I hang on you like shirts hang in your closet
and I cling to you like clothes cling to your skin
and I wish for you like you wish on stars
and I wait for you while your patience runs thin
I cry for you like you'll never cry for me
and I'm close to the end and you've yet to begin

you told me you loved me on the cold metal stairs
with tears in your eyes
and of course I said it back
but I've known all along you needed more than you could ever give
and you took my young heart in your hands
and told me you were all I would ever deserve

the light shining off your hair blinds my eyes
so I shield them from you and our all night fights
and I never learned not to wait
so I'm still here wondering when they will come for me
and take me to the warm place where all we breathe is the trees
and all we see is the heavy air that pushes us down and up and back and forth
unlike when my little hands push against your unbending will

My grandfather was a Southern Baptist minister,
but from the way people talk about him, you’d think he was Jesus himself.
I never met him, my grandfather, but I know he must have had big, strong hands,
And a smile that would make his eyes light up
like the only things that mattered were family, God, and a warm dinner.
I know that sinners would have swallowed the Devil whole
rather than face my Pennsylvania preacher.
And I know that he was handy with a belt, when he needed to be,
But generous with a pat on the back or a firm handshake.
Most of all, I know that he broke my mother’s heart
when his heart couldn’t beat anymore,
and so he left the preacher’s wife and their babies to find his Maker in the sky.
Sometimes I wonder what he would have done when he got there,
And no one met him at the pearly gates.
I wonder how long he would have looked before giving up,
and if he would have tried to come on back home.
I wonder if he hadn’t been sure his home lay above the clouds,
If he would have fought harder for his time in this paradise.

Stacks of records filled my bookcases like extinct animals just looking for a home
And you told me to burn them,
so the music could float up into the trees and teach the leaves to dance
to Talking Heads and Tchaikovsky.
But as the records burned,
the smoke filled my lungs and smothered the leaves,
and I realized that even the best poetry will leave you empty,
wondering when words stopped being the truth.

It was hot.
So hot that the sun that burnt my skin was not the sun at all,
but rather a deep warmth in the atmosphere.
It didn't come from above.
No, this sun was in the trees, and the grass, and the earth.
It was me. Or, it was of me, with me, on me.
The heat was more than anything else.
I was drowning in it.
That whole summer.
I couldn't let it go.
Or rather, it couldn't let me go.
Of its grasp.
Which held longer than anything else,
felt deeper and sensed who I was.
This heat that followed me,
beside me and in front of me.
I felt it.
More than anything else.

I've never been much of a religious man. I know I don't seem it, anyway. My hands are rough. My body lingers in the empty, old house, not in the tall steeple among the heavens or the barren earth and the hells.

My family were farmers. They harvested, and when they didn't, they played cards at the dinner table and slept heavy nights. The dark was always darker and the night always deeper. But the days, my god the days, they were bright and mean like you can't believe.

I've worked my whole life. I was so young I could barely wrap my hands around the levers I was pulling, or reach the pedals I was pushing. But I can still feel the work, the tough, wreck your head, break your body kind of work. Carrying, lifting, burying, digging, dirt-under-your-finger-nails kind of work. It made my hands rough. It made me tired. But my father, he never tired. He never fought shy of the heavens and the hells. His spirit rejoices in the tall steeple, and he laughs when I try in vain to learn from the preacher these many Sunday mornings.

I heard you outside our house yesterday
On the sidewalk,
Walking your overpriced dogs and ignoring your overachieving children.
I heard you say our house was a “real fixer-upper”.
Well you know what I say?
I say our house was built 100 years before you had even popped into the world
Your face already pinched up like a pompous Persian cat.
And I say our home has housed more joy, pain, and love in one week
Than you have felt in your entire life.

And so what if it’s in need of a little paint here and there
And the grass could use some water
And the roof could be patched up a bit?
So what if we don’t have petunias the color of your pastel cardigan
Or a shiny new coat of paint as thick as your makeup
Or ceilings as high and mighty as your ego?

