Saturday in Chicago

it was sunny on 18th and i had not expected it, worn jeans and boots and found myself with the premonition of sweat forming on my skin. turned then onto state street, heading north, and ducked into the shade of the buildings, enjoying the instant cool and the push of wind off the lake, some blocks off. i smelled him before i saw him, and expected to and did find him, for i had smelled that smell before, dead. he wasnt much of a man, little and worn. set in mismatched blues, sweatshirt and jeans too big and too old, eyes rolled up into his head, mouth open, bereft of breadth. i squatted next to him, put my fingers to his neck and found the absence of pulse i had anticipated.
i stood, taken aback by the vulgar indifference of the cement corner in which he filled, and the buildings so erect that they seemed too to loom over him. i thought then that street noise was a poor eulogy for a life, any life. i did not really know what to do, it was not so much a feeling of helplessness but a sort of stunted confusion. after a moment i went to my pocket for my phone, but almost simultaneously an ambulance turned the corner. the noise of it seemed so disingenuine, the wail of its care so falsetto. the emts tumbled out, within two questions they realized i had nothing to give them, when i asked who called, one kneeling turned back and over his shoulder informed me someone from the building across the street.
having nothing to add or do, i left. continuing down my path on state, turning left onto 16th, changing sides of the road to avoid the sidewalked roped off for repair. two blocks later i came upon a girl, standing as i was to join in doing, to wait for the crosswalk to become available, the light to consent.
she was very pretty i thought, wearing oversized stylish sunglasses, and black leggings that did well on her legs. i was again in the bight morning september light, and she turned to me, looked me up and down, which i caught out of the corner of my eye, and then said ever so casually.
'isn't it a beautiful day?'
i was unable to disagree, but could not bring myself to say anything.

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The girl across the aisle from me in row two was reading love letters.
Love letters, are the sort of thing you can identify with ease if you've written enough of them.
The stack of them, at least two dozen were written on matching 'Naval Training Station' letterhead, the edges stained in the devotion of frequent hands. She was a waif of a thing, or gave off the feeling of being so, something in the fragility of the way she held them. She had that careless, flawless beautiful skin that only black girls ever seem to have. Her hair sprung out, a wonderful chaotic burst of tight curls. Her playful blue sperrys seemed a quirky contrast to the plain, but ever eye catching off the shoulder brown top that exposed lithe but perfect shoulders.
There was an anxiousness about her, something I attributed at first glance to the contents or the history of her collection of letters. We waited in taxi, seats belted for take off and the letters filed in hand and her head on a swivel, she was continuously trying to look for something.
'Scared of flying?' I asked.
'Not the flying, just the taking off.'  she admitted and then shared , 'looking out the window, it sort of soothes me.' A quick look around and I could see, every shade was pulled down.
'Want to hold and squeeze my hand?' I offered, extending it into the no-man'so land of the empty aisle.
She giggled and said that she might take me up on it but I was left with the impression she wouldn't. So we sat, waiting our turn, me watching the enticing flitting movements of her anxiety and her doing her best to maintain her control.
When we rolled round the turn, picked up the first bit of pace, the cabin rattled with it's tale tell horizontal shake.
She turned suddenly to look at me, her eyes brown with rims of green and I knew instantly what she wanted and she took my hand with an endearing ferocity.
And then she smiled at me, and I knew in that moment exactly why all those love letters had been written.

'late summer 2013'

the white light. the separation of space. the canyons of down comforter and exposed skin. the tumbling laughter, the hissing water, the hours of wasted time. he was tracing shapes, spans of her flesh, drinking alone in the morning. the teeth of expectation, side step of obligation, the bar with all her friends. their quiet doubt, her vocal disappointment, the stretch and gasp of her fulfillment. her strange blue bathroom tiles, him reading marquez, her dreaming of his voice filling her house. tequila shots, weekend plots, and the maze of his silent heart- the walls translucent and carved with words. one hundred and thirty seven miles, those iron wrought chairs on the front lawn, his parade of old lovers, and the wounds he didnt watch himself make. mumford and sons in her speakers, questions she wouldnt ask him, the look on his face as she told of former fists. the song of trembling pianos, the orange streetlight blur, waking to a room strewn with the casualties of their clothes. whispers in the sand, gleam on the tiles, scent of bourbon on the winds of the tide. clothes drying on railing, beach stranded parasols, her wet hair hanging down her bare back. he is assailed by the pillows, she is putting on earrings someone else gave her, she is standing naked on the oceanview porch. she is thinking of cities, tracing out teeth marks, he knows it is their last sunset. red residue light, the howl of pianos, the raging of the brass, the symphony kungfu necktie. their procession of rocks glasses, him working the pool table, her drinking him through the bars haze. he is memorizing her constellations, of laughs and nervous ticks, of freckles and unsaid confessions. she is writing their name on hidden kitchen paper napkins, hes outside in the dusk. theres a kiss and a hand at the back, a poem written on the mirror, theres the lingering scent of his absence. he has her stranded on battered sheets, he has her laughing in the morning lull, he has her in his arms.
he has her in his arms.
he has her.  in his arms.

 he loved her
too late did he realize,
too late did she recall her heart.

