I wish you were a character I invented,
because then I could close the book
and go
to
sleep

In case you were wondering, my silence is not indicative of my thoughts. But what is there to say? These thoughts brew and bubble but nothing comes of them. Instead, midnight approaches and the lights dim as my eyelids fall. A night of restless sleep (and yes, sometimes dreams of you) and another day begins. My dear, it's not because I don't have time that I don't speak to you; it's simply that I don't have the words.

After a while it's all like eating cardboard.

The routine, when it holds, is sufficient and acceptable but at the end of the day it feels like cardboard, all cardboard, and stress -- or what we call stress -- has dwindled to a forced mantra of some kind to keep up the rhythm of mastication.

And then there's that moment, sitting with you, as our conversation drifts to the impossible. I see the fresh cherries you're holding and I allow myself a restrained sigh. "No," I say, "that is no different. What you're offering is just like what I'm eating; I will not be tempted."

You smile, the edges of your lips sparkling as you wink at me. "You're right, I offer nothing different."

"Then why offer?" I reply.

You just smile, and I slowly feel the moisture forming a trail down my chin. Recognition dawns as I wipe the red juice away and taste the sweetness on my tongue.

Daniel stepped timidly onto the wing, as everyone before him had. I watched him climb over to the side, holding tightly to the bar. He was hanging by his fingers now, his legs dangling over half a mile above the ground. Alan thrust his head out the doorway and yelled at him, "One, two, THREE!" I saw the white knuckles release as Daniel bit down and squinted, and then he shot out of view like a piece of litter from a speeding truck.

I grinned at Alan and dove out, anticipating the rush of the wind and the ground roaring up to meet me. Instead, all I could see were the words from my phone, imprinted on my retinas. Corn fields and forests and roads and creeks around for miles, and all I could see was this:

Meet me in Dubuque. Don't tell Daniel.
–N.

The past is as real to me as the present is, as I sit and read the nine-year-old words you wrote. I wanted to hate you after reading them, but I was the one who was aloof, distant. Your heart was in the right place, even if you were never able to act the part. When you sat, reading my story by the light of your candles and in front of a recording of David Bowie, did you imagine that you and I were the characters? You must have, and you must have known how deeply I was changed that night when I brushed your hair softly with my finger and watched you sleep. I imagined all these years that I felt what I felt alone, but maybe I didn't.

I thought I had discarded the emails your ex-boyfriend had written me, long after he was your boyfriend. He signed his emails "agape" even when I lashed against him in my proto-agnostic rage, and I resented myself when he died for never taking him up on his offer of coffee. It wasn't necessary; when we sailed on that boat on the Ohio River, we talked and sang enough for our entire lives. I can imagine him living in Missouri right now, preaching in a tiny church in a needy town. How could I really feel his death? Ten years on, I knew we'd have never said another word anyway. His death was immediate, when he boarded his bus and I boarded mine as we poured out of the convention hall that cold February afternoon. Everything I heard from him after that was from beyond the grave.

You asked how he and I had "clicked." It surprised you, shocked you to know that we had something to talk about. Who had we each become to you? I glaze over, reading emails that were written from your heart but clearly not to me. Who were you writing to? Were you writing to Daniel? It's my address in the "To:" line, but you never told me you loved me and here were words so sweet, words that ended with a declaration of love. Did you expect somehow you'd get us both?

I know where you live now. I'm embarrassed to admit that, but Daniel told me. He wants to take a train and he wants to find you. I keep telling him you're dead but he won't listen. He insists I send you a postcard, at least. Just one, he says, from Baltimore. How am I supposed to explain to him that he's reading the past, that you're not alive anymore? How can I convince him that when he reads, "i like getting mail and i think my favorite type of mail is postcards and i think my favorite person to receive postcards from is you," that he's reading what was, not what is?

How can I ever convince him that even if he sent you a thousand postcards, you'd never respond?

