Lilly Belle

She wakes herself up, crying in the night, plagued by demons from her past who aren’t done with her yet. Now she’s safe, a life of comfort. But her early years spent as nothing more than breeding stock, have taken their toll. Blind, deaf, she can only outrun her old life in daylight, rolling on her back in damp grass, raising her nose into breezes seasoned with the scent of saltwater and freedom. But sleep is seductive on dark nights, urging her to think it’s all over, not clearly sure of just what it was anymore. The ghosts in her dreams reappear to drag her back into memories that cause her to cry out. Only for herself, by herself. I jump up with the first soft moan, rushing to her side to tell her it’s OK. Greed took away her sight and hearing before she was even conceived. Defenseless property of owners with a darker blindness, relegated to life in a cage. Nothing more than a womb used to produce more of the same. Sitting next to her in the dark, my hands on her body, rubbing reassurance through her short black hair. Her smell the comfort of familiarity. I whisper softly into her ear: “It’s OK girl, it’s OK.”… and feel her relax as the nub of her truncated tail starts to flutter like a hummingbird’s wing.

Sing to Me in F Sharp...

 My love for gadgets came from my Grandfather. We both used to get a little too excited over cameras and wristwatches. So when my parents gave me an Accutron as a High School graduation present (and after I had pestered them endlessly about it), Grandpa was green with envy. it kept time with a tuning fork that used a "360 herta tuning fork instead of a balance wheel as the timekeeping element. That was both innovative and groundbreaking at the time. (Yes, I just said that.) Grandpa started salivating and ran right out to buy one for himself. With that tuning fork, if you pressed it to your ear, you could hear it humming an F sharp. In the summer of 1966, I toured England with the church choir that I had sung in since I was 7 years old. When we hit Westminster Abbey to sing a capella for the Queen, our choir master realized that he had lost his pitch pipe. He had me listen to my watch and hum an F sharp. Scaling it up or down from there he hummed the proper note for us to start on. I told my Grandfather about the F sharp, but at his age he had lost all hearing in the upper ranges and just had to take my word for it. He still loved his Accutron though and enjoyed telling people that his wristwatch was always singing... in F sharp...