I was driving home late at night

After a party

With my friends.

To me:

It seems such a new convention

That I could say such a phrase which

Slips easily off the tongue of an actress playing youth or

Perhaps a real one

I wouldn’t know

As such:

Smiled in to join as gracefully as a breath

And with such a breath I came

To a game of kings

Asking of me

Whether I would comply

I don’t feel I gave enough

To the waiting attentive faces

Occasionally turned toward me

In their happy, tipsy company

With the water bottle

I had brought

Between my knees

I feel an alien

Watching from outside

Something I can only pretend at briefly

But not fully become.

An entity, an identity

That swirls like ink in a glass

Osmosis that infects

Swells wall to wall with their sounds.

And though these children, laughing,

As they lose their minds

Tell stories of their short lives

I listen as farmer would at Homer’s knees

Of their small and private livings

Of Things I have not done

or missed

in my own time.

Driving through the roads

That would take me home

As a ship through Outer Space

I have a certain stillness

Like water, clear and empty

Paned inside of me.

No dreams or fantasies

or wishes to reflect

To distract me from

Myself.

In the domed ceiling of the Sky

I’m tired of there only being stars

That I can never touch

And know of never touching

These points of light

That were dead before I ever saw them.

For I am sealed on the Ground

Where no original light of its own glows

But that reflected and withheld from the Heavens

Ceilinged above me.

I’m tired of there being only Dark

Wrapped around me like a crowd

That isn’t there

And is quiet

Like the crickets

And the bugs

waiting to be eaten in the leaves.

I cannot see where I even stand

On the grass that I feel

Just, with clumsy bare feet

And nature’s breath cool as Space

As night draws back the delusion that is Day.

Sense of Prey and Common sense

Hold me silent in shaking fear

Waiting in an unmarked Time

Where, for all I know—I sense and feel—

Fate has finally given up and

The world rolled to a still.

when ice beat steel

and took her who was inconquerable

in the most accepting folds,

With gravity her corpse

—still alive and beating, screaming steam and electricity—

fell two miles, streaming air

before landing on the ocean floor.

Yet I wonder, in all the panic and the fear

Then sliding, gliding downward

—trailing air in pearls—

Was among the fleeing orbs of that

element most fleeting,

Were there men and women rising,

children following after like souls?

Or did they settle with her

within her body,

drifting unrelenting

unto that silent seabed?

A Sound that scraps Heaven from the ceiling

And shakes echoes from the rafters.

A Sound that rises heat

In air and men

And tranquility in any.

A sound that calls forth joy and sorrow

For its simple being.

Sung like wet crystal

And shattered like glass.

What jealously it brings in those

That hear the siren-calling

To fear it’s death

And thrill of living

The precious moment

Stretching

out.

Those in possession of the Sound

Now seemingly filled like bottles

Letting out.

A wishful expressive impression

That colors dust motes with undone

                  emotion

August, 2010

When I was Young

A taste was all I had wanted and seemingly what I got

And so savored this flavor, so delicately cusped on the tongue that

I never wanted to forget

So new and naïve to its brilliance, its thrill

That I risked to spill

Everything of mine on the floor

To be stepped on, or

Picked up.

From before the beginning

I knew it would go

And melt away

And leave its presents after

Sour

Or as if

It was never there.

And as it gently fades away

I remember the sensation

As a twisted sweet and pain affair

Like lovers in a bed

Tangled in my wishes

So much kisses

That sooner evaporate into air.

For however long it had lasted

Or would have, given the tense

Feeling I had standing

with it spread across the floor

Ice Cream

That I’d finished with.

Yes, that’s what it was.

August (31), 2010

For those who never die

Give the loudest hurrah

Because they never dared the line

That would take them from this place.

Hurrah for the second best

Who makes the pinnacle shine

Because they are there supporting

Does any One stand at all.

Those who run the groove worn deep,

The many whose faces dot the background scene

Are so easily forgotten

For there are too many to know each one.

These supporters, these watchers, these who commit the crowd

They record and remember

Details books forgot.

All the eyes tracing the path

Of the blinding, falling Stars

Go home after their spectacle

And brush their teeth and go to bed.

So much like the black that makes the sky

Treasure them dearest for the contrast

As they themselves would never ask why.

