She’s just a ghost now, an unnamed reason for disconnection. I used to think of that thing she used to do in bed while I was in your bed, and I wondered if maybe that was in poor taste. You probably thought about what Melissa did in bed when you were just about to drift off, too, I thought as I rolled over and looked at you sleeping. Your arm was around my middle and I couldn't tell if you did this because you liked holding me or because you felt that it was what people did when they were sleeping in the same bed. I wanted to tell you I wouldn’t be offended if you didn’t touch me but I didn’t want to disrupt you. Your eyes lolled around slowly like you were dreaming of mundane things. Maybe you were dreaming about being in bed with her. I smiled.
When we first met, I used to throw stones at your bedroom window in the mornings after your mom had left for work. You’d come bounding down the stairs to open the front door for me and we’d crawl like starved hyenas back into bed. Sometimes the birds outside would chirp, and you’d sleepily ask if it was cold outside. “Honey..” you’d start. “What if they catch a chill?”
You didn’t ask me these things as the sun rose anymore, that second time around. Perhaps it was because you didn’t love me anymore. That and there were remarkably less birds to listen to at your apartment downtown. The trucks heaved off the highway like pregnant sighs and I held my breath without any good reason.
I wanted to tell you that I’m not easily offended these days and that you don’t have to dance like autumn leaves around my feet anymore. Sometimes you reached for me under the table and smiled, and sometimes you did not. I realized that to outsiders just meeting us for the first time, we were that comfortable old couple laughing at things that no one else hears – I realized that and thought that you did too. Whether it was a comfort to you as it was to me, I couldn’t be sure. We skulked around like hungry lions, ashamed of our ribcages and though the quiet narcissist sleeps soundly without me, you must have smelled her on me and sensed how that has affected me.
I waited then with dilated pupils and the patience of a predator.
I needed you to evolve, to rise up to meet me where I sat with my palm on my belly, wondered if it would ever matter what we felt or if we would always walk these ancient paths with sardonic fingers until one of us got bored, or angry. I rose alone six days a week and on the seventh day, I floated out of bed knowing that the night was short only in the innate way that nights sometimes were, when spent next to someone else. I couldn’t exist in any other design than I did, then. Could you?
I left before you had a chance to let go of my waist, before you opened your eyes and noticed that it’s my body next to you, keeping you warm. I drove to work silently, anxious, and when I reached the town line I waved at the police officer sitting in his cruiser, waiting to pull people over, like some sort of scavenging hyena...
with love and squalor,
ekw
10.28.2010
9.30.2010
A Woman's Cry
I wake up terrified several times each night. The terror passes over me like a gust of wind, quickly and smoothly, but it leaves the irrepressible chill of confusion behind on my skin.
I never know what wakes me. My brain plays tricks on me, echoes of voices ring in my ears and I stand, my hand to my belly, and walk out of my room to the stairs to investigate. No one is there. Silvery wisps like the glinting flashes of fish slip out of my mouth when I open it to breathe. They escape me.
At the window, my cat watches the moonlight. The echoes are fading fast by this time and as my feet begin to recognize the cold of the floor, I am grounded again, realizing that I am standing in my underwear with my palm to my belly.
I go back to bed, feeling an empty ache. The esoteric, intuitive part of myself knows whose voices I heard, knows where they spring from and where those silvery flashes of fish scales went, but the rest of me cries out that their fates are ended before they could ever have begun.
My body panics with each waxing moon. It is inconsolable and the ticking of the clock gets louder every night.
with love and squalor,
ekw
I never know what wakes me. My brain plays tricks on me, echoes of voices ring in my ears and I stand, my hand to my belly, and walk out of my room to the stairs to investigate. No one is there. Silvery wisps like the glinting flashes of fish slip out of my mouth when I open it to breathe. They escape me.
At the window, my cat watches the moonlight. The echoes are fading fast by this time and as my feet begin to recognize the cold of the floor, I am grounded again, realizing that I am standing in my underwear with my palm to my belly.
I go back to bed, feeling an empty ache. The esoteric, intuitive part of myself knows whose voices I heard, knows where they spring from and where those silvery flashes of fish scales went, but the rest of me cries out that their fates are ended before they could ever have begun.
