The Essence Of You

At night, when I tuck my three little kittens into bed, I have a habit of breathing in their youthful essence as I press a tender kiss on their heads.  Sometimes the two older kittens notice and ask me what they smell like, and together we imagine all the possibilities...plump Santa-shaped sugar cookies baking in the oven, early autumn embracing leaves with a watercolor wash of red, gold, and orange, the calming fragrance of just cut, sweet summer grass that mellows a July morning, honey rich rings that encircle Saturn, the smooth, salty surface of turquoise sea glass.  The following piece was written about just a few of the scents my three little kittens have inspired.  I love you dearly V, J, and H.      

You smell of sunlight and the laughter

That warms your dimpled face

And heart notes of moonlight and stars bright

That foster the dreams you paint so vividly

With colors you collect

From the gardens you plant in my heart

You smell of the season’s first charging thunderstorm

And sweet lilacs that perfume memories of a youthful heart

And base notes of tenderly plucked buttercups

That you hold to my chin

Illuminating the layers of my love

E.A. O'Connell

Shades of Orange and Blue

Alive

Radiating heat from the wings

Shades of orange and blue

Migrating to dark depths

Nesting within the hollow

Fluttering

In kaleidoscopic patterns

Each unpredictable twist and turn

Directing me

To you

Standing in wait

For me

Disbelief proved a work of fiction

By the reality of my breathing

Catching

Easing

At first sight

Of you

Summer heat pulsing

Against my flesh

As my pace

Quickens

Closing in

Your smile

Illuminating the setting sun

One

Singular swift move

Your body upon mine

Arms about me

Lifting

Spinning

Exhilaration a soft song of laughter

Shades of orange and blue

Escaping

As you’re embracing

Me

E.A. O'Connell

Reflected

An inexpensive, vertically slim, beveled mirror, leveled with great care by her husband’s perfectionist hands, hugs the white closet door.  The mom-approved, streak-free surface, meticulously washed with Windex, a cotton flour sack towel and then a torn page of newspaper, was speckled within seconds by tiny fingerprints that extend halfway up the length.  She stands roughly ten feet from the mirror, positioning herself so that her reflection is framed by the cold afternoon sunlight that gleams off the prism mimicking border.  She likes the mirror.  It tells her truths that she can’t get from anyone else. 

Your former body, with smooth coke bottle curves that made his eyes smile and his mouth water like the want of a refreshing drink on a warm June afternoon, has been crushed, recycled and reborn as a thick, stout glass milk bottle, a vessel of nourishment, but not nearly as desirable to the eye or provocative to the palate. 

She cocks her head to the left and contorts her mouth with deep judgmental thought. 

No, milk jugs are definitely not sexy.  They’re functional and serve their intended purpose.  It’s just not a sexy purpose.

Contemplating a little more, the arch of a singular eyebrow and the relaxing of her mouth so she’s only gently biting the lower lip, steers her thoughts in a new direction.

But if repurposed to a vase, milk bottles are a fabulous way to display a wild, vibrant summer bouquet of snap dragons, zinnias, daisies, sunflowers, and celosia.  Sometimes a new purpose can be good.  

Perking up she thinks,

I’m kind of wild and colorful…and my body sure has found new purposes in the last few years.

But after scanning the unflattering, dark-clothed reflection in the mirror, her posture resumes its slump.

Well, I used to look and act more like a field of wild flowers, but lately I feel more like a swamp or a bog.  Ok, ok, ok, maybe that’s too self-pitying and harsh.  I think a marsh…yea a marsh…that’s more fitting.  From a distance…a great distance…I look inviting and picturesque, but as he approaches me my imperfections start to make themselves known.  My grasses and reeds look abnormally dry for such an environment.  My cattails are at their awkward pollinating state so they don’t look tight and wooly.  They look more like they’re afflicted with some unappealing, flaky skin and hair irritation…like mange…yeah, mange for cattails.  And my water no longer looks placid, reflecting the blue sky and wispy clouds, rather it’s murky and filmy in some places and fuzzy with algae in others, and it no longer looks like it’s borrowing the immaculate sky, but rather like it’s clinging tight with white knuckles to the façade of beauty. 

She narrows her eyes and then opens them wide, trying to find just the right line of clear vision to truly assess herself.

No…No!  This isn’t working for me!  What was I thinking when I put this on?!  If I went out in public to the grocery store, pushing a shopping cart through the parking lot, I’d easily be mistaken for a bag lady, not a customer.  Certainly…definitely…not a wild flower! 

