I cannot tell you
what you are, but I can
say what you are not –
And you are not
so many things:
You are not serendipity,
you are not footsteps
on pavement, you are not
grinding teeth.
You are not erectile
disfunction, you are not
orgasmic, you are not
auto-erotic asphyxiation.
You are not broken, you
are not porcelain and
you are not fragile, but
you are not strong.
You are not yesterday,
nor the day before that,
nor the day before that,
nor the day before that.
You are not stolen,
you are not photographs,
you are neither stardust
nor moonbeams.
You are not heartbeats
and you are not sighs,
you are not earthquakes
and you are not phantoms.
You are not salvation,
you are not 40 ounces
of freedom, you are not
any ounces at all.
You are not graffiti,
you are not permanent
but – rejoice! – you
will not be painted over.
You are not scars and
stretch marks, you are not
sunburns and pressure bruises,
you are not a mistake.
You are not dreams,
not even the beautiful ones,
but especially not those
shattered and stillborn.
You are not inebriation,
you are not “getting by,”
and you are not
giving up.
Your whole is greater
than the sum of all parts
now and still to come –
things repeat, combine,
change, remain the same –
but you –
you are everything, and
nothing, that matters.
These are things tossed out of the windows of my mind. Catch them. At worst, I am brilliant at breakfast.
At best ....
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It all started with a perfectly arced three-pointer at the buzzer to win the game. Well, if there’d been a buzzer. If there’d been a game, as opposed to a single shooter on a playground with faded paint competing with grass to crack the pavement.
It was one of those moments where time stands still for everyone — the ball in the air, eyes drawing a dotted line straight through the net, faces frozen in the same expression despite differing motivations of elation or fear — and I was thinking about him. More precisely, I was trying to remember how we met.
I remember how we met, of course — I’ve told the story a thousand times. It’s a great story, the thing a thousand romantic comedies are made of. But what tripped me up was whether I actually remembered meeting him, or just remembered the story. Memory’s funny that way. I think I remember moments from childhood, but really I only remember the stories that have been told about the moment repeatedly — my own life’s urban legends. Perhaps this is one of those as well. Perhaps, in the telling and retelling, I’ve made it so, made it grander than what it was, imparted far more significance to it than it ever had at the time. There’s really nothing special about it absent the “and they lived happily ever after” payoff.
As that ball reached the peak of its arc, I remembered how my story had been colored by his side of it. My memories weren’t of my feelings and thoughts in isolation, and they never would be — his were included as well. I was a storyteller. Had I been telling this story so long that it had ceased to be a memory, and instead become a story that I could control and alter at whim to suit my fancy?
As the ball began to descend, I realized the story was the most beautiful thing to come of the relationship — that I’d held onto the relationship as long as I had to do justice to the story. Perhaps I’d watched too many movies, but it seemed that any story with an opening that strong needed an equally strong finish. The finale shouldn’t let down the start and the whole should have a triumphant message that somehow included the word fate.
The ball swished the net and I realized I was more committed to the story than I was to him, and that I was an unreliable narrator. If I was the shooter, that ball would’ve bounced off the rim.
I am the shooter, and this is my story.
There was a moment
I was yours, and you
were mine —
did we really feel
that way?
I don’t know, but I
miss thinking
that I did.
There’s nothing triumphant
in the rise of the sun —
if the earth didn’t rotate
we wouldn’t exist.
Funny how much
emotive power we give
to things
we can’t control.
Your love was too much
and too soon; I pushed
it away. I want it back.
Where were you when
edges wilted, when tulips
drooped for longing? I am
past my prime and you
are the surface I reach
towards —
release.
Envelope me.
Our hearts are young
and we share
the same desire —
to be loved
by you.
If you are (or ever have been) a “young” writer struggling to find new ideas, someone’s probably told you that what you need to do is go out and live. “You have to go out and experience the world!” they’ll say. “You have to travel, experience different cultures, step outside your comfort zone, try new things!” Sounds easy enough, right?
Yeah, I’ll check back with you after I win the lottery. In the real world, such advice isn’t easy for most people to follow. In the real world, people have responsibilities. In the real world, people have ties — be they professional, educational, or familial. In the real world, people have obligations. For most people, the real world has limitations. Your imagination does not.
Think about the last dream that had you shaking your head when you awoke, wondering where your brain came up with such a bizarre thing. While you may not have dreamed up the next great fantasy novel, that dream came from your brain. When you’re asleep, your conscious mind isn’t there to hold it back. As William Blake wrote, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.” Your brain can do amazingly creative things — if you let it. The only thing holding back your imagination is you.
