from the forthcoming collection…
There Goes My Brain Again
It’s the morning of death.
For one daisy, at least.
It may also be true for Theodore Thundertucker.
He’s waiting for the one that has him all poetic and smitten. He’s trying to build up his confidence to tell her how he feels. Theodore realizes it may be too early to be so honest, but his emotions are acting like prosecco bubbles primed to pop under the pressure of purity. He expects to see her walking across the field in a matter of moments.
Theodore is holding a daisy and twisting its stem. He’s letting it become a propeller to lift the fragrance up to his nose. He’s contemplating why words matter. Not all the words, but why some words are grand slams, and others are infield grounders. He’s also wondering if daisies are born knowing if they have an odd or even number of petals. He’s thinking about Penelope P. Proust. Her middle name is Presumptuous. Since Theodore Thundertucker was born without one, he wonders that if they get married one day, he could take hers.
Theodore plucks, “She loves me.
She loves me not.
She loves me.
She loves me not.
She loves…”
He further thinks that if you have to find out if someone loves you by dismembering a symbol of beauty, you probably already have the answer. If a daisy could speak, it would say …loves me NOT after each pluck—unless it turns out that all daisies are masochists.
Theodore is thinking about nonsense because he’s really nervous about telling Penelope how he feels about her. So, he keeps on plucking. Maybe if he finds a daisy with an infinite number of petals, he can keep his anxiety in this state of purgatory forever.
Then he’d know that the outcomes that waver between affirmation and rejection would flatten out over time. But a life without courage is also without heart. It has no pulse. It flatlines ahead of schedule.
Theodore starts plucking procrastinating again.
“She loves me!
She loves me not.
She loves me!
She loves me not.
She loves…”
Daisies are the only thing he can think of that aren’t counted using numerals. This is a binary system that symbolizes the intensity and brevity of life when it is most vulnerable—and it symbolizes the passivity and finality of death. It isn’t 0 and 1; it’s Heaven and Hell.
With few petals remaining, Theodore plucks again, “She loves me.
She loves me not.
She—“
She, Penelope, puts her hand on Theodore’s shoulder, which gently stuns him out of his daze. He scrambles to hide the daisy in his pocket. He looks at her face and creates a portrait with the paintbrushes in his brain. Theodore’s heart offers to help, climbing up the brainstem with a frame, a hammer, and a nail.
Theodore needed to picture the possibility of her image in the gallery of his mind. Now he knows he will finally tell Penelope how he feels.
[Go on, Theodore. Ride the lightning!]
“Good morning, oh princess of the prairie!”
Penelope smiles out of both sincerity and embarrassment. “Good morning, oh prince of the pasture.”
“You look like you’re glowing.”
She says, “You should see me in the afternoon.”
“I should.” Theodore is wondering where she is going with this.
Penelope says, “It’s because that’s when we glow the most.”
“Do you mean the golden hour?”
“I’m sure that wouldn’t hurt, but no. You said I looked like I was glowing, not that I was bathing in kind rays of sunshine. There’s a difference.”
Theodore asks, “Would you mind shedding some light on those differences?”
“Humans glow… in the dark. It’s been scientifically proven. But it’s imperceptible to us.”
Theodore kids back. “Apparently, not to me. I noticed. I must defy science!”
“That’s a nice try, but we are not in the dark.”
Theodore believes he is in the dark, as far as knowing how things are about to play out. She continues, “You, my dear, defy logic.”
“That might be one of my favorite compliments I’ve ever gotten.”
Penelope stands her ground with a feigned smugness. “Don’t be too proud. What I mean is, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Quite true. But I know what I’m thinking about. It’s the in between part that I struggle with.”
“I already knew that!”
Theodore hangs his head. “Thank you for agreeing so quickly.”
Penelope bows, “You’re welcome.”
Theodore’s inner monologue exits through his voice box. “This has begun exactly the way I planned.” He facepalms, even though his hands are still sheltered in his pockets. “Do you want to sit down?”
“Yes, immediately. I have no time in my life for standing.”
Theodore Thundertucker and Penelope P. Proust take a seat next to each other upon a picnic table. Their feet recline on a bench below. Now that they’re more relaxed, their names can shed a syllable.
Theodore will go by Theo; Penelope will go by Penny.
