The End

'If this is the end,'  she thought,  'then let the world split open at the seams and swallow my heavy heart into it's darkness.'

Niagara is Steady

I'm saying that I want to know you; and I do at the time- more than I have ever wanted to know another being.
You're eyes feel honest when I look into them. The soft, calculated words you use create a comfort I am not use to. This comfort is short lived though and once you are gone so is the calmness you created. When we sleep, I toss and turns.
Our bodies crush together only to break apart by morning.
It's dark when you leave and I have a hard time falling asleep once you're gone.
The weight of what we have done sits on my chest.
Outside my window I can see the sun rising and the reality begins to set in as the wind blows my blinds up.

Love

"It's like putting a label on love. To say, 'You are, forever, my soul mate,' is almost like knowing the end of a story. When you fall madly in love, you think it is forever, and it might be and it might not be - what matters is not to label it."

How to Save Your Own Life

Follow the rules all of your life. Be lazy. Lazy enough to not get into a good private college out west or a mediocre SUNY school in central New York. Be motivated enough to graduate high school not a virgin, with a handful of friends and a handful of good memories that you can use in your yearbook quote.

Follow the path of least resistant. Take the news that your parents are having another baby for face value. Join the Army, Marines, Navy, hell you sign up for the circus. Just get out.

Have fun while you are away: too much fun, with new people in new places. Meet strangers who will one day ask you to be in their wedding. Get a taste of freedom through your travel. See America and feel the heat of a summer spent in the Carolinas. Never fully forget how the sun beat so deliberately against back while you run along vineyards and shorelines.

Excel at the program you chose- whatever it may be. Graduate with honor, graduate with a job and a fiancée to go home to. A dog waits for you –  no – two dogs. Two dogs, a wife and a house. Come back aged, but not withered. Come back and feel the sun differently.

Have a backyard ready for barbecues and birthday celebrations. Fill your house with pictures of your dogs at parks and your wife with sunsets behind her, in a long white dress, lying on a hammock, you cooking over a fire.

Wake up mid-way through your thirties and feel short of breath. Become alarmingly aware of the receding hairline you see in the mirror. Drive to work every day and think about cutting off tractor trailers that would never be able to stop in time. Allow these images to consume you. Arrive at work and have no recollection of how you got there.

Enjoy everything less. Fantasize more about nothing; traveling, the Carolinas during the summer, your youth; fantasize about young coworkers and zero in on the new girl. See her everywhere.

Go home and spend your weekends looking through photo albums. Have no memory of being in any of the places you’re pictured. Feel numb when you look through your wedding album. Feel the clock on the wall watch you try to remember holiday parties and birthdays where you look happy. Recognize your smile.

Befriend, then call her - this co-worker. This distraction, obsess over her. Late at night when you stumble home, sit on your porch and whisper into the phone. Tell her she’s beautiful. Tell her you have never felt this way before. 

Watch her eat up your words. Watch her fall in love with your sincerity and unfaltering calmness. Let your insecurities float through the air of her second floor apartment. Embrace that way she soothes your worries with a finesse you are not use to.

Tell her these things. Find yourself telling her the things you have never told anyone.  Feel light when you are with her. Get lost in the details of her smile while you work side by side. 

At home, sleep beside your wife. Feel what you can only assume is guilt. Wake up at the end of March and leave. 

Leave your house key. Leave your wedding band.  Leave and watch in the rear view mirror as your house explodes with sweater vests and running shoes. Consider going back for the first dog.

Drive the coast up to New England and spend the weekend intoxicated, texting her and drinking Johnny Walker with your cousin. Feel alive and at peace with the decisions that led you here. Don’t think about it for more than a cheers worth of time. Call her. Tell her you want her. Feel elated when she says she wants you too.

Be happy. Go back to work and hate it. Less with her by your side. Surround yourself with her. Be everywhere she is.  Watch her eyes when she notices your ring is gone.