Conan O’Brien interviewed George R.R. Martin, and asked him the one question all creatives dread, because it doesn’t have an answer — not a satisfying one, anyway. I’ll give props to Conan for his question’s careful wording. He didn’t ask George where he got his ideas — he asked him if there was anything in his childhood that fostered his great imagination. If you believe you have to travel the world and experience different cultures to be a great writer, you probably wouldn’t enjoy his response — but I did. George (and I’m only referring to him by his first name out of some (perhaps misbegotten) sense of parallelism, because it feels awkward to refer to Conan by his last) explained that, far from having a far-flung and exotic life, he grew up poor in New Jersey. George was the son of a longshoreman and lived in the projects. Since his family couldn’t afford a car and never had the money to travel, his entire world for the formative years of his life consisted of five city blocks. He read books and watched films and wrote stories. The fact he didn’t have the ability to travel the globe was irrelevant, because he knew that this world, and plenty of others besides, could be contained in his own mind if only he let them. To quote Goethe, “Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
If you have the ability to explore the world and immerse yourself in other cultures, do it. But if you don’t, realize that inability isn’t holding you back from being a great writer or creator of any sort. Not everyone has that liberty, but we all have the same freedom in our minds. Release it. When it comes to creativity, the only thing holding you back is you. Go and dream. Then come back and do. Einstein said “imagination is more important than knowledge.” Prove him right. George R.R. Martin did.
“I just don’t get it.” She was looking at our senior yearbook. Again. I was starting to realize why I’d been told no one stays friends with their high school friends. Here we sat, still rehashing the same issues over and over again, the same problems we’d never resolve. Well, some of us, anyway.
“Why was he so — fucking — popular,” She had her finger in the back of the book. The index. She’d looked up his name, and was flipping through to all the pages where he was pictured or mentioned. This would go on for quite some time.
“Why are you so obsessed with it? I mean, graduation is supposed to mean moving on.”
She sighed, flipping the pages, and gave me that look. “I just don’t understand it. What’s so great about —”
“Look,” I said, reaching over and taking the book from her hands. “Jake —”
“Jacob. His name is Jacob.”
“Fine. Jacob was popular because he did things, and he did them well. People found what he did interesting, so they supported and followed him. It’s not that difficult to understand.”
“Fuck that. I did things. I did the same fucking things he did and people never supported me.” She kept reaching for the book and I kept jerking it out of reach until she eventually gave up, because I was standing so far away she would’ve had to get up to reach me, and I knew she wouldn’t dare. She didn’t. “We were friends, you know,” she said, grabbing another beer.
“I know. And you probably still would be if you’d ever —”
“Don’t, okay? Just don’t. He transferred at the end of sophomore year, you know? He didn’t know anybody. I took him under my wing and introduced him to all my friends and made sure he didn’t get bullied and shit just for being new, you know? And he took that boost and just — just —”
“Made something out of it?”
“Moved on.” She slammed the last of her beer and went outside, slinging the empty bottle at the trash can as she walked by. She missed. I sat the book on the table and followed. Not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t know what else to do. I felt like that’s what I’d been doing for years — sticking around because she constantly complained that everybody abandoned her, and I wanted to prove her wrong.
“It’s all because he got that stupid award,” she said as I opened the door.
“What? The Principal’s Award?”
“Yeah. That one. Fucking stupid. It’s meaningless. It’s just whoever the principal’s favorites are; it has nothing to do with anything.”
“Then why do you care about it?”
She didn’t answer, just brushed past me and went back inside. What was she gonna say, because I didn’t get it? Doubtful. I followed her despite the fact it was now obvious she wished to get rid of me. Back inside, she was digging through that damn yearbook again, flipping through mentions of other classmates. “People only ever liked her ‘cause she had nice tits,” she said, pointing to one of the more popular cheerleaders.
“Maybe so — but did you know she talked Dylan down once when he was suicidal?”
She shrugged and kept flipping through the pages. “If people thought she actually cared they were fooling themselves. She didn’t care about anything past her own reflection.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said, biting my tongue. If anybody doesn’t care about anything past her own reflection, it’s you. That’s what I wanted to say. “She did care. You were just too wrapped up in your own shit to notice. You had your idea of who she was, and whatever didn’t fit in that box you created, you just discarded. Real people don’t fit in pretty boxes, Emily. Stereotypes are superficial for a reason. Anybody’s more than that if you take the time to scratch through the veneer.”