My body panics with each waxing moon. It is inconsolable and the ticking of the clock gets louder every night.
with love and squalor,
ekw
9.15.2009
like boughs in the wind
While you may be a huge rigid oak, don't be misled. Sturdiness is faulted in the way that one hard push will break you.
I am as flexible as a birch but once I bend I rarely ever spring back.
And now that the storm has passed, you've snapped in half and
I'm tilting towards never again.
I am as flexible as a birch but once I bend I rarely ever spring back.
And now that the storm has passed, you've snapped in half and
I'm tilting towards never again.
7.05.2009
the mosquito elegies
I hear the Westminster Quarters chime even when I’m not at my apartment. This occurs to me indirectly, over a pint of Guinness at a seedy bar in a town that didn’t have churches that chimed on the hour. And if it did, I was pretty certain that no one appreciated it the way I do. No one’s internal metronome was set to it the way mine is.
"It’s 8:00," I say to my companion, for no real reason. The day’s last chime played like elevator music in my brain, and I felt compelled for someone to notice the change, as if it were a matter of vital importance. People in seedy bars don’t notice the passing of time. I looked around. There wasn’t even a clock on the wall.
I got up to go to the bathroom, leaving Dylan to emptily watch the bartender uncap a row of Bud Lights. That’s the kind of bar this was. The most popular drink was bottled Bud Light.
Inside the bathroom, I stared momentarily at the confluence of red walls and red clay tiling. It seemed extraneously unnecessary and I got angry that money was spent by someone trying to make this bathroom look like something other than what it was, which was a restroom of an awful bar in a small New England city losing its soul. Turning away from the visuals that were upsetting me, I decided to wash my hands. It seemed like an appropriate enough thing to do in a bathroom, really, since I had no intentions of emptying my bladder or powdering my nose or whatever else females do inside of bathrooms.
Two girls then fell through the door and one pushed the other up against the angry red wall. "I’m pissed at you for saying that," she said, but it sounds too passive to me. Like she wasn’t upset but had to feign being so in order to still be accepted in whatever social circle she thought she belonged to.
"What did I say?" the other girl asked, genuinely surprised. I dried my hands on a bandana that hung from my back pocket and quickly exited.
"Two girls were fighting in the bathroom," I said to Dylan when I returned.
"Really?" he asked, interested. I think he must have been a little drunk, as that sort of announcement shouldn’t come to anyone’s surprise given the company here. Girls’ ribcages poked out unnaturally, and every man in here had the starts of a beer belly and wore a rugby style shirt. Half-heartedness was the basis for all their relationships, I was pretty sure. Relationships with food and beer included.
"Can we leave?" I asked after downing the rest of my Guinness. "Rugby shirts make me nervous and this town feels like a huge empty graveyard."
"It wasn’t so long ago that you lived here yourself, you know," he pointed out. "And might I add, you love graveyards."
I nodded willfully but said nothing. He paid the tab, finished his murky drink and we filed through a loud, wobbly congregation of guys wearing Red Sox hats. I felt their eyes on us, watching how I held his hand, with the interest that children give to neat colorful rows of candy. Empty, passing longing.
The night air felt good but I didn’t breathe it in deeply. I didn’t want this foreign, dirty air in my lungs. I didn’t want to need it even in the most basic of ways.
'It’s not my home," I said flatly. Dylan seemed to understand that I was continuing our conversation from inside the bar, though a few minutes had passed and he was surely thinking of other things.
"Goddamnit, does a place have to have some immense emotional connection to you for you to have a good time in it? You lived here, and you ate dinner with your neighbor and held her child while watching movies. Doesn’t that stick to you?"
"It isn't their true home, either," I replied.
"I live here," he said, defensively. "Don’t I matter?"
I said nothing to this, but looked wearily at Dylan as we walked briskly up the sidewalk. It might have been cold, or it might not have been.
"Let’s go to your place. We can argue your existential crisis on your porch and wave to every car that passes by, and I’ll listen as you list off the occupants’ names once they pass by." He sounded bitter about this; as if by knowing people I was somehow a less-civilized person than he. I didn’t reply but we got into my car and I drove swiftly to my apartment.
