You've returned to my nightmares, but these tears are not for you. Seeing the closed eyes of your corpse should have meant closure, should have meant that I could continue on, knowing that you're eternally out of my life. Why then can't I let you go?

But the tears are not for you. What if I were there, standing in front of your doorway, ringing the doorbell? What would I say? He opens the door, looks at me, asks, "Yes?" and I stand there, my chin trembling but unable to form a word as my hands convulse and shake. What could I say to him, even as I saw your ghost floating in the foyer? How could I stay the dagger from his throat... or mine?

No, they're not for you. As I try to imagine my life if you hadn't died, if I had stayed by your side and refused to let you go, I stare into the frightening abyss. There I am, at twenty nine, managing the one strand left of my sanity. No, I needed to let you die, and I cried for you then. Eventually the dreams faded, and I forgot you ever lived. I was free and almost happy. I allowed myself to believe that it was okay, that your death meant life for me.

So these tears are not for you. How did my path come so close once again to where it might have been? I shouldn't be able to see my choices, how things could have resolved. Why is it then that I stand on the ledge, a hundred feet above the gravelly old trail running beside the creek deep in the ravine? And why is it so hard to keep from jumping, from feeling the cold air prelude the sharp rocks and the splash of the water?

I wish these tears were for you, because then I could mourn you and grieve and wake up fresh and revitalized. But when I close my eyes tonight you will haunt my sleep, and I will be unable to forget your soft half-smile once again. It's a curse to have you giggle at me across the Styx as if to tell me that you told me so, that you told me all your life not to take things so seriously, not to care so much: it's only life after all.

These tears are for me, and they are only for me. When I open these groggy, crusty eyes and your image fades once again to mist, I face the true nightmare -- that you may be freely over there, but I'm stuck, lost and lonely, over here.

If there was a turning point in my life, it was that night.

It was one of my favorite memories, when I had favorites, when the past to me was a prophesy to the future and not the life of some fictional character, living in another world far from here. As the candlelight flickered off your eyelids, I spent that long lingering look upon your face marveling at it as one might wonder at the radiance of the sun. I've described the night with so many words now that it has become completely devoid of emotion. This is the tragedy of time, that descriptions of scenes as monumental as these can never carry with them the tumble of the heart, the stutter of the mind. But it is not upon that gaze that I wish to expound; doing so has done little to reveal the actual intention of that evening, or the actual consequence of it.

I could sense, even as I drowned in my own chemical ecstasy, that I was never going to feel that way again. I was at the peak of a curve, or perhaps as fate would find me, the trough. I was turning; the acceleration had finally reduced my velocity to zero, and I sat for one brief intentional moment in your presence, in that room, and I felt the world stop. I lied to you in that moment, brushing the hair back from your face and pretending that we could remain in that pause forever.

But it was a turning point, and we both knew it as we extinguished the candles one by one. My whole life before that night was spent dreaming of just one moment of tranquility, of knowing what true love meant.

And my whole life after that night was spent running from it.

A dark mist prevents me from seeing you, but I know you're gazing at me with those curious eyes again. You seem to insist, tonight as you always do, that I linger far too long here, standing in this wretched misery just because I find the glimmer of the brackish water beside my feet mysteriously enchanting. Yes, I admit that I come here to find you. I want you to set me straight, to push your hollow body through mine so I can feel the ethereal chill of the physically impossible but divinely required superposition of our souls.

Why do I continue to seek you out, and why do you mean so much to me? Why can't I ignore you, like everyone else seems so eager to do? Why can't I imagine you as a person? Why are you always a ghost, dead and inaccessible? I should be able to envision how you were: alive, vibrant, shimmering with the thousands of other souls I knew... but now you're something less than that... something less than real.

Were there any words I could have said to save your life? How could I have stopped this? Why can't you understand the guilt I feel, the overwhelming need I have just to be here, to try to find you once again?

