Daily Dose of Ordinary

"Who breathed your breaths and thought your thoughts and willed your life to live?"

2012-01-22T23:53:00.000-05:00

22 January 2009
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear Long Lost.

I wish there was a way to explain the hurt to you. Trust me, I believe that you don’t mean it, I have to believe that. After all, the only people I’ve ever really hurt in my life have been those I was trying not to. That’s the worst hurt, isn’t it? But I just don’t understand why you can’t tell me.

Who else do you think knows every part of you? Who else saw you cry? Who held you tight, who held you close, who stroked your hair and promised things would be okay? Who else sat with you in midnight hours, Long Lost? Who else refused to sleep until you slept? Who refused to eat until you ate? Who breathed your breaths and thought your thoughts and willed your life to live?

I know every part of you, and yet you would keep this from me? You would break the last promise you ever made me in good faith? I can’t help but wonder what I’ve done to warrant your mistrust (if that’s even what it is). Was there something more I could have done? Something more I could have given? But looking around I see nothing: you already have it all. So I sit here writing letters, wondering why?

Have pity on me, Long Lost. Have pity.

Beseeching, with love,
--

Yellow tulips used to be my favorite

2012-01-20T18:54:00.000-05:00

I was in the grocery store the other day and I saw that they had put the tulips out. I looked at the yellows and purples and reds and I think I closed my eyes.

Nine years ago, on Valentine's Day, I got a box from you. A big one. And inside were three dozen tulips, one of each color, carefully bundled and packaged. I had vases, of course, but nothing that could handle that kind of volume. I remember going to the store and buying a glass pitcher with a wide mouth and even then I had to sort of cram the last few in.

They lasted for weeks, almost unnaturally long, sitting on my desk in front of the window. A constant source of pleasure. And not just the flowers themselves, nor even that they came from you. It was because you had known that I wanted them. And at that point in our lives, you liked to give me whatever I wanted. I have no idea why, but you did.

Thank you. For the flowers and for giving me so many things that I wanted.

Silks & Lace & Second Skins

2012-01-19T22:22:00.003-05:00

I'm feeling very fashion-minded lately. It's not that I'm unaware of how I dress or carry myself (I'm incredibly conscious of both), just that I'm thinking about it more. Some people brush fashion off as frivolous. An idle pastime for idle women, perhaps. But I couldn't disagree more. Sure, some women may collect expensive handbags for a hobby, but I approach my wardrobe like any metaphor. It's saying so much more than what's on the surface, but you have to carefully craft that surface so that people can figure out what's being said underneath it.

So the question is, What does my wardrobe say about me? It says a lot of things, depending on the day. What I think I need now, more than ever, is a unifying theme for the one-way conversation my wardrobe is having with the rest of the world, from people in my office to people on the street to my closest family and friends.

Here are some inspiration points I've found while searching for my unifying theme:

I'm digging the Marian the Librarian blouse from Lace Affair. This kind of soft, feminine blouse is so stylish right now, especially with a pencil skirt in a modern color (think cobalt, jade, cotton candy pink). I sometimes worry about having large bows close to my face, but this one is artful enough that I think I'd be okay, and it's offset by the slightly puffed sleeves. Too bad they're out of my size, otherwise I'd be snapping this up.

This navy number by Heartbreaker also caught my eye. It's buttoned-up enough for the office, but seamlessly transitions to date night. The neckline gives it class and sophistication and the fitted waist and hip give it sass. What's not to love?

And now what about this one? I can't imagine ever being as beautiful and stylish as Jamie Beck. This Amelia Earhart inspired outfit is just one example of her shining sense of fashion. But the other thing to remember is that you can't just roll out of bed and look this amazing. It pretty much has to be your job...

"Because it's full of your dreams"

2012-01-18T23:44:00.002-05:00

18 January 2009
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear Long Lost.

I spent a few hours tonight editing Southern Cross and smiling to myself. It brought back so many of our little memories together. Do you remember that Murano bottle stop I bought you in Italy? Isn’t it funny how such a small thing could inspire such a big story? You don’t even know about Southern Cross, or at least not by that name. It’s the story I told you about; the one where I turn you into a piece of fiction. I can still remember you saying that you liked the way that sounded.

It’s the story of what might have been, and it’s full of your dreams and Sonoma’s soil. That’s why I love it so much. Not because it has you in it, nor because I get to imagine different lives for us, but because it’s full of your dreams, and especially Sonoma’s soil. Can’t you close your eyes and feel it? The sun beating down on those rows of grapes? Can’t you see the winery in all its rustic oak and glory? I swear, it’s as real to me as any other place I’ve been. I know it like the back of my hand, too. I only hope that one day I can truly share it with you. And have you understand.

You used to be so good at understanding.

I rest my head in your hands,
--

Reflections on Seventeen (I)

2012-01-16T23:12:00.001-05:00

Ten years ago, I was seventeen years old. But while my birthday was in August, I don't think I really turned seventeen until that January. I don't know why -- the first few months just felt like sixteen still, I guess. I more than made up for it though. I was seventeen for three years.

Seventeen was the first time I was able to hold two contradictory emotions in my heart at the same time. I was so unsure of everything, so untrusting, and yet at the very same time, I believed in one thing with all of my being. And that was that the Long Lost would always love me.

It's crazy, isn't it? Love can be so transient, people so faithless, and yet there I was. So sure. So beautifully, heartbreakingly sure. Sure that he would always be there. Sure that I would always have him. I never contemplated any other possibility because I couldn't. It was beyond even my own overactive imagination. The suggestion was as laughable as the Earth ceasing to spin, and to me, equally impossible.

I was wondering tonight when the exact moment was that I stopped being seventeen. I think it was a couple weeks before my twenty-first birthday. And I'm not sure...not sure if the he loved me anymore at that point.

Maybe he did. Things got a little better after all, but better wasn't the same. Better wasn't seventeen. It was different. Older. Harder. Completely uncertain. I wanted it that way back then. I don't know why -- maybe I thought it was exciting to be so unsure.

I miss it now. Not him, necessarily, but seventeen. That prolonged moment in time when two contrary beliefs could live side-by-side inside of me.

A love this big

2012-01-08T22:48:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the love I feel is so big that I'm afraid it will crush me or the world or both at once. And I have no idea how it manages to stay contained inside this cage of ribs. How it doesn't fly out into a million pieces and just as many directions.

Tonight I am reading Mary and Kahlil's letters from the years at the heart of their love for each other.

Boston
January 1911

Yes, beloved Mary, I would like to go to the Symphony Saturday evening and hear Elman,* for I feel a strange hunger for music in these days. And it will be so good to sit in your shadow for a few minutes afterward.

Mary, beloved Mary, when you are alone, in the silence of the night, send me a breath, a little breath from your heart, and I will work better.

Good night,
Kahlil

*The violinist Mischa Elman (1891-1967)
Beloved Prophet (1972)

Time on my left wrist

2011-12-19T23:59:00.001-05:00

Ten years ago, I walked nonchalantly up to a boy I knew and slide the watch he was wearing off his wrist and unto my own. And I never gave it back.

One by One

2011-12-12T23:47:00.000-05:00

He has been haunting me lately. --The Long Lost.

I can't seem to close my eyes without seeing his. My whole mind seems to fill with the memory of his dark hair, the tiny ones on the back of his neck. I remember his closely cut fingernails. The soft skin in the arch of his foot. White, cotton t-shirts. The bones in his ribcage or the tip of every vertebrae in his spine. When I think about it, I can almost feel precisely where each part of his body fits against mine when we're dancing. It almost feels real still.

These are it. The scraps of him I keep. Sometimes I wonder what he keeps of me. --Maybe the way I rolled my eyes. How small my hand seemed set against his, or the way they both felt clasped around his neck. Does he remember the way I smiled when I wanted something from him? The way my nails used to drum against the desk or table or doorframe? I wonder if he remembers me in sounds -- my laughter, my sobs, my silence. I wonder if my silence had a sound for him the way his did for me.

He has been haunting me lately, but I've been letting him. He comes and goes as he pleases in my dreams at night. This is the privilege of forgiveness, I suppose. At least it doesn't hurt anymore. Not the way it used to.

No. It doesn't hurt.

Simple truth

2011-12-04T20:08:00.002-05:00

He said it was ridiculous. He asked me how much longer he would have to wait until I would forgive him.

"Forgive you? I forgave you a long time ago. I just had to stop loving you to do it."

The boy with eyes as deep as a well

2011-11-16T23:18:00.001-05:00

It wasn't love at first sight. (Or was it)?

It was wariness at first sight. There was something about him that said danger, that said caution. And so I avoided him. I ducked his looks and touches. I thought to myself, No one should have eyes like that. One minute they were dark as a bottomless well, and the next they were shallow, green-brown pools. Maybe I knew at first sight -- and maybe I was afraid.

The love came later.

One day I looked into that boy's eyes and fell in. Down the well, into its darkness and into dreams where there was dancing and music and trees and a lake. And it felt like it would go on and on forever. How could it not?

Pretending

2011-10-30T23:23:00.001-04:00

The staircase was dark and narrow, winding slowly down to the foyer. I was taking the steps quickly, the soles of my shoes making soft thumps on the worn carpet, stretched thin over the years. The only light came in through the dirty windows on the two thin, French doors of the entrance. They illuminated the crumbling stucco of the walls and the broken tiles at the edges of the small area that housed the mailboxes and a three-legged table with a vase and one fake rose. I pushed open the doors, slipping out into the street, the rush of cold air tempered by how cold the foyer had been.

He was waiting just to the right of the front steps in a long black coat, his head bowed until he heard the doors snap shut behind me. And even then he didn't look up past my hand on the rail, saying simply, "No gloves, Angel? They'll be cold."

He took two steps to meet me and I put one ungloved hand in his.

"I'll keep one in your pocket and one in mine," I said, and did just that, descending the steps to join him on the sidewalk.

We walked through the 6th arrondisement for hours. Around the narrow blocks, sometimes twice around. We came to the Jardin du Luxembourg and walked through the faded landscape, not yet dead, but in its last throes before being claimed entirely by the creeping clutch of winter. Sometimes we spoke and sometimes we didn't. He held my hand in his pocket, sometimes lacing his fingers through mine and then unlacing them. My other hand, in my pocket, clenched and unclenched to the rhythm of our footsteps, which seemed almost to match the thrumming of my heartbeat.

We crossed the gardens on a diagonal, then went back up through the streets that surrounded the campus of la Sorbonne until we reached the river. We stopped for a while overlooking the Ile de la cité, the towers of the cathedral rising out of the tangled tree branches, the stone the same dead-ish color as the barren limbs. The air was colder off the water -- it always is -- and I tucked my neck further down in the collar of my coat.

We didn't linger long.

Instead of crossing a bridge to the Right Bank, we walked down the steps, closer to the water, but back toward the way from which we'd come. We passed other couples like us, huddled close, sometimes even sharing pockets as we did. And yet none of the couples were quite like us.

When we were almost directly across from les Tuileries, he stopped and turned me toward him.

"Tell me where it hurts the most," he said.

Wordlessly, I let my chin fall to my chest, my hair spilling forward, almost covering my face. After the smallest moment, I felt both his hands on the back of my head, his fingers gently pressing against the crown of it. I imagined it was almost still soft back there, as if a part of me was still a child, still a baby, and that part hadn't hardened yet. Not like the rest of me.

"Your problem is you're too forgiving of other people's flaws, Angel."

I lifted my head, but his hands stayed buried in my hair, his palms cupping my skull at the base of my neck. I looked as deeply into his eyes as I could, trying to find out what he could mean, but the instant I felt closest, he pulled his hands away and I lost my concentration. I felt dizzy and he tucked my hand back into his pocket, pulling me toward another set of stairs to take us back to the street level.

"I'm not forgiving," I whispered after a while. "I'm just pretending."

Everything else is the same

2011-10-24T22:22:00.001-04:00

I miss the way you used to call me 'dear.' The way that you said 'love.' I miss the way you signed your letters 'yours' and 'truly.' I believed them; I believed it all.

I miss March and April. That feeling that you could be my whole world and I could be yours, too. That feeling of sweet anticipation in having to wait to tell you something. Something that amused me. Something that I loved. Something that made me impossibly sad. There was no one I could share my sadness with quite the way I did with you.

I miss the way you questioned everything about me; no one ever had before. The way you made me choose my words so carefully; no one else had ever made me want to.

I miss your startling honestly. But maybe most of all, I miss being able to confess like this.

Lonely for treetops

2011-10-06T23:08:00.003-04:00

It's the sixth night of October and I haven't seen Orion yet. At first I blamed the clouds, but the past two nights have been cool and clear. It's the buildings that get in the way.

Excerpt from Rome

2011-09-28T23:56:00.001-04:00

Joe from Iowa would come downstairs, late, after Michelle got back from swimming. We would be getting ready for bed, anticipating the rooster and the dark sky of morning, but he would coax us out. One drink on the corner -- a truly shitty cafe that as far as I know served no food whatsoever, and the worst wine in Rome. But it was close and it had tables outside and you could watch the foot traffic of Trastevere. Even our quiet neighborhood was alive at night when the air was finally cooler, "cooler" being a relative description.

And because it was Rome and because Joe would smile in his irresistibly innocent and corruptible way, we would give in. We would slip back into sundresses and the soles of our sandals would slap on the carpeted steps as we ran down them, out the gated courtyard crawling with stray cats and up the block.

The umbrellas were yellow, faded, streaked with a dingy gray in the daylight, but at night the streetlights made them rich and vibrant, new again. The chairs were plastic painted to look like metal and not a single one had even legs so wherever you sat you teetered on the pavement. It was something you got used to, though. A strange lack of balance that was life in Rome. I would sit with one leg pulled up to my chest, that foot adding weight to one side. I had to tuck the bottom of my dress in to make sure I was still as modest as possible. The steady flow of commentary from passerby was bad enough already. I always wondered how they'd learned those English words, but it was probably the same way I'd learned my Italian ones.

We ordered red wine -- house wine they probably made in back -- bitter and stringent and barely better than fermented piss. But it was cheap, so we ordered it, carafe after carafe. And most nights we ordered espresso in equal measure. I don't drink coffee and didn't back then, either, but I would drink the espresso. In its tiny cup. With a packet of Equal stirred in, tapping the tiny spoon against the rim, not wasting a single drop. The espresso was everything that was Italy to me. Dark and hot and brutal and real. I didn't drink it to stay awake so much as I drank it to remember. To remember the lights reflected on the river, the sound of people laughing and singing. To remember being young and brave and alive.

"I'm not a child anymore."

2011-09-18T07:24:00.001-04:00

Before there was time, I was there. In the darkness and the stillness.

I was there when light was first created, and all the things that came after it. Space and rock and earth and plant and animal and man. I watched it all come into being without envy, without hate, without love. Thinking only that now it was and as it was, it was good.

I waited without even knowing I was waiting. I waited for millennia beyond your measurement of time, but the time passed quickly for me.

And then came the day you were born.

I watched you come into this world as I had seen a thousand things come before you. But this was different. This was you. Screaming and bloody and beautiful. Infinitesimally young, incomprehensibly small. From the first moment, I loved you. Stubborn and impractical. Breakable. Your imperfections combined in such a way as to make you perfect for me.

I watched you grow and, oh, the waiting. Your young years were like lifetimes for me, longer than all the millennia I had watched pass before. It was excruciating. Watching you fall. Watching you cry. Wanting to be your comfort and yet knowing that I had to wait for the day there would be an opening in your imagination large enough for me to fit through.

And then, at last, there was. And there I was. And there you were.

Sometimes when I look at you I still see that fifteen year old girl, staring up into the sky. Waiting for life to happen to her, not knowing that instead I would happen to her. You still have some of her look -- he touched my face with the back of his hand, his knuckles gliding across my cheek for just an instant before they were gone -- but you are not that girl anymore.

When I call you ‘child,’ it’s not because I see that little girl, it’s because you will always be a child to me. No matter what your age or my love for you. You can never hope to have the number of years I have had, nor the number I will have long after you’re gone. But nor can you understand how these years, the years of your life, are the only ones that will matter to me.

Too Late

2011-09-14T23:15:00.003-04:00

I climbed the stairs to my apartment, my bag heavy on my shoulder with work that would have to be done over the weekend. It was after nine on a Friday and I was coming from the office instead of the bar. I was dead tired and uncertain if I would ever feel rested again. It seemed like the pace had been relentless for weeks. Project after project after meeting after meeting. A grueling schedule set to a soundtrack of heavy sighs and 5 am alarms. Although the leaves had yet to start changing color and the temperature still hung in the 80s, it was clear that summer and its lazy days were over (if they had ever been lazy to begin with).

