Fly - never past devils in big windows, taking bows for a plate of flowers. They will glean your soul from you, as a reaper might - only you're living at the end.

Fly beyond wanton desires, past graves that were planted years before this moment. They hold memories, bodies of things best left forgotten. Bodies don't always have a face.

Exist in a time that knows nothing of itself. It has no perceptions of seconds, despite its blood is littered with wasted hours.

Believe you are sublime. The earth carries you to only the destinations that you own. All is yours, even the cracks in the sidewalks with reeds of grass deeply rooted in them. Cracks don't always mean broken.


Losses of life take the light out of the deep within - eviscerated by our grief. Flawless love and always praying for moments - momemts that have not our name on them, that are not ours and are not our right to touch.


What lies ahead is a road. Forked in many different directions, with vultures circling if you dance down the wrong road. Vultures are ignorant. You choose the road - AND LIVE!


Baby, I'm an American. I cry for those who can't. I cradle hope and hopelessness in the same arm, while they scratch and bite at each other. Will one lose? Yes. Time will scream it from the tabloids.



I Couldn't Love You More crooned the singer. And I can't. You are my skin. My cells. As others pull at you, I hold you up - for life! We're in this together, baby! Trust no devil!

I've been robbed.

My childhood, my manhood. My self-love.
Taken... taken from me without permission.

A ten-year old boy with an ancient soul.
"Think beyond the physical. Think beyond the physical. It will be over soon. It will be over soon. It always is. It always is..."

The mantra of a screaming, hollow little boy.

A ten-year old with the vocabulary provided by abuse.

You weren't there, and yet... you were,
in your later guilt.

You cried.
"If I had only known!"

Ah, but you did know! You were there. You felt the shake of the bed. The quieted, muffled, screams of your child.

I wanted the shiny blue bike, but you told him no. I'd earned it, didn't I, Mum? For what I'd done - what I'd done for you.
You wanted love, and I wanted you to have it.

A son making a sacrifice for Mum.

"Oh baby there ain't no mountain high enough,
Ain't no valley low enough,
Ain't no river wide enough
To keep me from getting to you..."

I used to believe I was being responsible when being irresponsible,
I used to hold hope that time had a life for me that was of brilliance and soft petals, because I'd known a hideous child life.
I was wrong.
The flow is off.
The DJ has not played my song.
I am not dealing in fanciful "what if's" any longer.
I kept it at bay.
The loss.
The feeling of it.  Its stench.
Now, it sits firmly in my gut.
Anguishing, as if it too knows its own demise.
Separate, but every bit a part of me.
Back in the day, I remember I used to love myself, despite the hurt.
I wish I knew him, he was a wonderful kid.
His hair used to hang down, covering his eyes.
Shy, but he had hope.
Too bad.

I had a thought on the long train ride home - the trees opposite me, out the window - passing quickly - but whispering.

I thought of my ability to get on the train, to go where I need to go - at any point in time, without being stopped, questioned, detained.

I had no bars keeping me from doing what I needed to do at any given moment.

I was free.

I could walk down the street and do .....

And do what?!

I am not free.

I work in a job that I work paycheck-to paycheck.

I live in an apartment more than half my income.

I have no car because I had to surrender it. I could not afford basic transportation costs, so now, the train - my only transport. Health costs dictate much more than most know.

I am stuck in a job that the only move I may make is lateral. No pay increase. No increase in respect. No increase in worth.

I'd always believed that "free" people had lives full of the love and relationships they needed. I used to believe that they at least had "family." (What is family, again?!)

I can save no money for my future, and I am aging. Not yet retirement age, but not enough time to save any numerical amount of monetary fulfillment that would make a difference to an aging man.

I am not free to walk down the street, void of judgement for being gay, should anyone "notice."

I am not free of my disease. The 80's disease meant to take all those who encountered it. Yet, it is cruel and won't take me.

I am not free of the empty space. The space where my family and friends should be, loving me. I guess there really are unlovable people, despite my reaching out, with a wounded, diseased heart.

I am not free.

I never have been.

Are you?

The abolute,
Resolute,
Binding and torturous,
Weight of the World,
Sits,
Boldly,
Between the blades of my back.
It mocks and laughs.
It does not know on whom it has chosen its ride.

I lay, I thought, dying.
You lay beside me, not letting me.
When I could not form a word,
You knew instinctively what I needed.
I looked at you through clouded vision,
Yet somehow I could see with perfect clarity how much you loved me.
You inspired me, to live, despite the diagnosis.
I can't say thank you enough.
I only hope time gives me enough of itself to allow me to try.

