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Patrick's writing has appeared in The Writing Disorder, Apeiron Review, and Dance Macabre. When he is not reading or writing fiction, Patrick works as a union staffer, dreaming of workplace democracy for all. if you can share experience “It always makes it more real if you can share experience” -- you think to yourself buckled next to the propeller fying into the gaping face of the grain moon overwhelming everything with its borrowed light on the night horizon while the others around you cough and sleep and ask each other if they are heading home or away and then look out at the craters and trail of if such a thing happens their wings beat so fast they paint their colors onto the air their deep reds and blues and copper tones wrap around them holding them where they hover as they hunt for the nectar that Grandy and I hung in the tree near the bench-swing. are you going to help little miss? yes Grandy! he asked without looking up hearing me scuffing along the row his back bent away from me knees in the soil pulling the prickly ones out by the root with his right hand gloved his left picking the bugs off the tall fat leaved ones and putting them in a can one hand doing its work and then the other me sweating in the heavy wool pirate hat and vinyl eye-patch I wore everywhere. nothing in the sky but the summer morning sun I switched the eye-patch to the other side and squinted. but Grampa James sprays medicine on his plants. that's not medicine, love it's pesticide and I'm sure Grampa James has his own reasons but I don't do it because it kills the earth. now come over here by me. can you get the ladybugs like this? dehe they're not ladies? well they're certainly dressed right - see them in their red polka-dot summer dresses? do I put them in the can? yes then later we'll move them somewhere better. don't crush them. can I keep them? you can keep one but you can't bring it in the house - Gramma won't like it. why do we have to take them of? because this kind eats my plants. why does the spray kill the earth? because it has chemicals that get into the ground. both of us filling the can between us with big round red polka-dot summer dresses and then moving the can with us up the rows that hide us under their green. it's always better to do things carefully with your fingers than it is to carpet bomb everything to get rid of a few bugs. carpets? no I guess I was talking again about Europe. there were carpets? no love, spraying pesticide is like warfare. it all comes from the same place. oh no Grampa James does it! he probably doesn't think of it that way: you'll have to ask him. can we call him later? let's see what we get up to when Gramma gets home. she'll have stories for us to hear. Gramma and Grandy's farm is a bazillion miles with their house by the road where we watch movies at night and drink all the soda pop we want and it has a deck where the dollhouse Grandy built for me stays and Grandy's garden is in the field and his horses Skip and Shady behind the fence I shouldn't go by and the woods behind them with the train tracks that got pulled up because people use cars now and far back in the woods the river smells like candy the mint plants -- that people and horses can eat -- grow along it thick where Skip brings us on his back because that's a better place for the ladybugs so that's where we empty them from the bucket. look Grandy, Miss Ladybug is napping I held her up cupped in my hand so he could see he saw and nodded and smiled but she leapt and dropped into his wineglass oh no! he picked her out gently by the sides his fingers barely fitting into the glass then he dabbed her on his shirt put her back in my palm and took a sip of wine. oh no Grandy, you'll get sick! sick? why? from the bug! no love, anything bad from Misses Ladybug will be taken care of by the alcohol. not to worry. one time a fruit fy got in Uncle Dan's drink and he swore and poured it out. well I'm sure he has his own reasons. the chain of the bench swing creaked if we went too high which we weren't supposed to do because it wasn't that kind of swing. us swinging by the tree with the sun moving behind the house and the chalky moon out early in the daylight Grandy would point out the hummingbirds - the arc their wings made their sharp zigzag movements their long stem beaks which have come to be formed perfectly for their work how peaceful they were and that he knows it's fanciful but if such a thing happens in any manner he would like to come back as a hummingbird. which is what I was thinking about just now when you caught me staring. us seeing these birds makes me think of him and what he would say now I wonder if I could piece it together from the traces of him that I recollect.
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