I remember her hands turning the knitting needles like mercury. Beating yarn into fabric.And in her wisdom, she'd spin her words into gold. I studied each line on her brow for truth. Reading the creases like India ink. Dark. Permanent. Earned. And she hums along with the record, knowing each warm pop and crack like lyrics. Like history.

We skip generations like the songs on the album and I am more like her than I'll ever know. A vinyl copy. Pressed and shiny. But she was gone before such things began to stick.

She is like the smell in a well used kitchen, even when the oven is off.
An afterthought.
A sweet recollection of a melody you hum under your breath.
But I am drawn to her like warm covers.
Like a soft glow.
And me, mid-life, and still with wet wings.
And she prepares me for the world with these moments. Keeping each second accounted for.
One pearl stitch at a time.
We listen as the room melts to afternoon sepia. the song lifts and sways. Kissing my ankles like the tide. Stroking my face like wind.
The woman makes the music sweeter with each rock of her chair.

"Why does the album skip sometimes Grandma?"

She laughs. Doesn't look up.

"Because it is old and eventually it won't play anymore at all."

I knit my brow up like her blanket.

"Then why do you listen to it so much? Won't you use it up?"

She organizes her work, spreading it across her needle as she does the same with the words in her head. The album sings out to her.

"Because it tells the truth."

I listen harder. Looking for hidden words between the notes.

Nothing.

"It doesn't talk, Grandma."

She smiles at how little I know. Sad for me. And says,

"Yes it does."

"What does it say?"

And our game is done. I now have Grandmas eyes, smile, and attention all to myself. She sets her labor in her lap and fixes on me. I am now her project and she will knit me together with the same love.

"Listen. That part says that your friends won't forget who you are. Even when you do."

And they won't. And you will.

"Ah. This part says, You, My Love, are the prize. Not them. Remember that."

And I am.

"This part says that Men don't cry. But if she loves you. If she really loves you, she'll hold you when you do."

And she will.

"This part knows that God is not counting on us as much as we are counting on him. He knows we will let him down and loves us regardless. Remember this part of the song when you are a father."

And I will.

And Grandma sat quietly. Her fingers still seemed to be a blur of motion. Her mind, even faster.

"One day Grandma will quit playing too. I've already begun to skip."

And then we sat together. Quietly.

And sepia became blue. And blue became black.

And all at once, the music stopped. Replaced by a motor whir and a methodical thump.
A one legged tap dancer, facing finality.

"What do we do now, Grandma?"

We sat, listening to more time pass like music. Clickthump. Clickthump.

It was in this moment that I would finally se the jigsaw puzzle for the beautiful picture that it was.
All creases and landscape and hello goodbyes.

Grandma reached over and cast magic as the years in her hand settled the needle into the groove once more.

She answered all of my questions as the music whispered it's truth to me a new.

"We let the song play out."

"Why?"

"Because it's romantic."

The sun had not shown its face for a few days. But this morning he greeted me with angel kisses. A snow storm of tiny floating messages danced through the beam of light from my window to my bed. A path I walked the night before alone. And I watched as he said, "Wake up, Sleepy head. It will be over before you know it. So take in this hug from the world. It is your own. And dance the dance of knowing. Because somewhere far away, someone is thinking of you. Right now. And you of them. And they know it and you know it and in some places built of poetry and ink that is the same as kissing on the wind. So write your song, Sailorboy, and listen to the seagulls. They know best."

And I made my way to a place that tries to be French in China. And had crepes. And now I will go to the beach. Pray until my hands are chalk white and my arms scream for release. Come to some agreement with a rock that is older but not as stubborn as I. And learn that we can bottle memories. But not in photographs. But in poetry. In hopes. In potential. And in potential energy.

I am sending you the taste of foreign salt water in the air. I am sending you the sting of good sweat in your eyes. I am sending you kisses on the wind. I am sending you potential energy. I said hello to the sun today. He said to tell you he'd see you soon..

Turn the wheel into the sun. Forget the stars. Forget the wind. Forget the way the waves are weeping. I am not coming home.

We are never again what we once were. And I am not sorry for it.

Some of them end before the music can even start. And we are left somehow, like monks, pinching book spines like vertebrae. Seeing if we can find our ability to
Stand.
Up.
In words.

Most days.

I am only words.

But some days, I am more.

Some days, the thought of those ivory temples run me up masts..

I am stretched out. Arms wide. Accepting the storm. Ragged.
(Stronger for it. Unafraid to unravel more.)
Inventing time. Investing it back.
Some days. I am yards of cloth, fighting history.

And when my sea is calm:
Puff your cheeks and blow on my spine.
For motion.

I am still.

I am calm.

I am still calm.

I am still calmly waiting.

It's worth mentioning that we never made love.

Now. Everything is different.

I am listening to an ***** grinder, playing my heart on his sleeve. Taking light from my future and shedding it on my past. Saying, "What happened? Where did you go?"

And I try to answer back but find my throat dry and only able to mutter, "I can't feel you, Lord. I can't feel you."

