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14 de Febrero 2009
yesterday
it began as simply as any conversation about step fathers could and then went careening out of control.
i realized early on in the day, before high noon crept up on us, hungry and failing, plodding unromantically across the parking lot to the cash machine that
the stories about my life hang innocently on white walls, artfully lit and beautifully framed behind an eighth inch of glass. but no one ever comes to the gallery, the cost of admission is often more than the simply curious are willing to pay.
but if you know the stories well already, if you are interested because you have already paid higher prices to get tickets to shows that will distract you from images like these and that is no longer working because you lived through it your defenses are wearing thin.
maybe you find that ever since you met me, you pay higher and higher premiums to avoid the images. you can't afford to continue to tell yourself you are all alone, you are going broke buying what you thought were cheap distractions.
with each conversation between us, you are realizing that you lived through it, the truth of which is a double edged sword, that my story makes yours true, that your story makes mine true.
and now you just want to check the details of my past against your own memories: of course you will want to drive past the house, throw rocks through the windows of my childhood home because you hope i will do the same for you, when circumstances and courage allow.
you will find camaraderie in my shaking limbs as i drive you past scene after scene, pointing to the line and form of my aching heart
and i look over at you, keeping watch for someone you've never seen knowing you would recognize him in an instant.
and as the memories of crashed bicycles, bloodied lips, childhood lost, stolen innocence and bittersweet independence shine like light through the trees in a the thick forest of my reserve
you realize you willingly paid the fare to take this trip, you are glad for a tour guide who tells a familiar story in an unfamiliar landscape, you listen carefully just in case i unravel the riddle because you have been puzzling and unpuzzling it for so long.
and this is the work of healing:
i have worn this security blanket every day of my life and then
you held the previous shape, the withered corner of the coverlet, so gently, not hopefully, not ignorantly, not naively, not innocently,
you stuck your finger sweetly through the hole in the corner of the old blanket and pointed out the frayed edges when i tried to ignore them.
you said, "no wonder...", you said, "it makes sense", you said, "this is what friends do".
and you saw how cold and afraid i was even when i pretended i was warmed by it, all alone underneath its uneven darning, and dropped purl. and i'm sure it was your stealthy fingers that undid my own, clutching to cover myself, and, now exhausted and almost naked yourself, you hugged me quickly, quietly and though you knew i was angry and cold, you sent me on my way home, to show off the soft skin of my real self that had been finally revealed after all your working to teach me: there is a self with soft parts under this false comforter.
and though i don't know what it will feel like, sound like, look like i think i am finally ready to pull the thread, unweave the woolen fibers until they are loosed and almost flying away, just when things seem to be about to blow away i roll them between my hands and retie, reknot, rewind them in a new shape, almost magically, but heartily and almost sweating from the exertion of looping one centimeter at a time.
what was once the tattered and snagged security blanket is now a long and holy line of yarn untangled and dangling sweetly, dangerously dragging behind me and i am filled with hope, not much, but more than ever before, that i can make a sock, a sweater, a scarf and a body part or two will be warm again. and though this is where i am most afraid i will consider, in fits and starts, hooking the loops loosely so that this will again be a blanket to wrap you in when your own story fails and falls away, on a sober night a long time from now,
and warm the whole of you against my story because that seems a fitting gift, a way to thank you.
because your voice reverberates against the inside of my cold and bare body and it says over and over
no wonder...
it makes sense...
this is what friends do...
and the heat from the tears i shed warms my eyes and my face
and i think of how
you simply tied each phrase to my story with a length of string, harvested from your own unraveling quilt
and for the first time i didn't undo all your work (i watched your nimble digits curl the frayed edges of short pieces, scraps really, pulled loose from your most valuable possesion,
i watched you slwoly tuck them under, around and pull tight);
for once i listened.
| By crymytinyflood | 6:04 PM
