4 February

Simon.

Ah, this black night. Ah, these stirred up entrails of mine. Ah, these bleary eyes that will not shut; that work ferociously and that look at what I am and hate it. hate it for being so small. So o’erburdened with fear and sloth and with foolish wavering.

And I want this bitter and biting wind. And I want the fierce and frigid cold. And I want the sharp edges of the filed and glinting stars. And I want the air – gathered up and smashed down and stuffed into a yellow sack – the air and all the infintessimal particles of the vast and endless sky that separate myself from itself. That separate my heart from God’s. and I come to see, to know, or at least, to admit, that all of that air, all of that sack of sickly hue crammed full of space and infinity, that all of that is just me. Nothing but this puling soul, this howling ocean of pretense and nothingness. This complex mechanism designed for nothing else, save keeping it from its one true end.

The echoes of what I might be if I were braver, or more determined, or better appointed; these echoes are a torment tonight. And if you knew. God, if you only knew.

And yet, one has to endure. There are these moments, at the precipice where the wind, with wild and whirling voice, rips at the heart, and whips the soul to shreds. And yet. Yet, we remain. And there is another moment, when this one has passed. And another after that. And another and another all in unbearable succession. And somehow we must be in them. Alike as in this.

And how to do that. To go on, with ravaged innards. To make use of a heart that hangs in shreds from the bars of a splintered ribcage.

To be ever and ever and everlastingly less. Less than what you mean to be. less than what you are, by genetic imprint, by divine inspiration, by will and intention.

And on nights like tonight I feel that I am something other than human. That I belong streaking the heavens like a comet, that I ought to be somewhere, - anywhere – other than inside this shoddy frame. That my skin and organs and bones and tissue are all just a well-constructed trap. A cage. A prison for something else entirely.

And I want to be everywhere. And to understand what it is to be other than myself. To know how it could be that someone else might have a different relationship with the world, with this tree, with that song, with this glazed and dripping window pane than do i. to and to know what it might be. to feel that. To understand another mind.

So that, by understanding I might be enriched. And so that I might know what it is to be another.

But. As I have not yet found the alchemy to turn my body into ether, I sit. Here. knitting like a fiend. Letting the music swirl its slow waltz of devastation inside my chest. Blind eyes, black to the world. And only lit up to what is not.

So that’s where I’ll be tonight. Blazing in the outer circles of this multiversed, unknowable, impossible night. Just in case you were wondering.  

22 January

Simon.

It is 8 degrees out…. 8

And it is clear as black crystal and there is a golden Cheshire, grinning moon slung low in the diaphanous sky.

And I feel tonight I could hold my hand out before me, and magic would just float off the ends of my fingers, coloring the blank canvas air before me like finger paints.

Delicate and bold, I will slash the sky with color. Beauty for nothingness. Music for silence.

I will carve me words out of the very atmosphere, phrases stamped into the incorporeal air, so that when you walk you would have to pass through the ghosts of words like love and promise and glimpse and olivine. So that as you turned your head you would be swathed in poems, robed in lyric, and draped with the richest, most luminous prose.

And darling, tonight; when this green and marbled world turns in silence and dark, when time stretches out thin and starlit; tonight, I will build us a castle of obsidian thought. Brilliant and invisible will be the walls, mighty elegance in the stone, brick upon brick, and

the night will crash upon our defenses like a raging tide, and we inside will smile our small smiles and feel our enormous hearts and clasp our warm hands and watch as everything dissipates into splashes of wonder at what we have built.

Tonight, I will hew us a ship, made of scarlet possibility, its sails will I weave of my very tissue and fibre, bending and stitching and gathering together every infintessimal particle of the endless unknown, and it will be cobbled together of bone and pitched with marrow, until all the infinity of the future is spliced into ourselves so deeply there is no distinguishing it from us. We will be everything. Everywhere. Allwhens.

And this night we sail. Blue herons, phosphorescent in the sea of black sky, over the sleeping, dreaming world, and we – only we alone – roman candles exploding.   

17 January

Simon.

I wonder why I sit here all these nights. Writing to you. There are people I could say these things to. Why don’t I do that? Why do I keep them inside like silly childhood treasures kept under the bed in a shoebox, and then pulled out in the surreptitious midnight, when the house is asleep, and uncovered in the square of moonlight there on the rumpled bedspread, and looked over – each twisted bottlecap and smooth stone, and faded pink ribbon.

