is the rage, pain and anguish i feel truly mine or am i just keyed into yours?

the form of the question, intricately woven with intent and anticipation. and a bit of fear. never forget the fear, always there. the form of the question is a rose. but not just the petals and the pollen and the stem, it is also the thorn, the pin prick of having indulged. the bead of blood pooling through the swirl of the fingerprint, the impression already made, the mark of a stain yet to be made after leaving.
the form of the question to be decided, to be told, how to unfurl. a curtain draped over abandoned furniture, what’s under there? the scattering of dust, motes flung into late afternoon light, the gathering of refined wool, or is it linen, cotton, what makes the question and the thing it asks heavy enough for a snap of the wrist to bring it to the fore for the revelation? pock marked legs and scoffed cushions. velvet or leather, arm rests slightly out of alignment and the overwhelming feeling that something that was once there, once there often day in and day out, is now irrevocably gone.
the form of the question begs the question, where to begin, how to phrase it just right, to know what i want to know and do i even really want to know?

i was thinking the other day, how weird it is, to go from being admired by your daughter to admiring her. to go from expecting your daughter to impress you to wanting to impress her. to go from getting her to meet your expectations to realizing you can never match hers. it’s not meant to sound sad or morose, it’s more of how pleasantly the tables have turned.

i need to say my piece here, i feel a more public forum is inappropriate: it’s too broad, the audience too wide, i would come off as too pretentious. so i choose to do it here, where some of you knew sajjad as long as i did, some of you didnt know him at all and others who knew him from the very beginning.

i am devasted. truly and resolutely devasted.

sajjad was, is, was, no, IS one of the sweetest kindest people i have ever met. he always helped you. he always forgave you. he always thanked you. he laughed with you. he had your back when things went sideways. he had no ego whatsoever. he was committed to the people around him. he shaped the culture around him, he was a balm to all the ills and stresses that comes from working for an MSP.

when he went to texas, i missed him, i missed hearing him say “…or whatevah” from across the aisle. but just as he set the tone in ny, he did the same in tx. he raised the bar in how to be a professional while also having an unoffensive and contagious sense of humor. he laughed easy, he tackled complicated problems with curiousity and eagerness to learn what he did not understand.

he then went to the UK to be our point person for one of our most complex and demanding clients. even i was unsure if he could handle it. this same client almost broke me. but he didn’t break. he mastered it. he had them eating out of his hand. he was confident and knowledgeable. he put them in his rearview mirror.

when he came back to the ny office, it was wildly different. we broke down the wall between us and the office next door. we took it over, we grew. we weren’t just an aisle or two apart. but still, i was happy, the way you are when you’re working with an old friend from that other company you both started your careers in long ago.

now he’s gone. my friend is gone. in a time when i barely had any time to talk to him as a human being, to just shoot the shit. i had his back like he had mine when i first started work wise, but between this virtuality we are all now living in and the demands of the day to day, i barely had time.

i wish i could hear, outside of my head, outside of my memories, his voice, one more time saying, an end to a sentence on some complicated technical thing, “…or whatevah”

What was an unexpected pleasure yesterday, is what we feel entitled to today and what won’t be enough tomorrow.
-Behave: the biology of humans at out best and worst. Robert M Sapolsky

my eyes swing from rooftop to rooftop in a mad dash as if they were chasing a costumed superhero from my father’s youth
and each place they rest is a glass finger scratching the shimmer and glare of a blue sky over a city full of villains

sarcasm… without it we’d have nothing to say

the question is, can you be broken (again)?
what horseshit. tired and livid. the sand beneath the foundation, jack hammer through what you though was forever and only and inch between you and the flood. all floods. how about that jack. it came all apart and you were at your father’s throat under the impression that he wasn’t doing enough and that ever sore tender spot that he never really understood you or appreciated you or saw your gift. irony: a mother who thought you were capable of anything but wouldn’t let you ever really try and find out and a father who simply couldn’t quite accept that everything that mattered to you, mattered at all.
and perhaps it was that seething-ness that ruptured everything else when the power was out and the basement was flooded and the garbage piled up on your curb like useless sandbags after the damage had already been done.

stutter, stutter, full step, full trip, an eyeball twisting about, where’s the comma in that?
and parallels: a dog chewing the scruff of its neck, a vague release, an itch about to be scratched but somehow lost in the translation.
great walls and pit falls, a wisp of hair caught between lips and a cough that interrupts deep sleep. I’ve always been lost at this point, where the exits become further apart and names have become numbers.
she says beds are for sleeping and not much else, a sour note that hints at aggravation and disappointment and I twist and turn and squirm and I am four again where all I heard was the sound of her weeping and him falling asleep soundly exhausted and satisfied and vile.
this is so inappropriate. she would say that. this isn’t fit for writing.