As I rounded the corner on my floor, I dropped my keys and couldn't even muster a curse as I bent to pick them up. I straightened quickly to prevent the contents of my bag from spilling out, almost losing my balance in the process and thinking gratefully that, at least the week is over.

It was when I started walking again that I noticed someone sitting with their back against my apartment door. Between the relatively dim hallway lighting and my contacts having slipped out of focus, it took me several steps before I recognized who it was, but when I did, I took the last few steps in a long, wordless stride. I bent down, my bag crashing to the floor.

"Is everything okay?" I asked, pushing the hair off his forehead as if it might reveal a wound of some kind. But his skin was smooth and unblemished as ever.

"Yeah," he said calmly with a half-smile of reassurance. "Your neighbor Vanessa let me in. I hope you don't mind. I might have told her I was your boyfriend. --In case she asks. Sorry."

"It's fine." The words were automatic. My heart had raced when I had thought something was wrong, but it was already slowing with the danger gone. "What are you doing here?"

He looked at me with clear eyes, as if he was finally able to see me for the first time.

"I think I really messed up."

I let my hand fall away from his face. I didn't know what to say so I just said, "Yeah," as I sat down next to him.

We sat there for a while, both our backs against my apartment door, staring at the wall and not saying anything.

"I should've kissed you that night," he said after a while.

"Which night?" I asked, closing my eyes and leaning my head further back.

"All of them."

I didn't look at him -- couldn't look at him -- but I smiled even while I kept my eyes closed.

"I would have liked that."

I don't know how much longer we sat without talking, but eventually I opened my eyes and let my head fall against his shoulder. He didn't move and there was a little more silence before I said:

"We both messed up, you know."

And he asked: "Is it too late to fix it?"

I noticed that I had dropped my keys with my bag, but I picked both up as I stood. I shrugged. "I guess it's never really too late."

Encouragement from my Father

2011-09-06T21:04:00.000-04:00

20 March 2008
J--, IL

[Received]

I think I blabbed so much yesterday that I forgot to tell you, no matter what choices you'll make throughout your life, I know that those choices will be the right ones. And I couldn't be more proud than what I am, of all that you have and will accomplish. Believing in yourself is a large part of the battle.

Love,
Dad

The Price

2011-08-30T23:23:00.000-04:00

30 August 2011
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear No Name.

I need you to be the safe place where I can put my words; I have so many to give you. You need not answer, can keep your peace, but let me bring them, let me lay them out before you. And then, let me build a wall around them so that no one else can ever know them.

This is what I need from you.

And yet, who am I to talk of need? Where you're concerned, I have no right to the word "need," nor even the word "want." I might hope and dream and long, so long as I don't flinch when there is nothing in return.

If you were wise, you would cherish this time with me. This time when I am full of words and full of wanting you to have them. It won't always be this way, No Name. One day the words will crawl back inside me and sew my lips shut behind them. One day there will be things that you will want to know, maybe even need to know, and you will find me silent -- as you are now. Will you beg me, No Name? Will you barter? What will you offer me someday for the words I would have once offered you unsought?

In some ways, these words are all I have, my love. And so long as you have them, so long as you keep them, then you have me. But once they're gone.

You may find that you have nothing left of me.

Toujours,
--

Mistaken

2011-08-24T23:12:00.001-04:00

It was my fault.

I mistook ambition for passion.

But he wouldn't know a fire if it burned him.

A Catalog of Progress (II)

2011-08-18T23:40:00.003-04:00

This afternoon, for the first time, I smiled and laughed while talking about him. This afternoon, for the first time, it didn't hurt. (At least not right away).

Progress.

It's so strange -- when I dream about him there's always water. Last night we were on a boat. Not so strange; we both loved boats. And we were out on the ocean and the sky was gray and the water was choppy and the wind was strong.

I was standing at the bow, my hair being whipped in my face, my bare feet wet, the way I like it. I was a little cold, the pale blue windbreaker (his, not mine) wasn't quite warm enough, but I was smiling.

"Don't fall in," he teased. "I wouldn't look forward to going in after you."

And we both knew, of course, that he would have gone in after me.

I laughed and took his hand, squeezing it in mine. It's the part of the dream that takes up the entirety of my memory because it's the piece that's real. The feel of his hand in mine, in caring, affection and friendship. It's the only piece that exists in actual memory.

"Don't worry. I never fall."

And he laughed too.

Haunting

2011-08-16T00:55:00.001-04:00

If dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghosts

The pictures have a gravitational pull all their own. I don’t want to look and yet I’m drawn to them. Not that many (not enough) but I look through them over and over again. Reaching the last one and then starting again at the first.

The pain is exquisite. Sugary sweet, like a knife dipped in honey. I wonder where I feel it most. My heart? My stomach? The back of my eyes? The memories create more pressure than a sinus infection and they make my teeth ache.

In every one, his smile. Frozen, and yet somehow – maybe this is some trick my mind is playing – still alive. Every time I look it seems a little different, even though it’s the same picture.

And with that smile, the rest of the memory. Driving down the highway in his car, the radio on, him talking over it. Jonathon was in the front seat and I was in the back, laughing at his road rage – laughing at his denial. "I'm an excellent driver."

I was fiddling with his camera. He turned and grinned... A press of the button. A flash of light. His laughter and mine. Telling him, "Keep your eyes on the road, mister."

And that smile.

I wish that there were more of them. More of them like this. Making tangible all the memories inside my head. Turning them into films about ghosts. Letting me hang on to his smile.

A Catalog of Progress

2011-08-10T01:24:00.000-04:00

This morning I spoke about him for the first time without crying.

I could feel the tears, not in the back of my eyes, but in the back of my throat. They're retreating, slowly, until eventually I won't feel them at all. Again, that sense of panic. The tears are connected to him and so a part of me doesn't want to let them go, lest a piece of him go with them. An insane thought and yet...true. This grief is all that's left of him that's tangible, except for a coffee mug, a Christmas ornament, some pictures and a pocket Constitution.

His name was Joseph, but he went by Joe

2011-08-06T01:48:00.001-04:00

Every day since it happened, I think of him in the morning. Sometimes even before I open my eyes, his face rises up in my consciousness. I try quickly to shut it out because I know it will be followed by another image, much more gruesome, of him hanging in the living room. Which is stupid. I know he couldn't have done it in the living room because of the logistics. But for some reason, that is where I see him hanging when I think about it.

The other day, I made it all the way to the bathroom, all the way to the sink, all the way through washing my face before I thought of him. I was brushing my teeth and I thought, Johnny Walker Black. And I spat the toothpaste into the sink and wondered if I'd ever be able to drink it again.

Probably not.

At work, I stare at the phone. I remember all the times his extension lit up the caller-id. All the times I teased, "What do you want now?"

I can't look at Alex's desk. Alex's desk that used to be my desk when I first started. My desk, where he would come by every afternoon to smile at me. To make me laugh. To extract promises for drinks after work, dinner on Friday, a baseball game next week.

I've never really thought about counting memories until now. Quantifying them somehow. As if coming up with a catalog or inventory will help me hang on to them. It's my responsibility to keep them now; a big responsibility. He's the only other one who had so many of them. If I forget, that's it. They'll be gone, lost forever. And with them will go a piece of him, something I so desperately want to keep from happening. I want to, need to, keep him somehow. And so I grasp at the memories like strands of smoke. Intangible.

"Rachel likes to call me Alex Keaton." His laughter. The blue-striped shirt underneath the navy blue sweater. He would not have put that on to die, but now that I've thought of it, it gets absorbed into the image. I squeeze my eyes shut as if that will help to block it out, even though I know it won't. It lingers in the darkness behind my eyes, fading slowly and only when it wants to.

There is a sort of forgiveness, usually, in death. We place the blame on accidents -- cars or planes or electric shock. We place the blame on illness -- fevers, cancers, strokes. We blame crime. Old age. The individual is forgiven. It was not their fault. It was just their time.

But in suicide.

We cannot help but think, "Who were they to say it was their time?"

What if it was not their time? Who were they to take themselves away from us? And the only one to blame is the dead. But what do the dead care about our blame? They have no need of our forgiveness.

It is we who need forgiveness.

"We can choose to remember gentler days and kinder ways"

2011-07-09T23:23:00.001-04:00

9 July 2009
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear Long Lost.

There was a time when I was steeped in kindness. Everywhere I looked and went, without even asking, there it was, held out to me. It was like a veil drawn over my world that I realize so clearly now I completely took for granted. I thought it would always be there.

Is there no kindness left in the world? No gentleness? Where is Robert F. Kennedy's dream that we might "tame the savageness of man and make gentle the ways of this world"? You know me, Long Lost, I'm a great believer in civilization, in the triumph of art and poetry and culture over the baseness of mere survival. I believe that we are called to higher things, that perhaps, even, God instilled this purpose in us. To strive and reach for our better selves -- as Lincoln said "the better angels of our nature." Why, then, am I faced with so many contradictions to this belief? Would a less stubborn person than I simply reevaluate their belief? Understand it to consequently be false? But I can't. For some reason, I can't.

The No Name said to me today -- and perhaps this is part of what's spurred these thoughts -- that you should be gentle with yourself because no one else will. But that can't possibly true. Already the No Name treats me more gently than I do myself, thereby contradicting himself, or whomever originally said those words. And as I've already said, I feel there was a time in my life when I encountered nothing but gentleness. It can't all be childhood, either, unless childhood ends at seventeen. No, it must be something more than that, and it's eating away at me tonight -- whatever took the gentleness away.

Even you and I, Long Lost, even we used to be gentle with one another. Not because we were fragile, although we were, but I think because we were better people. Now we effortlessly subject each other to dents and cracks, send each other crashing to the floor. We think the other can handle it, has grown accustomed over the years to harsher treatment, but have we? I'm not sure I have, but the cycle perpetuates itself. The less gentle you are with me, the less gentle I am with you. Increasing harshness, bluntness, until all of our smooth edges are made jagged again. But we can choose to stop, can't we? We can choose to remember gentler days and kinder ways, I'm sure of it. And maybe then I can finally stop crying.

With love and hope,
--

A pile of ash

2011-07-05T23:38:00.001-04:00

I have one hand on the railing, the other trailing along the paneling as I walk slowly down the stairs. There's no smile on my face. The house is silent, empty. He is nowhere to be found, though he's the one who brought me here. In some ways he is the house; he is my cage. I pause on the first landing, the fingers of my right hand closing around the edge of one of the tapestries that hangs there.

I am so angry.

One hard pull is not enough to bring the tapestry down. I grip it with both hands, a cloud of dust rising off of it and making my eyes burn. Two or three more tugs and I can hear it ripping from its nails. I take two steps back to avoid its descent. It must be twelve or fourteen feet long and only slightly less wide. It's heavy in my hands, but without thinking I am pulling it behind me down the rest of the stairs. I drag it across the front hall to a door off to one side, toward the back of the house. I struggle to get the stiff fabric through the door, and once I have, I am almost at a loss what to do with it next. I drop it in the center of the room, breathing heavily from the exertion.

I whirl around with a quiet cry of frustration, my arm held out like a boom down by the docks. Everything comes crashing off the low chest of drawers against the wall. Glasses and vases and little knick-knacks shatter on the stone. I grab a nearby chair and throw it on top of the tapestry. It makes a satisfying thud.

Emboldened, I reach up for a painting on the wall. Unlike the tapestry, it comes down easily, and it joins the rising pile on the floor. Nothing is beyond my reach or my rage. Chairs, books, the rest of the paintings.

I go back out into the hall and up the stairs halfway. The next tapestry comes down. I drag it to the rest of the carnage and come back for the third. A beautiful sixteenth century pastoral scene of lords and ladies, knights on horses, nymphs and dwarves in the trees of the forest. It's exquisite, but I am filled with an inexplicable hate for it.

Back in the room, I survey my destruction with almost-satisfaction. In a stroke of genius, I run to the mantle and snatch the box of matches that sit up there. I can hear them rattle against each other as I slide off the cover and turn around. I can almost feel the heat on my cheeks at the thought of the whole house in flames, but I stop short.

He is standing there, arms crossed.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"I am going to burn the Folly to the ground." I barely recognize my voice.

"You will give me those matches right now."

His voice is authoritative with an edge of urgency, but I am defiant. I put my hands behind my back, almost daring him to take them from me. We stare at each other for a minute and then he holds out his hand, palm open, level with my chest. He says my name very calmly and it is an obvious command. I will give him the matches.

I press my lips tightly together, but I am bringing my hands forward. With my left, I am lifting the box of matches, staring him coldly in the face. As the box falls into his hand, it doesn't even feel like my right hand belongs to me. It has drawn itself back and it slaps him hard across the cheek. Not just hard. Something stronger than that.

My hand is on fire. It stings so badly I can only imagine what his face feels like. I have no doubt that it was much more than surprise that sent his head turning.

"I hate you." I don't even know if I mean it, but I need to say it out loud.

He puts the matches in the pocket of his pants and turns his face back toward me, but he doesn't so much as reach up to touch the quickly darkening mark across his cheek.

"You tell yourself that, Angel."

St. George slays the dragon

2011-06-28T22:46:00.004-04:00

I must have been crying in my sleep because when I woke my cheeks were still wet. Then I remembered why I had been crying and started over again. These were not the pretty tears that trickle down one's cheeks. These were the kind of tears that come with their own symphony of water and noise. I pressed my face into the pillow as if that could stop them. Instead, I tasted the salt on my lips.

He came into the room without knocking. I didn't even feel him sit down on the bed -- there was nothing until his hands gripped me by the shoulders, pulling me up just enough to replace the pillow with his chest. He didn't say, Don't cry. He didn't say, It's all right. He held me tightly, one arm around my back, the other crooked so that his hand cradled the back of my head. This wasn't comfort, it was protection.

I couldn't say how long I cried. It was probably not as long as it felt. At one point I wondered if I would ever stop. Or if, like a girl from a folk tale, I might die from crying. If perhaps a great well of tears was building inside of me and would rend my body in two.

But eventually I stopped.

We sat for several more minutes in silence. At length, my heart and lungs returned to a more regular pace.

"You were right," I said.

He was the only protection from the ugliness of the world. He was the only one who could ease the pain of living.

Achilles tendon

2011-06-26T11:58:00.003-04:00

I think sometimes about the passage from Leo Gursky's life where he talks about the places we put emotions because the heart is too fragile an organ. It's a fair point. There is so much -- how could it all possibly fit in one place?

I've been thinking lately that I keep disappointment in my Achilles tendon.

It sticks in my head

2011-06-22T23:37:00.001-04:00

"I never go to New York City these days.
There's something about the buildings in Chelsea that kills me.
Maybe in a month or two --
Maybe when things are different for me --
Maybe when things are different for you."

Every once in a while, I wonder to myself if this is it. As good as it gets. I wonder if I should just take what I have, and what little more I can get, and be done with it. Be satisfied. I would never admit it out loud, but I come close sometimes.

And what stops me every time is a promise I made a long time ago to the Long Lost. He would never remember the conversation, and I barely do myself. It stays with me in an impressionistic way, just colors and shapes; the most important parts of what was said. He was uncharacteristically angry and I gave in more easily than I ever did in later years. He said, "Promise me you won't ever settle for anything less than the best. Promise you won't ever settle." And I said, "I promise."

At the time, I was humoring him, but the words ring solemnly in my memory. It doesn't matter how long it's been since I last spoke to the Long Lost. It doesn't matter that I don't owe him anything from our past life. I promised, and my word is not just my word, it's who I am.

So whenever I feel close to settling in, settling down, settling in general, I stop myself. The promise stops me. And with the memory of that promise comes a wave of certainty that the best is still out there waiting for me. And I will know it when I see it. And I will be brave enough to make it mine. And then, and only then, will my debt -- the debt of having given my word -- be finally paid.

"It's good for everybody to hurt somebody once in a while.
The things I do to people I love...shouldn't be allowed."

Feather on the scale

2011-06-20T23:57:00.003-04:00

I was so in love with him this morning. I could feel it in my bones when I woke up, the love like a weight on my chest. But slowly I could feel the weight turning into sadness, growing heavier and heavier. And when I finally met him on the corner, and he kissed me on the side of the head, the sadness turned to fear that he might never feel the same kind of crushing weight that I did.

