Skyscraping - Cordelia Jensen Page 0,4

own Halloween costumes.

A movie lover,

the one who took us to see Back to the Future and The Goonies four times each in the theater.

A sentimentalist,

the one who framed every card we made him.

A husband,

someone who stood by his wife no matter where she was.

A parent,

the one who took care of us, woke us up for school on time, every day.

NOW

My dad, hidden behind a door, is only this:

another man’s lover.

OUT OF ORDER

I.

Dylan calls and says

come to Chloe’s.

April at a friend’s,

I go, leave a note,

don’t ask permission.

My parents don’t seem

concerned

with normal

family

rules.

We sneak out,

run down

her fire escape.

Chloe in her Kurt Cobain shirt.

We sing “Come As You Are,”

all the way to Ludlow Street.

Use our old fake IDs,

lie to strangers,

Dylan buys rounds of shots.

Dad and James. The bed.

Shot.

An open marriage. What’s always been.

Shot.

Chloe asks why I’m drinking,

I tell her it’s Senior year, right?

Time to party.

Dylan gives me weird looks,

but doesn’t ask questions.

I try to play the jukebox

songs from when we were young,

“Our Lips Are Sealed,” “Love Is a Battlefield,”

but the box keeps flashing red:

out of order.

I kick it once.

Lay my middle finger against the glass.

Dylan laughs, tells the machine it better watch out.

Chloe says we don’t need music, just dance,

and so we do.

II.

Next morning, stumble home,

pass April watching The Wonder Years.

Worried she will smell me,

I walk fast, manage a small hello.

Mom not here. Again.

Dad waves from the kitchen,

bent over a sandwich,

asks how my sleepover was,

I don’t wave

or answer.

Go to my room

but I don’t know why I’m there,

reach for my homework,

head pounding.

Can’t focus on it,

instead I tear

the Columbia application

all the way

in half.

Why would I want to

follow him there.

Then I go into my closet:

throwing everything

that was once folded—

pink, purple, gray—

onto the floor.

EDGES

Staring up at me

from the mishmash of sweaters

is a piece of the glass fish

I broke when Mom left.

Part of its eye.

Dusty yellow.

Sharp edges.

I sit with it

in my closet.

My stomach sick.

Like hanging on to the ledge of a building,

I squeeze the glass piece

as tight as I can.

When I uncurl my fingers,

red covers the fish’s remains,

my palm bleeds

just a little bit.

REARVIEW MIRROR

In an effort to be this so-called family,

we all go see The Glass Menagerie.

Mom and Dad think a play about people

more confused than us will make us forget.

In the taxi home, Mom says

they’ve hired an art therapist

to help us process everything,

some woman named Ann

Mom knows

from the studio.

As Mom speaks, the taxi driver catches

my eye in the rearview mirror.

Pretends he didn’t.

I think about the play,

how Laura forgives Jim for breaking the horn

off her tiny glass unicorn,

then gives the hornless unicorn to him,

a symbol of how he

broke her.

I rub my forehead with my cut hand,

catching again the stranger’s eyes in the mirror.

Silence strangles all of us, as we fly past

Shakespeare & Company, H&H Bagels,

veer down West End,

spin the corner,

land right smack on Riverside.

We get out of the cab, Dad never saying a word

about Tom, Laura, the unicorn.

Usually he would’ve lectured us

on themes, metaphors, symbols.

Now, we’re all silent—

evidence left behind

at the scene of a crime,

lying motionless on an empty stage.

DREAMING INTO A DREAM

Art therapist Ann, armfuls

of bronze bracelets rattling,

asks us each to draw

a tree,

a house,

a person.

For her, I draw quickly:

trees as streetlights

houses as skyscrapers

people as shadows.

Later, alone:

I take my time, drawing what I want.

Two sisters climbing trees,

gardens to tend, bikes to ride,

neighbors, lawns.

A house, yellow, with a white fence.

A mom, pulling fresh cookies from the oven.

A father, tanned and tall, in a tie.

I hide this drawing under my pillow,

dream myself

into a dream

of a different kind of place,

a different kind of family.

RECORDING SESSION

October

SESSION TWO

(Sighs)

Just going down the line here with these assigned questions.

Three:

How did you choose your career path?

I had a teacher in high school who had me tutor other students. She thought I would make a great teacher myself. I listened to her.

Number four: Did you ever doubt your path?

Not really. As soon as I got to New York City, I knew I was in the right place. As big as Texas was, it doesn’t compare. This city’s a place where you can be anyone you want to be. A place where there’s always something to do. Always something new to eat. Always something happening in the street.

What does that have to do with teaching?

Well, teaching brought me to Columbia, and Columbia, the city. And the city brought me to your mother. We met in October, you know.

Yeah—

I’m not sure you know the whole story . . .

We were both marching in the Halloween parade.

She was a fairy with glass-beaded wings, me a praying mantis. She said, “Nice wings.” I told her hers weren’t so bad either.

Dad—

We drank