i’d like to dream again, breathe again. can you do that for me?
and while i let go of all i could’ve been and left instead mundane and tired she says to me:
while you are nothing and are now all that you can ever be,
you are everything to them. never forget that:
you are everything.
Monthly Archives: October 2010
redux
she pulls lilacs from sewer drains and he walks over to her, resplendent, dashing, missing tufts of hair, cut eyebrows.
she smiles and offers him a molar. he kneels down, takes it and fits it into his coat pocket. it drops through the tear in it and rolls aropund his ankles.
we’ve seen this all before, he says and points out the green sky, the orange haze of autumn, the crows in the distance.
she nods, stares at nail bitten fingers, and whispers, but we were younger then. so much younger.
should have been
it goes without saying, it goes on saying, speaking, rattling inside my head:
this isn’t you, it never was you, it was you all along.
and my head spins and my stomach churns, this sick pit
rolling around and across
i could have been more, i could have done less damage
i could have remained alone and unwanted and free of guilt
i could have had nothing and that would have been everything
but instead, instead, instead:
a daughter who loves me, a son who needs me, a wife that forgives me
how terrible all this, to feel so undeserving, to feel so much
to dread the days, not day, but days that i will disappoint them
over and over
this is not, this has always been you
hanging by a thread, hanging by a noose
clutching at them to save me, pushing them away
to save them from what i should have been
from myself
i was dreaming, i once had a dream:
i was tall and strong and beautiful
i was nimble and sometimes very afraid.
but often times i was brave, braver than most.
i saw the world as an orchard and i had evberything that was promised to me.
above all else, i was a man of my word, a man of words.
but i was never any of those things.
i was craven and hostile, meek and angry.
i was a facade, everything was veneer.
the world was sour around me.
and now, now i no longer dream.
i am blemished and broken.
i am shattered and without respite.
the flowers that bloom around are under constant threat.
i want to protect from all things.
above all else, i want to protect them from myself.
slighty average
he says, you dont write anymore.
i says, yes.
he says, this is a great sacrifice.
i say, no. it isn’t. it never was.
he says, we’ve talked before how you’ve squandered your gifts.
and i say, what gifts? i never had any gifts. i was a slighty above average kid in fairly below average neighborhood.
and that’s what it all was. no mystique, no mysticism. i rambled about a few times, strung together a few words, ideas. nothing too complex, nothing just flat out simple. but in the end, that’s all i ever was. slighty above average.
are we all that terrible
are we all that terrible, like spines and webs, like halloween run amok. and i hold my daughter’s face and gaze the purest perfection, selfless and selfish, knowing and unknown, oblivious and obliterating. my son tangles my feet in barbed wire and sings in tap dance shoes belting out a melody as if he were in the rain or a musical. i reach for her and i strain, i miss her terribly. there she, right there but i am not close enough, i have gone too far for far too long. time, time is such a vicious and relentless thing.