Somebody’s Child – 41 Months

Prison.
You worked hard to get to this. Ten arrests in three quarters of a year, dozens of charges, half of them felonies. It still took all it took to get you actual prison time.
41 months.
You won’t be out real soon, even with good behavior.
Prison.
As sick as it makes me, all anyone really feels now is relief. For themselves, for you.
I don’t check every day now to make sure the sticks are in the windows. I don’t sleep with the 44 anymore when I’m here alone, though your friends, the real danger, are still in and out. But I don’t worry about you robbing my neighbors. And I don’t wait for the phone call telling me somebody’s dead.

Your life will never be the same now, but I doubt you’ve totally grasped that. I doubt you get that you won’t be able to just pick back up where you hadn’t even started to go. I don’t think you know yet that you won’t be able to return to old relationships as they used to be, or that you can never “go home”, or ever turn back the clock.

I doubt you know that I held your four year old boy on Christmas day, and that he announced to the room that his Mommy will be out of jail by his birthday. He’s not sure when that is, but he’s sure Mommy will be out of jail then. She won’t be, but he’s been convinced.
I doubt he knows that Daddy has 41 months. I doubt he knows Mommy’s not far behind. Of course he doesn’t know. He’s four.
Your three year old, remember him? He’s a baby. A baby holding a stocking. They both are. There’s a picture of them both in my phone from the day, holding Christmas stockings of goodies.
They don’t scream and hit as much, and they seem to like being held more. They’ve been away from you for so long now, they’ve calmed down alot. No one’s driving them around, smoking meth and oxy in the front seat while they sit strapped in their carseats in the back seat.

Healing is possible. There’s always that hope. It takes alot for some people, but it happens.
What stops some people, isn’t even a blip on the screen for others. I don’t know what it will take for you. I know it isn’t losing your kids, and it isn’t ten arrests. I can tell you it takes alot of determination to change, to get clean and stay clean, to learn everything anew. It takes alot. There are still drugs even in prison.
But it takes something more than just determination as well. It takes surrender, and a changing of the heart. Some people must become completely broken before that happens, some just never will find it. Many just die first.
Sadly, they take others with them, too. Some of those they take don’t lose their whole lives, just find themselves derailed into a wreck not of their own choice or making. Some of those they take end up heartbroken, or with a broken spirit, and some grow up with a twisted notion of what love is….”Mommy will be out of jail by my birthday.”
Mommy won’t be out of jail by then. Mommy is going where you went when you “got out of jail.” She’s going to prison.

This is your chance. It’s the only one you have left. You can choose what you want to take from prison; who you want to end up being, what you want to become now. No one else can choose that for you. It isn’t going to be easy. You gave away so many of your rights, but you do still have that choice. I hope you choose well. You may not get another chance to choose.

PS- B? I can’t forgive you yet. I know I have to, but I’m not there yet. And I don’t want to see you, or write to you. I don’t want to think about the fallout that’s in all our lives from your selfish actions. You didn’t care what you did to us, and you would have taken everything if I didn’t get this way. I am responsible for protecting so much for so many others, and you would’ve taken it all; you would have ruined me, and them. As it is you took so much, and I don’t just mean the shit you stole and pawned and sold. You destroyed things so much deeper than that.
And you know what? People felt sorry for you. But you didn’t feel sorry for the people you hurt. Good people who worked so hard for what they had, people that were trying to do the right things. And I don’t think you feel sorry for them now, either. I think you feel sorry for yourself.
I can’t forgive you yet. I can’t pray for you either. But I know others do, and I believe in the power of that. I don’t begrudge you that. Maybe one day I will be able to pray for you, too.
What I can say is that I wish you well; I wish you a better life than what you’ve made yours into. One in which you can use what you have been, to be something better. And I guess that is a kind of prayer. It’s the best one I have right now.