"The memories we're making will sing us to sleep decades from now"

2011-06-18T23:44:00.003-04:00

18 June 2009
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear Long Lost.

I've been taking guilty pleasures, going out on work nights, but with the summer coming it's too tempting to refuse. We've eaten outside and I've slept on the heartbeat of the Archangel. We've been to a baseball game and watched each other through sidelong glances. We've laid on blankets watching movies in the park, laughing at each other's commentary, driving home with the windows down, the music up. It's almost like we're chasing younger days, trying to hang on to them. I don't know how else to describe it.

I wish that you were here to chase them with me.

The memories we're making will sing us to sleep decades from now, don't you think? It seems a dreadful waste to me that we're not making them together, but as I find myself so often complaining in these letters, I just don't know how to remedy the situation. I don't know how to be closer than we are right now, and I'd rather not force it. It doesn't seem right to force it. And after all, maybe we'll look back someday and see these as the "silent days." We'll see them as the intermission before returning to our old, familiar roles with practiced lines and marked exits and entrances to the stage. I hope for that, I really do. And when I next see your face and smile into your eyes, I hope you know that I'm glowing with that hope.

I admit, I'm in quite the mood right now, though it's so late. I'm not sure how I'll get to sleep, but somehow I will. And Long Lost, I'll be dreaming the sweetest things. My head is full of love and secrets. I hope your sleep is just as satisfying.

Sleep well, with love,
--

He Shall Thunder in the Sky

2011-06-16T23:34:00.001-04:00

The sky is telling a story tonight with water and wind. I think it's a story about a girl with a string tied around her heart and a boy with eyes as deep as a well. I don't know if it ends happily or not.

Or maybe it's not a story after all. Maybe it's a magic spell and when we wake the world will be remade in the image of our better selves.

The night I die (again and again)

2011-06-12T23:53:00.003-04:00

I was dressed in red and I was ready. I knew every line at this point, making my way to the same table in the small and crowded club. Underground -- no windows. Smokey, hot, everything seeming closer than it needed to be. I had barely sat down though before his hand was held out for me, three inches from my face, expectant. He didn't say anything and neither did I. We were going through the motions tonight, only this time I wanted the motions.

He led me out into the center of the dance floor. His hand was firm, flat on the center of my back, guiding me not in the steps but around the other dancers. His other hand, closed around mine, was not intimate, not seductive. It was almost perfunctory.

And still he was silent.

I didn’t press close to him, though I was still close. My hand, on the back of his neck instead of his shoulder, was careless, not careful. Perhaps we had been there too many times before for it to really matter. We both knew how it would end so there was nothing to anticipate. Maybe at last the magic that seemed to pervade that moment had dissipated.

But it hadn’t.

“So what are we doing here?” he asked at last. “It was you this time, not me.”

“But you didn’t keep me waiting,” I reminded. That was the only thing that was different. He had saved me the usual annoyance.

“You’re in a strange mood tonight, Angel. I didn’t want to risk it.”

“You could have changed my mind, you know,” I whispered as I leaned a little forward. “I could have opened my eyes and we could have been anywhere. Paris in the fall. The tower in Pisa. The plains of Mongolia for all I know. But you let me have my way.”

He shrugged as if he missed the accusation in my words. “I like to let you have your way sometimes.”

“When it’s not important.”

“No,” he said, after a long pause. “This time it’s important.”

We danced a while longer, again without speaking. In the darkness, I studied all the things familiar to me. The parquet floor, the small tables, the curved chairs. As always, the buttons on the officer’s jackets fascinated me with their foreboding. Any minute now. Black boots. Polished to a shine. The rest of us, our footsteps on the stairs…

“We could go now,” he offered.

“No, I’ll stay.”

“Why? Why this time?” I could tell that I had puzzled him, enough so that he had to ask.

I stared up at the large, white light above the dance floor. It was always the last thing I remembered seeing on nights like this. A sort of metaphor, perhaps. I couldn’t let myself be distracted from his question though. He deserved an answer. And I needed to say it out loud.

“I just want to feel something.”

And while one part of my brain was feeling the first, soft touch of his lips on mine, another part of it was registering the sound, as if in the distance, of a quiet click, metal on metal, fate on fate.

"Listening to all that beauty, silent and alive"

2011-06-08T23:58:00.002-04:00

8 June 2010
Washington, DC

[Sent]

Dear Sweetheart,

My walk home from work was so beautiful that I wish I could have trapped it in a bottle and sent it to you so that when you opened it you could have felt it just the same as I did today. Without it having gotten the least bit stale or dull.

It's been quite hot here for a while now, humid, too, and I've gotten used to it more quickly than usual. But today it was a perfect seventy-five degrees. The sun was still hot, but the breeze was cool and faint enough to keep a constant rustle in the leaves of the trees. The light on a day like today makes everything seem somehow sharper. The light haze of humidity was lifted, like the blurriness from sleepy eyes. I wish I could have wrapped my arms around it -- around the world -- but instead I just walked slowly. Humming along with my ipod. Taking deep and soothing breaths.

It occurred to me that I hope one day I have a bit of land. Maybe even more than a bit. But this evening I wished I could have gone home to a place where I could sit outside, maybe by myself, just listening to all that beauty, silent and alive. Sure, I could have gone to a park bench. I could have even laid down on Meridian Hill, but it would not have been the same. I wanted to be somewhere that was mine. And I wanted to imagine that maybe the sky and the trees and the sunshine could be mine, too.

--

Morning lullabies

2011-06-06T06:07:00.005-04:00

My missing the Sweetheart finally brought him to my dreams, where he and I were once again on the old couch in his parents' living room. I sat close to his side and he put one arm around me, like in the old days. But even in my dreams, I could not take my eyes from him. I have been wanting to see him so badly lately.

I kept him talking in my dream. Telling stories and making me laugh -- always making me laugh. His eyes sparkled with that old mischief that made me fall in love with him so many years ago. How could life ever be dull with a spark like that? His never will be, that's for sure, and so long as he is in it, I know that mine won't be either.

Now it's morning. And the sun is shining, calling me out into the world. I feel better. Ready. Able to bear the wait of six more weeks. And in the meantime, I offer up a message for the sun to bring him in an hour when it's shining through his own window. The message says, I love you just the way you are, without any desire to change you. And I hope that you are happy today.

"We thought ourselves the center of the universe...the stars swirling in our eyes"

2011-05-26T23:49:00.000-04:00

26 May 2009
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear Long Lost.

What would a film reel of our childhood look like? I am thinking of the Wonder Years again, but not the sitcom. I’m picturing me and Jilly Bean jumping on the trampoline, trying to see how high we could fly, a Monkees’ record playing loud enough in the garage for us to hear it over our own laughter. Those were the pre-teen years. Me and Jill and Davy running across the neighborhood with Lisa and Mallory in tow. Writing letters to Nick and waiting for the day that we could...I don’t know. Grow up. Be together. Do vague and lofty things. Even then I wrote too much. I read too much. I started to talk too much and listen less.

We wore ridiculous clothes. We thought ourselves the center of the universe, lying out at night in the yard with the stars swirling in our eyes. We had slumber parties -- those were the days of slumber parties. We told ghost stories and believed them. We had crushes and shared them with each other. We sabotaged each other sometimes, too. It was just as often accidental as it was deliberate. The pre-teen years. That was when we had our first taste of things like love and jealousy.

This was long before you were a part of my world. I think I missed you even then though, even before I knew you. I just knew that I was missing something.

And then you were there.

You seemed to come as part of my new age. You were persistent, silent mostly while I continued that old, bad habit of talking too much. Then suddenly, without warning, you would ask an awful question, a question you had no right to ask and my world would be shaken to its foundation. I would hate you for it sometimes, but the following morning I would wake and you would be there.

We drove and listened to music. We played cards and stayed up too late. Eventually we told each other secrets. I realize now that they were secrets even though we didn’t think of them as such. They were things we never told other people, things we gave to each other and no one else. We saw each other in vulnerable moments.

We would swing. We would swing and sing and dance as if we were making up for all of those childhood days without one another. I guess that I can see that now. We lived those early years as though we were making up for lost time -- lost memories. Perhaps it was wrong of us. Perhaps it’s what distorted everything that came later. Even now though, ten years on, it doesn’t make any sense. Why did we do the things we did, the way we did them? Where was our rhyme or reason?

If only we had that film reel. If only we could rewind and view each moment from the outside, dissecting it to understand it. If only we could see the way the other looked when our own eyes were averted. What secrets would we find then? If only we could hear the thoughts we never shared. What lessons would we learn at last? Even in myself, sometimes, I search for these things, but I know that I can’t find them alone.

With full heart,
--

The other part of me

2011-05-24T23:42:00.001-04:00

He's asleep when I come into his room, lying carelessly across the bed, as if he had fallen there earlier and been too exhausted to move. He takes up the whole mattress, accustomed to sleeping alone.

The streetlights come through the bare windows, casting strange shadows on his face. They fall into every frown line around his mouth, the crease between his eyebrows, his face contorted with worry even in sleep. I want to protect him from the harshness of the light as I can't protect him from the monsters that create those anxious wrinkles. I sit on the edge of the bed, wincing at the creak, but his breath continues unbroken.

Softly, as if I am attempting to touch the wings of a butterfly, I put my hand on his head. His hair is thick enough that I have to bend my fingers into it in order to feel his scalp. My palm curves perfectly around the crown of his head and rests there for a moment before I lift my hand and let his hair slip through my fingers.

It is impossible to know what will happen to us. It seems like every turn has some new surprise to knock us off our feet. I tell myself that we will get through this one as we've gotten through others before. And yet...

I look at that face. There's no way for him to be on his guard because he doesn't even know I'm there. His features are soft. Vulnerable as they never are in wakefulness. I think to myself how young he is -- how young we both are. And yet the day will come for us, as it comes for everyone, when we will look around and realize that youth is gone. Now is the time to take the chances we are taking on one another.

He stirs, rolling over to his back, his arm resting across his chest. I watch as his eyes open reluctantly, the streetlights finally disturbing him. I'm sure that at first he can only see my silhouette, but he doesn't question for a moment that it's me.

"What time is it?" he asks.

"A little before midnight," I say.

"Are you staying?" he asks, though he is still too drowsy to make more room for me.

I shake my head. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"I'm fine," he says, but it's unconvincing.

"You're not. But you will be." And I lean over to kiss his forehead, smoothing his hair one last time as if he is a child afraid of the dark.

He grabs my hand as I'm about to pull it away. "Tomorrow?"

"Of course." I take my hand from his and add silently, and every day after.

A smile touches his lips and it's debatable whether he was ever fully awake. He is breathing heavily again before I even stand up. In the doorway, I take one last look over my shoulder and think to myself that I am his guardian angel. I visit him in his dreams.

And suddenly. I understand everything.

Arrow

2011-05-18T23:52:00.002-04:00

Remember when I said that I want to dance with him at my wedding? And that I am okay with wanting this?

Today I couldn't bring myself to be okay with it.

It was one of those days when I hated that I want it -- and yes, despite this contradictory feeling, I do still want it. I still want him to share in my happiness, to be a part of it because it is a part of me. And worst and most of all, I want him to want it, too.

I am working hard at forgiveness. Some days it comes easier than others; today just wasn't one of them. The problem is I want to have it all. I want to give in without having to give up, but I can't have it both ways. And the truth is that both are hard. Usually the "hardest" option can be used as a shortcut for the "right" choice. But they are equally difficult in this case. Could they possibly both be right?

The other day, I likened him to an arrow shot through my heart. All the way through. But instead of pulling the arrow out, I cut it off on both ends, leaving behind a three-inch rod of wood. Gradually, my heart grew around it. It kept beating, kept functioning, so much so that at times I forgot about it entirely. But every once in a while a splinter rises to the surface: sharp and persistent. And it has to be pulled out, leaving a fresh little cut that will bleed and heal and scar over. The splinters are one thing. The bulk of it though, the piece in the center, is what worries me. Surely it can't stay there forever. Surely it will kill me if it does. But how?

How do you remove the last bit of arrow at this point?

Peace and War

2011-05-16T06:02:00.000-04:00

I found this letter strangely prescient, though I couldn't -- and still can't -- decide how much I share Kahlil's thoughts. It's rare that I disagree with him; I will have to think on it a little longer.***

[New York]
May 16, 1912

Abdul-Baha came back to New York a few days ago. "The Women's Committee of The New York Peace Society" gave him a great reception at the hotel Astor Monday afternoon. There were many speakers and "Peace" was the only subject! Peace! Peace! International Peace! Universal Peace! It was tiresome, illogical, flat, and insipid. Peace is the desire of old age, and the world is still too young to have such a desire. I say, let there be wars; let the Children of the Earth fight one another until the last drop of impure, animal blood is shed. Why should man speak of Peace when there is so much ill-at-easeness in his system that must go out one way or another? Was it not the Peace disease that crept into the Oriental nations and caused their downfall? Because we do not understand Life we fear Death, and the fear of Death makes us dread strife and war. Those who live, those who know what it is to be, those who have knowledge of the Life-in-Death do not preach Peace; They Preach Life.

My only desire, Mary, is to be and it does not matter how or where or when. There is no Peace in the art of Being.

O' Mary, how much I want to kiss your hands now, and your eyes, too. And how much I want to be with you and in you and around you.

Kahlil

Beloved Prophet (1972)

But I will meet him in my dreams, I know

2011-05-10T23:20:00.000-04:00

I thought about ordering an espresso after dinner tonight, but I'm glad I decided against it. I'm too keyed up as it is. An espresso before bed never fails to remind me of those nights I spent in Italy though. Staying up too late, getting up too early and everywhere around me a ceaseless sense of chaos. We talked about those nights tonight, smiling at them in hindsight.

Unrelated, I find myself lonely for the Sweetheart. It's May and so perhaps it is understandable that he should be so prominent in my thoughts, but how could I possibly say 'lonely' when he is always behind my closed eyes, forever in my heart? I guess I say 'lonely' because sometimes it's not enough to have his spirit with me. Instead, I long to have him physically with me. Even if I didn't touch him, even if I didn't say a word, sometimes all I need is just to sit and have him near me. To have the kindness in his eyes, the warmth of his smile and the comfort of knowing that I don't need to speak or move. That even in silence he understands everything I'm saying. And even in stillness I am held in his arms.

Beautiful Insanity

2011-05-04T23:13:00.001-04:00

4 May 2011
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dearest No Name,

The whole day sang of you to me and there was nothing I would not have shared with you if I could. From waking to the sound of rain to those few stolen minutes spent lying in bed. From the afternoon sunshine to the wind through the trees in the park across the street. And from the color of the night sky -- just as I recently described it to you -- to the single, perfect star in the west. The beauty of it all was so painful I was sure that it would make me cry. I could feel the joy in my heart stretched so wide that it touched sorrow on each end and I wondered if I am quite sane.

But I would gladly be guilty of that kind of insanity.

With thoughts and hopes and love for you,
--

May Day

2011-05-01T20:37:00.002-04:00

It's raining, but it doesn't matter. It's May now; he's gone. And so, a little bit of light goes out of my world. And a little more will go out as the summer comes and passes. Even as the fall begins. But then that's it. Only a very little while. My year balanced, divided in half. Half of it with him, half without. Now is the time without and I will manage as I have managed before.

But nothing feels as safe when he's gone. Nothing feels as right or tangible. Knowable, really. In the summer I am adrift. Perhaps it's just tonight -- the first night, definitively, without him. But either way, I am adrift.

May brings more things than flowers this year, but I am afraid of what else it brings. Threatening things. Closing in on me. Taunting that it will test me to limits I have never known before.

"I can see the beauty in the heartbreak"

2011-04-30T07:23:00.000-04:00

30 April 2009
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear Long Lost.

I can’t remember if I’ve already shared this poem with you, or if I only talked about it with the Word-Hoarder. Either way, it’s the last day of Poetry Month, and it seemed fitting that I include a tribute in this letter. By far it’s the poem that’s moved me most the past few years, and I was thinking about it earlier today in a nostalgic kind of way. I think we’re past noon now…

Noon
by Louise Glück

They’re not grown up—more like a boy and girl, really.
School’s over. It’s the best part of the summer, when it’s still beginning—
the sun’s shining, but the heat isn’t intense yet.
And freedom hasn’t gotten boring.

So you can spend the whole day, all of it, wandering in the meadow.
The meadow goes on indefinitely, and the village keeps getting more and
more faint—

It seems a strange position, being very young.
They have this thing everyone wants and they don’t want—
but they want to keep it anyway; it’s all they can trade on.

