Desert heat

If you believe in Satan, then imagine him as a trickster, silently positioning the potholes of life where you are most likely to trip and fall into them. Watch your step! – David M. Rubin

My love, have you noticed those seemingly perfect specimens of men living at our desert complex? Oh yes, I know that you’ve noticed them, as I’ve noticed you noticing them, with their enormous muscles, cryptic tats, and whatever else that fascinates you about them. They sit around the pool – 24/7 – with cold drinks, smiles, laughs, and the pretense of texting someone; all the while watching you…always watching you…keeping one eye on you, sometimes sneaking snapshots of you wearing THAT BIKINI purchased in 110 degrees of desert heat. Required pool attire, we now call it.

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Her Smile

Hey Anne,

Found this poem in one of Isaac’s boxes. Do you know anything about this woman? Did she really exist? Doubtful huh? 10,000 miles? Not sure anyone would travel 5 miles to visit a loon, except for social workers. Just being real, not mean. I’ve always loved our little brother, but his issues pushed everyone away.

Our ghost, Mr. Shrink, is back again. Poor Isaac!

Be careful, the paper is dried out. Looks like something chewed on it. Wash your hands afterwards!

Lizzy

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Sleepwalking

I felt “watched” whenever the moonlight streamed into my bedroom window at night, paranoid that God used the moon as his lookout – probing me from there with his powerful flashlight. I didn’t want “him” to see what I daydreamed about in my bedroom. Not that it was anything bad or abnormal for a 12 year old, but I didn’t want my parents finding out and meddling in my private stuff.

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Old man in the gym

Gazing into the gym mirror, old man Isaac observes a bloated belly; a fat neck that balloons out in every direction; skin transitioning to wrinkled leather; a generous portion of randomly scattered skin tags; arms and a chest with no muscle tone; bony, stick figure like legs; and a head gone bald. Yet, Isaac persists in turning this way and that way, searching for his 25 year old in the mirror, hoping to find a vestige of his youth somewhere in the reflections. For now though, every angle in every mirror shows the accumulated wear and tear of many years of despair, with no sign of the young, physically virile man of his past.

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The shrinking of Isaac

The shrink in my dream told me that a little piece of “something” is who I am. He showed me a tiny, hairlike splinter on his pinky finger, to demonstrate just how small this “something” may be. He asked me to consider that this minuscule fragment of “something” has been the real me, the only real part of me, since it formed during the earliest days of my life. And that before that time, I did not exist as an identity of any kind, but only as a formless blob of competing needs, fears, perceptions, and instincts. One day, the shrink explained, a tiny part of the blob solidified around something, such as an unfulfilled, infantile need or childish wish, and this hardened piece created a wall around itself and separated from the rest of the blob, becoming me.

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