-
The Most Beautiful Woman I Have Known.
I went for a walk today.
It was the first time I had managed to escape the confines of my room in 48 hours since the surgury. I needed to escape the aniseptic air I had been breathing. It was sunset and beautiful like I had never known my neighborhood to be. There is a certain, subtle fragrance that accents the opening notes of a summer night - there is birch bark and chlorine and questions that remain.
As I walked along the concrete path, past the creek and the willow trees I had always loved so dearly, a snake stormed it’s way across my path. I was startled for a moment until I realized this was the first life I had seen in two days. That was enough for me to love that snake. That creepy creepy garter snake that I had, at first, wanted to smash with a shovel meant something silly and stupid and big.
As I continued to walk through a grove of aspen trees on the banks of the creek, I found a tree stump - freshly cut. There had been a tree here two days ago. It was understandable though, it’s death. There were cracks and gnashes in the concrete along the banks - the roots had grown to zealous. The tree had dreamed to big and someone had to end it before it ended up on a house in some July thunderstorm. Trying to feel the stable edges with my calloused toes, I climbed on to the tree stump, a slight rush of vertigo - the anesthetic was not quite out of my system yet.
I climbed down, stumbling, stuttering.
I continued my promenade, wandering now, through and old farm neighborhood. There was little to see over the intermittent small house and field of wheat. I slowed down- I could feel my heart beat in my cheeks. As I slowed down, I was passing a small house. Simple and plain; built in the manner houses were built when houses still mattered. It was tiny and perfect - with a blue door, screenless windows, and shutters that swung slightly in the evening breeze.
The window closest to the road on the bottom floor revealed a classic farmer - old and gruff- watching the news in his lay-z-boy as the hound lay at his feet. There were three empty bottles of Coors on the table next to him and one, half full in his right hand. The CNN ticker danced across his face in the fading June night. He was cute. Cute in the quaint way old men always seem to be - like we’ve expected them to live some life we could never imagine and know things we never could.
As my eyes wandered away from the old man, to the trellis of ivy and some pale primrose, to the upper window, I noticed an old woman. Probably the old man’s wife. She stood in the window, looking out at the world, at the sunset, at the swallows dipping in her field. She was wrinkled as expected, not striking in any way. She had no rouge, no red lips, no bright eyes. She was just a woman. She stood in the window just looking. Her entire front was completely bare, her breasts just hanging there as if they had always done so, lump sums. Her skin was tanned slightly and her hands quaked. A pair of diamond earrings hung along the contours of her neck. She reached with frail fingers for her white hair, pulling the misty strands of white through her brush. The skin of her bare shoulders culminating as she reached the edges of her hair.
I blushed. I should have turned away. There’s a little thing called privacy and I was not practicing it. Had I learned nothing?
She looked at me. At my makeup-less face, at my fatigue. She smiled. She looked me in the face and simply said “Lovely night, no?” The pinprick of some accent on her tongue. I just nodded, stupidly and continued my walk. Thinking too hard about all the small things and wishing I had been more properly dressed for such and occasion.
I had just met the most free being in the history of beings. She was the best idea the world had ever had. She was beautiful and effortless and probably on the edge of cancer or Alzheimers or perhaps death itself.
She just wanted to brush her hair and feel the night as it came. I have never felt a night like this.
-
A Story of Five Months that is Far Too Short.
People say life is crazy – believe me I know. If you’d seen everything, you’d understand why I’m stubborn, passionate, why I love pain au chocolate as much as I do. If you had been there- seen us- you just might know what it means to look at someone and truly see them. You might see some wild, flailing passion. You might see piles of regret. You would definitely see the afternoons spent daydreaming about thin wrists and strong shoulders and whispers in the dark.
These are all silly little images I’m weaving you. Silly images with no substance beyond the things I’m sure you remember from those days back in high school in your small town with your pickup truck and too much time.
Time is crazy too. There’s never enough, and when there is, it’s painful because you know eventually it will be famine season and you’ll be drinking rain and breathing dust just to get past the stillness of it all.
