While the sun is out,
(your distant, skyward cousin)
I see you as you are,
wispy, wavering, hungry and transparent.
Your friends are around, your rocks, your dirt,
they keep you safe, and you keep them warm.
You sizzle and steam, you grow and you wean,
And no one pays you much mind, for the sun is out.
While the sun is setting,
(your envied, storied sister)
I see you saturate your skin.
Your limbs brighten and solidify as you stretch for the smoke.
The smoke turns orange in the tree tops,
painted by the sunset, and revered by the air.
They say the sky is on fire, in phophoresent attire,
And no one pays you much mind, for the sun is setting.
But when the sun is set,
and the guests have left,
I see you as you are to me,
full and opaque, defined against the dark, twisting and dancing.
When you've sunken into somber embers
I’ll crouch by your heart, and breathe life into you,
you’ll roar back to health, writhe and untie yourslelf,
and we’ll sing and singe each other to sleep.
I don’t think I’ll ever find the words to tell,
why I’m crying in the window seat of this eastbound plane.
The mountains over the wing will stand there forever,
I whisper goodbye all the same.
I search in the wrinkled faces of grandfathers in airports
for folds like postcards of folks left behind,
like the girl with the french name from college,
who taught his eyes and knife to be kind.
I bid adieu to the cemetary last night,
crying as I realized I was loved.
Sharp glass on the beach calling, hoping,
for the tide to return to the cove.
Along the way a dog with the aspect of a deer wandered over,
and looked at me as if it knew my face well,
the way I knew her’s from the smell of baked bread,
the way the afternoon sky dropped rain by the pail.
The dog and I were in love, on opposite sides of the fence,
the way headstones on the hillside are in love with their view,
It’s the silent love that comes after a few years,
of lying in the grass and speaking the truth.
A man with a few folds, and a cigarette folded into his hands,
got up from his porch, and took a step towards the dog.
I kept walking towards the cemetary, the tears carving folds into my face that had the aspect of the twisting road.
somewhere behind me the man takes another step towards the dog.
The plane banks, and the mountains are covered by the wing,
We talked long enough for the rain to clear from the sky,
the smell of bread floats after me out the door
like the girl with the french name’s goodbyes.
You were dancing through tomorrow
when I took you out back and shot you,
you and who you wanted to be.
I had been thinking it over for weeks,
how much I would miss you,
and how I planned to forget.
I made it so it would hurt,
how we grew up together
and sang for each other.
I knew everything about you,
and you knew everything about me.
And yet as you knelt next to the hole in the ground,
and the hammer did what it does,
there was no wail I fantasized of and feared.
Instead, in an instant, you became
the buzz-cut warmth of blustery sunlight.
A fraction of a second of a shadow.
And on your clay face lay every transient nightmare,
every reiteration of misplaced conversation,
every unsaid feeling,
every sordid day spent doing a little of everything
and a lot of nothing.
I realized, once you had a few months on me,
and your hair had grown long,
your face more storied and carved,
that I never got your name.
You didn't bother to tell me as you pulled me into
tomorrow’s crowded backyard, and a face we love played low notes,
until I learned how it was you slipped, step after twisted step
through the dancing press whose names I once knew.
The trees have begun singing their saccharine songs to lovers,
and the sky has cast away the clouds from over their heads.
I should like to think that a day like this,
a day drawn with broad strokes cast by the long tar-tinted shadows of early evening,
one day would paint me in a nicer light,
the way the sun through blinds partitions a page of a book whose name I forget.
The day, like the sun, like the moon, like the sky, like the trees,
invites talk opened by warm eyes and closed by a gentle floating downstream.
A bee lands on my table, I tense up. But the bee is beautiful,
it combs pollen from its head and torso, it too has discussed,
albeit with the flowers. I wonder if they are friends,
if they have history, the flower and the bee, as I erase the page again.
I am laughing in the shower. I am laughing in the shower and I wish I could cry.
I am laughing at myself, maybe. It seems like
such a waste to love the scraping of the pollen off my bones.
