"Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go." - e. e. cummings
Cynthia Miller has spent half of her life in Asia and the other half gradually accumulating pages of thoughts in
the manner of a harried bag lady collecting bits of pens. Having lived in Nepal, India, and China she has seen
the sun rise without distinction over mountains and over the gritty veneer of cities running in circles; running
with stops and starts and handles of hand-pumps broken. She's currently living in swaths of sari silk, lifting up
her skirt with ink-stained fingers to climb into a rickshaw. She's trying to find some humanity between the lines.
To the next-door universe, please.
Cynthia Miller has spent half of her life in Asia and the other half gradually accumulating pages of thoughts in
the manner of a harried bag lady collecting bits of pens. Having lived in Nepal, India, and China she has seen
the sun rise without distinction over mountains and over the gritty veneer of cities running in circles; running
with stops and starts and handles of hand-pumps broken. She's currently living in swaths of sari silk, lifting up
her skirt with ink-stained fingers to climb into a rickshaw. She's trying to find some humanity between the lines.
To the next-door universe, please.
Lullaby
"...There they are, your wildest dreams, of great balloons and lions' screams... "
She likes to think it starts with the dreams.
A toe in the flattened grass; the swipe of humidity on the inside of her wrists; the exhilarating arabesque of cogs and wheels
ticking when they shouldn't be; beats of a million and one tabla drums thrumming in time to the generator hums.
Sometimes, she wakes up, and it's raining softly against her matted black hair. She feels white cotton under her cheek (white
because she doesn't dare to dream of hospitals in color) but when she turns around -- really presses her nose and crosses
her eyes -- the stinking, coarse pavement rises up to meet her. She utters a soft cry, slowly rolls onto her back.
The spot behind townhouse number 43, hidden behind a garden gate and a ceramic bathtub, is hidden but she feels like
others can see her. She looks left, a brick wall; right, a brick wall, down, the uneven pavement; up, black wrought iron
trellises that seem to arch up forever into the sky. She's not even certain it's the sky, because sky is the meaningless word
meant to be crushed into plastic bottles and forgotten about. Strict relevance, she chants methodically; wrings her clammy
hands, looks over her shoulder. But then again, when have words ever stopped listening?
Then there are days when images flash behind her eyes, a slide projector stuttering in the enormous, darkened room. Images
racing, loping past each other into a frenzy of jerky movements -- and suddenly the projector stills on the image of a puppet
dancing, a forced smile painted on his contorted face. On days that it's too cold to force warm breath onto her hands, she
dreams she's the puppeteer.
And then, there are images she's never seen before: expansive blue water, unknown creatures or an insect landing on an
outstretched palm that isn't cracked and calloused. All these thoughts, she knows, are not her own and struggles to find
their proper place, fit them in where they ought to be but she can't -- they're too real and too coarse to slot into her mind.
She hums without knowing why, hurriedly rolling up her dreams with numb unmoving fingers and pushing them into the
cracks in the bricks. The bricks she scratched at long ago, eroded with the rain and her strange desperation to keep those
unknown, coarse memories safe, now form loose rubble around her ankles. And it's at this point, where her temples throb
like acid corrosion on garden gates, she tastes the word lunacy on her tongue. It tastes like unresolved sadness. She spits it
out onto the wall and wipes it off on the back of her hand.
Then, there are the days when she knows the sun is shining. In the relative unknown of Possibility, the sun floods the back
alleyway, sweeping with one grand motion into the corners and holes of the craggy walls. It twists and heaves as only
sunlight with naïve confidence can. She covers her eyes with her small hands; frightened pants forced between her fingers.
I don't want it to find me, she whispers and draws her hands tighter against her face. Above her, streetlamps flicker on and
off sporadically, as if their yellow bulbs were contesting the brazen sunlight. They shattered eventually with fury, each bulb in
each streetlamp in the alleyway a thousand houses long exploding, throwing themselves through the air. Bits of glass and
particles of burnt coils rained down around her.
She looked up, further and beyond the streetlamps and the black sky trellises, and noticed thousands of tiny shards of light
raining down from that nameless expanse, a thousand tiny raindrops of glass falling down into her hair, her arms, her
eyebrows. She felt, rather than saw, an image flickering onto the screen behind her eyes: a small, hazy girl sitting on a swing,
pulled by the wind. Two bright coal eyes swam shut. Strands of slick black hair. It could have been raining -- she heard the
rain of the memory patter in her ears -- the girl stuck out her tongue, tasting rain. She opened her eyes, the image fading,
and pushed her tongue from her dry mouth, tasting glass raindrops and smoke. Smoke in pipes and tunnels; the image came
to be re-played again on a sickening loop with startling clarity.
Something unbidden and full rose from the depths of her chest, swirling as it came up her throat, and she -- laughed. A
harsh bark from sore vocal chords threw itself into the deserted alley. She reaches her cracked hand out, shaking
uncontrollably, as if meeting an old friend for the first and last time. But no one else is in the alley, so she pulls the hand back
and clenches it around her chest, right above where her heart is pulsing slowly like a giant red balloon. Her coal black eyes
swim shut and she parts her mouth, tasting the day; day breaking into night.