I exhaled deeply when I reached the town line, and Dylan looked at me quizzically. I slowed down and pulled off the state highway to drive the long way through town, drinking in the images of all the houses with curtains drawn. The town’s ‘downtown,’ if you could call it that, was set up like an avenue, with a vast green between the two parallels. One side of the green had things like the old church, the town hall, and a small cemetery with names on the stones of people still living. The town’s noblemen, painters, oil guys. The other side, the side I drove down, had mostly houses and one small row of shops. That’s where the green closed itself, punctuated with a huge, sprawling house. The two parallels diverged here, still running parallel but no longer with open space between them.
Pulling into my building’s parking lot, Dylan glanced to the Masonic building across the street, where the lights glowed from one of the second-floor windows.
"Sewing club meeting," I answered, though he hadn’t asked. He sighed, frustrated maybe. I could see Mrs. Tamillo’s head bobbing back and forth inside the window.
Dylan got out of the car anxiously, heading for my door. I treaded softly and resented that he had probably scared off my nighttime friends with his loud gait. Many nights I see eyes glowing from under the shed, or shadows dart towards the trees, stopping to sniff the air. If I am quiet enough nothing darts, they just go along with the important business of animals, hesitating momentarily when the wind shifts and they catch my scent, but quickly registering that I won’t bother them.
That’s one thing that binds me here. The woodchucks know my scent. The mink that slinks around by the lake doesn’t run from me. It’s as if I am a necessary part of the ecology here. As natural and indispensable as air.
We went inside, and never ended up back out on the porch. Thinking about the important business of animals drew me to Dylan’s skin, where a crucial collision of bones relinquished the sour mood brought on by the huge empty graveyard of Haverhill.
"I like graveyards that aren’t empty," I explained in the morning, when the sound of chickadees and robins outside my widow forced consciousness upon Dylan and I.
Dylan was remarkable at following these mental pathways of mine. He always seemed to be riding the same frequency as I was, progressing with thought in the same pattern as I did.
"What makes a graveyard empty as opposed to full?" he asked legitimately.
I furrowed my brow for a moment, comparing my favorite place to my least favorite. "An empty graveyard is like the ocean, plenty of things residing under there but nothing interesting to look at."
"That sounds like every great city I’ve ever been to," he sighed into my neck, and maybe he was right.
I thought about geese honking as they fly and about the millions of mosquitoes that starve to death each day, never finding a warm blooded creature to feed on. Overwhelmed with sorrow for those mosquitoes, irrational as it was, prompted me to ask Dylan why he was here.
"What do you mean? To be with you," he replied without opening his eyes. I followed the bumps of his vertebrae with my fingertips.
I didn’t comment on that. It seemed honest enough of an answer, though maybe I had hoped for more. Our arrangement was gnawing at my muscle so that I seemed starved. I skulked around some days like a hungry lion, ashamed of my ribcage. I wished Dylan would feel unsure, too, but he was a less prideful sort of creature. He held himself with the mindful self-assurance of a grizzly. Even in the hungry months, he was not uncomfortable with what he was.
He was not uncomfortable with what we were, and yet I couldn't stop thinking he was like a mosquito, searching for proper sustenance, which I knew he couldn't find in me.
"It’s 8:00," I say to my companion, for no real reason. The day’s last chime played like elevator music in my brain, and I felt compelled for someone to notice the change, as if it were a matter of vital importance. People in seedy bars don’t notice the passing of time. I looked around. There wasn’t even a clock on the wall.
I got up to go to the bathroom, leaving Dylan to emptily watch the bartender uncap a row of Bud Lights. That’s the kind of bar this was. The most popular drink was bottled Bud Light.
Inside the bathroom, I stared momentarily at the confluence of red walls and red clay tiling. It seemed extraneously unnecessary and I got angry that money was spent by someone trying to make this bathroom look like something other than what it was, which was a restroom of an awful bar in a small New England city losing its soul. Turning away from the visuals that were upsetting me, I decided to wash my hands. It seemed like an appropriate enough thing to do in a bathroom, really, since I had no intentions of emptying my bladder or powdering my nose or whatever else females do inside of bathrooms.