Make your move. Be in the moment and feel the blindness lift; see her so clearly you are afraid to blink. Stay the night. And be tired the next day. Tell her it’s worth it and think you mean it. Tell her you will always stay the night and think you could probably mean that that too. Listen to her heels click as she approaches your office. Take the long way to the bathroom to cross paths.

Let your phone begin to disrupt dates. Let your other life seep into this new escape route you have mapped out. Let the laziness return. Ignore the signs until she can no longer ignore the signs. Don’t argue when she says you told her “I feel so connected to you” because that sounds like something you would say.

Quit your job. Tell your friends and family you are going back to school. Let her support you while everyone is talking you out of this decision. Let her optimism wash over you and her drive seduce you.  Don’t say good bye on your last day. Just leave.

Lay in your parent’s pool on hot summer days and think about high school, try to remember the girl’s name that you first slept with. Call your friends that you lost touch with through the years; make plans to visit Boston and Chicago. Go to Pittsburgh and feel relieved on the ride there. Don’t think about anything but being consumed by where you are.

Arrive home and feel weathered. Sink into the pool; think about how you got to this point. Think about the tractor trailers and the highways, the money, your dogs waiting for you to never return. Think about the last time you saw her. Think about how easy it could be to just let your legs go limp. Slide under the water silently and count the slow thumps of your heart.

Right Now

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this." 

-  Henry David Thoreau

Paths

Life moves us even when we dream of remaining stagnant, even when we want to stay sitting in the certain comfort of traffic. The days pass even as we will ourselves to remain stuck in time.

Change is constant and while it can feel like we will never move again, never feel the purity a true smile - life has other plans. In the time we spend mourning, life creates something new.

Sand Dunes

 

You take a week to run away from the universe & what it is trying to tell you.

You pack what later is not described as 'lightly' and try to escape this reality that you craved.

You run back in time only to realize that everyone has continued on. 

You look for people who know you best & they are there, right where you need them. 

They are saying things you need to hear. 

You escape to less.

Less movement, less scheduling, less clothing that leads to less sweating. 

You look out to a haze of thick air ahead of you and nothing seems focused.

You accept the film that has taken over your perception.

You are calm in yellow peep toe flats and long blue halter dresses. 

Your hair is long this year, your reflection looks drawn but peaceful.

All the heaviness disappears when the wind blows picks up your curls.

Everything feels disconnected, but know you are whole. 

The Future is Bright

He drove you out to the coast as a birthday surprise. The road is long ahead of us, the summer air crushes me with humidity and I soak in the sunshine like it is Labor Day and not mid August. The airport is hot with people drinking iced coffee. We're all waiting for a sign but the tarmac is empty and the universe silent. I'm sucking down a Bloody Mary hoping it can save my life.

When they find me days later, I'm sunburned to the color of a lobster. Curled up on the floor besides by my bed I'm looking out the window from below. My eyes are dry.

Too Much

It's a sunset after a thunderstorm and I can't help but stare at the veins in your hands. On my way home I think about the driveway where your car sits and the gravel that cradles your tires while they're worn and tired from the 80 mile drive. I clutch the wheel at ten and two and look at how white my knuckles are. You are so pale. 

What you Want

It's a lie, about the long stretches of nothing suffocating me, when I say that I'm feeling suffocated, I really mean the hours of silence calm me. The quiet hum of my engine soothes my concerns about destination.

Where Are You?

Elaina tells me that drinking gin to put me to sleep will only make it harder to wake up. I reassure her that I am not trying to make it easy, that I wake up and drink half a bottle of NyQuil to dim the pain of the bright sun. I wake up and go right back to sleep again. I tell her I am now dreaming of Connecticut as a safe haven and  the Mid West as a nightmare.

Lone Red Wall

Years from now, I will be in the midst of life I never knew I'd want or wish for. I will be painting a room to sleep in with a person I have not met yet or someone I have already met many times; someone I admire and loath sometimes at the same time.

I will look back at this point in my life, when I was sleeping just to smell familiarity woven into cotton threads, and take comfort in how far I have come. The empty bucket of paint will bring me back to a time when I was both coming and going but getting no where.

