SADIE MAKES BREAKFAST, INJURES ONE

The morning of Sunday, February 3^rd, dawns slightly later than expected, at least in the Graham household, 246 W 30^th St. Sadie Graham, mother of two and adorned in a pink bathrobe and mismatched socks, arrives in the kitchen no earlier than half past ten, with a plan to make pancakes.

Midway through the first batch enter Scott, 10, and Kevin, 15, who sit at the table without speaking, presumably still somewhat asleep, until Sadie hands Kevin a plate, his arm promptly turns to ceramics, and he yells: “MOOOOOOOMMMMMM!”

For the past six months Kevin has been experiencing unexpected manifestations of a skin-changing mutation which his mother refers to as his “chameleon charm.” When the Baltimore Polytechnic High School freshman makes contact with certain materials – which, exactly, he is still determining – a portion of his skin from as little as a finger to his entire body takes on the properties of that object.


Kevin was ejected from a lacrosse game last summer when his arms and torso temporarily became aluminum and a collision with another player resulted in that player's breaking four ribs; however, the call was later retracted on the grounds that lacrosse is a dangerous sport to begin with and the injury was not out of the ordinary enough to to merit such an exception.

But this morning in the kitchen, the Graham family is coping with the more emotional frustrations of adjusting to a newly mutant-human mixed household.

“That's it. I'm not touching anything else, ever,” says Kevin, whose arm is rapidly re-humanizing in a fade from shoulder to fingertips. “I refuse to turn into a pancake.”

“Kevin, honey, don't be stupid. You can use a fork,” responds his mother. A heartfelt supporter of mayoral candidate Grace, Sadie Graham admits that though she believes in the mutants-are-people-too mantra, she is often at a loss for how to deal with her own mutant son.

“True, a fork won't solve the problem, but he needs to eat,” Graham explains. “Teenagers.”

Scott, meanwhile, has remained unperturbed, watching the exchange from behind his plate of syrup with pancakes and only pausing in his food-absorption for a moment during Kevin's arm metamorphosis.

“Pick up your fork and take a bite,” Sadie addresses Kevin in a tone turned suddenly hard. For a few seconds, the two elder Grahams glare at one another and Scott takes the chance to serve himself two more pancakes.

“You follow Grace like a sheep,” Kevin finally growls, “But I'm sick of you humans deciding what's best for everyone.”

“Kevin, you watch--”

“--You included. You don't have a clue.”

“Put the pancake in your mouth.”

“You can't force me.”

Sadie reaches for a fork, stabs a stack and leans toward Kevin, who suddenly panics and yells to her not to touch him. Sadie stops and puts the fork down. Kevin is tilted back in his chair, balancing it on two legs.

He falls back and hits his head after Sadie replies, “fine,” loads her spatula with pancakes, and flings them at his face. “Oh Kevin! Honey-- are you alright?”

This time, maybe, turning into a pancake may have been preferable for the mutant teen.

GRACE'S RACE: NEWEST CANDIDATE SPEAKS TO CITY

“Soon as he said he'd bring HAMMR to Baltimore, I liked the guy,” says Sadie Graham, 32, of Remington, “And after this speech, I might be in love.”

Graham's comment outside the Convention Center following Tuesday afternoon's press conference captured the spirit of a crowd smitten with lately-announced mayoral candidate Cameron Grace.

In a follow up to his announcement of candidacy last week, Grace spoke to a mixed crowd of humans and mutants about his positions on all issues from city education reform to the proposed Chesapeake restocking with Old Bay-Maryland Blue crab hybrids. However, his efforts were overwhelmingly focused on his standout initiative to establish the Nation's next HAMMR location in Baltimore City.

The Human and Mutant Mediated Relations group, which typically goes by the acronym HAMMR (pronounced “hammer”), is the foremost organization dedicated to cultivating peace between the human and mutant races. Founded in Westchester County, NY, by advocacy leader Charles Xavier six years ago, HAMMR has established offices in a dozen cities worldwide and has passed peacekeeping legislation in over thirty countries.

“I believe in Baltimore, and I believe that HAMMR will help break barriers in this city so that it will continue to be the Greatest City in America,” said Grace, “It's time time to work together and fight the chaos plaguing our nation's capital right next door.”