When they’re by themselves like this, these are the things they talk about.
How time for them doesn’t race.
It’s like the reel breaking at the movie theater. They stay anyway—
mainly, they just don’t want to leave. But till the reel is fixed
the old one just gets popped back in,
and all of a sudden you’re back to long ago in the movie—
the hero hasn’t even met the heroine. He’s still at the factory,
he hasn’t begun to go bad. And she’s wandering around the docks, already bad.
But she never meant it to happen. She was good, then it happened to her,
like a bag pulled over her head.

The sky’s completely blue, so the grass is dry.
They’ll be able to sit with no trouble.
They sit, they talk about everything—then they eat their picnic.
They put the food on the blanket, so it stays clean.
They’ve always done it this way; they take the grass themselves.

The rest—how two people can lie down on the blanket—
they know about it but they’re not ready for it.
They know people who’ve done it, as a kind of game or trial—
then you say, no, wrong time, I think I’ll just keep being a child.
But your body doesn’t listen. It knows everything now,
it says you’re not a child, you haven’t been a child for a long time.

Their thinking is, stay away from change. It’s an avalanche—
all the rocks sliding down the mountain, and the child standing underneath
just gets killed.

They sit in the best place, under the poplars.
And they talk—it must be hours now, the sun’s in a different place.
About school, about people they both know,
about being adult, about how you knew what your dreams were.

They used to play games, but that’s stopped now—too much touching.
They only touch each other when they fold the blanket.

They know this in each other.
That’s why it isn’t talked about.
Before they do anything like that, they’ll need to know more—
in fact, everything that can happen. Until then, they’ll just watch
and stay children.

Today she’s folding the blanket alone, to be safe.
And he looks away—he pretends to be too lost in thought to help out.

They know that at some point you stop being children, and at that point
you become strangers. It seems unbearably lonely.

When they get home to the village, it’s nearly twilight.
It’s been a perfect day; they talk about this,
about when they’ll have a chance to have a picnic again.

They walk through the summer dusk,
not holding hands but still telling each other everything.

How very heartbreaking, isn’t it, Long Lost? But you know me, and you know I can see the beauty in the heartbreak. It’s funny how this poem says so many complex things so simply –- things about love and youth and life, I suppose -- and even as it spells them out, it laughs at them, denies them. We’re quite the same, don’t you think? But what can you do if you don’t laugh and deny the awful truth in front of you?

With full heart,
--

"Makes me smile even when I hate you...makes me cry even when I love you"

2011-04-26T23:25:00.002-04:00

26 April 2009
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear Long Lost.

I suppose I haven’t often mentioned it, but I have some amazingly selfish friends. There are times when this is more obvious to me than at others, and, if anything, I suppose it’s a good reminder of the things I don’t want to be. Too often I’m afraid that I’m becoming the same way: that I can’t see beyond the limited periphery of “me.” It’s a valid worry -- if any worry can ever be valid -- and I realized again today that I need to be more watchful. It’s harder to decide what I need to be doing instead though. What will help me be more giving, Long Lost? What will help me be more considerate and less self-focused?

I suppose you might dispute that I could ever really be such things. You often see me through rose-colored glasses and believe me capable of the most supernatural and saintly things. I wish I could be the me you see through those pretty eyes. I wish I could be all the things you believe me to be, and I wonder if you ever feel the same. Do you ever have moments like this? Where you sit and think about all the different ways I see you and wish that you could genuinely be those things? Or am I the only one between us with those insecurities? I don’t know, Long Lost. I’ve seen the vulnerable parts of you. I can imagine you thinking just such a thing regretfully, but I wish that you could know that it doesn’t matter: you are already more to me than anyone else could ever hope to be. It doesn’t really matter how much or how little you meet my lofty expectations because there’s just something about you, something that would make me forgive any flaw. Something that makes me smile even when I hate you. Something that makes me cry even when I love you.

It’s this feeling that’s always gotten us in trouble. This is why people have so often accused us of being in love, even when we weren’t. But there’s no “you and me” without it, whatever it is, and I am feeling it powerfully tonight. I’m remembering when we were seventeen, and I think I feel precisely the same way tonight as I did one April night back then when we weren’t 500 miles from home and each other. Oh, to be there again.

I kiss your two hands, with love,
--

Nachtmusik

2011-04-22T23:23:00.004-04:00

It's raining. But I need a little rain now and then to help my heart grow; to water my soul.

I'm sitting in the window because I love to sit in the window when it rains. I'm listening to the sounds of the night, quiet now and close to sleep. Earlier I could hear someone listening to Wagner. I imagined that they played it from a record, though I'm sure the reality was more modern. The music was beautiful, with that strange sort of depth that Wagner has. Full of silent words and even more silent toil. I was sure that I could feel the the music coaxing plants up from the ground, pulling leaves out from the buds on the trees and making flowers unfurl. The work of Spring. Busy, but at a steady and unhurried pace.

As I said, it's silent now and the air is cooler than it's been the past two nights. It sweeps in past me, into the living room, cleaning up the little worries of the week. I hope it also brings me sweet, uncomplicated dreams.

"As happy and sad and dead and alive as we are"

2011-04-18T23:06:00.001-04:00

18 April 2009
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear Long Lost.

And so you will have a daughter.

I find it interesting how sometimes life mirrors fiction. It’s more strange this time only because it’s a fiction I wrote myself almost four years ago, and so much of it has come to pass since then. By the time the eyes of others come to see it, I’m sure much more will have fulfilled itself in prophecy, but no one will know my particular foresight.

Is it even foresight? A cursed one if it is.

There’s much I’m overwhelmed by at the moment. There are so many things I think I want to say, so many secrets I think I want to share, but they are all contradictory, as jumbled and illegible as my feelings at the moment. The only really acceptable feeling is congratulations, after all, and I’ve already given you that, for what it’s worth. I hope you won’t question the sincerity though, Long Lost. I am happy for your future daughter, and I imagine that, through the terror at the thought, you must also be quite happy to have a little girl on the way. That much is just as you always hoped, even if the rest isn’t. But I can’t remember the last time we talked about “the rest,” as I call it. I can barely remember what you used to hope for, and I fear I’ll never know what you hope for now. You could allay that fear, but will you?

Do you ever think how having a baby is so permanent? That isn’t to say that everything hasn’t always been permanent, but a baby is…a baby. A baby that will become a child that will become a teenager that will become an adult just like us. A human life that will feel all our feelings and make all our mistakes and one day be as happy and sad and dead and alive as we are. --When I say “we,” I just mean you and I, but it could just as easily be the whole world. It’s one and the same for the most part anyway.

A girl. What shall you name her? Will it be a long road to a name? Will she be fair? Will she have your eyes? I’m full of a million questions and a million fears, and I’m sure you’re even more so. Won’t you share it with me though? The overwhelming emotions have come to pass, and I’m no longer thinking of myself -- how selfish for me to have done so at all. Now my thoughts are only of you. I will send something soon. Something to be the envy of any daughter of man or god.

With love, times two,
--

Sold.

2011-04-16T07:02:00.003-04:00

They were young, but not enough so that people said, "They're too young." They were getting married in a few months and looking for a house. He already had one, but she said, "No. I want one that's really ours." And so they looked.

They had already seen half a dozen houses and he was learning new things about her at each one. He had known her for eight years and yet he smiled to think that he was still learning about her. She liked rooms of a certain size. She liked strange nooks that other people would have found inconvenient. She needed, not wanted, a lot of windows; the more the better. She couldn't abide a lack of natural light, but that was something he had known almost all along.

It was about more than a house. There needed to be a bit of land attached to it, and this taught him things, too. She wanted trees, or room enough to put them. She wanted there to be plenty of grass for the children to play on. She said this so casually it made his heart stop beating. That word. Children. And the silent word in front of it. Their. When his heart started beating again, it was faster than before and he couldn't seem to slow it.

She had varying opinions about fireplaces, romantic views on window seats. She'd say things like, "I think our daughter would like a room with a window seat," as if such a daughter already existed. And the real estate angent would smile and nod patiently. At one house she commented, "It's a shame that tree isn't closer to the house." It was an old oak tree, with sturdy branches. "Why closer?" he had asked. There was no way for him to have guessed the words she said next. "If it was closer, you could reach that branch from the bedroom window on the side there. The children could sneak out that way when they're teenagers."

There was a matter-of-factness to everything she said.

"And will we be the type of parents who have children who sneak out?"

She shrugged, still studying the tree a bit wistfully, though she had already decided against the house because of it. "I hope our children will have good judgment. But I also hope that on occasion we'll be strict enough with them to warrant sneaking out. Children -- teenagers -- need a bit of danger and adventure every once in a while. We had some in our day. I want them to have some, too."

He loved her for the way she thought about things. He kissed her spontaneously for her speech, and the real estate agent smiled with even more patience.

It had taken a long time for them to decide where they would live, or rather, for it to be said out loud. She had worried that he would want to live further east, but she also worried that he thought she had expectations about them living on the coast. She wanted him to want to live there for himself, not just for her. So when she'd finally asked about it, trying to be nonchalant, he had been surprised. He had looked up from the newspaper, spread out on the kitchen table in her small, one bedroom apartment, and he'd said, "In Monterey, of course. Where else would we live?" She had smiled and put her hand on his shoulder and kissed him.

All of these things had led them to house number eight. There were four more on the list to visit, but she said she didn't want to see them. The eighth house. That was it. A modest bungalow with four bedrooms and a living room that flowed into a dining room through a large arch. There was a fence around the backyard and a tree where she said they could hang a swing. She loved the roses out front and the porch that was wide enough to fit a small table and chairs for summer evenings. She talked through their life as they walked through the house -- their life that hadn't happened yet. It made him fall in love with the house, almost the same way he'd fallen in love with her. So when they left it, hand-in-hand, he smiled at the real estate agent and said, "Sold."

An apocalypse of love

2011-04-14T23:46:00.001-04:00

Boston
Friday, April 14, 1911

[From Mary's journal]

...It seemed to me that it was the moment of the opening of the door between Kahlil and the world that shall love him and into whose heart he shall surely feel he is pouring his work. I think his future is not far away now!

And so I made up my mind to follow what seems to me the final finger of God--I put definitely to myself the possibility of being his wife. And though every waking hour since has been drenched with inner tears, I know I am right, and that the tears mean joy, not pain, for the future. My age is simply the barrier raised between us and the blunder of our marrying. Not my age constitutes the objection--but the fact that for Kahlil there waits a different love from that he bears me--an apocalypse of love--and that shall be his marriage. His greatest work will come out of that--his greatest happiness, his new, full life. And it is not many years distant. Toward the woman of that love, I am but a step. And though my susceptible eyes weep, I think of her with joy--and I don't want to have Kahlil, because I know she is growing somewhere for him, and that he is growing for her.

Beloved Prophet (1972)

"Your seeing eyes and knowing hands"

2011-04-13T01:39:00.001-04:00

Kahlil tonight. It happened that I flipped to the end of the book (I am drawn to sad endings this month), and I came, by chance, upon the following:

Western Union

1931 April 12 AM 11 28

KAHLIL PASSED AWAY FRIDAY NIGHT WE TAKE HIM TO BOSTON ON MONDAY WRITE 281 FOREST HILLS ST JAMAICA PLAINS MASS

MARY GIBRAN

A quick Google search will tell you that April 12, 1931 was a Sunday, making Friday April 10. And so, two days ago, it has been 80 years since his light went out of this world.

But I think -- I feel -- that his light is really still in this world.

Palaepaphos

2011-04-12T02:24:00.000-04:00

The pale wildflowers, the rocky terrain. I would know it anywhere. The wind is warm off the Mediterranean, the water spread out before me, a perfect azure blue. The sun is so bright my eyes are forced to squint, even with my back to it. It lends a sort of haze to everything around me.

Behind me, a short, squat lighthouse stands abandoned, the white paint is slowly chipping away, exposing the nondescript gray bricks beneath it. He is sitting on a crooked bench ahead of me, staring out to sea.

"I forgot about this bench," I say, putting my hand on the back of it, feeling the dry splinters of the weathered wood. Even as I say the words, the memory of the first time I sat there washes over me. That day seems a million years ago.

He turns his face up to look at mine. "You didn't forget," he says. "You keep everything, and this bench was in there along with everything else. With the sign for the Odeon. The old man in the garden. The archeologists under the canvas tent. It's all here."

I smile at the thought of having it all in my grasp again. I sit down beside him, the ocean breeze against my cheeks, even as I press my face against his shoulder. I wish I had a hat, but instead the sun beats down mercilessly on the top of my head. You'd think it was the birthplace of the Sun God instead of the Love Goddess. This, too, makes me smile. I tuck my feet up under me and we sit silently for a few minutes, just the two of us and the water and the island and the past and the future. I am reminded of a sad dream I had two years ago, in which I was waist deep in a sea the same color as this one.

The sun is working on me like a lullabye. I close my eyes, breathing in the dust mixed with salt.

"You'll give yourself away at this rate, Angel," he says at last.

I open my eyes and sigh like a child. I feel like a child. I take his hands in mine, resting them on my lap. "I wouldn't mind that so much," I tell him. "Sometimes I get tired of living in a tower."

"I worry less about you than I do about him."

"You should worry about him," I agree. "The things that I could do to him--"

"The things you will do to him."

"It's decided then?" I am staring at his hands in mine, idly rubbing his knuckles against my palm.

He nods, perhaps not knowing what more to say, and I nod, knowing that there really isn't anything to be said.

"And so you brought me here...?" I ask.

"Because you changed here once. And I wanted you to remember that it can be pleasant to change sometimes."

Together But Apart

2011-04-07T22:54:00.002-04:00

I have been wild with a strange kind of wordlessness, but it's been far from silence. On the contrary, my heart has spoken to his unceasingly. I am probably in danger of overwhelming him with my constant mental chatter. Nothing is too small to escape my desire to share it with him.

And at night I find I sleep to dream him. I sleep to wake and conquer one more day that separates us.

Nighttime conversations

2011-04-04T23:55:00.001-04:00

I climb up to the roof though it is dangerous to begin with and more so in the dark. I will keep my counsel with the stars before I sleep. Downstairs, I've opened all the windows. I need to let the evil spirits out and call the good ones in. I think the warm air makes the bad thoughts multiply more quickly. I am haunted by dark moods tonight, pestered by persistent devils. I've been counting crows for hours to summon cleansing rains to wash it all away. Even now, between me and the stars the clouds and wind roll thickly in and threaten to unleash the very things I'm eager for.

My evenings with the stars are numbered, a testament to the necessity of this inclement weather. It almost doesn't matter that I can't see his face tonight; I am safe in the night air, knowing that his eyes see through the veil that separates us. He watches over me and keeps my secrets. It's a wonder he hasn't fallen out of the sky from the weight of them over all these years.

"Keep them just a little while longer," I insist.

Toasters

2011-04-03T22:12:00.000-04:00

3 April 2009
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear Long Lost.

I threw a toaster at your head today, but you ducked and said I threw like a girl. I laughed, but what you didn't know is that I cried a little, too. I thought about it later -- why I cried -- and I wasn't quite sure why: it seemed like there were just too many reasons.

Missing you, toujours,
--

Monster

2011-03-30T23:51:00.004-04:00

He watched all her movements covetously. In that moment she was running into the arms of another man, her laughter echoing behind her as if she had gone much farther away than ten or twelve feet. She threw her arms around his neck, the gesture requiring her to stand so tall on her toes that they barely touched the ground. It didn't matter anyway, she had been lifted off of it, spun a quarter of a circle out of the pure joy in the meeting.

Always that joy in their meeting. The look in their eyes stabbed him with jealousy.

It was foolish of him. He knew her and he knew the man -- her childhood friend. There was nothing between them. It had more to do with him and how anyone who was the object of her affection, even momentarily, became his momentary enemy. He couldn't stop himself.

He hated the way she looked at the man. Having grown up together, there were no secrets in her eyes. Even if she had tried to lie, he would have known because he had been there. Witness and participant. It was not that she lacked openness or directness when she looked into his own eyes, only that it was different. Her trust in him had been earned. Learned. Her trust in the other was so much older as to seem in-born.

