Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsSpring 2011 v10n1
CATHERINE PIERCE

She Gets Drunk and Talks Too Much at Her 20th Reunion

Used to be I was locked in the future. And the future
was no blank canvas, was no white page, but
was crammed with graveyards and rivers and red-eyes.
All black and green and gold, all sailing-off-the-edge,
all how-do-you-know-which-mushrooms-are-poison?
Used to be everyone said baby in my fantasies,
but mainly my fantasies were silent, occasional voices
flapping past the moving windows, aural hitchhikers.
Used to be I’d pick the voices up for a while, then
drop them in the next town. If they got rough, the gun
came out. Used to be I was going to ride horses and sail
schooners. I was always going to have twelve babies,
and they were all going to live. Sometimes the future
was the prairie in 1870. I wore hay in my hair
and howled till the wind matched my pitch. Sometimes
it was Fenwick Island in the sixties, and I saved
men and children from the toothy waves. Sometimes
I crawled through movie screens and snatched plastic
apples right from the almost-bite of starlets. The starlets
hated me. Because I could climb out of the screen again.
They wanted to leave. Oh, baby, I told the girls, everybody
wants to leave. It’s when you stop wanting it you’re in trouble.  end