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“Doc” Rini

“Doc”

“I want to leave something behind when I go.
So they’ll know I was here.” -Darryl “Doc” Rini

The Palomino Club 1987
North Hollywood

Billie Jo wore my boots that night, the black and blue Tony Llama’s. Because they went with the dress. I know that’s right, because she borrowed the dress from me, too.
For some reason the three of us were in the parking lot, between two parked cars. Her boyfriend held up a beach towel and played look out. I was a lot more nervous than she was; she was never very shy at all.
They had dressing rooms, didn’t they? I’m sure they did. But for some reason we were out there. Then she was in my dress and we swapped boots and earrings and she was ready to go.
Billie Jo was a coworker and a friend; that’s why I was there. Oh, and I like music. I liked Billie Jo’s voice and I liked her. But I never liked “Country”, to say it nicely. At this point I was unaware there was such a thing I could ever like. I plead ignorance. I was still learning that good music is good music, period.
So I simply went to see my friend play, and hang out at The Palomino. And, yeah, there was that outfit.
Billie Jo played and sang and growled and purred, and it was a good show with a good crowd. Whatever my taste in music, I could appreciate her talent and I enjoyed myself enough. It wasn’t until the last song her band played that I began to see things a bit differently.
Truthfully, I can’t remember what the song was at all, though it may have been one of Billie Jo’s originals. It was a driving, rockin’ number that made me think of fast trains, and if I’d have had someone with me or been a little less shy back then, I’d have been on the dance floor. But things got even better when the steel player took over the song and made it his own.
She’d already introduced the players a few numbers back, and it was Darryl “Doc” Rini on pedal steel guitar who was now setting his instrument on fire. I had never seen anyone play like that before, and I fully expected to see something combust, or melt. I couldn’t do anything but sit still and watch until he was finished several minutes later, awash with sweat. And then I was still absorbing it.
I’d seen plenty of players give their all to playing, and I love to watch people do whatever they do well, when they really love what they do. But Doc had that extra something so many wish to have. Passion. And the ability to make you have it too. He gave that passion a voice, and the voice came through the steel. Until those moments, I’d had no idea anyone could do that playing Country Western music.
I was pretty close to the stage, and I tried to watch the finger picks he wore, but they flew and his hands were just a blur. For all I knew his hands were performing some feverish and ancient magic ritual. He was sweating more than I thought was possible for someone sitting down. Of course, he was working hard and likely in some kind of altered state. I was transfixed. I realized my mouth was open.
He’d seemed to teeter just on the edge of losing control, and you know, he never did lose it. Not a stumble. I imagined smoke rising from the steel when he finished that solo. I tasted ashes, and still he played on. I thought about the fire hose on the wall, and I know that’s corny. I wondered how many people were in the club. It seemed like there were suddenly a lot more people, and it was awful hot in there with all the bodies. Things felt dangerous, and I was looking towards the front door, wishing for air.

Before I can think about how to get there, his face is before me, words falling from his lips. Cowboys and bikers, tourists and squealing girls all making sounds like a boiling soup of noise; my head is ringing from his long train-robbing solo. It sounds like stampedes in my head and I can’t hear a word he says, but his eyes are a piercing blue and they bore down into my soul like deep water pouring into me, and I don’t look away like I usually do. I admit, I can be cold that way, and who has not been approached in a bar and it’s really nothing special. And then there’s that look again like fire and blue water together, so I smile, and say “Pardon?” and dip my head a little closer. I still can’t hear. The third time my ear ends up just about where his lips are and I know this voice is the smoothest thing I could ever feel at all and I feel the heat of it when he says in one easy breath, like it’s the first time “You’re a very pretty girl”. When I look up, those eyes look the same as they did, no different, and I see what I later will forget. The same thing I saw when I watched him play.
One day I’ll look back and remember it was never really gone, just hidden lest he burn himself up on normal days.

We’ve had fun, no doubt. I can’t really say how long it’ll last, because it won’t really end in the usual sense. I’ll just go and do other things after a time. I’m living the five minutes of my life where I just won’t be pinned down. At the same time, I do have a way of getting my back up about a guy not telling me how he feels about me. I figure he’s had enough time to know, and he knows how to speak.
But that really isn’t his language, at least not yet. He speaks through the steel, and sometimes, through his eyes. Whatever the reason, I’ll wander off finally.

