Walking Far From Home

I have spent years with a picture of you in my pocket

Folding and unfolding a brief moment so many times

the photograph has become warped and

I don’t know what it looked like in the first place

Our most recent meeting was a melancholy affair

Filled with laughter and knowing silence

I looked across the table at a young woman

I never actually understood

Two dots on a map that only ever knew distance

Growing separately, independently until

tattered memory was all that remained

but it’s going to be okay.

See, I went for a walk last night and

Loved every minute of it.

The moon off set the bracing cold

With an alluring grace

I only thought of you twice:

Once when two people laughed distantly

And again when the noise settled.

I hoped that you were happy wherever you were

We all have dreams that never see any light

That’s one of those hard facts of life

And I am white-knuckled, like a vice grip that’s 

learning how to let go. Slowly, slowly.

You know as well as I do that

Time unfolds exactly the way it means to

And so too goes this prayer for acceptance:

“it’s going to be okay.”

Most of the people I know squeeze their own lives so tight they can barely breathe.

blue in the face, heart at the bottom of their shoes

I know what it’s like to have white knuckles but,

Inside, I am a vice grip that’s learning how to let go. Slowly, slowly.

I dreamt that I was on the phone with your ghost last night. I remember feeling desperately afraid to hang up, like I would never get to speak with you again. I memorized your voice while you talked about this one time when we were happy. The memory played over everything else like an old home movie. 8 mm film and no sound. I pushed you on a swing and you looked back and smiled. I said that I missed you, and then

I woke up in the dark with my hand on my ear.

See, I like to wish for sun when it’s pouring rain. Sun so thick it drips like honey off my fingers and collects in pools around my feet.

Gentle wind curling her hair while she sets under a great big oak tree and I rest my head in her sundress covered lap.

That’s what I thought of when she cried. It was easier just to go someplace else—if for no other reason than to get out of the rain.

They have 10 o’clock meetings downtown for the red-eyed and any-collars. I go because it’s the only joint in town that’s got decaf; I think I just like the taste. Halfway through, this gruff afro-poet guy that introduced me to the program speaks up… maybe just to break the peaceful silence

“Hi I’m Mark. I’m an addict, and man, people like us, we ‘go there’ over shit that don’t matter. We ‘go there’ cause we’re hungry, angry, lonely and so, so tired. Fuckin, then when we come up against sum’n that does matter, we can’t deal with it so we ‘go there’ over that, too. Get to a point where we just stop experiencing things all together. Get to a point when we’re numb and we can’t do it anymore but we keep going cause that’s all we know… Today, all I know is whatever I might be feeling I don’t go back to those alleyways… shit’ll just make it worse. ‘Cause I been to those alleyways and they’re long and they’re dark and maybe today with the help of God or whatever, I can keep walkin’ past them bitches.”

I sit there stunned, like I just found out alleyways lead to where I don’t want to go. Like all this time, all I’ve ever had to do was look straight down them; appreciate the dimensions of the place, remember what it was like to be in the dark and then walk past.

I gather my coat and cigarettes, check the clock for no reason and leave noiselessly.

I think cities breathe. In and out. I think they have a pulse that beats with the lives of the millions of people that make them beat. They hum insistently like life is happening everywhere all at once. Think of it like a call to arms, or a mother waking up her sleeping child. And she says she says “Wake up! the world wants to greet you.”

Someday this is going to be an old photograph. Kids will look at it and say, “Mom, you were so beautiful!” And you’ll laugh like, “What do you mean ‘were?!’”