Broken: A Plague Journal
Page 20
wondered what the end destination
for a course charted across freckles would be;
was satiated on a southern path,
and his tongue remembers.
they do leave texture:
he preferred that alternate smooth.
you don’t need to know.
you don’t need
wrote poems of war
in his own blood, vomit and shit.
such holographic wills are legally-binding
if properly witnessed;
i call you to bear witness.
burned all the steak-ums
and days later dreamt the gutter was filled with the war dead.
to walk across that desert to you...
convinced himself that he could pinpoint the
exact moments they’d erase him from memory:
11:11, 11:42pm, 7:41am.
he’d sometimes wake for no reason with an urgent sense of nothing.
resigned to the same status as the dead,
intangible.
wanted to write her into a book,
chose words for actions, phrases for breathing
the way she smelled at night.
hid the explosions of the midnight city
behind headphones, sirens bleeding through,
once watched them hose the blood from the street
and gasoline
after two vans danced around the corner, tangled,
the very spot the crazy man had shouted in dozens:
“Mayor Matt Driscoll is an asshole.”
until sun rose, traffic drove over glass.
sat on the roof sometimes because
he loved the smell of sun on tar.
reminded him of his lung.
a spiraled coil, a field of red:
he carried within him delicious genetics
for heart disease, Alzheimer’s, a predisposition
for children with inexplicable holes in their chests.
vowed that his line would end with him,
since his siblings did a good job of breeding.
reserved core terrors
for plural pronouns and the fear of substituting new names
into well-worn phrasal constructs.
felt disingenuous and watched ceilings
because he was so afraid everyone would see through his skin.
underreported the number of cartons
overreported the frequency of meals
never told anyone of the hours he’d spend lying on the floor.
once rocked forth, back, forth after lighting
a candle now long melted into the rock fabric of
a birthday gift, a monkey sculpture veiled with dozens of
dollar-store candles
[once wrote a poem]
prayed the first and only time.
[these penance years
never restarted his computer when prompted.
allowed frost to build to ice in the freezer compartment
until he hacked the tip off his one good knife
and breathed freon enough to make him sit down.
the landlord paid because he lied about the affair.
not once used his toaster oven.
wondered if cats saw ghosts when
they looked past him at nothing, attentively intent.
wondered if cats talked to his dead.
fatigued by himself
but just wanted to try something different for once
in a life filled with static days.
the downstairs neighbor ran out to the street
to help what was left of the white van driver:
he stood at the window and counted the pieces of her
as he drank milk straight from the carton:
some conveniences come solely from a life without partners.
the end result of the total mathematical extrapolation of
the designed ignition of infinity:
collapse entire, cessation,
wanted to beat that compression of
all possible heavens by a record of
twenty, thirty billion years.
the next time, that would be it
because there’s only so much a person can give
before recognizing such giftings deplete the
essential desires to remain.
had the mis/fortune of being an artist
born with a brain hardwired for logics and maths;
some chapters augmented his internal mathematics of desire,
her curves and planes and volumes.
slept nightmares drawn from futures forged
of the gutted nickel cores of rock seas, unbreathing.
woke too many nights to the recurring image:
the staccato tattoo of a war
without the possibility of surrender.
jog shuttle to pause, play:
rupture, rend, rive, split, cleave:
edited a past away.
what you thought would disappear
lies
and waits:
wednesdays are the days we fight.
i’d ask you to call, but i know money’s tight
the true change of that transaction
still punched through your face
i’d call every day if i could, but we can’t.
january cuts a deeper distance
and sometimes i can’t taste the words you type.
you often remind me of just how fragile i try not to be but am.
once you told me i was asleep when you got out of bed,
asleep but i still asked you if you were leaving and
looked so sad; i’ve tried dying those reflexes to departures.
i wonder if i whispered;
it feels like i would have whispered it
if asked not in sleeping, if asking awake,
if asking you to stay.
once you reached for the light switch and
in doing so, a tear fell from your cheek to mine.
i never told you that because i didn’t want you to know
how close you’d come to breaking my heart with that tear.
once we didn’t shout over something about dinner
but it felt like it, and i apologize for not remembering the specifics.
i wanted you to leave the room so i could pull the bones from the chicken,
and stood there listening to the hot fat silently burn my fingertips
and hoping to hear you laugh at something the television could provide.
we’ve fallen, and we’ll stumble, still learning this
and i know the insecurities have to be exhumed and waked.
i’ve buried so many of my loves, and you met me
in an interesting time, i’ll admit.
i don’t doubt you.
smoking my last cigarette
and the snow’s too deep today.
