We’ve all come to realise
you’re primed for detonation.
There’s only one problem
we’re not ready to go.
We don’t want to come with you.
If you ever cared about any of us
postpone
give us the time
to clear the blast zone.
If you ever cared about any of us at all
if you ever loved any one but yourself
give us time
to walk away safe.
Give us a sign
when you’re walk-away safe.
It’s been a cold, quiet spring. I say that out loud, and you tell me that is has been, that the rain and drop in temperature are unusual for this time of year. If I could bring the words to my lips I would tell you how right you are, that the temperature hasn’t just dropped outside. It’s this relationship. You and I, and that doesn’t seem to be something we can agree on. We don’t agree about anything any more. When we do, it’s almost always by accident. I want to say that, and instead I just remind you to bring an umbrella. I have no idea where you’re going or who you’re seeing, but I don’t ask that either. Be careful is what I say, but please come home is what I would say out loud if it wouldn’t start a fight.
Do you know? I want to say it before your hand reaches for the door. You turn and glance at me, and I can’t stand that look on your face, empty, emotionless, indifferent. You’re miles away, maybe at your destination already, and I have no idea where that is, or I’d be there too. Not to follow you, you have your own life, your own friends, but if I could be where you are, in your head, I’d be there. I’d be there in a second.
Countless ways to say don’t leave, and none of them sound right in my mind, all of them seem like ticking time bombs. If there was any way to say it that would result in you staying, spending time with me, holding me, I promise I would say it. Do you know what this is doing to me? I wish you did. Worse to admit, I wish you cared. I know, deep down, it hasn’t occurred to you to care. That would mean you notice me at all any more.
Some day, maybe soon, maybe tonight, you’re going to forget all about me. What happens next, I can’t stand to think about, and I think about it every day.
Please, if you ever cared about me at all, just leave. Before I say something to make you cry, stop looking at me. Walk out the door, and do what you have to do, but please come home. Leave, but come home, don’t look at me, but come home.
I’m always the first to break eye contact. It’s because, and I would tell you this if I could, it’s because I see it there. Everything you ever disliked about me, every thing I’m going to do, it’s all reflected right there.
You tell me you’ll be home by ten, but we know you won’t pull back the covers until half past one. I’ll pretend to be asleep while I stare at the wall, hands clenched and fingernails digging trenches into my palms. You’ll look at me, eyes burning into the crown of my skull, and then you’ll roll over, pulling the covers away from me, and sigh. That sigh. One of these days it will kill me. For now, for this evening, it’s what I have to look forward to.
He was telling me a story about his kid, something about Peter Pan. It’s one of their favourite movies. This was important to the story he was telling. They went to a carnival, and while they were on the carousel a man with a prosthetic hook stopped to stand outside the fence and watch. My friend didn’t want his kid to remark on the man or say something rude to him, and rather than try to divert their attention, he said he reached out–
–and reached out–
–and he had put a hand on the side of their face, to turn their attention away from the man with the hook–
–and to make his point, his hand went to the side of my face, and it was an electric shock to the brain.
…
“What ever happens, you’ll be alright.”
…
I glanced away from my friend and mustered up the willpower not to turn around for the sound of a voice that wasn’t there.
…
But in my head, it was ‘94. Another hand was on the side of my face, forcing me to meet the eyes of my best friend. The back of my head was bleeding, and my friend was desperately checking my eyes for a reaction, holding my face steady as the room swam around us. I’d already thrown up on myself, and all I wanted to do was sleep. He wouldn’t let me sleep.
…
My friend looked at me, a tinge of suspicion or concern registering, and I quickly struggled to regain footing in the conversation. Something about kids are cute. Ha-ha.
…
Back in ‘94, I started to shake uncontrollably. The hand on my face clenched hard, a thumb wedging itself into the hinge of my jaw. He started reaching around him without looking at me, searching for something, coming back with a pen. I didn’t understand, until I remembered something I learned about first aid in school. I realised he thought I was having a seizure. I managed to say I was just cold, and he tossed the pen across the room and let go of my face. Without getting up from the floor he pulled the blanket down from the bed, wrapped it around my shoulders and bear-hugged me.
…
In the present I was supposed to be ordering food. I came back from my thoughts and ordered something I wasn’t hungry for, then retreated as my friend ordered his. I didn’t notice him paying for it. I was too busy thinking,
…
it was warm in there. It made me drowsy, and again, I wanted to sleep, wanted to stop the pounding in my head and escape the taste of bile on my tongue. Instead my friend shook my shoulders and asked me what song I wanted to sing. I told him I just wanted to sleep, but he wasn’t hearing any of it. He asked me if I knew Angie by the Rolling Stones. When I didn’t answer he shook me again and said Angie, Angie, when will those clouds all disappear.
