Stealing Lavender: Chapter Six

This is chapter six of my book, Stealing Lavender.

The Future
Chapter Six

“I pick up the dead thing, that dense lump of materialism and ego,
and I throw it backward at the perfectly
innocent and helpless child I imagine is standing behind me.
And when it hits her I say, The child is ME.”
—Iodine, Haven Kimmel

         The Hermit revealed himself in my readings for several years after those days; a beggar of a sanity that I could never quite attest to. That twilight evening on the porch with Lavender, it bided with me like hands that never outreached to pull me upward. It just observed me from the interlaces of my brain stem, peeking out every once and again. The flickering lights, within me and without, the omens, her acoustic fingers; marionette strings that had forced me to travel my own distances. I had been at a crossroads then, where the fork in the road had offered me The High Priestess or The Tower and mulishly, I chose the I95 straight on into The Devil again and again. A hard-headed child. A martyr for what I deemed worthy enough to favor as love and hopeless with naivety, drunk on the power of what could be.
         Mara had spent what felt like a lifetime, forcing the shape of her into spaces where she could not fit. She realized that what had grounded her, had grown dead in the absence of her care and she had become her own kind of transient. A black balloon, half deflated and still somehow afloat in the thick, smoky air of her indecisions. She had risen for all the wrong reasons, but she had risen and once her legs found their footing, she stumbled until she could walk through her life again. Mara had kept a job cooking breakfast for cankerous, old men and bouncing families come Sundays. She felt like she was being watched by them, her movements becoming analytic and precise, until anxiety reached into her like an anchor. It pulled at her harshly, often ripping her in two; an ID and a who.
         This was an aspect of her illnesses that often carried on misunderstood. The split, like identity was a solid that could be halved into smaller bits. Instead of them being made to coexist, they abstained from one another; two magnetic poles repelling each other and unable to bond. Mara could be wise, forthcoming, conscientious, and kind. She would also erupt, volcanic ash lining her creviced hands, as she nervously escaped from her sights of explosion. Mara was irrevocably loyal and entirely unreliable all the same, in these frantically fleeting moments.
         A borrowed room emerged like a manifestation of some kind. It held curses and hard truths, with ceilings that went on for miles and sea blue carpet that felt so soft between Mara’s toes. She had a blue russian, a familiar named Plato but to everyone else, she was a stranger. And there was nothing more inspiring than being a stranger. She had been an azure winged bird in a cage, full of wisdom that she could never let out. But vocal cords are muscles and becoming unmuted was a recovery as much as it was a discovery.
         Her chasm came with a woman downstairs whose curls crinkled and flew off in all directions. She was magical. Her laugh shook Mara until her anima rehomed itself, lighting a flame in her that burrowed to be stoked. Daphne was a force of nature. Her aura was like a loud sunset, in great bursts of amber and peach. She took in the world with one big smoky inhale and exhaled clarity. The world was under her magnifying glass. And she was a scientist, able to dissect the very innards of a person without breaking a sweat. She could take one look at a person and know them.
         Daphne was vastly intelligent and wildly humorous, and she spoke to Mara like she was a sister; a foreign sensation that was the pinched nerve of Mara’s psyche coming back to life. Like Lavender, Daphne was magnetic but sisterhoods were her specialty and she only pulled in what she wanted to. She saw Mara for the wounded bird she was, her self-inflicted incapability to love herself, and her almost compulsive need to burn down the bridges that might lead to goodness. When Mara would falter, Daphne would construct a foundation to hold her, to balance her. She would cackle in this hilarious way and say,
         “It’s on me for now. We can divvy up later.”
         In some grand moments, one is born with capacity but more often, capacity is earned. It is scooped out of someone by the handful gradually, until one is left empty enough to be a caretaker; someone gracious enough to take and make room for the burden. They both knew of burdens, but Daphne’s past lives were riddled with hostile maltreatment, of great loves lost and loved ones that barred great abuse. It slithered through her, a nyoka hell bent on shedding until its second skin soiled her, made her into what bored her. Daphne cut the head off that notion.
         Daphne taught Mara what it was like to have a friend. And how to be a friend. Especially to herself. Towards the epilogue of an evening, they would scurry off to the back porch to chain smoke and roar over what their lives turned into. They would ask each other difficult questions and listen until the other was out of breath, pacing fervently between the past and present. Daphne was never afraid to raise her voice and yell with her hands. She showed Mara what was real, even when it left her uneasy and grievous, and then she’d stay in the uncomfortability with her until it was time to leave. Hand in hand, until finally one day, Mara felt strong enough to let go. And Daphne, she was proud, her fingers bloated white from the tightness of Mara’s grip, as she watched her friend grow into whatever direction she pleased.
         I was alone, in the most loving way, when your own company feels heavenly and godsent. I was enveloped by it, its immersion a bedaub smeared over me like a new skin that felt havenous. My authenticity rushed from me, a dam splintered and broken inside me, becoming honestly everything I was made up of. I was every bit of the looking glass. I was a mirror and when I looked into the faces of Lavender, Aiden, Anna, or Daphne; the reflection wasn’t just them, or the pieces of myself that I left inside them, but they were me. Just like I was them. Every single stray of us connected and frayed into one another.
         Mara held this revelation close to her chest, fearing it might vanish if she were to sit it down somewhere. She wrote for the first time in ages, collecting her thoughts of transformation in leather back journals with celtic crosses and provoking quotes on their faces. Not all those who wander are lost, one would remind her, an ideation that moved her toward a cyclical destination. Mara’s family had moved abruptly and periodically throughout her formative years, and along that journey, she had stopped unpacking.
         In this safe haven she had curated, her material possessions felt less like distant lessons and more like what belonged to her. Mara wanted to make space for them and release her aura into the room, colorful and vivacious again. In this small feat, she was removing her insides and displaying them on the outside, for everyone to see. Plato suddenly materialized herself, yawning as she shifted between Mara’s ankles, exuding solace as she consistently did. A resounding, encouraging yowl left her as she jumped into the bed, settling herself to watch as Mara rummaged for hours. Her spirited touch left an impression on every object she found, no longer caged or quiet in their vessels. Like she had been. And as if it had been waiting for this hour as long as her, smiling from the ether, it appeared.
         When Mara finally picked it up, she took in a big whiff of its maroon spine, the binding of this copy of Iodine timeworn and riddled with messages from a Lavender that existed over a decade ago. It was priceless. Mara had no recollection of the last time they had a real conversation but this - this was a genuine exchange. Echoes of Lavender graced Mara with each turn of the page, her manic handwriting looping its way into the parietal lobe, welcomed and considered. On occasion, Mara would imagine them at a corner cafe someplace hazy, discussing the comorbidity of Trace and Ianthe or how glorious the first and last lines of the book are.
         I am light as a feather.