Something Temporary

My ego will remember itself out there, I hate to say, and I will ask you if I’m still beautiful. (We’re not bringing mirrors, only words of reflection.) The going may be easy when we’ve disappeared into each other’s spirits, but some days if not most days, I will need reminders of where we’re walking, and why you love me, because I hit my head on my something temporary on our way out the door, and my brain rattles with past and future, refusing to sit still in your lap.

A Meditation (on Us and We)

Bring me back to where our bodies are

Let’s erase those lines around our skin

Blending into you, blending into Now

Every atom of our psyches all in one place

All in One, all in All.

Bring me some unity, baby

And light a candle on your way inside

It’s a funeral in here

And our past is on the pyre

All my hurt getting laid down like kindling for this fire

The eulogies mean too much and the cremation not enough

Scatter the ashes of these demons into the next ten millenniums
Of silence in space

For the rest of our eternity

It’s you and me, me and you, us and we

Now One.

Wet, Silent, Naked Car Ride

It was a long trek alone to the edge of the pool. I had hopped the fence at a quarter to two, a.m. of course, going methodically through the bushes, gripping the bars that criss-crossed through the old wrought iron of the gate with the arches of my bare feet, holding myself steady on the spikes that rose from the top. This wasn’t the kind of pool you wanted to get caught in after hours. The people in this neighborhood, they were old and white and Protestant and stern, as a whole. They took their fences seriously. The one around the community pool looked medieval in its black stubbornness. But I had never really thought much about the fence, not there. It felt natural, not even rebellious anymore. It didn’t feel much different than walking in a door.

            It was a long trek alone to the edge of the pool. A few nervous rabbits had watched me sneak in. I felt their eyes on me, or maybe God’s. I stood at the crack between the grass and the pavement, that old kind of “this is a swimming pool” pavement with those irritating piece of gravel in it. I toed the line with both “Whatever” and “Well maybe…,” trying to remember why I had wanted to come here alone in the first place.

            I didn’t feel any victory when I felt my naked skin immersed in slippery-warm. I had barely made a splash. I felt nothing. I was skinny dipping in some yuppie community pool at two a.m. on a beautiful July night and I felt nothing.

            Some things, you just can’t change.

            The last time I had plunged into the pool after hours with nothing hiding my ass from the neighbors, it had been with Wrenna. We had made love in the shallow end. We were earnest and happy then because we were eighteen. I had wanted the water to make me feel eighteen again but all it did was make me cold when I came out of it.

            I had lost my capacity for fire and I hated myself.

            It was a long swim alone from one end of the pool to the other. I lapped it carelessly. I didn’t want to be anywhere. I hated the shallow end because she had been there. I hated the deep end because she had never been there. I settled on standing in the middle, between five and six feet of water, crouching a little so the air wouldn’t graze my shoulders. I wanted the pool to be a womb and give birth to me anew but all it did was make me remember the sound of her voice.

            The grass collected dew in drops too small for sentiment. The breeze ruffled what was left of what she used to like about my hair. I heard a sprinkler go on a couple blocks east. A dog barked, uneasy, feeling the streetlights become louder than my breathing. They buzzed with the electricity that I was missing.

            Somewhere, less than five miles away I’d guess, Wrenna slept under a thin comforter in the arms of someone who didn’t remind her of me.

            I felt sick with the smell of chlorine and I hated myself.

            I didn’t want to breathe anymore. I felt trapped in my sensory freedom, trapped with air in my lungs. It would have felt more comfortable to drown.

            I heard the echo of her voice like a cloud between my ears, and I let out a long sigh as I sank below the surface.

            I felt good under water. Warm. My eyes burned with the chemicals while I inspected my simple surroundings. A hole in the ground, lined with cement, filled with the false blue of wet, altered nature, a few bright lights looking wavy and fake when you were above the pool and looking in, but down there they looked real, everything looked real. Bluer, brighter, maybe, but real. And down there, it was truly quiet. Under the water, all I could hear was the calm blood in my ears.

