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?