The days were growing longer. I was standing in my yard, or my parents
yard, the grass was coming back to life- slowly, slower than I remembered it
doing so when I was younger. But back then my father willed the lawn to life, with the weight
of his frustrated brows, as if the only thing that could calm his smouldering
winter wrath was the Gregorian mechanical churn of the lawnmower. In his
absence the winter lingered, and while my brother’s dog's gingerly steps crunched
the brown grass, I pretended I could not hear the voice coming from the
upstairs porch, clinging copper strands of her hair were still wound around my
fingers.
A pictures comes in the mail, the envelope its corners, bruised and bent. In it Madeline is crowned in chaotic curls of wispy blonde hair. I marvel at how grown she is, two maybe three, and the glean of her dark brown eyes, like lacquered disks. They look just like her mother’s. Somewhere over the border I know they’re curled up in their den, laying amongst seemingly endless wave like layers of blankets, taking in the fire, or perhaps reading a book. In place of memories I imagine, their exchanges, the difference in the size of their hands, and their ever growing bond.
Joe’s hands, wide at the knuckled, the lengths narrow. He’s flexing them over and over as if he could wring out whatever was within them. I’ve got my collar popped, and am leaning against the railing of the dock. Without the sun, the wind is almost nonexistent. Cigars, the warm ends glowing. He is staring off at something in the dark, and while I ask questions that skirt every obvious issue, I try to decide what on the horizon holds him, what horizon he could possibly see.
There is no sense that can be made of these things, these times. Every waking moment is the same, completely doused in an unarrangable assortion of unique specifics. The overlap of people and places doesn’t help, I can not keep an order to it. Sometimes it feels like I am doing the same things over and over again, but as time goes on I can’t tell if that’s just the feel, or the way it is. The line between those things ceases to be clear.
A memory of Isabel at the door, she’s leaning into the door frame. A disheveled orange skirt clings to her round hips. Her hair, black like summer pitch, is up, and there’s a look on her face, but what it means, out of context of the things that happened before and will happen after it, I cannot tell . I don’t know if she is coming or leaving. The only consolation I have about the confusion is that in the end it doesn't matter, it’s a memory and it’s always fading a little, bit by bit.
In the brown chair across from me my brother packs a bowl. Underneath the months of his beard I can still see his little boy smile, I can see the shadow of the person who used to cross himself every time he passed road kill. He’s has caught me off guard, having shouldered off the hood of his addiction, his guise shimmers and I know him again, know him not as he is, but as he was. I feel guilty in that moment as he makes a joke, an old reference, and his laughter shakes the walls. I slip, and laugh myself too.
Kim’s back arches, and she shudders. She’s grey, cast in the streetlight that cuts through the horizontal blinds of her bedroom, resting on tops of shoulders and breasts and hips. The undersides of her retain her caramel characters, her eyes are dilated, and her hair pours down around her in heavy streams. She asks something but I’m not listening, I don’t ask her to repeat herself and she lets the question go. She falls down beside me, with my eyes closed I can feel her, buzzing, alive and young.
I go to sleep, I awake. I go to sleep. In their repetition they cease to be book ends for events, I am always doing both, sleeping and awake. The places change inbetween I am on the highway, the interstate, the direction I’m driving becomes as irrelevant as the state I am in. The sun comes up and goes down, and in the noise inbetween those things I am dreaming of Alyse. I am waiting for rain.
Gerrard is dead. I touch his hand, his skin is strange but familiar all the same. His fingers are slightly bent. People are leaving little trinkets in his coffin. Each token, reference to a memory I assume. A slender shiny putter, a Dan Marino rookie card, a ring on a chain both of silver. In my pocket I toy with a pewter figure, I turn it over and over. I hesitate, release it and leave without depositing it. Coffins I think are not places for unfulfilled promises.
A pictures comes in the mail, the envelope its corners, bruised and bent. In it Madeline is crowned in chaotic curls of wispy blonde hair. I marvel at how grown she is, two maybe three, and the glean of her dark brown eyes, like lacquered disks. They look just like her mother’s. Somewhere over the border I know they’re curled up in their den, laying amongst seemingly endless wave like layers of blankets, taking in the fire, or perhaps reading a book. In place of memories I imagine, their exchanges, the difference in the size of their hands, and their ever growing bond.
Joe’s hands, wide at the knuckled, the lengths narrow. He’s flexing them over and over as if he could wring out whatever was within them. I’ve got my collar popped, and am leaning against the railing of the dock. Without the sun, the wind is almost nonexistent. Cigars, the warm ends glowing. He is staring off at something in the dark, and while I ask questions that skirt every obvious issue, I try to decide what on the horizon holds him, what horizon he could possibly see.
There is no sense that can be made of these things, these times. Every waking moment is the same, completely doused in an unarrangable assortion of unique specifics. The overlap of people and places doesn’t help, I can not keep an order to it. Sometimes it feels like I am doing the same things over and over again, but as time goes on I can’t tell if that’s just the feel, or the way it is. The line between those things ceases to be clear.
A memory of Isabel at the door, she’s leaning into the door frame. A disheveled orange skirt clings to her round hips. Her hair, black like summer pitch, is up, and there’s a look on her face, but what it means, out of context of the things that happened before and will happen after it, I cannot tell . I don’t know if she is coming or leaving. The only consolation I have about the confusion is that in the end it doesn't matter, it’s a memory and it’s always fading a little, bit by bit.
In the brown chair across from me my brother packs a bowl. Underneath the months of his beard I can still see his little boy smile, I can see the shadow of the person who used to cross himself every time he passed road kill. He’s has caught me off guard, having shouldered off the hood of his addiction, his guise shimmers and I know him again, know him not as he is, but as he was. I feel guilty in that moment as he makes a joke, an old reference, and his laughter shakes the walls. I slip, and laugh myself too.
Kim’s back arches, and she shudders. She’s grey, cast in the streetlight that cuts through the horizontal blinds of her bedroom, resting on tops of shoulders and breasts and hips. The undersides of her retain her caramel characters, her eyes are dilated, and her hair pours down around her in heavy streams. She asks something but I’m not listening, I don’t ask her to repeat herself and she lets the question go. She falls down beside me, with my eyes closed I can feel her, buzzing, alive and young.
I go to sleep, I awake. I go to sleep. In their repetition they cease to be book ends for events, I am always doing both, sleeping and awake. The places change inbetween I am on the highway, the interstate, the direction I’m driving becomes as irrelevant as the state I am in. The sun comes up and goes down, and in the noise inbetween those things I am dreaming of Alyse. I am waiting for rain.
Gerrard is dead. I touch his hand, his skin is strange but familiar all the same. His fingers are slightly bent. People are leaving little trinkets in his coffin. Each token, reference to a memory I assume. A slender shiny putter, a Dan Marino rookie card, a ring on a chain both of silver. In my pocket I toy with a pewter figure, I turn it over and over. I hesitate, release it and leave without depositing it. Coffins I think are not places for unfulfilled promises.
