"The Flowers in the Yard"

            Armagon.  There she stands, still, behind the metal fence in her yard.  She looks at me and the dark brown of her eyes is heavy, darker than the cracked ground beneath her feet.  My eyes are a shifting kind of green and blue, and they touch her through the years and the chain link fence that stand between us.

            Aramagon.  There she stands, and in her hands she holds weeds plucked from her yard.  I can remember how she smiled and called them flowers. 

            Her name was something exotic, faraway and strange.  It matched the smell that crept through the closed doors and curtained windows of her house.  Even when we sat together in school, the smell of unknown spices flowed off of her clothing and flooded my senses.  Some days, I sat dumb, pretending not to like the way that it made all the things in front of me seem far away.

            Most days, I found a way to pass by her house, leaning my bike against the metal fence.  The other girls lived close by in houses all in rows, on crowded, narrow streets lined with parked cars �" shining and new.  Armagon lived on a busy street, wide and dangerous.  The little kids wouldn’t cross it alone, but I sliced across on my bike, enjoying the sound of horns and the occasional screech of tires. 

            And there by the fence we would stand, three feet apart with a metal fence neatly marking the boundary between two worlds, two people.  We would talk, mostly about me and the foolish, defiant things I had done to entertain her in school.  On a good day, her severe face would allow a crooked smile.  She would say, “Oh, Michael,” and the mirth would dance in her eyes.  Then, on cue, I would insult her handful of weeds.  Never once did Armagon fail to honor our script: “They’re not weeds.  They’re wildflowers.” 

            Not long after that, the curtain would shake and the chipped green front door would open.  A bright splash of orange or yellow on her mother’s clothing would emerge from the darkness inside.  “Armagon.”  Her name spoken aloud was an order, and she obeyed every time. 

A study in opposites: one person with so little freedom, one person with more than enough. 

            With a violent dash and a jump from the curb, I dared the cars to hit me but none ever obliged.  The drivers swerved or braked as we cursed each other, and I rode on to other streets and other girls who spoke so much but said almost nothing at all.

            Finally, I remember the day when by bike lay broken against the fence.  The tires were cut.  My nose was bleeding and one eye was swollen nearly shut.  I laced my fingers into the chain links and rested my head against the metal.  When I looked up and wiped the tears from my face with a dirty forearm, she was watching.  Her dark eyes saw through the metal barrier between us, straight into me. I leaned my head once more against the fence.  I wanted her comfort and she gave it to me in the only way she could.  “Oh, Michael,” she whispered.  She passed me a bouquet of weeds, white and yellow, through the fence, and I closed my hand around the stems. 

            Then, the door, and a wave of spices reached out and broke over us where we stood.  “Armagon.”

            And I wanted to hear my name, too, as an order, wanted to disappear into the dark mystery and the safety of that house.  Instead, I stood there, alone, and watched the blood run from tattered knuckles onto white petals.

           

Not long after that, she went away to some place far or near; I don’t know.  Miles I can’t speak of, but the years I can measure, and the distance becomes greater each day.  But I can see her still, through the metal links of a fence, and that unknown smell wraps itself around my memory like a cloud. 

Armagon, in my mind I can hear you, still, and I can see the flowers that I thought were weeds.