First Few Times

I remember knee length washed out gray skirts and lacy pink shirts. And there was Jack Sparrow hair peering out behind wipers keeping time on winding roads. There were sincere eyes and an honesty that I have since tried to find. I remember falling asleep in the woods, waking up wrapped in a blue down comforter sweating under the sun. It was a summer of thick black headbands with pink hearts and long blond hair; I had the blondest hair. There is no way to reproduce the humidity that July.

Muse

There is a certain level of calm that has finally sunk in and now it's alright to not know where anything is headed. The plan that I painted was not with my own brush and when I went back to remap the route I ruined the painting using my finger.

After a day of walking all you want to do is sink your body into a bath tub and submerge yourself into the life of Jean Paul Marat.  Your battle cry would be referred to as explosive and your smile deadly.  This is where you become a revolutionary and have the power to stir up an entire society with just one speech. Their concerns become demands and anger unfolds before you the same way you've felt it bubble up inside you. It all sounds very romantic from the solitude of bath salts.

In the morning, there is broken glass on the carpet. The mirror is still standing like a wounded solider reporting for duty. As the general I understand that I have no choice but to rise to the occasion and rally my troops for another day of battle- another day of being beautiful and charming.

This is War, This is Love

I am dreaming of past summers but not in the fantastical way of missing sand between my toes and the warmth of the sun as it browns my freckles. In the middle of the day, while everyone is lathering themselves with tanning oil, I am still hiding under blankets pretending it is June. I cling to itchy pillow shams and sweat as if there was air conditioner blowing on me. The sun sits high and melts my bangs to my forehead through the window.

On the phone with your mother, you promise to keep living. The water is warm and your toes tingle as you step into the tub. When your shoulder gets use to the water you dead down further. The air bubbles feel like waves crashing against your cheeks and it’s the most quiet you have experienced since you woke up. 

In DC, it’s a frenzy. People there are walking around looking for a connection to those they have been left behind by. I take a cab instead of the Metro, and as we change lanes I watch the memorials fade away. It’s happening, this living that everyone does, it’s happening to me and I guess it time to embrace it before it leaves me behind.

Choking on my own gum I wake up to feel the heat from the moon. It's not the 21st of any month, it's not even summer. My sweat is a hallucination that comes from a fever that refuses to break. I cry for the chill of snow to bring relief to my skin.  Our lives are measured by the weather.

Flight Risk

I am living in this paradox of normalcy and drinking Club Soda from the mouth of the bottle licking germs from strangers. I'm reading biographies of men I've met in another life; men with such strife and stubborn convictions they bring their own young to their knees. I keep referring to the same random fact: Kangaroos eat their own offspring.

These instances stay with you; the experience doesn't follow you but moves along beside you. While I think of this, I look down and see that my hands are the color of summer rain in a satin base.

I will look back at this point in my life, when I was sleeping just to smell familiarity woven into cotton threads and feel overcome with a tiredness I will never learn to articulate. But by then, no one is asking me to. I'm offering a stuttered explanation to drawn, bored faces.

Those months were a time when strangers remarked that I was what you call a flight risk- only months had gone by and even the post office was having difficulty keeping up with me. In this same time of awakening, I started straightening my hair and using sand paper at a rate that alarmed both my roommates and my landlord. When the dust settled, so did a mess of curls against my shoulders. 

Three Days

They sat around the table with their heads hidden in their hands, almost more embarrassed than sad. The lights were off because the sun had not quite set and a small dog is whimpering in the corner. I feel his pain and his fear with such a force I search for a bruise for the following three days.

Noah

We're sitting around two benches that pass for coffee tables. The lawn furniture is cracking but we've put pillows over the plastic to make everything feel a little more dignified.

My keyboard is covered in teal and green paint. I stopped counting how many times a day I stop to think about what it must feel like to be you. And the calendar has slipped completely away from me. All that I grasped on to before has fallen the way we missed that sunset in mid September.

On the beach, I'm looking towards the horizon while ships pass. The under tow is strong but so am I. I am squinting and in the distance I swear to no one that I see it but as the waves crash and the currents pulls nothing towards me.