i am sorry my friend that i could not extend her life by giving her some of my own.
Category Archives: internals
thoughts, musings, life, etc
echo through time
i tell her, “these things echo through time.”
and we look at our daughter and talk of the little i remember of my father, the four or five memories of him beating my mother, throwing me aside, the night he raped her, the feel of his palm on my cheek as i was terrified of him. these scant moments have circumscribed me, defined certain limits and obviously have opened doors within me that i might have been better off if they were closed. perhaps it is those open doors i fear the most and pray that i am never the one who opens them for my children.
the malaise
sometimes the malaise comes over me and although i know it’s a sickness of the mind, it is difficult to think through it, to imagine the other side where i am alright and my thoughts are not tinged with rot. that there is a dawn where i will be able to take deep strong breaths and fill my lungs without sharp pain or a heavy sense of futility. i curl up on our love seat with my newborn son cradled in my arms and i want to stitch him there, safe and sound and smelling his father, a buried memory he will always carry within him even after i am gone. i kiss him and in turn reach out to my daughter to kiss her soft cheek as well, and each time she veers near me i whisper, i love you, because one day i won’t be able to say anything at all. i only remember fear and the sickly sweat of my father’s death. it is difficult, despite everything, despite this new thing i have become, to abandon myself effortlessly, to hold myself still enough and breathe it all in.
promises of a calm winter
down to 250ml, my friend’s mother gasps for air at a quarter of a liter throughout the day as he watches over her until she falls asleep in the early morning. another friend brings his daughters, all three of them, and they fill my house with squeals of laughter, running between and over us. my father pines for the earliest recording he has of his father singing, his voice tinny, hum and hiss filling the speakers, the distance between the microphone and the music. in our room, my wife brushes aside my hair to kiss me, our son cooing in the same bassinet our daughter once slept in. the night is cold and clear and the fierce wind has died but holds no promises for a calm winter.
just like this again
sometimes my head is so full of bricks and my mouth so stuffed with mourning that i am short of breath and the wind whips the skin off my bones and my muscles ache and my knees crack and i can barely stand up to it all, this swelling up and over, this drowning of the dam, that all i can think of is, and tomorrow will be just like this again, and the day after that, and the day after
hooliganism
i remember going to the mall, the odd assembly of stores packed tight, robbing kids of their beepers because we knew someone who could tune them up and resell them. i remember smoking in between subway cars, flicking open my butterfly knife and cutting the rubber seal to the conductor’s booth, announcing stations somewhere between here and hell. i remember chasing down the two muggers who snapped off our chains in the bronx and pounding the head of the one we caught into the sidewalk until it was wet. i remember firing my first gun, a .22 raven off in the dark of forest park, not hitting anything but wishing there was something to catch the bullets in between the trees. i remember running across queens boulevard and someone saying, it’s him, it’s him, and we had guns drawn down our sides like mad men, then suddenly, when the guy at the pay phone looked at us, we stopped abruptly, turning away, it ain’t him, it ain’t him. i remember learning they finally snatched up into a cargo van the kid that had stabbed me and that they broke both of his arms. i remember the rage and the clear detachment, the grief and the guilt, and the curious sense we were all toeing a very dangerous line and at any time it could have gone either way.
trick or treat
“let’s go to that one!” and she runs, her bag already open, as fast as her little legs can carry her and she manages the big steps and almost trips over the little ones and she screams in delight as the next house comes into her field of vision, with its ghosts and frankensteins and halloween elmos, and she knocks on the door, rings the doorbell, extends a careful hand into a bowl of candy, then runs off saying “thank you!” already lost on her way to the next stop on her halloween dash.
(the wife later tells me, after i left, the little one gathered all her little purses, filling each one to the brim with the night’s bounty)
mouse trap
we found a mouse in the house. a little mouse, a house mouse. i did nothing about it the first day, but with the newborn and all, she went and bought glue traps, snap traps. she set them on the kitchen floor with little pieces of cheese, straight out of the cartoons. a trap snapped within the hour. couldn’t even tell what was sticking out of the trap, whether it was its hind legs or torso but it didn’t twitch or anything, so it was dead. turned a plastic bag inside out and i scooped it up like dog poop. but the very same night we caught sight of the tail of another. there had been two, so the wife breaks out the glue traps and i placed where we had seen it. i finally read up on it and it turns out that peanut butter was the way to go, not the salami i had replaced the cheese with. so i dab it here and there and set the snap traps by the glue ones. an hour later there was the other one, stuck on its side, moving its head as it saw me approach. turn another bag inside out and scooped it up, still twitching. i tied the bag, then slammed it on the granite counter. it didn’t move after that.
all these with no place to go
all these with no place to go. an old chemistry set, the wick of a candle that’s been burned off prematurely, a quilt that’s been stretched open like a chain link fence. they leave grooves on the skin when pressed, the stray eye lash that falls in your coffee. a rock that tumbles out of your shoe to alleviate the pain of having crossed over, clean and unblemished. your son wobbles his head as you hold him tightly above you, up and over, erupting with a laughter he has yet to understand. rubbing her eyes in the dark, your daughter asks you to sing a song that you can’t possibly remember until you begin to whisper the words in the dark. the sum of a foreign set of limbs that were once your own curling up for warmth.
barefoot on slate
i walk barefoot on slate, mice run around about. she sleeps above me, nestled in a odd mix of sadness and delight: she has a son, her husband has betrayed her. it is like walking on ice, feet pressed firmly with toes splayed, the night hints at winter but i am not cold. she wept into my hands and i shivered and shook, cigarette now dangling from dry lips, hearing the distant echo of a car making a tight turn.