It seems like such a waste, to offer myself completely,
and get pollen in return, casing the outside of my windpipe,
tightening my neck. I am confused and choking and I am laughing.
Today the sky is filled, with clouds and bees,
and flowers and friends mill about in the grass.
The bee is turning on the table now, looking for more,
and I hope it will fly until one day,
it falls out of the sky, beating its wings which have been worn to nubs,
by the wind, and the sky, and the air, the pollen and more.
And if by chance it lands near a flower
perhaps the flower will bend down, and care,
and talk about love to the bee,
and coat the bee one more time.
When it’s limbs can’t bring themselves to scrape it off
as the bee lays there, after all, how much of a waste it must seem,
the bee might learn to live with it,
and I might stop laughing as I scrape soap into my skin.
I’m not quite sure how I got here. The night is still young I guess, but it's dark outside, the clocks too have fallen back on old habits. As I walk down the street I came because you called me, too drunk to drive. I offered to walk you back. The ecstasy from the night before still rang true in my soul as I skated over. In 7 minutes, I said, my phone might die. I shuffle the playlist I made after it ended and put my phone in my pocket. The cold has not yet turned piercing, just a dull blanket surrounding me, textured like the road as it ground against the flat of my shoe left a slight rubber mark. You took a video of me slowing to a halt. The cold hadn’t even turned cold yet, more of an excuse to wear a hoodie than a requirement. I try to find the video, but it's long been removed from wherever it was. For now, I must simply try to remember what way we had gone. It’s been a long year since we put down the longboard and went. You weren't used to it, so I showed you where to put your feet on the board. It wasn't too hard of an adjustment. I was happy when you took off down the road, and you smiled back at me from the left turn seems sharper now. Maybe it was the rose goggles that made it seem smooth and flowing. The music drowns out the sound of the road that I assume is there. I merge onto the arterial road. A year ago I passed here five hours later than I do now, and the road is not as empty as I remember it, at the bottom of the hill you stood, waiting for me to ride down it. I didn’t go as fast as I wanted to but it’s okay, you still seemed happy to see me arrive. We turned onto the side streets. We took turns riding down the street and coming back, pulling each other along. I held your bag I adjust my bag. It has ridden down my shoulder with the oscillation of the walking pace, I assume. It should only take me another fifteen minutes to get to your house. I remember it was taking so much longer. And that was a good thing. My excuse to leave the house didn't have a time limit, so any moments I could get with you were perfect opportunities to cherish. I think I knew that day would be important, that later I would follow the path in my mind's eye, take the steps I took were small. I didn't have to hurry to keep up, and neither of us wanted to be home anytime soon anyway. The streets were empty. My mind was full. The streets are marked by cars every couple of minutes. I suppose it's a reminder that I’m not alone. It doesn't work. It’s not as fun to walk slowly when you lack your companion. It’s been a year and it still defines me. It’s been a year and I still can’t speak. It’s been a year and it's still the campfire on the frigid peak of Everest, and it's still the tennis courts you would send me pictures of. I reminded you of that. You laughed. We approached our houses. I don't know why I didn't make something up, a reason to keep walking is what I wanted to do. But it would be rude, I thought. And the moon glared disapprovingly and I wished I could take a picture of how I felt. I felt it slipping away, even if I couldn’t tell why. What had I ever done wrong? It’s been a day. And it's been a year and I wait at the base of the street as the tears start to fall. Leaning on the same stone wall that sheltered me from the snow. I am waiting for you. Every couple of minutes I take my phone out and look for any update, but it doesn't come. Every second I sit under this bush-made-awning I accumulate more snow on my brown coat. It feels like the beginning of the ending”, you say, “I feel like something is ending.” “I feel like it’s a new beginning,” I say. I don't believe it. The first time I had seen you in person for the better part of a month and I am done believing the things I say and I’m done believing the things that you say because it happened again, and I waited and you never came and I’m cold and I finally decide to say goodbye and you told me to text you when I got home and I agreed and I looked at you and I wondered if it was all the alcohol and I just hope that it wasn’t and that when I wake up tomorrow you will still be there and I’m watching you walk down the street to your house and I’m watching you walk down the street to your house and I’m laughing but I don't really know why and for a second I’m in a good mood and I remember that you’re walking away and I look down the street and it’s empty and there’s no one there and no one is coming outside you didn't come outside and now I’m cold and I’m crying and I know why and I cant figure out why I’m okay and I’m not and it’s a year later and the street has one less car in the driveway and I don’t know where I’m going. I guess I’m going home and the tears keep falling and the salt keeps dripping and the crunch of the salt meant to break up the ice fills my head with sound other than my thoughts and I hope everything is okay and it's amazing and I thought to myself ‘Life is looking up, don't you think’ and I’m looking at the moon, and it looks the same, at least that's what the song says and my hair is longer and I turn to walk home, and I turned to walk home and I’m walking home and I love you and I love you and I can’t and I’m not sure and there’s one less car in the driveway and I know where it is and I’m happy it's gone and I don't know where I am but I know how I got here and there is one less car in the driveway and it’s pure euphoria and I am in misery and the trees have just blossomed and it's cold and I’m walking home and I get into bed and a year passes.