While we are here, he makes me laugh. He has a wicked sense of humor that covers nearly everything from his coworkers to the five or six leaks in this Hollywood Hills roof. I know he has a deformed and less than prestigious car that he never complains about but gives a pet name to that cracks me up, every time.
While we are here, he plays the steel for me when I can get him to, in this place in the Hills that leaks rainwater on the bed. He doesn’t like an audience when he practices, when he pushes himself, perhaps because it’s the only time he doesn’t feel in control. But he does let me be one, sometimes. I enjoy it even more than watching him perform. I get to see the real thing.
While we are here, I will tell him the one thing I know, that he was born to play that pedal steel, and is really here to be heard. I believe this of him more than I believe most things, and I tell him so whenever I can.
He looks like a young John Heard with a smile like the Cat that ate the Canary. A hiccup easily missed that floats out a feather here and there. I sit in the bed watching The Headbangers Ball on the TV until the feathers stop and the snoring starts, and wonder just what it is we have in common. And I know there’s only one thing, and it’s something neither one of us can name or even see. We’re both watching the sky and the dark and the strings for it, but it is elusive and multicolored. And while it makes you dance like bullets when it’s aimed at your feet, it hides in alleys when you ask it yourself, to dance.
What I’ve fallen in love with is the theme music to our story. And it will always take me there, just like this. It will forever make me know exactly who this man is, just like the first time. But I’ll stop listening, because it’s time to go. In too many years to remember why, I’ll finally remember what it sounded like when it became a part of me.

Darryl

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Billie Jo, but like I imagined, she isn’t hard to find. She looks the same with that long blond hair and the quick smile and she’s playing and singing wherever she lands. I’m glad to see her, but she says “Doc’s got cancer.”
I don’t know this, and wonder why I don’t. “It’s in his brain.”
She asks me to call him and I am surprised when she says, “I really think you should.” Should I really?
Here’s where things start to get hard for me, where I stop knowing how to tell the rest of the story, the end of the story. Because there really isn’t one.

He’d had brain surgery and been recovering a while. He has me helpless within minutes with his humor that is so Darryl-nothing sacred, completely irreverent, yet steeped in a touching and self-effacing insight that is crystal clear. I cry tears of laughter, and of sympathy. But mostly we laugh.
His immediate recovery from surgery was brutal I think, and was graced with what he referred to as a male Nurse Ratchet. Nurse Ratchet reportedly thrust a mirror into Darryl’s hands right out the gate and said, “You might as well get used to it.” With a shaved and swollen head full of staples, he said he wasn’t ready. I myself might need to get used to the thought of it for a day or two before looking, but Darryl did look, and his first sight of himself brought Frankenstein’s monster to mind.
At least this is the story he told me, and I laughed ‘til I cried, and then just cried.

Later, I received beautiful letters from him, revealing the Darryl I never knew. I don’t know what ever happened to those letters, but I wish I had them now. I’d known Doc in his day, but Darryl was someone I only suspected, now and then when I heard him play.

Not so very long ago I learned Darryl was gone by “the late-‘80’s”. I don’t know why I ever imagined maybe he wasn’t. I’ve not known of many brain cancer survivors that have lived a long time. And it had been a long time. I suppose I hoped, and didn’t want to think about the obvious too much. I’d shut a door and moved to another planet; I couldn’t, wouldn’t keep the connection I had with him. And I suppose once I’d seen those letters he wrote, I could have never again seen him as that smooth talker in snakeskin boots who’d run me over in The Palomino. I knew more. I loved him more as a friend than I ever could have as a lover. And that was far more dangerous than some man in snakeskin boots. So I stepped far to the side. And we just slipped away.

Bert

A while back I happened across the wonderful Garrison Elliott [also known as Bert], who knew Doc well. Upon hearing from me, Bert very graciously sent me everything he had of Doc on recording, including his own music. Not only am I pleased to become acquainted with the talented and kind Bert, but I will always be grateful to him for giving me a part of Doc that will never die. He cannot know what a gift he gave me.
When I received those tracks, it took me a while to play them. I guess I knew I would be with the “real” Darryl again, even if only in spirit. And since I never got to say goodbye, I wasn’t sure if I was ready.
The music made me cry. I was totally unprepared. I didn’t know I cared that much, or that I would know the sound of him so quickly, like he was in the room with me. I listened for a long time, cried, laughed, and clapped my hands. I even heard him talking in a bantering intro, and I cracked up like I always did. He was something else, and that’s when I really remembered why I’d liked him so much in the first place.

Bert thought so much of Doc’s playing, he salvaged original tracks by Doc on steel from the ‘80’s, and has given us the simply beautiful “Rainy Day Serenade” to which Bert gave his perfect and restrained vocal. In my opinion, it is a stunning tribute to the subtlety and passion Doc was capable of. This is not the firestorm of picking I remember and know, but the song is a quiet beauty.

“I want to leave something behind when I go.
So they’ll know I was here.” Darryl really did say those words. And yes, the second part always came out funny, I don’t know why. Even though you knew he meant it. And he did.
Thank you Bert.