There is a woman who lives with the rain, behind the dilapidated townhouse -- number 43, in the alley a thousand houses
long, with a trillion yellow streetlamps as her broken, stoic guards. The one with the memories. And the life that shutters to
a stop when the slide projector hums to a close as the generator fades. She reaches, slanted forlornly across pavement, and
dreams of lions.
"...There they are, your wildest dreams, of great balloons and lions' screams... "
She likes to think it starts with the dreams.
A toe in the flattened grass; the swipe of humidity on the inside of her wrists; the exhilarating arabesque of cogs and wheels
ticking when they shouldn't be; beats of a million and one tabla drums thrumming in time to the generator hums.
Sometimes, she wakes up, and it's raining softly against her matted black hair. She feels white cotton under her cheek (white
because she doesn't dare to dream of hospitals in color) but when she turns around -- really presses her nose and crosses
her eyes -- the stinking, coarse pavement rises up to meet her. She utters a soft cry, slowly rolls onto her back.
The spot behind townhouse number 43, hidden behind a garden gate and a ceramic bathtub, is hidden but she feels like
others can see her. She looks left, a brick wall; right, a brick wall, down, the uneven pavement; up, black wrought iron
trellises that seem to arch up forever into the sky. She's not even certain it's the sky, because sky is the meaningless word
meant to be crushed into plastic bottles and forgotten about. Strict relevance, she chants methodically; wrings her clammy
hands, looks over her shoulder. But then again, when have words ever stopped listening?
Then there are days when images flash behind her eyes, a slide projector stuttering in the enormous, darkened room. Images
racing, loping past each other into a frenzy of jerky movements -- and suddenly the projector stills on the image of a puppet
dancing, a forced smile painted on his contorted face. On days that it's too cold to force warm breath onto her hands, she
dreams she's the puppeteer.
And then, there are images she's never seen before: expansive blue water, unknown creatures or an insect landing on an
outstretched palm that isn't cracked and calloused. All these thoughts, she knows, are not her own and struggles to find
their proper place, fit them in where they ought to be but she can't -- they're too real and too coarse to slot into her mind.
She hums without knowing why, hurriedly rolling up her dreams with numb unmoving fingers and pushing them into the
cracks in the bricks. The bricks she scratched at long ago, eroded with the rain and her strange desperation to keep those
unknown, coarse memories safe, now form loose rubble around her ankles. And it's at this point, where her temples throb
like acid corrosion on garden gates, she tastes the word lunacy on her tongue. It tastes like unresolved sadness. She spits it
out onto the wall and wipes it off on the back of her hand.
Then, there are the days when she knows the sun is shining. In the relative unknown of Possibility, the sun floods the back
alleyway, sweeping with one grand motion into the corners and holes of the craggy walls. It twists and heaves as only
sunlight with naïve confidence can. She covers her eyes with her small hands; frightened pants forced between her fingers.
I don't want it to find me, she whispers and draws her hands tighter against her face. Above her, streetlamps flicker on and
off sporadically, as if their yellow bulbs were contesting the brazen sunlight. They shattered eventually with fury, each bulb in
each streetlamp in the alleyway a thousand houses long exploding, throwing themselves through the air. Bits of glass and
particles of burnt coils rained down around her.
She looked up, further and beyond the streetlamps and the black sky trellises, and noticed thousands of tiny shards of light
raining down from that nameless expanse, a thousand tiny raindrops of glass falling down into her hair, her arms, her
eyebrows. She felt, rather than saw, an image flickering onto the screen behind her eyes: a small, hazy girl sitting on a swing,
pulled by the wind. Two bright coal eyes swam shut. Strands of slick black hair. It could have been raining -- she heard the
rain of the memory patter in her ears -- the girl stuck out her tongue, tasting rain. She opened her eyes, the image fading,
and pushed her tongue from her dry mouth, tasting glass raindrops and smoke. Smoke in pipes and tunnels; the image came
to be re-played again on a sickening loop with startling clarity.
Something unbidden and full rose from the depths of her chest, swirling as it came up her throat, and she -- laughed. A
harsh bark from sore vocal chords threw itself into the deserted alley. She reaches her cracked hand out, shaking
uncontrollably, as if meeting an old friend for the first and last time. But no one else is in the alley, so she pulls the hand back
and clenches it around her chest, right above where her heart is pulsing slowly like a giant red balloon. Her coal black eyes
swim shut and she parts her mouth, tasting the day; day breaking into night.
There is a woman who lives with the rain, behind the dilapidated townhouse -- number 43, in the alley a thousand houses
long, with a trillion yellow streetlamps as her broken, stoic guards. The one with the memories. And the life that shutters to
a stop when the slide projector hums to a close as the generator fades. She reaches, slanted forlornly across pavement, and
dreams of lions.
Cynthia Miller