The mistake.
This technology we now have, we make gut-ripping mistakes with it.
Or, at least you do.
With your fanciful lies of love and life, to me.
Again, the pain of the lies.
It never ceases, it takes new shape and gathers steam.
Like drinking a fine wine, only to discover, you've poisoned it.
Once, only once - I believed in your love, until you smashed me in the face with reason not to. Bruising my face, my ugly, docile face.
A burn, that singed my soul.
That mistake. Your mistake.
That message - you sent it - to me,  but... it was not for me.
Always I dream what my intuition is trying to sell, always you lie and hide it well.
You planted that seed long ago, your first technoligical mistake - I've been an utter fool.

Five hours from now, you will leave me again.
You've only just returned from your nearly 24-hour time away from me.
I don't trust you.
Because of the many trysts you've had in back seats of cars and "God" knows where else.
You hide.
But, too, you forget - I can see your soul.
If I so choose, I can breathe the stench of your ****** and vile get-off sessions - not from your clothes, but from looking you square in your lying face.
It wreaks of the absence of love. Love for me that is.
That's okay though.
I make plans.
One injection.
My pain ceases.
You won't know, no one will.
I will leave - you know, because you separate yourself from me 19 of 24 hours, and you will have no idea that I've gone.
I will find an old decrepit garage, or abandoned warehouse.
I will sneak in, death juice and syringe in tow,
In the dark and wet corner I will sit.
Listening to Adagio for Strings (you never cared enough to know how much I love it), I will do the deed.
You won't know.
Who knows what you'll think.
Weeks will pass and flesh will rot.  
I'll be identified not by the love in my heart, but the love that will yet be on my finger - our wedding ring.
You are not solely responsible for this - this demise.
But, you were my Savior from all that came before.
Saviors lie.

You made me promises,
And I wrapped myself in them like melodies on a hazy Sunday morning,
I savored them, twisted them and made them into fibers that I wove into my existence.
And then,
Then you broke me.
And I let you.
I let you because I didn’t know better.
Beyond time and tide you were a brilliance, a light, that warmed and coddled me into this desperate oblivion.
A ***** oblivion.
Polluted.
Shards of glass beneath my feet.  Clothes made of extreme anxiety.
And in this moment, I blame you.
But, no longer.
I accept that I allowed your entrance into my life.
I allowed you to be more for me than I ever trusted anyone else to be.
It isn’t my fault that you disappointed me.
I suspect that I am not the first of your disillusionments.
Look at you.
Your physicality is breathtaking.
Every muscle, every nuance of your outward being is a tantalizing treat of enticement and temptation.
I know it isn’t where you end, though.
You had it in you to devise your plan of promises and expectations.
Did you catch what I said there?
Devised.
A negativity.
Not something endearing or stunning.
Maybe I am wrong.
It has been years into this.
And I was wounded well before you.
In consideration of that deep disdain, I must not always believe you to be a fraud.
Surely, not every fraction of your being has set out to malign my heart.
Yet, you have.
Maligned me.
Cast me out into a void that stinks of rot and old.
And so, I float. I linger. I coast along.
Slow-motion.
My own private Hell.
Wondering every time you go out if you will return with the stench of infidelity wafting through the air.
So, I float.
Oil and water, flesh and bone, separate and together.
Endless.
Or, is it?