Grace claims he will entice HAMMR to open a development center in the heart of Baltimore, possibly downtown or in Harborplace. He has mentioned an unconfirmed personal connection from within the Xavier Institute, HAMMR's umbrella organization, as well as potential zoning and tax incentives. By keeping the location prominent for both city citizens and tourists, Grace says he plans to make Baltimore an example for other cities struggling with violence and intolerance between races.

Thus far HAMMR been his single most touted pursuit. Though candidate Grace has never overtly worked for a peace group himself, he has spent over a decade working for social justice and campaigning with various peaceable causes in the Baltimore and DC metropolitan areas. He is a board member of nonprofit advocacy groups Marylanders for Mutantkind and Bmore Coexists and holds a law degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

And in a time of uncertainty in both the nation and one's own backyard, people seem ready to at least listen for a while to the Grace doctrine.“They ain't nothing but a bunch of cold-blooded machines down there,” said one unnamed bystander, of Washington politicians. “They just got no idea.”

“But Grace,” said a woman to his left, “He knows what we need– and he'll deliver.”

Box of Mornings

Here's your cigar box back that you gave to me with 12 nights inside, lined up 3x4, and I did my best with it. Sorry I wasn't ready until just before you were leaving town and I really couldn't find enough energy to change them all the way, but here it is: 12 mornings. I'm sure you'll still find some use with them. I can imagine you sitting on the bench at the train station with this box on your lap, checking the departure times and people walking by you pulling luggage, waiting with their paperbacks and magazines -- but you, all you wanted was that box and if you lift up the lid just a crack for one second, some morning will surely shine out. Scents probably too, mixing, as they were all 12 different mornings. You'll get bacon and hot coffee and steamy shampoo from the shower, toothpaste and, if it's a walking morning, maybe car exhaust and pollen, and you might just catch snippets and a mixture of these things if you open that box on your lap.

I know you'll want to give a few of those mornings away when you get home, a couple to the girls and maybe one to your grandfather. The one with the birds and the breeze, I think he'd like that one.

Hopefully you'll be able to save a few for yourself. If you are peeking at the train station or on the train, you might find the special one, well, I wouldn't call it the best or anything I mean of course I'd say all 12 are pretty damn good mornings especially with such pressed time.

But if you look in there and see it, remember that one's for you. Don't give it away. I recreated the one at the beach, that morning with white curtains breathing and muffled voices downstairs and just 2 inches of blue sky visible from bed, and I tried to add in the heartbeats even, but that's just standard, and the stillness, but you'll just have to hold that morning real still in your hands -- and if you do manage to hold that morning very still and you are very careful with it, that might be the only morning in the box you maybe could stretch out into the afternoon like taffy. I won't guarantee it but it's worth a try.

Enough of the preamble, you have the box. My love and regards to everyone and I again wish we could have had more time. On your next visit, I'll have that box of chocolates full of Mondays ready. If I start now, I should be able to get you at least a few 4th of Julys in there and maybe even a New Years, one from the 90's, I'll try.

Raining

Standing in the rain and getting soaked, sweater pulled over head and one hand puny, holding the sides together just beneath chin. No zipping, just cape-like hoping for a half centimeter of dry space between body and weather. Where is the bus?

She stands a few feet away, also waiting. Under a small umbrella. After a while, you ask (that was you getting soaked), Do you know when the bus will be here?

She says, I thought, well it left at ten-of and so any minute now, it's late... (trails off). The wind whips and you close your eyes for a moment. Water slaps your face and you try not to move at all.

Ah, you say. And now that she's had a moment of looking at you she says, Here, want to get under my umbrella? You hesitate a moment, because you are already so wet, why bother, right? But then, it's so nice to not feel the pelting, to hear it just above you and so you

SPLASH

     SPLASH

         SPLASH

               over to her in three big steps. The worst part is the water between your toes, the shoe-sock squash that happens with each movement. Part of why you were standing still.

The girl and you, you don't know each other but the space is very tiny. Your elbows brush and you are both tense for about ten seconds before giving up and letting your elbows brush. And one half of you is still sticking out in the rain and you realize the girl is leaning over to fit you underneath and there are drips running down her back and you hope they won't drop down her neck and make her shiver. (When they do, eventually, she shivers and the umbrella shakes and a drop falls down your neck and you shiver.) Both of you are getting wet now. But neither of you moves out of the umbrella.

You should, you think, let her at least stay dry, but there is the bus coming up the hill.

