Matchbox Phoenix
1. The new job I got, I already lost. I was supposed to start today. I told them I had some trips planned this upcoming week that I couldn't get out of, and was doing my best to integrate their schedule with my set schedule at the Aquarium, and have been working tirelessly to rearrange it. On Monday, I even canceled my trip to Slammasters to make room for training days. On Tuesday, without so much as calling me to work it out, they sent me an email saying my availability wasn't what they wanted, and my job offer was rescinded, and that was final. So now, I have no new job and am not going to Slammasters.
Laura's bad back has given out again, without cause. This means that she is almost entirely bed-ridden, and cannot stand or move without excrutiating pain. When she walks, her spine is stiff and crooked as an old tree, and she has to lean on me. This girl, nearly 27, and beautiful as a fairytale: hunched over and limping. And, though it's terrible to have to worry about these things: every day she's unwell, we lose another day of pay. We already lost a week of pay at her tutoring job because of Spring Break. I see rent on the horizon like a black sunrise. My house never has heat, and my lover's fingers are cold to the touch. Believe it or not, these things are not even the worst things to happen to us this week.
2. There is a species of phoenix that does not rise from fire but from merely flammable things: kindling on a dry forest floor, barrels of oily rags, and the mess on my floor I can't find the will to pick up. It is a rare bird, and small, the size of a wren. It lays its eggs in matchboxes and greasy kitchen sinks. It cobbles itself together with metal from the junkyards it frequents, like one of Leonardo's flying machines that was never tried, and its song is the squeaking of unoiled hinges. But when it flies, it flies so high into the stratosphere that self-pity cannot breath, and once suffocated in the bird's talons, is devoured. The matchbox phoenix is born before anything can burn, while the house is shambles but not yet lightning-struck. It is an omen and a warning, born not of destruction but before destruction, and it exhorts us to piece ourselves together with whatever we have lying around before it's all gone. And I can feel its tiny beak tapping against the inside of my eggshell-thin cranium, and the sound of ripping paper, as it prepares to hatch.
Laura's bad back has given out again, without cause. This means that she is almost entirely bed-ridden, and cannot stand or move without excrutiating pain. When she walks, her spine is stiff and crooked as an old tree, and she has to lean on me. This girl, nearly 27, and beautiful as a fairytale: hunched over and limping. And, though it's terrible to have to worry about these things: every day she's unwell, we lose another day of pay. We already lost a week of pay at her tutoring job because of Spring Break. I see rent on the horizon like a black sunrise. My house never has heat, and my lover's fingers are cold to the touch. Believe it or not, these things are not even the worst things to happen to us this week.
2. There is a species of phoenix that does not rise from fire but from merely flammable things: kindling on a dry forest floor, barrels of oily rags, and the mess on my floor I can't find the will to pick up. It is a rare bird, and small, the size of a wren. It lays its eggs in matchboxes and greasy kitchen sinks. It cobbles itself together with metal from the junkyards it frequents, like one of Leonardo's flying machines that was never tried, and its song is the squeaking of unoiled hinges. But when it flies, it flies so high into the stratosphere that self-pity cannot breath, and once suffocated in the bird's talons, is devoured. The matchbox phoenix is born before anything can burn, while the house is shambles but not yet lightning-struck. It is an omen and a warning, born not of destruction but before destruction, and it exhorts us to piece ourselves together with whatever we have lying around before it's all gone. And I can feel its tiny beak tapping against the inside of my eggshell-thin cranium, and the sound of ripping paper, as it prepares to hatch.