July 29, 2010

It’s funny how life can be like a soap opera. Here she stands in a tiled hallway in the middle of the night, breaking tides of people like a prier post. She can already taste the pain, the tragedy in the sterile air and feel it by the weight of the low-slung ceiling. She can only find her way by claiming one foot  after another and then another upon the floor in order to get by busy girls in scrubs and smocks, each as impressive as pastel smears in her abstracted state. She only finds the right place when she recognizes Carol, no, Missus Hollenger in a group by a door. The woman—older by evidence of more lines, more gentle eyes—finally sees her within two paces. 

She smiles.

“Oh, hello, Mary. I’m so glad you could make it.” 

The welcome is genuine.

“Yes, Ca—Missus Hollinger. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it sooner.”

“I’ve forgotten,” she continues our Mary. “How long has it been?”

The older woman’s mouth gives a small twitch, just a twitch, that might have been mistaken for a smile. This is her child we’re talking about.

“Three months, dear. Three months.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Don’t.” The request is firm and as sudden as a stone thrown into water: Sp-lunk.

“You don’t have to, dear.” The smile has returned, watered down perhaps and pained, but there. “We all know that…that you two weren’t close, haven’t been close for a very long time.”

“Yeah, I’m…sorry.”

“—and it’s not like we all haven’t been busy too,” the woman starts to gabble. “With exams and working and school and all that. We’re just glad you could come, even now on this last day, even…even…”

“Yeah. Still.”

Missus Hollinger/Carol does not answer that.

Instead, she quickly looks into the room and brightens with a smile and relief. 

“Oh, good. They’re all finished now.” She turns face on to Mary. “You can go in now.”

Mary can hear the permission steeling those words as she turns her body to face inward, into the room. The people going out—a old man, a young man, and an girl; a father, a brother, and a sister—ignore her, with the slight exception of the girl: her glance is vengeful, full of past’s anger. With that, Mary can feel things returning back to her, like bubbles to the surface. She steps into the room…

~~~

In person was best. Everything was. Going to Paris, to Greece; seeing a movie or eating sushi for yourself. Everything. 

So she was surprised by the text message. She flipped it open when she shouldn’t have, in the middle of a class’s lecture. In the semi-darkened lecture hall the little screen’s glow shone particularly bright, as if it were holy.

[sorry]

That was it, no more text or explanation. Yet, the subtext or context or whatever text was there: the falling, flagging of interest even as they did more things together, went deeper into each other as person and by body; the longer glances away, the longer hesitation; the delicate choosing of words, the—

She typed back furiously.

[sorry what??] 

She waited, seemly doing other things yet never entirely there, not really. Eternities later and she got an answer text.

[i cant do this anymore. im sorry.]

~~~

There were confrontations, if they could be called such. Accidental meetings in halls, doorways; sightings across rooms, roads—always there was that distance between them, in all senses. Mary wanted and didn’t want that full facing of faces. She knew how the conversation would go, as inevitably as a needle through a record groove.

Play that song: 

No, why didn’t you, how could you.

Please, I don’t know, I can’t do.