Refrain

She props herself up on one elbow hair falls mischievous lengths suddenly illuminated its colour wheat before gleaning the afternoon light he smiles she laughs poured out in the defiantly green december grass she is all bare feet and a navy blue patterned dress even as the wind like an escaped giggle tumbles out and over and shaking the grass he can hear material pull over the her pale limbs she’s staring at him and he thinks for a moment she might keep the seasons at bay by ferocity of her smile and her dancing eyes reflecting blues and greens clouds only move when they are looking at them and he rambles  words a sieve then her voice ringing out all hammered yellow gold here he cannot remember if he laid down or if he fell she asks him if all the world is only what he can see he cannot answer or figure out what she is doing here her head now on his chest listening hidden heartbeats not so far off there is the noise the indifferent churning highway that he was sure that would never come to grips with the truth that there was no such thing as time he feels suddenly shorn the light like a prayer and while he knows in that moment that he will never understand her or how in her aura everything even him seems to pulse with tidal waves of resistance or even why she was laying there beside him in this space between seasons he thinks perhaps the only great mystery might be why there was no mystery to it at all.

Leviathan

-I’m not long for this world- she pronounced from her mismatched ensemble of pillows.  Her eyes, wide and surrounded by the residue of last night’s mascara, stared at him around a sharp nose, lying casually on vulgar silk purple pillow.
He was sitting at the window, exhaling, a push of the breath, the smoke from his cigarette through the barely opened window. Bleeding back in through the gap was the sound of water pushed between tire and pavement and the casual assault of rain but she knew he had heard him.
She considered repeating herself and opted instead to roll over on to her back and sigh dramatically. He had seen this too she knew, she had continued to watch him as she shifted positions.
He drove the butt of his cigarette into the ash tray, the act seemed brutish to her, she decided it was due to the disparity between his hands, large and strong and the vanquished cigarette.
He had been so tan once, but spring had been long coming and when it did it was not cool and bright as it had been back home. Here the spring was cold and wet, not too terribly different than the fall. She didn’t understand how he could not be cold, his chest bare, propping himself up against the window.
He turned to face her, his eyes dark and blue. Flat. Took her in, and turned back to the window.
-are you trying to imply you’re dying?- his voice and a snap, the window old and wooden being pulled down and into place.
-no.- she said – I just feel liking I’m not going to make it. Like I am going to be gone soon.-
- so you’re implying that you’re dying.-  he responded, tone of voice to match the eyes that had come back around to her. He stood there in the bedroom, her grandmother’s carpet propped up under his toes, and his torso, pale and lean rising just a little with each of his slow breaths.
-yes.- she admitted- but you don’t understand.-
-you’re not dying.- and shook his head.
-how do you know?- she was being childish now, she knew it, but she did that sometimes, she felt because it was role relegated to her. She rolled, perched herself up on her elbows, and peered at him her eyes framed by her disheveled close cropped hair.
-I’ve seen someone dying- he said  - and you’re not dying.-  he looked across the open apartment into the kitchen at something she couldn’t see. She knew he was remembering, she could see it.
-What was that like?- she inquired, he heard the tone of her voice chance, gone was the pitch of the melodrama and he could tell she was concerned
-It was a long time ago.- he started, paused, knowing she would persist, continued- there wasn’t much left of her at the end. She wasn’t a terribly big thing to begin with, but at the end there didn’t seem to be much of her underneath the hospital sheets.  You know I don’t remember much about it, except her eyes and the smile that she always had. And then that broke, and I can remember exactly how I felt when it did. I remember that feeling more than I remember her- he quit talking, he was flexing his hands.
-How did she die?- she asked, though she didn’t know why.
-The same way everyone dies. - he said- Scared.-