“You’re no better than the rest of ‘em,” she said, tossing the book on the table. “All these people ignored me, Jessie. I had plenty to offer, and they just ignored me. They didn’t care about anything I was doing. At best, I was a diversion — someone to laugh at. Remember when I called myself the queen of our travel club? Ha, more like court jester.”
“Everyone else called you queen, too, Emily. They probably still do. You wanna know why you never achieved the same heights as all these other people you’re so obsessed with? Because you quit all the damn time. It’s really fucking hard to get behind somebody when you just know they’re going to skip off. If you care about something, you show people that by sticking with it, and doing the work that needs to be done. You never even stayed in the travel club a whole semester. You kept complaining about how there were too many divisions, too much politics, and it was too much work. Then you’d leave, and we’d all carry on. Every time you came back, though, we welcomed you with open arms. Every fucking time. So you had people who disliked you — it was because you were a whiny fucking bitch who wouldn’t shut up about how everyone was against you. If you would ever just shut the fuck up for once and look around, you’d see people who support you, people who care, if you’re willing to actually put forth the effort to make something happen. You’d see me.”
I wish I could tell you what she said in response, but the truth is, I didn’t say that either.
Do not subsume; do not fall asunder
like leaves blown on winds whispering
rumors of the dying and the dead.
Consume me like a fever, knowing
nothing of patience. Speak not of
calm; of passive cravings
quickly sated.
Have you ever held a hurricane?
Beneath brutality’s gleaming edge
hides the sacred sophistry
of sadistic urges best spoken
in broken tongues,
and I have been careless.
You are the strength; I, the willing.
If I am to be destroyed,
I’d wish it to be done by you.
I love you drip-dried on
chapped lips forming
pretty little lies.
Pretty little lies
to match
that pretty little dress
I wore last July —
the last time
our faces wore
smiles unbroken and
made for each other.
Pretty little lies habit spoke
long past meaning’s shelf life.
Somewhere past remembrance,
the light of us still shines.
These days, the sun
still feels the same, despite
the fact it’s not yet June,
and we are not yet
alone
together.
If I could lay your soul out,
flatten its creases and
weight its corners so
it wouldn’t blow away,
what paths would its surface
diagram?
All you want is fuel
and my wood’s too damp
for timber.
If I can’t refold you to slip
in the back pocket of my alone,
should I blame my lack
of dexterity?
I cannot love you
any less
than I did;
any more
than we were.
Longing takes
so much of love’s breath,
what can remain
when figures are confirmed,
static, constant?
Passion pricks patience’s fingers,
makes mincemeat of comfort
with wait and calm and other
words living hearts can’t translate.
Don’t look at me with quiet eyes
bartering memories for touches
like fingerprints on new glass —
your silence isn’t mine to take.
Your words pound
walls with kick-drum echoes
bleeding rhythm my veins,
my mad refrain, your love —
I can’t be sure it’s not a dream.
I woke up
and you weren’t there.
“If you love something, let it go,” they said.
But I said no.
No. The hour was late and the rain was light but steady; the sort that would’ve been refreshing on a hot summer’s afternoon but brings damp frustration at 2 a.m. For some reason, rain seems more angry at that hour, and more persistent on being so. Of course, the cat chose this particularly annoying moment to attempt her escape. She’s only been with me for a couple weeks, so escaping is something she attempts often, and she took advantage of a bout of carelessness on my part. Halfway through the parking lot she realized she’d made a mistake, that being out in the rain was precisely the last place she wanted to be, and she retreated to the relative shelter under my car.
I hadn’t hesitated from the beginning. Not following her was never an option, and when she slipped under the car, I dropped to my knees on the wet pavement. The rain, as though upset at both of us for interrupting its steady falling, erupted into torrents. My hair was already soaked, my clothes were already soaked, and the poor frightened cat simply slipped further under the car the more I reached for her. I laid down on the wet concrete and slid under the car myself, moving at a slow pace that I hoped wouldn’t startle the cat who was already startled. There was nothing else to do. I would’ve laid there on the filthy concrete half under the car all night to get that little cat back safe into my home. There was no other option.
It only took a few minutes to grab her by the scruff of her neck and slide out from under the car with her. I curled her up in my arms and pressed her into my wet and dirty hoodie and bundled her inside. Once inside, I got her a towel and commenced to drying her off, cooing to her and making sure she was alright. It took about 15 minutes for me to figure out that I probably needed to change out of my own soaked clothing and dry my clammy skin, and in that moment I knew. Although I’d only had this cat for a couple weeks, I loved her, and if she was in trouble, I’d go after her. I’d never let her go.
Because that’s what love is. Love is never letting go.
