Diagnosis

May 27, 2011. I'm still here. Yesterday I started to lose my mind, a reaction to an antidepressant I was taking in a brutally misguided attempt to quit smoking. It backfired and I spent the day pacing around in my parents' driveway, chain smoking, terrorizing my ex boyfriend with needy phone calls, and watching Project Runway with my Mom in her sweet attempt to distract me from my own instability. I wanted to go back home, to Brooklyn, but my mother asked me to stay for another day so I could drive her to the doctor. So that's where I am, I'm the parking lot of the medical complex, still chain smoking in the unexpected heat, waiting. I make an apologetic call to my ex and forge an awkward plan to have dinner with him later, once I'm back in the city. But for now I'm waiting, in the waiting room where I let myself doze. It's an hour, much longer than either of us expected, before my mother comes out of the office, and I meet her at the reception desk.

"It's not good," she says.

We go to a diner after even though neither of us want to eat.

"I don't think I can accept a kidney from any of you," she says. "Maybe I can get one from a stranger."

"Stop it," I say. It might be the only sane thing I've said all week. "You have to let us try." I already know, without really knowing, that it's going to be me. "What would you give up," I ask, "if you could have your mother back?"

A few hours later, I'm on the train, rushing to meet my ex-boyfriend, who I will only a month later admit that I'm still in love with, before he goes off to spend the weekend with the mystery person he's using to replace me. The train is only semi-crowded, and I have a seat to myself. I curl up where I hope no one can see me, and cry. Stage four kidney disease.

We Thought

We Thought

We thought we knew what love was,

its smell and shape,

imagined it subtle and curved,
petals of light perfume.

We knew we knew how love looked,

and we built it,

a mannequin of misplaced words.

We learned the language of silence,

the idioms of disconnection,

memorized with razor-edged flash cards,

and pressed forward into black,

without legend or compass.

Where we found ourselves was nowhere,

ducking under starlight, lost,

a graveyard finally emptied of souls.

What we knew was nothing,

nothing at all, and our mistake hangs over us,

a sky poked full of holes.

The silence stretches to forever,

swallowing all horizon,

swallowing all sky.

(10.20.11)

On Richard: Now

The man sleeping next to me is not Richard. That’s the way it’s going to be from now on, for some version of forever. I find myself, in someone else’s bed, surrounding myself with memories of Richard as if somehow they could bring him back, the Richard I thought I loved, as if somehow they could undo everything that’s happened. Nothing will bring it back, but the memories crowd me regardless.

When we’d first get into the bed, he would hold me, put one arm around me, and I would take that hand and hold it to my chest. His fingers were freakishly large and it was sometimes a little painful when he’d squeeze my hand, but I’d stay there, on my side, intertwined with him, until he’d say, “Sleepy time,” and roll away from me.

I don’t remember him saying that he loved me, except for that first time, but I’m sure that he did, at least at first, I’m sure that he said it often. I try to hold all the memories that I can, but they slip through my thin fingers. The memories that stay are not the most invited ones. I don’t want to think about them.

I don’t want to think about Richard at all, but this first time, waking up with someone, this first time in years, it’s as if he’s the one here with me, and I feel guilty, because the man sleeping next to me, gently snoring next to me, is a beautiful man who has never hurt me, and I should close my eyes and let my dreams intertwine with his, but instead I lay on my back, staring towards a ceiling that I can’t see, and let my mind fill a bit with Richard.

I wonder if he felt anything like this that first night he spent with someone else. I shouldn’t wonder. Richard was not me, did not feel things the way I feel things, and Richard is gone.

I get up, put on pants and shoes, no socks or shirt, and a heavy coat, and go into the morning rain. I cross the street and stand in front of the building that used to be my home. The first night I spent with Richard was here, but I don’t remember that, or the last one, or any of the other nights I spent with him here before I left. I do remember him in my bedroom, telling me sad stories, crying because he had to leave me, and I remember him standing at my window on the morning of his birthday wearing just a towel. I may only remember that because I took a picture of it. I wish I could remember better things.

I wish I didn’t remember at all.

After my cigarette I go inside again, climb back into the bed and let another man’s body warm me. He wakes, a little, and smiles. I smile too, resting my head on his chest, and wait for Richard to leave me again. I moved to a different city, to a different life, but he’s the one who left, maybe the one who was never really there. He’s not here now and I close my eyes.

The man next to me is not Richard.

This is how it is, now.