And yet I am still here, waiting for you to respond to my text that I’m home and I hope it wasn’t just because you were drunk and it's real and the snow is real and cold and I just want to lie in it like a dull blanket and I don't know what to say anymore. And it’s been a year. And I’m cold.
I ask of you, my dear, one thing
I ask you to be a blade of grass,
in a vast, seemingly unending field.
Maybe this is the grass of a park,
or a farm,
or just the soft shell of the hard earth, with no reason to exist other than the fact that it does.
Cast your eyes over the field,
in whatever season you choose.
It may be a barren one, muddy and pockmarked,
it may be a flourishing one, with flowers, wild lilies and poppies,
endless all the same.
It may harbor a person,
lying peacefully (or not) in the tacit ocean.
They lie naked in this field, every little spike of grass supporting, cutting, pinching, massaging.
The person is lying on only a fraction of a fraction of the green planks, it has chosen the ones it is lying on arbitrarily, if at all. They are wholly unremarkable.
I ask you, my dear, to ask of me one thing.
Ask me to be a blade of grass.
How wonderful might it be, to be wholly,
magnificently unremarkable,
to everyone except each other.
“So, what about you?”
My hair was at that awkward length. The first hints of cold were creeping into the summer nights. “So what about me?”
“It’s your turn to talk to someone”
“It’s okay man. I don’t have that much going on.”
He sighed. “You don’t have to talk if you really don’t want to. But seriously, you’ve done enough for me for now. Why don’t you get the same thing?”
“I guess.” We walked a stones toss away, and sat on the sidewalk, our backs up against the not quite jagged wall. “So, what do you… want to talk about? Hear about? I don’t know.”
“Whatever you want. What you've been doing all summer, let’s start there.”
“Well, not much. I guess. I picked up longboarding? I dunno. Smoked a bunch of weed? Walking around the cemetery? Bought a pair of shoes? Not much.” I rubbed my eyes. “Christ, that's depressing. How many summers do we have left here? Two?”
“Well, did you want to do more?”
“I mean, yeah. Didn’t really do a lot to do more though. Maybe next summer. I just don’t feel like people, like, actively, want to hang out with me. Like nobody asks me to do shit. People ask you to do shit right? You have stories, that's what I need.” I sighed. Nobody who doesn’t get invited ever has any stories. Any good ones anyway.
“I put myself in situations where those stories can happen, dude.” Damn right he did. He was a fuck up anyway. I guess I looked at him as a role model for a second. Every time it seemed like he was making a positive change it ended up with some wild side effect. I felt happy when he would tell me he would stop smoking, or drop nicotine, or drop a toxic relationship. I think he knew it made me happy when he would say that, so he said it more than he meant it. I do think he meant it. “I’m not waiting for a good story to come to me. I take the chances I get.”
“Well, there's my problem. I don’t get chances.”
“Oh shut up. You have all the chances in the world, look around.”