If I tell you too much about the things I know, you’ll probably go searching for them. That my dear, is dangerous. Happenstance is far more kind than circumstance and love is not for everyone. I say that solemnly- not everyone can love. Some shouldn’t love. I’m probably one of them that shouldn’t love. I’m feeble and fearful and sheltered and selfish and I can’t imagine the way he looks at me.
There are things I wish I could ask him - “Are my eyes capable of setting your chest on fire as yours do mine? Do your fingers tremble over my spine too? Do you smell the want, heavy in the air, as I do?”
There are more things I wish I could tell him – “I love your cheeks I love your wrists I love your tongue I love your words I love your plans I love your adoration. Darling, I love the way your palms feel on my thighs, the way your fingerprints feel on my hips. I love the way you say “hello” and I dread each of your goodbyes.” But beyond these heavy things, I have no words for the film that floats across on cocoa evenings – there is a certain, subtle sweetness in his skin.
I cannot say, in all my romancing, from the line of men I’d rather forget, that there had come any good. I can say, however, that upon shifting tides, he made his entrance dramatically into my life. There was a quick crush, a falling for, months of folly and the serendipitous decision to proceed. And yet, somewhere amongst all of that, there was discovered not a moment, but a condensation – there has been, and I pray to god, always will be, a look in his eyes and a scent in his shirt and the strength in his arms that allowed me to breathe freely for the first time.
We met in that parking lot too many times. There’s no romance there- there’s asphalt and reckless teenaged drivers and something left behind.
The first time, things felt so utterly right. We were together, he and I, and that was all that was necessary. That, still, gives me hope. The sudden warmth around my waist. Even if we blanketed three months in lies and caution tape and red Xs, there is hope in what that meant.
The last time, there was nothing right about it. It was unexpected and frightening and I’m still pretty sure I chose the wrong words. But you believed in things that last – and you wrote it down. I read that journal every night because most nights it’s the only hopeful thing I have left.
That parking lot should probably mean something, but it doesn’t. Starbucks does. And Taco Bell. And every other place we adventured just so I could be removed from the things I was hiding from.
I still don’t know what I was running from.
In retrospect, things are still as scary as they once were – I still lie and hide and cry about the things I wish we were. And yet, I love him more for every tear I’ve shed over him. I know he does the same.
I love him for late night calls and early morning texts and the letter he wrote me on Valentine’s day.
Dear god he is so perfect.
I want to read the things I feel, and tell him in his native tongue. But I am weak and my words are dry and useless for now. By the time I finish Abbatoir 5, we’ll probably be married, but even if the words don’t make sense, he does.
And sometimes he is the only thing.
-
On Recklessness and Lifestyles I Don’t Understand.
I am guilty.
I have been there-
all the places I promised you
my toes would never kiss.I am shallow-
I am puddle
and cheek-kiss
and frozen dinner.I wait to be seasoned-
pink-salt summers.The dishes need a’ washing.
Rinse the blood from my blue river wrists.
Shake it off
shake it off.We keep moving-
hollow veined,
trembling tough-Like sugar cube
and bubble gum
and quick exhausted
energy.We live for lack of sleep.
In the mornings
there are pictures that form
in the rings of violets
that grow under eyes-Picture books of
nights I can’t remember.(Awfully Grimm.)
“I guess,”
she said,
“That’s what it means to walk with circumstance.”But I look back with no recompense -
only shoulder-weight
and a single bead of sweat-regret
dripping down the hollow guilt
of a cheek.This is what has become of all of us.
-
Refrigerator.
You
You
You
are reddish-fresh.Burn my hunger-lust
with honey
and bake it
until black.
Glazed over with simple
sweetness
for which I have no
name.Stir your tea.
Steep it slowly.
Let it gather all the feelings
and let it burn as it goes down
the smooth of your
pink throat.
Don’t choke
cough
sputter.
Drink me up for breakfast
and I will gulp down afternoons
with nothing but steam-
heat-
the stickiness of June under
berry vines
and sweaty brows.
I’ve lost sight of colour these days.
Fear is folly and
evening is soft
“coo”s
You are my lovelight.
Love, our wooden window pane
and spine can kiss the green of grass
and remember form.
