‘a little bit of rain’, ‘Louise in Paris in the World of the Undead’ & ‘New Sweetness’

Donald Patten is an artist and cartoonist from Belfast, Maine. He produces oil paintings, illustrations, ceramic pieces and graphic novels. His art has been exhibited in galleries across Maine. His online portfolio is donaldlpatten.newgrounds.com/art

a little bit of rain

My father and I were sitting in the Red Lobster.

Or the Olive Garden. In Harlem.

All my stuff was in the back of his car.

Or somewhere else but it wasn't home.

I remember the feeling of the pleather booth against my still skinny thighs.

I only have 10 memories that date earlier than this week.

All of the other things I have lived through have simmered down to a paste and then a glob and then the sticky black stuff that sticks to the pot and never comes off.

5 of the memories could kill me and the other 5 serve as sugar dusted reminders to not let the other five kill me.

There are other concepts that float around my dusty mind, concepts I was apparently

there for.

They are less memories, more vignettes. Scenes from a play.

A daughter and a father sitting together at one of America's great chains in Harlem.

In these scenes, I am flawed but in the way you are.  My eyes look like you imagine your eyes to look.

In these well lit moments, I am not trying to remember if I took my birth control or noticing a chipped nail.

In these moments I am living. Alive. Accepting the love I deserve, feeling the rain on my skin. “No one else can feel it for you”

The sunshine touches my skin and it feels familiar.

Ever since I flew away from home, every night ends with a little bit of rain. Usually it comes out of my phone, tucked somewhere by my horizontal body. Or on the TV screen a youtube ambiance shows me a simulation of rain.

A little bit of rain before all vitality leaves me. Before I sleep for as long as I possibly can. I make sure to have a little bit of rain,

so I can drown.

So I can be baptized. 

So the sound waves turn into ocean waves.

To lap at my feet, to slowly seep in through my brain.

And waterboard all the memories out. And wash all the memories into clarity.

and make me new.

Louise in Paris in the World of the Undead

When your girlhood leaves you, you are, kind of, still a girl.

When grandma speaks of her regrets it's almost as if she's right there. Like it’s almost possible to bring her twin back from the dead, away from the bottle 50 or more years ago, rearrange the puzzle pieces so that she makes it to Europe.

“Louise never got to go to Europe” she’ll say slowly every few days, almost unbelieving.

Almost as if it's something on her to-do list, she has got to get someone to show her how to get on the internet, book a ticket, and make sure Louise goes to Paris.

Today AI can make us a photo of our dear Louise smiling in front of the Eiffel tower as it sparkles. But the someday twinkle in the eye is gone. Someday came and left without her.

I get older and inherit all this melancholy, it spirals around my ribcage and turns my bones bruise purple.  I look in the mirror, wondering how they got so lonely. What is there to be done about the bed that was made?

The second before this one is so close we can almost grab behind us and snatch it,

like the subway door.

It was just here, if you can just run fast enough to catch it before it goes to the next stop.

I was buzzing with my boyfriend, the New Years in which it turned into 2023, clock strikes midnight.

I grabbed balloons from the moodily lit restaurant and bobbed with them all the way home. I was lighter then I think, buoyant with him by my side taking a selfie an inflatable Christmas minion.

We sat next to strangers who were quiet beside us while we chatted. They weren’t saying anything but we strung words together like popcorn garlands. So easy to spear the next sentence with our needle, enough popcorn for everyone.

And when my next birthday comes in 2024 I will still be mulling over those $15 weeks when I worked at the grocery store in 2020 when it was death, death, death and office politics.

The past is playing peekaboo with us, ducking behind exquisitely manicured hedges in Los Angeles and the Hamptons, places I've been but never behind the gates.

The past is coy, existential hide and seek.

And the regrets of my elders soak into my bloodstream like Aunt Louise's lidocaine patches those last years.  Every day a needle slits through fabric, another stitch nailed in, stitching you into your bed.

New Sweetness

I can live and be sad now and usually, I don't drink my coffee black,

tinkering with milk and sugar like I love myself.

The way they work me to the bone for the legal least

feels personal.

I take it personal that humanity is this cruel.

On days off we take advantage of the possibility of laziness

trying it on like we can afford to live like this, an impossibly soft fur coat in a department store dressing room.

Alone in the bed the cool sheets comfort and smooth my working city body,

ironing wrinkles out of a button down shirt.

(We were once little dreaming of sleeping on clouds,

knowing it was possible).

My bones yell at me and I yell back, a child on a step stool, fists balled.

They creak like clattery day of the dead skeletons and I don’t wanna hear it.

I spray strangers counters with a spray that smells like margaritas

and they follow me around, spinning words around my head.

They ask my opinion so they can practice their rebuttal skills on someone who doesn't matter.

Some days are like floating,

sometimes everyday words seem to turn into love songs.

Some days my body is so tired the piles of garbage on the sidewalk look like a good enough place to rest for a minute.

My insides are gray and the horizon is closing in

until all I can see is a slit of light, a gun's laser beam.

Spitting up on light

and inhaling office dust,

the ocean is real but it’s dirty and a daydream away.