Hello To All That
This evening, my mother left the room to watch her favorite TV show.
We were in the middle of a conversation when she realized it’d started.
She said she wanted to continue talking.
She asked me:
“Will I be able to find you when it’s through?”
Somehow, it was like she was asking an entirely different question.
I’m lost and alone and together and entirely whimsical.
When the dawn breaks, when the moon shakes
On some mornings and evenings, I am unfindable, Baby.
I shed colors, and hair, and song.
I shed You.
It’s impossible to hold my hand anymore. It’ll disintegrate beneath your grip.
I am a line you can’t define
This morning, I rode into town with the dawn. Everyone was so far from catching us.
So this song is restraint on piano keys and my breath is desperation in a police state.
We cannot create music without wanting to tear at the stray threads of our clothing.
I cannot write this page without moving my head to the keys beneath your fingers.
I cannot believe that the world is more beautiful than the voice behind your words.
(Because it is not. Because when I hear something that meaningful for days at a time, I’ll know I’ve reached the end, I’ll know I’ve reached the unthinkable.)
We are less reliable than butterflies.
We will disappear before the dawn lays its hands on your shoulders.
We’ll drive away again, before they catch us.
Before it’s all said and done.
I will trace over defeat and Autumn will smell fresh again. Like leaves and trees and dirt.
Like it always did before the sun set too soon. Before nights meant more than I ever wished them to.
Find me at the end of the sea, between the ocean floor and the surface that tugs at the sky.
I will wait for you and when the water freezes, I will hide beneath the glassy waves.
We will fish out the truth.
They’ll keep asking questions. They’ll keep trying to discover our faces on the wrong continent.
They’ll keep un-understanding, unraveling, until even the waves lose their blue.
We will have stolen some already, but Baby, it will be years before they realize.
Will you be able to find me when it’s through?
I can’t exactly say.
Mama, I’ve never been sure of anything that beautiful.
I am linked to the madness of you. Here is why you do not mean anything to me. You mean chaos and madness and pain and hurt, and here is why you do not mean anything. You mean everything.
I have become a tea girl. Late nights mean up-lates because the caffeine rush never rushes, but Baby, does it drone on. And here’s the thing about late nights up with the those leaves and that smell swirling around in my head. I am left with the imprint of you in between my lips and legs. Do you understand that I cannot write about this. Do you understand that it is more than words have ever allowed me to give because Baby, Kid, we are too powerful against ourselves when it comes to loving. We will destroy sooner than we will love, and Baby, you were always the jumpiest. Always the impatient go-getter. I just went along with it.
Do you understand that destruction is easier than gentleness. Do you understand that it is miles easier to crush and smash than it is to touch and graze. Your touch and your graze left marks. I tried to measure up, and Baby, could I only try. I was breathless from the hurt of you. Do you understand that you are the pain that I can never face without moving inside myself and not coming out for hours. Hours, Baby. If I could trace your name across my cheek I would never graze. There would be blood and I would cry for the first time in months. Because this is how I feel when I turn towards the fullness that used to leak from your fingers. You were full and you were emptying so goddamn fast. Baby. I had to place my body beneath your leaking figure to catch every last drop because Baby, Kid, you were wasting away, and I was running out of breath to catch up. I was running out of breath and out of room and I’m not sure if we were moving at the same pace or if you were always fire and I was always air, waiting to blow you out.
The nights when I curled into your valley of a chest were the nights I felt the warmest, even in that terrible July heat wave. Even then, I shivered. There was a morning in which you woke me because I shook with such urgency. Such urgency. Did I dream of it then, Baby? What you would give to me when the air became dry? When my mouth became dry? When your bones became cold and you had no warmth left to wrap around my waist. When I began to drown in my own imagination of you. A whole mess of waves of you, you, you—not leaking but instead moving and splashing about, trying to clean me and wash me down of any love I ever had. The only discernible substance beneath the waves of you was the salt in my own eyes. I never knew what heartbreak tasted like until you gave me tears. I didn’t need to catch up anymore. I could quit heaving. I could quit breathing. The only leakage I was catching was my own, dripping from the holes you cut out, empty and shaped like memories underneath my eyelashes.
