1. |
Relief and Not Remorse
02:14
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So heavy with ink that the photo bleeds. Pressing holes through his eyes with a pen. Can I go back? The disorder that I think have pulls the shine from every surface, flattening every shape, every voice I hear leaves an echo of him. I’ve been avoiding the people I love. Watch the sunlight crawl down the door. It’s locked. I hesitate on the porch of your house, my arm too heavy to reach up and knock her down, screaming. Black her eyes. Her breath comes in ragged gasps. Put myself like a bolted door between you both. Hit me instead. Breathe through the guilt of knowing his death only brings you relief
and comfort instead of any remorse. I’ve been trying bloodletting, I’ve been trying to purge me of him.
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2. |
This Wasn't Meant to Be
03:32
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Suddenly, I felt far too big, like my presence in the room was wrong somehow, like cigarette smoke in the E.R. Watching your small grief like a rock clutched in a fist. Aim at windows, scream and let go. It’s unfair that you didn’t get to really know the man who gave you his seat every chance he had. This love wasn’t meant to be a risk. I played at a friend’s house while my dad died. You were told through a text that yours wasn’t making it. While cleaning up, you knocked over a candle, and took your time putting out the flame. While sometimes we can figure out tomorrow, other times, we struggle through today. With loss, it’s the things we can’t name that we’ll miss most. I sat and listened while you tried to find the words and catch your breath. Dragging yourself through every day like wet cement, setting like a cast, not a sunset. There’s still a breeze in here coming in through a broken window. The figure eight we drew in the mud has been covered up. While listening to your daughter while she slept, you wondered when was the last time that you prayed. You so rarely look forward to tomorrow, but can’t wait for the end of today. This sunlight, it isn’t reflected. It touches directly. It warms your skin.
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3. |
It's Enough
04:17
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A black tie washed gray, wrapped twice around my neck. “Say what you need to say.” Their eyes on me. Spell my name in my mind twice. Your hands are heavy rubber gloves that I tuck a plastic cross on a string into. Somewhere a car breaks down and the driver knows how to fix it, while somewhere a pen is scratching out plans. The small movements made between us. Like a key change, the distance in our positions stays the same, while every day, you’ve moved further away. Stacked books, each page cracks when pulled apart, like they aren’t meant to separate. We kept it together until we got in the car. And I know somewhere a constellation is a small reflection in water held in shaking hands, draining out slowly and it’s enough to know that when you leave, I’ll still have these things. It’s enough to know that you, at least, believed you’d be with me. Lying alone on the grass in the backyard, I took everything all at once. I never had any luck pacing myself, one day at a time, taking steps. I can’t manage. And I’m living like an ember that’s escaped the fireplace and made it — found its way to the hearth rug. The only way that I can see forward is burning out. Somewhere a bathtub fills with water and with lavender while somewhere a dad is driving home, smiling, changing lanes safely. And it’s enough to know that when you leave, I’ll still have these things. It’s enough to know that you, at least, believed you’d be with me.
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4. |
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When you left, I had the table set for breakfast, almost sunrise. I heard the screen door snap shut, ran, looked out the window. Your broken taillight winking at me. The irony that you never paid attention to me before leaving. Whisper “Thanks,” and mean it. When you’re young, your life is a mirror up to a mirror, continuing onwards. But in time, you see that the glass needs cleaning. Like the loose threads that lay scattered under my sewing machine, leftover from what I’ve fixed, useless. All those holes I’ve repaired in your clothes you packed and took with you. In the stillness, in your absence, before the sun comes through the blinds, I reach for something in the darkness, stop, think to myself, what I have here is enough. And so I let the plate stay untouched, let the coffee cool, and listen to my breath, steadying myself. I’ll fix all this. All these holes. I’ll repair what you stole, the things you took with you. When you left, you took the person I always hated being. When you’re young, your life is a field seen from the center, stretching out in all directions. But in time, the paths we take are clearer, our limitations more defined. The routines are familiar, as certain as the sunrise. I still have everything I need.
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5. |
Write What You Know
01:33
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She picks up a stone, throws it at her old house and misses the window. The rock bounces off the side of the garage, and she cries silently and starts running down the street. She can’t even do this right. She can never do anything right. Do the new people living inside know? Do they have any idea? Can they feel the unhappiness in their new home still lingering, still lingering, sticking to the walls like yellow from cigarette smoke? Her teachers encourage her poems. They tell her to write what she knows, but she’s not comfortable enough for that, and so she smothers everything that she writes in metaphor until it’s barely there. The fingerprints left on the glass in the frame, the only proof that she saw and touched the thing.