She lifts her husband’s excessively worn, black, double XL t-shirt over her head, letting it carelessly fall behind her.  She then pulls down her black sweatpants; her bare feet stepping out of each puddled leg.  As she adjusts her black cotton panties and tries to corral her ample cleavage into the satiny, black bra she scans her body from unpedicured toes to long overdue for a dye job, faded auburn hair, and back down.

I mean, I’ve never been super toned and thin, but I was slim and thick in all the right places…the right places…for him.

The minutest hint of a smile almost touches the corners of her mouth, but it disappears just as quickly as it appeared.  Looking at her arms she shakes her head, raising them so they are outstretched, making her body look like a lower case “t.”

What the hell is with this? 

She puts them down and turns her body to look at them from the side.

I look like an old lady.  I have old lunch lady arms.  What is sexy about an old lunch lady?  Are they sexy?  Has anyone ever had a crush on their lunch lady?

In her best husky, flirtatious voice she quietly purrs,

Well, hello there Mrs. Monroe.  I see its mashed potatoes again.

She shakes her head at the reflection of her arms.

There’s nothing sexy about scooping mashed potatoes onto a tray and your arms are still echoing the movement as you temporarily holster your slotted spoon.  There’s just nothing sexy about mashed potatoes…or slotted spoons…or is there? 

She reassesses her arms with a glimmer of hope in her eyes, seeking for possibility in her reflection as she flexes them and extends them above her head, then down to her butt, finally sliding over to her hips, but her hope fades quickly and is replaced by a look of horror at the mere thought that such things could be sexy.

What the fuck is wrong with me?!  Have I completely lost it?

Her eyes then zone in on her stomach.

And you!  For the love of God what the hell are you?!  What has happened to you?! 

She turns and faces herself again.  She pokes at her tummy.

You used to be supple and easily kissable, but now you just look like a sad, deflated balloon.   

Without any thought to it she imitates the sound of a balloon rapidly losing air…

Bbbbbbbbbbbpppppppppffffffffttttttttt

…as she pinches the sadness and then swiftly releases it, leaving a small, red blotch in place of her fingers.  She redirects her hands to her breasts.  Trying in vain to cup them with her small hands, she pushes down on the overflow of pale flesh that has escaped her bra.

Go in!  Get in there! 

She looks down at her breasts and then at their reflection.  She puts her weight on her left hip.

Oh my God!  Do you know what I look like?  I look like a poorly drawn caricature of a porn star.  No, no…a porn star wanna be…a porn poser…even better, how it rolls off the ton…what the hell…where am I going with this?  Priorities! 

She grabs them once more and then releases both, extending her arms backwards, her fingers unhooking the bra clasp.  She gives no thought, nor sensuality, to slipping her arms through the straps and allowing the bra to fall to the floor; after all, she’s performed this monotonous ritual a countless number of times in her life, and it’s second nature, task-like feel, compounded by her middle-aged, momified body imperfections, have suppressed the sexy, strip tease she once made of it.  She cups her naked breasts and then slightly raises them.

Before kids.

She raises them just a tad more.

Before thirty.

And again, adding a bit more support and height to them.

How I want them to look when lying on my back. 

She lowers her breasts to their shameful resting place, releasing each one from her clasp, and raising her arms and hands above her head, turning her body so she can see it from all angles.  She takes hold of the clip in her hair, pinching the top so it frees her shoulder length locks.  She fluffs her hair with her fingertips, and then with the side of her left hand, draws an imaginary line just beneath her left breast.

If I can just grow my hair so it’s a foot longer than it is right now, my naked breasts will be completely covered.  And if I can save enough money, or find a way for insurance to cover surgery, or win the lottery, and I can get past the fear that I’ll die a selfish death on the surgical table, leaving my husband a widow and my children motherless, I can have my breasts done and they will look like this.

Grabbing her breasts and pushing them up to her desired position, she cocks her head to the right, raising her chin and studying the desired look reflected before her.  She continues her self-degrading dance, turning and angling her body so she can give great attention to her back, her butt, her thighs, and finally her face.  She just stares at herself, right in the eyes, staring at the woman before her, comparing her to the teenaged body she keeps high on a pedestal. 