I stared at apparent brokenness in the 4" thick green trim that lined my room as you sat on my bed, listening to my rumbling voice. The wall juts in not two meters from where I sat at the desk, and my two-dimensional perspective forced an awkward disconnectedness in the border. It bothered me as I rambled on, talking just to keep you in my room. How could this brokenness ever be resolved?
( ... )

When you walked away, I thought of a hundred reasons to yell at you.

I stared after you, the fear and rage boiling to the surface of my consciousness, not because you ever offended me or trespassed on my implicit trust of you, but rather because I needed to feel something, and when you walked away, hatred was easier.

I wasn't mad at you for leaving. It was exactly what you should have done; maybe even what I would have done had our roles been reversed. But watching your long red hair swish back and forth so impersonally infuriated my sensibilities. Who gave you permission to be so damned beautiful?

When you walked away, I spat on the ground. I know that makes you think I'm sick, that I'm somehow unrefined, like a thug or a tramp, but it's the truth. I spat when you left because I was so angry, so tired of this petty godless sensibility that condemns me to have ever met you.

I thought of a hundred reasons to yell at you; I hated that smug lilt as you spoke, that cold grin as you gazed out from behind your spectacles, that vacant anger in your eyes as we made love. I hated that you could never boil an egg without breaking it, that you never hung your coat when you walked in the door, that you always spoke of yourself with a pompous air that suffocated everyone in the room. I hated everything about you, and I wanted to yell every single one of them into your arrogant little face, but I just stood, sputtered, stammered, and barely managed to spit.

When you walked away, I stared after you. I couldn't accept that you had left, that you would ever leave. I wanted things to be different; I knew they could never be different. It was my curse, my lot, to make you leave, to send you away. Beauty like yours could only damn me.

I wasn't mad at you for leaving. I was mad at myself. I spat on the ground, swearing and kicking. You just walked away; how could I blame you, after all? How were you to know how much I'd fear you, how I'd turn away and let you leave?

I stared after you, dreadfully wishing I hadn't been longing for you. I wanted to yell at you to come back, to meet me, to please just once acknowledge me. I wanted to tell you the hundred things I wanted to hate you for. I loved you not because you ever spoke to me or supported my implicit trust of you, but because I needed to feel something as we passed, as you walked your way and I walked mine - surrounded in a city of a million other people. I needed to feel something for you, and for you alone.

When you walked away, I spat on the ground. I thought of the hundred reasons I had to yell at you, and how I didn't even want to know your name.

"I hear Boulder is sunny 200 days a year," he said, staring out at the overcast gloom outside, "and LA is like 75 all the time."

I shrugged. "So what? I'll take variety any day." Of course, I'm one of the most routine people I know. I'll admit that readily to perfect strangers when I first meet them. I go to bed every school night at 11:22; I wake every morning at 6:57. It's what I do – routine keeps me moving forward, keeps me sane. This minor detail about my wanting variety in the weather shouldn't have been so easily disclosed and passed on.

It was probably Nathalie who enacted this change in me – in subtle, unnoticeable ways. Her unpredictable nature when we were in college led me to brief periods of intense joy and sorrow, and those puffs of intensity became all the more meaningful when superimposed on my methodic lifestyle. She connected in some intangible, intimate way with my soul; I once commented that she, who condemned the thought of a world beyond the observable as the "pretend world," taught me more about the mystical than most self-proclaimed spiritualists. Maybe I felt that the unpredictability of the weather in this city was in some small way connected to Nathalie and moreover to my soul itself.

As it was, however, the comment slipped through, unexplored and largely unnoticed.

She understands but cannot quell
the intense need I have
to stay awake for no other reason
than to delay
the morning.

I cannot feel pain.

Perhaps that is why I'm so valuable to Daniel. When I first came into his life, his teenage life was reeling out of control. This is, of course, not true at all. It's merely how he perceived it at the time: it was a minor earache that launched a war, nothing more. And so, I arrived, the pawn queened at his desperate hour.