“You sound like my mom.” I paused. “If, right now, tomorrow, you died…would you be happy… happy isn't the word, okay?, I guess, with how you have lived your life? Not necessarily the choices you made, or what you have and haven’t done, but how you made those choices? You know what I mean?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“See I couldn't agree less. I feel like I missed a lecture.” A long pause.
“If I asked you to come smoke at two in the morning, you’re at your desk, playing games or whatever, and your phone buzzes, are you coming out?”
“You don't sound like my mom anymore,” I chuckle. “Probably not”
“Well, see, there’s a chance. If, I don’t know, a girl texts you. ‘Come outside, come over.’ You going?”
“In a heartbeat.” That’s what I said. At least I meant it. I wasn’t lying either. I never thought it would happen. But it did, and the next year sucked, and I stopped meaning the things I would say. I only stopped believing them after a while.
My hair is down to my shoulderblades. The smoke mixes with the rain. Once the last embers lick my fingertips, I trudge back to my room. The shower hugs me extra tight tonight, the water’s warmth a moment, a micron closer. Every once in a while, the high crosses paths with a melancholic song. And in that moment, I picture myself, sitting at my desk, listening to this very song, as the camera pans away and out, and the credits roll. I fabricated this moment, in my senior project. The music swelled as I got to the last lines of my script, I talked about that question, on that summer night. I said I could finally answer yes to it. But when I see myself, now, at the end of my own show, and the music playing is melancholia, it's the same question, and evidently it's the same answer.
My hair was a little past that awkward length, tucked underneath my orange beanie. We are walking through the snow. “I feel like you’ll be successful with women in college. You seem like that kind of person.”
I let out not quite a laugh, “Great. Just have to wait another year and a half.” I said it as if I hadn’t already resigned myself to exactly that.
My hair is down to my shoulders. I am walking across the stage, cap and gown and relief and all. I suppose I know that everything will change, on some intellectualized level. It doesn’t feel like anything is changing. It feels like a Friday. I like to think it's always a Friday. I don’t have to do anything for it to change from a Friday to a Saturday, and yet they are very different. I keep hoping the rocks keep becoming unsettled under my feet. I’ll slide down the hill, just a bit, or a lot, and I’ll look back up at where I came and see how much I’ve changed, how much better I am at riding the hill as the boulders shift and settle and erode.
I don’t know how long my hair will be. But I feel like I will look up at where I started. And on the hill will be another person. I can yell at them all I want, and I do. “Time starts moving faster! The time, it starts and it won’t stop.” And the camera will zoom out from my face. What you hear won’t be the words, they fall on deaf ears anyway. They will understand when they are older, and now it's me that sounds like my mom. What you hear instead will be that same melancholic song, the one I will find unbearably corny in a year, and think to myself, “How could I have ever listened to that and felt moved. I’ve changed so much.” But the song plays all the same, and the camera flies away. It’s just me, on the rock face. It’s just me, like it's always been me, the me I’ve always been. I could always try crawling up the hill. But it's so much more fun to slide.
There comes a moment,
somewhere between the beginning of my thought and wherever it leads,
where I must pause.
and collect my thoughts.
I love to talk. I love to share my thoughts to people willing to listen,
but under streetlights, and streetlight polluted skies, and moonroofs, there comes a time to stop.
For a moment I realize I mean not what I say, but something else entirely.
The love of expression clouds what exactly it is I mean to express.
So I pause.
and collect my thoughts.
And after a moment (there comes a moment),
and after another (there comes a moment),
“Let me think about what I want to say” I say, not having thought about it.
And for as much as I love talking,
god do I love the silence.
I wish I could tell you what it is that I think about in those moments,
although frankly I’m not sure if thinking is what I’m doing at all.
When I think back on those moments of silence, I picture myself weighing my emotions, calculating.
It convinces me that I am human, a hopelessly irrational creature with a fetish for rationality.
Searching for meaning in the silence,
an asteroid desperately trying to swim away from the rapidly approaching planet.
When I emerge from the silence, I speak tentatively, because it may very well be that in that silence I have in fact considered nothing.
Maybe I just liked knowing someone cared.
Someone was hanging on my every word,
waiting for me to come back.