She hates the mirror.  It reflects a person she’s unfamiliar and uncomfortable with.  Away from her reflection she feels less vulnerable and under less scrutiny.  The mirror reflects the unease, the fears, the truths, the half-truths, and the lies, every god damn last one of them, and she abhors its honesty and its x-ray vision.  She sighs, hooking her fingers in the elastic of her black cotton panties, as she turns to the door of her ensuite bathroom, pulling the soft fabric down her legs, leaving them on the carpet with the other articles of clothing she shed during her unintentional strip tease.  She turns back to place her wedding band on the dresser when her eyes catch sight of him, her breathing catches and her body stills from the surprise.

Holy Fuck!  Cover up your body!  Don’t let him see this! 

She wants to grab the t-shirt from the floor, but she doesn’t want him to see her bend down to get it.  And she wants to scurry to the hook on the other side of the bathroom door for her floor length robe, but she doesn’t want him to see anything jiggle, so she just stays frozen in her spot, her face and body heating to eight shades of pink and red. 

He smiles at his wife, admiring her beauty, and the body that gave him three beautiful, healthy children, thinking about how sexy she is and about all the things he’d like to do to her after the kids go to bed; well before then too, but they shouldn’t be awake for what he wants to do to her.  He walks towards her and gently rubs his hands down her arms to her hips, finally resting them on her butt, where he playfully squeezes it.  He smiles down at her kissing her neck, her chin, her lips.  Through a huge smile he tells her, “I love you” and it’s an even more honest declaration than any mirror or reflection could ever give her.  Grabbing her face in both his hands, he kisses her hard one last time.  He begins to exit the room, knowing that his wife needs this time to herself to decompress from the daily life of a stay-at-home wife and mother, but he can’t help but turn around one last time, his face still wearing a huge grin, to admire the woman he still can’t believe chose to make a life with him.

Of all people…She chose me.    

E.A. O'Connell  

Witness To Her Beauty

Lizzie O.  June 2006. 

Witness To Her Beauty

Nothing

Just the numbing static expanse

And silent disbelief

No electric wounds or wilting symptoms of disease

Only her statuesque presence

Spawning unrest and nightmares

In elderly neighbors who find fault with age

Bewilderment sank to depths of grief

Watching the shadowy figure climbing her

Binding her

The self-proclaimed surgeon

Amputating with dirty hands

Unsanitary tools

His wicked toothy-grinned saw

Slicing through her out stretched limbs

Her seasoned trunk

A horrendous display of unapologetic violence

In broad daylight

But how venerable

Maintaining her composure

The serenity that met finality

Sawed in half

A brutal actuality mirroring a magician’s audience-friendly illusion

Her strange pall bearers hoisting

Carrying her remains with forceful hands

To the obnoxiously loud grinder

Angry with hunger

Violently chipping away at her thick skin

Severing the halo of rings

Their life-glow born of each dawning sun

Once saturating her in green and gold      

Released as a sap sweet perfume

Blossoming in the lung choking exhaust

The summer rooted grass

Bleeding rusty brown earth

As the only solace to escape

Is the cyclic beauty of her beaten

Mangled flesh

Regurgitated and reincarnated

As a play inducing surface

Forgiving  

Welcoming adventurous little feet

Leaping from smiling swings

Hopes high with ambitious aspirations of capturing heights

Once her reality

Now their dreams

E.A.K. O’Connell

Kunstkammer

I’m pulled forth from a heavy, artificial sleep, my senses laced with the milky drunk of Propofol.  I hear the monotone hum of white noise that gradually increases its pace, approaching my recovering conscious mind with a speed that accentuates the fact that my limbs are not recovered and that they hang heavy from my torso, as if shot up with half-set concrete that clings to every inch of bone and muscle.  My head begins to swirl as my sinuses are sucker punched by the rich, spicy aroma of aged wood and a more confusing odor that lingers like perfume, but burns like rubbing alcohol, all of which are hooded in a musty, metallic scent that reminds me of an old, rarely inhabited basement.  My eyelids finally begin their slow ascension, and as the cataract-like haze begins to burn off, my eyes start to focus on the view that extends beyond my eyelashes, which have eerily morphed into thick prison bars that mar the natural light that is struggling to awaken me entirely.  I feel the urgent alarm from deep within that wants so desperately to summon my fight or flight instinct, but like the rest of me, it has not recovered and remains tucked under the blanket of anesthesia, so I lay there, vulnerable, waiting for the lethargy to release me. 

