They appear one afternoon, the green stairs, softly soundless after all the noise. I lay in the lilacs at the top of the green stairs, sitting in sacred silence while I dream of secretly slipping into Renoir’s garden, tiptoeing amongst his red, red roses. I ride wild horses in a storm and wish I was someone else, someone not ashamed, at the top of the green stairs.
From the top of the green stairs I hear life leave on its journey to neverafter, taking its first timid steps towards death. And I blindly brush away those futile, final words before all breath blows away, weightless and wild, like so much dandelion fluff, at the top of the green stairs.
The ghosts of my spirit live under the eaves, sleeping deep within its shadows. I lock them in, when twilight blooms, at the top of the green stairs. Again and again the night wakes me, screaming and scared, and I count the countless stars in a bruised and broken sky until I fall back into dreams. I am forever suspended in these moments, never again unafraid, at the top of the green stairs.
***
Barefoot I skip along the path, on a carpet of pungent pine needles both silky and sharp, and emerge from the cool cool shade into the hot afternoon sun. With the little yellow house at my back I stand at the top of the old stone steps, pink toes sticky with pitch gripping the topmost edge, and gaze at rippling topaz beneath a tourmaline sky. A basin brimming with whip-poor-will tears. Descend.
Old wood stretches its lazy length into the pond while I float weightless in watery space beyond. Eyes closed and ears deaf, I lay on my back, blind and buoyant. A child’s verse on meditation. Then laughing, I let go and drift down to her cool clear crystalline depths.
Like Electra, from the water I rise, my feet making swirling clouds of sandy silt. A little storm with each small step. Minnows scatter around me, like so much quicksilver lightning. And I reach the narrow shore, with velvet-mossy rocks and the water always lapping, lapping, lapping lightly at the foot of the old stone steps. Ascend.
***
I lay in the backseat as licorice night gives way to foggy dawn. It feels as though I’ve been holding my breath for miles in anxious anticipation of the lighthouse whose terrifying foghorn races along the dark and rocky curving coastal road to meet me long before its brilliant blinding light pirouettes into view.
Later the world will forget where it has lost its blurry edges, coming into sudden, sharp focus with cool cerulean skies quenching the gasoline fire of sunlight on the water. Honey sands. Bleached whites. And aqua, aqua, aqua: boats and buildings, signs and sails. In the shade of the tumbledown bridge bobs my beloved little pink dinghy; thrilling me each time I pass over it.
Red beach plums frame the dirt road that leads to our cottage, perched on the edge of Israels Cove, its old toes timidly testing the water’s chill; a blue vw parked outside. And me, riding my red tricycle in an endless loop around the faded gray porch, wet bathing suits dancing on the line above my head, fluttering on the breeze like prayer flags, while we devour the salty heat and thirst for the cool of our little kitchen and melting black raspberry ice cream.
***
I press through the blades of marsh grass, sharp and still, tall green sentinels standing guard between the Little and the Big. On sun-freckled, sandy skinny legs I run, happy-lonely, through the brush and scrub beyond the pond, my footfalls mostly silent on the dirt roads and dusty hills around our house.
Blue-gray grows green and green turns sickly yellow in the wink of an eye. The sleepy summer sky changes to something more insistent as wormwood air creeps low. In these last meager moments of stillness before the looming thunderstorm, in an atmosphere electric, I alone am all that moves. Precious and pure, with a quickening pulse, I head for home.
I am the green fairy’s youngest child, intoxicating and intoxicated, as my seven sister nymphs call forth their first fat drops. I am too fast for Grandmother Gaia. With her full belly, caramel skin and pale eyes she watches me fly past, weightless and wild, in her chartreuse gown, gold leaf and black at her back. With the sweet taste of petrichor on my lips I run through green air under an aged absinthe sky. Home.
***