Someone’s here to see you,
He is insistent,
I don’t know who it is, blue suit.
The bell rang and I answered.
He has glasses and a glow.
He said something about good people.
Good people.
That meant you, I knew he needed you.
What do you want me to tell him?
To leave the box?
Okay. I didn't see a box.
He did say he knew you were here.
I don’t know how.
But – he did.
He has dreamy eyes, blue like his suit.
I sat him on the sofa.
Away from the china.
I know how you like your china.
Well, yes – I let him in, why?
I meant to do the right thing.
I always do the wrong thing though.
He is like music.
He is magical when he walks.
I think I love him.
It is not silly!
He is magic.
And light.
He walked such a short distance to the sofa.
The corner of the rug flapped up as he made his way.
I didn't put it back down.
He is dreamy though.
Why can’t he stay?
What will I say to him?
I know him.
He looks like you.
He made his way here.
For you.
For me.
For us.
Let him stay, please.
I don't know who he is.
I thought you did.
He'd asked for you.
He came to save us.
You and I.
From each other.
What do you mean?
He doesn't exist!
Hmmphhh!!!
Indeed!
His blue suit and blue eyes are right now on the sofa.
Next to the china.
Waiting for you.
With a box I didn't see.
Yes, I took my medicine.
I always take my medicine.
You know that.
I DID NOT miss taking them last night.
I did see the man.
He is magic.
He is light.
He is right now sitting right next to your ****** bone china.
He has blue eyes.
And a ****** blue suit.
AND a box I didn't ******* see.
He rang the bell.
I walked him toward the sofa and the rug flipped.
I told you that.
I would feel better if you went in to greet him.
At least to say hello.
He has a gift for you.
A box.
No, I didn't see a box.  
You said he had a box, not me.
I saw his blue eyes and his blue suit.
I'm becoming distressed.
****.
Go see the man.
Yes, I'm ******* sure he's sitting on the ******* ****** sofa.
Yes, I saw him.
I think.
I'm not sure now.
I think he walked in.
Wearing a blue suit and he has blue eyes.
Did I mention he has a nervous tick?
His hand.
He had a nervous back and forth motion with his hand against his thigh.
I don't think he knows.
He is dreamy.
Magical.
Get the **** up and go see this magical man with the blue eyes.
Fine I'll go out and offer him tea.
What kind do you think he'd like?
Earl Grey?
I wonder if Earl Grey was a person.
Was he?
Maybe it is Earl Grey on the sofa next to the China.
Surely a man named Earl Grey can be trusted to sit so closely to the china.
He sounds so regal.
Earl Grey.
****** he's dreamy.
I like the word dreamy, that's why.
I'll go offer Earl some Earl.
He moves like wind.
He wasn't there.
Earl departed.
He left us.
He was here to save us.
But now, he's gone.
He came to save us but now he's gone.
I need his magic.
His blue eyes.
I feel ever so abandoned.
Did you hear that?
A knock at the front door.
I hear music.
I'll go check to see who it is.
It is a woman this time.
Shall I invite her in?

I don't know where to begin,
I don't know if I should.
After all they are only words.
Words that no one cares about.
Gone are the days of hope.
Yes, something negative - again!
No one wants to be near someone who hurts.
I am sad.
I can't be different.
It's a circle.
I hurt, no one cares, I hurt more.
Round and round it goes.
I don't like me.
I don't like the life I've had.
It started with abuse as a child.
Leading to abuse as an adult.
I allowed the love in that was there.
Even if I shouldn't have.
Then I got sick.
So very sick.
But somehow, I stay alive.
Tortured by doing so.
There is no one near.
So I try to drown the pain.
Pills and drink.
The pain is dulled, ever present.
How long can I do this?
Somewhere, deep down,
Underneath the cancer of addiction and disease,
Is a hope.
Hope.
I can barely see it but it smells pretty.
I am no where near it.
But I know it's there.
I have become a burden.
To the one person who is near me.
The one person who loves me -
Who used to believe in me.
Everything is said in the eyes
And the absence of smiles.
I wanted to be a writer.
I wanted to create beautiful stories.
I didn't want to be sick,
Or to be dead while breathing.
I wanted more.
No one wants to be near someone who hurts.

It is funny what a lock can do,
it can lock us in - or out.
A lock can keep us from impeding danger.
It can keep us from heading out into the world, a crutch.
There are many types of locks - emotional locks are the walls we put up.
We tend to these walls - these locks - we keep putting up our walls.
We build our walls, tuck-pointing and adding bricks where they need to be.
It stinks within these walls, the air is stagnant, there is no dignity in hiding.
A lock in its metallic sturdy state, in its walled and emotional state - can be broken.
It can be left unlocked too.
The wall can be knocked down.
We have to decide.
We have to choose.
Living in a moment is possible.
It can be a trip to the moon.
It can be joy.
It can be cataclysmic.
Living without locks is possible.
We have to decide for ourselves.
Let the light in and breath.

When you were here,
way back when,
I loved you.
You were distant,
always distant.
And yet, I loved you.
But now, silence.
Ten years have passed,
Eleven since I last saw you.
You came to my house, remember?
You felt the finality as much as I did.
We both knew it would be the last time.
You had a cane.
Your clothes hung on you like rags.
Your face was gray and gaunt.
I have your Cleveland Indians hat that you wore that day.
As you left, you stumbled.
Conscious of the fact that I was watching you.
And I was.
Frail and weak.
Yet, you wanted to see me.
You pulled away in your Buick Riviera.
I cried.
Our time together, tumultuous.
But you were in your prime then.
Full of life and red of face.
Smooth and calculated.
Bold.
But then, the flame flickered,
the candle melted.
The pineapple meaning "welcome" on your front door,
seemed to be lying.
I made choices.
To protect myself.
Because I couldn't watch you **** yourself.
I couldn't beg you to get help any more.
I was angry.
Angry that love wasn't enough.
I'd always heard it was.
It wasn't.
I miss you.
You were the best and the worst of my life.
I live daily remembering you.
You gave me no choice.
What a gift to give!
I wish you'd never given such a vile present.
"Is it o.k. to go to Heaven now?"
Sure.
Go.
Maybe I'll see you there.