I come to with a violent jolt.  My entire body is warm and coated in a thin layer of sweat.  I am bathed in late morning sunlight that fools my body into thinking I have a fever that needs to break.  I wipe my forehead with my right hand and let it slowly slide down my right cheek, to my neck, finally dropping it to the sticky, moist flesh of my stomach.  I immediately sit up and look down my naked body, panic stricken by the knowledge that prior to my black out I was fully clothed.  I begin to inspect my body with frantic eyes and hands, while trying to mentally zone in on any radiating pain that would give away if I had been injured, abused, or violated.  To my great relief all flesh is intact and the only insult I seem to have suffered as of yet is the unlawful drugging and the rape of my modesty.  I start to scan the floor around me for my clothes and undergarments, but there is nothing within the room; no furniture, no carpeting, not a thing spoils the mature hardwood floor.  Out of sheer disbelief I begin a second search of my confines, and as I turn my head to the left my eyes are momentarily blinded by the glint of an ethereal light.  I stand up to investigate further, when I am dumbstruck by the new angle that has been given to the starburst.  Overwhelmed by disbelief, I walk forwards, my anxious hand extended before me preparing to succumb to the reality of my finding, while my head slowly raises and my mind attempts to grasp and process the enormity of the fact that I am enclosed within a glass dome; a bell jar. 

My fingers hover before the glass, as my mind weighs which finger I should use to release the profound reality of my situation upon me.  As if moving of its own accord, my right middle finger presses into the warm glass, my remaining fingers, thumb, and palm following suit.  I place my left hand on the glass and then bring my face just centimeters from the transparent wall, gazing out at the most ordinary of views.  I’m in a small room.  Before me is an ornate cottage window, trimmed in a seasoned, splintered wood and bejeweled with six seeded glass panes.  To the left of the window, butting up against the uneven, yellowing, plaster wall is an antique desk composed of shelves, drawers, and cubbies of varying sizes and shapes.  The desk surface is cluttered with papers; some crumpled others merely mistreated by rough hands that have pushed them off to this side and that corner.  There are pencils that bear teeth indentations, fountain pens stained with ink blotches from careless hands, empty wooden picture frames, and books with worn spines stacked unevenly; some books lay open, others bear the scar of pages with dog-eared corners.  The walls of the room are adorned with maps of exotic and domestic locales, photographs of indigenous people I’ve only read of in tales of travel, of wild animals and flightless birds long extinct, and illustrations of deep sea dwellers that resemble visions from nightmares or dark fairy tales.  Tucked in one corner of the room is a tattered, moss green velvet chair that looks as if it was resurrected from the bowels of a trash heap and stretching across the floor of the room is a faded, moth eaten oriental rug that I can tell once proudly flaunted rich jewel tones.  Just a few feet from the chair is the warped, wooden door; shut, and as the gaps reveal, locked.  Thinking on the grand picture I am able to deduce that this is someone’s study, but in terms of my crystalline prison, I’m as ignorant as ever as to the questions of who, what, where, and why. 

As the sun’s position gradually shifts, my cell slowly cools and I’m caught off guard by the minutest whirl of a breeze that envelops me.  I look above me to see that the dome is punctured by several small holes, clearly my source of oxygen, and vital for my survival.  My mind flirts with the idea that my captor wants me alive.  As I slowly turn around I am frozen with fear at the horror before me.  A primitive wooden cabinet stands open.  Worn iron hinges, pulls, and handles adorn the doors and drawers of the cabinet, but it’s the bizarre knickknacks…the morbid trophies…that fill the shelves, that drains the blood from my face and sends my stomach plummeting to the soles of my feet.  Glass jars filled with clear fluids drown nature’s oddities; a two headed pig fetus, a six fingered hand, a five eyed fish.  Insects painted in the most stunning hues and shimmering in an otherworldly iridescence are pinned to linen wrapped panels.  Snake skins and small animal pelts hang on the cabinets back panels.  I see small glass containers containing collections of teeth; incisors, molars, gold, even a few that bear precious gems.  Skulls of odd shapes and sizes, some even resembling that of humans, stare back at me with their deep, dark, forlorn sockets.  Patches of tattooed flesh are stitched to canvas and sealed behind museum grade glass.  My body is numb and trembling with fear.  I bring my hands to my mouth to stifle my inaudible screams, when my eyes catch sight of my mental undoing.  Just a few inches from the bell jar that holds me captive, is an array of cold, scientific implements, some medieval in appearance, laying in wait for my abductor to return and with dexterous hands and meticulous precision and skill, violently craft me into an exhibit in the Cabinet of Curiosities.