…
We sat to wait for our food, and my friend was talking about books. Things he was reading. I have no idea how I held up my side of the conversation. I’m not sure that I did.
…
I didn’t know the words to Angie. We sang our way through You Can’t Always Get What You Want instead, my teeth chattering and his breath sour next to me. There was probably another song, and another,
…
and he remarked that I hadn’t heard a word he was saying. He didn’t say it unkindly, but it was clear he wanted to know what was on my mind. I shrugged and shook my head. Sorry, I told him, it’s nothing. I asked how his food was.
…
But I wasn’t hungry. I couldn’t stand the idea of eating, the taste of vomit was on my lips, at the corners of my mouth, pasted on my teeth, the very idea made me think I’d be sick again. He broke the graham cracker in half, begged me to eat half, eat something
…
it was a question. Was I going to eat something. My friend had finished half of his food and was dusting crumbs off his fingers with a napkin. My food remained untouched, the cup of soda in my hands nearly drained. I put the cup down reluctantly and noticed for the first time the straw had been chewed– mauled, really– to a flat, misshapen strip of plastic.
…
I wasn’t sure how that night ended when I woke up the next morning. I was in my own bed, my face and hands scrubbed, a t-shirt too big to be mine hanging around my shoulders. There was a crushed graham cracker in my pocket.
…
I picked up the sandwich and ate it dispassionately, picking through the mental scraps of my memory for what could have happened, how I ended up at home, how I’d avoided my parents finding out. My friend glanced at me as he drank his soda and finished his sandwich. The conversation had drifted off, but he didn’t seem to mind. I sat there with my thoughts, and my friend wondered silently where, and when, I was.
“This weekend I was in the grocery store, and they had all these gold coins, right, for Hannukkah or whatever the fuck?” She sighed and twisted the hem of her skirt in her hands. “I wanted to stuff them in my pockets and down my shirt.”
“Did you,” the counselor prompted.
She looked exasperated. “No, but I wanted to! That’s insane, right? They’re CHOCOLATE!”
“Yar, TASTY chocolate,” the man to her right interjected. He wore an eye patch and grinned at her with a row of glinting gold teeth.
“Shut the FUCK up, Doug.”
“Let’s pause for a cigarette break.”
Tonight we’re all going out to dinner—yet again. It’s been too long, his insistence, a double date would be just the thing, he says. His girlfriend will make reservations at the new small plates joint and get back to my girlfriend with the time and the address. The thing that stands out to me after this brief exchange of electronic messages is what an effort it is to force small talk and make plans neither one of us gives a shit about. When did we become people who used insipid phrases like “double dating” and “small plates”? We’re adults. How did our language become the language of that which is new, trendy, precious, and unnecessary?
I can tell you the script of the evening as I replay past experience in my mind’s eye. He’ll order the most expensive things on the menu, I’ll order the closest thing they have to chicken. His girlfriend will drink too much wine and fall down in the parking lot, or, as it happened on one memorable occasion, in the restaurant lobby, flashing her underwear at a crowd of waiting patrons as she struggled to stand up. It would be funny if it weren’t a skipping record I can’t seem to stop. Read more…
“But officer, I thought it was a JOKE.”
“What part of METER WILL SELF-DESTRUCT was unclear to you, son?”
“That’s– that’s just stupid! I mean, it’s a parking meter!”
“A meter that said, clearly, INSERT COINS. METER WILL SELF-DESTRUCT.”
“What is the POINT of that? I mean, sir, why didn’t someone remove it if something was wrong with it?”
“There was something wrong with it?”
“It exploded!”
“No, it self-destructed. That’s what the sign said.”
“But– ” Read more…
What if it’s all true? What if what they tell me, that the stone foundation is crumbling, that it was never strong enough to begin with, what if that’s the most honest thing any one has ever said? How do I believe you, how do I find a truth in what you’re saying that’s more faithful and more humane than that? If I’ve led those I care about into a dangerously precarious structure of half-accomplished goals and broken aspirations, do I deserve anything less than condemnation? Everything I have is built on the knowledge that, at heart, I can never ever be good enough. There’s no way to replace every stone I’m built of, every stone I stand on. If you re-pour the foundation the stones can’t soak anything in, can’t weep, can’t be reached. Then what? I could be stood upon, but only with several feet of hardened dust between you and me. That’s not the support you want, and I know that. There is a place of calm, cold acceptance in my head, and it’s not safe there for you. Please stay away. If you look long enough into this void, I may never know what part of you I destroy. It’s not a place for visitors; it’s the only place I have to recover when I ask myself, who did I hurt today? What harm have I done? In the calm after the destruction, I can only ask myself and listen for the void to answer.