Me and My Friend
By Nanette L. Avery
The heart shaped planchette that had once been tossed into the box along with the other memorabilia lies before me with its feet up like a dried cockroach. Yellow and brittle as an autumn leaf, it’s marvelously intact considering the age. It speaks a million tongues, but grey silence breaks the seal and I am plunged into a free fall sliding back to the source of its amusement. On the way down I meet Terri; she’s convinced that if we summon the spirits of the Ouija board we will be inviting the unknown. So, we surrender our fingertips and seamlessly glide across the board while Diana Ross consoles. The air is dripping with trails of sandalwood while an incense stick smolders and crumbles over a cracked saucer. The moon is rising, curved and warped. Diana Ross is quiet. It is calm. The horizon is being artfully erased. We go outside and sit on the stone wall. The whole night sky spreads out before us like a road map. Stars lavishly multiply by the hundreds piercing flickering nail holes, and we take turns forging stories that fill each shiny void until they fizzle out and the timid lamp through the kitchen window is the only incandescence to be seen for miles.
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Nanette L. Avery grew up on St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; a small island in the Lesser Antilles. She is the author of a number of books including Sixty Jars in a Pioneer Town and My Mother’s Tattoo And Other Stories For Kids.Her poetry and literary works can be found in publications such as Americana Magazine of Popular Culture, Digital Americana,Riverlit, Florida English Journal, Middle Ground, Broken Circles, and more. www.nanetteavery.com