“come here.”
i remember the shapes of those moments, the
Modular Calculus
we figure each time we assert.
how “I’ll be right back” palimpsests
the variables with which i’ve measured times,
two minutes, five. thirty, after fifty-
nine, i shift to hours and trust you’ll be back
eventually.
others never inspired such trust.
i think the definition of a partner is
someone you always want near, but
you aren’t afraid to let them wander because
they come back.
our calculus is of additions:
cats, green radios, our bed, our house,
augmenting concepts of home with plural pronouns,
subtracting places and histories with a honed
methodological approach, methodically
approaching methods of subverting:
i’m a capitalist confused by your anarchies,
but i’ll learn you through them.
i rea
d fascination into you.
all the internal conflicts and external dissatisfactions
i learned a collection of decades ago to forget;
you reopen convenient scars and ask me to look.
it helps that you hold my hand.
i can imagine your fingertips typing, those
same fingertips i cradle with my tongue, tasting us,
those tips urging words into action, the letters a confusion
sometimes that adds to my wonder of the way
your mind works.
our mathematics—
i want to learn you and buy our cat.
paul hughes, come here.
i’d ask the same of you, but your name isn’t mine;
i’ve had dreams that part of it will be.
i’ve had dreams of entering that city in conquest with you.
i’ve had dreams of a coastal life.
i’ve
because i’ve never been loved like this.
but
a heart can only break so many times before
you start to lose the important pieces
the nearest unsteady light
the return of books
or the brittle desire thereof
t-shirts you will never wear again
pajama pants too big for you
too big for her
thursdays are the days we fade
a fist bundle of broken glass
beating, chiming sunrises
echoing, screaming loss
each departure a new crack
each departure a new opportunity
for scar tissue to encapsulate
for the appearance of normalcy
but the grinding of the heart’s edges goes on.
the nearest unsteady light
a burn barrel that wouldn’t accept the flowers i bought you
the oven that ate the pumpkin pie
i’ve put the rest of you in a box
when are you coming?
when are you coming?
please don’t ask if you don’t want my answer.
please don’t ask if you don’t want me
because i’m assembled from memories that could be lies
missings so muches and i love you toos
and i think of you all the times.
maybe it’s because you taught me how to play checkers
in bed
and i beat you the first time.
maybe only a poet could ever deserve to love you.
but i tried to learn your language
the subtleties and nuances of you
and there were great plains of you i never saw,
but i wanted to with everything i had.
which edges were lies?
that there are people who will wander the world,
never knowing the path of damage they leave behind,
always convincing themselves that it’s okay to walk away.
that we are downgraded.
that he hoped that someday, someone would feel for him a fraction of the love he jettisoned into the world.
that there are people who deserve your touch more than i ever could.
that there are some trips you have to take alone.
that i am faithful to dead causes.
that there are no second chances and barely any firsts.
that we can be cheated of futures that were never ours.
that i will never forget the airport.
that i put holes in my body.
that we ran through a city and we were in love.
that i’d go around by Doney’s
to see you once more.
to laugh at that.
with you.
you told me where i stood.
i fell down.
to learn that language, to speak with your tongue
i’ve forgotten your taste but only mostly.
you were imprinted.
you’ve given me a window
to count every fiber of my being,
and every one agrees:
my worth has an inverse relationship to proximity.
maybe if i were a poet,
i’d give my life for yours.
i’d walk those streets with you.
calling all certainties forth to question: think, miss, love.
the heart’s sudden inability to unravel memory from lie.
we had a song.
the way a jaw works over words that won’t form
the way the chest hitches as the devastation soaks in
the gasping, flailing loss underlying disbelief.