What does it feel like?
When you hit rock bottom.
Does it hurt?
Should I be bleeding?
I do emotionally bleed.
That is to say, I am actively emotionally bleeding.
I have **** near lost almost everything.
Everyone.
That I have ever loved.
So, is this not yet rock bottom?
The surface here is gritty.
I can't reach through it.
Or above it.
It stinks here.
And I'm alone.
There are shadows of life gone by.
How do I recognize rock bottom?
Is it surreal?
Tangible?
How am I to know when I'm there?
I did hit my head on the way down,
Two or fourteen times.
I guess I will sit here.
And wait.
Looking up for the light that I'd always heard tell of.

If I hide in the closet in the far back corner,
I don't know if I would be escaping anything but the light.
I want to hide though.
I don't want people watching me.
The sense of failure is impeding fast.
I am so tired of looking sick and feeling sicker.
I used to believe that I would make a difference.
I would rise above my illnesses and write a great American novel.
But now?
Now I feel as though the world has stopped spinning for me.
As if to say, "Jump off! We don't need you anymore...."
I feel like a failure.
I wanted more -
before the sickness set in.
Before the invasion.
I want to write beautiful things.
I want to write about beautiful people doing beautiful things.
But - I don't....
I write about how I'm dying.
I write about having an addiction.
I write about how no one wants to be around me.
No wonder....
No wonder no one wants to be around me.
I have a world of dreams in my head,
But no one wants to be around the dying man.
I used to have such breathtaking dreams.
But no one will ever know.

It was in a bargain bin - an empty book of lined pages, embossed on the front in gold leaf: Journal.

This Journal -to me- could be a story, a book of poetry - a collection of thoughts and musings. It is blank and it is mine for a bargain.

Did they not see the value when they placed this in the bargain bin? It could, in the right hands, be turned into a fantasy, a love story, an epic journey.  It doesn't have to be a Journal but maybe...

I pick it up and feel the weight of it in my hands - feeling the texture of the volume, earth-tone paisley with a gold ribbon down its center.

I open it and breath in the freshness of the pages - a smell like none other.

Perhaps this volume could be a gift given to a young person - to inspire a love of writing, to appreciate what it is to have your own words in a bound book.

Or do I keep it for myself? To begin the great American novel, full of characters and plot and some tragedy. People that I create, lives that I breathe air into, hearts that I break and heal all by just writing words.

All of this from a bargain bin and I got it first.

I watched you walk away a moment ago.

Quickly.

I wasn't prepared for this moment.

The loss I feel.

The trepidation beating me down, hollowing out my heart.

Scarring my existence without the softness of death.

I must suffer in this loss, weak and frail – ****** and lost.

I dropped my head for one second – only one – so that the tears may fall.

I looked back to where you were but you were gone.  I wasn’t ready for you to be gone.  You had hurriedly turned a corner, dodged into a building and left me on the sidewalk, crumpled and distressed.

That I know of, you did not turn around to see me one last time.  Perhaps your “one last time” look came when you said you didn't love me any longer and you walked away.

So easily they fell – those words – “I don’t love you anymore.”  Yes, you said “anymore” not “any longer.”

When did that happen?  So that I may know, please?  When did I do something?  When didn't I do something?

Please let it be something because I can’t live with it if the reason was simply that I was just being me.  To think that being myself, the only person I know to be, could have driven you away. (Into the arms of another!)

Oh, is it that?!  Someone else?   I truly have lost – to someone who has no face, at least not to me.  To you, it may be the most beautiful face you have ever seen and you can’t stop wanting to be near it, to hold that face in your gruff hands and smooching it …. Over and over and over and over.

Sans the face.  Forget about it.  I need to know, where did I fail?  Please let me know.  I fear though, you will not – let me know, that is – because you all but ran away from me, to put distance between our two hearts….mine broken, yours yearning for the face of another.  The face.