So you just look at her and say thanks, peeking out from beneath the cape. She says, no problem and has a closed-mouth smile and her shoulders are a little hunched, keeping those last drops away from neck. You sit near the front and put on your headphones right away, she walks to the back; you leave similar puddles on the seats.

The Renegade, in a window seat, is tapping out the rhythm of the wipers on his knee, his forehead is pressed to the pane. Something out there on the street has his attention. You think whatever it is, must be dancing, singing in the rain.

Arriving somewhere

Woke up on the train she had
Writing in black marker up her arm, she realized,
Pulling back her sleeve, head slumped
The sun was rising so she must be
Somewhere

There was someone else in the car
Or wasn’t there? That person was not
Looking at her
And she was looking at her arm
A time and a place

Memory like a basset hound
Sad and soft and
Utterly unhelpful
What a rager last night was, what
Great thirst

She got off at the next stop, onto a
Wooden platform, bleak
Not busy, it was Sunday and she picked a
Quarter up from the floor for
The payphone

Oh right, there was a number there on her arm
Next to the time and place
And, being somewhere and
Awake and not in too bad of shape,
She called it.

No answer. No more quarters.
She heads down the stairs,
Gets a street-level headache,
There the people are.
Here she is.

A hanging yellow banner reminds her
There was a man in a bird suit
Last night
There were
Punchbowls and piñatas

She finds a park somewhere
Inside the here, and a bench
She sits to let her stomach settle,
To let her head ache,
Naps for some time.

Light is lower and grayer when
She wakes and it is
Chillier
And she wonders if she is expected
To be

Somewhere- the place on her arm
Right.
She isn’t sure but thinks,
Has an inclination it is
That way

And off she goes, trot trot
Swinging her pony tail
Wading through noise and traffic
Coming to a large metal doorway behind which is
Thump thump thump

Not sure of the time,
If it is indeed the time on her arm
But anyway she has made it
Arrived at
The place

Where am I?
Where was I? and how
Did this get on my arm?
Are things she
Could ask

She thinks for a moment,
As she walks inside,
About searching for answers
Then remembers
She is Miss Thing

And whatever it is
Will likely not start until she gets there
So
She jumps into the crowd, says
Hello hello hello!

Any

I occasionally mistype my name, spelling Any, and oftentimes will pause before correction. Because for a moment, I am Anyone, someone who I always am and you always are too.  Whose voice is a mystery, like conversations blowing in on the wind. I want to know what the voices say, let my name be a vehicle for Any to hide beneath and speak out of, like a medium of sorts. Any is hiding in there all the time, anyway.

It feels like, until I hit backspace, there is so much possibility and then I erase and it’s just me (but it is just me, and you, and all Amy’s and Really,

It’s just a name and a word.
A rock splashing in the water, for thoughts to spiral off of just like
Anything else
One could say

Sounds

feel free to submit more to me for this list!

The crickets and the cicadas make those noises before a storm.

The sound of a symphony warming up.

The subwoofer on the best of songs, a sound you can feel in your toes and resonant in your memories.

When somebody involuntarily or unconsciously exhales around you, slow and deep, like hearing a smile. Nothing beats that sound.

Thunder in the distance
Thunder right above you

All your friends laughing at once

The clink of ice cubes in the bottom of your glass, then the filling up.

The stupid noise of a gchat message when you are tired and alone. Someone saying hello.

The drone of a needle during a tattooing. Like meditation, like eyes closed and feeling and not thinking about it.

The sound of a great party or show from the outside, just before you step in the door, waiting in line in anticipation (craning your neck so you couldn't even point out the bouncer's face later, as you hand him your ticket, ID, absently).

The sound of “you can go”, “you are dismissed”, and your own footsteps echoing down the hall as you walk away, leaving the others behind, gradually gaining speed until you skip out into the sunlight and the sounds of outside suddenly hit you and it's wind and traffic and voices and freedom!

The ocean. Enough said.

Playgrounds shrieking at children (it sounds like plastic slides slipping and creaking metal at the top of the swings and the splash of feet hitting mulch underneath it all).

“The sound of your ____ (sic) firing up and idling after working on it for a while.” - DC

When one ear is on the mattress and you can hear the muted thud-thud-thud of footsteps on the level below you, like they are crawling up the walls and the ceiling into your head and, simultaneously, your other ear can hear the voice the footsteps belong to and the clatter of plates and drawers and shelves and you know they go together but they are detached and distinct and you fall asleep listening to one thing in two ways.