Penny rests her head on Theo’s shoulder. As we know, Theo is nervous. He’s not cold, but his teeth are chattering. Penny feels his anxious vibrations against her jaw, which also causes her teeth to chatter. It’s nearly eighty degrees out. Summer is about to be on its way, but the season doesn’t appreciate being shown the door in the sky so soon.
Theo uses his fingers to comb away a few strands of her hair from his chin, each a different shade of autumn. Before they all fall, Penny pulls her hair into a twisty ponytail.
She asks him, “Now, what is it, Theo?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He pauses and tries to imagine how many petals were remaining on the daisy in his pocket. But since she surprised him by coming from the other side of the field, he doesn’t have that picture in his head. He only knows that the last phrase he spoke was not encouraging; it ended with “not.” Theo considers the odds. They’re still, and always will be, at fifty-fifty. “Well, I know you don’t like that I say it so often, but you look beautiful.”
Penny tucks her face into Theo’s chest. Penny’s head looks like it landed on tails—or perhaps, on ponytails.
He continues, “I know I shouldn’t have started out so honestly.”
Penny raises her head, and then an eyebrow. “Oh stop it, silly boy.” She looks into his eyes, a whiplash of eyelashes apart. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
Theo says, “I think it’s way too early to say the three most dangerous words in the entire dangerous world.”
“Do you mean… ‘I’ll kill you?’”
Theo smiles, “No, but it might be on the other side of that coin.”
Penny thinks for a moment. “Ummm, the three most dangerous words… how about… sixth specific isthmus? Those are pretty rough.”
“Definitely dangerous for the lispy. But, no.”
She holds her gaze. “Wispy lips do whisper in hollow sips.”
Theo says, “I think lisps have to do with more of a tongue thing.”
“True. Fine. So you’re not trying to say either of those things…”
Theo says, “No. I’m trying to tell you something about how I feel. But since it’s dangerous, you’ll have to take me at my word—“
Penny interrupts, “—you mean take you at your three words.”
Theo shakes his head. “Touché.”
Penny raises his retort, “Three-ché.”
Theo shakes his head off his shoulders.
Penny picks Theo’s head off the ground and glues it back to his neck. “Papier-mâché!”
Theo checks the seams and tries to continue. “How about we change the subject, and I’ll just tell you about the things I care about?”
“Ok. I’ll tell my tongue to sit still.”
Theo says, “I’ll believe it when I don’t hear it.”
Penny shines a wordless and minted smile.
Theo is shocked by her silence. “Impressive!”
She leaves her lips buttoned, zippered, and clasped.
“These are a few of my favorite things.” Theo preemptively clears his throat of all amphibians before letting his words leap from his mouth. He looks into her eyes and speaks solemnly. “I… love… YOUlysses S. Grant. I love YOUlysses by James Joyce. I love YOUthful curiosity. I love YOUnicycles. I love YOUnicorns. I love UUUsing long vowel sounds. I love UUUniversities in Utah. I love UUUnions of joy. I love love letters. I love the letter U. But mostly, I love—”
Her tongue jumps up to the roof of her mouth to interrupt the trinity. “—I love U2!”
Reaching for her hands, Theo blushes the color of acceptance.
Penny clarifies, “I mean, I love the band, U2. How presumptuous you are!”
Theo says, “Presumptuous is your middle name.”
Penny avows, “Confirmed, sir.”
“I was going to say, ‘I love… UUUkeleles.”
“Sure you were.”
“Do you want to go to Hawaii with me?”
She points to her heart. “No, I think the weather is warm enough right here.”
He kisses her with his lips pursed, the same shape they would’ve been if he ever said the last ‘you,’ without all of the following nonsense. It counts just the same, perhaps even more.
Penny says, “Don’t focus so much on words. Life is about feelings and unspoken actions.”
Theo takes the pen from inside his head and puts it in his pocket. He swaps it out for the daisy and holds it up by the stem, eclipsing the star in the sky. What’s left of it is the disc in the center, a little yellow sun, the golden wheel of Theo’s hope, with one spoke of a cloud attached on the right. Then he plucks the last petal in honor of his mettle.
Penny kisses him three times, as if knocking on the door to his heart.
Theo welcomes her inside and keeps the trinity of flammable words on a bookshelf next to the fireplace.
Dedicated to Storm
1.17.23