            My lungs started to ask a little more earnestly to be let back up to breathe. My mouth was puckered, my cheeks puffed for no reason, resisting my most human need, I must have looked ridiculous. I ignored my lungs’ request.

            It came to me while I was down there, my arms treading around me a little, my legs bent out of shape on account of me being too tall for this depth to naturally envelop me, my eyes searching the pool bottom for nothing with the kind of listlessness they probably looked at everything with, in those days. It came to me at first as just a little thought, a little spark in the drought-dry forest of my brain.

            You are nothing without her, the thought suggested.

            I opened my mouth to answer I guess, my lungs truly burning by then, and I don’t know how I was able to do it, but I was skinny dipping in some yuppie community pool at two a.m. on a beautiful July night, feeling nothing, and then I let out a scream.

            I was naked, completely naked, vulnerable and weak, my eyes shut to my plain surroundings, my noise muffled by countless molecules of water, and all around me I felt the emptiness of my chest, no air, no air, but somehow still, I could scream. I was wounded. I was dead. I could still scream.

            To say it was a relief to come to the surface, I’d be lying. Instinct brought me there. I felt dizzy and sick, pulling myself out of the pool, the animal part of me distancing itself from water, the human part of me wishing you could drown yourself without the insurance of a weight forcing you to go through with what you started. I laid on the pavement, panting, for a while, not noticing the stars or the uncomfortable feeling of the rough on my back. I didn’t notice anything that was real. I was still living in the time when she had been there with me. The panting then had been a different kind.

            It was a long trek alone, back to the car. I dripped from every piece of me, the now-colder air feeding on the host of my was-warm body. I could feel my skin glistening like fool’s gold. I was fake and flimsy and glad to breathe oxygen maybe, but I knew it was true. I was nothing without her.

            I sat in the car for a long time after I got in, the heat blasting, my balls smushed under me and into the 90s-velvet of my seat. I rested my forehead on the steering wheel and kept my eyes open, the blur of it too close to my face. I was delirious that night. I hadn’t slept well in three years. I hadn’t slept well since I had slept next to her.

            My head turned to the right, my temple resting on the wheel, the still-wet of my cheek feeling odd on the plastic. My eyes searched the passenger seat for nothing with the kind of listlessness they regarded everything with, in those days. The passenger seat, it was empty. It hadn’t always been so.

            The last time I had driven home from such a covert operation, it had been with Wrenna. We had held hands, cold hands, resting them on the middle console. Her thumb acted like a gentle little windshield wiper when we held hands, the back-and-forth assurance that she was still there and we were still real. Her wet, blonde hair had stuck to her neck. She had been wrapped in a dusty-smelling Americana blanket that had bald eagles on it, and every time she had gone to change the song on the stereo, the blanket had fallen to reveal her almost in full, the not-perfectly-flat of her stomach, the not-perfectly-round of her breasts. Back when I believed things could be perfect, she was perfect to me.

            The last time I had driven home like that, naked and wet with my eyes full of things to say, we had been laughing, she had screamed once, we had blasted Santana for whatever stupid reason, and I had been happy, so happy, that she still loved me.

            This time, I drove home in silence. The wind swooshed with the acknowledgement of humanity the few times I passed another car. The seat squeaked when I shifted. I felt the weight of the air like I’d felt the weight of the water in the pool. Somewhere, I thought, Wrenna isn’t dreaming about me. My lungs burned. It was in reality that I was drowning.

            You’re nothing without her, the thought reared again.

            I know, I responded. But I can become something without her.

            It was that night that I decided to change my life. I still haven’t seen Wrenna since then, and it took some resistance every warm summer, but I never went back to the pool.