But this man was not the worst. Joseph was the worst. Just thinking the name made his jaw clench at the unfounded rivalry. What he hated most about Joseph was the casual persistence of her touch. Whenever she and Joseph were in the same vicinity, it seemed to him that some part of them was always touching. Sitting down, their knees might graze each other. Standing and talking, she might put her hand on his arm. And when they put their heads together to talk quietly -- how the thought of it made his blood burn -- they would sometimes seem so close to one another that surely their faces were touching.

It was all unintentional. Neither forethought it, and he knew that. Her relationship with Joseph was of the same nature as her other childhood friend. They had all grown up so closely that they had grown into and around one another. One could hardly be separated from the other at points.

And now she had grown in and around and through him, such that he was envious of anyone who could lay similar claim to her love. He wanted every part of her as his sole possession. Every movement, every word; every memory, every thought. That she should exist at all outside the realm of his heart felt like a betrayal he was forced to watch every day, over and over again.

He reminded himself that it was all in his head. That he had every part of her already.

That night, though, as they went to bed, he couldn't help but hold her a little apart, not as close as he usually did. It was more punishment for himself than for her. She barely noticed, pressing her face to his chest, her arms around him like a vise on his heart.

"I always feel so glad to see him," she commented on the encounter. He could hear a wistfulness in her voice at the nearness of the memory. "Seeing him reminds me that this is real," she continued. "That I haven't just dreamt it all."

She held him tighter, and he knew what she meant so completely that he kissed the top of her head. He, too, needed to be reminded on occasion that she really had come true. And even the things he thought he'd change about her, he'd never truly want to.

"There’s a hidden metaphor here somewhere, and I’ve always wondered what it is"

2011-03-29T23:28:00.003-04:00

29 March 2009
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear Long Lost.

This letter is a little like your Monterey Tears. I’m in Sonoma tonight, and I am so jealous of Claire. I don’t remember the last time I saw her look so confident and beautiful. It’s as though nothing can touch her, nothing can take away that kind of golden touch and golden luck. She’s got everything, it seems, and that eats away at my soul. She’s forty-six years old. Can you believe it? Forty-six years old. I wonder sometimes if it will really take us that long to get to where we’re going.

I’m sitting on the back porch of Southern Cross enjoying the incredible silence of the evening. I’m around chapter nine at this point, and I’m reading about how “Even the birds were quiet in that moment. No wind rustled the plants, and no cars or tractors penetrated the air around the winery, insulated by the acreage surrounding it. It was as if they could hear the sun rise as it cleared the thin line of the horizon, and then suddenly the whole world woke.”

Instead of a world waking though, I’m watching a world preparing for dreams, for a deep and peaceful slumber. A world and a half away, you’re probably also looking forward to closing your eyes. Has it been a long week? (They all seem long these days). Has your head been busy with a thousand thoughts, some having to do with the work you’re supposed to be doing, but most of them completely unrelated? Perhaps it’s just me.

What are you dreaming about these days? I know you rarely remember when you open your eyes, but every once in a while...every once in a while it seems like you’ll remember one or two. It’s interesting, you know, I’ve been dreaming less regularly these past few months. It’s been that long, black sleep I know I’ve told you more than once that I hate. Just these past few days though, the dreams have started coming back. Slowly, at first, disjointed, but getting brighter every day. I think that’s how I ended up in Sonoma.

Isn’t it funny how we used to talk about dirt in the old days? I’ve never had so many conversations about dirt as I’ve had with you, and I can’t imagine I ever will. Black dirt. The kind to make a dream grow and come alive; the kind to sink one’s feet into and leave behind a perfect imprint. I can see down to the edge of the grass where it meets the careful rows of the vines beyond. I can tell that there’s a hidden metaphor here somewhere, and I’ve always wondered what it is. All these years -- it’s years now -- I’ve been coming to Sonoma, and I still don’t know what the metaphor is. How can that be? Are you keeping it from me?

What are you dreaming about these days? I know I already asked, but I mean the other kind this time. Tell me what you’re dreaming of these days.

Toujours,
--

The Whyte Boar

2011-03-28T23:18:00.000-04:00

I walked into the bedroom with a book held in both my hands. Though I walked as I would normally, it felt like sneaking. He was already sitting on the bedside closest to the wall, his own book in his hands, engrossed. I sat down beside him, my body turned expectantly, like a breath before one asks a question though I was silent. After a moment or two, he smiled without looking up and asked:

"Do you want me to read to you?"

"Yes." I smiled back, feeling childish.

He sighed and set his own book aside, holding out a hand for mine. I turned it over eagerly, crawling under the covers as he looked at the cover without surprise. It was a book that he had read from before.

"Start at Redmore Plain, please," was my only additional request.

"But it's the saddest part."

"That's why I like it."

And so he turned the book to nearly the last chapter and began reciting the last acts of Richard's life. I listened, thinking of the greatness of men and the mysteries of God.

"I still believe in our love of adventure"

2011-03-25T19:39:00.001-04:00

25 March 2009
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear Long Lost.

Tonight was a night of cowboys. There’s something so refreshing about the idea that American mythology lives on somewhere even today. I was listening to a young gentleman -- around my age, I would imagine -- talk about his work herding cattle over hundreds of miles on horseback in Montana. They call them big sky states for a reason, and he confirmed all of those reasons with a kind of gleam in his eyes that left me certain he was seeing it all again as he described it to me. The sun coming up over the Little Rocky mountains, two hundred head of cattle and a good workhorse beneath you. He smiled a little wistfully and protested that he didn’t mean to romanticize it. It’s hard work, he said, with high start up costs and a small profit margin, not to mention how labor-intensive it. But of course he had a caveat, and this is when his eyes really did light up. He said that there were moments that made it all worthwhile: moments when he would look up and know without a doubt that there was no place he’d rather be and nothing else he’d rather be doing.

Can you imagine? I couldn’t help but catch my breath listening to him and watching his face. He was so earnest and I found myself wanting everything he had. I wanted that life, even if just for a moment, and I hope he didn’t interpret my reaction as the same old irony that characterizes people of my profession. I really meant it when I said, “I’m so jealous.” Hours later, I still am.

It was easy for the men tonight to be caricatures of themselves. I’ve never seen so many cowboy hats outside a rodeo, and the mustaches can only be described as impressive. For all their suits, they were predictably in cowboy boots, many with steel tips, and there was that half-expectation that any second one would spit tobacco out of the corner of their mouth. The point is that they weren’t caricatures though. These were men at the forefront of their aging industry. With a country long ago mechanized and turned into a giant factory and/or assembly line, these are salt of the earth sort of men. They get their hands dirty, but they’re thinking into the future. You won’t find their cattle locked in pens. You won’t see their ranch hands in lab coats with syringes full of hormones. They bring new meaning to the words “organic” and “free range.” Talk about single handedly keeping the grain industry in business -- these cattle eat better than some third (or second) world countries. I guess that should offend me, and in some way, I suppose my sensibilities are hurt by that, but more than anything, it interests me. They could hang up their hats and ropes. They could join together and be just another agro-business, just another cog in the machinery of the beef industry, but they refuse to. They love what they do, they love the land that supports what they do, and gosh darn it, they are determined to keep it. And if that means caring about climate change and developing mitigation and adaptation plans, then so be it. If that means lobbying against the Farm Bill and biofuel incentives, then they’ll do that, too. If it means making peace with traditional enemies, and if it means carving out defenses against new ones, then they are ready.

I couldn’t help but be impressed. And they were all so personable, so welcoming, and so refreshingly considerate of my “female presence.” It’s only rare moments in my professional life that I’m keenly aware that I’m a woman and am amused by it, but tonight was one of them. There was no condescension, only an old-fashioned sort of deference. Talk about the new and old worlds colliding. That’s exactly what this was, and I wish you could have been there to enjoy it with me. Would we be dreaming different dreams aloud tonight? Would we trade our sails in for ropes, our boats for horses? Would we talk of mountaintop sunsets and an ocean of prairie instead of water? I think we would, even if this dream would be less permanent than the other. I still believe in our love of adventure. Will the day ever come when we’ll finally pursue it?

With full heart,
--

Relief

2011-03-24T22:34:00.000-04:00

I've sort of been living in the in-between lately. A decision-less coward. Such an existence always has its breaking point though, so I finally demanded of myself, with force: what do I want? And my first thought was:

I want to dance with him at my wedding.

Well.

That explains why I've had such wavering resolve. It's about so much more than wanting to forgive him, it's about wanting to have him back in my life. Because he is a part of me, and so he will always be in my life anyway.

This is something I can live with. I can live with wanting this.

Deliberate

2011-03-21T23:27:00.000-04:00

I am unraveling him. Slowly. It's something that can't be rushed, but I swear I will drive myself mad with my own restraint.

I want to rush in. Throw my arms wide -- throw my heart wide -- like a tempest in the sanctuary.

But gently, gently. Treading softly.

'I want to be a garden.'

2011-03-20T21:24:00.000-04:00

Part of the homily today was a story about a missionary in Africa. The missionary would watch the peculiar behavior of a Bedouin man who, every day, would lay down on the ground, his ear pressed into the sand. One day, the missionary asked the Bedouin why he laid there in such a fashion, and the Bedouin said that he was listening.

"What are you listening to?" asked the missionary.

And the man replied that he was listening to the desert.

Somewhat amused, the missionary asked what the desert said to the man.

"The desert says, 'I want to be a garden.'"

Broken Wings (1912)

2011-03-12T19:49:00.002-05:00

“The heart of a woman doesn’t change with time, nor does it alter with the passing seasons. The heart of a woman struggles long, but does not die. The heart of a woman resembles a field on which human beings stage battles and massacres, uprooting trees, burning the underbrush, spattering the rocks with gore, sowing its earth with bones and skulls. But it abides, imperturbable, placid, self-assured; thereon spring remains spring, and autumn, autumn, till the end of time.”

--Kahlil Gibran

Marigolds

2011-02-27T21:27:00.001-05:00

I am pinning yellow flowers in my hair tonight because I'm almost free and I could not be happier. The rain drips down the windowpanes, but I could not be happier.

Impasse

2011-02-25T23:45:00.003-05:00

I stared up at the sky, counting the stars. The same seven, over and over again. Technically there were eight, but one was so faint I skipped it as often as not.

I was lying on my back, my arms spread just a little from my body, my fingers splayed out on the ground, but my legs pressed close together.

"You're going to get hit by a car," he said.

I turned my face to see him standing sideways in my vision, upright in my parents' driveway. I could feel the grooves of the asphalt on my cheek.

"No, I'm not. I've been waiting thirteen years for someone to come down this road and no one ever has."

As he walked down the driveway, the orange glow of the streetlights slowly illuminated his features. I watched as he smiled, almost ruefully, and shook his head. He was wearing the same long, black coat that he often did and his hands were in his pockets. He walked out into the middle of the street until he was barely a foot away from me. He looked down, seemingly from a great height, and I looked up.

"Aren't you cold?"

It was freezing outside. The twenty-fifth day of February. The streets had only just rid themselves of snow and ice, though both lingered in patches on the sidewalks and in the grass. I wore no hat, no scarf, no gloves. I could feel the cold in all the strangest places, and on top of it, the cold of the rough road underneath my hands, my scalp. It seeped in through my clothing, through my coat and jeans. It bit into my bones.

"I'm pretending that it's warm. That it's summer and I'm lying on a beach somewhere." It was true; imagining was the only thing that kept my teeth from chattering.

He bent down at the knee, as if about to pray. He leaned over, his face very close to mine. One hand was on the ground next to my head and he put the other on my cheek. He put his mouth over mine very deliberately, as if to give me CPR. But instead it was a kiss.

When he finally pulled back, after a minute or two, I looked into his eyes and held them, almost physically, with my own.

"You know I can't," I said.

He smiled and said, "You know I can't either. But this is one of those rare times when I wish you could and you couldn't care less."

"That's not true." I propped myself up on my elbows though it took effort and my joints felt stiff. "If you could it would make all the difference in the world."

"But I can't." His smile was sad, almost like mine.

"And neither can I."

"An impasse?"

I paused, thinking. "For now."

"What should we do then? Instead?"

I pushed myself up into a full sitting position, my palms grinding into the pavement, dirty and damp from the recent melt.

"Let's go inside. I'm tired of being cold."

"We’re too young...to have left so many dreams behind"

2011-02-23T23:43:00.002-05:00

23 February 2009
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear Long Lost.

It’s a cold February night tonight, rather unlike the past few ones, which were rather mild. It’s the kind of night, no matter how seasonable, that makes my mind drift to thoughts of warmer days and warmer places. I think about a sailboat on still, blue waters.

You used to dream about a sailboat that you would call la Torre. Do you remember? You had her all picked out, a beauty at only $150,000 or thereabouts. It’s on that list of dreams I keep. A creature of the sea at heart myself, you inspired me to I pick my own. I named her Ophelia to tempt the Fates. You said it was an unwise name; after all, Ophelia drowned herself. But it’s the name I wanted and I still stand by it. I see that boat sometimes when I close my eyes. She’s a little different every time, but she’s always big enough to carry all my loved ones. You, I think, preferred the name Penelope for my boat. An equally cursed name, if you ask me. Penelope -for Odysseus’ stranded wife. That’s just your kind of joke.

Will we ever get to sail away together, Long Lost? Or is it just another of those long lost dreams of ours? Sometimes I can’t help think that we’re too young still to have done so little; to have left so many dreams behind, unopened. Undiscovered.

Is it too late to go back for them?

Fair winds and following seas; sweet dreams,
--

The memory of all those breathless, sleepless nights

2011-02-21T19:54:00.000-05:00

It hurts everywhere. The old hurts, buried under layers of scar tissue -- even they are soft and raw. This is what is left when you have cried out all the tears. Just a dry well of sadness. I am trying to be better than it. But I am failing.

I can feel the hole inside of me: the space he used to fill. I remember the hours I spent sitting on the floor in the middle of a strange room far away, listening to the sound of him being torn apart and willing my voice to be an extension of my arms, and, through the phone lines, to somehow keep him together. I had to have more faith in the power of my love than I had ever had before, and maybe than I have ever had since.

For most people, their relationships are based on words and talking. It’s how they get to know one another, how they learn each other’s secrets. I think we are among the rare few who came to know each other in silence. We always communicated more through the unspoken than others could hope to say in a thousand words.

I thought that we'd grow old together.

And now? Tonight? All I can do is marvel that there is even tenderness in my hatred.

Earlier; at the museum

2011-02-19T19:19:00.004-05:00

There is a perfect view of the clock tower from where I sit in this old, half-round room I took you to once. It seems fitting to have time staring me in the face. Reproachfully.

I have been thinking about my own blindness lately -- an attempt to study it. Know it better. Perchance, defeat it.

I seem never to be able to see things in the moment they are happening to me. I fear this is a willful blindness. For some reason it is always easier for me to believe and accept the bad things. Something about the terrible seems so much more tangible. But happiness? Ephemeral. Imperfect in a way tragedy never is. And so I cannot trust it, can never believe it is mine to hold on to.

The light is all wrong today. Too late in the day; too early in the year. It's not the only thing that's different. I am learning that it is all different without you. Bacon, Kuhn, de Kooning. They are all laughing at me.

I am like those tragic comedians.

I keep thinking that perhaps you are just behind me. Perhaps you are about to walk around and sit beside me. Perhaps I will say I'm sorry. For that other day -- and that other night -- when, in typical fashion, I got it all wrong.

What taught my heart to fear

2011-02-17T23:35:00.002-05:00

Ten years ago today, the Long Lost heard me cry for the first time. That's always the second thing I think about on February 17.

Ten years ago today, I learned that nothing in life is sacred. That nothing is guaranteed to be either perfect or easy. That the safest thing in the world can bring the worst heartache.

But those things are still worthwhile.

Because the third thing that I think about today didn't even happen on February 17. It happened several days later, standing in a quiet, dimly lit room, holding my eldest niece in my arms. She was surrounded by a sadness too big for how small she was as she rested her cheek against my neck. I remember smoothing back her hair and giving her a kiss -- and that was when the thought half formed itself, I think. That though there was no protection against that kind of pain, there was also no substitute for what I held in my arms.

You can't plant dreams where hearts aren't true

2011-02-15T21:39:00.001-05:00

The light has only just begun to touch the sky as I walk up the front steps of the darkened winery. The door is unlocked and turns easily in my hands. In the pre-dawn silence, my shoes sound particularly loud on the hardwood floors, echoing off the exposed beams of the pitched ceiling. The main hall is deserted, though the linens have already been laid on the tables and the chairs arranged. The windows are open to the veranda as they always are, except when it's raining, and the air moves the edges of the tablecloths, giving the place a haunted feeling. I touch the tables as I walk between them, around the far corner of the room that conceals a small hallway. My hand trails along the wall, my fingertips tracing the frame around the closed door that leads down to the cellar.