Garrison Elliott and “Rainy Day Serenade” can be found Here. As Bert said on his track notes, “Enjoy the haunting steel..”

Postscript 2012

“Darryl was deep as the sea.”-Garrison Elliott

I began writing this a few years ago. Before the time I began to say I was stuck and couldn’t write, that I had something to say and couldn’t say it, couldn’t string my thoughts together, and far before the time of just not having time to write.
I could not finish it.
The truth is, I didn’t know what the ending was. The “ending” was something I didn’t know, and didn’t wish to face, and was an ending much more difficult to deal with than the simple ending of a relationship. That had been easy. I walked away. While I didn’t really know that he was gone, I didn’t need to have an end.
The real ending came from Bert. He had what Doc left behind, so we’d know he was here. The ending is that he’s still here after all. He left his music with us, and our memories. He was The Doctor, after all.

Rest in peace, Darryl.

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Isi

Isi

You gave me the best parts of you.

So much of what I am, are the things I learned from you.

Your love of a story, especially a long one, your life long love of books and the written word, you gave me as a little girl, and it’s only grown. Your interest and appreciation for how things are made, all the details and efforts involved in creating the things we see and use everyday, you passed that on to me. I am told I am a person with a lot of curiosity, and some of it comes from knowing a lot goes into everything, because you told me so.
So many things about you are part of me. From you I learned to find the treasure in the overlooked, because you were a great salvager, gleaner, repairer and restorer of things others just didn’t have the eye or the patience to pay attention to. You brought so many things to life that most people would have missed.
It was a beautiful but over-used teak coffee table that you made perfect again, a working blow dryer when I was a teenager, a bookshelf you quietly made for me in the garage, just because I wished one out loud; a refurbished, reclaimed, polished, whatever, because you saw the treasure in things. It was a book you made sure you had an extra copy of so you could give one to me; it was my heritage; it was a story I heard a hundred times. You wanted me to know your treasures, the real riches you knew.

You taught me to look for quality and possibilities, over quantity and ease. You also taught me that most things are hard work. My work ethic comes from you, and my stubbornness, my determination and my humility; I watched and learned from you. I learned about opportunity from you too; that it’s up to me to find it, and that it takes a lot of sacrifice to make one’s dreams come alive.

I wish that I had spent more time with you. I am proud of who you were. You would be proud to know these things you gave me are parts of who I am, and they are some of the best parts. These things you passed on to me are my real riches in life; they are my treasures.
I love you and miss you Isi. I know you love me too. I know we’ll see each other again in a better place.

Always your daughter-
Tatiana

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Jess

Jess?

 

I found some pictures. Pictures of you.

Not the you I once knew. Gone now, the mass of black curls. Gone, the sharp cheekbones women whispered about, the slanted green eyes that pierced so much they frightened people. Gone now the tiny frame of muscle that had lifted me high and twirled with such frenzy as to become blur. Not there, I looked for it; the small, silent cat who walked on padded paws, claws pulled in.

 

Jess, I remember. Lithe and compact, deceptively strong, the kind they say you should watch out for. He could land on his feet and turn on you faster than you could regroup. That was evidenced to me more than once. It wasn’t rare to see some big dumb oaf try to take him on. Usually it was because of the eyes, and his size, but also because of me. Just because he was with me and some big guy thought it should’ve been him.

Big-guy could have never kept up with me. In fact, I would have left him wondering what had just happened to him. We both knew that.

Now that I think of it, I guess since then I probably gave that guy a try or two. You can probably guess the outcome.

 

I’m sorry, I was talking about you like you weren’t in the room. But in a way, I guess maybe you’re not, are you? I’m still having a time putting it all together. You are the same guy, after all. And then, you aren’t.

I am not the one you knew either.

It’s been a long time.

 

I think maybe what’s happened is this simple: You grew up. That makes sense. I guess I did too. Certainly, I’ve come at least as far as you.

It’s not that I myself look much different. No, I really don’t think I do. I might look better, even though I have laugh lines now. But I’ve replaced myself.

I didn’t do it all at once, and it was never intentional. Just eventually, enough of that old me died, and someone new settled in. I never knew it would be that way.

I tried to hang on to who I was and who we were and what we said. What we did. And one day, I just couldn’t find you anymore. I never really knew what happened, or couldn’t remember. More and more, a glass and a needle had made the shape of us into something I couldn’t see. But something I couldn’t leave either.

