Blessed Bees * last updated September 20, 2000

Sideways
by Melissa Oringer
(c) Melissa Oringer, 1995-2000, All rights reserved

Walking sideways, she sees the world askew.  She enjoys the vision that way, the perpetually shifting shapes and the shadows she senses lurking at the corners of her eyes.

She lives in alleys and byways, seashores and basements long abandoned.  She can be found on the roof top of a shopping center during the dead of night, or dancing about in a dilapidated shed.  She smells the roses and kicks up her feet and moans and dances to the moonlight lingering on her tongue.

She likes the dark places, the secret places, the hard-to-get-to places and the places where everyone is afraid to enter.  She balances on beams at deserted construction sites, plays hopscotch among the gravestones, and laughs at the graffiti she finds in the damp and bracing aqueduct.  She knows nothing of fear, and maintains the illusion of life simply for the fun it brings.

Look for her in the old abandoned lot next door, and see her tending the wild flowers and weeds which are her children.  The Queen Anne's lace and the cattails and the dandelions and the enchanting money plants that grow with strength and certainty and have no doubt about where they belong.

Which is everywhere and anywhere their hearts desire...

(c) Melissa Oringer, 1995-2000, All rights reserved