At first, Daniel regarded me with curiosity and wariness. It was his right, and he utilized it. In fact, I'd have been surprised if he hadn't. I can imagine how it appeared to him: this eighteen-year-old was suddenly in his life, demanding to be let into his secrets. Why should a preppy, clean-cut high school senior accept this new entity, this punk-ass shaggy-haired freak sporting baggy pants and a wallet chain? Daniel had everything going for him - at least externally. His college career was on the horizon. He had more friends than I could shake my tongue stud at, and his family life was just fine.

So why did he suddenly need me?

He tried to convince me that it had to do with Nathalie. I'm not sure that's the only reason, but I accepted it. I've seen mentally unstable individuals suffer harsher blows to their pride and come up unscathed; I don't know what made his situation so dire. In any respect, my role was never to question why I was suddenly so important to him - or why he had never noticed me before. I was simply to be his friend and confidant. This role, it turns out, I would play for the next ten years.

During the first year, while I was waiting patiently for Daniel to decide how I was to interact with him, I enjoyed the freedom to be whoever I wanted to be from one day to the next. I regularly morphed from punker to raver to greaser and back in the course of a single weekend. I enjoyed my chameleonic state for those months, before Daniel's needs became more defined and sophisticated. And, even after I reached some sort of stasis, I often snuck off on my own and explored my potential in ways that would be - how shall I put it - less than appreciated by my best friend. Of course, that didn't matter. I never told him, and as far as I know, he never found out.

Nathalie, of course, had her own preferences. She loved it when I shaved a day before she saw me. She despised but somehow admired my clean but unkempt look, and a vague scent of cigarette smoke aroused her more than a vanilla candle ever could. I found it easy to play her game when I was young: she wanted me, and I wanted what she could give me. I think Daniel would have wanted it that way: if he couldn't have her, why not his best friend?

And besides, I can't feel pain, remember? She could try her best to hurt me, but in the end, she'd get what she deserved. And she did.

Art imitates life, and as the climax approaches, it's interesting to contemplate the life of the creator of this art.

I'd like to understand why this bothers me so.

Let's start here. Perhaps I feel that I am in some sense "legitimate" because I've spent four years working to accomplish what others will set out to do in a single month. Now that's some commendable self-righteousness! One might think, as I do (believe me, there is no absent-minded modesty in me!), that the quality of their creations is going to be beneath mine, but the law of averages is against me! Ten thousand twentysomethings, in front of ten thousand computers, might create something akin to Hamlet!

Aye, but here's the rub: one of those could be me. I could choose to engage in a flurry of infatuation, to create quickly and intensely, to eclipse even my own works! Yes, I could!

But the truth is, after 50 hours a week of work, and maintaining personal relationships, and cooking dinners, and washing laundry, I'm tired. Simply tired. So, naturally, I'm proud of myself when I manage to sequester a few spare minutes to wipe off the dusty tome and etch a few dense, well-planned words. So is it jealousy of time? Of the freedom to do this? Or perhaps I'm simply too lazy and making excuses for myself.

Maybe what it really is - and how I hate when it comes down to this again and again - is my intense spirit of competitiveness. Maybe I'd be unable to do it, not because of time, but because I'd be fighting with myself to make it better, better, ever better. I can't create without modification. I'm never quite happy; I sit and stare at the screen for minutes at a time, debating whether "fluffy" or "ragged" is the appropriate adjective.

I could defend myself for choosing to abstain, and I want to. But that's only because I feel somehow inferior, somehow lacking. Why do I believe I'm doing something wrong? Is this guilt? Fear?

No, I think it's jealousy, in the end. The jealousy that only comes from being on one side of a glass window looking out at a beautiful day, while the door stands open. The jealousy that is only felt in the words, "It's too cold out there anyway." The jealousy that only saturates the room as I sit, pick up my crayons, and sigh.

