hoist herself up. Somehow she had to. She had to sift through what was left of the walls and the ceiling that once stood around them. She had to find the children. She had to find Muriel.

Buried Imprints

In a not so distant yesterday
I held onto your arms
In a tight grasp
Afraid of having to let go
Of who I thought we were
Unsure of what would become
Of our hearts
In the distance and solitude
Where only our minds
Could possibly touch
Or go astray

Saying good-bye
Was almost too easy
As though there were no more threads
Left of the strings between what was
And what could be
I guess we were tired
Of night dances
And daytime wishes
That couldn’t erase the emptiness
Between what was
And what should be
Of an existence entwined

Love is funny
In the sense that it never ends
Even after you’ve let the last pebble of sand
Slip from the grasp of your fingers
So that it can become free
To find what it now wants
Becoming just a memory
That fades slowly
Like the light of a sunset
Returning only in pictures
Captured by time’s stillness
Forgotten until the lines of the imprint
Rub up against today’s reflection