Unraveled

Nail down the lid of this coffin
No I don't want to kiss her face
Twenty years underground, it was lowered
Lit a smoke and thought, What a waste
I worked all this time with her weakness
We lit fires in the town with her eyes
You destroyed her, six feet below she went down
Everything I was just died
We all just die
In the end we're all lies

We made love in the dark for an era
But love won with the lights on
Now I look for love in the ceiling
Threw my old self out like a pawn
When you're with me, whispers echo
When you're gone, the silence is loud
Lost a game of chess to the ticking clock
Lost the sight of my face in the crowd
We're lost in the crowd
In the end we're all proud

I can't sing for you
Without my soul coming out too
I can't burn for you
Without shedding some tears

You found a loose string in my body
You never meant, I know, I know
You pulled the loose string through my spirit
I unraveled in a cheap little show
Did you want me before you knew me?
Do you feel like you know me at all?
Broken open, I'm scared of you looking inside
And finding nothing you want
Behind these walls

I couldn't die for you
Without becoming something new
I hope you find something
You want to keep in here

Love Used to Make You Magic

How do you ask someone to chase you when you’re standing salt-pillar still? Why would you ask for words when what you want is for words to come without asking? How do you burn with love, prophetic, indestructible, but watch everyone walk past you with their shoes on? They know not what they do. They walk on holy ground. You want to watch the fire but you want to be the fire. You want two fires in one hearth, maybe. You want the impossible. You asked for balance now you dig in your skin for madness. “Love used to make you magic,” you insist, but all you find in your sleeves are cheap trick cards and double headed coins. How do you find the Holy of Holies without curiosity killing the cat? And if you convince someone to need you, did they ever need you at all?

Judge Not, Lest

It has never been my place to judge you any more than it has ever been my place to judge a stranger. I wasn’t there for every unfolding moment of your existence. I haven’t felt your pain or seen the world through the tint of your mind. I haven’t felt your heart beating strong in my ribcage and I haven’t counted your tears or the hairs on your head. What I know of you is the pinprick of light that you offer to me when you can, but what there is to know of you is a whole universe of stars. Your soul fades into the heart of God just the same as mine. Every time we hurt each other we bring forward a jury panel of our pasts. I can’t see where my words have cut you. You can’t see where yours have cut me. Here we are, blindly wounding the infinitely fragile frames of our spirits, assuming that we haven’t drawn blood, but the cosmic can bleed darkness, too. We should never assume when it comes to things like this how heavy our blows are felt when to our hands they feel like mere pats of condescension, and I am insecure and I am imperfect and I am inconsiderate, and so is anyone, and so is everyone, all of us lost, all of us broken, all of us feeling the weight of every failure, and what any one of us needs is to offer our light, pinprick by flashing pinprick, until our hearts are understood enough that there is no judgment, only love, love for every star that beckons us to believe that ours are not the only eyes to regard the sky.

My Deeds

My deeds spoke paragraphs for me

I couldn’t feel the gravity

Nor see the saturation

But apparently, they tell me

I’ve been laying a foundation

Coming up from beneath me

Like it’s been begging from the mantle

Of an earth that couldn’t handle

Its potential for passionate possession

And the sea parted for Moses

And my deeds parted for you

Like I was blind as Stevie Wonder

Before the day you put too much

Dressing on the salad

Like I wasn’t supposed to know

How this was supposed to go

Until it felt too late, and the earth

Cracked open

In such a way that I found myself

Breathing your air every morning

Not knowing whether to feel lucky

Or to wait to wake up from a coma

And I keep doing things that

I don’t even understand

In a dream-like world where

I got everything I wanted

And don’t even know how to tell you

How happy I am

That no one has pinched me

Thus so far

But that I’m still waiting

(biting my nails)

For someone to explain the punch line

Because you really can’t be serious

Because I really don’t deserve this

Because I could never scratch the surface

Of the deeds you saved me from

Maybe

            Maybe it started off really simple. Maybe it didn’t take a lot of acid to digest. Maybe you were too young to think about it, too young to analyze it. It’s probably true that every child is too young to handle the first real problem that they encounter. Maybe if you had been protected from it, you wouldn’t even be you. Maybe if we had been protected, you wouldn’t be reading this.

            Maybe it was a divorce. Maybe Dad left, maybe Mom did, maybe it was one of those rare mutual agreements that aren’t actually any less ugly. (If you look under the floorboards of strained amicability, you’ll still find rotting corpses of promises; they’ll smell strongly of dead romance.) Maybe he hit her. Maybe she cheated on him. Maybe they just looked at each other with disdain instead of desire for one hour too long for both their withering patiences. Maybe they felt themselves becoming just like their own parents and they were afraid.