And tonight I finished my allotted work and the lights were low and there was music and I went to the kitchen and stared into my teacup. Looking for who knows what. And I found I wasn’t lonely. Alone, perhaps. But that it was alright. At least tonight. Me with my bare feet, wrapped in a blanket, my hair all wonky, and this silent cup of tea.

Because it’s simply this: I can only love big. That’s all this giant magnet heart of mine knows how to do, and in a breathtaking show of wild idiocy, it’s decided that you are what it points to. It’s like some horrible force of nature. And so I do. Love you. In all the ways it is possible to love. Because it seems there is nothing whatever to be done about it. And in spite of the glaring facts that I absolutely should not. In spite of Adelle, who is everything good and beautiful. In spite of Avelyn who is a flying brilliant wonder. In spite of whatever damage it does to myself. And in spite of the fact that it does your pompous ass no good at all. Do you remember what you said to me the last time I told you I loved you? It was that harrowing night I came back. Ready to be the prodigal, to apologize voluminously and to make it all right again. I had driven twelve hours straight with everything I owned shoved into the back of the pickup, all but erupting with the watershed understanding that I had been wrong and that without you the world – with all of its beauty and fascination and inscrutability – would always be something I simply observed. That somehow, without you, I couldn’t touch anything. That night I ran to you; and found you recently married, just returned from your honeymoon.  And nobody had wanted to tell me. And I nearly choked on all of it. And could manage only the flimsiest of good humors, and the sickliest congratulations, and the weakest-brewed excuse for my being there that ever was proffered at the doorway of a lost love. And after a torturous hour of visiting, I escaped out your door and ran to my still-loaded car and thought to drive away and never come back. But I had left my keys on the table inside, and I leaned on the car and couldn’t stop the sobbing. Because I couldn’t bear the thought of going back in there. Because I couldn’t bear the thought of anything at all. And then you were there. With the keys of course. And it was this terrible moment where we knew what to do. Where we had the answer to all of this awfulness, but couldn’t use it. And we stood there, separated by the hood of the car and by everything we had done.  And you started to talk, in that tone that begs me not to hate you because whatever it was you did was the only thing that could have been done, and I couldn’t listen. So I turned around and slid to the ground, sitting there leaning against the wheel, my legs straight out, touching the pickets of the fence that separated your house – yours and Adelle’s – from the James’s. And you came around and slumped beside me. And you sighed. And we both stared at the fence. And then I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It was too ridiculous, and you laughed too, and it was good. And when we stopped, the hurt was still there. And I said it. ‘I love you, Simon.’  ‘I know,’ you said. Arrogant fool, and undeserving. ‘I know.’ Just that. In that voice you have when you say something that you don’t want to admit. Staring straight ahead of you at the pickets with the peeling paint. Which is when I snatched the keys from your hand and got up and drove away. With every intention of never seeing you again.

But I can only love big. And you’re the only one I’ve ever met who is big enough to merit that kind of love. To contain it.

So there it is. This love, you-directed, inside of me, spinning in there like a top, quietly and perpetually in motion, regardless of the fact that I’m washing up, or grading papers, or bundling up for a walk to the mailbox, or trying to spin this blank page into an idea.  

And so I don’t know if that is an answer or not. To why I keep these things, hoarded like a miser, to tell you here. in this journal you’ll never read.  Maybe it’s simply for that silent spinning thing inside. My one small kindness to that warm, ensouling movement.

3 January

Simon.

It’s winter. These cold days of grey quiet. And it’s a hushed and thoughtful season. And the forests are dreaming, and murmuring phrases of song with their foggy breath. And the cities have thought to disguise themselves with these robes of white. Which we all know will soon enough turn a dingy brown, revealing them for their grim and gritty selves.

And it is none of it unlovely. Here is the cardinal, a bright streak of fire in my morning window. And here is the mittened hand and the scarved throat, insulated and armed against the ravages of the bleak day. There is the river of cloud, dark and roiling, sliding over the hill, its belly full of snow. And over here the glitter of cut glass and shining bauble in the glow of the long candle.

