to the old songs

It’s 1996, and you are the tiny nails keeping this ship together. I am buried in my parents’ house and can’t succumb to the tears because I’m mouthing words about Virginia and La Loma, my friends there, and how I always do what I see. I am thinking the tiniest touch would topple me over, but it’s not true because you are there. You are giving a rhythm and rhyme to every chord life seems to drop. It’s 1996, or maybe it’s 1999, or 2001, and I am alone and coming apart, singing “15 miles east, where you should be, no one’s around.”

You were those tested nails, but I see now that you were also the battering waves- turbulent and violent, but rhythmic, and coming in predictable intervals. My boards came apart to the waltzy one, two, three, one, two, three of “watch the pretty ones go, in their fancy clothes, and it’s been decided that I won’t go out dancing.” They came apart so beautifully I couldn’t help but sing along. Every rise rose just enough, every trough sunk just deep enough. When the thunder grumbled long and low, all I heard was a saddened violin stretching out every note before Michael would sing “Look up, what do you see? All of you and all of me,” slowly getting to “I’m lost. Here we go again.” I was lost, but I knew the routine. This is where things go up, this is where they come crashing down. This is where I rip my heart open. This is where I sit and wait for you to come back. I was lost, thinking, “Here we go again.”

You held me together and took me apart, but worst of all you played a trick on me. You made me think a long and a sad goodbye was as long and as sad as it got; that there were only three things in life: being left, leaving, and choosing who was who. It is 2003 and I am standing on the edge of my bed. Shirtless and staring out into the writhing sea, I am whimpering, in all sincerity, that all I ever wanted was to sing the saddest song, and if you would sing along I would be happy now. You sang me to sleep that night, whispering something vague about how accurate my view is.

You played a trick on me and you brought me here, to this stability, to this calm and passive sea. If the only waves ever come from being left or from leaving, what happens when the last, last one has left, and there is nobody to leave? If the only thing that tosses you around as you try to sleep is choking on that long and sad goodbye, what happens when it is finally coughed out? What happens? Well, the wide skies clear up, the churning subsides and you go back to the ropes, assured and quietly confident. And while, for a time, the water lapping and slapping against the wooden beams is nice, it isn’t long before, somewhere deep down, you start wishing for waves.

It is 2009 and I am standing on the shore, looking out over a pond we used to call an ocean. Fish nip at the surface and ripples trickle out, but other than that, it’s as still as my heart, and almost as shallow. I’m sure somewhere out there, there is a storm. I’m sure there is a yawning swell ready to swamp somebody’s deck, but I can’t see it. I can’t feel it. I’ve only felt one kind of heartache, only known one kind of storm, and once it has passed, there’s nothing left to be overwhelmed by, nothing to be comforted by. I’m sure there is a song out there, with cello bows groaning to break my heart. I’m sure there is a song out there sighing the sweetest words to put me back together. I know those songs, those feelings, are out there, but I can’t hear them and I can’t feel them. No, I can’t feel a thing at all because it’s all smiles and business these days and I’m indifferent to the loss.

above the plains

Thinking of you, visualizing your face here thousands of miles above these patches of farms scribbled across with the swooping line of an aimless river, my heart lies as low and flat as the north Texas plains below. Or maybe it’s Oklahoma, or Missouri, or maybe it doesn’t matter.

It is a crime what I have against you, bringing nothing in response to all you have given, but when I think of you, in the dark, quiet hours, that’s how they remain- dark and quiet. Nothing stirs in me, no light diffuses to fill the room, even the slightest, like the sensation of your eyes adjusting when some one turns on the lights. No couplet looping through my thoughts, no question I can’t help but try and answer, no spark that’s love’s whispered “go.” I closed my eyes and tilted my ear up to the night sky, neck aching, I was listening for it. I was listening. I was.

There is a poet inside of me, a dreamer, or perhaps, more correctly, there is a poem and a dream, written on my heart and etched into my mind so many years ago by God or a girl. And these markings are the landmarks I have navigated by when wandering, when lost, when flying blindly through the clouds, when miles away from anything familiar.

I have no apologies for the selfishness of not wanting to learn to love you, and I can only offer up this stammering, feeble reason: That love is the very essence of falling, that it just takes you and takes you, until one day you open your eyes to find yourself in some country you’ve never been before, but somehow feels like home. And you know it is home.

I wish I didn’t have to learn to love you. I wish I could hold your hand and run my fingers along your arms like you do mine. I wish making you happy was what made me happy. I wish I could want for nothing more than to be in the service of you. I wish saying goodbye did not sound like the right thing to say. I swear I was listening, but I’m not listening anymore.

