The alarm turned off again this morning. Well it always turns off in the morning because I turn it off. I set it every night…uh, let say that I set it before I go to sleep, before I try to go to sleep, and every time the alarms beeps at me, I turn it off thinking that I only hit the snooze… what a horrible advent that turned out to be… But we need it, we crave it, that snooze, ‘coz that’s when we dream, or so I’ve been told.
The alarm turned off at 8am this morning. I had some really high ambitions that I was going to get up early and “get work done”! …HA!… The alarm beeped at 6am. For Christ sake what the hell was I thinking? It’s still dark! Snooze…. My body felt heavy, so I let the heaviness sink back into the bed. I started to have a sexy sorta dream, no sex, but a lot of sexy sorta, … uh, preparation. I don’t remember any action, but I could feel the humming, a buzzing… and I wanted it… Beep! Beep! Snooze… Beep! Beep! Snooze … I could feel it, as long as my eyes were close, I could feel the humming, the buzz. Beep! Beep! Shut up! So, I turned it off finally at 8am…
I still didn’t get up then… I really didn’t have any reason to, at least not that early … I guess it wasn’t “that” early, but you know, I didn’t have a reason to get up at 8am. My dog used to wake me up before 7am every morning so that I would let him out to pee. But when you let him out at 4am ‘coz that’s how late you’ve been staying up, well then he doesn’t have to go out again before 7am… Even then they’ve taken over that responsibility, you know like your uh, … significant other… For whatever reason they do those things now, so you don’t have much reason to get out of bed … There’s laundry and dishes that need to be done, cleaning stuff, work…
I turn myself over so that I’m not facing the skylight, I close my eyes hoping to fall back into that dream and feel it… I can hear the neighbors out back. They were talking… There was a young boy, maybe 4 years old or so, I don’t know. He was making up songs and singing out loud. … Maybe it was a girl … You can never tell at that age. “Oh, the sun is out and the clouds went away…” I giggled at the lyrics “…the cars won’t move, because it’s better to ride a bike. The flowers won’t grow until the bee’s come home…” The bee’s, how I miss the bee’s…
I hear the door slam downstairs. Oh yeah, they’re home for lunch to take the dog for a walk. I stretch my arms out way above my head and grab on to the head bored and yawn. The ceiling looked so white and empty these days… I have to pee really bad but I wait until they leave. I just don’t want to, you know, …uhm… say anything about it being past noon and just getting out of bed, and blah, blah, blah… whatever. So, I go downstairs to pee. The upstairs toilet been broken for a couple of months now… Just haven’t had a chance to fix it…
There’s piles of laundry all over the place, here and there. They’re not filthy dirty they’re just not clean. Like the shirt your wearing. You’ve worn it a few times already, again it’s not filthy because you just been putzing around not really doing anything. So you say to yourself, ‘It’s not like I was rolling in the mud or sweating in it…’ And you think, well you could probably get away with not washing it for a few more days, maybe a week. So your shirts’ not filthy, it’s just not clean, it’s not fresh… It’s funny how it piles up. When you finally decide to change your shirt, you toss it in the corner or hang it on the back of a chair, get a fresh clean shirt and start all over again. But then all the fresh clean shirts run out. Now what? You don’t want to do the laundry ‘coz, oh for fahhh… there’s so much! Never though you had that many shirts… No, no you don’t want to do the laundry, not now so you find a shirt that maybe you hung on a chair last week ‘er something… It’s not bad, it’s been on a chair airing out for the last week… It’s not filthy, it’s just not clean, it’s not fresh…
It happens with the dishes too. Except the dishes are worse, ‘coz they’re filthy… You leave them too long and they attract flies and those other kind too, … what are they called? Fruit flies? Somethin’ like that. You get use to them though. You wash a few dishes every now and again then they go away. But if you wait long enough, and you play it just right, they’ll wash them all before the flies take over… They’ll do that with the laundry sometimes too…
