it was always just the two of us…my dad and I orbiting around each other like some kind of unseen stars. he fought for me. he fought it for it to be that way, just him and I and eventually the kitten he named Twinkle. He bounced around the world, singing songs, making music, tip toeing that line between father and musician…and I bounced around from bedroom to bedroom, family member to family member waiting for him to come back for me. Home was the closet I slept in when he was home. the closet he fit a mattress in and fixed stars to the ceiling so it wouldn’t get dark. Home was the chair at his desk with his book of song lyrics in my lap. Home was the utility van that smelled like spilled coffee and guitar cases burning in the sun. Home was his pillowcase that smelled like infusium at 12 o clock in the afternoon. Home was the table closest to the stage, the inside of an open guitar case, thoroughbred music store. Home was just the two of us. Home was my father…not any specific address, just him…always him.

And I liked my mattress in my closet and I liked his long hair and boots and earrings. I liked the callouses on his hands from the viscosity of the guitar strings. I liked listening to band rehearsals and going to gigs. I liked our bizarre schedule, I liked waiting for him in the airport terminal tour after tour.

I liked that I never had to share him.

But now…now I do. While I’m home with my newborn, he’s home with his, texting me pictures, asking me questions. And I wonder who the father will be that this tiny brother of mine will remember…because the father I have locked inside my beaten box of memories just doesn’t exist anymore. The father I remember won’t be the father J does…the father of his childhood will be someone I’ve never really met…and the father that hung the stars in my sky, J will only know in old photographs.

I can’t shake the feeling that we’re living in a parallel universe, he and I.

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we were laying on the floor, every blanket we owned spread out beneath us, a fire burning at our feet. a movie was playing and I was flipping through cookbooks. my hair was down, spilling over the pages, snaking down my back in tendrils. I made hot chocolate, spilled scotch on the kitchen counter, let stella curl into my side. and while we lied there on the living room floor, the feeling finally went away, finally just let me go.

the feeling …not sadness, not anger. not any feeling that has a name. the nameless feeling that cuts at the center of your being, dead thorns and broken glass. it’s heavy, this feeling…deep and cold and heavy. it’s suddenly opening your eyes and finding yourself in a swamp. and you dont know how you got there and you dont know where you came from…but you look behind you in the distance and you see a stand of black trees that pierce the sky and call your name. but those trees, they scare you, and you don’t know why. you don’t want to breathe their air, to fall into their shade…and you never want them to find you. so you face the swamp you’re standing in with the vague notion that you shouldn’t be here, that this is somehow all wrong. but there’s something coming, something pulsing at the faintest edges of your subconscious mind that pushes you forward. the water is black in the swamp and it’s deep, deep and cold and heavy. you’re stuck now, trudging through the water, clawing at the roots of trees, trying to get out because there are terrible things below the surface of that water and you can’t see them. and the swamp…the swamp knows you’re there when you shouldn’t be.

and you’re lost and confused and the panic starts somewhere deep, spiraling up through your chest in ropes.

and you don’t know where you’re going.

or where you’ve been.

or how you got there.

but something’s coming for you up out of that water.

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i’m sitting there and all I want is to go to her, to grab onto her hand until my knuckles bleed white. she’s not a foot away, quiet in her casket…go to her. but you can’t go to her, not now and not ever again because now…now you don’t even exist in the same world. chasms and black light and entire fucking universes are separating you now and you will never find her. she’s not for you, not anymore, and your entire perception of reality is cracked and broken.

and i’m sitting there, i’m sitting there and that tiny voice inside your head, it’s back and it’s holding me still, whispering words that dissolve away the lucid thoughts, eat at your sanity until there’s nothing left but the irrational screaming…all the things that don’t make sense and you know they don’t make sense…but that tiny voice is a steady drip of liquid poison right into your mind.

i’m sitting there and all I can think is that she can’t breathe, she can’t breathe in there and it’s dark, it’s so dark, and if you bury her she won’t be able to get out. she won’t be able to get out. please, listen to me, she can’t breathe, she can’t breathe and she can’t see in there…and what is she supposed to do. how is she supposed to get out?

i’m sitting there, sitting in complete silence and I can’t say anything, nothing…because what do you do when all these tear streaked faces tell you you’re crazy…that you’re completely fucking insane…?

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she’s gone.

you could have told me the exact day, the exact second I would lose her. I could have anticipated it my entire life, counting down to the last minute with her…and still, when the time came it would have caught me off guard, alone and crying on the bathroom floor, struggling to keep composure.

we went to see her. she was sleeping…frail, drifting. I called to her, curled my hand into her palm, pleaded with her to please wake up. “I’m here,” I said, “Nana, I’m here.” She didn’t open her eyes, floating in a morphine haze somewhere I couldn’t reach her. I stood there, watched her, tried to match my heartbeat, my breathing, to the rise and fall of her chest. B held onto me, quietly, with his head tucked into my neck, his eyes never leaving her. I tried again…and again…and again. And as I went to leave, Brigsby cried out and her eyes opened. “How pretty.”

“Nana, I love you.”

“How pretty.”

And Brigsby laughed, he grabbed her hand, he tried to kiss her.

