On sadness and grammar

Today is my mom’s birthday, and if she was still around, she would be turning 62. I’ve always been taught to avoid using forms of the infinitive “to be” as my main verb, as it creates a passive sentence, the enemy of the compelling writer. Subjects should exercise power. Never relegate yourself or your loved ones to the position of the weak object. Action, action, action.

When speaking or writing of certain topics, though, I feel as though I am unable to exert any force. I don’t have the heart to actively “do.” I am a weightless, forceless object acted upon by my surroundings, tossed about by the wind and ripped apart by the elements. The blood in my veins meanders. My brain’s impulses shuffle to and fro. My smile slips and creaks. Even my tears seem directionless, pausing at the crook of my nose, loitering on the edge of my lip.

I know I am not the only one, and my sadness is shared. I know this injury is old and this pain is stale, but it remains, as it is known to do, as it does for everyone. It flares on days like today, but generally remains burrowed deeply and quietly. It has become a muscle that spans my whole body, fusing to every bone, picking up my feet again and again, stretching my arms wider, standing me up straighter, imbuing me with a power both foreign and familiar, alien and familial.

I am silently flexing this muscle every day, testing my strength and rehabilitating the parts of me that have atrophied. My heart groans with each beat and grows while it keeps time.  The days and nights switch places every so often while I am in training, aiming to climb the inclines and cliffs of a sentence diagram that has me pushed too close to the end, hidden behind clauses and under phrases, living on the wrong line.

A tiny, little dot balanced itself on the edge of the windowsill. I could see it – I swear I could – brace itself against the gentle breezes of the cat’s breath, and the furious assailment of sunbeams. If it had fingertips, it was using them to grasp the rim, using tiny little biceps and triceps and miscellaneous other ceps to maintain its survival grip.   Why was it so scared to fall? Do all dots quiver at the thought of heights, or, more exactly, big heights quickly becoming small ones and then no height at all? I guess life for a dot is better above ground.

Will you be my Valentine?

I’ve known you for so long now, I feel you imprinting on my memories. You’re in the bushes on the Easter I had chicken pocks and couldn’t search for eggs. You’re guiltily giggling at me as I am the only little kid putting in fake teeth to eat dinner. You’re grimacing with me as I do my physical therapy, my tiny legs shaking with pain, in the living room of my childhood home.

And I find myself in your stories, rooting for you as you escape from a menacing goat. I’m behind a telephone pole the day you sprained your ankle on a trampoline. I’m blending into the landscape when you’re sulking around Grand Canyon, too mad about not getting candy to care about the massive chasm in the ground beside you.

These memories converge and overlap, like double exposures kept for humor’s sake. They see a future lifetime shared and buckle from exclusion. They refuse separation. They hug close together and bleed through, superimposing and impressing on each other until the mingling is complete and irreversible.

I’m there the night we met, looking over my own shoulder at you, seeing all the things I don’t remember and finding details I’d hate to forget. At that moment I love you doubly, as I do today, as I will forever.

A short list for a long day

I am thankful for my organs, that function well on a day-to-day basis. I am glad my toes bend, and my arms work, and my pants fit. I am happy my Achilles tendons, though malformed, have supported me all this time. I appreciate all the smiles that surround me, whether full of shiny whites, spots and specks, or imperfect canines. I am so lucky to have work again, and more importantly, to feel like opportunities exist. Thank you bills, that bring me joy to finally pay. Thank you inconveniences, that underline the overall ease of my life. Thank you problems, that bring me closer to myself and others. Thank you words, for falling into place, and fingers for letting them drop. Thank you thanks, you’re welcomes, and how-do-you-dos. Thank you thoughts, truths, and shouts. Thank you diction, moods, and themes. Thank you capitals, lowercases, and the dots and swirls that freckle the space around you. Thank you love, for leaving so we could both come back. Thank you family, for quietly rebuilding my heart. Thank you friends, for incessantly bearing with me, even now, and even now, and even now. Thank you beginnings, middles, and ends, for knowing just when to show up to the party, and especially when to leave. Thank you, really – kindly, firmly, and often.

Sometimes I like to write

Don’t close my eyes when I die -
Don’t you dare close my eyes.
Let them stay open and take in what they can
Without my mind editing or my heart interpreting.
For once they will accept the truth without it being painted
No bells and whistles
No man-made faults
No swaddling linens to make the facts more comfortable,
To make the world well-rested

Don’t close my eyes when I die.
Put the coins in my pocket instead,
And one in my mouth to keep my tongue at bay.
Leave my hands up-turned
And my hair a mess
And let my last tears dry on my face
And let yours fall with the ease of sunlight
And none of the violence of rain
That is, if they need to fall at all

Don’t close your eyes when I die.
Let the moment stay with you and remind you
That you never knew all of me
But you always came the closest,
And I knew as much of you as you’d let me.
Even in our selflessness,
We can’t help but keep some things to ourselves.
Don’t close your eyes when I die,
So you can keep them open while you live

Typing creepily in the dark

I’m walking through this with my pants rolled up; I tip-toe through the muck, trying  to prevent it from actually sticking to my jeans, but instead it seeps in though my socks and soaks my skin, leaving a sickish film that won’t wash off for days. It’s a familiar scenario with repeated results, yet I still take the time to roll up my pants before I make my way to you.

You sit amid the flood, legs comfortably tucked under you, as if you’ve controlled it all all along. Your lazy-boy island in an underwater room shelters you from whatever creatures swim amid the ottomans and coffee tables. You’re positioned above the domestic, within it but with no need for it and no fear of it. Congratulations, you’ve avoided the trap. You are still free, and I am knee-deep in an anonymous goo that’s determined to ruin my only good pair of pants.

In the Dark

I have been so happy with the amount of creativity flowing through my group of friends lately. It has really been inspirational, especially seeing and hearing what Tara has been coming up with musically with Zuhair. Hearing her play, and doing it so well, and seeing how happy  it has made her – in addition to Joe writing his short stories and Kelly&Ben starting their blog, and Zuhair learning the ukulele so effortlessly, and Caitlin making awesome stop-motion stuff, plus the resident artists, photographers, and geniuses all around us- really kind of snapped me out of a trance. I really enjoy writing. I am self-conscious about it, but the fun it provides definitely outweighs my insecurities.

I guess it’s been a few weeks since I finished the first real short story I’ve written in a long time. For Valentine’s Day, I made Tara a book-form of it, which I now scanned and would like to share with everybody [with her consent]. I’m so excited that we’re all pushing ourselves creatively, and I’ve been so impressed by what I’ve seen from everyone. Keep it up!