WITH TWILIGHT ON HIS LIPS
You used to glow. A magnificent sunny white that gathered in the corners of my eyes, bleached my bones clean of self doubt and destruction. I knew you biblically. With golden feathers sprouting from your shoulder blades you whispered me words of wisdom and truth. I saw you my prophet, lord almighty, big man in the sky, and I was proud to call you father. You washed the earth from a battle wound I wore from the playground, when I picked a fight with the marry-go-round trying to impress the girl next door. You poured light into my wound and said next time try roses, or poetry. I wiped the tear soaked dirt from my face, smiled at my mother, your wife, our goddess, and I knew heaven. It occupied this circle we made and hung like daylight in a dusty room. But like the setting sun, your glow began to fade. Dipping behind the hills, I wondered where it was going, and if it would come back. I’ve always been most scared at night. But with your glow I never knew true darkness.
And then you did it. In the middle of the night you kicked those pearly gates open, dragged her out by her hair and tossed her from our circle. Black and bruised I watched my mother crawl down those stairs as you sarcastically thanked her for the blood-red stains she left on the carpet. Hustling me inside, you locked the doors, stood behind me and rested your hands on my shoulders, replacing the spot where she used to do the same. Staring out the window I watched our goddess, my goddess, pull herself into the blanket of a streetlight. It looked so cold out there.
My world crumbled. You told me that those who go against your word are committing sin, but who were you to decide? I watched you clip your wings that night, I saw you grow a soul. You took that soul, tore it in two and placed it at the bottoms of your shoes. With every step you took in that house, I watched it fade from glowing white to dirty and human. It’s something I wasn’t prepared to see. But what 6 year old is?
Two years passed, and every night I cried myself to sleep only to be met by nightmares of what could have possibly happened to my mother. I never asked you what did. The fear of knowing the answer locked itself in my jawbone and tied itself in knots.
It was that tension that showed me that I do in fact have a voice, that I do in fact have my own words.
They weren’t always in line with yours. You must have smelled something, because the first time I voiced objection, slammed the car door, and started to walk around feeling MY own two feet carry me for the first time, you pressed the petal to the floor. Metal hit me, as fast as that accelerating car and I kissed the pavement three feet ahead, watched my individuality bleed out onto the street. I lay there, feeling the gravel sink into my body, waiting for light to be poured into this battle wound. You just drove away. Without you to purify and disinfect, it grew over callused and hard. It’s still there.
Since then you’ve branded me so many times. Fists, knives and words. It took me too long to learn to hit back, but when I finally did, when I pushed you off of me and down those same stairs you threw my mother down, I saw how far from a god you really were. Ruby life dripped from your face, and gods don’t bleed.
I spent the next 6 years reopening these wounds with razors, trying to coax them to heal smooth. I never did succeed. You taught me that the best way to solve a problem was to cut it at its root. I realized that I was only slicing petals, draining the fluids, sweet aroma therapy. The root of this problem was that I, like most living beings, am uncomfortable with my own scars. The only kind of person that doesn’t read and reread the stories etched into their bodies is the dead kind person. I opened the medicine cabinet, grabbed fistfuls of white pills and washed them down with a bottle of whiskey. Looking up at the bathroom ceiling, body stretched out on the tile, I prayed that I’d find heaven again.
My world grew silent, and the walls around me melted like butter on skillet. It began to bubble and spin, joined by the feeling of ascension and flashing red lights; an orchestra of color and movement.
A week later, I awoke to a bearded man dressed in whitest of robes. With a warming voice that had to be divine, he welcomed me into providence. Peace washed over me as I knew I had escaped. My jawbone untied itself as I knew I had found heaven. I shortly discovered that this bearded man was not Jesus, but a doctor named Carl, and that by Providence he met the hospital, not the protective care of God.
Later I realized it didn’t matter. Helped into a wheelchair I was rolled out of the ICU, down a labyrinth of white halls and into a room with a single man. He was hunched over in a chair, the saddest looking human I’ve ever seen. His hands hung loose, like someone who held on as tight as they could and lost it all.
At the sound of my rusted wheels turning he slowly lifted his head, and I saw a face I almost didn’t recognize. My father sat before me a broken man, apology soul deep in his eyes. This is the look of a man who almost lost it all. I saw two words form at the tip of his tongue, but they never left his lips. “I’m sorry.” I’ve never seen so much emotion escape this man as three tears fell from his cheeks and down to the tile.
1. The world isn’t so black and white.
2. Heaven exists wherever you create it.
3. There is no shame in admitting mistakes.
It was so easy to blame you for these scars when I saw you less than human. Forgive me father, I see now that you are nothing less. This journey that we call humanity is not divine for any of us and I can’t expect your decisions to have been flawless. It was easy to accept my mother’s abandonment when I could paint you demonic. Forgive me father, for I am human too.
I just ask of you one thing:
Hug me, hold me and tell me that I’m loved. I want to hear your heartbeat and know that mine is beating in sync. I know two points don’t make a circle, but this line that links us doesn’t need to be so long. I’m tired of living in this twilight, this in between of light and dark. We’ve both been through hell, but I want to rebuild this heaven with you.
Chase Person is a poet, model, and general slice of the best humanity has to offer. He regularly delights crowds at local Portland poetry events with his dazzling wit and smile.