Maybe what happened was, someone hurt you. Maybe you had a bruised face, maybe you had a bruised body, maybe you had a bruised ego, a bruised innocence, a bruised soul. Maybe they touched you. Maybe they called you words that you still call yourself. Maybe what happened was, they broke you. There was something in your brain that used to tell you that you needed to be protected, that you were supposed to be protected, that you deserved to be protected, but maybe you were too weak to protect yourself and no one else was going to do it. Maybe this made you believe that you weren’t worth the trouble. Maybe that instinct in your brain, protective instinct, human instinct, cracked in two, and neither superglue nor self-help has ever been able to repair it.

Maybe your whole life, all you’ve wanted was to separate yourself from the misery that made up your shaky, cracked foundation. Maybe your whole life, all you’ve wanted was to be happy. Maybe your every waking moment, you’re bent a little out of shape, your jagged form pointing in the direction that it wants to go, your crooked legs not knowing how to get there, your crooked mind unable to find the time to ask for directions.

Maybe you’ve been doing everything you can. Maybe you’ve tried the only way you know how. Maybe you’re coping, maybe you’re dealing. Maybe all you’ve been able to do in there is deal. Maybe your way of dealing never gave anyone at the table a balanced hand of cards.

            Maybe somewhere in the rearview, you started smoking this thing, shooting that thing, snorting the other thing, drinking whatever, dropping whatever, taking whatever. Maybe you started to become uncomfortable if something that wasn’t you, wasn’t made for you, wasn’t meant for you, wasn’t in your body. You needed it, wanted it, loved it, whatever it was, maybe as innocent as a beer or frivolous as a joint, maybe as sinister as a foil or angry as a needle. Maybe the point was to feel something. Maybe the point was to feel nothing at all. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe in the end it took you over, doubled you over, bent you over and had its way with you. Maybe it raped you and robbed you and racked you in the balls. Maybe it ostracized you. Maybe it killed your friends. But maybe you still sometimes wonder, when you look back on your memories, where your personality ended and the substances began. Maybe you still don’t know how to be happy without it. Maybe when you learned to walk as a man, as a woman, as a grown-ass person, maybe you learned to do it back then with a crutch. Maybe now you just limp, but your legs are so tired.

Maybe you’re not eating. Maybe your self-hatred has become horribly behavioral. Maybe you find poetry in the sight of your own bones. Maybe you’ll never be able to forget that a carrot stick is six calories and a grape is only three. Maybe the toilet became your very closest confidante somewhere along the line. Maybe you’re still not done with it, haven’t broken up with it. Maybe every day poses the question of if you’ll ever be perfect enough to deserve the perfection you desire.

            Maybe you have voices, voices that are not your own, reverberating consistently from the inside out of your mind. You don’t know where they came from, but they have made neighborhoods in your neuron-paths. Their kids ride their squeaking tricycles around in small circles while they yell up at you exactly everything that is wrong with you. Maybe they call you things you’ve been called before. Maybe they call you things you’ve only heard in movies. Maybe they’re the ones convincing you that you don’t deserve this happiness you chase. Maybe a war is always being waged inside of you, no matter how calm the surface is, a volcano slowly rumbling at the floor of the morning’s glassy-faced sea. 

            Maybe you are in love with the idea of being in love. Maybe you fell in love with a flesh-and-blood human somewhere in this thought process. Maybe you gave that person every ounce of effort and every piece of your spirit that you could fit into your hands at the time. Maybe it was everything. Maybe they took it soberly and returned the favor in kind. Maybe they stashed it under their bed and paid you in badly-made counterfeit bills. Maybe they left you with a venom-filled phone call about your shortcomings. Maybe it was more of a slow drift, the seasons changing, the leaves falling without pretense to the ground. Maybe you can’t believe the amount of pain that a heart can feel when it’s dropped back off in your chest, a long drop down a raw throat from hands you thought would hold it forever. Maybe you’ve repeated the process a couple of times, maybe more than a couple. Maybe your heart has more fingerprints on it than you’d want to have it dusted for. Maybe there are pieces of it still missing.