of course you’ll see me again.
of course you’ll see me before i go.
of course i still love you.
of course.
of course i miss you.
think about you.
dream of you.
of course you’ll see me again.
of course
i’ve never seen any of them again.
of course.
because i would come to you
over the water
through hills and memory
i would come to you,
i promise.
through the fragile web of the distances between us
accelerating into turns
never looking back,
i would come to you.
i would run.
i would promise.
if you asked me.
i’d run alongside your code forever
girding for wars of desire without end.
was never known to command respect from his peers
was known to steal his fourteen minutes in fragments
was known to sometimes allow ashes to burn on his forearms and face
while waiting patiently for them to gutter out
because at least it was something nearing proof
that he was there at all
jog shuttle to pause, play:
rupture, rend, rive, split, cleave:
edited a past away.
what you thought would disappear
lies
and waits.
it wasn’t love
but it was something as painful.
OF SPLENDOR, OF MISERY
“If we’re going to do this,” Jean Reynald paused to snuff out the unfiltered cigarette between his fingertips and the ashtray glass, “I want my ship back.”
“That’s.. impractical.” Cellophane wrapper crumpled in Paul’s hand. Next, foil. These late-time strategery sessions were bronzed with a nicotine aftertaste. “We’ve looked for—”
“Maggie or nothing. That’s the deal.”
“I can’t just—”
“Paul.”
Eyes lock across distances deeper than a tabletop, a war machine. “Fine. We’ll get her. Any other requests for your strike team?”
“Only two more. Relatively easy.”
“Let me guess—”
“Simon.”
“And pilot?”
“Michael.”
“Of course.”
Reynald’s silvered eyes narrowed as he sipped the last of his monkey-picked oolong. “Son, I know there are places you don’t want to go, and people you never thought you’d be asked to bring in. I wouldn’t ask you this if I didn’t know that we need them. That’s the cold truth of this: we need them.”
Flick, scratch, click. Paul inhaled, talked through the smoke’s exit. “I know.”
“Why?”
“Hmm?”
“This place—Why’d you bring me here?”
The wait—The weight of being whole draped the winter plains with a tougher skin than dustings of snow could provide. He’d dreamt worlds into realities, and this was how he now regarded the ghost space: more Minnesota January than Michigan February. He’d been to neither place, now never would.
The work-shined leather gloves were warmer than they’d ever really been. The realizations of ghosts were in the details of perception. T
here were trees on those edges, timothy spines interrupting the cadence of the frozen ground’s rises and falls. Grabbing and tearing one of the winter hay stalks without gloves would have been painful; the way timothy snaps, inserts itself into the palm when grabbed, when dry. Under gloves’ pressure, there was no danger, a buffer between red-stitched palms and infection. Ground those now-weeds into chaff. Alfalfa barely broke the snow’s surface; it was pliant, without will, bending to the white pressure and hiding until rising again, desiccated, in the thaws.
“If we’re going to make this work, there are things about me you have to accept.”
Alina walked to his side, faced the small snowed stone, one of dozens (hundreds, thousands?) across the ghost space. Glove reached for glove, but his hand was slack, not returning her attempt at reassurance through pressure. That place contextualized a particular, peculiar fear: he’s gone already, no hand in that glove; this is how distance feels, tastes of wind.
“Say something.”
“What do you—”
“Anything. Something.” But in that expanse, silence seemed the most appropriate discourse.
“I—”
“Not that, not here. There’s no way you could, not here.”
“Get out of my head.”
It hung there.
The glove under her grasp grew a framework of bones and action as it pulled away. He knelt before the stone, swept away the sugared surface. She thought of childhoods she’d not known spent building forts in the snow, a sunny day lying warmth, hardpack bleeding into snowpants, numbing knees and afternoon hot chocolate before suppertime. Snotty noses frozen solid. What semblance of a childhood she’d survived had had alternate definitions of forts, bleeding, and freezing.
“Know this: this man beneath me, this boy, he died because I chose typing over listening. Stayed home to finish writing a book and never looked at his warnings. Spent years trying to convince myself it wasn’t my fault, but I know... If I’d listened—”