Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Growing Up

When I think of you I think of your big hands, like baseball mitts. 
Our breakfasts together, slowly dripping honey over a bowl of cheerios in the morning. 
You slicing bananas with your pocket knife. 
Its funny to me that after all of these years and through all of these situations, that you haven’t changed at all. 
You still use that pocket knife for everything.
I remember the smell of the glue you would use after a bad night. 
Gluing on the end of the table that gave in to your pounding fists. 
You still whistle all day long and your enormous key collection still jingles from your belt as you walk. 
I miss seeing you walking towards me with your head cocked to one side, eyes squinting in the sun. Smelling of simple orange and old spice. 
Your Sunday ties. 
Sitting in the recliner with your glasses on snickering over books I would never read. 
Books about the President, books about how things used to be. 
Only pausing to tell me exactly why this country is going to shit. 
I miss your stories about being young and wild , when the price rose to 60 cents you threw your pack of cigarettes out of the car window and never bought another pack. 
I used to pick you flowers every afternoon and wait to hear the crunching of the gravel under your tires as you pulled up. 

Growing up complicates things in ways I never expected. Everything gets crowded with things that shouldn't matter. Every year a new calloused layer forms,separating us, distancing people further and further until I'm just not sure of anything

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Nights on the Amazon

I remember laying in a hammock in the middle of the jungle one night, just listening. The sound of the jungle at night was so deafening that we couldn't’t sleep. The blackness was full of hidden things. Things we could hear but would never see. We were blanketed in this unexplainable presence. I looked over to you and saw your face glowing by the light of our borrowed oil lamp. There was no need to say anything. Your face looked warm and kind and it was my home in this strange place. There was no time only miles and miles of darkness. Life just dissolved before us .You told me you loved me like you had a million times before but this time was different.

We took a boat ride that night. Turned off our lanterns and lied on our backs in a boat carved by strange hands. We silently sliced through the black water, under a glowing moon that was round and pale like our sleepy faces. That night changed us forever.

getting older

It’s funny how things change. Things are always changing, sometimes very slowly , like leaves changing color. One day everything is just brown. People leave, doors close, and one day you are looking in the mirror and your skin is like a map. Eyes searching, Trying to trace the lines on your face like roads that have led you to this end. Where did things go wrong . Alone under unforgiving light, walking through silent hallways into empty rooms. When did this face become something unrecognizable to me . When did everything become so unreachable.At what point did you become only someone I once knew. Long ago in some distant world ,we were young and everything was liquid and flowing like blood through veins, ready to gush red and warm. This is the pale afterbirth of a life that I fought so hard for.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

picture of the day


...


...what happened in our house taught my brothers how to leave, how to walk down a sidewalk without looking back.

I was the girl.

What happened there taught me to follow him, whoever he was, calling and calling his name.

no words


I read that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand and that the Eskimos has one hundred words for snow.

I wish I had one thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep

and there are no words for that.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Monday, August 10, 2009

...


Tell me about the dream where we will pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again.


How it was late , and no one could sleep, the horses running until they forget that they are horses.


It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere, its more like a song on a policeman's radio. How we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple to slice into pieces.


Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it is noon, that means we're inconsolable.


Tell me how all this , and love too, will ruin us.


These, our bodies, possessed by light.


Tell me we'll never get used to it.