Your Name is Bob, You Smoke A Pipe

Sometimes I wonder if I am addicted to addicts.

It's getting cold again. My room faces the field and some mornings I wake up to frosted kale and can't remember my own name.

All in all, I am doing okay.

My friends here gently suggest some couch time now and again, but they don't see the beauty of driving around when a song called Bob comes on.

Grief to me comes in quiet waves. Some days Bob is simply a syllable, other days it's the voice on the other side of the phone that I will never hear again.

I have formed an unfortunate habit in my life that is just coming to light as the gravestones quietly multiply.

I have yet to go see my father's grave.

I could cover this simple fact up with my belief in there being nothing under that grass but earth.

However, the extra miles on my car that are mysteriously absent seem to think differently. It has manifested itself in a little girl homesickness that I seem to have developed. Three months is a fascinating period of time to change everything or absolutely nothing at all.

In between the waves, I get occasional feelings of solace. When I was 14 years old, I had a forgotten day where nothing fascinating happened other than it was winter, and there was snow, and Rashka and I went for a walk.

I will always remember that moment for the clarity the menial brought me. I tried so hard to remember every step so when I was old and my energy was about to leave me, I would still feel the cold air and my young veins and the beauty of not knowing things yet.

That memory keeps coming up for me, and I realise perhaps I didn't save it for the wrinkled face of my old self. I saved it for when things weren't so much ordinary as just shit.

It amazes me sometimes how I left little time capsules along the way.

My father was an orchid child, my mother from the dandelions, and I, in an orchid way, planted a some very dandelion seeds.

and I have both of them to thank for that.

Especially when it comes time to remember my name.

All That You Can Do

Perhaps loneliness is simply going to be the way it will always be.

It has been exactly six months since Lovely kissed my shattered forehead on his front steps, and I walked away towards my side of the blue.

I am almost the age where they will let me buy my fathers poison.

I have known that which drove me to myself just shy of 8 years now.

And, though it will never be the last time I say it,

I don't know if I feel it anymore.

I think of Lovely and try to pull up every glance (s)he ever gave me, and I feel a stronger pull towards what exists in my life currently, as porous as that is. I think that with the events that moved the earth out from under me, I am tired of ghosts.

I'm tired of having too much to say to nothing at all.

And yet the loneliness stays. I wake up in the mornings sometimes and think I can hear someone else's chest rise and fall. Then I realize its just the cold fall air beating at the windowpane.

I suppose we do what we have to do.

I suppose that's all that you can do.

Now That I Know

After everything was said and done, I closed the boxes, found my keys, and came home.

And healed as much as you can when you are missing an arm.

This summer filled up with patients, stethoscopes, and Rashka's greying beard.

I'm back in the north again.

Yesterday I followed the beaten path towards the driver's seat and drove north, to a little theater in the middle of beautifully nowhere.

On the drive, I started to realize the peace that has been growing from the scars.

Peace to me is being the first to wake up in a house full of New England age and standing in the kitchen listening to the floorboards rub their aching joints in a cold weather sound so quiet it's deafening.

Peace to me is hearing the female in Lovely's voice rust away one more link in our chain.

Peace is finally seeing the color wheel in the mountains.

And enjoying the road because it means not having to do anything in the space between surviving.

Peace is hearing a friend understand the same kind of unearthly realism.

Peace is watching a man blush with joy when he sees that the dough he set out has finally risen.

Peace is everything and all and moving forward and letting the dirt settle and give life from the grave between it.

I have taken a step forward from my ragged shuffle backwards.

All I need is one more.

And peace is waiting.

Souvenirs

The death of a parent creates something that slowly creeps in just as you are beginning to sleep away the pain of freshly dug earth.

And that is fear.

Every time my mother leaves the house, I panic just quietly enough for Rashka to glance up at me, and no one else.

This morning she hit her head and told me goodnight before leaving. I drove to work with my hand clenched on my forehead.

There will be two phases in my life. One with my mother, and one without.

I am dealing with the silent phone of my father. I am too young to have both of my connections to the earth stop calling.

So I have come home for the summer. And for the first time in years, I relish the ability to not be completely on my own.

Sometimes at night though, my brain flutters like it did when I spent the night unexpectedly at my grandparents, and the dusty toys hanging up in the shower gently reminded me to enjoy my final evening.

Tracing patterns in the dust of childhood gives me a fleeting contentment I will never forget, and makes me wonder if this fear is simply my body trying to memorize.

Fly Away On a Hummingbird

I guess it's time for me to tell it.

Friday was a snapshot of priorities. A friend's birthday, I make my way over to my phone through laughing bodies, and there are people who have been there.

Specifically, my mother.

I knew what she had to tell me before I put the phone to my ear.

What I did not know, however, was how human I could be.

I felt my knees on the ground, and what came out of my mouth was a wail that could have frozen half the heritage of anyone's blood.

My father laid down on his couch with the heat up high on Friday afternoon, turned on the tv, scratched Sally between the ears, and left this world.

The drink beat the reds.

When I was little and could not sleep, I would pull out a picture of my father in a teal kiss the cook apron and try to make myself feel what I would when he died.

I never knew why a child before the age of cursive knowledge would do such a thing, but I think I do now.

I worshiped him. However, something in my bones always gradually tucks religion away as a storybook.

I was learning to mourn him before I didn't remember how to love him how he was.

I hoped for my father, but I cannot forget that he was Samson between pillars.

Yesterday I lost my mind and became that little girl again, and ran to Lovely.

But today, there is a reverence for the pain I could imagine years and years ago, when I was convinced the man only drank Coca-Cola, and cigarettes were beautiful boxes I got to play against the side of the truck.