Some days I am lost.

Is it fair, when asked what happened, to say, "She did. Calliope happened to me."?

Start the music. Let the carousel turn. I am not coming home.

Is it fair to say that I am better now. But not always better for it.

I am walking a tightrope of strength and..

Something else. Something else entirely.

Now, I am tired. I am at a loss for words. I am sinking into the oldest crimes in the oldest ways and creating my own wooden chest. You are on it. Carved. Etched. Playing in my mind like laughter on the really cold days. Your fingerprints matching the grain. A petal for each flower I picked trying to fix it.

And this is how it will end. It was this way before it even began. When we found our faults on the back of each others lips with our tongues.

Thank you for teaching me the opposite side of love.

And this is how I will end it.

I will be words. And action. And learn to touch with passion. Learn to make love, like sounds strung together. Masterful. Seamless. As to seem less important. like lyrics. Like an aria. Rising and falling like tides to my mast. Lips pressed and cheeks puffed. And arms outstretched like a horizon to sail into.

And all wonderful happy lies.

I will be more. In hopes of forgetting that briefly.. I once more allowed myself to be less.

And found my self wondering, If it was me who slipped through your fingers... or you who slipped through mine...

I once allowed myself to seem less.

I guess...

I just needed to get you off my chest.

I no longer wish to create.
I no longer wish to write.
I don't want song, or word.
I have no need for art.

I am sounding out my request to any God that will listen.

Give me a foreign beach.
Give me a sunset.
Give me a hand to hold on to.

I wish my life to be poetry.
Every action a song.

I want my days to be the paper I spread my ink upon.
I want 'lost' to mean 'home'.

I want the salt water on my cheeks to be the sea.

Give me mountain tops.
Give me blistered feet.
Give me a mouth that knows my own, like voice.

Make me a villager.
Make me a vagabond.
I no longer wish to be a warrior.

I am sounding my request out to the universe, like a lighthouse.
Come to me.

Make me forget.
Make me forgotten.
Make me to be overlooked.
Make my days count.

Make my days count.

Let this life be poetry.

Give me someone to read it.
Give me someone to understand.

Give me someone to add a verse.

String Theory. A theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one dimensional objects called strings. In string theory, the multiverse is an idea in which our universe is not the only one; many universes exist parallel to each other where all possibility has potential as the universes are theorized to be infinite.

When I heard this for the first time, I imagined us all on this giant carousel, spinning in the infinite, to the ***** music of fate.

And the possibility was sweet, like cotton candy. And the potential seemed to rise like tidal waves and I was filled with joy for the other versions of myself doing great things out there somewhere.

Writing lullabies to star children. Kissing ink blotches on to skin like paper. Replacing the light bulb in the moon. Dreaming love into reality.

And I began to imagine the strings stretched and rotating, propeller like, in a theoretical game of double dutch. Fighting back my desire to move too quickly.  Feeling my body sway and rushing in too soon.

And I was sad for all of the versions of me that are struggling. Failing to see the beauty in the gutter. Walking alone in the rain... still. Writing quarky signs on information superhighway off ramps, like:

Quantum Mechanic.
Will tune your Hadron Collider
for food.

And I began to remember the geometrical string patterns we would draw on graph paper in math class. And knowing somehow, even then, that they stood like a veve for infinite possibility. And I began to wonder what would happen if I'd chosen differently at key moments in my life. The infinite outcomes circling like ashes falling down.

Would I be bigger? Smarter? Stronger? Easier to Love?

And the web began to stretch until it was bigger than my simple mind.

And I began to wonder at the insignificant moments. The moments overlooked. And I began to toy with the possibility that our fate is truly ******* in these moments. It was these choices that determine how easy we are to love. And how it would unfold into a chess match of a million different decisions until it was so far out of reach that it was painful to consider.

And these strings, interwoven and bundled “bigger than the sky”. Marionette strings to just as many possibilities as stars. Or more.

A universe where these strings are ropes binding sails to boats and time is the ocean.
A universe where music is medicine and I could sing your broken heart back to hope.
A universe where we could leap from place to place so I could find my young self and say,
“Listen. Don't try so hard. It gets better. And you become so much cooler. And though it seems so important now, it isn't. And guard your heart a little more than you do. And a little less.”

A universe where touch is talk. And to dare is normal. And our hearts are fluent in every language.

And then the notion of the strings as veins. Veins that form a complex system in a beautiful body of flesh and possibility and star dust so much greater than ours. With limbs and hands and heart and eyes and tongue and soul. And this body of possibility is not the only one. Other possibilities are forming other bodies. And this greater celestial body is interacting with other bodies comprised of infinite possibility all making decisions at light speed which will cause it all to reverse or go round again.

And in this framework.

We are you.
And he and I are we.
And once is always.
And never is nothing.
And I am everything.

And we are all the same celestial body.
Made from the same strings.
The same gift of possibility.

We are the carousel.
And anything, anything is possible.

And through it all. All I can do is wonder how...

How do I get back to the version of me where you didn't leave.