my love,

typically i take these moments to write something artsy, something crafted, rife with memories and nostalgia, something crafted.

i do not want to do this now. i want instead to tell you, i am afraid. i am afraid of what you mean to me, of what my life would’ve been without you, of how much of my day to day silliness is predicated that you are my audience. i am afraid of how much i yearn to be around you, to know you are near, of how it is all meaningless without you.

yes, there are the kids, but they are not my partners. they have and will have their own problems to solve and lives to build. i built this life with you. and this year has been such a struggle, we’ve had so many scares. i never considered your mortality, being so obsessed with mine own, with work, with money, with the kids’ futures, until this last year. you cannot do this to me. you cannot leave me. i refuse it.

i refuse it because all of this is for one singular purpose: it is for us, it is for you. maybe because of my fears i have chosen hope. i have been driven to hope, to work for hope, to plan for a hopeful future. a future where i will sunbathe with my wife again. we will hike through a forest again. we will cuddle as the sun rises again. for a future where we will wander the streets of some city like we did in paris. to wander the streets of paris again, perhaps for our fiftieth.

all these little notes through the years revolve around the same themes, be it an anniversary, christmas, a birthday, valentines, it doesn’t matter. none of that matters. only you matter. because you are the key to all of this. thirty years ago you broke something in me. you shattered me into believing. you shattered me into dreaming.

you brought me to life.

love, always
me

i dreamt of sorrow, i dreamt of malice
i dreamt of the whiskers on his chin, and callous of his fingers
i dreamt of his smile and what was held back behind those teeth
i dreamt of him sleeping, of the bed covers etched by his frame
i dreamt of the garden, i dreamt of the silence, how silent i had to be
i dreamt of her song, i dreamt of her fear as she baked cookies
i dreamt of the storm, of the loneliness, of terrifying freedom
i dreamt i never left, i will always be his child
and i woke up, and i woke up, and i woke up

dear mikey,

I have said, perhaps callously, I am living through you. I am excited for you. I am fearful for you.
I am fearful of you.

I remember Michael, I remember thinking I had it all figured out. I remember telling Papou, of all people, ya I know what heartbreak is. I cringe when I think about it.

But I was young. I was stubborn. I was right. What are you talking about, you stupid old man?
You’re the past. Your generation killed our future.
Can you not see how short sighted you are?
Can you not see how I have it all figured out?
I will clean up your mistakes.
I will do better.

Over thirty years later, I hug him tight so he can forgive me. Not because I was wrong, but because I was right.
He is the past. His generation did kill my future.
He is literally short sighted now. His eyes are a mess.
I did figure it all out but it came at a cost.
I could not clean up his mistakes.
I barely did better.

And I see you standing there at the doorway when we had this huge blowout, maybe you need to stop worrying about me, stop being obsessed with us, maybe you’re the one who needs help.

And all I really want is to sit with you.

I made a song, years ago, those silly loop things, it’s called sit with me dedicated to you. It starts with some guitar strings, gentle intermittent cymbal crashes that increase in intensity while two competing beats come together, a soft heartbeat in the background, sketchy beats that all fade into a haunting echo and then this flute comes in.

That’s you. The real you behind the haunting. The you I wish I could be a part of. It comes onto the scene: pleading, curious, free, light, twirling, alive.

A contrasting flute comes on, almost in harmony, a more cautious tone, and the two flutes dance, it goes back and forth, finding a pattern, a way to be in the same space. The cymbals slowly disrupt, and the haunting eventually returns, the flutes gone. The light strings step back into the spotlight and the quick beat of the world washes the rest away. At the end all we’re left with are the strings. It ends on a heartbeat.

And you’re my heartbeat Michael. Not my hopes, not my dreams. You’re the stammer and the fear and the thrill. The steady drum that tells me there’s a song out there where we are dancing, still dancing, despite all the time of the world.

love, always
me

53, do you remember me?

It’s all falling apart. This house of cards you built, this land you find yourself in. Always finding yourself, suddenly, without passion, exhausted at the sight, and no sweat to show for it. Cracks in the foundation, you got it all wrong and it’s crumbling.

You thought you were at the end, that the road paved before you, and as you go down this decline knowing it will be gentle at first only to accelerate, was ready to handle the momentum of everything you wrought. Instead, a patchwork of cracked lightning erupts alongside you, beneath you, and up ahead, chasm upon chasm, deep and wide and irreparable.

you have failed, there is no cruise control for you here.

And you scramble in your seat, desperate to get off this ride, hands against the tarmac, fingertips bleeding for purchase, and it mocks you, it laughs in your face. There is no stopping it now, it yells above the din of debris you are plowing through, this is the machine you built: you are it and this is the damage you’re leaving in your wake.