I stop as the hall opens up to the kitchen, a room as familiar to me as my own face. I am the one who picked out the large oak island, the pot rack above it, each hook now occupied. I chose the copper hood above the stove, the cabinet doors -- some of solid wood and some with lattice work glass. I filled the cabinets. Glasses for water, for wine and champagne. Every size dish, from saucers to serving platters. My presence is in all of these things, and yet the room itself is all him. He's in the wood of the floors, the walls, the tables and shelves. I think to myself that he's the trunk and the branches of the tree and I am nothing more than the leaves.

The back door is propped open. Beyond it I can see the neatly planted rows of grapes. Thick ropes of green and brown braided across eighty-six acres. They seem to pull me across the room, to the door and through it.

The sun has finally begun to rise. The mists along the ground will soon evaporate, taking the chill in the air with them. Until then, I pull my sweater closer around me and sit on the top step of the porch.

Beside him.

He doesn't turn to look at me. He stares, perhaps unseeingly, out across the vineyard. His elbows rest on his knees, his sleeves already rolled up, his feet bare. In his right hand, he turns a black flame between his fingers. Every once in a while he puts it idly to his lips before resuming the former motion.

I untie my shoes. One at a time. I take them off and set them beside me. I draw my knees up to my chest, one arm draped over them, and I rest my head there. I study his profile. He is, perhaps, forty-six years old. There's a bit of gray creeping through his black hair, starting just above the ear, at his temple, and one small piece at the very front where it falls across his forehead. There was a time, when we were younger, when he would wear his hair much shorter, but I've always liked it long, like it is now. I reach out my free hand and tuck an errant piece behind his ear.

I wonder if he looks old. To me he just looks like himself.

Now he's staring at the piece of black glass in his hand, worry creasing the space between his eyebrows. In one quick motion, he closes it in his hand and then rises, as if he'd been contemplating doing so for a long time. The glass slides into his pocket. I stand more slowly, my head level with his only because I am one step higher. From this position though, our eyes share a line of sight across the property. I remember the first time we stood there, full of doubts. How those doubts dogged us. As we broke ground. Planted. Built. Laid down our lives and our dreams in the soil and on the land. For some it is too big a risk, too great a sacrifice, but in the face of doubts we were brave.

Once.

He walks down the steps and I follow, taking the last two in a small jump to match his pace. Without a word, I slip my hand in his. We walk across the lawn in our bare feet, the grass damp between our toes. Above us the sky is turning from a bright orange to a faded yellow, and will soon turn back to blue.

We walk right up to the edge, where the green grass meets the black dirt. The dividing line. And we cross over it.

The rows are wide enough to accommodate two. We only go a few steps before he stops though. When I look up, I can see tears in his eyes.

"I miss you," he whispers. "I miss dreaming together."

I nod. I miss Sonoma, too. It was never supposed to be my dream, but somehow, as I wrote it all to life, it became mine.

The things you're not supposed to say

2011-02-13T23:38:00.001-05:00

Do not call me 'dear.' Don't sign your letters 'love.' Don't sign them 'yours' or 'truly.' They're all words that you can't possibly mean the way I want you to mean them.

Heaven in my arms

2011-02-11T23:58:00.004-05:00

I lead him laughingly down the hill, the flashlight bouncing carelessly off the open lawn and the trees that ring the lake. I have him by the fingers, tangled in my own, and the slope propels us forward at a slight run. Any faster and we might have tripped over the hammock, but instead we reach it thankfully. He tries to hold it steady, gesturing for me to get in.

"No, you first," I insist, still laughing. "I'm better at it than you."

And this is true. So he climbs in, leaning back with an unsteady smile. He's not used to doing this sort of thing. He is wholly in my hands and they are eager hands. I give the hammock a practiced push and the sudden movement makes him grip the edges of the fabric. But instead of tipping out, I have only tipped him closer to me, and I press a quick kiss to his lips before I slide in beside him, sending us gently rocking. I switch the flashlight off and let it fall onto the damp grass. It's entirely possible that it will roll away, but I don't care. He has one arm around my shoulder, and I have one around his waist, contentment filling my whole being. We stare up at the stars. We don't even say a word.

Everything is clear now that my eyes have adjusted to the darkness. The sky is an endless window to the universe beyond it, just above the treetops that seem to curve around its edges. The air is cool for summer. It raises the hairs on both our arms in a pleasant way. A way that makes the moment feel all the more alive.

I'm so full of love for the boy in my arms. I pull him closer to me, feeling the familiar combination of his bones and flesh beneath a plain white t-shirt. They are just the first, deceiving layers between his heart and mine. Beyond them are the bricks and mortar, the traps and snares. I am determined to defeat them all. I am laying siege upon his heart -- I wonder if he knows. I have been doing so for weeks and months and there are times I think that I can feel him crumbling in my hands. Or could it be the other way around?

I wish there was some way to show him. Some way for him to know my love as fully as I feel it. I turn unto my side, away from him, and stand.

"What are you doing?" he asks, that still uncertain smile on his lips.

I smile back with confidence before I look up at the sky and say, "I'm going to pull down the stars for you."

He laughs, half sitting up. I put my thumb and index finger to my lips, licking them slightly and then reaching. Reaching.

And he is silent.

"I wish that I could pull them all down," I whisper. Comets' tails and shooting stars. Fire and ice in my hands. I hang them in the air above the hammock and he can't help but be distracted for a moment, but only for a moment. His eyes are on me. Astonished now.

"But how..." he begins to ask, and then he stops. Does it really even matter? He knows it doesn't.

I wasn't sure that I could do it, but now that I have, I put my arms around his neck. For a while I just look into his eyes, feeling my own success. My mouth is very close to his when I say, "You're like heaven in my arms. I just wanted you to see."

O, poet, who has heard thee?

2011-02-09T23:16:00.000-05:00

[New York]
Tuesday -- Feb. 9, 1915

Beloved Mary,

You not only understand my silences and my formless days but you also become one with them in spirit. My silent days are your silent days. How utterly impossible it is for me to do anything without you -- and how absolutely necessary your spirit is to my daily life.

The other cold day, I found Ryder in a half heated room in one of the most poor houses on 16th Street. He lives the life of Diogenes, a life so wretched and unclean that it is hard for me to describe. But it is the only life he wants. He has all the money he needs, but he does not think of that. He is no longer on this planet. He is beyond his own dreams.

And he read the poem. There were tears in his old eyes. Then he said, "It is a great poem. It is too much for me. I am not worthy of it. No, No, I am not worthy of it."

Then, after a long silence, he said, "I did not know that you are a poet as well as a painter. They did not tell me that you are a poet when I went to see your exhibition. I have been wanting to write a letter to the lady who wrote to me about your work. I wrote many letters to her but I burned them. One must wait for the spirit to move before one can write a letter."

He promised to sit for a drawing.

His head is wonderful -- very much like that of Rodin -- only it is unkempt.

Love from Kahlil

Beloved Prophet (1972)

Two Thoughts (un)Related

2011-02-07T21:11:00.002-05:00

I could smell the earth today. And I thought how strange it was to smell the earth in February.

I am thinking of dark-haired poets tonight. I wonder if it's the words they choose or the tone they choose to use them in.

Silence Between

2011-02-05T02:17:00.002-05:00

The silence is the worst.

Or is it not knowing the reason for the silence that is the worst?

No. It is the silence itself. Knowing the reason would not make it any more bearable, and it is so unbearable at the moment. It seems to have taken on a life of its own, with physical qualities. There's a thickness to it. An oppressiveness in its size such that it seems to have its own gravitational pull. I am caught in its orbit. Unwillingly.

I can't bring myself to be a part of it. I never could. But the silence seems to only make me say the wrong things. I don't know why. Even now -- these words -- it seems almost certain that they are wrong. Or at the very least not right.

I miss the Sweetheart.

I miss the joy and the laughter and the certainty that he brings to my life. How funny and wonderful that after all these years he should be the bearer of certainty. There was such a long time when I could not have been less certain of him. But things are so different now than they were then.

I try to remind myself that it hasn't been that long. Two months. Not much time at all. But two months can seem like an eternity when they are filled with silence and waiting for that silence to end.

I can't help but think about that summer eight years ago. My own unyielding silence. Is this what it felt like for him? Maddening? Not knowing why it had begun nor when it would end? If it would end?

I try to remember his words to me, that night in the parking lot, sitting on the curb. One would think I would remember the apology. That was the whole point, wasn't it? That was what I had been looking for? But it wasn't really. I suppose that's why what I remember most is when he told me he didn't want to start over. He didn't want to forget our past, he just wanted to move forward from it. I almost can't believe that I had mixed feelings about those words when he first said them. They were in every way the right words. Who are we, after all, without our past? Who is he? Who am I? Without the other? He was so wise in that moment, and so much wiser than I was.

The other thing I'll never forget is just holding him. There was forgiveness in my arms, but there was so much more. It was the acceptance that I would always love that boy. That complicated, confusing, sometimes-silent boy. And I didn't know why, but I was willing to stop wondering why. And just love him.

This, now, is just another reminder, I suppose, that he still has the power to hurt me. He's done it a few times over the years. Sometimes unknowingly, and sometimes at least a little knowingly. I've hurt him back, of course. I think more often than not knowingly, even if I'm always sorry for it afterward.

It's a hard reminder. A forced appreciation of my love for him. I think that's the way I'll try to think of it until it's all over.

But I'll keep hoping that it's over soon.

Trust in mystery. There are great forces at work between you and those around you. You never know when one moment will forever alter the way you live.

"The culmination of all the little things between two people"

2011-02-03T21:56:00.001-05:00

3 February 2009
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear Long Lost.

Today is the day the music died.

In some small way I always like to keep today in memory, so I listened to Don McLean on my walk home from work tonight. I was late in the office and the sky was already quite dark when I left, the stars crisp and clear between the branches of the magnolia trees that line the streets. I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but the magnolias have their buds already, the malady I've come to call the Second Spring. It's much too early, of course, for them to flower, but the past few years of unseasonably warm weather have confused much of the plant life in the city. Somehow nature corrects herself though and the damage hasn't been permanent yet. We get the flowers again in April when we're supposed to. I've been thinking lately, for no reason in particular, that I measure my love by magnolias.

Do you remember dancing to "American Pie"? It was the first song you ever really sang to me. Of course, I had heard you sing a hundred times before, but when we danced together at the end of senior year, you held me close and sang the words in my ear just loud enough for me to know you wanted me to hear. Will I ever forget the sound of your voice -the feel of it in your chest an inch from mine -when you sang about how the lovers cried and the poets dreamed?

Did you write the book of love? [] And do you have faith in God above [] If the Bible tells you so? [] Do you believe in rock and roll? [] Can music save your mortal soul? [] And can you teach me how to dance real slow?

Did you love me back then, Long Lost? I can't tell. I was too young, too close to you to see through discerning eyes. If you did, I'm sorry. Mostly because I loved you too and didn't know it. We had such strange beliefs about love back then. We thought love meant sex. We thought it meant saying the words (I love you). If we had known then what we know now, about how real love is the culmination of all the little things between two people: listening, telling, sharing, touching, holding, waiting, stopping, yelling -what might have been instead?

I know we'll never know, and I don't even really want to, I just like to wonder. It's my favorite way to fill the hours in between my desk and bed.

I wish I could say that I miss you tonight, Long Lost, but the truth is that I don't. I miss no part of you that exists in the present, only the many pieces of you littering the past. If it makes you feel better, I miss the pieces of myself as well. That kind of innocence lost, if innocence is the word for it. We grew up fast, so maybe it's the wrong word after all. Whatever it is though, that's what I miss tonight when the music seems to have died again.

I kiss the stars, I keep your voice,
--

The Hanging Tree

2011-02-01T23:20:00.000-05:00

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree?
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three?
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree?
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee?
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree?
Where I told you to run so we'd both be free?
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree?
Wear a necklace of rope side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

[Song excerpted from the book Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins]

"I could translate all the beauty that I see unto the page"

2011-01-31T07:31:00.000-05:00

31 January 2009
Washington, DC

[Unsent]

Dear Long Lost.

It’s your mother’s birthday. And Nicholas’ too, but more importantly your mother’s. I’ve often found it strange how you and I keep the anniversary of her death so faithfully, and yet her birthday passes with hardly any notice. Shouldn’t it be the opposite? Shouldn’t we celebrate the day God gave her to us, not the day He took her away?

We’re old and set in our ways now, though. I doubt that we’re able to change at this point.

I stood out in the cold today, down by the river. My fingers seemed about to break off, but the sun was warm on my face, and I hungered for it like a starving person. When will summer days come, do you think? They were saying on the radio that it’s been the coldest January on record for the city. There were only a handful of days when we broke freezing, if you can believe it. I can believe it: I feel it everywhere in my body. I woke this morning to find a softening bruise on my hip from when I slid on the ice yesterday morning. I can barely bend my knee up to my chest.

Some friends and I were talking this afternoon about summering in Maine this year. I had planned to all along, but it would be wonderful to make a trip of it. Go up to Bar Harbor again, try to catch a glimpse of some Atlantic Right whales. I can see it already in my mind, the way the sunlight comes through all that foliage. I want to hike to new heights, and no one need even dare me to take a dip in that freezing, salty water. I crave that kind of baptism in all that’s wonderful about life.

I’ve always wanted to go on a lighthouse tour, too. I have friends up there who would serve as perfect guides. I’d want to bring some paints with, too. I’m hardly Edward Hopper, but I’ve always believed that if I tried hard enough, if I loved long enough, I could translate all the beauty that I see unto the page.

I guess we’ll see.

My hands, my heart, toujours,
–

Blindness revisited

2011-01-30T15:26:00.002-05:00

He lifts my head on to his lap, his fingers brushing lightly against my neck as he pulls my hair out from underneath it. His fingers continue to move through my hair, fanning it across his outstretched legs. I find it soothing and my eyes remain closed against the bright sunlight warming my face.

“Why did you do it?” he asks. “--Let him go?” he adds before I can ask.

I see the face of the boy he’s referring to behind my eyelids. His smiling face. The sound of his laughter. And I do so love to make him laugh.

“An early sacrifice to February,” is my answer.

And then, because he’s the voice inside my head, he asks, “But why did you really?”

I open my eyes, and he’s looking down at me so sadly. I wish that I could smile, if only to make him less sad.

“Because I saw how much he loves her.” It seems to require more explanation than that though, so I continue. “And I couldn’t hate him for that. I think I was happy for him. For them. I couldn’t even be jealous, really. I want him to be happy. So I let him go.”

It feels good to have said it out loud. A weight I didn’t even know was resting on my chest seems lifted, even if it was just a small weight, and I breathe in more easily than I had even a few moments ago. His fingers have stilled in my hair, and with his other hand he puts a finger between my eyebrows. I know he must be trying to smooth the persistent wrinkle there.

“But now you are unhappy, Angel.”

I don’t think I'm unhappy. I think I’m growing up. But I’m a little afraid of growing up, lest it mean I shall grow out of moments like these. Nothing could make my heart break faster than that.

“I’m not any less happy than I was before.” I settle for a half-truth.

He shakes his head. Still sad. But is it sadness for me or for himself? I know that sometimes he regrets that he can’t fix this little problem with my heart himself. There are times that I regret it, too. But it’s one of those things that doesn’t bear thinking about.

I have no idea to what he’s referring when he says, after a few minutes, “You’ll see. In the end.”

Whatever it means, I trust him. That I will, in fact, see.

The No Name

2011-01-23T01:36:00.003-05:00

[Unfinished]

I call him the No Name. And yet
everything has his name.
His name is on the empty sheet of paper
sitting on the kitchen table. Waiting
to be filled. His name is in the darkness
behind my closed eyes at night before
the dreams come. His name is the bright star
in the western sky before eight o'clock
in winter months. His name is the feeling
after reading a well-written book. The feeling that
makes me stop. Makes me wonder. Makes that part
between my neck and hip ache with namelessness.
His name is in the hope that I cling to,
just as it is in the sadness that threatens
to tear me apart. His name is in the silence
that fills the waiting hours. Waiting for something
to happen. Anything. Just to end the
waiting. And his name is still there,
like a spark or electric shock, at the moment
when the waiting ends.