Two girls then fell through the door and one pushed the other up against the angry red wall. "I’m pissed at you for saying that," she said, but it sounds too passive to me. Like she wasn’t upset but had to feign being so in order to still be accepted in whatever social circle she thought she belonged to.
"What did I say?" the other girl asked, genuinely surprised. I dried my hands on a bandana that hung from my back pocket and quickly exited.
"Two girls were fighting in the bathroom," I said to Dylan when I returned.
"Really?" he asked, interested. I think he must have been a little drunk, as that sort of announcement shouldn’t come to anyone’s surprise given the company here. Girls’ ribcages poked out unnaturally, and every man in here had the starts of a beer belly and wore a rugby style shirt. Half-heartedness was the basis for all their relationships, I was pretty sure. Relationships with food and beer included.
"Can we leave?" I asked after downing the rest of my Guinness. "Rugby shirts make me nervous and this town feels like a huge empty graveyard."
"It wasn’t so long ago that you lived here yourself, you know," he pointed out. "And might I add, you love graveyards."
I nodded willfully but said nothing. He paid the tab, finished his murky drink and we filed through a loud, wobbly congregation of guys wearing Red Sox hats. I felt their eyes on us, watching how I held his hand, with the interest that children give to neat colorful rows of candy. Empty, passing longing.
The night air felt good but I didn’t breathe it in deeply. I didn’t want this foreign, dirty air in my lungs. I didn’t want to need it even in the most basic of ways.
'It’s not my home," I said flatly. Dylan seemed to understand that I was continuing our conversation from inside the bar, though a few minutes had passed and he was surely thinking of other things.
"Goddamnit, does a place have to have some immense emotional connection to you for you to have a good time in it? You lived here, and you ate dinner with your neighbor and held her child while watching movies. Doesn’t that stick to you?"
"It isn't their true home, either," I replied.
"I live here," he said, defensively. "Don’t I matter?"
I said nothing to this, but looked wearily at Dylan as we walked briskly up the sidewalk. It might have been cold, or it might not have been.
"Let’s go to your place. We can argue your existential crisis on your porch and wave to every car that passes by, and I’ll listen as you list off the occupants’ names once they pass by." He sounded bitter about this; as if by knowing people I was somehow a less-civilized person than he. I didn’t reply but we got into my car and I drove swiftly to my apartment.
I exhaled deeply when I reached the town line, and Dylan looked at me quizzically. I slowed down and pulled off the state highway to drive the long way through town, drinking in the images of all the houses with curtains drawn. The town’s ‘downtown,’ if you could call it that, was set up like an avenue, with a vast green between the two parallels. One side of the green had things like the old church, the town hall, and a small cemetery with names on the stones of people still living. The town’s noblemen, painters, oil guys. The other side, the side I drove down, had mostly houses and one small row of shops. That’s where the green closed itself, punctuated with a huge, sprawling house. The two parallels diverged here, still running parallel but no longer with open space between them.
Pulling into my building’s parking lot, Dylan glanced to the Masonic building across the street, where the lights glowed from one of the second-floor windows.
"Sewing club meeting," I answered, though he hadn’t asked. He sighed, frustrated maybe. I could see Mrs. Tamillo’s head bobbing back and forth inside the window.
Dylan got out of the car anxiously, heading for my door. I treaded softly and resented that he had probably scared off my nighttime friends with his loud gait. Many nights I see eyes glowing from under the shed, or shadows dart towards the trees, stopping to sniff the air. If I am quiet enough nothing darts, they just go along with the important business of animals, hesitating momentarily when the wind shifts and they catch my scent, but quickly registering that I won’t bother them.
That’s one thing that binds me here. The woodchucks know my scent. The mink that slinks around by the lake doesn’t run from me. It’s as if I am a necessary part of the ecology here. As natural and indispensable as air.
We went inside, and never ended up back out on the porch. Thinking about the important business of animals drew me to Dylan’s skin, where a crucial collision of bones relinquished the sour mood brought on by the huge empty graveyard of Haverhill.
"I like graveyards that aren’t empty," I explained in the morning, when the sound of chickadees and robins outside my widow forced consciousness upon Dylan and I.