Circumstance is heavy
and my kisses are like
aniseed.
I have learned things this year past.
I
I
I
am vert fonce
and I wish I knew what that meant
Someday, perhaps.For now,
I am summer breeze
and flannel shirt
and pen and ink and paper. -
Deriving Inspiration
When you love me,
there are words to write-I have eloquence and
passion and
adjective
over for dinner
and we chortle
and discuss tomorrows
over dishes of
sweet flan and strawberry custard.When you are miles away,
across oceans,
I have things to say.I meet loneliness
like an old friend
in empty coffee shops
and he lends me his coat and
we sit on park benches
in the somber stillness of want.
My cheeks are flushed
and he knows so well-
a heart that is swollen
and a soul that is heavy.When you are here,
and I am gone-my eyes sent to other faces
another nose,
another brow,upper lips still quivering
wondering at what point
in all this formality
it is
appropriate
to canyon-glide
to mineThen, then words are easy-
because I am confused
and so is the world.
in that night, grey areas-
those lacy underbellies of truism and platitude
are so much cleaner.Then, then I must not
fight my tounge
or restrain my fingers
to know where my place is.For where with you,
so are my words -
semantics my only hope of finality-
and thus I will forever fall subject
at your side
on the brim of sleep
to feel your heartbeat
(iambic pentameter)
like syllables in my
cheekbones. -
Thinking back to when things were as we like to remember them…
I’d like to ask you,
(if I may)
what was going through your head
when you let your lips
so purposefully
grasp for mine.I have known what it is to fumble
blindly through all this
“romantic business”
and I have known
touch and tremble and thick.But with you,
never.You were trepidation
hanging
over European balconies like some
incessant ivy -
looking into my eyes as if they were the Seine
and whispering “je t’aime” because it was always
heavier than “I love you”And good God -
the bruises on my hips
were a trademark
of a good lunch break,
and the static in my hair
reminded everyone
what they were missing.
I learned alot from you-
that everything is better with sugar
probably being the most important.No.
That’s a lie;
you spoke with more eloquence than that-
brought more truth than a billion bibles,
than a million mothers
than the infinite sky-You taught me that there is
an absurd,
irreconcilable devotion
that doesn’t mean anything, really
because we lay it in clover beds
and call it folly
and wait for it to be trampled by summer’s heat
but the only heat I remember
is the heat of your open palm
on the smallness of my spine
and the fresh of your breath
in the space behind my ear
where the sounds
spin webs and make little homes
so that I can remember
the Thursday afternoon
when you promised to remember.Well now.
Do you? -
Teach me to love.
Boldly,
bare chested,
breathlessly.
Feel the plush of my stomach and forget
that words ever
meant so
much.Could you remind me
what it feels like to
breathe
the air that comes in April
or to feel the thunder coming
in your knees?I seem to have misplaced my sensibility.
I read the newspaper on Wednesday nights,
and eat nothing but chocolate for dinner.
Then I weep.Not because I’m sad-
but because now I know you are.And I worry that circumstance
will start to get pompous
and chase away all the good things
and all the places we could have been
will become just names
on a map of a state I never knew.Is it wrong?
Wrong that every time I drive in the rain
I think of you?
It reminds me of
Valentine’s day.
And I don’t think there are any words
that could express
just how perfect
you made my life in that moment-
Even though I was
failing math and
fighting mom and
completely wrong in every sense of the word-
you understoodsometimes, forgetting about everything else
is okay. And
sometimes, doing the wrong thing
for the right reasons
is better than pretending it would
never be.And I’m still not sure
if the way I felt was
something I should consider
and try to grasp.Those feelings were like humidity-
sticky and strange
and they engulfed my lungs
and my skin stayed soft
and I curled my hair every day-
Just for you.I don’t know if I could grasp it even
if I tried.I need things to solidify first.