A season of antitheses; warmth and chill, softness and harsh, bright and monochrome. And when could I ever be steeped in paradox without seeing you. When so much of who we are, you and I, are opposites. Not from each other so much, as within ourselves. We are our own antonyms; our opposing poles, and every step between.  

28 December

Simon

Good God, Simon. What is it about this night. This endless, ageless, limitless night. This night here, right here smack in at the bleak end of December, in this winter of my 32^nd year, this night is Avery’s field, ’97 after the ballgame. And I could close my eyes and smell the grass, and the nachos and hear the chatter from the outfield… Rook was pitching and we hadn’t missed a game all season. He was amazing. And maybe it was just that everything was amazing that year.

They won, of course, and Rook invited us out with the team to celebrate, but we decided to decline, and we went rambling instead. How many of my greatest moments have started out as rambles with you. So we ended up finding that place out by Chapman’s Mill, the old cabin on that creek. It was dry that day. And we sat on the rotting porch and played stupid games we made up, and we wrote poems about the cabin – the homestead, we called it. Do you remember? – in the voice of whatever came into our head. This rock, that weed, yonder sunning lizard…  and invented a whole life story for the people who had lived there.  I can still remember the feel of those weathered boards and the hoo-ing of the light wind in the chinks in the roof, and your hand, warm and familiar playing with the woven bracelet I wore around my ankle. It had a little bell tied to the end of the strings, and I used to love the jingle of it when I walked. Ah, for the love of foolish things.

We walked the creek bed that night, do you remember? And there was a moon  then that was the twin brother of this one. Huge and yellow and wavering. Like it was its own reflection on a midnight lake. And the stars were out in droves. A billion glowing freckles on the face of the universe. We lay down on our jackets in the meadow grass and stared out into them, thinking how amazing it was that we were here, on our tiny little backyard planet, not in the center of anything, and yet here was all of this. Just for us. And how many people, (‘couples’ we said, looking at each other on that word, suddenly shy) had lain under how many skies full of the same starred magic, and felt rocked by it. And we didn’t have ipods back then, but we shared the headphones to your discman (oh, those days) and listened to something sweet. You always had good things, billie holiday, tom waits, john fogarty,

And you found my ear and in that voice that always covers me in chills, said, “every single song that has ever been written – they’ve all been about you.”

And I remember thinking, “ALL of them? What about I am the Walrus, or Bad Bad Leroy brown?” but I held my smart-ass tongue and nestled down into that space that was miraculously me-shaped beside you, and sighed. And I closed my eyes and felt the world spinning underneath us and the stars streaking across this perfect hour, and how we must look to them, two tiny specks, all spoony, and what kind of light must we be giving off just then. Something beautiful. Warm and bright and full. And what the colors you and me might make when mixed together.

20 December

  

  Simon.

What in… what? You wore your necklace today. The one from the fair that time. When we snuck in with your cousin who was playing drums in that Jefferson Airplane tribute band. And we helped them set up and then took off, sixteen and wild with freedom. And we stood up on the ferris wheel to see if we could see the ocean and they kicked us off. And then we walked the tents, and looked at everything and it was all marvelous and it was all just a way of looking at each other. And we were holding hands then, I remember. And it was making me float, all of me filled with the helium of passion, stirred; and there were times I couldn’t tell which fingers were mine and which were yours. And we would do that young-person thing where you would look at me, and our eyes would lock and everything would get all breathless and dark, and so I would have to look away, and find something to distract my mutinous heart that wanted nothing but to take control and drive me top-speed, head-first off the deadly, sheer-faced cliff of you. And we saw those necklaces, the guy was making them, right there, do you remember? This blacksmith guy, pounding them out all orange and radiating, in whatever shape you wanted. And you said, “Lets” and I ok’d and we asked him to make something for us. And he did. And they were perfect. Two hammered circles, the front flat, punched around the edge with small circles. And the backs, two hearts, yours an indentation, mine slightly raised, so that, put together they fit precisely. And we glowed with them. And you took both of them, and paid the grinning smithy, and led me out the gate and we wandered over the foothills where the boulders have all collected and lie about in a riotous granite hullabaloo, and we climbed up and sat and watched the sky turn plum colored and soft. You took the necklaces and you put yours on and then turned to me and clasped mine around my neck, and I swept my hair aside and your fingers on my shoulder were a universe unplumbed. You caught my face and you looked at me and didn’t let me look away. And that was when you told me you loved me. At that moment all I wanted to do was to open you up and climb inside of you all small and warm and to never ever leave.