Skin and Bones

2011-01-17T23:47:00.005-05:00

I am lying on my bed with my eyes closed, but the light is still on. He sits at my side, his fingers on my upper arm where the blood pulses underneath my skin. His touch is gentle, sliding down to the soft spot inside my elbow and back again. It's soothing -- so much so that I can feel myself slipping closer to sleep.

"Oh, Angel," he whispers, as if he hadn't known it had gotten quite so bad. As if the sight of me this way brings him pain.

"I thought you'd be happy," I say.

"How could this possibly make me happy?"

I look directly at him and point to my eyes. He nods, remembering, but he doesn't smile at my attempt to joke.

"Who knew that one could survive on so little?" I add, as if this should be considered some sort of triumph.

"You're not surviving." His voice is strangely hoarse. "You're wasting away."

I think about his words. About the way my clothes have been hanging more loosely every day. I put a hand on my chest and can feel the bones of my ribcage with disturbing clarity. He's right, of course.

"You would never let me," I smile, closing my eyes again.

"No," he confirms, his fingers sliding further down my arm, to my wrist, to my palm, to the tips of my fingers.

On love, in sadness

2011-01-16T23:10:00.004-05:00

The tears were hot. The kind that need plenty of oxygen to burn, and I couldn’t seem to provide that oxygen quickly enough. I was inhaling before I could finish exhaling, the result a series of strangled noises, watery and weak.

They came quickly. In large numbers. And I let them come. It’s been a while since I’ve cried myself to sleep – since I’ve allowed myself the painful luxury. But it felt right. As if they were the only way to get the poison out. If sadness is a poison.

Forgotten

2010-12-28T02:33:00.001-05:00

I tell myself that I'm not afraid, but the truth is that I am. The fear does not deter me though. I am a glutton for my own punishment, and so I'm trudging through the snow. These boots are just for show, not weatherproofed against these kinds of conditions, but I soldier on, the white cloud of my breath thick against the dark night.

On the other side of the playground are the swings, the same as they have always been, but they look about as cold and stiff as my fingers feel. I dust the snow off the seat and sit down, careful to tuck my coat beneath me. As I push myself off the ground, my feet sink into the untrammeled snow and the chains groan in protest at such unseasonal abuse. I am determined though. The air, like knives, seems to cut into my face, a warning to go back inside, but I refuse. The stars, at least, are beautiful. Orion, ever watchful, stands as king in the late December sky, and I tip my head back to keep my eyes on him. Higher and higher, wanting to fly, but never quite able to.

When at last I'm through, I let my feet fall, leaving deep ridges in the snow. I don't get up right away, continuing to sit there, fidgeting with my gloves and just remembering.

Remembering that he is dead.

It's hard to think of him that way. To think that I'll never look into those eyes again. That he'll never smile at me in the old, familiar way. That his hands will never again take mine in his own and make them warm, though his were often just as cold. Funny how two colds can make a warm.

But no more.

I think about that list I used to keep. Of all the things he'd ever said after the words I wish. From La torre to a light saber, and that vineyard to Cadiz. I still have it somewhere, too. Tucked away in some drawer. Unlooked at these three years at least.

"But he's dead now."

It seems like saying it out loud should make it feel more true.

I stand up and walk to the edge of the playground, or, rather, where I think it is. I imagine I can feel the wooden beams beneath the snow beneath my feet. The edges of my universe -- the old one, anyway. And I close my eyes. And I start erasing.

I erase the house first. The barking dogs. That spot, in the driveway, that seems to have been forever imprinted on my back. It takes a little while, but I erase the couches and the blue chairs. His mother's eyes -- I hesitate, but I erase those, too. I can't keep anything.

I erase the footprints in between the house and where I stand. I erase my running legs, my heavy breathing, the night I threw my arms wide in the field in between. I erase it all.

I turn around and open my eyes. I walk back toward the car, my fingers touching the swings as I pass: erasing them, too. I erase the wooden tower with the slide. I erase his hands gripping my waist as I leapt down from it. I erase my racing heart, my wondering. I erase the time I thought, I think he loves me.

I am almost to the car, lonely in the yellow lights of the empty, unplowed parking lot. And I erase the conversation that we had in front of the garden now unseen, buried under the snow. I erase the self-fulfilling prophecy of the moment by that garden. I erase his careless words. His careless laugh. The silence that hung, foreboding, after he had said the words.

I open the car door, one foot inside. There's a giant, gaping whole in the middle of my memory, but I can't stop now. I erase the perfect physics of his body turning toward me. The nervous accent in his voice. The way he used to carry me in his arms.

The night he cried.

The first hug.

The last one.

Opening my eyes that morning and seeing his face next to mine.

Every dream. Everything. Erased now. Forgotten. As if it all had never been.

I close the door and start the car. And I don't even know his name now.

Star-crossed lovers

2010-11-10T22:07:00.005-05:00

Do you think that if a girl was in love with a constellation. And the constellation loved her in return. And took away all her heartache. And she spent many nights crying all her worries into his waiting arms. And he watched over her and kept her safe. Do you think that eventually the gods would take pity on them and let them be together?

The joy of all the angels

2010-10-31T23:58:00.002-04:00

I cut each rose carefully, keeping the stems long and removing most of the lower leaves before adding them to the pile. The basket beside me in the grass is long and curved up only slightly at the edges, perfectly designed for gardening.
How strange it is to be at the Folly in summertime. The place is alive with noises as it never is in the winter. There is a sort of hum in the air, as if the heat is strumming the invisible chords of sunshine, and there are sweet smells in every direction. The roses, first, right in front of me. Further along the design of the garden: daisies, gardenias, irises and other colorful counterparts. Further off herbs and vegetables, and even further, the smell of wheat and hay in the pastures.
As always, his footfalls are silent, but I sense him nonetheless. I can even tell when he stops, tilting his head back to admire the south-facing façade of the house. It’s overgrown with ivy, the windows of the Queen’s Room the only part still regularly cleared of the creeping vines. This, too, is unusual. That we should be here so late in the Folly’s history. Practically contemporary.
I keep my hands busy with the roses, methodically snipping and cleaning them, setting them aside and beginning again.
“Well. Here we are again,” I say conversationally, though without turning.
“Here again indeed,” he replies, also conversationally. “Here be ghosts.”
I glance sharply over my shoulder at him. He is standing with an open book in his hands, the left one holding it from underneath while the right one rests on a page, as if marking his spot. His eyes are still fixed on the house, rather than the book, seeming to be looking for something.
“Why would you say so?”
”Your words, not mine, if you recall.”
And of course I recall. But if he thinks to mislead me into believing that he refers to Anthony, he is sorely mistaken.
“Haven’t you been dreaming of swings lately?” he inquires, needling me further.
I also know he cannot mean my first love, the Golden One. Surely he doesn’t. --The Long Lost then? I have no thought of the Long Lost though, and he knows that, too. My heart is still hardened on that score. As it is, I mean to replace him. In fact, I don’t just mean to, but find it, rather, a necessity to do so. Because there must always be three, and now there are only two. Upsetting the balance. I am toying with the idea of replacing him with the No Name. They have enough characteristics in common to make it nearly seamless. I, myself, should hardly notice it.
I find it wiser to change the subject, turning my attention back to the roses.
“The Folly is older this time.”
“Around 1970, I should imagine,” he agrees, looking back down at his book.
“And such an unexpected season,” I remark.
“The same one from which you’ve come.”
“You know very well I came from October,” I argue, looking back over my shoulder at him.
He is walking closer, holding the book in one hand, the other in his pocket. “And yet…how much love I’ve sent you this month.”
“Heartache, more like,” I scoff, tossing another rose into the basket at my feet.
He meets my eyes, his face suddenly serious where a moment ago it had still been half-teasing. “Ah, but you crave the heartache as much as the rest of it. How can I deny you when your eyes are never more beautiful as when they’re sad? It would almost break my heart -- if I had one. Perhaps you were always meant to be an angel of sorrow.”
I feel breathless. He has come to stand very close beside me, placing one hand on my cheek, looking intently into my eyes. And where a few minutes ago, staring at the house, his eyes had seemed searching, I can tell he has found what he’s looking for in my eyes, as if, even now, he can see some sadness there.
“But you don’t have to be so sad, Angel.”
I avert my eyes, pulling my cheek away from his touch and wiping the dirt of my hands on my corduroy skirt. I am dressed as I would be dressed for any ordinary day and find it momentarily disconcerting, staring down at my clothes. I shake my head in vain attempt to clear it.
“What a mean thing to say,” I say accusingly.
“Perhaps. But true nonetheless. And it’s just as true that the only reason your little Sweetheart, your little Glass Hoarder, hasn’t dropped any glasses for you is because you have never, not once, asked him to do so.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
“Don’t I?” he says archly. “I can’t think of anyone who knows more about it than I.”
“Then you know that we never even touched.”
“More things were touched than you know, and more important things than you refer to. Minds and souls and hearts and things less easily torn apart than flesh, and which know no distance, however great.”
And with that, the book falls from his hands, landing perfectly on top of the roses in the basket, breaking some of the stems with its weight. Although it has a plain, woven cover, there’s something familiar about it. I am almost tempted to pick it up and inspect it more carefully.
“It’s one of your favorites,” he says, picking it up and handing it to me, uninterested in the now crushed flowers I’d spent an hour or more collecting. “You’ve read their lives often enough I’m surprised you do not see your own in them.”
I turn the book over in my hands, immediately recognizing the initials emblazoned on the back. An M and H entwined with a K and G. How I miss their lives.
“You’re mistaken. There’s nothing of their lives in mine, nor the other way around.”
“You can be happy, if you try. As Mary was happy.”
I hand the book back to him and he takes it, his eyes still on mine.
“She was not happy,” I say firmly. “Anyone who knew her, really knew her, would have known that she wasn’t. That she knew no love. She was content, maybe. She was able, for a time, to devote herself to the things she enjoyed, but never for a moment was she happy. I can’t see how you would even suggest something like that to me.” I pause for a breath -- to calm myself. “There was no happiness without him. And they destroyed themselves in not being with one another.”
I have no greater conviction than this.
“Perhaps I was wrong,” he says with a half-smile. “I can see now you were meant to be an avenging angel. With fury like that…”
“Don’t tease.” I mean to sound admonishing, but I smile in spite of myself.
“I know you feel strongly about it all.”
“Very,” I agree, determined again to change the subject. “And now I’m going to have to cut a dozen more roses since you broke half of these.”
I bend over to take the broken stems from the basket and toss them aside. He takes one of the full blooms and tucks it into my hair behind my ear. I pause just long enough for him to know my silence is a thank-you and then I hand him the extra pair of garden scissors. He works beside me, the time shortened in collecting the new roses now that there are two of us. When we’re finished, he asks what we’ll do with them.
“Put them on the mantle, of course. And then perhaps see if we can’t stir up Anthony for a little haunting.”
“How very wrong I was,” he laughs as we walk toward the back door. “I can see it now -- I can see you carved in marble with a smile still upon your lips and the mischief of heaven in those eyes of yours. The joy of all the angels."

Unfinished Portrait:

2010-10-26T23:39:00.002-04:00

In the Accademia there's a dimly lit room with a domed ceiling and no corners, no place for the shadows to hide. It's as if the room was built with only one design: to house its subject. The subject? A man in full perfection. Laid in marble. A dwarf made into a giant -- long-legged, broad-shouldered, sure of purpose.

I have no skill in sculpture, I'm afraid. If I did, I would build a monument as great as the one by Michelangelo, and with the same name.

David.

I can see it now, how he would look. A fitted waistcoat. Quizzing glass and walking stick. A pocket watch that doesn't keep the time at all. Is it strange that this, as much as anything, is the vision that first comes to me whenever I hear the name David?

Since I have no skill in sculpting, no marble to oblige me, instead I must construct the image of a man in words. There are his physical attributes, of course. Being of fair height and long legs. Eyes the shade of blue a romantic might call "piercing." His hair a nondescript shade of darker blond or lighter brown -- one can hardly know which to call it. His capable hands, composed of long, thin fingers. His smile reflecting confidence. Friendliness. Assuredness. And if one looks more closely, even mischief. On his lips, a bit of laughter always half-formed. On his tongue, some witticism. A bit of cleverness and poesy that he is sure will help you pass the time as much as it will amuse him in the process. And beneath the marble, underneath the flesh, there is a gentle spirit. An agile mind. An eagerness for joy and life and learning that has and will set many kindred hearts on fire.

He is everything I imagine for myself; everything I want to be and more. If there is anything this whole world over that would lead me to believe that there is bravery in love, I need look no further than David, who embodies the spirit of that courage. While I might talk of closing eyes and taking leaps and of trusting beyond reason, he is all those things made manifest. He is closed eyes that see more clearly than my own. He is long leaps that know no fear. He is trust so complete that only saints and angels know it.

And for all these things I love him. For all these things I wish him every perfect happiness. Now -- today -- and forever.

Happy birthday, Mr. Carrather.

I don't mean to disappoint you

2010-10-25T22:56:00.001-04:00

I am trying to forgive your son.

I am trying so hard and I just...I just hope you understand. More than anything I'm sorry for how this must hurt you. How you must look back on the certainties of five and eight and ten years ago, the certainty that we would always be together, only to find us so suddenly and strangely separate. I hope you also know how much I wish it was not this way. How I wish that I could go back to whatever moment or moments in which things went wrong and somehow make them right.

I'm aware, as I'm always aware on this night, that I promised you. (How I used to wish that I did not have to keep "such big promises"). This is the first year though where I am confident that I'm failing you. And I fail you for my own petty and selfish reasons. Or do I? I know you are not so biased as to think I'm being wholly unreasonable. That there is blame to share as much on his part as on mine. He is his own person, after all. He has the right to choose. To decide. And he has done both regardless of my feelings in the matter. What I might want was completely erased in the equation by his own selfishness.

You would beg me to put myself in his shoes. His confusing shoes. You would remind me to be kind. You would hold up that picture of us...that frozen moment in time... And do you know? You could almost make me do it. For the memory of you I could almost forgive him.

I promised you that I would love him forever. And maybe I will. (At least with some part of me). I promised that I would take care of him. And I tried. I tried with all my might, but there came a point where there just wasn't anything left for me to take care of. They grew up. Grew out of their need for me -- if it ever existed at all. And as for my promise to never let go. Isn't this letter proof enough that I still haven't?

Practice

2010-10-23T01:52:00.000-04:00

There's a great whooshing sensation and I can feel the blood rushing to my ears, crashing waves against the back of my eyelids. For a moment I half expect for it to blur my vision, but I remain clear-sighted. I worry about my heartbeat: quick and uneven like a one-winged hummingbird. It seems like he should be able to hear it, but I avoid looking at him altogether. My heart skips a beat and I can think of no good excuse for not being able to steady my breath. For a moment -- just a moment -- I wonder if I am about to die of nothing in particular.

"And there's nothing under these bright stars that could bring this night to ruin"

2010-10-17T23:04:00.000-04:00

We are just a couple weeks away, and then it will have been eight years to the day. The memory is with me early this year. Something in the air, I think. The right amount of cold. The clear night skies haunting me with their never-changingness. I can't help but think, even more than I usually do, that you should have kissed me that night. That all of this would have turned out so differently if you had. If we had both been a little braver.

It's why I worry, you know. Why I wonder if there is bravery in love. Because if I believe there's not, then we are both excused. Then our mistake is simple and forgivable. But if there is. (And I admit to hoping so fervently that there is bravery in love). If there is, then there is nothing that can forgive us.

Keeper of Things

2010-09-27T22:42:00.000-04:00

He is the Keeper of Things.
Of old receipts and unread mail.
Drawers that haven’t been opened
in years, overflowing with scraps of paper,
scraps of things long past.
Pictures. Taken in train stations. Malls. Discount grocery stores.
Photo booths where for a dollar and some change we could climb in
to a curtained seat,
his waiting arms.
Four flashes -- sometimes five.
He keeps those, too. Worn over the years from being folded
into picture sleeves and wallets.
Carried in back pockets.

In the basement there are bottles
collected over forty years ago for some unknown
reason.
They are irregular shapes and sizes. Foreign colors.
And I love every one.
They are the Keepers of Dust. But I think also
memories.
They don’t have caps or stoppers, but somehow they still store
the moments of his childhood. And my childhood.
When my mother used to complain
about the bottles in the basement.

In the freezer, still more memories. This time in the form of
Snow.
Literally frozen.
A handful from each New Year. A February or March
thrown in at times.
Beside the freezer, empty boxes.
Unused ropes and fishing lures.
Abandoned work bench, assorted tools.
Former Father’s Day presents. All just:
kept.

