Every Day I Ever Lost
Coyotes in the city–– brindle-backed, loose-limbed, slack-jawed––loping through crosswalks, muzzles high, tails low, tongues out. Birthing litters in the bus stop. Marking parking lots with scent. Catching alley cats and spitting out the fur.
Walking home, late at night, I feel breathing at my heels, warm, damp, closing in. The exhalation of carnivorous pursuit. I could turn to face it. Face every fear I ever felt, every day I ever lost to fear. Instead, I run.
The landlord lets me in and slams the door. “You’re safe,” he says. He has that lupine grin, he’s high again, shows his grimy canines, slits his grimy eyelids at every day I ever lost to fear. When he breathes on me, I run. Down the endless hallway, through the years of darkness to my room. I slam the door.
In bed I tell myself, “You’re safe,” but then the alpha female arcs through moon-thin curtains, landing on my chest. Her footpad prods my throat, she’s curious, acquisitive, a friendly nudge of wet black nose against my lip. My fingers comb the golden grizzled coat, caress the blood-warm ears. Every day I ever lost to fear is swallowed in her yellow eye.
I love the way our pack runs hell-bent through the hills. The layered air, the prey, the catch, the kill. The yips and barks. The howls that bind me to the clan.
Andrea says, in my book What My Last Man Did Blind Willie Johnson shows up at a funeral of a jazz singer in New Orleans in 1932 and plays “Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground”. But more importantly, that song is one of 27 musical pieces on the Golden Record on the Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. It is a haunting, beautiful song, as you probably know. He doesn’t so much sing as moan and hum. So, I don’t want to play just any guitar, I want to play Willie’s guitar which no longer exists, except for a burnt piece of its bridge.
In our dream band, on Blind Willie Johnson’s guitar:
Andrea Lewis writes short stories, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction from her home in Seattle, Washington. Her work has appeared in many literary journals, including Prairie Schooner, Catamaran Literary Reader, and Raleigh Review. Her collection of linked stories, What My Last Man Did, won the Blue Light Books Prize and was published by Indiana University Press.
Ran Off With the Star Bassoon 