Finally, I let someone else do it for me, for us. He slid in like a snake, slithering into the space you left. He struck with something you couldn’t fight, a venom with no antidote. He helped me turn on you, away from you. It didn’t take long for me to see what I had done. What he had done. There was no undoing it, but I had to tell you. And I still don’t think the end came there.

 

I would’ve died. Without you, I would’ve died. You saved me but you couldn’t stop the seizures.

Before it happened, I remember us being inside. I’m standing in the barred doorway smoking, and someone’s yelling at me to get away from the door. “Don’t get too close to the bars.” Hands are reaching in to grab my lit cigarette. And voices are passing and lingering, calling to me with proposals and curses, insane whispers rustling and fading on, smells, Mota. In the pitch black, a sudden awareness of a body and a pair of eyes so close I can feel heat, see blinking. This time a hand reaching in, offering smoke.

I take another hit of cognac from the singer’s bottle, for courage. I’ll be outside soon. It’s cold. We finally head out together.

 

At first, it’s just like pins and needles. It starts in my feet and moves upwards, and I stand still looking at myself, trying to see something. You’re hissing at me now to walk, reminding me where we are, but my feet don’t do what I tell them. I look at your face but the picture is in pieces. Triangles and slivers, broken glass.

I know my head explodes. I hear a loud “pop”, when the pins and needles get that far up. When I hear it, the kaleidoscope vision I’ve had just before, vanishes. With that “pop”. And then there’s dark.

I hear screaming, a wailing, that builds and rises. A horrible sound and one I hope I never hear again. Absolute terror and agony in it, a person being skinned alive. I hear it from far away, and I strain to tell it’s source, and I can’t see a thing but blackness.

I’m trying so hard to fight my way out of the black. I can still hear everything, and you’re screaming my name. All my will is given to it, but I can’t help it. Just black. The blackest black I’ve ever known. Where do you think I am? I’m serious, do you know? Because I don’t. I’m gone, but trapped, still here. I am blind and I am dead, but still aware of me. Still hearing you scream at me. Still registering the impact when you start slapping me, but too dead to feel. In truth, it’s a worse pain that any other pain I’ve ever felt—that much I register. Dead, but alive. Afterwards, I will dream for years that I am dead. Dead, but aware. That’s where I am, I can’t come back, I can’t help you. I can’t do anything.

The people that see me when you bring me in think I’m out of it. And I am. By this time I’m not even twitching; I am silent, unresponsive, unfeeling, “unconscious”. I hear them say it. But I hear every word they say, every word you say. All these years later, I will still feel Erin’s hands on my face, over and over stroking, her voice the only peace like a song “It’s going to be all right—It’s going to be all right.” She says my name, over and again, tells me she is right here, right here, right here. The only one who seems to understand—I can still HEAR.

How does she know where I am? She knows. No one else does.

But you save me. You get me to her. You yell my name so many times I don’t fly off with those screams I hear, those screams that are really mine.

Erin knows about this place. She must hear the voices in my head that tell me not to listen, not to listen to her, that try to keep me with them. She never stops saying my name, never stops touching me, never gives up. I know it, know she is holding on, showing me a light I can’t see or really feel, but she keeps the tether of it wrapped around my soul.

 

God. Erin. I wish she knew. She was the one who saved us both that night.

 

I can’t tell the rest of the story now. I thought I could. But it turns out I’m not brave enough after all. You have your story, and I have mine, but you don’t know the rest of mine. If I could get through it without crying, without looking for the scar…

Maybe it’s better if I leave it that way. I know I can always fast forward. That’s easier.

 

I see you in pictures. One, I keep only in my head. No one else can see it.

You’re sitting on a kitchen chair out my back door playing slide on an old Les Paul. Tipping the chair back, rocking it. You’ve just had a haircut—the only one I ever saw you with. Your wild curls look tame. Like they might even stay that way.

We’ve never said a word before, least not that I can remember. But I hear what you’re playing and I can’t help it and I give you that look. And too much passes between us then and I can’t take it back. And you just say “How eloquent you are.” And you are playing slide again. But now it’s only for me.

 

I had another one; I kept it for years ‘til someone made me throw it away. It was you, again with the Les Paul, but it had nothing to do with me. I just liked the picture. My friends liked it; they thought you were someone I didn’t recognize; a rock star, maybe. They’d always ask who you were, and I’d just shrug. I liked it because I could see blue on you.