I’ll tell you what we do have.
We do have flowers I planted with my mother a few years back,
that come back each year
rain or shine.
We do have a porch swing that’s carried the weight of 3 generations
and a rocking chair I remember climbing into at 2 years old.
And we do have a family who loves this house almost as much as we love each other.

So next time you go calling our house a “real fixer-upper”,
Walk in my shoes for a day
And see if you would change one brick
Paint one wall
Or erase one memory.

I’m going to make you a promise.
Right now.
I’m going to promise you that I will never let you down,
that I will always be polite at Thanksgiving dinner with your parents,
that I will never lie, that I will always kiss you goodbye.
That I will hug you like I never want to let you go,
that I will never hurt you,
that I will consult you before getting a haircut,
that I will stay by your side when you’re misty-eyed.

But that’s not enough, is it? That’s not enough for anyone.
You wouldn’t be happy with that.
And that’s okay. Because I can’t promise that you will always love me,
and I can’t promise that we will be happy together forever.
But I can promise you this: I will always love you.
I will love you until I close my eyes for the very last time,
and welcome that blinding light,
or deafening dark,
whichever makes it easier for you to let me go.
And even after you’ve moved on,
I will still love you.
And I’m not one to break promises.

The seconds pour out of the clock.
The dark car on the street speeds home.
But I know that I have to wait.
I used to be patient.
But maybe the whole ordeal slowed my heart a bit.
Now each heartbeat that used to mark the minutes,
Marks the hours, and each day feels like years of my life speeding away.

You told me you would be back for me.
You said it would just be me and you, kid.
I waited, and waited, until I realized you weren’t out there waiting for me too.
And that I wasn’t the only one left waiting with no one to wait for.

I am not at home.
Home is where you go back to after vacation.
Where you don’t worry about whether to take your shoes off in the entryway.
Where you know that the light switch between you and your parent’s bedroom
doesn’t actually do anything.
Where you know you can leave your ***** dishes on the counter
because somebody will put them in the dishwasher for you.
Where people say, “What are you doing for the holidays?”
And you say, “I’m going home.”
And they say, “Oh, that’s nice,”
and it is.
That’s home.
But I have none of those things.
Sometimes things like that depress me. And then I have this strange urge to tell someone,
just to see if it depresses them too.
It doesn’t have to be someone I care about. It just has to be someone who would listen.

All I need to get is eggs and milk. Eggs and milk. In and out. I make my way to the little corner grocery, only to find a new video store in its place. I sit in the parking lot for a while staring at the cold, grey letters and blinding white lights. I can’t bring myself to go to the industrial-sized grocery complex just outside of town, so I drive home in the dark and say I’ll go tomorrow. Only about half the street lights are on, and it reminds me of learning to drive on Saturday nights with my sister, overwhelmed with pride at learning how to use the turn signal. Back then, I thought learning to drive was all I needed to know, and then I’d be overflowing with wisdom. But I’ve got so much left to learn sometimes it scares me.

I’m still a few miles away from the house, and I see a ramshackle I don’t remember just off the road. Then I realize it’s the old, wooden barn we used to tell stories about. My whole childhood, it was deteriorating from the outside in, but I must have missed its last breath.

I’ve got two months at home before I head back to the city. I’m already exhausted after one night, and I can feel the heart of the city pounding in my heavy head.

Sometimes I think I loved his imperfections more than I loved him.
I loved eating his burned pancakes, and smoothing out his crumpled shirts.
I loved how his necktie was always crooked,
and how his hand-me-down dark khaki pants were frayed on the bottom because he was shorter than his brother but didn’t want to get them hemmed.
I loved how he snored like a baby, but only after his hand had found mine in the dark.

You are standing still.
But it's not hurting anyone.
It doesn’t take that much effort.
It's simple.
Yet people are dying as you stand there.
They are taking their final breaths, and looking in their loved ones’ eyes for the last time.
People are being murdered, and tortured, and robbed, and all you’re doing is standing still.
Now how does that make you feel?
How do you keep on going when you know that you're not going anywhere?