He is the Keeper of things.
Of secrets and wisdom. Of silence and dreams.
Like life and death
rain and stars
war and raising children.
Patience.
Waiting.

[unfinished]

Breakfast

2010-09-23T22:13:00.000-04:00

My cellphone rings, filling the quiet of the room, and his name lights up the screen. I quickly press the side button and get up to answer it in the bathroom. I close the door and sit down on the toilet.
"Hello?"
"I'm in the lobby."
He never says, "It's me." He knows I know it's him.
"When did you get in?"
"Landed around eight. Took a taxi. Traffic was terrible, of course. I'm checking into a Lake Suite down the hall from you."
"But you always stay at the Hilton."
"Mixing it up. Meet me for breakfast in fifteen minutes?"
I can imagine him signing his name at the front desk and taking his room card.
"Downstairs?
"In the tea room."
"That's fine," I say.
"I'll see you in fifteen then."
When I get downstairs, he's waiting for me, seated comfortably in one of the large and over-upholstered chairs. I know it's him, even though his face is hidden behind the cover section of the Chicago Tribune. There's something about the tailored quality of the dark gray suit, the bit of exposed trouser sock between the hem of his pants and the shine of his black shoes. He turns the page, and I see his face. He sees me too and folds the section in half to set it aside. For some reason all I can do is stand and watch as he rises in a single, fluid movement. There is a subtle grace about him that continues to mesmerize me, and today it makes a part of my heart ache. I think to myself that the only thing I ache for is what I can't have.
His hands are on my shoulders and his lips are on my cheek.
"Are you hungry?" he asks.
I nod, not trusting myself to speak, and with one hand on my back, he propels me forward into the chair opposite the one he was sitting in. Outside the tall windows I can see the holiday shoppers and the salty sidewalks not far below. The sky is still overcast, but the sun is bright behind the slate of clouds, giving the sky a steel quality that hurts my eyes to look at too long.
"What's wrong?"
His voice brings me back to the present and I turn to look at him, though that, too, hurts.
"What do you mean?" I realize I've barely said anything since he arrived, and although that's not unusual, he's probably wondering why he's here to begin with. All I did was leave a voicemail -- asking him to come. I almost can't believe he's really here, sitting right across from me.
"You never ask for me," he says matter-of-factly. Strangely, he doesn't look at me when he says this.
I cross my arms tightly, also not looking at him. I think about a line from a Broadway musical about hugging my arms until they turn blue. And then I cry and cry until the tears come down and I can taste them. I love to taste my tears. I'm not crying this morning though. There's no need for tears.
"I just wanted to see you one more time," I say, as calmly as I wish I felt.
"How dramatic of you." He smiles as he unfolds his napkin unto his lap.
He has a beautiful smile, and I can't help myself from smiling back. I wonder if the dead are allowed to keep some memories. If so, I would want one of mine to be his smile.
The waiter comes and takes our order: two eggs benedict, one for each of us. Fruit and pastries; he orders a cup of coffee -- black. I ask for tea because I like the way they bring it in a little porcelain pot.

Goner

2010-09-22T23:39:00.000-04:00

It's that moment when you suddenly realize that the thing you love most in this world is making him smile. And when he laughs...

That's it.

Things We Never Say

2010-08-31T23:33:00.001-04:00

He stood in the doorway of the bathroom, watching as she put on her makeup. He had never done this before, usually erring on the side of her privacy, but she seemed unfazed by his presence. Behind him, the blankets were folded and the pillows were stacked on the couch where she had slept the night before.

"So," he heard himself say. "Are you in love with him then?"

She gave no sign of having heard him. She did not stop the steady, circular motion of the brush over her cheeks, didn't let her eyes wander from the mirror, didn't even lower herself from the tips of her toes, which she stood on in order to lean over the sink in front of the mirror. Only her lips betrayed her, curling into a slight smile.

"I love him very much. Isn't that enough? Must I also consider whether or not I'm in love with him?"

It was not the response he had been hoping for. It was a non-response, really. Ambiguous. Possible for it to go either way. Maybe she was in love with him, or maybe she wasn't, or maybe she was even somewhere in between. He didn't want ambiguity though. He wanted a definitive yes. A definitive no. He needed to know.

For her part, she was experienced in avoiding the question. She asked herself the same one often enough that it was almost easy to not think about it. Thinking about it was the hard part. Was she in love with him? The 'him' who was not the one standing in the doorway of the bathroom just over her right shoulder? Was she ready for all that being in love would mean?

Because it would mean that the fairy tale was over. That she had tried on the shoe, that it fit, and now there was only one page left. She wondered if there was any other person in the world who found the idea of "they lived happily ever after" as foreboding as she did. She just didn't want the story to have to end. She didn't want an end to romance and adventure -- all the things that had drawn them together to begin with.

She closed the little jar of powder she had been using and dropped it, along with the brush, into her makeup bag before turning to face him.

"Anyway, he's not in love with me. So it probably doesn't matter." She smiled gently for his sake more than her own.

"Why do you think he's not in love with you?"

"Because it seems like something he would have said by now. And he hasn't. So." She shrugged.

He was not so easily convinced. He knew how hard the words could be to say. And he feared, very much, that he should have been saying them even in that moment. But she was already walking back into the living room, asking if they should eat lunch first or go straight to the museum, wondering how crowded it would be.

Dock on the lake

2010-08-23T01:54:00.001-04:00

I slammed the drawer, the sharp snapping noise it made not nearly satisfactory enough for my mood. I wrenched open the one below it, making only a cursory shuffle over the papers before knowing with certainty that what I was looking for was not in there either.

"You're not going to find it in there."

I wanted to scream at him standing so calmly in front of the tall curtained windows drinking tea. Drinking tea! The nerve. I didn't even look over my shoulder at him, knowing it would just make me more annoyed. In his perfectly fitted suit. Black. Even the tie. His hands holding the saucer steadily as he gazed out the window, not even at me though I was the object of his remark.

"I will find it if it is the last thing I do and I will tear it to shreds," I insisted through gritted teeth, slamming yet another drawer and wondering why in the name of all that was holy there were so many drawers to begin with.

"Well, I can safely assure you it will not be the last thing you do because you're not going to find it." The sound of him setting his cup on the saucer and the pair of porcelain on the table was distinct even over the sound of my rummaging. "Don't you think you're being a little dramatic?"

"You lied to me!" I shouted, slamming a large cabinet drawer which finally made a satisfying thud as I turned toward him.

"I never did any such thing," he said, still calm but almost sounding affronted.

"Letting me believe--"

"Ah-ah!" he interrupted, shaking his finger at me as if I was a small child, and I felt almost chastised. Though the length of the room was between us, I looked down. "Letting you believe what you wanted to believe is not the same as lying to you. How could I have explained it to you then anyway?"

"Three years though!" I persisted. "Three years of thinking--! Believing something that wasn't true!"

There was a frustrated growl in my throat as I whirled back around and attacked the drawers and cabinets with renewed vigor.

"You act as though three years is an eternity."

He was one to talk about eternity.

The Doorway

2010-07-28T07:23:00.000-04:00

I see heartbreak standing in the doorway. Waiting. Unavoidable. Wearing a t-shirt and old jeans, looking a little ashamed of himself, as if he hates what he's about to do as much as I do. But there he is, all the same. And I'm no better, really. I keep walking toward him. Determined to be foolish.

Worms

2010-07-21T22:58:00.001-04:00

It's like my chest is full of worms. Crawling. Burrowing. Tunneling. Eating me alive one hundred tiny mouthfuls at a time. I can feel every inch they move, painstakingly slow, rubbing up against my insides. It's exhausting. Exhausting to think about and even more exhausting not to think about. They are the worms of unhappiness. So heavy and getting heavier.

Evaporating

2010-07-15T07:19:00.001-04:00

I feel his fingers touching my forehead, smooth for once, unwrinkled in the remnants of sleep, worry not yet formed there. Then my cheekbones with just his thumb, the rest of his fingers inching into my hair, grazing my ear. It's an illusion, but I can almost feel his lips touch mine. He's so close. I imagine I can smell him.

"Don't go."

I keep my eyes closed.

"I won't."

Even if I opened them, there would be darkness. Early morning darkness.

"It's strange the way I miss you."

Of all the things to say. I wonder how long the conversation can possibly go on, only one of us real, only one of us there.

"I know. I miss you, too."

The missing is physical. The weight of his absence tangible in almost every waking moment. Less so now, in the in-between. Even in the waking moments when it softens, lightens, it's still there. Only for a second I can feel him alongside it. Twin presences.

"What do you do without me?"

I want him to keep talking, to keep his fingers on my face. As if that's what will make him stay.

"The same as you. Keep on living. Going through the motions. Work. Friends. Family. Waiting."

"Always waiting."

There's silence and that might be it. I sense him only vaguely from behind my closed eyes and yet I keep them closed.

"Soon," he begins.

And then that's it.

I don't need to open my eyes to know he's gone, the air around me has changed. Behind the blinds, the faint gray light of a new day is still invisible. I tuck my hands under the pillow, turning my nose into it, wishing something of him lingered. Only in my thoughts though.

Speculation on nightmares (in progress)

2010-07-14T23:31:00.000-04:00

I wonder what it's like sometimes
to live forty years haunted by the same nightmare.
Over
and over again.
Uncontrollable.
The film reel looped unto itself,
repeating, repeating, repeating.
And yet you still wake up. Cold sweat. Eyes focused
far away, on receding dreams and images.
The past.
Darker.
Heavy breathing and fast reminders:
it's over now. it's over now.
Never really over though
is it?

Weather

2010-07-13T23:28:00.002-04:00

Tonight's and last night's thunderstorms were perfect echoes of my heart and the remaining clouds are a reflection of my indecision.

Fury

2010-06-09T01:31:00.001-04:00

I can't even sleep, I'm so angry. I'm irate.

I am standing in a room lined with shelves, stacked from floor to ceiling with beautiful, breakable things. And I am smashing them on the floor. One at a time. Harder and harder. Each one is his heart. Each one is his soul. Shattering into a million tiny pieces. The hardwood floor is carpeted in shards of glass and porcelain. I can hear it crunch beneath me every time I take a step, every time I reach for one more thing to throw. I can almost feel it digging into the soles of my feet.

It's not even about what he did to me, though what he did was plenty bad enough. It's about what I let him do to me. And independent of that, what I did to myself. I let myself believe the lie. I let myself believe that I was better or stronger or smarter than the lie. I let him wrap himself around my world until I believed I couldn't breathe outside his chest, couldn't live without his heartbeat, my own seemingly unable to function without him. I hate myself for it.

That's why I don't want to punish him, I want to punish myself. Punish myself for wasting all those years of my life and all that love. Yes, tonight I believe that love can be wasted, and I have wasted so much of it. I wish that I could take it all back. I am going to build a machine that will do it. Will go into the past and take it back, erase his face. Erase the way I held his hand, the way I smiled at him. Erase every word I gave to him that he did not deserve. Hours of phone calls in the hours before the sunrise. Miles of emails like ticker tape interstates. I will erase it all if it's the last thing I do. I will rewrite my own memories.

People say that this won't last, that I'll forgive him the same way I've forgiven him a thousand times before. People say that I'll get over it, that I'll give in again, but I believe this time is different. Those other times I wanted to forgive him, but this time. This time I want to hate him. And not because he doesn't care -- now is not what matters -- but because he never cared. He never gave a damn about what I said or did or felt. I may as well have been digging graves and burying my love alive. And it makes me so angry.

But I am no longer breaking things.

I am crying angry tears, I am covering my ears. I can hear the voice inside my head saying don't. Saying it's not worth it, that I am better than the hate, the anger, but I am not. I'm not! The voice persists. You don't need to do this. You can just let go. You can let him go. And it will all be over then.

But when?

Letter Receiving

2010-06-06T22:57:00.001-04:00

I know how much it pains you to write a letter. To sit down and put thoughts to words to paper. I know how carefully you pen them, too, to make your handwriting as legible as possible. I wonder if you know how much I appreciate it. How when I get the envelope my heart skips a beat. How much anticipation I feel as I slide the letter opener carefully under the corner of the flap, and slowly drag it across the top. How I smile as I pull out the paper and unfold it, wanting, almost, to prolong the anticipation. The contents vary, but the sentiment never does. Each letter is a stamped I-love-you for the mailmen to see. I read your letters and I pin them to the walls, papering the rooms with your love, letting it surround me. And as more come, I take the old ones down, carefully refolding them and adding them to my growing collection, loving each one a second time before I tuck it away.

You'd think that people would've had enough of silly love songs

2010-06-01T23:27:00.000-04:00

Where to begin? I guess by linking to this. But how do I even begin to explain how torturous it was to write that? And it's still raw, just a barely chiseled piece of marble, the shape underneath it still indistinguishable.

Sometimes the story just comes, you know? All of a sudden your head is full of words and people and it's all you can do to type as fast as you can, to not miss a moment, to capture it all. Those are the easy stories, and they're few and far between. The rest are the hard stories, but the ones incredibly worth telling. You want to tell them before you're ready to, before you're able to. Pieces of them exist, but they're only half there. Tangible, but ephemeral at the same time. Like this one -- I can feel every moment of it. The emotion is overpowering inside of me, as if they were my memories. But I can't yet put all of that into words. It kills me. Each sentence, each word! It just kills me. I can barely even write this, trying to explain the conflict, the turmoil.

So why this story? That, at least, I think I can talk about with more clarity. The "what" is what's ephemeral, but the "why" is clearer.

It's because no two love stories are the same.

Sure, some part of every love story is the same, but it's like the part of every human that's the same. You wouldn't say that Audrey Hepburn and Steve McQueen were the same person, after all, even if they do have many things in common. Such is every love story. The problem is that we get too caught up in the sameness. And worse, we get caught up in a familiar formula. We get caught up in boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl get married, boy and girl live happily ever after.

In all my life, I've only seen that formula play out once, and I think I'm a lucky one even for that.

The truth is that love stories are complicated, but we don't like to talk about it. No one likes to talk about what happens when the formula breaks down, when our childhood daydreams don't come true, at least not the way we thought they would. (The way we were raised to think they would). What are you supposed to do when love comes in an unexpected package? In this case, a ready-made package? Isn't it time we open up our eyes, look around, and finally acknowledge that love comes in different ways, under unusual circumstances?

I want to tell those untold stories. The ones that still end happily ever after, but which took a little while to get there.

"The Force Be With You"

2010-05-29T17:07:00.003-04:00

It's been a long week in terms of worry. (Heck, it's been a long few months in terms of worry). But mom is doing fine post-surgery and sister's test results so far are good. I'm ready to take that deep breath and finally start looking toward the future where things are hopefully going to be a lot less worrisome. It's weird though. On the surface I've been pretty successful at keeping all these things at bay. I've really only felt it in the subtle and inexplicable exhaustion, the somewhat heightened emotional state, and the consequential nervous ticks that rarely rear their head. But as I said, it's subsiding now, at least until the next thing. (Lord, please don't let there be a next thing for a while)!

The truth is the exhaustion comes from spending every minute of every day willing things to be okay. You project so much energy outward that there's very little left over for your own consumption. Even the internal chanting of, "everything's going to be okay; it'll all be fine" over and over in your head requires energy because it's not just words. You are willing those words to manifest themselves, to be true. It takes effort, but the effort is worth it; it's all you can do to stay sane, really.

Luckily, I have two parents of incredible willpower. I waver trying to determine which of them has the stronger will, and I have to say it really is a draw. Even now I can imagine my mother thinking, "Eight weeks recovery? I'll show them six." My dad refers to it as "the force." Kind of like in Star Wars, I guess, but more than that because it really is a force that you can feel, with a power of its own. Whenever there's something going on, whether it was finals back in college, whenever we've been sick, whenever we've hoped for that new job, whatever it was, my dad would always tell us, "Well, I'm sending you the force. Don't worry about it." And you know what? After he'd say that, we kind of did stop worrying about it. Because it was his will that would step in and take over the chanting of "you'll do fine," or "you'll get better" or "you will get it." It was always that last boost that got us over the finish line: Mom and Dad cheering on the sidelines, tackling the doubts.

Of course, they passed that determination on to their daughters, and my sisters and I...well, let's just say there's nothing we can't do when we put out minds to it. That's why mom's okay and sister too and I'm taking a little break for now. Back to saving the world on Tuesday!

Love,
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