Dylan was remarkable at following these mental pathways of mine. He always seemed to be riding the same frequency as I was, progressing with thought in the same pattern as I did.
"What makes a graveyard empty as opposed to full?" he asked legitimately.
I furrowed my brow for a moment, comparing my favorite place to my least favorite. "An empty graveyard is like the ocean, plenty of things residing under there but nothing interesting to look at."
"That sounds like every great city I’ve ever been to," he sighed into my neck, and maybe he was right.
I thought about geese honking as they fly and about the millions of mosquitoes that starve to death each day, never finding a warm blooded creature to feed on. Overwhelmed with sorrow for those mosquitoes, irrational as it was, prompted me to ask Dylan why he was here.
"What do you mean? To be with you," he replied without opening his eyes. I followed the bumps of his vertebrae with my fingertips.
I didn’t comment on that. It seemed honest enough of an answer, though maybe I had hoped for more. Our arrangement was gnawing at my muscle so that I seemed starved. I skulked around some days like a hungry lion, ashamed of my ribcage. I wished Dylan would feel unsure, too, but he was a less prideful sort of creature. He held himself with the mindful self-assurance of a grizzly. Even in the hungry months, he was not uncomfortable with what he was.
He was not uncomfortable with what we were, and yet I couldn't stop thinking he was like a mosquito, searching for proper sustenance, which I knew he couldn't find in me.
5.09.2008
fossils in a jar
I heard a story about death once. A girl I worked with told me about a time that she and her friends went to the fair. This is a place where traditions last for centuries and never ever flicker or falter, least of all being the fair. I heard once it was the oldest annual fair in the country.
I imagine it being the oldest in the world.
At the fair two of her friends bought chickens. Young ones, but not chicks, she said. They were still fuzzy but they were white and big. They brought them all around the fair with them. She was happy.
Then, on the drive home, they tossed the chickens out the car window and tried to hit them. They laughed along the highway, heads hanging out of their windows into the summer air.
I checked every cemetery from here to the ocean. Every trail in the forests. Every crushed beer can. I even hiked back up to the crest of that hill where we picnicked to see if it was there. There was no sign to tell me. No ghosts hanging heavy in the air where perhaps our love for one another was left, forgotten, as if we could just shed it like our clothes and forget to grab it again on our way out.
I thought that maybe it died the way Jesus did, or Basquiat. Or Lenin. Saviors and fascists and artists. They all rot the same once their flesh is underground, anyhow. The maggots and bacteria don't care who you are.
I bet the gods of decomposition didn't care about our love, either. They waltzed at its demise the same way they would have for anyone's.
I even drove back to that torched city and dug through the ashes. They were his ashes, naturally, but a part of me wondered if maybe the night I burned that city to the ground, I had accidentally left a part of you there, too.
After all, I had driven there at 93 miles an hour while you sat at our house in the bathtub downing a bottle of wine.
Remember when you used to never drink?
Remember New Years Eve?
I glanced at the wood-burning he gave me for Christmas. I thought about the matching one that he made for you too, and how the band-aid on the You is over the heart, and how the band-aid on the Me is on the ribs. I guess that was a good foretelling of the future. He can be clever and he hates to be clever, which makes me laugh. Usually I smile when I look at it and think about that. Today I screamed.
Perhaps I should torch that, too. I could bring it to the city and lay it down in the pile of ashes where that photograph of him kissing another girl sits, decaying like an only slightly painful memory. It could be a monument to my lovers loving others. Would that be trite? Would that discredit our relationship, by comparing it to blatantly to the one that came before it?
I don't want to offend, really. I just am struggling with trying to understand if I am a bad girlfriend or not.
Tomorrow I'm going to go to the ocean and look for fossils. You can come with me, if you want.
with love and squalor,
ekw
I imagine it being the oldest in the world.
At the fair two of her friends bought chickens. Young ones, but not chicks, she said. They were still fuzzy but they were white and big. They brought them all around the fair with them. She was happy.
Then, on the drive home, they tossed the chickens out the car window and tried to hit them. They laughed along the highway, heads hanging out of their windows into the summer air.