I don’t hold you like you hold me. When I wake up in the middle of the night to find I’m no longer wrapped around you, I stay just like I am. I hold your hand, but when you hold mine, I can feel the way you press your fingers firmly into my palm exploring it, looking for a lifeline. I used to wonder if these motions meant anything. And maybe they don’t mean anything, but I think they do, so, simply because of that, they do.

But what is more important is the picture I’m painting on that blank, flat canvas thousands of feet below me, or rather the one I’m trying to paint. Because right now there may be an iconic look, an evocative blending of forms or a warm palette of heartfelt colors aching to immerge from these river-framed plains, but right now all I see is an empty square, and all I feel is an empty heart.

to mr. everett and praying for the right things

When I first met your daughter, it did not surprise me to hear she was a Gemini. She is a mix of stoic seriousness and the kind of playful attitude that comes from finding the joy in every day. I learned the seriousness came from her mother, and the joy, from you. I never saw you without your wife, and it always struck me how perfectly matched you two were - without her, I wondered if you would get anything done; without you, I wondered if she would forget to laugh. They seem such common and imprecise word to describe you, but you were, very simply, a good man, and she was lucky to have you and I am thankful to have known you.
Standing in your daughter’s empty living room some years ago, you carried a lamp and asked me about my year. Hands full of the things that clutter a girl’s dorm room, I laughed and groaned and said, half jokingly, that I was just praying to make it through finals. Smiling, eyes closed as we walked outside into the bright summer afternoon, I heard you say to me, but also, I think to the world in general, to make sure I always prayed for the right things. And it made me stop still, and stop smiling. But my eyes opened.
Mr. Everett, when your daughter called me about the cancer months ago, I prayed it would never get a hold of you. I started asking for an extra blessing at church in hopes that it would make what I had to say to God come out a little bit louder or a little bit clearer. And what I had to say seemed so couched in logic to be undeniable. You have lived your life following His will and doing His work. From the church, to your family, to the way you cared for even the acquaintances you only saw when your daughter found a new apartment and needed help with the boxes, you gave yourself freely and it seemed only logical, only fair for Him to give you more time. I prayed your strength would come back to you, and with every update, I prayed against worsening odds and decreasing hope. On Friday, I stopped praying for you.
Mr. Everett, today I realized something – I have been praying for the wrong things again. All the while I had been asking God to give you back your health, I should have been praying that the buoyancy and peace you navigated this world with would, after all these years together, stay with your wife; that your grandsons would inherit your humor and sense of what was right; and that in those last days, when your strength and spirit seemed to be leaving you, that they would migrate their way into the hearts of those who loved you.
Mr. Everett, I am done praying for the wrong things. So instead, here is a prayer not for you, but because of you. I have only a fistful of memories of you, but what they lack in quantity they make up for in impact. You always seemed to make a warm impression on anybody who met you and to have that memory linger on afterwards. Lord, please let the memories of Mr. Everett that we have all collected stay with us and give us the strength to smile, to laugh and to find joy in every day, even the saddest ones. It is what we need most; it is what he did best. Amen.

to robyn and the graveyard that is your house

You live now with your husband a few blocks from my parent’s house. The safety of suburbia called you back from art school in the Northern plains of rural Nebraska where the coldest bitter winds froze solid the anxiousness that came from sleeping directly above a man who did not know what remorse was, and did not know the line between anger and discipline. I heard him once lumbering up the stairs; his heavy steps following after your sister’s light, quick ones. She shut and locked her door. You shut and locked your door. I wondered what I was doing there.
It’s just after Christmas and the boredom of winter break is pulling me around this town, past my old high school and the park I always meant to take you to. I kept a blanket in my trunk for over a month. The pond level rose and sank; sometimes there were people by the wooden bench having lunch. It’s empty now, as is Rose Cottage Lane, as is my heart, as I drive past your parent’s house and say a prayer for all the memories buried unmarked in your front yard - Driving you through the neighborhood in my first car; you ducking down so your other boyfriends didn’t see you; the complicated rules about where and when I could touch you; staring up at the stars to make you jealous, and hungry again for my attention. I still do not know if, when we were play fighting, we were play fighting, or if my forearms and neck were just another one of your canvases where you sketched out your frustrations at me, your dad, or all men in general.
If I look hard enough, if I think hard enough, I can still see the lines you painted on me in raised pink abrasions, each one a summary of being taught the wrong lesson. You were a horrible teacher, and I am still unlearning a year’s worth of your lectures. I still do not know the difference between attraction and acceptance, or the role of self esteem; if love is something you have to earn, the prize awarded after great tests of endurance and determination.
It is wintertime and I am parked in my car on Rose Cottage Lane. I wonder what I am doing here. They told me your parents defaulted on their mortgage and had to move. They told me you cried all this Thanksgiving and started going to therapy. They told me your sister does not even come home for the holidays. I wonder what I am doing here. I will not find any apologies or answers, just a few minutes’ chance to throw small stones at your memory and curse you and your fingernails. This house is a graveyard and there is no use in coming around to bury old ghosts, only to stir up other ones. Kiss your husband goodnight for me. Tell your doctor about how you used to use makeup to hide the bruises on your wrists. I hope time will do what Nebraska’s frigid winds could not. I hope if I ever come here again there will be a new tomb, a mound of fresh dirt piled on top of your resentment and the way cruelty begets cruelty. It can sleep there beside my resignation of any grudges I hold against you. They can sleep there, and at nights, deep in the cold, disinterest earth, the two can whisper stories to one another about the past and the time it takes for forgiveness to actually mean something. And one day, once they get tired of all the nostalgia, they too will stretch out in their beds and wonder just what they are doing here.

