burning heart

turtles and skinks and panthers

May 16, 2025

THE LITTLE STORY THAT MENTIONS A BLUE TAILED SKINK

I don’t know if that’s what it actually is. But that’s what I call it. Because it’s a lizard that’s black. With blue stripes that are iridescent, and shimmer in the sun.

It is mid spring, and the golden light at the end of the day is lasting longer and longer. Tonight it has cast all of the neighborhood in a spectacular glow. I close the composition notebook I am holding, and lay it on my lap. I see her notice me and I wave. “Did you see that sunset?” I call out. “It was glorious.”

She lives two doors down. She is attractive, late twenties, light brown hair. She is carrying a bag of groceries up the steps to her side door.

“No,” she says. And then she asks me what I’m doing.

“I was watching it, and writing a story,” I tell her, “but now I’m just sitting here.”

“That’s not your yard,” she says.

“I know,” I tell her. “But the people that live here gave me permission to sit in their yard any time I want to, even if they’re not here.” The view is different from their yard.

“They love you,” she tells me.

“I’m glad,” I say, “I love them too.”

I extend an invitation, and she puts her groceries away, and comes over and joins me. She has brought with her a blanket and a bottle of wine and two plastic cups.

She has a pet tortoise. It’s smaller than you might think. She thought she was buying one of those big ones. This one fits in the palm of her hand, and has long legs. She lets him “run” through the grass. He is fast for a turtle. She corrects you if you call him a turtle.

The owners of the house come home and see us out in their yard, and they come out too. They are drinking Coronas, and it’s like we’re having a picnic. We are all fascinated by the miniature tortoise. One of them asks if they can hold him, and they sigh about how precious he is. “We all like teeny things on this block,” she says, which makes me smile, and I glance over my shoulder to see if he’s coming.

Whenever he sees me, he instantly freezes, and looks at me. Then suddenly, like a starter pistol has been fired, he breaks out in a full on sprint towards me. Literally racing as fast as he can, almost on the verge of toppling over. Never slowing down. Like he’s scared I’ll leave before he gets to me. Or that there’s no time to waste. Like every second faster he can be, is an extra second that we’ll get to spend together.

That’s how I was as a kid.

Ebullient. Exuberant with my joy.

That cartoon Robin Hood movie. Where Robin is a fox and Little John a bear. The song they sing about running through the forest, and laughing back and forth at what the other one had to say.

Catching crayfish and salamanders. Building forts in the woods, and jumps on the street, for your bike. Sleepovers at your best friend’s house in the first grade.

When every day was the best day, and you were excited to go to bed at night because you couldn’t wait to wake up and see what good things might happen the next day.

I’d forgotten there was ever a “me” that was that way. It’d been so long since I’d felt like that.

My whole adult life has been just holding on. Until the next really great thing comes along that will make me feel alive. For a little while. Grabbing onto that for as long as I can. Hoping that one of the times when I grab it, that it’ll last. I’ve never been “just happy.” I fight so fucking hard for happiness; since I was sixteen.

I feel like that Robin Hood song every morning now. Excited to get out of bed and open the front door and let that weird little cat in if he’s there. He is always there. He comes in and we lay on the floor for a few minutes, and he just rubs his face on my goatee, over and over. And I laugh. I cry sometimes thinking about how beautiful it is to be able to feel like this again; when for the past twenty five years I’ve just accepted that maybe it wasn’t possible. That maybe those bursts of happiness were all that it ever could be anymore. I tried so hard to make those bursts worth it.

Sometimes after I’m thinking about him really hard, and I come out of my trance, I look up, and he’s right there. Just appeared out of nowhere. Like magic. I like it when that happens. But he isn’t there tonight. He might already be in for the night. This turtle would really blow his mind, I say, and everyone laughs. A Corona is offered to me and I take it. It is cold; and has that Corona taste. There are no limes.

Me and the couple with the Coronas have been neighbors for two years. For the first year and a half we never spoke to each other. We waved a few times but that was it. Now they text me pictures of the sunset and clouds if they see good ones and I’m not outside. Now we have happy hour on their back deck some evenings, where we drink, and have snacks, and take turns reading each other our favorite poems out loud.

The first time we ever talked was about him.

I’d just woken up from an afternoon nap, and was heading out back to see if he was there. They were planting flowers, on the other side of the waist high chain link fence that separates our front yards. Standing up and brushing off their pants, “We saw your cat out here looking for you earlier,” they said. “He’s so cute.”

“He’s not my cat,” I said. “He’s just decided that he and I are going to be best friends and I said okay.”

“What’s his name?” they asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, “mostly I just call him Little.”

There is a teeny chill in the air. There is one bright star shining directly above us; that, when it fills in, will be the Big Dipper. More will start popping out soon. The tortoise is taking one last run through the grass. I tell it’s mom that her name is in the title of one of my favorite Chris Wall songs. She looks up the song on her phone, and saves it for later. She asks me what the story I’m writing is about.

“It’s kind of about blue tailed skinks,” I say.

“I don’t know what that is,” she says.

“Basically just a lizard,” I tell her.

Peeking out of the folds of a crumpled blue tarp on a sunny day, nestled in a pool of water from the previous night’s rain, a snake head and lizard head are nearly indistinguishable.

The first skink the panther ever caught was on the opening day of lawn game season. He deposited it right in the middle of the Kubb court, in between Dave and Bill and I. I screamed a little bit.

I never knew what it was that he’d been trying to catch for so long. I’d just see him pouncing around. And determined.

I tried to shoo him away, so that I could get the skink off to somewhere safe. Bill and Dave said there probably wasn’t any use to that. It was too late for that, they said.

I wish I’d congratulated him instead of yelling; he was so proud. I’d hate it if I squashed his spirit at all.

Hurray! I finally caught one! the panther said to himself. I can’t wait to show that boy.

The panther trotted to the backyard, the slimy thing dangling from his mouth. It felt different than he thought it would. But he didn’t dare let go.

Look! I got one! the panther proclaimed excitedly, as he dropped it in front of the boy. The boy yelled a little, which confused him. Perhaps he thinks it’s a snake, the panther said. Snakes ARE disgusting.

I’ll try to catch him one of those black and yellow things that are always buzzing around and tormenting me, the panther thought to himself. And he pranced over to the patch of purple flowers where they frequently hovered. Next to the crumpled up blue tarp. That collects little pools of water every time it rains.