and they know, they must know, they must have seen heard, felt, running through the tension now, like a net, like honey, but too sweet, too sticky, it gets in their eyes, their noses, their feet trip them up but they scamper, yell, laugh, scream through the house, unstoppable, unknowable. they know and he can’t bear to look at them, wants to only hear their laughter, convince himself they don’t know when they must surely do. it’s in her voice, they listen to it, to her, because it’s off, it’s tired, it’s broken and where other children would take the upper hand these two stop and listen, to listen, the net having caught them and she says, she says, “be quiet, your father’s working”
no. he strains, he doesn’t want to hear it. close up, eyes squeezed tight. he’s listening to them listening, about to know, she says, “come here, there’s something we need to tell you”
silence. silence. don’t break it.
but she does.
Category Archives: words
in a spur
and it’s all madness and pain and loneliness and fear of the night. i want to strangle it. i want to strangle him. i want to strangle every ounce of hope out of me so there would be no fear, no heart, no memory. i would be gone, i would be dust. i would be the stain that evaporates in the sun, leaving nothing.
from twelve on
in my early, early teens, right when puberty began to wreak havoc on my chubby body, I wept. alone in the dark, in the single bedroom I shared with my mother, I wept that I would never find love, that life was painful and lonely. I had never really known company, never really shared a friendship that kept me whole. the type of bond that perhaps a father and son would share, or a brother, or even a sister. that singular bond that made you not singular, that common knowledge that you came from the same womb, both of you, all three of you, even four, came from a commonality. whatever your differences in opinion, in gender, in eventual lifestyle, you began from a common point, shared a common history that you could touch simultaneously.
but I never had that. I had friends. friends with common backgrounds even (Greek, absent fathers, etc). friends who I think even looked up to me, admired me, but I always felt forever singular, forever odd, forever apart. and there in the night, in the dark, I wept because no one would weep for me when I died. no one would truly know me.
in the course of conversation
in the course of conversation yesterday, the sudden realization:
“we are, at best, impersonating ourselves”
in the same vein
annoyed with it. in the same vein. to continue some trope of agony and malaise. you did start this after all. but to abandon, to squander. to bounce back and convex. or is that to concave? to somehow demonstrate a new resolve, a new beginning. atrocious. impossible. boring.
instead instead what? this? this is nonsense. a means to an end. to get to the end of it. to say, we did this at least today. we wrote something. this isn’t writing. nothing is happening here. move on. same again, beginning again, only to end up in the same place. well worn map.
in the same vein, little to remark. birthdays and conundrums. complaints and feasts. well rested and yet new pains appear. not quite there yet. no new destination. only tracing the edges of what was once thought a treasure map. no longer seeking gold or lush riverbeds. just escape to some other territory.
to make it through
to battle the night, to make it through the night. where there is bliss, where there is no worry. impossible dream. impossible to dream at times. I’m forgetting them more often. I forget to dream. what is there left to dream. how selfish. there’s them, the two of them. everything we were and could be but will never be again. said that the other day. it was poignant and true and beautiful.
but to think of them their lives entails watching them grow older and that in turn means your death. my death. me growing old, me finally showing my age. I boast how young we are, how young we look. but it will not be forever. at some point I will turn. at some point I will be fragile and incontinent. then that awful thought of the great sudden death that wipes me out without knowing. even worse. even worse the one where we all go in our sleep and my parents devastated and alone. grieving.
and so here. and so now. fighting through the night. fighting against the natural ebb and flow of proper sleep. of laying beside her in the dark to rest. only when exhausted. only when I am sure that sleep will overtake me. to make it into oblivion before the thoughts run wild.
uesless sandbagging
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.
where’s the comma in that?
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.
Girl Practicing; Boy Cut Up
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.
no longer welcomed
books, there can never be enough books
i wished she would say that. i wish she would believe that. and i swore, i swore one time she did believe that. but now, now walking between stacks of books, she told me no, she told me in front of the children, no. she told me in front of the children that there were too many books to be had. we had enough books. we had to stop it already with the books. and although i smiled, although i chided her, kissed her, pleaded with her, i felt odd, i felt distant, an immigrant who, having spent a long duration from home not only no longer recognized it, but was now no longer even welcomed.