Sky Dexter

Field of Dreams

Joseph G. Allawos

I visited her field of dreams And pretended for a minute, she was in it. What contrast of color was created when I set her breath free. Among the dainty yellow flowers and the dreamy ozone blue. And the miraculous hues of green. Swaying like gentle waves. In her field of dreams.

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Puddles

Sky Dexter

It felt like a pair of thick chopsticks playing my spine like a xylophone. The sound of the storm gave me goosebumps. Standing there, the rain pounding unevenly against the stretched plastic of the umbrella over my head. The turbulence of the puddle screamed at me. Droplets splashing upwards before being drowned by the rain once more. I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t walk away, as if I had some important business with this murky mass of water. But when I finally convinced myself to pass this puddle writhing at the end of my neighbor’s driveway, I was surprised to find I was already shin deep in it. My right leg had quickly sunk into the thick pool. The feeling of cold shredded its way deep into the bones in my foot and began slithering up my leg. This icy chill reminded me of the puddles of our front yard when I was small; frigid on the surface but deep down the mud was warm. I used to look up with a childish grin at my sister as I gouged my toes into the orange mud swamp meant to be a lawn. It played like a movie in my mind. Grey mid-afternoon and we were shivering, two kids drenched from eyebrow to heel. Clouds swam overhead as we stepped into the bottomless puddles, a thick fog making our yard small and dim. I promptly sat, brown water swamping up my pasty thighs. Deep in the puddle, I pushed my toes into the warm orange mud at the bottom. I looked up, giggling as I saw my sister do the same. But when she looked back at me there was no smile. I felt a pain in my throat, as if I had swallowed a handful of gravel. My lungs constricted and I felt tears claw their way to my eyes. My small, innocent hands reaching towards her, as if touching her could bring her back to me. As soon as my fingers reached her, her figure collapsed and was gone. Turned to mud, mixing with the pud-

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dle where my tears joined her. Her, the earth, me, all melting in the rain together. But as I tried to pull myself out of that reconstructed memory, another surfaced. I was standing on the worn boards of the back deck, leaning against the railing, staring at where all the wood was turning black with rot. It was the twelfth of December, the day I realized I might never see her again. The clouds spit droplets, coating my nose and cheeks. The whole earth seemed dull and irritated. Like it was unimpressed with my efforts to stop her from leaving. My blue flannel rippled in the breeze, leaving the chest of my black t-shirt open to the mist. That was the last time I ever wore a flannel. The cold crept underneath my skin and I retreated inside. The house was full of clutter. Some books and mugs on a wooden side table, a heap of papers on the couch, snow globes and other knick-knacks scattered across the mantle. For all the laden surfaces, it still felt empty. Empty in a way I had never quite experienced before. When our grandparents died, we stayed here. Just the two of us, always combing through the mounds like we were looking for treasure. We missed them, but we knew they were ready to go. So, there weren’t a lot of tears shed when the phone call came. This house became our adventure into adulthood. We had been living there for two years, my sister and I. Two years and three months, and then she left. Two years and three months… and then our father committed suicide. Two bullets in the chest… the first had missed. A sharp uneasiness brought me out of my memories. Slowly, I raised my leg out of the pool of gurgling water, watching the rivers coming from my pant leg. I lifted my gaze, surveying my mother’s spotless silver Honda parked on the sweet little red brick driveway a few yards away. Right where Tera’s car used to be. Anger crept like vines down my shoulder blades, wrapping tightly around my stomach. I remember one afternoon as a child I’d been adventuring out around the neighborhood. Spring’s showers had left the air

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muggy and the ground slick, sticking sludge to my shoes. I’d raced in the door to see my mother, knowing she’d just come home from work. Around the hallway corner and before my tongue could leap to a greeting, her pale green eyes landed on my shoes. I saw her jaw tighten and, suddenly, I didn’t know what to say. “Take them off,” she demanded. I did, and she was beside me. Father watched from across the room, hugging a steaming mug with his hands. Wrinkles of stress twitched on his face, but he was quiet. Her thick nails led me by the arm, cutting naïve skin as my socks gathered dust on the way up the stairs. The door slammed loudly behind me and my sister turned around. Seeing me standing with a hollow look on my face, it didn’t take long for her to notice the blood seeping from my arm. She let out a quiet, disappointed breath. We watched the blood slide down to my fingertips, gathering in droplets. Before they grew too heavy, I clenched my fingers against my palm. I knew better than to let it get on the floor. If I did, there would just be more mess and more blood. A cycle of repeating events if I didn’t learn my lesson. Tera and I fastened a bandana as a bandage. Two dark blue ears hung from the knot on one side, tickling my wrist. Tera smiled and dug in her dresser, pulling out a second bandana. She tied it on her arm in the same fashion as mine, matching aside from color. Hers was red. We were a pair, blue and red, brother and sister. Our parents had been anything but warm to us in all those years, a pair of corporate climbers with restless children. That’s why we packed up and moved into the house after our grandparents died, escaping their constant condemning glare. But when our father was found in a puddle of his own blood, our mother’s anguish entered that little house like a forest fire. She’d stand in the kitchen, the smell of coffee wafting through the carved archway to the living room, and then she’d flick her snake tongue and say something about how he used to do things, or how we just weren’t the way we should be. Anything to make us feel guilty. She set that house on fire with shame. Tera told me she was leaving three days after our moth-

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