I returned from Pittsburgh with a book.
When I was 17 and tried to write poems
they came out reeking of immaturity,
but not for lack of trying.
The red book from my freshman year,
from the class I hated, was hiding
in the bottom of a tub of similarly discarded textbooks.
But this one
surfaced.
It's not a textbook, I tell myself,
but a text. I sat nights reading it, not understanding
what sex had to do with petty things,
what a crow had to do with memories. I read it
over and over and tried to copy the style -
the empty flattery of mockery.
It was easy, I concluded, to write poems like he did:
just make a few clever statements,
wrapped in a clever innocuous story. Oh
and don't forget the larger, magnanimous words
that seem to tower above all of the others,
drawing the reader to them like flames.
I never figured out when to start a sentence
in the middle of a line. It seemed random,
like the cut of a fabric or the length of thread.
I hated the class because poetry seemed so trite;
so banal and ridiculous. Something anyone could do
and look back, laughing, at the fools trying to analyze it.
Yet burning hot embarrassment tore through me
as I read about my teenage pain, thinking how my teacher
said there's nothing wrong with therapy but don't ever
compare therapy to poetry. And I traced the lines cut in
awkward places; the flow of words that never made any sense
beyond the present context. I felt those threads I wove
float into my future, land softly as elephants.
You see, I never learned to write poetry like Dunn or, what's worse,
like I always believed I could.
I wanted to keep that secret for myself,
not share that minor intimacy with anyone.
But, see, the teenage boy in me refuses to budge,
still believes he knows the Truth.

Willow colored me a picture last night. We sat and colored them for each other, visiting with each other and telling stories and singing songs. A few verses of "Old MacDonald," a word search, and a lot of silliness about a blue cow and an apple-grape-blueberry tree later, it was time for Willow to go. It was, in many ways, a perfectly normal visit with a six-year-old.

Except that Willow isn't normal.

If you already know why, you don't need me to explain, and if you don't, I can't. It's enough for you to know that it's as if the whole episode - as every episode with Willow inevitably is - is tinged with a tangible sadness. A very real feel of saturation that rides on the back of every encounter with her. She loves me, and I'm happy to see her when I get the chance, and sometimes when I play with her I can imagine that she's just like every other six-year-old I know. But those feelings don't last long, and I eventually feel morose again and have trouble looking her in the eyes.

This evening was an event with friends, one of whom has a normal four-year-old daughter who did the normal four-year-old things. The group of adults drank wine and chatted, and Lily announced her presence early and often, drawing one or more of us into games, stories, or fantasies as she buzzed around with little plastic wings on her back. She was a pure joy, in the way that only little children can be, and while she was annoying, it was wonderful to see someone so happy.

The Harry Belafonte episode of the Muppet Show made its way onto the television around nine o'clock, and Lily was overjoyed. All through the Banana Boat Song and later in Turn the World Around, Lily danced as if she could hear the music of the soul clearly - she moved her arms, torso, and legs with her head in exuberant celebration of the rhythm flowing in her body, and I had the very real flashback to a couple nights ago when I felt the very same way.

In a dark and misty club, I quickly finished my beer and moved into the main room when I realized the band was ready to go on. The lights went off, then quickly on with spotlights of various hues twirling around the room and an extended riff holding over the floor, reverberating through the rapidly-filling space. I headed for a chair and sat, only to be moved to standing before the second bar of the first song had been completed. I couldn't bear to sit still while such a beat coursed through the ground, resonating with my heart-breath.

I moved quickly to the front left corner of the dancefloor, and I looked around at first. "How are they dancing?" "What if I move wrong?" "Am I allowed to be free?" and slowly those questions faded as I felt the music take over.

I wanted the story to end there. I wanted to talk about how freeing this was, about how moved I was in the euphoria. True, yes, and I felt a full emotional release as the beat drove up and built to an explosion and jumping and spinning - but this didn't come until much later.

Instead, I found myself facing another set of feelings. I knew what I should have felt, but I was bothered at first that I didn't. I looked around at the other dancers and questioned their motivations. "You," I thought to myself from my high horse, "you are just drunk. And you are an attention whore, and you two a couple afraid to let others near your mates. As for you, I thought when I looked at a pathetic-looking man inching closer to a deadly-attractive brunette wearing a tight black tank-top and jeans, you're the worst of the bunch, driven only by testosterone and sexual desire." And so I suffered, half the night, trying to allow myself the freedom to enjoy the music while keeping an egotistical wall up.