 

There’s more. The last place I knew about without me in it. A box, and my shaking hand on the cover and lifting, before I can say not to. And there it is, all of it. And I know you’re serious, because this is not the outfit of a dabbler. And I know you know I know. And I watch you walk like a ghost out the door for your appointment. I know what we’ve lost is never coming back.

 

There are several missing pages. I don’t know where those shots went, but I never have seen them anyway. I just leave them blank. The one I find next is someone else again.

And I ask him, “Are you happy?”

Then “Do you love her?” And you are silent for too long.

“ I never want to have again what I had with you. The kind of love that makes you DO what you would never do, under any other circumstances.”

And I know just what you mean.

You are comfortable, you tell me so. And it’s all right if we just sit holding each other all night, and if we cry for who we were because it’s all we’ll ever have of it now.

 

And then I found these others. Not mine at all, they’re just out there and I saw them.

They really do have not a thing to do with me, just like that other picture. Someone I don’t know; yet I’d know you anywhere.

Age has found us all, if we’ve survived. And you wear the weight of your soul in your eyes, in your flesh. Just as I do. It’s shocking, really, to see the scars. No, they’re not ugly. I know about them, anyway. Like you know about mine. All the same, we forget.

 

And I ask, “Are you happy?” and I can’t hear an answer. But you look comfortable, and so I tell you so. You reply by holding your guitar, the same as always.

And I ask, “Do you regret anything?” And you are silent again, but I think I see you smile.

 

Jess?

 

 It’s good to see you.

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Ruby Mountains

Ruby Mountains

Snowy Mountains

Lay your mantle on my back

When I’m leaving

Yes I’m leaving

Will you point me down the path

 

Ruby hold me

Tell me your sorrows

Drop your tears along the road

When I’m leaving

And I’m leaving

Light a candle for us both

 

Ruby Mountain

Ruby Snow

Keep your secrets from me still

When I’m leaving

You know I’m leaving

Keep what I have left you with

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I Saw You

A smoky golden eye. Green flashes sidelong, blazing. Shocks of bright blonde flying forward, and curls of chocolate tumble from under straw. Like clouds under sun. A warning: things are not always just what they seem. Are they?

Ensconced in shiny black, nestled in leather, giving it the gas. A satisfied purring powers down the highway with a soft growl; it knows the way home.

It’s a real hot day. A/C cranked to 60 and fan full blast with every vent pointed straight at a body part; even the back seat ducts angle for an armpit. Feels good, like drinking ice water too fast, for the brainfreeze. Gooseflesh, at 98 deg. outside.

Still, she leaves the windows down and reaches up, opening the sunroof. Yeah, the best of both worlds, and she don’t care if it defeats the purpose.

Noise, wind, scorching sun. Waves of hot and cold air weave together.

The phone rings and she ignores it. A bill collector, or someone complaining about someone…what was there to say?

 

Life was like this feeling once.

Roaring rushing heat and wind through a fast moving truck; this moment, just this moment she’ll forget there was ever any other. Life is good, and maybe it was always this easy.

Doesn’t matter that she’s almost forgotten, doesn’t even want to remember, days on days of walking with her toes in the sand.

Hot, so hot you willingly run into ice cold water and throw yourself at its mercy. Again and again. Just to walk, lay, play in the scorching sun until driven to enter the sea once more. Crashing, tumbling waves spraying brine and separating hair into snakes, seahorses, braids, all painted and bleached with streaks of summer and salt. Warmed to the core, never really cold at all. It gets in your flesh, that warmth, just like cold does into your bones.

She almost doesn’t remember that it’s so much like being on a bike, one that rattles your pelvis and your soul while it takes you through the wind. A hot day, but wrapped in leather to the bite of that wind. Just you and that wind and that rattle of bones and soul.

She’s almost forgotten the kind of hot and cold this is like, almost another lifetime.

 

A smoky golden eye. Green flashes sidelong, blazing. Flying hair. A deeper growl, a faster powering on the highway, a chase. Instinctively, reflexively, forgotten yes but still ingrained, the survivor that she is takes the grip. And there is a warrior girl at the wheel with sticks and stones in her mouth and at her feet, and her hands are ready for anything.

