the
Perch
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volume 1; spring 2013
been drawing the cards, not from the deck but with a pencil along her outline of a hollow fish skeleton, the story’s backbone. She had pushed herself into the Tarot’s underworld, the best metaphor to organize the events she wanted to capture, events from the darkness of her mother’s mental illness. She resisted remembering. Remembering was her doorway. She pulled the string in the tangled yarn toward her own unraveling. The Fool stepped out of the house and into the dark troubled by the card she had tried to draw three times, the Death card. She could render the helmet, the horse, the armor and flag, but the skeleton face eluded her. The flat eraser rolled up gray shavings like dead skin each time she started over. The first of the hero’s tasks in the underworld, the sublimation of ego, would not come so easily. The pavement turned to earth under her feet. Alice strode into the deep woods, the darkness of night turning darker. She heard a creek, voices singing in the tinkling and tumbling of water and guessed her time in the circles had landed her in Paradise. Her heart beat harder, timpani overtaking the percussion section in her private symphony. Alice noticed the moon was lost, no longer visible among the trees. The trees hung over her from the canyon walls framing windows of stars. The shadows engulfed her. River sage and cedar pitch and the rumbling water soothed her. The road and water met at a cement platform for crossing. She paused to watch the creek flowing under her feet and remembered the Temperance card, the balance, pouring from one cup to the other. She was ahead of herself. Temperance comes after Death, but the angel was with her nonetheless. A council of trucks conspired near the bridge. Trucks with flatbeds and big cabs circled like wagons illumined by the porch light of a cabin nearby. One truck’s hood popped forward, tipping a cap in welcome. A shingled dwelling squatted in the clutter of a well-used yard and through a sliding glass door, a light. Under twisting oaks, a picnic table invited her to sit. Alice glanced down at the bare earth where someone had raked leaves to form a witch in the dust.
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