what it feels like to get exactly what you wanted

technically, the difference between here and my old home is about 1,300 miles and an hour difference. but you and i know better. how many nights did i keep you up on those humid summer nights, droning on about how weary i was at the end of every day? how many times did i tell you i was tired - tired of being under the wrong demands with the wrong responsibilities, tired of slowly meandering further and further away from the place i wanted to be? eventually all that, too, became exhausting and i was left with all these tiny forces pushing, waiting for something to pull as well and lurch this body forward. i sat alone in the listless darkness of a big city sleeping; i sat there, i tense vibrating ball of kinetic energy and begged, or prayed or maybe just thought aloud for some chance to step outside of each day's draining cyclical pattern. and each day became a little attrition war that i was losing, there were consistent casualties and steadily dropping morale. and then, that afternoon, i got exactly what i wanted. now the humidity is gone; the responsibilities feel like the right ones and when i fall asleep tonight it will not be as an act of acquiescence. when i think about, and i've told you this before, there is a cold front moving in on the area. the loneliness of having left every one behind hangs around just beyond where i can recongize it. it's coming one day, maybe soon, and it will come on with force. but until then, while i still have this cricket chorused night with a chill in the breeze and a few lightening bugs scattered low, while i still have this moment that is so undeniably not what i had before, while i still have this newness, this momentum, this hope, i am so incredibly grateful to be here and so indebted to you i am for listening to me all those humid summer nights.

i know what i'm not because of you

you are a landmark, a sign post, a mile marker on a road i'm taking the next exit off of. and seeing you tonight, the darkness disguising the sticky heat of texas' summers, i remembered every hurried, humid day we spent together. you educated the educated with lessons of perserverance and how to live someone else's reality. you taught me about ___ and ___, but mostly you just made me tired.i met you the first day i moved downtown. you made me dizzy with anticipation and wonder of this new, unpredicatable life beginning. all your friends came around - the well spoken militant, the lonely chicago transplant. vegetarians. i didn't fit in with them, but i tried. i think this was when we first set down our pattern of my capitulation to your rigid ideas of schedule and duty. long before the first time you kept me up all night then drove me weary all the next day, i had a steady record of bending my will to another's. and nothing changed with you. very little every changed with you and by the time that we were supposed to be done, i wanted to be done. more time has past since we were together than we actually spent together, and i have very little left to say here, except maybe this: you made me tired, but not all the memories i have of you are bad ones. i hold closely what memories my fragmented mind can retain, and we shared some precious ones. the flood. sitting on the globe outside the museum. children crying for the right reasons.
you started me down a path i no longer wish to travel. i know what i'm not because of you.
i know what i'm not because of you.

be kind to the new ones.

To Diana

This is the point when I look out across the broad foothills and hold a single thought for hours. The memory of looking down into your dark eyes as they picked up the reflection of the moon above us; your head in my lap, your hand in mine, the little hill below us, the lagoon behind us. That was the point I put my faith in the strength of a look, in the indomitable clarity of the absolute peaceful joy emitting from my face. So happy I couldn’t smile. So ready to believe in anything as impossible as such a light, such a look, lasting long after it should.
This is the point where I know that moment has lasted at least this long. The long low green plains, the silhouettes of the Guadalupe mountain’s foothills miles off, and all I can do is think about you with the moon in her eyes. This is the point when I pray that somewhere on the other side of those ridges, on a long dry road between Tepozan and San Luis, that a moment, a look, has lasted at least this long for you, too.