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6. |
AN+TA
04:00
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If there’s a breeze in here, it’s coming through a broken window. If there’s a tender moment to be had, I missed it while smoking a cigarette. If it’s a new house, it’s built on sand, and if it’s an old wound, the bones were never set right. We met, both still cold to the touch. There were small fires but they did not keep us warm, so we built our own. If there was smoke, we did not see it until the first light of the morning. We tried to keep burning. Draw a figure eight and claim you believe in infinity. Tracing our initials into mud. Tracing AN + TA into mud. If there was a moon tonight, it’s passed beyond the horizon. When we talk about love, do we still keep our fingers crossed? I had a dream you were standing over me. I can't stand to be alone in this apartment.
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7. |
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I just glanced around. I didn’t know what I was looking at. The snow hid two white roses lying frozen. I just met a drink for you and felt like winding down. Shivering, I say it out loud — I’m unhappy. Do you smile now? I’ve got a lot still to think about. Carefully, now. Our fingers sore, we’re clearing it out, carrying down a decade’s life together. We can’t just set it outside in the driveway. I saw you pick up the phone, the one that hangs on the wall. I saw you press the receiver to your ear. We haven’t used it in years. Did you hear in the dial tone the happiness that used to fill our home? Just set it outside in the driveway. I had just settled down when you started to climb to the attic. You went looking for souvenirs to remember a dozen years and found the damp had gotten in somehow. I saw you looking at shelves where we would keep records. We thought we’d build a collection over years. I forgot we once planned on years. Carefully, now. Our fingers sore, we’re clearing it out, carrying down a decade’s life together right now. Carefully now. We’re tearing it down. Just set it outside in the driveway. I saw you pick up the phone, the landline that
never rings. I saw you press the receiver to your ear. We haven’t really talked in years. Did you hear in our silence the unhappiness that used to fill our home?
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8. |
Deterioration
03:27
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It wasn't an easy thing to think you loved him when you were cutting his food and you were wiping his chin. To be a mother to your husband, you must have built up so much resentment. I can only imagine. Was it a relief? Driving halfway across the country with your son asleep in the backseat, now your only responsibility. Did you feel like a smuggler? I remember feeling like a stowaway. To a man who can’t hold his son in his arms or run his fingers through his wife’s hair, I wonder what else is there? Life feels like limping to the box you’ll be buried in. Life feels like deterioration. He didn’t know, though, how his leaving would leave us lost and drifting for ten years. To feel an absence more keenly than a knife in the sheets, than a bruise turning yellow on your cheek, than a pipe between your loosened teeth, then your only reason for waking up. Did you feel like a prisoner? I remember our house as one dimly-lit cell. We needed to learn how to love again.
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9. |
Forgive Me
02:43
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God showed me how you can be both the architect and the critic. I’ve brought most of this misery down on myself. Still, I keep on complaining. I threw that bottle, I thought it might act like a torch and set fire to the asphalt. But nothing changes anymore. I’ve made no progress, so I’m giving up. Forgive me for giving up on me. My father showed me how to die slow, a heart that beats. But just barely. I still blame that dark stretch of road and all the cars that just drove by while she was screaming. They just kept driving. While he was bleeding. When I set that fire I thought it might bring everyone to help.
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10. |
Certainty
02:24
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Stepping through drying concrete I didn’t see. Kick my boots off against the curb half-heartedly. I know this is sticking to me. The corner where my street meets the main road, at night it’s too dark to see my hand in front of my face. I watch the cars drive by. As loud and bright as shooting stars. There’s comfort in seeing something from a distance off, and knowing at least one wish could come true. The one that conflicts with the one of me being with you. Step into the street. When you find certainty, cling to it. There’s no stone so dense it won’t shift some when the water begins to flow. If I saw that concrete, I could have pressed my handprints in. There’s comfort, though, in leaving nothing behind. When I get home, I am telling you everything.
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11. |
Every Meaningless Thing
02:57
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As this year ends, I’m patting down each day, shining a light on darkened corners. How much do we have left to give? It started with a car accident. It didn’t end with your father’s death. When you press her hands to your lips, hold her tight even when she wants to pull away. You need her today. When you save each scrap of paper he ever touched with a pen, every meaningless thing you now find meaning in. The way he wrote his “R”s in your name. The way you both watched baseball the same way: hopeful even when you’re down late in the game. It’s an instinct to hold still when you feel the eyes of something predatory passing over you. Let’s take our daughter and spend the rest of this year with our hands held tight and her in between us not moving an inch.
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