There it is again.  This face that I don’t know – mocking me while I sit, sobbing, on a sidewalk – holding my coat tight around me, the cold making the snot run from my nose and down my face.  I shiver.  

I will sit a few moments more – an hour or so, a day – longer to wait for you to come back and pick me up.  You will come back, won’t you?

You have cast your shadow today,
One you cast many years ago when I was a boy,
A boy full of ideals.
Of warmth.
Of hope.
Your shadow then was for me - life.
A boy of fifteen with the heart of an old soul.
You weren't much older but by a few years.
Connected for a moment in time.
Then you were gone.
Which I understood (eventually).
But....
I thought I loved you and your shadow.
That idealism playing and pulling at those young heart strings.
How can someone love with a heart so young?
(With a soul that is old and strange.)
Now, decades later, your shadow - though distant - is here again.
Redefined.
I welcome it.
I need it now more than then.
This isn't a boy in love.
This is a man.
My body catching up to the age of my soul.
Thank you for letting me see that dreams do come true as I live vicariously through you.

You are beside me in bed,
Asleep.
Distant.
You are in some far off land I have no transport to.
I look at you.
The softness of your face.
The expression you make while you slumber.
I have never seen anything - anyone - so beautiful.
So fragile.
Yet,
The strength is all mixed up with the beauty,
and with the softness,
making my heart want to be in your dream
with you.
Together.
You and I together.
In that land that makes you smile as you slumber.
You have my heart.
Now and forever.

I say it is chartreuse,
You say it's yellow.
I say you look wonderful
in red,
You say you look fat.
I say you haven't aged,
You show me your wrinkles.
I say you love too much,
You say "But I love you."
I say nothing because
I'm smiling.

It isn't likely
that I will live
much longer.
Emotionally.
I fight for love
every single day
without believing.
This road has
too many turns
and dangerous
separation.
Ambivalence.
Why do you
love that which
is unlovable?
You deserve more
than who I am.
My words -
they cry,
they are sad
and this is
all that I am.
Even I don't
like me.
Even I think
I complain
too much.
Even I know
if only I
believed....
Why do you
love me?
Run!
Save yourself.

You have again made your way in,
Cold and beautiful.
You are December,
And I love you.
Despite the seasonal celebration,
I know you to be more.
You are calm,
You allow me to slow,
To envelope the tranquility I crave.
Your winds, December, though cold,
Allow me to feel the life in my cheeks,
And if I’m lucky,
It too will bring the sweetness
Of some distant firewood.
I welcome your snow, December.
So that I may sit wrapped in wool,
By candlelight,
The dog having nestled in as well,
Watching the frozen rain accumulate
On the branches of the birch and oak.
Though I live in the city,
I dream of loving you December,
Even more – if I were in nature.
Then I would feel closer to you,
As a lover may feel,
Or perhaps a mother to a child.
I would know, I think, how to
More fully know why I am in love
With you.
And being with you, December,
Brings me to life.

Allow me today to sit and talk, while sipping on my cherry Kool-Aid – which by the way, tastes just fine to wash down my prescribed addiction,

I sit and relax today, I so rarely do – well, in truth, I have sat in boredom for months while life, people and chaos have come and gone, only to all visit again over and over and over…

I have focused so much on what is ideal that I know nothing about what actually is.

I have listened to sirens beneath my window, the ambulances, the fire trucks, searing into my brain a desire to be able to ignore them as they pass all while holding good thoughts for those who the sirens attend to,

My dog and I sit, he by me, me by him – along with the cat, sitting day in and day out – wondering.

Wondering – what if I wasn’t sick?

What if I had been a writer like I wanted to be?

What if I had learned to play the violin?

What if I hadn’t been molested as a child?

I write these words because there is no one.  No one with whom I can converse.  My dog – in his antsy fervor – has yet to utter a single word in contribution to my many attempts at conversation.

I don’t know where things changed.  I hear that people don’t like to be around people who are depressed.   I don’t want to be around me much either.  

Suicide, though an answer, I don’t have much courage for.  My mother always said suicide was a sin and you’ll go “straight to Hell” for doing it, then followed that up with “don’t even think such things!”  Rest In Peace mom but I think of it every day – but it’s a good thing I never learned to have courage in life.

The ice in my Kool-Aid is melting. Perhaps it’s a metaphor – a representation of what is happening in my life.
The bright red of life is watered down, becoming pink if the Kool-Aid to ice ratio is just right.