There’s no food in the house. I could go out and get some, but then I would have to justify the money I spent and the food I got with them. … Oh, and I don’t know what they would want …Naaahhh… They’ll come home tonight with food. They always do when there’s no food in the house. May take a couple of days but they always do…
So I go back upstairs. I shut the skylight ‘coz the warm sunny morning turned into a gloomy rainy afternoon. Oh! But the sheets are still warm! So, I snuggle in…The warmth, yeah… it buzzed against my skin… I turned over in the sheets to looked up at the ceiling… I sighed…
I use to have a honeycomb above my bed. It wasn’t huge, but big enough. The bees would buzz around it, making their honey, and honey would drip, drip, dotting my lips…It was good honey, it was very good honey… When it was cold out like in Winter, the honey was so dark and rich and… and warm. Warm like that blanket that just came out of the dryer, you know how you would pull it out and quickly wrap it around you or bury your face in it feeling that warmth, if only for a few seconds, that warmth that even on a hot summer day would feel so, so … Those hot summer days, the honey would drip, but cool, cool, fresh and clean…
The bees though… always buzzing making the honey, buzz, buzz, buzz. The buzz would hum in your veins, inside you like a deep message. You wanted it though, you wanted the buzz, the more the bees buzzed, the more honey would drip…
Sometimes the honeycomb would get so full that it would gush out and wake me up in the middle of the night. That honey, that very good, intoxicating honey would pour out and swallow you whole. The sun would rise and a there you are in that honey comaaaahhh … hehehe … All that honey, there’s still some left! Ah hell! You don’t want it to go to waste so you lap it up, and it’s OK because you won’t crash, like with sugar. You know how when you have a lot of sugar, you get a sugar high, but you crash, and you crash hard, but this is honey! It’s honey, so you won’t crash. You take it all in, every little drop… You go on for days on this honey high and your not coming off because it still drips, the honeycomb still drips…
There’s something wet poking me in the face? What the hell? … Oh, it’s you, Simon. Simon, you were just out! Go away… He walks downstairs in a huff. That dog I swear… I turn over and that damn alarm clock is glaring at me… Ah faahh…. Damit! It’s 4pm! I jump out of bed and run down stairs but it’s too late… Poor thing, he couldn’t hold it. Simon was huddled in the corner of the kitchen shaking. He knew he knew he wasn’t suppose to pee in the house… But it wasn’t his fault. … I let him out, used my bath towel to clean it up. I didn’t know where the mop was, so I used the towel. I rinsed it in the bathtub and hung it on the side. I went back upstairs and sat at the foot of the bed. … Simon’s always been so good to me and I … I …
I fall back on the bed and stare at the white empty ceiling. I remember the day the honeycomb disappeared. … Well, it wasn’t sudden, it just wasn’t there anymore. The flies ate it all up. The fruit flies, or whatever they’re called. … There weren’t so many at first, you didn’t even notice them. I had no idea where they came from, but they didn’t seem to bother the bees and the honey still dripped. More and more flies came and more and more bees went away… The honeycomb stop gushing in the middle of the night… I didn’t care… I didn’t ‘coz I could still hear that buzz, I could still feel that buzz that hummed deep… the honeycomb got smaller and smaller and the drip, drip, ….drip … then the silence…
I needed that buzz that hum, I needed it I craved it and it was gone! I followed the flies thinking that they will lead me to the bees, if I could only get the bees back, they’ll make another honeycomb, I must get the bees… where are the bees? I need the bees to come home! … I found myself standing over plies of dishes and laundry and swarms and swarms and swarms… the flies, the damn flies… desperately I washed every dish, cup, spoon… I washed every sock, and shirt … Maybe if I washed, maybe if I …the bees will come home…
I hear Simon rushing to the door. They’re home… they got Simon a new ankle bone and he’s crunching it. I hear the grocery bags rustling and the fridge and cabinets opening and shutting… It’s been a long day and the sheets are still warm. … Maybe, if I curl up and feel the warmth, I could feel the hum … Maybe if I close my eyes I can feel the buzz…
The 3rd Coyote 