A voice calling, yelling, and it is for her. Relief comes when it is no stranger who follows, no random menace. And then that moment comes where the brains eye knows it recognizes before it knows what or who it sees and it brings a smile, a welcome and a nod and an open hand. And before that hand closes to a fist it already knows it’s mistake and that it fell asleep at it’s post, but there’s nothing now to do but maybe stop smiling, or smile anyway. But between the gas and the brake she is kicking herself, one foot kicking the other foot, each one and both at fault because one didn’t use the gas more, the other didn’t stop and turn left. Damn. And after all, there is nothing more to do but just smile, and just drive. She remembers who she used to be, who she isn’t. She remembers the rattle, and the mark on her soul.

Along side, keeping pace, a large brown dog hangs as far as he can from the back of a Jeep, and stares intently at her. What does he know. And why is he staring? And his driver smiles ear to ear and shouts “I saw you.”

She smiles, doesn’t smile, looks forward.

“You’re still beautiful.”

The dog appears to lean further from the Jeep, peer closer at her, as though wanting to say something too. And just before she leaves off the gas to be left behind, the driver throws his voice into the wind;

“I always did love a beautiful girl in a truck.”

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Neighbors

Frozen stiff

Not a figure of speech

In high desert winter

They found you

Not so hidden

But already far away

Victim of

Unrelenting bitterness

 

She handed that gun right over to you

Hospitable old gal

Gracious when you claimed

He’d offered to lend it

 

She hates to think of it now

Knowing she helped you

In ways she would never

Knowing she was

Unknowingly

Bidden

 

This country asks

That you not ask

Too many questions

Leaving others to be

Just who they are

Right now

And right now

She hands it over

Neighborly

 

They finally found you

Frozen like firewood

In the dead of winter

Far enough away

You were hidden

Already bitten

Unrelenting

And bitter

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Do I Forgive You?

Do I forgive you?

 

Do I?

Do I really?

 

Hate you

I loved you

I wished you dead

 

A little girl

I knew even then

Shocked into knowing

Nothing would stop you

 

Only the ash and dust

You finally became

 

Dead

You are dead

So many years now

 

Hate you

Loved you

Wished you dead

 

When I heard

Satisfaction

Did not come

 

Instead

I saw you

Lifted

 

I saw you

Clean

And whole

 

Free

 

I sent my wish

Of redemption

Up

 

I did not look

To the burning

The burning forever

 

You wished on me

 

I did not smile

A party

Nasty

Vicious

And justified

Inside

 

I did not conjure

Torment

Hell

And the sickening agony

Of shame

You pierced me with

 

Instead

I saw you

Lifted

 

I saw myself

Clean

And whole

 

Free

 

I ended this

With me

 

I forgive

 

For the rest of us

 

For all of us

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Magic Words

Magic Words.

 

I love someone who does not say them. Those two magic little words: “I’m sorry”. In fact, he doesn’t say much at all. At least, not in words.

 

Words; everything about me; words. I dream them, wake with them on my tongue, in my head. I see them on the wall, in color. Like pictures. Like things I can taste. I feel them, like jewelry in a box. Eyes closed, hands dipping and running through their shapes. They are fat, voluptuous even, or small and sharp and jagged. They are light and airborne, or fast and furious, or heavy, lazy, slow. Sometimes pondered hours or days, sometimes having their way with me right now, having no consideration for my wishes but bursting forth like their own beings.

Sometimes I choke on them and cry for this insistence of theirs, for the trouble it brings me. They emerge into being through my mouth or my hands and begin lives of their own. Wouldn’t it be easier to be a placid and taciturn person? This being such a stretch of the imagination, I settle for the wish of being “temperamentally disinclined to speak”, a web definition for taciturn. It sounds like someone I would like to be yet know I can never.

 

And some of this comes back to those two magic words. “I’m sorry”.

This is the way I was raised. Say:

“I’m sorry.”

You say:

“Excuse me”, “Forgive me”, “My apologies”, “How can I make things right?”

Even if you find fault in the other, even when you think you don’t feel it, there is grace in the action, the words.

In my own experience it is disarming and “I’m sorry” can melt away a war brewing. It conveys unwillingness to offend, hurt or fight. It conveys care. It can be humbling to hear these words from another, especially when this other may have been within their rights to begin with. For me it has often instantly diffused what could have been trouble and blame, and opened the gates to gratitude and bonding.

 

But I begin to rethink my mindset about this.

 

I had shared my life with one who easily said, “I’m sorry”. About so many things, in so many ways he said it, and he could say it, elaborate on it, for hours, days, years.

