through my paperround last year i met a wonderful man. he used to walk his dog as i’d deliver papers and we started talking around the time i started writing this blog. i think he’s 82: he must have mentioned it a while back. and i’m afraid there’s nothing literary about him: his existence is one of uncouth coutesy.
i quit the paperround a while back now but i still see him every sunday. nine o’clock in the morning, like church. he’s my little christian connection: even S is nowhere near taking his place. he gave me a bible with a picture of him in his youth stuck at the back, so that i remember him. secretly, i think, he believes that it will help me find him in heaven: he believes i will go there after all.
to my friends, this man is “the old man”. to me, he is much more than that. it may be true that i meet him every sunday partly because i feel like it’s my obligation, but also because somewhere beneath my skin there’s a tendon that connects me to him.
his wife died last night. or the night before that. and there’s no more words because i’m hurting for him. because how can one even begin to describe his pain?
i had made them a card only this march: they celebrated their 60th wedding annivesary.
sometimes he told me he wondered if she ever loved him but i know that was only because he loved her more than anything else. ever.
and it’s a little late for him to tell her, but i hope she knew. i think she knew.
Posted in chapters of my life
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bonne anniversaire!
i like the way it rings, reverbrating from the eardrums straight into the heart. it’s been a year.
only.
already.
and i don’t know how to feel, i just feel the need to thank you for the knowledge that someone in the world matters more than the world itself. je t’adore. and i’m not joking. sometimes, not too often, i catch myself pause in the middle of the sentence when i look at you because thoughts that flush into my head like tapwater into a blocked sink.
i’d say remember, but you do. every word i say. you’re magic, you hear me? maybe. telekenisis? unlikely. but know, if you do, that though you’re not here but somewhere else, my feeling never wanes. artificial flowers never wilt; real emotion never dies. sometimes it just recedes to the back of the mind. like magic.
you gave me the rosary beads from your first communion as a gift this morning. placed it along with your card on my porch. and i swear, i didn’t know what to do. it seemed like so much. a universe of you in my palm.
and i couldn’t wait to ask you about the meaning, though i knew. and you knew that i do. it’s a game we play because neither of us likes losing.
it’s a symbol that i’m ready to learn about it with you. and i can’t be sure that’s exactly what you said, but that’s what i heard.
and i’m stuck for words, but i sit here clutching at metal and plastic made to look like glass in silence and i know wherever i go, you’ll follow.
sometimes emotion is enough to fill the silence. this once, its more than enough.
Posted in chapters of my life
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the week is nearly over. again.
and it feels like rain on skin in the heat of summer, raising goosebumps in spite of its warmth.
i never want anything to end.
not even nightmares.
i drag them out carefully, tossing and turning, roasting, like a pig, in my own cold sweat.
i had one every night this week. sometimes two. and i remember. i don’t keep tabs on my subconsiousness because it scares me. the brutality of the mind always scares me. and i dream of death. of death and failure.
y flores. flores para los muertos.
right now, my world is a house made of paper: cards with pretty scribbles on them, where blanche‘s words i lived in a house where dying old women remembered their dead men have more than substance; they have depth to go on and on, revolving in my head.
i’ve seen them from every angle. i swear.
what is it with death?
i’ve always said i have to die before the one i love. i couldn’t stand life otherwise. and i’ve made you promise you won’t die before me. i’ve made you promise me the unthinkable, the unpredictable, the unpromisable.
i did it just because sometimes i just need to know that you won’t die.
Posted in chapters of my life
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Sequence of stills
Running like film in the chasm of the mind,
No order to it, weddings, funerals, holidays all mixed in
Haphazard flicks of photo albums in your head
Insomniac’s counting down of the hours,
Only in snapshots,
Hastily taken, crucial moments secured on glossy card
Lest they decide to run off into the distance, leaving your memory bereft.
And you would call it theft.
I’d call it life.
—-
sometimes you need let go of the past,
sometimes you ought to just live.
Posted in excerpts
Tagged card, distance, excerpt, film, flick, funeral, holiday, insomnia, insomniac, life, live, memory, mind, moment, past, photo, photo album, poems, poetry, sequence, snapshot, theft, wedding, writing, you
glittering soot on her eyelashes 