I checked every cemetery from here to the ocean. Every trail in the forests. Every crushed beer can. I even hiked back up to the crest of that hill where we picnicked to see if it was there. There was no sign to tell me. No ghosts hanging heavy in the air where perhaps our love for one another was left, forgotten, as if we could just shed it like our clothes and forget to grab it again on our way out.
I thought that maybe it died the way Jesus did, or Basquiat. Or Lenin. Saviors and fascists and artists. They all rot the same once their flesh is underground, anyhow. The maggots and bacteria don't care who you are.
I bet the gods of decomposition didn't care about our love, either. They waltzed at its demise the same way they would have for anyone's.
I even drove back to that torched city and dug through the ashes. They were his ashes, naturally, but a part of me wondered if maybe the night I burned that city to the ground, I had accidentally left a part of you there, too.
After all, I had driven there at 93 miles an hour while you sat at our house in the bathtub downing a bottle of wine.
Remember when you used to never drink?
Remember New Years Eve?
I glanced at the wood-burning he gave me for Christmas. I thought about the matching one that he made for you too, and how the band-aid on the You is over the heart, and how the band-aid on the Me is on the ribs. I guess that was a good foretelling of the future. He can be clever and he hates to be clever, which makes me laugh. Usually I smile when I look at it and think about that. Today I screamed.
Perhaps I should torch that, too. I could bring it to the city and lay it down in the pile of ashes where that photograph of him kissing another girl sits, decaying like an only slightly painful memory. It could be a monument to my lovers loving others. Would that be trite? Would that discredit our relationship, by comparing it to blatantly to the one that came before it?
I don't want to offend, really. I just am struggling with trying to understand if I am a bad girlfriend or not.
Tomorrow I'm going to go to the ocean and look for fossils. You can come with me, if you want.
with love and squalor,
ekw
12.16.2007
Are we more than carbon and chemicals?
All of that yarn, it's still unwound. My history is all criss-crossed and scattered around your ankles, and I'm petrified you are going to trip. If I try to look away, whatever polar metals in my blood pull towards you and I'm helpless to stop.
I saw you when I didn't even look. There is a plane coming in to land right now, and I'm trying to understand how it does this. Behind me, the city burns and smolders. Fire is the only thing that can eliminate some things, reducing years worth of emotions and sweat to the plainest of things; reducing all those chemicals that make up memories into something as ordinary and essential as carbon. I can't see him anymore. I try to remember the tone of his laugh and I only hear yours.
It's been torched to the ground. That city. The monument in the park downtown erected to the day I held his hand. That street I walked down when I discovered his pointy hipbones. All those memories. All those skin cells. Carbon.
If I look at it, I might panic. The place where the city once stood - just a sooty pile. I briefly wonder if that aeroplane was from Chicago in 1871. I wonder if this is how the Trojans felt the day after that mysterious horse showed up at their gates. Where did they all go after their city was gone? Where did he go?
I get back into my car. I drive away from the cremated city. Above me, breaking through the scattered clouds, I see the meteor shower that we didn't watch. Inside my hearts swells and boils. I step hard on the gas; shift into fifth gear. I'm careening over a hill and when I break the crest I stomp hard on the break and let out a monumental gasp. In front of me, growing up around our house is a city. It glows like Las Vegas.
In the center of that glowing city is our house. And in the center of our house is our bed.
I have to go there. The magnets pull. Cadmium desire for nickel.
with love and squalor,
ekw
I saw you when I didn't even look. There is a plane coming in to land right now, and I'm trying to understand how it does this. Behind me, the city burns and smolders. Fire is the only thing that can eliminate some things, reducing years worth of emotions and sweat to the plainest of things; reducing all those chemicals that make up memories into something as ordinary and essential as carbon. I can't see him anymore. I try to remember the tone of his laugh and I only hear yours.
It's been torched to the ground. That city. The monument in the park downtown erected to the day I held his hand. That street I walked down when I discovered his pointy hipbones. All those memories. All those skin cells. Carbon.
If I look at it, I might panic. The place where the city once stood - just a sooty pile. I briefly wonder if that aeroplane was from Chicago in 1871. I wonder if this is how the Trojans felt the day after that mysterious horse showed up at their gates. Where did they all go after their city was gone? Where did he go?