And yes, I am well aware-
that makes me a terrible lover,
one hell of a puzzle.But just imagine it
as it was-
with breath
and sunlight breaking through blinds
and the Black Keys moaning
(as I was)
and just this terrible feeling-
knowing there
was something
there. -
{ 24 april 2012 }
Bukowski said “let it enfold you” and this morning I did. Passively. Complacently. I let morning in - it never knocked. I spent a better part of my waking moments fumbling blindly with the curtain, trying to close it - the salmon sky thrusting it’s way through the glass of the window, resistant to chiding. I feel so insufficient on mornings like this - I peel my eyes open to a world that words cannot describe as my feet are slow and my hair is knotted and my pulse is in my belly - the world is out there. I never leave, really. I just go places. But the world is out there.
I like to think that each day begins full of promise. I haven’t yet decided if that means I’m getting better or I’ve given up.
Today Amy posed some heavy questions - we questioned God together. No significance in mentioning it, I don’t have any conclusions. It’s difficult to make conclusions when words are insufficient.
We read Tim O’Brien in English today; “On the Rainy River”. I think it’s nice that humanity’s ability to fictionalize- to condense into metaphor- the biggest, happiest most difficult things, if nothing else, says something significant about the way we feel. Not that we all feel the same, or that we should feel one way or another. I like words like Tim’s because they remind me that we feel.
People feel things. I like that almost as much as I like cherry coke and leather-bound books.
I think I’m beginning to understand how all this works. I’ve been very sad- I’ve cried myself to sleep and taken pills and gone for long runs in the foothills and lied to everybody and once I even tried to kiss the pain away but only now do I realize what sadness is. I’ve never been sad because the feelings wouldn’t come or because my heart was empty or because I was numb, cold. Sadness is what happens when your heart gets so full you don’t know what to do with yourself.
I’ve been sad because the world is such a beautiful place and every word I read fills my belly with fire and nothing tastes as sweet as red licorice and photographs know the precise blues for the lake and Dad bought me tea even though I was a wreck.
So today, I’ll go somewhere - work probably. Maybe buy myself some cherry coke on the way. I think I’ll be happy now.
No.
I’m happy now.
And as long as there are old pianos, and books to read, and friends who aren’t afraid to question, I think I might just stay that way.
-
The Sunrise
is far too pretty.
I am ill prepared for this-
feigning sleep instead. -
{ 22 a p r i l 2012 }
When mother came in this morning with two bottles of Dayquil I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to get drunk off them or go to church. I chose God this time, but next time I am not so sure of.
After sermons and air conditioning and carpeted walls, I sat out in the sun, read Bukowski, dreamed of Africa, let the sun shove me into sleep. I burned. That’s what gingers do. We burn up in the sun, in the rain, in the night when I think about the way your hands felt on my hips.
I have recently discovered a particular fondness for pronouns, especially for “you”. In coming years I may forget what “you” really means, but for now I am content to believe one day “you” may amount to a “we” or an “us”, but “he” is probably more proper, circumstantially.
I write alot of words, I think, but I often wonder how much I am really saying. Do you read these words? Does he read these words? I am content not knowing for now. Its easier to pretend the world has things to sell to me. Like a big ice cream truck. But instead of Drumsticks and Klondike bars, contentment or forgiveness. I don’t know. I’m being silly now - lazy metaphors.
I have a family, and today we drove to the park to eat cold chicken so mother could tell me for the upteenth time how her family would do that on Sunday evenings and they were poor and her dad never had a job but loved basketball and she once got all her Halloween candy stolen when she was twelve and dressed like Wonder Woman and she was afraid the wasps were overbearing in the recent heat wave we’d begun to experience and we should use our hands to flick them back from whence they came but still say a prayer on potato salad.
The good news, then. I can tell you that I like things now. I like dry grass and I like clear sky and I like angry music and I like new books and I like fake gems and I like ice cubes and pizza crusts. I like to spend a lot of time thinking about just how much I like things and I don’t even need a conclusion. Which is probably, the best part. Because I don’t have to make anything of it - I don’t have any reason to be happy, but I accept that I am and I wake up and say to myself,
“You may not like yourself but all the world is going to smile at you today, so you sure as hell better smile back.”
And now, after Nyquil and too many popsicles, I pray to the gods of algebra for some amount of goodwill - or at least to be too sick to leave my bed and face them.