E.A. O'Connell

It All Started With A Kiss

It all started with a kiss

On an unwashed head

Small and wet, rosy and impressionable

I’ve kissed you a thousand times over

And a thousand times more

Never kissing the same sentiment twice

Growth with each second, every minute

Deepening and widening

A universal declaration

All with just a kiss

Mother kisses baby

Baby kisses mommy

And a light is lit

Illuminating a silhouette within the blush

Reaffirming a greater knowing

In a gesture so simple, so profound

A sentiment of the purest nature

And it all started with a kiss

As he held my face in his hands

Elizabeth A.K. O'Connell

A Letter To A Sister

I am a sister and so I can easily pull emotions from within to put to paper.  This is an excerpt of a fictional piece I began writing a few years back about the bond, love, and energy that exists in such a relationship.  Sometimes sisters quarrel and this excerpt captures one side of the story...so to say 


A Letter To A Sister

It is in moments of great sadness that I turn to you, looking for that ray of light, hopeful for that ray of light.  In moments of nightmarish horrors that I curl up next to you, and remember how to breathe.  I could never tell you these things, they would be too personal, and I don’t do personal.  At least not vocally.  Built strong, built durable, I can be beaten down by the stabbing words thrown from your mouth and rise up unscathed to the naked eye.  But you, you know where they have landed, certain with your aim of where to send them, deep into the flesh, down into the darkness, particular of which parts should be spared the hemorrhage of days old septic hurt.  That is left for your final blow, that binds my arms to a holy figure instructing me silently to whisper my pain, fall on my time, out of sight from your torment. 

And here at this age, I can’t find my way so easily to your door, and ask if I could sleep in your bed tonight because of the nightmares, and I won’t remember how to breathe without you there to tell me, and I will fade into the shadows of my fear and my anguish, praying that if sleep takes me I will remember to take in oxygen and exhale forgiveness, so I can wake up and know that I am still alive.  See it’s your job to keep my aware of my existence, otherwise I lose my train of thought and lean towards a questionable mortality, questionable in whether I am truly living this life or just writing it in my head, to be read by a patron in a chain bookstore.  And you didn’t ask for this job, and I never knew it would be so needed, but when do we ever really know what our place is, unless someone makes it for us; until someone makes it for us. 

Your burden is me, to keep me in the rational and to encourage the art that fears me with failure.  You’re to guide me in a direction that you too are going, because in all honestly you lead the pack and you always have, and I follow happily and without question, because you are my one true friend, my first friend.  What will I do if I can never find your door, and make my place next to you, and you aren’t there to remind me that breathing is how we see tomorrow, and the day after, and the day following that day?  Will I be strong enough to take that risk, risking self imposed insomnia out of fear that the blood we shared, that keeps us rosy, would run out; puddles pooling in sunken ground, no longer sturdy and capable of supporting the weight from us both.  And we know how that plays out.  I am after all the heavier of us two, but you do always say to take the weight off my shoulders. 

So I take two steps to the left and you stand transfixed on the reflection in the puddle, looking deeper and deeper into the hole, and I take four more steps to the left as your face loses color, and I take six more steps to the left, as your mouth curls around the word as it sometimes does the world, and as my shape becomes more of a smear, you reach out your arm, and reach back towards my arm, and your neck turns to direct your eyes to where mine would be, and without thinking as you often do, you utter “We,” but me has to be for there to be a we, and in this moment, on that day you sent me away to a foreign soil that cuts between my toes with every step I take that sends me farther away from you.  Without a map I get lost easily, and I’m getting quite scared with these new surroundings, but if I must I will adapt, but not by choice, by laws of science, that stipulate that only the fittest survive, and I may be cut, I may be bruised, and sore and tired, I may need time, but I will learn to remind myself to breathe and I will find my way and I won’t remember how I need you, and my hands will be empty, but they will be ready when a hand comes along, a familiar hand that fits perfectly into mine, and can squeeze me a “Hello” and will hold tight to “We.”  I will remember, because if there is one job in this life I know how to do, it is to be your sister, and to be your sister is a privilege and an honor I still fear I will not measure up to, but that’s a chance I’m willing to take, after all I’m the only one who has this job and if mistakes happen along the way, we don’t decide if my job is terminated, that belongs to another, so for all we know I could be employee of the month. 

Be patient with this human, imperfection runs through me, as does compassion and loyalty.  Don’t lose faith.  The night has proven to be much more strong willed than I, so I find my end, and I find my breath, and I lay my head towards the direction of your room, and I set out to banish my dark horrors alone, inhaling oxygen, exhaling…..      

E.A. O'Connell