My heart is broken – again.  I continue to believe that somehow the one that I love will love me wholly without the need for sordid little rifts in the back seats of cars that sit far off in a parking lot, not under the lights – maybe under a tree that hangs over the last spot in the corner.

And where am I when this happens?  Home.  With the dog and the cat.  Cooking dinner, I imagine.  Knowing and oblivious.  Intuitive and in denial.

You used to love me so.  On our hours long bike rides through St. Petersburg – never venturing to Tampa because I didn’t want to ride on the Gandy bridge.  We sat time and time again at Mirror Lake contemplating our future together.  Happiness ensued and you were beautiful.  It felt as though our souls fused each and every time. And then I began to wonder.

Wondering – will I always be enough?

Will our lives be happy together?

Nine years into our relationship, will you still see me the same way?

I have changed – through no fault of my own – a series of strokes can change a person.  They can leave you blind on more than a physical level – but that too.  I didn’t mean to be different.  I didn’t choose to be cross-eyed and wounded.  I wanted to be more for you.  I, for some reason, need you to believe in me, for me to be better.  Are you still here?

Somehow, though, I knew that I would not always be enough for you.  It came as no real surprise when it was confirmed the other day.  The question is: what do I do now? (Oh, and… are you in love?)

I have no self-esteem.  I have no one around me to help pull me from the clutches of happiness turned sad.  Social media and a telephone are no replacement for a hug or a hushed conversation in a coffee shop – where I embarrassingly admit the emotionally crippling downward spiral of what I have allowed for myself to endure – the shame.

I deserved to be loved too.  I deserved more than cherry Kool-Aid, a prescription addiction and time spent wondering who you’re with.

Mom, are you sure you were right? Just wondering.

December 23, 2011

This time of year, this now sad time when I find myself lamentingly thinking of you, I am yet again crying because I no longer can pick up the phone to hear you say “Hello?” as if you were asking a question and not answering a phone.

This time of year, Christmastime, when families gather, when friends laugh. Gifts are exchanged.  Hearts are warm.  The color red is all around and supposes to envelope all that it sees.  This a time when many people are kind to those that they would otherwise never think of, say perhaps on July 4th when the weather is balmy and fireworks flare.

You have been gone but days, however, it seems like years.  My days are consumed hoping that I might wake up from this dream, this nightmare really, that you somehow got better.  That I could wake up from this, though tears would be streaming, I would be thankful that you were still here, and I would immediately pick up the phone to hear that “Hello?”  You too would have been sleeping and you answer confused.  You ask me what is wrong.  I say, holding back the sobs as best I can, that I had a bad dream and I needed to hear your voice.  I am not waking though, this dream is now months old, it clings to me, feeding, biting deeper every day.  I am living this sad nightmare.

This is our, your family’s, your creation’s first Christmas without you.  With you, all those many years ago, the little gifts you gave, simply wrapped with a bow and names written on the wrapping paper, were all appreciated with eyes glowing.  With little you gave much.

I will get no more hugs from you.  This painful realization denies me much.  Hugs, for me, always meant that everything was well in the world.  Hugs have been taken, leaving me with but the memory that makes me write these words.  I will pause to remember these hugs not just at Christmastime but at every time of year – in the spring when the wind blows across the lake, over the sand of the beach and then over the trees and flowers, I will remember those hugs.  Little did I know that every hug gave me comfort that will last for the continuance of my life.  It’s a gift that I can open over and over.  Thank you – an eternal gift that you gave to all of us.

The magic of Christmas is not so powerful that it can give me the only gift that I want – more time with you.  One last Christmas, perhaps, with the family together, cooking and playing games.  All laughing with each other, loving each other, all while you rest in your recliner, gently rocking back and forth, with a look on your face that defines happy.  Your family, your blood, all near to you with happy smeared across our faces too.
  
Though, as I think about it, I don’t know that more time would prepare me any better.  I would still grieve as I never have.  I would still know the reality of your not being here along with my want to not accept that which is my reality.  

I think, question, why am I still here if you are gone?  This thought, though silly, is that I came from you, should I not go with you as you go?  I find myself seeking out ways to push it all away.  Strange thoughts, expressed here only that someone may look oddly in my direction if I spoke those words to them.

This year there is no snow.  It is fairly warm for this time of year.  Cloudless sky – allowing the sun to shine, warming the brick and mortar of all surrounding me.  If there were snow, I think it would remind me more that Christmas is here and we don’t have you or more so that Christmas itself, along with us, mourns, weeps that you and your sweet smile are no more.

