My friend, a poet,
is buried under wildflowers and fir trees. Her
graveyard hums in a quiet neighborhood, slumped in the shadow of the nearby
college campus that gave me my degree last Spring. One
year ago. She settled there four years ago. I go there when
I am feeling sorry for myself.
I went there today. I walked up the hill with a stolen dandelion in my
hand, cupping my other around it against the wind like I would for
a candle. I intend to blow it out like one too. Four birthdays of unspent
wishes. There were people by her grave already, so I wandered down
the path to a place in the sunlight, where the
Headstones of strangers are a soft, aching comfort.
I am feeling sorry for myself because
there is an absence, a widening distance, between
myself and the life I have been given to live. There are
two names in the weathered stone before me, and
They tell me to sit and listen to the poetry of today.
Warmth soaks into my skin as I translate the
words being told to me by wind and crows calling
their dark refrains into the evening. A train
cries in the distance, lonely, gravely stating that
Moving forward is a labor of asking unanswered questions.
Where does this disquiet beneath my ribs go? What do I
do with it, now that I have it? I did not invite it. I barely
want it, growing where it is, sharper and wilder by each passing
hour. I cannot contend with it, with the faded colors of my
recent memories, with the dulled sensations telling me
Each day is faster and shorter than the last.
Two squirrels interrupt my feeling sorry for myself, falling
over themselves on their way down my little stolen
avenue. We make eye contact. Both of them freeze
their tiny bodies and stare, unmoving, removed
like I am from their unthinking momentum, as
The sun falls in earnest, unasked for, never slowing.
A slow purgatory descends between us, my
strange companions and I, because I do not want the
guilt of startling them, because I am afraid I will be too
loud. We watch each other, and I think to myself that I will
wait until they go, and so the minutes stretch on, and
Nothing changes for minutes, maybe hours, maybe years.
I realize, breathing in, watched by graveyard squirrels,
if I want to see my friend, my life, my self, if
there is a peace to be made with the slow changes
creating unknown space around my heart, I have to
Risk, every day, moving first.
As I stand and dust the sap from my hands, the squirrels
scatter away from me into the bright, flooded horizon where
trees make a frame of lead bars around a stained glass
window I had forgotten to look through. I take my dandelion
worth decades up into the shade, away from the headstones of
strangers. I stop by the flower and stone-laden grave of my friend,
the poet, and I
Promise to never waste a wish.
--
I am feeling sorry for myself.
Headstones of strangers are a soft, aching comfort.
They tell me to sit and listen to the poetry of today.
Moving forward is a labor of asking unanswered questions.
Each day is faster and shorter than the last.
The sun falls in earnest, unasked for, never slowing.
Nothing changes for minutes, maybe hours, maybe years.
Risk, every day, moving first.
Promise to never waste a wish.