“Nana…I love you…”

“How pretty.”

and her eyes closed

and the tears came

“Nana, please, I love you”

“…how pretty…”

and a nurse came in, slipped her morphine…

and she drifted off back to the place where we first found her, safe and dreaming.

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when I was little, I remember riding in the back of your old car while you and papa fought in the front seat. you were angry and papa couldn’t figure out why. you thought I wasn’t listening and you told him, in that stiff voice you always used when you were mad, that I loved him more. you were upset because you thought I liked him better than you, that I didn’t love you as much as I loved him.

It isn’t true. It has never been true and I don’t know what I had done to make you think that. I loved the way you brushed my hair for school in the morning, the way you always made ham sandwiches the same way, with the same bread, and same pickles and same chips my entire life. I loved when you would pull out the blue mattress and we would watch Murder She Wrote laying on the living room floor. I loved when you would let me wear your bathrobes and scratch my back. I loved curling into your side to fall asleep with your arm around me…I would pretend to sleep sometimes just so we could sit there longer. I loved floating in the pool with you wearing those huge straw hats. I loved that weird noise you always made in the back of your throat and eating oreos in your rocking chair. I loved wearing the costumes you sewed for me, the blankets you made me. I loved that you were my safe place to go when I came home from Florida State. I loved how you would drive us to taco bell in your golf cart, how you covered everything in leopard fabric. I loved the look on your face when you saw me in my wedding dress, the way ran your fingers over the buttons when you altered it. I loved the way you looked at B, the way your face lit up when you saw him. I loved how no matter what, you always made me feel like you were proud of me.

An hour from now, I’ll be sitting with you, holding your hand, and maybe it will be the last time. And I don’t know if you’ll be awake, or if you’ll know I’m there. And I’ll tell you I love you, the way I always have, so much so that it will pysically hurt to walk away from you, to drive home not knowing if I’ll ever see you again.

I loved you that day in the backseat of your car.

I love you now, 18 years later.

And I will love you, ache for you, every day for the rest of my life.

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Mark Ryden…my favorite artist since senior year of high school.

I was in art class, drinking kool aid out of a disintegrating cup, when Slater introduced us.

Have you ever come across something…a book, a photograph, a painting…

…and felt like it was singing for you?

Ryden sings for me…the most peculiar, fucked up song.

his art reminds me of Tori Amos’ music.

like a dark dream with your eyes wide open.

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days play back in your mind, slow at first, folding into weeks, into months, edges of the frame deep and hazy, just so slightly out of focus. a flute of champagne and a fur coat, a red heart balloon floating to the ceiling. cold and blue, grass frosted white. the frame speeds up and the sun rains technicolor shadows down from the sky. a green wig, a pink flamingo. the gray smoke curling off a birthday candle. a bunny mask, a tiny baby. spring speeds into summer, days begin to melt. beach sand and a crashing wave. ice dissolving into rum. fireworks and baby’s crawling. the frame skips, and faster now the days play back. blurry and close, a tear stained cheek. a falling leaf and husband’s older. a pumpkin glowing, a baking pie. things move faster, faster, a deafening cacophony. only glimpses now, a string of lights, a flurry of scissors. a baby’s eyelash, fingers entwined. and the noise of it all bears down, holding you still, and your eyes sting and still it moves faster, alive now and engulfing you, setting the air you breathe ablaze with an electric current. christmas, an explosion, sound and light and nothing else.

and then the frame goes dark.

silent. still.

with nothing left to give, like a dying moth, it loses color. faded and brittle it turns to dust, pale wings crumble, hollow body breaks away, spent and broken, nothing left but a shimmering pile of ash. and then you wait, wait for something new, something living, breathing, to stir…to grow wings and fly. and while you wait the world sheds its skin…that sickly, blinding, faded film peels away.

a molting world.

the transition of days.

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1st anniversary

2nd anniversary

Posted in Musings, True Love 2 Comments

confession: most days I don’t wear makeup or do my hair.

I used to. every. single. day.

but then I said fuck it.

it’s amazing how free you feel when you decide to just be…

…when you put down the eyeliner and let your hair grow wild.

alex still can’t keep his paws off me.

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we sit here and we wait. holding breath and holding hands in hibernation. quietly and reverently making our way to the edge of a very steep cliff, the edge of the world as we’ve always known it. days are numbered for the life that’s come to whisper in our ears everything we want to hear, that’s wrapped us in a solar flare of silken flame…bled gold into our outstretched hands, wound itself through our legs like a cat in heat, desperate to be pet. marching towards that desolate edge, where untold wonder waits in the dark abyss, revealing nothing, giving nothing away. there’s nothing left here for us, the family of three in the tiny house, and the sky now has a heartbeat that sends us lurching forward, wether we consciously take a step or not, to the edge of that cliff.

and at the end of this quickly fleeing world, we’ll say a prayer to each other, and hold on tight while the clouds explode around us, raining down their doubts and questions. the center of the storm is where we have to look into each other, deeper than we’ve ever looked before, and find something to cling to. because soon…we’ll find ourselves stepping off the edge of the cliff and the tiny fragment of optimistic light we see in each other’s eyes is the only thing that will save us from smashing into the rocks below, devoured by the new life we’ll come to find ourselves in.

every day we’re getting closer to that cliff…wandering in search of a new home, listening for the tiny voice of a baby in the dark…holding hands and waiting for the jump.

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