I work in a false-eyelash manufacturing plant in Poughkeepsie, New York.
The eyelashes we make are called Flutters.
I'm in the hazmat compliance division.
I also work the company's drive-through window every Friday when we serve barbecue.
It's a living, as they say. Or used to say.
"It's a Living" is the name of an old TV show.
Probably the name of a song, too.
Flutters might be a good name for a song.
Flutters "flit like beautiful butterfly kisses and nestle in with your make-up free, natural look," according to a print magazine ad the marketing department whipped up.
I'm not sure I know what natural means.
Or beautiful.
Not since I've been working here.
But I think I know what it is to believe in these things. Or, at least, I know what it is to believe.
I believe in the moon, like when you can’t see it, it’s a light you see, and you want to take a picture of it, this moon, this little light, but whatever picture you take, it won’t look anything like what you see, so you don’t take the picture. You sit beneath the light instead, that little moonlight, and while you’re sitting, you wonder where she might be at that hour. What she might be thinking about under that light.
I believe in the river, the one that rolls, the one that laps, the kind that takes you somewhere, or could. How beautiful it is. That kind of could.
I believe in the forest, the one you see when you see the forest and the trees, the kind of forest that conceals and reveals, like a moonlit city. One that frees up memory and helps you find an open field. Or another forest.
I believe in identity, how it can grab you something fierce yet clutch so gently, even when (especially when) you thought you knew. How that clutching can come calling without warning or wishbones. A self without wishbones! The beauty in that.
I believe in trust, like when you’ve got a map and you lose count of the number of ways it can be folded. Or lose track of the sad-eyed salamander you think might need you. Or lose not faith not hope not heart but touch with the only one who ever saw you nearly get it right. And then there she is, in an open field, in natural light, while a river rolls in a rhythm all its own.
I believe in love, no matter the moon, wherever the light, however it's folded.
I'm not sure I know for sure what any of these things mean.
Or what's natural, or beautiful. Or false. Or true.
But I believe I might know.
Just like I might know the words to a song called "Flutters," if there were such a song. And there might be.
That might is enough for me.
That might, that belief, is me, batting my lashes, giving butterfly kisses. Blink after beautiful blink.
Flutters (an excerpt from the anthology “What We Believe: North American Workers Speak to the Sky, the Way Soap Star and Pop Singer Rick Springfield Did About the Nature of Things, or Maybe He Was Speaking to the Sky About the Little Light That is the Moon”)
Pat Foran believes, and doesn’t believe. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tahoma Literary Review, Moon Park Review, Milk Candy Review and elsewhere. Find him at http://neutralspaces.co/your_patforan/ and on Twitter at @pdforan.