No, there you are right in front of me, gliding back and forth, staring at me but hidden, veiled in your precious mist.

this messy house and restless sleep
and hours of staring at tiny bright pixels
flickering and wavering after a while,
this tired sore knee and aching foot
and a combination lock at the gym
growing a thin, stale layer of dust,
this foggy head and tired eyes
and longing looks at a soft black case
that's opened far too rarely,
this dying car and long dead iPod
and all of this entropy collecting
on everything I own and am,

every day a little bit more like a drop in a bowl,
this blood thins and this skin dries
and I ponder with my hands on the keyboard
the next words I will write
and how they could possibly make
all of this
go away

2000-11-07 23:04:21

It's kind of like watching a hockey game, in the playoffs, which is tied and going into successive overtimes. I admit freely that I'm as caught up in this as everyone else around here. I chose my preferred of the two and am rooting him on, watching the scoreboard intently.

But does it matter?

Probably not. My life won't be affected. Tomorrow will still consist of me not doing nearly as much studying as I should, spending too much time trying to be clever in the presence of unexpected girl, sitting around in class wondering why I haven't chosen an easier major or whatnot.

Test Thursday, test Friday. Does the matter change that? Will either one prevent my diploma? Would either one make a decision that will affect me as a person?

I sigh into ruminescence.

The night is not permitting me slumber; the emotional irrationality is too strong. Has Iowa been decided yet? Oregon?

Too easy to watch to board light up in blues and reds. It would be a different story if I were to look at myself, perhaps. Have I been decided yet? What do the exit polls say?

Where am I?

The falcon cannot hear the falconer.

The only way I can make it through my days is by coming up with suitable distractions. Daniel seems perfectly content in this, and Garrett seems downright ecstatic. Myself, I feel guilty as the credits begin to roll and I realize that for the past 90 minutes I have done nothing but numb my reality and escape through a temporary suicide.

Oh, I don't always feel this way of course. Sometimes I feel a rush or release of chemicals and realize that if nothing else I surreptitiously replaced one little blue pill for another. That's all my life has become, you know: the generation and maintenance of appropriate chemical balances. It didn't always use to be this way. I used to believe I had a purpose, that my life had some form of structure or meaning, but I'm not so foolish anymore. I am no Daniel.

Nor am I perfectly content to overtly seek carnal stimulation, crudely inhaling whatever experiences I can scrounge up in the dregs of existence. No, I won't seek the rush from falling from an airplane or drinking myself into a hospital. Never is enough for me, thank you very much.

Still, the distractions I'm gravitating toward are becoming more and more obvious; I can no longer rationalize my books as probes into the deep existential reality of humanity. God knows that my shallow skips along the surface of the internet are even more banal, and yet I can't resist, can't force myself to stop.

Clint always used to try to slap me to get me to "come back" from this "dark place" where he couldn't follow. "Couldn't," he always said, though he simply didn't want to know what it was like. His love extended only as far as his fingertips; he could follow me halfway across the country, but he couldn't follow me into my psyche. He preferred to reside in his shatterproof crystal palace, hearing only my muted cries.

The worst part is that I'm so alone in my knowledge of the truth. I sit in a room full of people who munch away on popcorn or vapid trivia, and I can see in their dim eyes that something has gone horribly wrong, and that they have no clue. They are a herd, chewing on grass and intentionally oblivious of the impending slaughter. I scream at them; I try to convince them, but they look at me with cold, wax-like stares, painted and sculpted to look just like you or me, curving and glistening, and almost human.

I wait for you behind your moments of greatest confidence. I stand beside you when you sleep. Every breath that slides triumphantly out of your mouth feeds me, makes me stronger. I feel your muscles strengthen, your pride grow. And I sit, patiently waiting for you.

Where was I when you stumbled? Where was I when you cried? In your deepest dreams I shatter your illusions; in your finest hour I sound the horn. And yet never have you heard my call; my silence is deafening. You never know where I am.

Oh how your blood tastes! The twisted agony on your face, deformed and raw. Yes, it is my eyes you see in the shadows, fading behind the powerful veil of darkness that shrouds me. But you will never reach me, never touch me. You lash out at me with your strength, with your brilliance, and yet you never snare me. Where am I now? Have you the wisdom to capture me? No, you stand with your head raised to the sky wallowing in your greedy narcissism. What a fool you are, my captain.

I am waiting for you.

Two incisions, a near-faint, exasperation, a patient retreat, frustration, consumption, and angular momentum.

A compliment, a critic, a helpful conversation. Confrontation, consolation, revelation. Reminders of the past, promises of the future, the present lost in forgotten breaths.

A million dragons; not a single stone.

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.

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.