six sixes by louise yeiser

Six Sixes

by Louise Yeiser

sixsentences.blogspot.com 2


CONTENTS

Heiress of Air …… 5

Semantics, Semantics …… 6

New Age Rage …… 7

Acapulco Afternoon …… 9

72 Hours …… 10

The Revolving Door …… 11

About the Author …… 12


Heiress of Air

Most of my friends don’t know this, but when I was 27 years old, I joined a born-again Christian commune, read in the Bible how hard it was for a rich man to get into the Kingdom of Heaven, thought, “Well, the hell with that,” and gave all my money away. Then I spent the next ten years deprogramming, chasing the cult leaders through the Courts, and trying with little success to get my money back. What they do know is that I’m a 5th generation heiress. Having money that someone else earned on my behalf is a strange feeling common only to blue bloods, many of whom are insufferable bores, and produces uncomfortable pauses in conversations at parties (and such) when the question is asked, “So what do you do for a living?” I have spent the last thirty years recycling my talent, time, heart and money back into the community, and still I am not satisfied. I just wanted to fit in somewhere.


Semantics, Semantics

Someone outside was talking about Republicans. Since I thought he said all Republicans were massaging ists, I stopped and turned; but the two students who were talking had dirty dreadlocks, dotted with pieces of sawdust (or something), enormous ear plugs and curvy lip piercings that startled me even more than their conversation, so I delayed my inquisition until I was inside the building, away from their cigarette smoke. At some point, I realized they probably said misogynists, not messaging ists; and since I didn’t know what a misogynist was, I asked a group of students, clustered at the bottom of the stairwell looking bored, and then a second group huddled together in deep, studious thought just down the hall. Nobody knew. So I went into the computer lab and looked it up: "someone who hates women." Personally, I like the idea of Republicans massaging ists much better, but then I'd have to figure out what an ist is.


New Age Rage

I have often daydreamed of driving up to Mont St. Michel once again during a full moon and high tide, with the cathedral and its village almost completely surrounded by water, looking like a mysterious, mythical island in a world apart. I would tour the cathedral and climb its stone steps as high as I could, to be near the place where I stood as an endlessly enthusiastic, can't-hug-life-hard-enough teenager, looking down into the dark, swirling waters of the English Channel, oh-so far below me. Crepes would be a must, since I remember the ones sold in the cobble-stoned cliff-village, as being particularly sweet. Such a contrast to Chartres Cathedral, not far from Paris, which in the 60's was surrounded by golden wheat fields. I remember standing barely inside its enormity and I could feel the rustling echoes and awestruck silence tickling the back of my neck, while the air sizzled and popped with wonder-flicking the flames of prayer candles that stood in solemn supplication by the main entrance. I read online that the cathedral houses a labyrinth (did I know that?), used infrequently, which makes little sense to me, since we live in an age of spiritual resurgence, where


labyrinths ― particularly ancient ones ― are quite the rage.


Acapulco Afternoon

In a fit of flimsy propriety, I had to make you wait; so we wasted precious days and nights — picnics on the beach, dinner under the stars, waterskiing, dancing, laughing with another couple from L.A., chardonnay and chocolate chip ice cream. Finally. Afterwards, in a dark room high over a brilliant bay saturated with sparkling silver caps and sailboats, I didn’t want to let you go. I ended up in front of the hotel, watching you disappear in a cloud, in a blur — sand, yellow, black and white — skidding around that last bend in the drive, rocks flying, tires squealing, heart breaking. Your name was Arturo, and that was 22 years ago. No one has ever matched you.


72 Hours

You were a premie and I was terrified. The doctor said if you could make it through those first three days, your chances of survival would be excellent. You struggled. You fought. You were still breathing at the end of three days. And then you turned a corner.


The Revolving Door

He took me home to make me dinner and meet his teenaged children, so I thought we were an item, having no reason to believe otherwise. “Being introduced to someone’s children doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to someone else that it means to you,” best friend Annie told me three months later, looking all worldly wise and shaman-like in her shroud of sincerity and halo of helpfulness, while I sat across the table from her, wringing the damp tissue between my fingers and feeling their feathery, spiral-flakes coating my skin. “I guess I hesitated too long in the revolving door,” I said. As it was, I must have rushed the woman before and barely missed the woman after, and we were all going around and around and in and out, one right after the other, saying hello/goodbye to him, and winking at his lovely children, who ate with us and stole sips of his chardonnay when he wasn’t looking, our little secret. I never noticed the revolving door — well actually, I didn’t realize it still existed, since I thought I already did the players back in my twenties and thirties, but apparently there are a few more out there I somehow missed. Looks like I finally know enough to be old better.


About the Author

LOUISE YEISER has been published in print in Kerlak’s Modern Witches, Wizards and Magic, and Six Sentences, Volume 1. Her work appears online at Tuesday Shorts, Flashquake, and Long Story Short. She studies creative writing at Carlow University in Pittsburgh and Ireland.

six sixes by louise yeiser

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