The wind

His brother was standing off by the water, at the lake, his back to the sun. He stared at him for a while from the porch, not knowing if he should join, or interrupt. It occurred to him that he had not taken much time to see him, to look at him. The wind pushed in off the water, shook the heavy leaves that hung like fragile ornaments from the trees. His casually blonde hair it too gently messed. He was looking out at something over the water.
                He tried to guess at whatever he was so intent upon, but could see nothing except the shimmer of the retreating sun, and the onset dark of the southern night. He walked through the screen porch, into the choir of the shaking leaves the churning crickets and the door closed quickly behind him in a jarring crash. His brother turned and his eyes were flat and dark.  By the time he reached him his brother had turned back to the water.
                They stood there like that for some time, shoulder by shoulder looking out at the water that so far as he could tell, had no reason to be looked at.
                ‘She left.’ His brother said. He had known, or suspected, no known in that way you can know something about someone just by looking at them. He grunted.
                ‘I’m sorry.’ He said some time later, which seemed not enough to him, but he could not really decide on what else he could say.  His brother shrugged. He tried again to see what on the water so held his brother’s attention. There was nothing there by familiar afternoon light so far as he could tell.
                ‘Do you remember when we were kids? There was this tree that had been split by lightning.’ His brother began unprompted.
                ‘Yeah’
                ‘That tree must have been there for years, it was grey and dead where it split, and it had fallen into three parts. You guys used to climb and build. Every hour for every day in those summers. They seemed to last so much longer.’ He grunted again in agreement. ‘One of the sides that fell, was really overgrown, too much to build on. And while you two were building and talking. I would climb through the branches to the very end of that part of the tree.  You guys couldn’t do it, you were too big. But I would climb out on to this same long branch. Couldn’t have been more than twenty feet off the ground but man it seemed like I was so high. The sun would go down, just like it is now, and the wind would pick up. And that branch would sway, I would be on it, and I would sway too, and though it always felt like the branch would break, I knew it wouldn’t. I didn’t ever worry I would fall, I would just sway up there.’
                ‘I never knew you did that.’
                His brother shrugged again. ‘I liked the way it felt.’
                He turned to look at his brother. ‘What are you looking at out there?’
                His brother, his voice carrying his confusion about the question, responded ‘Nothing.’ And after doing so, put his hand on his shoulder, held for a moment and then walked off to the porch that was now empty. He watched him go.
                He turned back to the water, to look at it; it was a field of endless ripples, set upon by his brother’s wind. He thought of all the minuscule organism being pushed and throw around, moved by forces beyond their comprehension. How did they endure it? Did they do it gracefully or ignorantly? And he wondered if in the end if it mattered at all.

Memory

Waking broken light. Barren the space, black sheets. Trembling vertical blinds. A cosmos illuminated, the silent swirling translucent dust, every where, but only visible there in those thrusting bars of white light.  Moving over and through a sound, sounds on sounds, a wobbling voice, fluttering paper, and underneath it all a monotone, mechanical scratching.
The dream slipped away from him, tide receding his waking mind unveiled by its departure. His breath was a deep one, akin in sound to the first breath upon breaking the water.
She liked to sleep, the calm. And she awoke each morning reborn. She watched him awaken, the stuttering opening of his eyes. In that moment he did not look reborn she thought, he looked marooned. She put her hand, the flat of her palm to his chest. She did not know why she still did it, reaching out to feel it. It was always absent- when he woke, when he slept, after the collapse of their bodies that occurred in between. Her strange habit and his nonparticipating role in it, her hand searching for the beat of his heart.
'How did you sleep?' she closed her eyes to await the roll of his rumbling voice over her.
'I dreamt' She knew, only when dreaming was he still in his sleep.
Her voice, he thought,  was a cat stretching as she asked 'Of what?' He would have lied, natural inclined to avoid combustive conversation, and believing that truth had no business in a morning bed. But he was denied the chance. Before he could he heard her voice again, 'Of whom?'
She did not know why she had extended her inquiry, the second question simply tumbled out of her mouth. Still he could have lied, but he mistook the inertia of her words for intuition.
He tried to remember who it was it he had been dreaming about. He knew her name, it stood steadfast, erect in his mind like a memorial column, a history, their history, storied, wrapping around the syllables of her name. But he could not see her when he thought of her. He had been able to in his dream, but the image, her likeness, had been pull away with the movement of the dreaming waters, the exposing of being awoken.
'A ghost', he responded.
She knew all of his ghosts, reluctant or willing, were women. She was not surprised, simply curious, and so asked who she was. He answered. She thought there was something quite odd in the way he said her name, the way it came out of his mouth, forced, the sounds seemed distant to the him. He said her name like one says the name of ancient places one knows of but has never seen, like places that exist now only in the stasis of history passed.
'Why is she a ghost?'
He ran a heavy hand over his face, his callouses catching on the his skin. She knew this look, this movement of the hand, the veil behind which his eyes would fall, and the churning that would go on in his mind as he sought the words he wanted.
Eventually, 'I can't see her. When I think of her there's no picture, no image to go with the name. I know I knew her, that I had known her well. But I can't remember her.' Those words caught in the minute illuminated debris - as it did, in the air as if it were being kept afloat by the condemning viscous whirl of the ceiling fan. She didn't understand, or she understood but couldn't believe. She could still remember them all, intimate companions. She could still remember the most casual of companions, a friend from a summer camp when she was a child, the look on her first grade teacher's face when she was surprised. She could not imagine not being able to remember someone.
He felt her look at him, peer, squint as if to help the flawed organ focus. He knew she was bothered, he could feel it come off her bare skin, a silent buzz, not bothered simply stirred from her complacent morning centeredness.
'You would know her if you saw her right?' she asked.
'Of course,' he responded and continued through the first sounds of the question blossoming within her,' but knowing isn't remembering'
In that moment she thought she felt it, his heart but it could have been the residue of some far off thunder.
'I think' he began but she cut him off 'Stop, I don't...' trailed off and he did. She rolled over so she could not see the window, closed her eyes, and forced her self to remember.