Restitution*
Even now, I think that perhaps we followed each other,
dogged each others' steps for many years
before stumbling upon the ocean our love became.
As people who seemed divorced from the world we live in
maybe Nature drew us together, or more likely it was Nurture.
No matter.
You touched me that first night, for the first time, in the first room,
whispering "hush" as you put your fingers to my lips. Always you are
embarrased of your hands, "Rough" hands, "Not at all like a
woman's" hands should be, and I never could fathom who gave you
that ****** up idea. When you touch me, when I remember the feel
of them, I always think of driftwood, and smile. Powerful and utterly
lacking in self-conciousness, your hands knew their origin,
remembered the glory and the majesty of making fire, of making a
meal, of making love, of bringing forth light and life out of the
depths. I hated it when you apologized for such wonderful things.
For it was with those hands you brought something back in me,
something lain dormant and whimpering the dark, dying of thirst in an
empty land long forsaken. Holding you in my arms brought strength
back into them, your teeth on my skin ripped a growl from my lungs,
just remembering your voice crying out in surrender and triumph
makes me want to tear off my clothes and dance naked around a
roaring bonfire, howl like a wolf into the night for the sheer joy of it.
After so long being dead, you kissed me, and I was again alive.

I remembered a thought that I had many years ago and apparently buried down deep, tossed into the mind cellar along with all the other bits and ends, all the other odd beginnings....it might sound trite and hurly burly, but it struck me further in than I care to admit: Jewel married a racecar driver. And even then, in my eleven year old mind, I came to the conclusion that it couldn't have been for love, a poet couldn't do that except for something superficial like ***,(even though I hadn't had any yet) or money or security(all things I knew nothing of and yet wished I had). It strikes me now, that I didn't believe in love even before I knew what it felt like. So, having said that, this is my apology to you. You believed, deeply, and I....I only wanted to.

Thus do I gather these scattered memories
tenderly,
having been burned
having been broken
the time comes to carry them into the coming days
quietly.

What are you supposed to do when everything that used to bring you pleasure fades? Has been fading....for a long long time. It's not like you can do just more and harder drugs. Going back and trying to make things okay with old flames isn't an option either, they've just mastered the art of moving on, while you clearly haven't. And it's one thing to have not been able to move on, but another to wake up and realize that the people you love are standing around on tiptoe, waiting for you to lose your mind.

This isn't for them though, this expose isn't for my loved ones. This is for me.

It's 10:54 PM on Friday the 18th, and I am only responsible for my own actions. That's it, that's the beginning and the ending of everything I have ever written, or thrown up, or cried, or whispered into a lover's ear.

My name is Jon Daniel Shierling, and my Father was a Navy boy. He did the best he could with what he had, and he loved my Mother deeper than he knew how to express. My Mother was a Virginia girl, the blacksheep of her family, the hippie girl just a few years too late, but she had a vision and a hope. This scene I'm giving you is probably very far from the truth, but it's what i remember and what I've been able to piece together. For better or worse, their story is one that has followed me since I pieced it together. Not that it really matters anymore.

I'm just your run-of-the-mill garden-variety baser(as my brother calls them), but I used to do good, I used to try. I gave all I had in pursuit of something. I joined the Army in the hope of making a difference. Turns out I was just the same nobody I always knew I would be. Lemme tell you somethin about hookers boy, all of em are lookin for the one, and you ain't it. They've all got the face of your long lost love that you couldn't be there for.

There's no such thing as the one, and the girls that you've met dying for something more, it's not your job to give it to them. You'll never be able to give them what they need, and it's not your fault.

You knew this, way back when at Flagler when you were still a boy in cowboy boots getting chucked out of beach parties after trying to steal a bottle o ***. What a ******* scare when you saw Kiki up in St. Augustine a few months ago, as if that was a good enough reason.
Get mad if that makes you feel better, but you know it won't be the truth. You're the same old soul today as you were driving down Hwy 98 with the wind in your hair in the old green Taurus. You had people you loved with you, and it ended. That idea ended. Just because it hurt doesn't make it okay for you to stop being a caring person.

I digress, I stopped believing. I stopped believing the day that I understood that I couldn't love a girl enough to take away the terrible things her father did to her. I couldn't **** that man and make it better. And she's not the only one who loved me. I attract girls looking for hope that I don't have to give. I loved Rachael too, but there was nothing I could do to take back what her brother did.

Maybe my real failing, my real **** up, was not recognizing a good thing when she came my way. Maybe that's why I couldn't understand something so simple. God Amanda was, is, beautiful.....she was all I was looking for. And yet......I never slept well in bed with her.

Yes I have hurt people, hurt people that loved me without my understanding. This I thing, this I word, I'm not sure that abandoning will get me to where I should be. We'll see what happens. We'll see where I end up.

There were many things I wanted to ask when I held you in my hands. Things I know now you were waiting for me to ask. But it wasn't in me to bring those shadows to light in that ****** room after I had proved myself to be no better than those that wounded you so deeply. I had thought myself inviolate, apart, above temptations aside from those I actively hurled myself after. You offered me that needle and I thought I had to, in order to prove myself somehow I guess, but I also wanted to get ******, so I traded love for solidarity. Ironically, since then I've not craved opiates, and the one night I got ****** up enough to query a spike I was too drunk to manage. I guess I have you to thank for getting that out of me. But the expectation and the surprise in your eyes when I let you shoot me up, and then many hours later nearly **** us, are things I'll take to my grave with me. I loved you. I loved you those years ago when we were teenagers, and I loved you the second time you hit me, like some kind of beautiful horror out of the past. We didn't do a very good job of loving each other my dear, but **** it if we didn't try. You never set out to hurt me, and I didn't wanna cause you pain either. But it we did hurt each other, in ways I don't have the words to explain. I put my hope in you, my love, but I guess didn't have enough left of a heart. And it was indeed stupid of me to bring you back to the heart of your pain expecting a miracle. But you in your turn did the same to me. You took my last hope in a happy ending, in terrible beginnings turning out okay. Never again will I let someone just as broken as me in, never again will my walls fall. I'm sorry your father did what he did to you, but nothing I could have ever done would have taken that away. I told Rachael the same thing about her brother....I don't have enough love in my heart to overcome what happened. I'm not angry at you anymore, because I know that we're all just doing the best we can. I can't forget though, can't forget you sitting naked on the bed demanding more than my ****. You cried out for more than I could give.

I'm coming back from the hole I put myself in I suppose. You were the last ***** in outdated armour I've tossed away. The last of many things. For quite a few months I fought hard to be normal, like all the rest, but thanks to you I can finally accept that I never will be anything but a freak, anachronistic and feared. I have to look on a world that I don't like and don't want to be a part of now. Before I failed at loving you, I could accept that circumstances changed, but I remained essentially a good guy, misunderstood but whole. Now, I know better. The whole world changed without me understanding how or why.

I'm going away. Far, far away. It's the best I can do for myself and I think the best I can do for you. I'm sure there'll be a good man standing next to you in those pictures of you picking berries in white one day...one day soon. I'm looking forward to that day, the day I see images of you happy. With any luck, I'll be somewhere in nowhere.

A low roar in my ears, when I accept that I'm not the one to take away the marks left by a bad man.

I no longer imagine you next to me
when I lay down to sleep.