Trying to Breathe

You pick up the pieces. If you’re lucky you find most of them, and if you’re very lucky you find enough to assemble something that vaguely resembles what you were. The kind of four-leaf-clover-in-a-rabbit’s-foot luck you’d need to get it all back in one bright shiny piece is something you don’t even dare dream.

You’re missing something. You will always be missing something – a sense of security, perhaps, or the certainty of your own rectitude. Maybe it’s more than that. Maybe you don’t have the heart for the fight any more, and you hang up your sword and sling your shield over your slumping shoulders. Let someone else take the arrows for a while. Let someone else rescue the damsel, slay the dragon, and put that windmill in its place. Or maybe you just can’t imagine winning: you know the word is there, hanging on a nail by the door, but you don’t dare wear it.

It’s okay. The soul remembers what the body has long forgotten – how to shed a tail and regrow it. How to make a new limb – maybe not the same as the old one, but it balances you just the same.

A Portrait of the Empress

“It must be regal,” the Emperor said. “I want the world to see what I see when I look at her: beauty, grace, love, and nobility. A proud woman, the envy of the Empire. I have seen your work, master artist – only your hand could do her justice.”

“As you say, Majesty,” the artist said. “But may I suggest seven portraits instead of just one?”

The Emperor was intrigued. “Why?”

“One will show her on the throne in her full regalia – the golden crown on her auburn hair piled high, the ivory scepter in her firm grasp. She looks out across the throne room with pride and certainty. The set of her shoulders and her jaw reveal her strength of character and will.”

“Yes!” the Emperor said. “That is what I want.”

The artist went on. “Another will show her bending to comfort a poor blind man. He cradles the crushed body of his daughter as he sits by the broken wall of his home. Her lips brush his dirty forehead, and her tears mirror his as she reaches to hold him.

“The third will show the Empress rising from her bed. She is wrapped in a white silk robe with a red velvet lining, and she has caught it as it slips from her bare shoulders. A silver chain circles her neck, nearly covering a bruise,  and she smiles seductively with crimson lips. Her free hand beckons with an iron key dangling from her wrist.”

The Emperor shifted in his chair. “Go on.”

“The fourth portrait shows her in polished steel armor, sword in hand as she treads the neck of a terrible serpent. Her head thrown back, she calls her warriors to battle and glory. Her sword points to the sunrise driving night from the sky, and the wind whips her hair past her face.”

“In the fifth, she leans through the open window of a common home and with a long pale arm seizes a young boy by the neck. Her fingernails are the color of dried blood. His parents are helpless and terrified, and she rejects his mother’s pleas with a cruel laugh. She holds a misericord, the point turned away from the boy.”

“A sixth portrait would show her kneeling in prayer to the goddess of the harvest. There is strength in her gaze as she implores the goddess’ kindness, but her tightly clasped hands betray her terrible fears. Just out of the firelight a rat crawls on a sack of grain.”

“And the seventh?” the Emperor asked.

“A mirror, her face but faintly etched in its surface,” the artist said.

Like Tabasco

“I don’t get what you see in him,” I said.

Parker smiled into his tea. “He’s … different.”

“Different,” I said. I looked at the sun-white windshield of the car parked outside. “What does that mean, ‘different’?”

“I don’t know,” Parker said. “There’s something about him. He has a quality. He’s different.”

“Okay,” I said patiently. “Different how, exactly? What makes him different?”

Parker leaned away, frowning. “Don’t interrogate me.”

“I’m trying to understand.”

“You’re trying to box. You want to pigeonhole everything. I hate that about you.”

“Oh, stop it,” I said, waving off his outrage. “I just want to know what you see in this guy.”

“Why is it so important to you?”

“Because he’s important to you,” I said. I took another sip of my chai. “And you’re important to me.”

“And you want to know if I like him better than I liked you,” Parker said.

“God, I’m having flashbacks to every fight we had for the last three weeks,” I said.

“Me too. So can you stop with the third degree?”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “I -”

“Jason, let it GO,” Parker said. He glanced out, shielded his eyes with his hand, and looked back into the café. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Fine,” I said. “How’s work?”

“Same as always,” he said. “Food comes in, food goes out. In between we get money.”

“So business is good?”

Parker shrugged, sipping his tea. “Good enough. How’s the wild world of architecture?”

“Nothing new,” I said. “Still working on the same commissions. Thanks so much for asking,  Parker.”

Parker stuck out his tongue. He started fidgeting with the condiments. “Why are these here? Salt and pepper for coffee?”

“I think they serve breakfast, too,” I said.

“Two Tabasco sauces? Just what we need, more ways to drown all the flavor.”

“Or enhance it,” I said. I wanted to needle him a little.

Parker frowned, shaking his head. “They’re the same thing.”

The wind shifted, and a tree leaned just enough to block the sun from the windshield.

“The same but different,” I said.