she plays next to me, hesitant and proud, cautious but prideful: she’s gotten somewhere with this piece, she knows some secret about it, she knows how to get there.
and she plays next to me as i write, a shy confidence building with each repetition: i can hear her little breaths, a slight cold but fingers dancing, stumbling but finding themselves again, righting themselves, moving forward, beginning again. a spiral, she’s spiraling outward and possibly away. departure.
and my boy yesterday, my boy today. it was as if nothing happened. slighty sore but walking about. rotating specialists came in checking and double checking: why are we here today, who are we here for, how do you spell your last name. and each time a little further, from one room to the next, from one stage to the next, spiraling closer, honing in. arrival.
after the pediatric surgeon explained the problem, the procedure, the afterwards of what should happen, he asked: any questions for me and i turned to him and said, where do you live. of course: silliness, useless sense of over-protectiveness that would be impotent and frail in the face of any real sort of tragedy.
i didnt get to hold his hand when he went under. i gave that to mari, let her have that. so hard to give that up.
by the time they led us back to him after, he was already awake, cranky but focused. he didnt want us to talk to him. not in pain exactly but uncomfortable with the pins and needleness of being numb where they cut him. he didnt want any overt affection or concern for him. he didnt want us looking at him, embarassing him. he wanted all that worry to be put somewhere else, anywhere else.
as the final wisps of tha anesthesia wore off, he was anxious to be home again. the nurse told him to eat just a little more of his icey. he nodded sweetly but the minute she turned, he frowned and dug the pastic spoon in the blue icey with a ferociousness. i’m down with this place, i’m outta here.
when we got home, he went about his usual routine: rubbing the dog’s nose, circling around the living room asking for a snack, heading downstairs to play the Wii. no whining, no complaints. he was worse in the morning, constant whine and moan about his hunger, his thirst, his hunger. after the surgery and now, the next day, just a slower pace in his going about, but the same going about, the same climbing of stairs that he shouldnt be doing, the same willfullness just a notch below the standard stubborness.
as if nothing happened at all. as if he was just getting over the flu.

ever closer to forty, the fury of forty, the resignation, the sputtering out, the desire to revisit, revamp, re-do, undo. impossible, all of it.
and this, voice, this disembodied embodiment of disappointment, of judgement: once youthful and wise, now smoke laden, tired and sore. done with itself even while speaking. out of the dark, something returns to nothing.
and yet, yet: doomsday scenarios that would tear the heart asunder; daydream vistas of compassion and love and the beauty of immortal children; fearful transgression into the very depth of a death only a smattering of decades away.
how do you do it?

Io @ the NYC Greek Independence Day Parade 2012

did you dream this? i slept through waking nightmares and sleep through precious moments where i rest and they rest and we laugh but i am gone, absent, ethereal, unreal.
i cringe at the thought. i cringe at all thoughts. i cringe at my thoughts. i cringe at the sight of me: imperfect, oblong, irregular, irrational, unattractive, ugly, obtuse, meat sack sagging through the kitchen, the living room, the stair the bedroom: avoid all mirrors at all costs.
only for the close ups, the face, the bags under the eyes, the eyebrows dense, the slight grey at the temples. just barely looking at, if at all.

there had been a time, a something for the day, every day: visceral and gaunt, toothy and wrapped in sinew. and now, now, silence within a semblance of peace. but it’s all there, under the floor boards, like poe’s beating heart ranting and screaming and bursting at the seams and i dance over it instead, steps stomped out in routine and mediocrity, with dressing the children and washing their hands and holding them tightly as we venture in to the world, day in, day out. bang all you want, tortured demon of mine, but this isn’t your time: i belong only to them.

ok. how to do this? with pliers and will and something sinewy, something that gets stuck between broken molars:
day 3 of SAMe. new week of Unisom and 5 Hour Energy Boosting. Like MZ said, “This, this is what’s going to kill you.”

the sudden sense of failure, of internal implosion: i want to be free of this, i want to stand absolutely still and have it overwhelm me, have it wipe me out finally and completely and totally. i want to stop feeling everything and nothing, i want move beyond feeling broken.

the same again: will i ever find peace? will i ever be complete and whole? work and wife and children and still, still this fucking pain with each breath. working out, chiseling a body long abandoned, reading fact and fiction and theory and science, and still, still: ennui and void, entropy and emptiness, pathos and pain…
are you happier or more pre-occupied? have you found a rhythm to dance to or more rabbit holes to scurry into? zen or distraction?

there are times, late into the night, in this haggard breath the moon coughs across these streets, i feel this intolerable loneliness, this immense and profound sense of isolation: this skin is a prison, my mind a cell and every word i have ever said a betrayal of every word i should’ve said.

I had the weirdest dream: I didn’t know exactly where we were, it could have been Athens or New York, but my father, Savopoulos, just showed up, alive and not dead, alive and just as young as i remembered him. We were all shocked and when he invited to take you and I to the casino, we went. It was dark and I was in the front seat, you were in the back, and he was driving. We didn’t say anything: I couldn’t believe my eyes. How did he stay so young? Where were the years? We would look at each other, but neither of us could say anything. How could we, we were riding with a ghost. But as we approached a bridge over a very wide river, I could tell he was tired and falling asleep. I told him to let one of us drive and at first he would not let go of the steering wheel. When we almost crashed we struggled over the steering wheel and he finally let us drive. This time you sat with me up front and he slumped into the back seat. As we drove back home, I kept staring at his reflection in the rear-view mirror until I finally asked him, “So if I didn’t kill you, who died? Who died for you?”

I woke up with bile in my mouth.