And who knows how long we wore them. Till I left, I suppose. And there you were today, reaching into the back of your car to get your things, and that old circle of hammered silver glinting in the light. And you watching me see it. And me having to pretend that I didn’t . I won’t wear mine tomorrow. I won’t have it be some private language between us. I won’t.

But I’m wearing it tonight, Sime. And I do. Still. Always.

16 December

Simon.

There are days, whole entire days, even, when I don’t think of you. When I don’t feel like some hobbled amputee who has lost a leg or an arm or a left hemisphere. I can even see you. We can talk. Nice little things, books, friends, plans… and not have it feel like soggy breadcrumbs, left by the ducks to rot and decay on the water’s face. We can do that quick little friend hug, one arm and a quick pat, looking to the left or right to show it’s just a formality. Just a habit. And I can do that and not feel out the old familiar place where I fit always, so tenderly. And not want to settle there, and not think about the weight of your arms or the rough, raw scratch of your jawline. Not imagine grabbing the back of your shirt in fists and speaking your name, and sobbing out these last 12 years. Or your hand in my hair, and your lips on my ear breathing words and sighs and promises and other impossible things.

There are days that I can hear some grand new philosophy and not think of how much I want to hash it all out with you. Days when I can eat my soup and watch the rain collect in the rocky path outside the window and not remember how good rainy days were. Not think once of that night in the storm and the firelight and the sound of the rain at the window and the thunder that shook the walls and the way things blurred and time got watery and wavered and the feel of you so, so close.

9 December

Simon.

Good gravy, Simon. Why did we have to do those things. Those things back then that ruin every single blasted thing right now. Like all those songs. Like the hours in your room picking out guitar chords and humming every single song we knew and having them amalgamate with the days of our breathing. Of our growing. Of our loving. So inextricable. Like the late night walks through Amos’ field and all the stars. Like dancing on the porch all those nights to the music that played from your grandmother’s records. Like all my favorite clothes, the wild outfits we would get at the basement store, the one where you paid by the pound, that have the ghostly scent of you clinging to their every hem and button. Like the books. The pages on pages on pages, the ink and glue and dust that was our world entire. Like the truck. Like how every time I drive it I find myself looking over expecting to see you shotgun with your arm out the window and your hat pushed back, that way you used to do. Like Ketchum’s and The Spider and Evanrude’s and the dad-blamed grocery store. Like how I can’t go to one damned spot in this whole town without being snagged, cobweb-style on some armed phalanx of memories of you.

You’re the ghost, Simon. The ghost we used to always be so afraid of. The ghost of regret. You’re this smoky phantom that shrouds every one of the two hundred million things I do each day. Yet you’re such a real ghost. Such a palpable spirit. You’re the ghost who brings me coffee on Saturday mornings when we happen to meet up at the dock. The ghost I played chess with last night as your wife read a deposition and we talked together of chocolate turtle brownies and planetary motion and the aces of diamonds. The ghost who still tucks my hair behind my ear when I want to hide behind it.

And somebody had better explain to me why I do this. Why I stay. Why I keep up residence here in this haunted house. Because I can tell you for certain that it’s not for the excellence of the sleep. And it’s not for the romance. And neither is it for the bright and promising future. Maybe it’s simply because I can’t leave it. Because you are the most beautiful thing that is likely ever to happen in this cracked and frozen world. Because walking away from this place would be walking away from all the light and wandering off into the darkness of the blackest void. Because I’d rather have the ghostly remains of you than the actual beating heart of anybody else. Because once you’ve had the greatest thing, there isn’t much place to go. After that. And mostly, I suppose, because it’s my fault. Because I left. Because every moment I’ve been circulating blood and oxygen and electromagnetic pulses since that one moment when I told you I needed to go – every one has just been me doing everything I could to turn around, and take it back, and make it right again. Because I guess all we do, if we’re honest, is break the things we most treasure, and then spend our lives on the floor with a bottle of crazy glue trying to piece them back together. Wishing for the impossible. For the broken thing to be whole, for restoration of that lost thing we love, for redemption.  

