Unholy Imaginings

Sometimes I wake up and clasp my hands over my eyes. Oh Lord, I will yell up through the blue light and into the empty attic. In my dreams, you were sleeping next to me, still my confidant.

Morning enters: slim, cool, ethereally stunning as only she can be this early on a cold winter day. Her twin sister, Memory, is close behind: razor-thin, peremptory, laser-focused.

I check my phone – it’s 5 O’Clock. They’ve been waiting outside my door for this very moment. Memory has prepared an Excel spreadsheet in response to my cries, hands me a printout. “The facts distinctly show he is neither here, nor your confidant.”

Doubt yells, muffled from the closet “Maybe he never was!” She’s attempting to choose my outfit, but for reasons innate to the core of her being, struggles with a final decision.

Morning looks pale. Memory eyes me sideways.

I groan. Some atoms of my soul, imbedded grains of my character, and tough bits of gristle in my sinews want to know where the hell you are.

Memory points to the tab of her spreadsheet that says ‘He Left You’ and seems prepared to expound at length.

I interrupt: Yeah, I remember. I gotta get out of bed. I had lots of crazy dreams and need to write this shit down before it’s lost forever. Is Creativity here, yet?

Memory is annoyed, Morning sighs. Neither collaborates well with Creativity. She’s a crazy-ass liability to the overall order of things. Stays up too late reading Fante and poetry. Has fantastic nightmares that she writes down in sardonically labeled Moleskines. Doesn’t fit into any existing narrative, circadian rhythms, or cyclical passing of seasons. She keeps fucking up facts of existing events, just for fun. And she is never, ever on time.

I scribble the framework of my thoughts into the notebook she leaves next to my bed, before the concept evaporates.

The Twins convince me to get up, make tea. Doubt emerges from my closet, hands me a giant fleece robe, and shrugs. “Put this on. We’re not going anywhere. It’s probably for the best.”

I groggily descend the stairs. The three women follow and sit at my great-grandmother’s antique maple table, politely waiting for Earl Grey.

I am proud of my home, and though I live here alone, still feel like a domestic goddess of comfort and peace. Filling up the tea kettle, I notice the fine turn of my slender wrist. I ponder the anatomical name for the beautiful protrusion of these bones.

Before I can ask Hey, what are these things even called? I see Creativity climb through the dining room window, wearing my leopard print coat, logger boots, and favorite 60s shift dress. She watches my form, my steady ulna and delicate radius balance the heavy tea kettle. She smiles. She has intuited my innermost thoughts.

“You know what! Fuck him!” Creativity screams.

Morning, Memory, and Doubt are startled in unison and their knees hit the handcrafted scrollwork of the old table. They didn’t see her enter through the window, although she always keeps one unlocked so she can come and go as she pleases. “He never appreciated your goddamn bones!” She is overalert from sleeplessness, I can tell from the sleet-and-salt-covered boots she’s been wandering the city all night chasing down wild words.

“You don’t need a man,” the Twins chirp in calm, supportive unison, trying to reign in Creativity’s fury. She calms a little and begins speaking low and frantically, “Write odes to yourself, love songs, write your own elegy of all the shit you accomplished and repeat ‘I don’t need a man’!” Morning and Memory repeat wholeheartedly “You definitely do NOT need a man.”

“Yes, true, but it doesn’t preclude her desire for one.” Doubt has to be the devil’s advocate. Nobody holds it against her. I like her, despite her constantly forcing reality into this fake poetic haven I’ve created for myself.

Creativity runs upstairs to grab our dream notebook. “We’ve got shit to do!”

I smile, touch my wrists. Each hand a slender dove, folded over the other. I pick up the plaid coffee cup and gracefully sip my tea. The next man who loves me will know to love my very bones.

Morning, Memory, and Doubt each finish their tea and fade from the table. Morning flits away until tomorrow. I like to think she’s got a fancy apartment uptown in one of those Art Deco skyscrapers, lounging in beaded dresses on furniture from that period. Memory and Doubt head up to the attic to perform tedious statistical data calculations that both quantify and question my existence. Sometimes I bring them sandwiches and milk.

Creativity and I stay at the table all afternoon, hunching over my old notebook, furiously scribbling, whispering, cackling.

What weird words!

Praising and lamenting my goddamn bones.