the house was lit with nothing but xmas lights. i think it was supposed to be tonight, new years eve. i had people over: my mom, my friends, plus steve burns, tom waits and wayne coyne. we were drinking and having fun. my husband was entertaining the children in the rumpus room and i was playing at being the hostess with the mostest, flitting around the room refreshing drinks, offering h'ors d'eouvres made of phyllo pastry and telling entertaining stories. the celebrities in my midst seemed bored and i was running out of ways to stimulate them. finally i took off my apron, set down the tray of food, and said, "i can do amazing things. would you like to see?"

steve burns was the most enthusiastic. "yes, i know you can do amazing things, but i still would like to see them performed." he sat down on the couch and folded his hands in his lap. wayne coyne and tom waits stood together near the tree and sipped whiskey from highball glasses filled with ice. my mother and friends were looking at one another with confusion in their eyes. i smiled knowingly at everyone, and then, with an effortless leap, lifted myself into the air, my toes pointed, my arms outstretched, and began gliding around the room. my belly filled with warmth at the feeling of weightlessness. everyone started, aghast, as i drifted through the house, my pretty party dress dangling from my legs, my bracelets tingling on my arms as i used them to propel me through the air.

there was some incredulous laughter, and as i glided past tom waits, he reached up to touch me, as if to see if i were real. i smiled down at him and evaded his hands. wayne coyne joined in the game, trying to get a hold of me. steve burns got off the couch and started following me around, making small jumps up at me. everyone was following my gently floating form through the house, trying to reach up and grab a hold of me, maybe to hitch a aerial ride along with me, but their hands would slip off, they couldn't get a good grip, and i would roll over onto my back and kick my feet lazily, as if i were swimming, and i was laughing and laughing at them. it was the funniest joke in the world.

haunting

leon and i were sitting up in bed, in our jammies, playing cards and smoking and drinking wine, when i looked over at the corner at the end of the bed and saw bagheera. he was laying down but his head was up and looking beautiful and noble. i was shocked, and pointed at him and said, "leon! it's bagheera! he's back!"

bagheera stood up and strode across the covers, knocking our cards astray, and then gently leaped off the bed and wandered over towards the closet. we were watching him while we held hands, wondering if he was real or perhaps a visiting spirit. i started crying from relief that the whole ordeal had been a bad dream. leon was petting my hair and stunned into silence.

bagheera sat down on his haunches and the most amazing transformation took place. he slowly and gently morphed into two cats. they looked like him, but smaller, and where he was brown, they were peach coloured. where he had one eye, they had two. where his eye was an irridescent, almost supernatural violet hue, theirs were a clear, bright green, almost like pale glass. they looked like twins and sat side by side next to one another, watching us.

i don't know what we said, but we were shocked and surprised and a little awed at the mystical implications of what we'd just witnessed. we called them over to us and were petting them. if they were seperated by more than a few feet, they would both become disoriented and start stumbling, like bagheera had in the moments before his death. we decided that they were bagheera's reincarnation and that they each represented one part of his whole and that they should be kept together at any cost.

marvelling at this amazing development we introduced them as "bagheera" to the children who were confused. i didn't care. i was high. high on the fact that something divine had come down out of the heavens and touched a fingertip to our lives and given us a strange and inexplicable gift. i wanted to take the bagheera cats out with me, show them to people and explain the story, so that they might understand as i did there are marvelous forces at work in the universe that do magical and amazing things. i scooped the two cats up in my arms and carried them out to the car, plopped them in the passenger's seat and drove up towards liam's school where i knew there would be some parents i could amaze. i pulled up to the fence running alongside the schoolyard and called some parents i recognized over to see the magical cats. they came and were ooh'ing and awww'ing and some seemed skeptical about my story, but i didn't care. as i was talking to them, though, i got a strange, dark feeling in my chest. my eyes glanced up and in the rearview mirror i saw a woman, a very bland, plain looking woman, maybe in her 40s, with a beak nose and a lined face and a quiet expression of resignation, sitting in my back seat.

i stopped talking to the parents and they wandered away. i rolled up the window and turned to face the woman. she didn't speak. i said, "who are you? why are you here?" she looked me right in the eyes at that point and i could see infinite sadness in them, and determination. i suddenly realized who she was, this boring lunchlady-esque woman in my back seat all bundled up in a brown puffy parka. she was an angel of death, here to amend the fluke chance of bagheera coming back to us, even in an altered form. "no, no, please no," i begged her, quietly, wanting to pull the cats in close to me to keep them from her. she still did not speak, she only looked more sad. i started crying as she leaned forward, the vinyl of the seat squeaking underneath her, her arm extending over the passenger's side seat, her index finger extended loosely towards the cats. i cried and cried.

it was quick. she gently moved her finger along their jawlines, like a soft swoop or a friendly hook like you would do to a friend who is blue, as if to say, "chin up, you." the effect was immediate. the cats melded back into one another, became bagheera as i knew him in his first incarnation, with his one eye and his chocolate point markings, and then he turned into a very small human baby boy, who writhed in his death throes, in the front of my car.

blacking out in the patisserie

Hovering over the slick wood veneer, pen in
Quivering hand poised to sign a credit card slip
Packages exploding from out of bags
Handles cut into tender flesh
When I blacked out in the patisserie.
In that last moment before the vortex swirled up
Narrowed down and closed into pinpoints of light
I wondered
What do YOU write in cards to rock stars?
Is your handwriting spidery?
I was only wondering because
I bought chocolates for acquaintances today
And blacked out in the patisserie.

O, mall, mall, most dreaded of halls,
With your poisoned air and your fried fat stalls,
It's a wonder we ever go in you, mall.
It's a wonder we get out alive, at all.