If only this was a dream and I could feeling nothing

I tell her, I’ve been waiting for the other show to drop
I tell her, I’ve been far too lucky
I tell her, I do not trust this

And I don’t think it’s all that absurd to be afraid. My dreams are rife with despair and resignation, desolation and acceptance, a certain kind of grief that always was, always will be, always expected.

I tell her, this is not sustainable
I tell her, we need to hold it together

And maybe this is the tension, this is the yawning sound, the tinny vibration of something stretching to its limits, that whatever is holding it together is being tugged by a momentum that demands it is thrown apart.

I tell her, we are so close

And perhaps this is the wrong analogy: there are so many moving parts that I imagine it to be a centrifuge when it might be better understood as a house of cards, that this issue is gravity.

But he remains silent

I look for him over my shoulder and he’s there, always there
He looks down at me slowly, quietly says, it will come. it will all end
He raises his head and looks off to the horizon
But not now, he says, not now

Ba,

There is so much I have come to appreciate about you over the years, there is so much I am embarrassed of.

How do you did do it? How did you not just put me in my place when I was so sure, so arrogant, so clearly stupid? How did you keep a straight face when I thought I knew anything about anything. I remember, I remember trying to tell how life was, what I knew about it. I wish I could laugh about it now, but instead I cringe. Instead, I try now to be more humble. I look at my kids and sometimes, not as often as when I was there age, I see it. I see the same pompousness and I wonder: is this what you saw? And like you then, I do not mock them, do not put them in their place. I think to myself, oh man, I hope they get it later on. I listen, I give advice, I let them breathe, I let them get there on their own without them crashing into the rails.

So thank you Ba, thank you for putting up with my stupidity and my confusion. Thank you for putting up with my laziness and my worries. Thank you for tugging me gently from the edge and for pushing me towards the road. The older I get, the more I’ve come to appreciate you and the stronger your voice in my head becomes.

Keep talking to me Ba, even when I don’t show it, I am still listening.

I tell the little one, who is little no longer, “there is the ‘quiet’ and there is the ‘roar’, and in between is the living”

I gesture with my hands, I struggle with the words, because it’s just coming to me, this is what I’ve been feeling for so long, in that moment of telling her, the longing for the quiet, the staving off of the roar and the fourth thing, the thing I cannot bear, the thing I cannot face, but I do not tell her that, I do not dare: the end of all things, the inevitable, the inescapable, what underpins the preciousness of time, the forward momentum of each echo.

You want to write your way out of this and it’s impossible, you don’t have words for it, you don’t know how, you’re ill equipped. Let’s set aside that perhaps you are the cause of it. that it is all your fault because of everything you prided yourself on. You called it hubris. Indeed. You missed the signals, the warnings, ‘she doesn’t engage with the other children, she plays by herself’ and you wrote it off as her being shy, she’s just shy, we have history of that. You who was sat on the floor in kindergarten because you couldn’t shut up in class. You who always yearned to connect because you had no brothers, no sisters, no father. You didn’t have history of that, if anything it’s another addiction that you’ve tried to shed, another bad habit you try to avoid.

And you hear her weep and you wonder what pain you ignored in her short life, you think of that song, “the dreaming tree” and at some point, you won’t be able to protect her, at some point you will be in the ground with the dirt and the maggots and the worms. Or dust, or ash. Either way, you will be dead and will she suffer? You hound yourself, will she suffer? If there ever a time to believe in God and the afterlife, it is now and I cannot bring myself to it.

Between the quiet and the roar, there is the living and the absolutely certainty of the end

my love,

All things come from you. Through you, we have two wonderful and amazing children. Through you, we have learned to be caring and kind. Through you, we have learned selflessness and perseverance. This life, this ridiculous, little life of ours, full of laughter and seriousness, full of worry and seriousness, full of silliness and honesty. Every day I witness some nuance of how to be better, to be a better father, to be more than I ever thought I would be. So thank you. Thank you for being strong for them when I was weak, for being the soft hand when I only knew how to be the stern voice, for holding all of us together when we were tired and falling apart.

love, always
me

“If you hold a gun and I hold a gun, we can talk about the law.

If you hold a knife and I hold a knife, we can talk about rules.

If you come empty handed and I come empty handed, we can talk about reason.

But if you have a gun and I only have a knife, then the truth lies in your hands.

If you have a gun and I have nothing, what you hold isn’t just a weapon, it’s my life.

The concepts of laws, rules and morality only hold meaning when they are based on equality…”

-Anonymous

at some point, enough is enough
and the goodbyes need to be said, the recriminations
displayed, maybe
not for all to see but to be laid out, this is why
i was aggrieved and this is why you were
not enough, to blow out the cobwebs
that have become thorns, to wrestle
past regret and animus and
resentment. while he was never one
for poetry, he was for words
laying out treatises and guides and paths for others to follow

i will miss him, if only there will be one less person
to share my rage with