This year I must start a new journey, one that has you with me – physically no, but with the warmth of your hugs.  Keeping me connected to you, still holding onto you with the deepest of love, not just this Christmas but all that shall follow.  And not just for me, but for us all.

A tradition starts this year.  In honor of you, I will burn a candle – perhaps one in your favorite color – periwinkle.  Every year that candle will burn, in a window so that you may angelically fly to see it. It will signify your perfection, your strength, and your love.  I will watch the flame burn.  I will watch it because in times past I’ve noticed that as a candle burns, at the tip, at the very top of the flame, if you watch closely, it looks as though there is someone reaching out of the flame, toward heaven.  I will honor your memory, watching the flame, the spirit therein dancing until it burns out and flies away.

I will think now and forever more that you are an angel now.  An angel at Christmas, watching over, whispering love.  True the world is a sadder place this year, but even in your absence, you comfort me.  At the end of writing this, yet another realization, and epiphany perhaps, we are not without you at Christmas.  You are everywhere.  You are in the tree ornaments of past.  You are in the photographs of us, as a family, standing by the tree.  You are in all that you’ve left behind, you are in your legacy.  You are here, right now and always – hugging and comforting, listening and loving.  

“Have yourself a Merry little Christmas, let your heart be light…”

Thomas

Surely if I had an ideal existence, I would not need these drugs that keep me alive.  I would not need the drugs that keep me from jumping out of my third story window.

Three stories.  Would I die?  Would I lie there, broken, head bashed in, but still able to think?

If I, in me, had all that the characters of the Wizard of Oz were seeking but had all along, would I be human enough to lift myself from the goo that keeps me stuck in this dank and awful place?

My heart stinks of rot and yet it feels.

My soul has holes that account for roughly forty percent of its entirety and yet there is still some of it left.

I want to be cleansed, purged, of all of the bad.  The things of my past that make me think of regret.  I want a chance to show the world of the brilliance that lives within me.  The brilliance that, may I add, blinds even me at times.

I hope to clear the cob-webs cluttering all of the corners of the creation that is me so that I may reach in and pull out the words to make you all cry.

All I have ever wanted was to make someone feel.  Ugly covered in syrup, with someone there to pick up the two and separate the ugly.  

Everything is better with something sweet.

I see this woman,

A small woman, asian, older maybe 60, gray hair at her temples.

She is wearing a tan short sleaved blouse, darker tan khaki’s to her knees and open toed sandals.

She is standing in the alley, by the utility pole with her hands cupped together below her *******.

I wonder about this woman.

I wonder if she has known pain, then I stop myself.  Of course she has known pain.  Then I wonder, is she loved?  I try to tell myself that everyone is loved by someone, but then I think, or rather I ask myself, is that true?  Is everyone loved?

In the alley by the utility pole, she looks around, her hands still cupped below her ******* and she begins to look around.  Side to side, to the north down the alley then to the south.  She then looks up into the hazy, warm sky.
She continues to stand there and I watch her from my third floor kitchen window.

I then think to myself that I need to think of this woman more often.  

I think of my own problems and punishments too often without ever thinking of the problems and punishments of others.

She has now folded her arms and is looking down at the ground, walking in small circles, as if she is contemplating something.  She has been lead to the alley by the utility pole by these thoughts.

I begin to think of the things that may have lead her here, right now, at this moment, right when I look out the window.  

Has she come out here after a heated argument in her own tongue (an assumption on my part, Chinese perhaps, Vietnamese.  This is my own idiocy locked in my own world.) with her partner, husband, love, significant other?  An argument over bills, money, a recipe perhaps.  

Then I think maybe she isn’t outside because of an argument at all.  Perhaps she needed some “me time.”  She needed a moment to breath air brought to her by the wind.  To take it in and have it heal her where she needed it to.

Then she drops her hands to her side and she begins to sob.  She leans against the utility pole and slowly slides down its splintery surface.  Her tan blouse snags on the pole but she continues to slide down the pole, her hands at her sides.

She is sitting on the ground, crying, needing someone to help her, needing the person to have caused this pain to cure it, to make it go away, to come to the alley, reach out with both of their hands and pull her up from the pain of the gravel on which she sits.

Then I thought, maybe they can’t.  

Maybe they can’t and that is why she is sitting in the alley by the utility pole, crying with her arms at her sides.  Perhaps she has lost someone she has loved and is regretful of the last thing she ever said to this person.