His blood stills runs through my veins regardless of what form his life exists.

And I do miss you, Dad.

Cat's Cradle

My father is about to die from living too hard.

Saturday was his birthday, and seeing as how I had come full circle home, I went out for lunch with him and his president of the world sibling.

My father has become a child.

His eyes are full of water that has stood still too long. Sentences slip over his fingerprints, and as he put it after eyes from his sister, his liver is shot.

It was then calmly explained to me that my father had been living unbeknownst in filth and unemployment and bottles and they had only found out because his blood had decided to explore parts of his body it did not belong in.

Oh, and Hepatitis C.

My father has poison for blood.

We then went shopping for new flooring in an attempt to clean up what he had forgotten to do to his home. Except I was asked to make the decisions, because it is to be my house soon.

My father is about to go out into everything.

And I am ready to let him.

The Magi asked me during a first sleepless night of learning each other what my deepest secret was.

I told him that I would not be sad when my father dies. I know I ruined it with that boy, but I will appreciate that he let me give the tip of my tongue that came crashing back when I was asked, a few weeks later, for a tip of my liver.

It's not hate. It's not revenge, or apathy, or anger.

I am tired. And life will be so much better for that man when he no longer has it.

My father is going to lose big.

I never expected anything else.

Don't Be a Stranger to Yourself

The lovers revolve, but the picture is always the same.

It's usually blurry from my love of hiding from lights.

I'm never actually looking at the photo. But whichever fascination has decided to capture me, they usually get it.

Genuinely happy. It's a smile that used to be reserved only for the moment in question.

But recently, they have been shedding some light on it.

I never know it's happening. I will be pressing buttons late at night, and come across that moment, now pixelated and glad I was the only one in the room.

And tonight, as I stumble over the most recent evening of a self inflicted silent phone, I have found another.

It could make me sad. It could remind me of how I have run.

Instead, it reminds me that sometimes, in the early dawn or late afternoon, when I have reclaimed an old plaid shirt and given up on everything else,

I have made these moments, and

I really am happy.

Kurt Vonnegut

Sometimes in November, when I walk into empty rooms, I smell my old red haired mother's perfume.

Imagine my surprise when the scent came to me in an upstairs room of a birth center in central Manila.

Two nights before, I had scrubbed off the smell of Lovely, stayed up all night, and then walked onto a plane to the other side of the world.

For the life of me, I do not know how I did it.

I left everything. I left Rashka. I left Mom and school and normal thoughts and clothes and my sense of putting everything in its place.

And I jumped.

And I flourished.

I came home to cold days and reality and Lovely. I left those for colder days and Chemistry and Lovely's expected backwards flip off the ledge.

it was bad. I would lie down at night and let my mind spin itself into a knot so tight the only thing to do was cut it off.

Day by day, it got better. And I met the Magi. But sitting here now, I realise that Lovely has reincarnated.

And I hate him for it.

But I know who I really hate. I am the one who habitually goes into the forest at night looking for ghosts with nothing prepared to say.

I can feel the breaking point coming.

If it weren't for my recent break from tradition that proved to me that I am strong, I would probably run right back to the ghosts.

Come Back to Us Barbara Lewis

I am absolutely and completely terrified.

Each night in Richmond, I have stayed up dream cycles past the rest in my house, grinding my teeth and fearing sleep, only to free fall in guilt when 4 am rolls by.

I do not have enough time.

I want to be able to talk to my mother, to tell her how completely frozen I am in life about the thought of disappearing from it for a month.

I want to tell her I'm terrified that I will never make it back.

I want to drive to Lovely next weekend, hug him, and push time back to set gender roles and before driving abilities.

I understood that I would be nervous. I understood that I would be scared.

I did not understand that I would feel every nerve in my body grind to a sit-in. That I would let books gather in the corner, only to jolt awake right before the sun appears, panic set in about gathering deadlines.

But when I sit at the computer, I cannot write. My body will physically not let my fingers touch the keyboard.

Trying to grow up is turning my thoughts younger and younger.

At least, I finally understand what it means to be trapped in my head.

Dammit.

Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

A ghost appeared out of nowhere tonight to ask if I still write. Perhaps it was surprising, except that several apparitions have asked the same thing recently.

And here I am, early morning, wrapped up in EMT gear, freezing and wearily awake.

Hampshire is sucking at my bones. I was not prepared to grow up this fast. It wouldn't be an issue if I wasn't the only one.

And yet I come home night after night, exhausted with a backpack full of mandatory papers, only to hear complacent voices from all rooms of the house.

I didn't think it could happen after such a long summer, but I miss Richmond.

Mealticket and the Gentleman and drives along familiar streets.

Perhaps its because I won't be there for Christmas. Perhaps its because I should be. The mother of my mother has a death threat running through the marrow of the bones, and no matter how much the rest of the relatives talk about gamma rays through their clenched smiles,

I'm well aware how this could end up.

I wasn't particularly upset until I realized the mother of my mother will probably never see the children I bear.

And that's how I know I'm growing up too fast. I sit in the shower and daydream about telling my mother to pick out a grandmother type name.

This cycle of birth and birth is wearing me to death.

Christmas to me is cold sleet, Rashka tearing paper apart, children born to save marriages running around a sea of credit card debt, and the smell of the stairs creaking as my grandfather slipper shuffles down them to his chair and glasses. Things I love.

Not hot tropical weather. Not an old Catholic woman I don't know. Not religious zealots.

I'm paying good money for this type of learning experience torture.

Birth has become my life. I just only hope it doesn't take it away.

20 should be drugs and sex and short term love and college.

I suppose I'm just living more ones than others.