            Maybe all you wanted was to be wanted. Maybe it wasn’t their eyes you were looking at, the intricate waves of color and refractions of light. Maybe what grabbed you was the reflection of yourself in their eyes, that look on your face like you belonged there, watery in a glass more overlooking of your flaws than of the bathroom mirror on lonely mornings in the sunlight.

            Maybe you’ve been looking for that one, waiting for somebody to make you somebody by loving you, loving you completely, wholly, loving you forever. Maybe when you choose the ones that don’t love you, you cling to them like a sailor to the drift-wood off a wrecked ship. Maybe some of them have used you, taken whatever they wanted, shut the door behind them with a fuller stomach and a better self-esteem to face the sunrise, and left the husk of you behind, sallow-skinned and sunken-eyed with a quarter bottle of whiskey on the floor of your own home. Maybe some of them, you meant nothing to them. Some of them, they just got caught up in you for a while. Some of them were too young or too erratic, too irresponsible, too easily bored, too wrapped up in their uh, wife, husband, or their job, or their plans, their big plans that they needed to skip to without you alongside.          

            Maybe all of this has been lost on you, your searching for a feeling, for perfection, for love. Maybe for a while you’ve been trying to search for the real thing. What is the real thing? Why do you feel so completely incomplete at every turn, with every change, every change that you fear and every change that you embrace? Why do you look at your face in the reflective windows you pass on the street, surprised at its age, at its darkness, at its exhaustion? Why do you chase the same white rabbits expecting them to take you down different holes? Do you sabotage every good thing that comes to you? Does your skin crawl once you reach a place of true stability? Maybe you are uneasy, you feel like all this cannot be true, cannot be yours, and so you resort to arson. Every relationship drenched in gasoline, every job drenched in gasoline, every home drenched in gasoline, and you set the match of self-loathing onto the pile pretending that freedom is what you really want. Maybe only moments after the ashes have finished falling, you find yourself on the ground, your cheek all too familiar with this feeling of pavement. Maybe what you wanted was freedom, but when freedom came to you and settled into your chest, maybe you suddenly wanted safety again. A pair of arms to hold you every night the same, a steady income to sustain you, a sun to wake up to and a moon to sleep to. Maybe you fight for it, tooth and nail, and then as soon as you get it, don’t you just burn it all down all over again? Maybe you don’t think that you deserve it. Maybe you don’t feel like it’s real. Maybe you don’t feel like you’re real. But what is real?

            Maybe you are searching for the real thing. What is the real thing? Maybe you are wandering after it like a missing puzzle piece. Your soul is incomplete, your brain still broken. You think you’ve been wandering as far as you can, but maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you’ve been sitting in one place with a blindfold on, always believing it when they told you that there were four walls around you that you could not move beyond. Maybe you took what was handed to you, the coping mechanisms they thrust upon you, the demonic voices they placed in your head to tell you who you are and what it is that you deserve. Maybe you need to reach up and take off the damn blindfold. Maybe you need to question what they told you was true about you, true about your life, true about your containment. Maybe you’ve got it all wrong. Maybe recklessness is not youth, and maybe stagnancy is not adulthood. Maybe love does not chain you. Maybe love sets you free. Maybe there are no walls, no rules for you. You’ve been sitting in an open space all along. There is freedom to be found. Take up your mat and walk; you are healed. Maybe you need to move on.

            Maybe now you’ll just be walking, walking through the desert. Freedom takes away the boundaries at the border of your body, but you still need direction, and you still need to learn to walk without your crutch. You still need to reach forward to touch the hand of God. Maybe that’s all there is to it. Maybe nothing else is worth it. Maybe everything else will fall into place in time. Maybe all you can do is go forward, go confidently, still wondering when the lines will show themselves and lend form to what you’re reaching for, form to the brilliant, elusive colors blending into themselves in the sky.