I recalled my earlier thought acknowledging that she has indeed known pain.  I was watching her experience it.  I was helpless to this woman in this moment.  If I were to ask her if she needed help I could be invading on what she thought was a private moment.  

She didn’t need the help of a strange man watching her from his third floor kitchen window.

She pulled a handkerchief from her right pocket and put it to her face, resting her elbow on her knee and looked down the alley again, still crying.

I felt bad.  I was standing watching this poor, and yet beautiful, woman cry in the alley thinking I couldn’t help her.

I was conflicted.

Do I go see if I can do something that will help ease her pain?  Will I make it worse if I infringe on this moment?

Something pushed me.  An impulse.  God’s whisper.

I put on my shoes and descended the three flights of stairs to aid this woman that I did not know.  What would I say?  Would she even understand my English words?  Could I understand her (assumed) Chinese words?  

Regardless, she needed help.

I opened the back door and stepped onto the sidewalk cautiously, as if it would give way and I would fall.  What am I going to say to this woman?

I looked up and my heart swelled, as did the tears in my eyes.  I saw what I had envisioned seconds before.  The person who had caused the pain came to her, both hands reaching for both of hers.  He reached for her and she reached back.

It was beautiful and I choked on my tears.

He lifted her up and they embraced saying words I did not understand but I thought that perhaps it may have been “Baby, I love you, I’m sorry.”

I didn’t want them to know I had witnessed this, this pain, this loss, those tears, the love and the embrace.  I walked quickly past in a direction that I did not need to go with only one more quick glance so that I could remember this love that I had seen.

It made me think of all of the love that I don’t see, the moments that I don’t take to look at someone from my third floor kitchen window.

The love in my own life that I take for granted sometimes and that made me sob.

I think of my own love and I want him close.  No words, just an embrace, like theirs,

in the alley by the utility pole.

Today
is but a day
that I am looking at like
all the others
but somehow it’s different,

a small fiber of it breathes differently,

it moves in such a way
that lets me know that it is
somehow changed,
altered,
from what all
of the other
days have been.  

I am instantly in love
with this change.

Who am I in this, this world, this space in time…this lost hope,

Where is my place, my destiny, my beautiful violin solo?

It all seems so cluttered, chaotic and destined to be a deep sadness… sagging and weak… I know there is beauty, I see it… and I want to lose myself in it…with no hope of return….not to this dark place, the place that stinks of old and rot.

You were for me the most amazing love I have ever known and ever will know, I never knew I could, or would even want to love as much as I do love you.  I was transformed, I became someone different because you loved me.  I don’t know where it is that I became not enough, the instance in time when I was, simply put, no longer in your heart.

I digress.

I can’t control the impeding sadness, I am getting tired of the fight and I don’t feel the love from you that I once felt.  As I type them, I hate the very words I am using…sadness, dark place, chaotic.  I don’t want to be the bleeding heart, the wounded one.

Please God, let me be.  Let me not suffer like this.  My heart is in agony and my body is weak.  I feel as though I am a disappointment and I don’t know if I can do this much longer.

For today I will put on the face, the façade…the someone I am not, so that I may go out into the world and face the people that do not know my heart.

It is time to let it go.
It is time to watch it fly away.
So see it down the drain, distant and far.
Your hate,
Your rage,
Your intolerance,
Your racism.
Let it die,
Watch it whither and become dust.
Your depression,
Your mistrust,
Your curse,
Your sorrow.
I am beginning with me.  What about you?

If there were music, divine and beautiful music,
that could reach in and caress my hurt,
I would open myself
by grabbing hold of my chest bones,
ripping them apart
and letting it devour me wholly.  

Music to teach me to love,
to live
and to die.  

I would lose myself in it,
living every note, every nuance,
every cord, every instrument
until I left myself so far behind
that when I looked over my shoulder
I would see my weeping self
far off in the distance.

I would want this music to take me off,
to some distant place,
perhaps Orion’s Belt,
where, if I were lucky the searing heat from the nebula,
from the stars, the comets, would make all traces of me
disappear,
gone forever,
from even memory perhaps.  

Piano and violin,
stars and moons …lost infinitely together.  
Beautiful.  
Dancing as they would,
timeless and classic,
haunting and amazing.  

Perhaps it would be the violin solely,
crying…for me…because it feels
the hopelessness
and the down to the bone marrow ache
that exists within.  

I want to dance,
to fly,
to live among the vast incomprehensible void
that exists beyond our own small and somehow
insignificant world.  

All of this,
if music could do that.  
Sweet music,
won’t you please take me to the heavens and
leave
me
there?