5 December

     

 Simon.

It’s been a few days. feels like my mind has been rioting lately. Flashing colors, too many voices shouting, the world spinning, nearly out of control, like that last, sad wobbly turn a top gives just before it topples over on its side and skids to a stop. But tonight. Tonight somebody – maybe it was me… who can really tell – stood up on the hood of one of the cars and waved her hands and clutched at her hair and screamed for it to stop. And it did. Almost unnaturally. And it is as if the world in my head is on pause and everything and everyone is frozen, and the lights are beginning to tunnel, and there are only a few things left that can be seen in the blue-black space. And one of them is your face. And it’s – unbelievably – still. And quiet. And it makes the rioters lower their arms, and close their mouths, and turn and try to find their various ways home. And I feel everything inside begin to crouch down and to breathe, and to keep itself silent and calm. And then the light spots another figure in the crowd, and it is Adelle. And I see that, when I thought you were looking at me, through the crowd. Seeking me out to settle and stay… it was her. She was the one. And she is looking at you as well. And in her eyes is love. And no small measure of fear. Spiced with panic. And there was me. Looking on at the two of you, and feeling my own tunnel of light closing and narrowing to a pinpoint, and then disappearing altogether. 

1 December

Simon.

Reading Plath. Beh. But there was this one line in it that was so right. This one about mutual exclusivities and flying between them because choosing only one or the other is unbearable. And, that is SO me. And, I don’t know, it didn’t work out so well in the end for her… so I maybe that isn’t really the best way to go.  Like, can one person really hold together two polarities? Ones which are always pushing out from each other. Ones that have as their only and sacred end to fly in opposite directions. And how long can you do that before your arms are ripped from their sockets and you’re left watching them fly away, farther and farther, and you there with nothing but empty sleeves and no way of flagging down a taxi. 

29 November

I don’t know if I ever told you this. Because we don’t really talk about that time. About what happened. … so… About that guy in Carolina? Mark? Yeah. He was a musician, actually. Which I know you’d love…  piano and guitar. And, oddly, bassoon. Anyway, he lived down the hall from me, and we’d always seem to be leaving at the same time, and the halls and elevators were so small and cramped that with the three of us (he and I and his instrument cases) all packed into such a tight spot, it was almost impossible, not to meet. It was either laugh at it and strike up a conversation, or feign either idiocy or irritation. We chose the former. … the conversation, not the idiocy… anyway, it was good. He was pretty amazing. Honestly. Great lyricist, and that kind of voice I love. All raw and real. Anyway, he invited me over once, and we drank coffee and I nosed around all of the pictures in his apartment and we listened to some music and talked. Those good kind of talks where you’re not really discussing anything but yourselves cloaked in arbitrary topics. And we built a fire on his balcony which I’m pretty sure isn’t allowed, and he played his guitar, and we watched the stars creep across the sky. And it was a nice place. A fearless place, and free. And so we struck up this affiliation. And I was so glad of it. And maybe another time I’ll tell you about how it ended. Because I was stupid. As I so often am. And ruined it all. And I’d rather not go through all that tonight.

Because tonight the sky is bleeding opal over the hills, and the shadows are long, layered behind the light, and the autumn is ripening. And I want my heart to be light tonight, running. Light enough to ride a falling leaf, or to catch an igniting spark from the pearly flame of the dying sun. Or maybe just light enough to remain buoyant in the churning quicksand of the world.

28 November

Simon.

Sometimes, when it’s really late, and it’s not so much that I can’t sleep, but just that I won’t, (such a coward I am, I can’t even say this on paper…. On paper that I will most certainly burn before it can do me any harm) … sometimes, maybe I break just a little. There among my pillows and the overabundance of blankets, because I get so cold. Maybe I reach for you, and maybe I .. maybe I imagine what it would be like having you there. Just to burrow into, just to float with, just to breathe beside, our dreams mixing above us in the shared, twining night. And these are the things I don’t allow myself to think all through the day. These are the things I mercilessly squash. Me with my metaphorical head-tossing and my defiance. Me with my barracks heart. But here. Here on this page. Under this moon. At this unearthly hour. Here is where I pull down the window dressing. Here is where that triple-security-locked heart is laid bare, seen, crumpled and deflated, lying on the cold ground, weak and weeping. And maybe I do cry. And maybe once in a while, I drag my blanket over to the window seat and drown in the tears and the hours, and the liquid stars. When the night is like a black ocean, and the fish that swim in it are the collected sorrows of the shadows of the hearts of men. And mine is there among them. And I watch it. Until I can’t anymore. Until it disappears into sleep.