--

In May of 1998, I wrote a short fiction piece called "On Richard." It's always been one of my favorite works, but it's definitely fiction. Now, thirteen years later, given some things that have happened recently, I thought it might be interesting to take the first line of that story and use it as the first line of a new piece, this time purely autobiographical. I hope this is the last thing that I ever write about Richard, but I make no promises.

Still Here

Still Here

You may snuff the heavens, silence the hum of the stars,

But I am still here, and

You may turn the rivers to stone, cities to flood,

And I will still be here, still

Standing here, still,

Watching you inventing havoc and gathering madness,

Watching you try to break me, to wake me

From this dream of creation,

Knowing you cannot sway me, and you cannot

Steal me from my home,

My cities and rivers and stars and heavens.

I am still here, always here, and ever still.

8.1.11

Black Hole

Black Hole

The black hole is not evil, you see, and not even black,
Only in that no light can live inside it,
Nothing can live inside it, no warmth or love,
But it does not mean harm,
Does not mean to disintegrate and dissipate
All light and love

I found that singularity, and I thought
The black hole isn't evil, it means no harm,
And I thought
I could bring some brightness to that darkest place,
And I smiled,
And I saw the light within me,
Disintegrated and uninvented,
Everything bright about me, and everything dark,
Destroyed

It isn't evil, or even black, only to my eyes,
Which expect light, light returned.
The warmth must be somewhere inside it.
That's what I still think.
Flying as fast as I can from that place,
The place we shared,
Flying as fast as I can,
Though possibly not fast enough.

7.31.11

Day 26

It's been twenty-six days since we've had any communication. The last time we went into radio silence, you broke it after that many days, so as we move through today into tomorrow, we will set a new record -- for no one but me to observe -- for days without contact.

I'll confess that, although I've managed to avoid saying anything about what's happened publicly, until I sat to write this, that I've run a dialogue with you in my head this whole time. No, not a dialogue. A monologue. Your input is notably absent. I think you had to know it would be like this for me, given the way you did this, that I'd be left waiting, wondering, addressing the air. I think you had to know. I hate you for doing this to me, again.

If you did contact me, I think I know what I'd have to say:

You only get to kick a puppy so many times before it either bites you or runs away.

I think you're a good person, overall, but there's another person that lives inside your body who is not so good, not so nice. He's selfish and cruel. I've met him a few times and I always made excuses for his appearances, tried to mitigate the awful things he said to me and the thoughtless way he treated me by contrasting him, and the sparsity of his visits, to the other, more visible, more present, nicer parts of you. But this time, by letting the nasty version of you have the last word, or the absence of a word in this particular case, you've left me, for the past month, with no access to the calmer, softer, sweeter you, and so it's been harder to forgive you your jealousy and your temper. Harder. No, it's been impossible.

So now I have two impulses: to try to hurt you back or to get the hell away from you.

I have done petty things designed to sting you, but I've always immediately regretted them, and they don't compare at all to the level of hurt I'd want to inflict now. I don't know if you even have an idea how much you've hurt me, always under the aegis of protecting yourself, always flying that banner. It's not a good enough excuse for what you've done and what you're continuing to do. There's so many horrible things I could say in return, if given the opportunity, but.... I don't want to. Writing this publicly where probably no one will actually see it, well, that's about as nasty as I can bring myself to get. I will always care about you, and the thought of inflicting pain on you brings me no lasting joy. I've been told that I shouldn't continue to care, that you deserve whatever I might want to unleash on you, that you never deserved me at all, but I know the other you. I loved the other you. I always will. That said, you only get to kick a puppy so many times.

That just leaves me the other option.

I will forgive you eventually, of course. As the cliche goes, time heals all wounds. This is just a phase, for both of us. But if we will be "friends forever" as you said just a day before cutting me out without warning, well, I'm skeptical. You didn't trust me, when you could have, and I trusted you, when I shouldn't have. So it goes. This is how it goes.

You wanted a life without me, so that's what you'll get.

Now

Now

don’t believe in
love, now, i see through
that sugary skin, i
rip at it with teeth and
sharpened nails, recoil from
the rotting flesh of
desperation, of need.

now i will not cover lies with
lies, will not stitch up
that delusion with
this dull needle, i will not

believe in love, not
now, not as anything
as an orchestration,
a well-choreographed deception,
by animals,
wild and mostly
untamed things,
who are smart enough,
now, to
fool themselves:

dancing in pairs, figurines
on a chipped music
box machine, circling there,
waiting for the tin notes to stop.

6.10.11