A man, drifting loosely through the floor distracted me. "You," I chuckled, "you, I've got you figured out. You," I paused. "You," I paused again. Nothing. "You, " I eventually had to admit, "you actually feel the music." I watched him for a while and slowly drifted. I thought of all my baggage, my conceptions, my pride. My pompousness and my self-righteousness. My fears. And I watched this man as he danced, not from chemicals or from sex or from desire. He danced because he felt something that other people didn't. Something that I knew was there.

And I looked around more, and I saw another. And another. Soon I realized I was surrounded by these people, swimming in a medium that was thicker than air. I could touch it now, feel it. I could begin to inhale it and taste it. I had become a part of them as well. I turned my head, a girl winked at me, yelled "Yeah!" and smiled. At the end of the night, the man and I would hug.

Lily twirled and moved, and one of the adults commented that she had rhythm. I didn't say much, but I suspected that she could taste music that I could only hear, right then. I wonder if there's something about children that allows that complete openness, before the walls come up and we're forced into the world where we're told to ignore the music except in certain tiny sequestered places. I was jealous.

One of the few times I turned to look into Willow's eyes, I thought to myself, "maybe this is real. Maybe she really is a normal 6-year-old." She tastes the music, still, and as much as it hurts when I force myself to notice, I have to acknowledge that I need to learn from her like I did from the man in the club.

"You're tho thilly! Cowth aren't blooo!"
"Well, this cow is!"
"Well, if you do that, I'ma uh make put thome gwapes in the apple twee!"

I told her that would be great, turned my eyes back to my paper, and went back to my coloring. It was a long time before I looked up again.

“Do you think he’s ready for this?”

As the plane swooped and dove unmajestically above Indianapolis, I sat, looking across the aisle and the other three seats at the ground enveloping the entire opposite window. In between pitches and jerks were long periods of smooth drifting as the circles became lower and the approach final. In my landing, I experienced a vague memory of the last time I had flown into this airport, more than ten years ago.

( ... )

When the first rays of sunlight pierced the window and hit my closed eyes, I floated up from my sleep like a diver returning to the surface. I took my first breath of fresh air and tried in my grogginess to recollect the reason I was here. I could wade through the evening as the moon, bold and orange, rose slowly from the east, and as we sat, alone in the universe that was nothing if not one. Staring past each other into the dimly lit humanmade courtyard we were reminded that this is all layers, and we peeled back the benches, the buildings, the cobblestone walk. Soon we were seeing the abyss beyond, and we lingered on the precipice.

We turned and faced each other and unceremoniously removed our shoes, our socks, our shirts. We stood naked on the ledge, weightless and natural. The words, continuing to flow from our lips became a driving harmony to the beating of our hearts, and we took each other's hand patiently, slowly, as if memorizing. The stale air gave way to fresh breeze as we tipped and lunged, soared into the nothingness.

But the sunlight revealed the bruises from the fall, and as the world slowly came to focus, I realized with a sense of dread that I had not been dreaming. The softness of your hand had been too real, the breeze too cold. I could feel the jarring pain of the ground as it crashed into me; what had been a void became a courtyard again: here now were the bushes, there now the trees. The layers filled my eyes and ears; the empty smell of nothingness became the rich tapestry of pine and lavender and clay. And I remembered how I had been naked with you, how my soul had been bared, and I felt the shame and fear envelop my every fiber. As my eyes focused on the window, my heart pounded. I tried to comprehend what I had done.

Then a sound, a rustling, from beside me, a soft scrape of skin on cotton. I turned and wanted to be guilty; I wanted to be told that I was alone, that I had imagined it. I wanted to be confirmed that my understanding of illusion was wrong again; that the abyss was a lie, the concrete real. The ego demanded it.

But you lifted your head slightly, opened your eyes in narrow slits as you recognized me. I tried to find hollow distance in your creases, in your tangled hair. But as I looked, I saw only my reflection. Your hand reached up, touched my cheek; your head fell back to the pillow. And I, amazed, felt the calm come over me.

I closed my eyes and drifted. Our souls lifted with each breath and resumed their dance.