15 November

Simon.

It   It has occurred to me that a girl writing love letters she has no intention of sending to a boy who is off limits to her for… well, ever; is not quite the same as a boy doing the same thing. When a man is struck down by love, it’s the stuff of romantic legend. When the same words come spilling out of a female, it only  savors of desperation. And pitiful … ness. Which is unfair. What is it about a woman that denies her  the right to be just as hopelessly love’s fool as a man? Austen said something to the effect of the following: “No heroine can fall in love with a man who has not first declared undying love for her.” (ok, that really shouldn’t be in quotes, because I’m pretty sure I butchered that puppy pretty good) But seriously. What’s that about? Why must we as women, in order to remain dignified and worthy of respect and love and admiration, only be allowed to love as a reaction? Why is it somehow inappropriate for the female of the species to love first? Or last? Or longest? (Austen had opinions about that too, but I think I’ve caused enough literary grave-rolling for one night) Are we not allowed the same breadth of emotion as the male? Why can’t my unrequited love be as honorable and heart-rending as that guy in Cholera? Why is my ridiculous devotion to someone who will never be free to love me; to someone who, when given the choice, picked some other girl; only desperate and pathetic, and not noble and fine and … mythical? Because it should be. Because you did. Because, honestly, where else would I go? Who else is there... after you.  Because I would rather bury this – deep and silent – and live with my sarcophagus heart, as long as I can, and still, in whatever small, insignificant way, be a part of you, than let it go and be ever diminished. Because in truth, Simon - you flawed and undeserving, wholly perfect specimen if man - your sweet absence is dearer me than the present dust of any other. 

2 November

Simon.

Took a morning run today. And it was this amazing morning. There’s no real reason, why I should compare it to what I’m about to compare it too, but somehow it felt like opening my grandma’s music box when I was small – you remember, the one with the doves on the top, that I wasn’t allowed to touch, but I would sneak into her bedroom when she thought I was going to the toilet, and stand on my tiptoes and drag it off the bureau and crouch down in the tiny space between the bureau and the closet and my heart would start to beat really fast and I would imagine the things that would happen when I opened the lid, and then I would, ever so slowly, peeking through the crack and watching to see the exact moment when the music would start… and then It would, and the little bird would spin around that tree in the center, and the song would play – clair de lune… of course – and I would sit there, and feel like I was on some kind of magic carpet of music box Debussey… and somehow that was what this morning was like. The mist off the lake, all brown and still and glassy… and I had to stop a moment on that footbridge over the meadow… I’ve never seen it like that before. It was this incredible patchwork of colors… gold and brown and green and the purple of the Spanish broom and those yellow spiky things, and this red-orange color that has sprung up everywhere this fall… the birds swooping low, and that little soft spring bubbling and it was that same feeling. Like I had opened some magical box and there was this beauty just pouring out all around, and me wrapped right up in it. And then I wished for you. Because I always wanted you to be there in my grandma’s room, those times I escaped with clair de lune. And because I know you would have known. …. And … and I wasn’t going to say this, because, well, because it’s one of those especially pathetic things, but nobody reads these anyway, so what the hell… and because I pretty much wish you were everywhere I am. And because I can’t forget what it feels like sitting on the jetty like we used to, me all wrapped up between your arms, my head leaning back in that place it fit so perfectly. That place just below your collarbone. And the way you’d always wrap my hand up inside yours, all safe and snug, and the way I could hear your heart beating, and our breathing would always match up… and I miss you in ways I can’t even say. And this morning was a treasure. Glorious. But it wasn’t half as nice as it would have been if you had been there to stand behind me on the bridge, with your hands around my waist, feeling your breath on my hair, and eventually we’d find ourselves swaying like we always did. Making a dance of everything. 

And I have to stop. Because … because I might actually kill myself one of these days with what isn’t. With what can’t even ever be. With you.