writing – Kelly Yandell

Pretending At Death

Bette stood, balanced over the water, hanging forward precariously from the rail on the bridge. It was velvet black all around save for a shaft of moonlight that invited her and pulled her down. It seemed to say, “I guide the tides, I can show you where to enter.” The water rippled slightly below, and she imagined the tinkling sound of distant wind chimes coming from the tiny waves below. The moonlight decorating one side of each small undulation mesmerized her. She drew comfort from the friendship of the moon and its cool hand accompanying her to this place and adorning the water below.

She took a final moment to appreciate her strong body. She hadn’t realized that her body was strong and that it had will. She had only ever thought of herself as being blown about by circumstance. Her arms were taut, pulled behind her and holding her out at an angle over the water far below her. Nothing was wrong. Everything was right and she felt a power in the starless sky where the moon and the water were the only beings outside of herself, the only bodies that mattered other than her and they were calling her home.

She felt the grip of her hands one last time. She appreciated them for letting her have this moment, this pause, this last view from above. She relaxed her hands. She let go. She said, “I’m coming,” as though she was joining a lover for dinner but had been running a few, unavoidable, minutes late. The cool air rushed up against her face, or rather she thought, she was rushing through the cool air. And then she wasn’t any longer. Her shell was cracked and beaten on the rocks below, but it didn’t matter anymore.

Of This Place

I wasn’t made from the rib of a man
I was fashioned from a potent mixture
Of Gun Powder
And the Seeds of Bluebonnets
Bound together with the Sap of Mesquite Trees

I didn’t crack forth from the skull of a god
I was born in an Oyster Shell in Galveston Bay
And adorned with Pearls on my Birthday

I’m the Feral Daughter of the
First Twilight Star and the Bobcat.
The Child of a Blue Norther
That picked up the Red Dirt and carried
It to the rich
Soil south

Falling Back

I rolled up in front of John’s house to pick him up for the funeral. I love a man in starched cowboy duds, I do. I hope everyone comes to my funeral in starched jeans because it shows a certain awareness of the importance of the occasion. He looked great. Dad would have been so pleased. Or maybe Dad would have called him a damn quitter. John gave up drinking a few months ago and really seems to have his shit together this time. It’s nice to see. He was not a pretty drunk and he wore it like a mean vagrant now and again.

Mom owed us a debt of gratitude for even going to her service at all though. She disliked both of us to the core. It gave me chills to even think of her. The condescending glare. Always looking so damned disappointed. Kind of like Stacy, John’s perennial girlfriend, who was standing behind him.

Stacy didn’t even bother to dress up like a two dollar whore. She had on flip flops for the love of all things good and holy. It matters not a tiny speck of dust that there were rhinestones on the straps. And on the thighs of her jeans, on her bag, and you can call that a tunic all damn day long but we all know it’s just a long ass t-shirt. I rolled down the window.