#209 (compliments to w. whitman)

she pauses for moment beside the last picture in the hall, placing a trembling hand on the glass. a crooked-lipped boy grows from infancy to adulthood in the space between the foyer and the den.
"A child said 'What is the grass?' fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he."
she knows that all things begin because they are meant to end.
"I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps."
there is no need to look. every smile is memorized, the cowlicked hair (so obvious no matter the style), the creases of every ironed shirt etched into her mind.
"All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier."

seventyone

He noticed that her dress was only slightly darker than the wine, and the corner of her eyes sparkled like the glass. And they shared stories, but ones that people tell when they want to be only slightly more vulnerable than they would be with someone they met on the train to work. They didn't notice that they were taking turns trying to surreptitiously make contact with hands on the table, but they both noticed the resulting awkwardness. And there was laughing and stolen glances and a magic trick in which a cloth napkin hid the transmutation of a fork into three grapes.

And this became a story he told his grandchildren, but not for any of the reasons he expected.

#208

the venue was smoky, but not from cigarettes. machines spewed faux smoke to keep up appearances. blue and purple and green lights faded and changed and adjusted with the mood of the music. behind the fog was all eyeliner and collarbones and legs. deep voices laughed louder as the night wore on; the sloppy laughter of red stripe and pbr. of whiskey and coke.
the singer wasn't great, but the songs were, and by this point no one cared either way. she looked older than she was, hollowed cheeks and tired eyes, hidden under layers of L'Oreal.
and everywhere, the fake rhetoric of a generation based in hyperbole and disenchantment.

#207

she admired the plaques on the wall and medals hanging from striped and faded ribbons. each one had a story and he felt equally proud and uneasy relaying events to her, trying to make her understand the feeling in the pit of his stomach before a race, like a fist inside of him, growing and sending shivers and cold through his body, from the inside out, down to his toes, out through his fingertips. how even his jaw clenched and his heart beat faster waiting for the gun than during the run. studying a photo, he wondered what her thoughts were... maybe surprised at how dark his hair was, how twenty-five years can turn a runner's lean and muscular frame into a film critic's body.
he wondered if her respect and admiration for him today was contingent on his former glories. it's easy to be brilliant in the past.

#206

it's near the back of the store, not really "tucked" into anywhere, but set back behind all the innocent bottles. aspirin, allergy medicine, cough drops. behind all that is a line of women and men and they all look tired, but in different ways, and his mind raced, "who here is scared?" some approach the counter with a bit of hesitation. you can tell who has been coming here for years. you can see who is grasping their doctor's note in a white knuckled hand like a first time traveler clutching a brand new passport.
the pharmacist is bored, checking her hair for split ends and waiting for the credit card machine to run.
he steps up when she asks can she help whoever is next and she cracks her gum but doesn't flinch at what his card says. he wants to tell her how a neighbor man taught him to ride a bike when he was ten. he wants to tell her how he doesn't mind this abnormally hot summer so much. he wants to ask her who she would visit first, if the words on that paper belonged to her.

#205

the struggle between mystery and honesty has never been an easy line to balance. and i've never been such an easy target as now, mystery lying outside these four walls and all across the floor. truth running in a jagged scar up my thigh... is it not what you expected?
our first meeting you complimented my name, "so beautiful" as if i had achieved it. as if it were my choice. did i tell you my namesake is dead or that i never knew her? it is apparent now that her name did not bring with it her long brown hair and quiet poise. or is she more beautiful in death?
my mother's favorite child is my brother, and he looks nothing like my father.
mystery is lying all around us, and the only honesty i know to give is lost in your brilliant mind. you read into me the way your first-year poetics teacher taught you to read rilke and proust and balzac.
and still today you are no more ready for me than you were for them.

#204

it stared back at him, a grainy black and white, an obvious shaded corner from a haphazard finger covering the lens. a moment in life that felt like many incarnations ago.
he set it on the bare table, not taking his fingertips or eyes away. relationship without ego meant nothing to him then. there was no universal community. despite the ornate pagoda, her young smile remained the focal point of the picture. her insecurities the focal point of his youth. he'd been too brash, too arrogant, too hard. remembering the slow fade of life from her eyes, he quickly turned the photo facedown.
maybe if he'd learned to write a poem, or at least read her one. maybe if he'd taken any time to notice that no one withstand one-way love. maybe if she'd seen a glimmer of selflessness.
love is wasted on youth, and youth is wasted in ungratefulness and uncertainty.
a horn blew to signal dinner. sliding the picture into his antaravasaka, he prayed as always, for her next life, for her forgiveness. one day, peace would come.