He fulfilled my need of someone to talk to. Talk, he did. And talk, and talk. Where I see and feel and dream words, he seemed born with them as a large toolbox under his arm. Later he filled a vehicle with them and became his own traveling show, just he and his words. He has learned to use his words to manipulate his surroundings, and those surroundings are the people he gathers to himself. He moves quickly and frequently as traveling shows should, taking what he needs and trading his trumped up goods for whatever he can get.

He still says, “I’m sorry”.

It doesn’t mean anything, except that he wants something.

It doesn’t mean a thing.

He is “sorry” for the same things, over and over. It never changes. “Care” isn’t really present. Perhaps like me, he has observed the social value in being “sorry”, but there is no personal regret involved. It’s merely a tool.

 

But I love someone who does not say them. Those two magic little words: “I’m sorry”.

 

He has expressed at times the idea that “sorry” means you’re never going to do something again. If you were really sorry you wouldn’t.

Knowing we are human, I can’t say I agree with this belief, and find it unreasonable. Being human, I find this impossible most of the time. I also find offense in such judgment when I have said, “I’m sorry” to diffuse a situation, to make peace, but haven’t really seen a wrong in myself. After all, I had the grace to say it.

And there it is: our concepts of what “I’m sorry” means, how it should be used.

I’m challenged by his idea of “sorry”. I can’t think the way he does. It means he usually doesn’t use it, even when it would be a powerful tool. Because it isn’t in his toolbox; his toolbox has few words in it. And because while I do use tools, my heart has to be in it to use this tool, and the implication is that it’s not if I have to be sorry for the same thing all over again.

 

Magic Words.

 

I love someone who does not say them. Those two magic little words: “I’m sorry”. In fact, he doesn’t say much at all. At least, not in words.

 

Yesterday was one of those times, a time of no minds meeting in this house. My words flew and now those words will be remembered above whatever they stemmed from. As I’ve said, they take on a life of their own.

I was sorry, but not nearly as sorry as I was for what had started it. For that I wanted to hear some kind of apology. I wanted an acknowledgement that he had some part in things, that he had hurt me. I wanted some kind of discussion. But it was not forthcoming.

 

I think, “I try to be fair; what’s right is right. We should talk about this. I want you to understand, or try to, so I want to understand.”

But I never will.

 

I see the collection of small birdhouses in my plum tree is growing. It is a holding area for rustic birdhouses made of reclaimed barn wood. Birdhouses that eventually sport living roofs of succulents that I create. People love them and pay me for them. This is one of the ways I make money, and a lot has gone into their evolving designs. I am no carpenter, so I am gifted with these birdhouses collecting in my trees by the one I love.

 

I wanted words; I wanted “I’m sorry”. He went outside and made me more birdhouses.

 

This morning there was a short note by my keyboard, carefully placed. It said simply, “I love you.”

 

The words were not from his toolbox. And they were beautiful.

 

Magic Words.

 

I love someone who does not say them. Those two magic little words: “I’m sorry”. In fact, he doesn’t say much at all. At least, not in words.

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So Long

I’ve lost you

I think for good this time

I’ve lost you again

I’ve just now realized

How much I need you here

 

I’ve looked everywhere

I’ve tried everything

And I can’t replace you

I’ve pleaded time

And time again

But you aren’t coming back

 

I guess now it’s up to you

Or fate

Or the stars

Nothing I say

Seems to penetrate

Your stubborn heart

You’ve strayed

And nothing I can do

Will bring you home

 

I filled your pages

Lovingly

Well, yes, I ripped some out

And once or twice threatened

To quit you

But you were always around

Waiting

And I came back, didn’t I?

 

No ones pages quite like yours

So comfortable and worn

You always knew me best

My words filled you up

And made you

I made you different from the rest

 

I wrote to you

Faithfully

Well, yeah, I broke your spine

And once or twice, I hated you

And left you behind

But you were always around

Taking it

And waiting

And I gave myself back, didn’t I?

 

No one else can take your place

So long, now

Just a memory

I’ll think of you

When I stare into another’s face

 

I’ve lost you

I guess for good this time

I’ve lost you

I’ve just now realized

How much I need your ear

 

All these years

I’ve told you everything

I told you time

And time again

You were the only one

But now you have nothing

To say to me anymore

 

I keep thinking you’re going to be there

Next to my pillow

But there’s just an empty space

You took all my secrets

All my hidden meanings

You took it all

With you when you left

 

My words filled you up

And made you

I made you different from the rest

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