one unheard message

I stopped finding dimes.
Dimes. Ten-cent pieces. Smallest of the silver doubloons. Elusive, sometimes.
I had had a glut of them.
All over the place.

I swear one even fell out of the sky. "cross my heart and hope to...."

This is why I'm in Minnesota. Or, why I have been here. Cuz now that the dimes have dried up, I figure it's the gods' way of telling me to get outta town. See what I mean? This silliness, diversion, dizziness all started with that first rocket I built. I'm convinced, as I walk along the sidewalk in the rain, that each crack in the sidewalk, the slippery moon in the tree branches, the dimes, my shoes, all hinge together like the ligamentous joint of a clam shell.
"Am I slightly off?" I whisper to myself.

[if i'm even THINKING of trying this NaNoBlogMo thang http://nanoblogmo.blogspot.com]

My niece and I had rocket-building day. I was unable to escape it. My adult glue-sniffing lecture aside, I introduced her with my 14-year-old's enthusiasm to the endeavor. We constructed a simple beginner rocket with a parachute recovery. Waited patiently for the 24-hour glue drying to complete. She painted the body canary-yellow and the balsa-wood parts- nosecone and fins-- passion-flower purple. Then I showed her how to sand the imperfect joints in the launch pad's rod to even out the trip the rocket would take before it was free of the pad. We loaded batteries into the electronic launch remote, picked the perfect spot in the middle school's soccer field, connected the launch clips to the engine fuse wires and laid down on the grass close to the remote control ready to sizzle and slice a purple-tinged wormhole through the still air.

She was a natural, my niece, her knees and ankles and pink sneakers kicking aside the humpy, humid air in a run across the field to catch the odd jetsam falling smooth on a full orange and white chute. Jesus. God-help-her, but it was exciting, to touch it that had touched clouds and comet-dust and ancient sediment of atmospheres.

That was it, though. A few more launches to use up the few engines.
She went home and drew a picture of she and I in the field for my refrigerator.
She sat the rocket on her bed-side table. Up close, it now had a sharp, bitter scent of burned fuel.