DRAGONFLIES

Behind the laughing house, the path is a sudden steep slide to the riverbank, and there are no stones along the path. Young ladies don’t go to the river unchaperoned. Once, a young lady slid down the steep path and into the water. When she returned, her hair was a nest of mud and blue baby dragonflies. She tittered constantly, and touched her puckered lips with the tips of her wet fingers. She couldn’t speak otherwise, fevered and whirring as she was. She stroked her throat and flicked her hair. She pulled open her thin blouse, and exposed her tiny breasts to the village boys. The handsome man in the laughing house stepped outside his door to see the commotion. Old church mothers clucked, “She shouldn’t have been standing so close,” as young boys learned to kick the dirt and crow. The man shook his head at them all. He covered this young lady’s body with his white coat, placed a cold stethoscope against her burning skin, and found inside her heart the thrumming of the river.

 

There’s a mermaid in the river behind the laughing house. She’s the kind of mermaid who grabs at the ankles of young fishermen; the older ones’ legs are too sturdy. She pulls the youngsters into the cool water. She slides her body against theirs. They too, surface, crowned with blue baby dragonflies and the river rushing inside their hearts. The old mothers clutch their rosary beads.

 

The river didn’t used to be this close to the laughing house; one day, the river started to stretch itself wider and wider. The house started to throw stones, and cough up so much dust. Tickled by its own dust, it giggled and it shook. The goats knocked over trees with their hooves and the flat tops of their heads; they fed upon the roots until the trees all withered and the soil gave way underfoot. Even the dragonflies ate grass blades, one by one. The river, the house, the goats, the dragonflies, they did these things much to the old mothers’ dismay, because the mermaid wanted to see the face of the godless, handsome man who lived inside the laughing house.