that you lock in a box

hoping it's still alive

“What is going on?” I ask one of the managers.

He tells me no one can enter the bathrooms, and no one knows why. He looks surprised at having given me the information.

I sigh, approach the oldest of the police officers. “The Code Jaysome is in hand,” I say quietly. “You can call that in.”

He starts, eyes widening a little, and hurries outside to his car.

I use the elevator and go up twelve flights and enter our hotel suite. Charlie is still out shopping. Jay is sitting in the small living room and playing video games.

“Hi, Honcho,” he flings out.

“Kiddo.” I close the door. “I’m wondering, academically, why no one in this hotel can enter a single bathroom?”

“Well, you know how bathrooms are evil places?” he says.

I fight back a sigh. Jay is eleven, and also from far Outside the universe. He keeps himself clean with bindings, and isn’t capable of using a bathroom. So he tends to never be in them. “Just because you can’t use it doesn’t make it evil.”

“But Charlie says that’s why I can’t drink beer!”

“It’s evil because you can’t drink it.” He nods. “And maybe not jaysome, but I’m not sure yet.”

“And the bathrooms?” I press. “Humans do use those.”

“But what if a shark attacks you when you’re taking a bath?” he demands.

I pause. I doubt that has ever happened, but Jay worrying about things increases the chances that they will. “Sharks are normally in oceans, and quite large. Often too large to fit into bathtubs.”

“Really?”

“Very really, yes.” “Oh. Okay,” and I there is a faint crack of energy as every binding Jay made on the bathrooms in the hotel ends.

Which was far easier to settle than I thought it would be. I wait for the second shoe to drop.

“Uhm.”

“Yes, Jay?”

“What about the Tyrannosaurus Deer?” “What about them?” I ask without missing a beat.  “Well, I kind of have some in the boardroom, since I figured they’d like boards and might not eat people there since most humans that enter a boardroom aren’t really human!”

“I’ll go see if they are all right.” “Okay!” And Jay grins and goes back to playing a game.

I find out where the board room is from a suit and tie wearing a person, head down to the second floor. Hotels are easy: I make wards from irate guests and desperation without effort, open the door to the board room. It’s locked, but that doesn’t matter to a wandering magician.

On the other side of the door are two ordinary kangaroos.

I stare at them. They stare back.

My Tumblr Crushes:

moondriver00

frofc

hangingoninquietdesparation

arosepoetry

notpervymess

merseawaves

cherokeeghostwriter

writerscreed

mikefrawley

my heart races at the thought of it.

i can’t see my own face without a mirror- why should a poem of mine look back at me with any hint of grace?

the words once came like whispers- a ghost leaning close as i walked through my day. now the voice is faint, an echo from a hallway i can no longer quite discern.

age has thinned the distance between silence and despair. i fumble for meaning, for the leap my younger self once made without thinking.

time flickers past, half-dream outlines -measured in glimpses. observations of light, as it gathers a pale hour upon the wall, faintly radiant -warmly casting its last.

winter seems a long time going, even though it's only January- it creeps in each night -like a tide softly slipping beneath my dwindling attention.

I walked the woods out back gathering fallen limbs- windfall remains, scattered beneath the trees, as if something had died and left its bones behind.

I stacked them into order, a quiet penance, wood laid like confession, waiting for flame -an offer of absolution.

by nightfall, the pyre had become its own cathedral- fire rising, sparks threading upward through surrendering smoke, winking out between the stars.

I sat awhile, watching as if learning some forgotten language- the crackle, the hush, the dance of light devouring its own creation.

why is flame so captivating? its beauty is peril dressed in golden expiration, fragile, flickering, yet able to undo a world without hesitation

a fire asks for nothing but all of itself.

I see it in me sometimes- unresolved embers consuming my days, old griefs that flare again when the wind shifts.