 It’s funny that it would head here. 

~~~

A strong mixture of flowers and antiseptic was the first thing to hit her. It was like a miasmic wall permeating the room, eminating from the containers of browning roses and molding carnations dotting all horizontal surfaces like a vegetable audience. 

And there was the condemned.

Mary walked over and sat down in the closest chair to the bed. Lying on the barred hospital bed, asleep and with shorter hair, it was almost hard to convince oneslf that this person wouldn’t wake up. The thin, clear tubes connecting this body to the air tank waiting on the floor and the heart-pump, like a giant white typewriter, persuaded otherwise. Mary couldn’t help but wonder if the things were pumping the soul in or pulling it out.

She looked down at the bed.

“Hello, Kary.”

Of course there was no response.

“I’m sorry, Kary. I’m sorry for everything bad that’s happened.” She paused and decided to clarify. “Between us and… I guess everything else, too. There’s nothing for it.”

“I just wish…I just wish we could have ended it in person. I really liked you, even though you weren’t ready or were scared. I’m not sure which it was with you and maybe you didn’t either.”

What else could she say? She sat there trying to think of it and thought there for what felt like hours.

It probably was, for a people had entered the room. Carol/Missus Hollinger hurried over to her, looking uncomfortable.

“Mary, dear, thank you for coming, we really appreciate but if you don’t mind, the doctors are going to–to–”

“Can I stay?” Mary said without really thinking.

Carol looked surprised.

“Why…Yes, I suppose so, but wouldn’t you rather not–”

“Let her, Mom,” said the young man, the brother from earlier. Mary thought his name, his name might be Josh.

“But–”

“What?! Are you serious?” This was from the sister, Emily. She turned angerly to Mary, her face saying that this was your fault, all your fault!

“I’m not having some dyke Kary fucked for one month be here when she dies! No! Get out!”

“Emily! That’s–”

“It’s true! It’s–”

“Shut up, all of you.” Mister Hollinger said this; he had always been Mister Hollinger, even when Mary had been just a friend. “She’s here, so she might as well stay.”

Mary stayed.

Mary stayed and saw the slow motion of the nurses, the authoritive girls in pastel smocks, move deftly between body and machine, toning it down and unhooking tubes. Finally, the girl lay on the bed totally unconnected.

She still looked asleep. Her chest wasn’t moving.

I work days. That’s the theory. What ends up happening is that I get up at six in the morning and come home L-A-T-E in the evening. “Up with the cows and down with the chickens” I’ve once heard, or something.

            Whatever animal it is, whenever I do get home I might as well be asleep standing up. It’s only the insistent blinking eye of the kitchen’s telephone that deviates any attention en route to a shared bed.

            There’s one message: “This is Virginia Highway Patrolman Bill Jenkins. There has been an accident.”

“Kqw—wha’?” I managed to say.

Technically, it was too early for this, just barely on the other side of twelve by the kitchen’s clock. The dial back feature on the phone quickly scales the keynotes and, less than a minute later, with some inquiry, the same message is repeated.

“Excuse me, Miss? Ma’am? We’re sorry to inform you that there has been an accident.”

I was standing in a yellow fluorescent-lit kitchen, on a linoleum floor with my shoes off.

“Wha’?…Oh. There has?”

There was a small static-y sound on the other end, like the officer had breathed a sigh of relief, Finally, she understands. “Yes, ma’am.”

“—miss,” I say, an automatic response.

“Oh, uh, yes. Miss, there has been an accident involving a red Dodge four-by-four, 1986 year we believe and a young Caucasian male aged about twenty-six?”

I’m so drowsy and longing for bed, but there’s something in those descriptions that sharpens my attention.

“Yes?” Sharper, more alert now.

Another sigh, this more of dread. “Miss, approximately forty-five minutes ago the man driving the Dodge pick-up truck was hit by a tractor trailer while crossing an intersection on a yield turn signal. There’s…” A breath, to steel resolve, and I realize that this man is young. “…He did not survive. Died on site.”

What can one say immediately after a statement such as this? A scream or yell of fury? Grief?

All I know is that I sink to the floor, the linoleum patterned like wood. Suddenly, by a sentence, the kitchen seems too large, stuffed with magazines, mail and cookware.

“Oh my god…”

“We’re very sorry, ma’am,” says the young officer through a receiver’s speaker. He lapses into another awkward pause, one in the many stringed pearls.

Then, in the background on his end, a tinny voice calls, a conversation and he is back on the line, breath flustered.

“Ahhhh…Ma’am? Are you still there?”

“Yes. I’m here.”

“We’ve just managed to recover…Mr. Harborough’s personal effects, so if you don’t mind would you please come—”

“Wait, what? Harborough? I don’t think I know any Harborough.”

“What?” Voice so high, boy-like, so young. “To whom am I speaking?”

“I’m Melissa Carpenter.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I…I’m sorry, I misdialed the number. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s…it’s okay.”

“Sorry to have disturbed you, ma’am,” he says and quickly cuts the line.

I am standing with the phone dead and silent but for the dial tone. Its electronic hum fills the silence that is now utterly complete in my kitchen. It only stops when the phone is replaced in the carriage, ending with a click.

I don’t know what to think, and can’t think of anything in the hall and on my way up the stairs carpeted in a textured beige: warmer than fake wood but somehow it achieves to hurt my bare feet, like pebbles.

The bed feels soft but cold on my side.

“’oo waz it?” says a sleepy voice.