I get back into my car. I drive away from the cremated city. Above me, breaking through the scattered clouds, I see the meteor shower that we didn't watch. Inside my hearts swells and boils. I step hard on the gas; shift into fifth gear. I'm careening over a hill and when I break the crest I stomp hard on the break and let out a monumental gasp. In front of me, growing up around our house is a city. It glows like Las Vegas.
In the center of that glowing city is our house. And in the center of our house is our bed.
I have to go there. The magnets pull. Cadmium desire for nickel.
with love and squalor,
ekw
7.16.2007
un nouveau riche
Since you, my life has been a novel written in reverse. I'm steadily unraveling every thread of my life so that I can reweave a more comfortable blanket.
Also, I'm on a manhunt.
For myself, mostly. I need to find the person I was before you. I need to find the answers to the mysteries of my life. It's a tedious process, for the quilt is tightly woven, and the knots are tough to undo. But I know that the knots usually hold some important clues: a bit of advice not taken; the impact of the girl's fist on your thigh; the crack in your voice when you said, "that hurt, but not as much as I've hurt you emotionally, so it's okay." There were Monday night trips to the record store that the girl wasn't invited to. The lost scarf she gave you for Christmas. Your girlfriend named Desiree.
I have collected many fragments of my old life, too. There were friends - these were the first knots that I undid and the freshest wounds in my disintegrating memory. That girl wasn't ready to lose you and definitely wasn't ready to lose her friends to you. There was art, too. The girl had a notebook full of poems written for you. Memories of paintings that hang on your wall now. I know that they hang there - I've seen them. They are familiar paintings, but still look as though they were a stranger's ideas.
Of course, I have to backtrack in chronological order. I have to go through the end to get to the beginning. The viscosity of the tears running down the girl's face when she saw the photographs of you kissing another girl; the tension in your eyes at the concert. Then, some clues of a lighter tone: a memory of the texture of a stone I threw at the window next to the couch you slept on; the slick skin over the bumps of your vertebrae when you stepped out of the shower.
Also, I'm on a manhunt.
For myself, mostly. I need to find the person I was before you. I need to find the answers to the mysteries of my life. It's a tedious process, for the quilt is tightly woven, and the knots are tough to undo. But I know that the knots usually hold some important clues: a bit of advice not taken; the impact of the girl's fist on your thigh; the crack in your voice when you said, "that hurt, but not as much as I've hurt you emotionally, so it's okay." There were Monday night trips to the record store that the girl wasn't invited to. The lost scarf she gave you for Christmas. Your girlfriend named Desiree.
I have collected many fragments of my old life, too. There were friends - these were the first knots that I undid and the freshest wounds in my disintegrating memory. That girl wasn't ready to lose you and definitely wasn't ready to lose her friends to you. There was art, too. The girl had a notebook full of poems written for you. Memories of paintings that hang on your wall now. I know that they hang there - I've seen them. They are familiar paintings, but still look as though they were a stranger's ideas.
Of course, I have to backtrack in chronological order. I have to go through the end to get to the beginning. The viscosity of the tears running down the girl's face when she saw the photographs of you kissing another girl; the tension in your eyes at the concert. Then, some clues of a lighter tone: a memory of the texture of a stone I threw at the window next to the couch you slept on; the slick skin over the bumps of your vertebrae when you stepped out of the shower.
I still can't find her. She is as elusive as Whitey Bulger most days, and perhaps this is because she doesn't want to be found. Perhaps I am not meant to know her the way I used to. A college ruled notebook. Blue hair dye. A navy blue Nissan Sentra. It has come to my attention that she might not even exist anymore, and may never exist again.
But still I will search for her. If she is in fact dead I will hunt until I find her tombstone, probably left turned over in a forgotten cemetery overlooking a railroad. I don't know what I will do when I find that stone, whether I will cut the grass around it or simply leave her to decay.
Because, I suppose, sometimes, knowing where we end and where someone else begins is the only closure we really need.
with love and squalor,
ekw
Because, I suppose, sometimes, knowing where we end and where someone else begins is the only closure we really need.
with love and squalor,
ekw
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