The Oath - I

There was a burning in my eyes stemming from some unknown allergen in the office. I planted my hands beneath each cheek in order to keep myself from rubbing away at my eyelids.

The maid happened to be the first patient of mine to ever have used the fainting chair for its literal intent. As far as I knew, she was still unconscious. Her smooth mocha face was lying face down, pressed against the leather. Her skin was beginning to shine in the light of the lamp from my desk, sweating oh so slowly. By the way her dress slumped against her legs, and sunk into the crevice of her thighs, I was reminded of my wife in green fields when she and I were still studying. We’d drive an hour to some field, and I’d photograph her dancing among the waist-high weeds of Kansas. I would rotate my film and snap the image of her sundress attempting to escape backward between her legs with the help of dear wind. Her thin silhouette of latter days had not yet left our home, and I longed to return to such a figure. But there was a prostrate maid sweating on the couch in my office, and seeing to her situation felt like something of a priority.

With the tip of my pen, I nudged her shoulder with more contempt in mind than concern. Most patients I had, they chose to lie on the chair, facing away from me, divulging the history of their lives to the leather spines upon earless mahogany shelves and a wall of inane diplomas. The maid, however, paced back and forth, wearing in the suede behaviors of the carpet in my office. Her methods of speaking were labored, framed in the flailing hands and boisterous vowels of generations past. Only when I asked the maid to have a seat did she refrain from babbling, though, simply to have me repeat the question.

As much as her silence warmed my being, I felt it my psychiatric and civil duty to wake the Colombian maid lying face-down in front of me. Plus, she owed me for her last session, too.

Wake up, I whispered into her ear, pushing again with my pen, though, this time with the wrong end. A blue dot sat staring back at me, contrasted against her faded eggshell denim jacket. I licked my thumb and dabbed, but ended up only spreading the ink over a wider area. All hell. I licked and dabbed again, but the ink was soaked in, and wasn’t coming out with just my saliva.

As I was drying the spit from her jacket using the end of my sleeve, the maid flung her torso backward into me, and the back of her skull met the bridge of my nose in an unwelcome embrace.

She screamed out in her holy awakening. I hollered for the sake of shock and agony. The maid grabbed for the back of her head, having realized the force asserted to something foreign, and turned over to see my figure hovering above her. The familiar properties of iron were overtaking my senses. Tears were forming in what space was left in my puffy eyelids. Dazed, the maid sat up, questioning the happenings of the last five minutes. How long was she out? I didn’t know, but I wanted a tissue. Why was my nose bleeding? Because her head collided with my face. Now would she just go to the bathroom and rip me off a paper towel? What time was it? She had to get going. Her session didn’t end for another twenty minutes. And if I didn’t take care of the blood pouring from my nostrils, anyone who happened to walk into my office at that very moment wouldn’t know whether to believe the maid or myself.

I had to leave. I told her to stay, to sit down in the chair where she was until I returned from the restroom down the hall. I had to clean myself upon before I ruined my shirt.

When I walked past a new intern, I told her not to ask. Judging by her furrowed brow and scrunched nose, she wanted nothing more than to ask, but she did as she was told, like a good intern.

My allergies combined with the tears of my recent ailment left me with blurred vision. In the restroom, I wiped the tears from eyes first. Though, given the sneeze I released upon clearing my vision, I imagine I should have rinsed the blood in my nose, which had found itself pooling in my mouth. With one fell achoo, the base of my mirror image, as well as the white marble sink, my hands, tie, and shirt, were now covered in the blood brought about by a maid who awoke in the wrong moment. Or, the right moment—depending on who hates me.

With a speckled right hand, I turned the knob to my office, entered, and told the maid she could leave. She lifted herself from my couch, came frantically toward me, embraced my upper body with both arms, and walked out with one half of the worst Rorschach Test on the front of her jacket, one of drying blood and unscented yellow soap stains.

Respect the women who respect themselves.

Being yourself can prove strenuous, but the outcome is worthwhile.

Can’t a man be quiet when he as nothing to say? Why must silence be questioned?

When Day Breaks

You are a standing shadow,
A silhouette before me,
Whom I wish to kindle
By means of conviction
And of well wishes
And of resilience.

Barred in, though,
Are my convictions,
Whimpering while
Fending off sight.

The well, too,
Once a bountiful
Cradle of wishes,
Is all but arid.

My resilience,
without its head,
Surely wanders
In whole silence.

The contours
Of your being—
My earthly desire,
My depth of lust,
My thirst for life—
Fade, rather dull,
With the moonlight
Into some mourning sky.

May ‘11 • tlkirk