“A…” Stop, swallow and try again. “The police. They mistakenly called me for an accident.”

“Mmm…Really? What for?” he says.

“Someone named Harborough.”

He becomes infected by a silence too. Then: “Harborough? Wasn’t that, like, your boyfriend before me? From two years ago?”

I remember it then: Chris Harbrough. Colorless lashes, loud laugh, round-about jokes.

“Oh god.”

Again, the weight of grief, loss, bereft-ness comes down, now all the more hard, all the more accurate.

“Hey…hey, now. Don’t cry.” My fiancé’s arm comes across the sheets. “It’s okay.”

The apartment she bought, that she once owned was now his. If he looked carefully he could still see the traces of her, like fingerprints, around the quiet rooms: the dying potted plant by the door; the pictures on the wall; the bookshelves looming in the sitting area, their shelves filled with thoughts chosen by her. Within the Spartan dim-lit rooms of the place, there was yet one area that still retained her presence undiluted, so strong he felt he could talk to her, all enshrined in storage boxes in the spare bedroom.

            Initially he went there because he was bored. Television couldn’t hold him and the words and ideas of her books swam before his eyes like fish he could not touch. The bed was still made up, though the pillows were gone; the plastic bins, of a soft green color, were stacked one on top of another two by two deep in the corner in front of the drawn window. He was surprised how light the first one was, lifting it down.  He peeled the lid off and found inside what looked like snow piled to the brim. Touching it, it crinkled, not cold—tissue paper, wrapped around cloth from a dream: soft and smooth the fabric flowed through his hands and the tissue like water to puddle in glistening folds on the floor. He held his breath, unintentionally. Spreading it out, he saw it was some sort of robe, covered with pictures, thread sewn in bright patterns of red, white, green.  His hand found further masterpieces, each showing palettes like seasons: cool and nightly blues, lustrous violets, blazing golds.

            At the bottom of the box were photographs, massed together like forgotten leaves.

All of them were back and white, though some had had the images later stained with dye so that they almost looked real in their kaleidoscope robes. In a small errant picture he found her, posed sitting with her dark hair hanging undone like an elegant brush stroke. Her face was turned to glance back at the viewer, as if she had heard the question he wanted to ask.

He wanted to tell her. She wasn’t here.

He tried talking to a picture first.

            “I…don’t know really. I guess…it was when, when you, uh, confessed to me.”

He stopped. It was funny how the picture seemed to hold her presence, the slightly insolent edge to the two-dimensional eyes stripping him bare. He gulped, dry, and started again.

            “I don’t know when it started. I guessed it started when you first really…talked to me. You… you…Until then, you never really talked to me. I don’t know whether it was because you didn’t want to talk to me, I wasn’t interesting enough, or…that now that I know you better, if you could most of the time. You’re not really easy to talk to,” he confessed to the picture, ducking his head.

“It’s like…you’re angry all the time, angry at the world. I can see that. I guess I’m experiencing that too, now. But you were alone. All alone and…”

Could he say it now?

No, he couldn’t, not even now.

“…I wish you weren’t. It would help if—Maybe if you—Perhaps being friend…ly.  I…I want to help you, in any way I can. If you’ll let me.” He looked at her. “Please?”

The photograph stared back at him, unchanged.

Somehow he expected she would really be like that, silent and unmoved.

And somehow, he was still inside—but not calm, no, not comforted—and then he held the picture above the box’s void and so let it fall, swinging, back down among the others.

Awkward

(I always hated them for some reason. Those, erg, certain people like that guy across the street…who crosses that street and I, panicking, dart inside a bookstore. Peering back, I see that for some God-knows reason he seems to have followed me.

            I really, really hate his type. Walking deeper into the store, past yuppies with their gourmet coffee-like drinks and middle-aged couples trying to read, yes, there’s a elevator! to my right. In pressing the button for the lift I might as well be pressing for an escape pod, that’s how desperate as I am.

            Of course I’m so intent that I don’t look back or around me. Of course when the elevator opens I don’t perceive anyone else getting on with me. Nevertheless when the door closes, guess who’s there with me???)

“Erg.”

“Uh, are you alright?” he says.

(Don’t look at ‘im, that might help, don’t look at him!)

“Er, I’m fine. Ugh, really.”

(Liar!)

“Um, okay…But…are you, like,  having an asthma attack?”

(Possibly. I forgot to breathe again.)

“I’m…*WHEEZE*…fine.”

“You don’t look it. Here, I’m an emergency medic. Are you feeling lightheaded or disoriented?”

(Yes, but it’s not what you think.)

“…or do you have any allergies to anything…”

(Well, something’s making me react alright. When will that damn door open!)

(He peers closer and, by virtue of close proximity, I have to look at him: clean shaven, looks like he goes to the gym every day, definitely looks like he could save a life and big blue eyes. The little part of my brain that always sounds like a literary analysist remarks, “Oh, so cliché does have something right.”)

“Eep.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

(The door opens and I bolt like a deer. For the next hour or so I’ll be avoiding him between rows of bookshelves and reading pedestrians as he good-Samaritanly tries to check up on the girl who nearly passed out in his presence. He won’t realize that it was because of his presence that I nearly fainted out of shyness. Damn it, I hate the good-looking type!)