VOLONTÉ

[zampan0]

go ahead, take me with you across cobbled side-streets, where motorcades squeeze between graffiti and us, breathing dust and coffee and the noise of something ancient what is this numbness, making itself at home within my dreams, my growing anxiety, toast and jam, purple and brown; i want to scream, i want to sleep; there are so many words - forgotten utterances, the weight of them crushing all desire. there is driftwood in the walls; seafoam and salt, i can feel it on my lips, thirsty, always thirsty for this life we have nurtured, bound by grace and ruin; i think of her hands, live oak gnarled, holding and squeezing themselves across the table. "You know," she begins to say. "You know, it's a funny thing, where I was the caretaker, and now I am being taken care of. There is this change, of generation to the next; it's a weird feeling, something I can't quite believe."

"That is not true; I have cared for you since my screams were first heard." I lay awake, picturing pools of darkness, what it feels like to dream, to be dreamed of, and the weight of disbelief that there can be anything more; I want to hear her sing again, ride in the passenger seat, small and nervous.

[zampan0]

tears on her pillow, she awakes to pools of light soaking her hair, staining her face porcelain; i want to tell her, she is enough, that there is no such thing as a charity case within all of her splendor

she sends me pictures of the pastries that she bakes; whenever i call her, during idle hours alone, she says, "Oh, just making a pie crust," like it's some sort of mantra; her love is filled with pears and almonds, making my teeth sticky, drowning in sweetness.

i try to make words, like i've been there, that i know the things she must feel, but this is the lie, the groping in the dark to connect a line, assure her: we are not fumbling mad.

maybe one day, i can be sober

[zampan0]

I have known torrents of happiness and waves of grief. My mother's hands becomes gnawed by age, fingers like tree roots, groping and prodding along dining tables. Eyes like peeled grapes, they well tears beneath them. I want to tell her that I worry, that I am scared to see her like this, but it does no favor, no use. We can only stand idle, watching time take us, piece by flesh, piece by soul, until they both slip away into the aether.

I asked how checked out our distance aunt has become. "I would say 85, if not 90 percent." "Man, that's heavy."

Are these thoughts of mine the soul? Or is merely electricity? My eyes turn to stone. No sight, no clarity: there is only the sleepless plight of eternity.

[zampan0]

The antique shop was sprawling, containing dust and time, porcelain and glass. I walked through aimlessly, every memory a blur, until it all mixed together into a dream-like fog. Two selves, walking along together. The first is the real you, alone, taller, the shadow of someone looming still over you; your form stern, rigid, unable to look sideways or behind. The other, smaller, this person in the dream laughing with their love; both are smiling, laughing, kissing with their eyes. I try to catch up, and someday I do. Our eyes meet, and I find myself smiling, trying to smile for you. No words come out between the two of us. It can never be enough for you; nothing can fill that well, not the solidarity of species or the ache of longing, the dreams we allow to overtake our being, the touch of strangers. It is always that swirling inky void that swallows us whole, never satiated.

"I'm sorry it's taken me this long to reach out." I try to add on, but the message on my phone will not send. The words that need to come after will not manifest. I once heard from a poet, maybe it was Bukowski, "Sometimes: there is nothing to say about death."

[zampan0]

there’s nothing but cicadas, filling the heat with noise, like constant chatter, they make these nights, with growing darkness and morose fatigue, something not dwelled alone. if i could reach her, touch swaying hair, soaked to its core in sacrificial blood, maybe i could make my own noise, and it could feed these darkest nights.

[zampan0]

i read something today: “each new morning allows us to be a new one ourselves”

i like the sentiment, not having our guilt fetter us from advancing; every day, in itself, the unworked block of wood: we chisel at it, carving new faces, allowing them to pile upon themselves.

i want to find peace buried within me; my mother’s magnolia  flowers swaying, their weight bending the branches of the tree.

if it is that wind, or the water and seaweed rolling across our feet, the mountain sloping bleeding trees endless; i want to breathe it into myself, let it fill me again, like the baby  trying to grip the air.

[zampan0]

They apartment had no AC, only three window units. Out of one, in the central hallway, a vine creeped its way toward the ceiling, something that advanced slowly enough to not notice. In the summers, the ancient fans blew constantly. Sometimes they burned out, then one of us cranked it back on. The building was brick, and if we kept them running, we could almost forget about the heat of Georgian Summer. If they did switch off, dead, an hour would bring out the dank and putrid smells the ragged, thirty year old carpet accumulated. I had sex on that carpet, countless times, uncaring.

This was during the late 2010's. I was back in graduate school for an MA in English, earning grants to pocket the cash, already aware I would be dropping out next semester. I originally went back due to a breakup. She insisted I had no direction, which made her believe there could be no future together. I couldn't blame her, at least now in hindsight. Back then, it was a crippling realization.

During the day, I read Murakami novels, working at the reference desk at the public library. The pay was terrible, the work sometimes overly convoluted, with a surprising about of bureaucracy, but, mostly, it was easy. At night, I moonlighted as a bartender for a Mediterranean pub. That, too, was mostly easy. Graduate school fell somewhere in the middle, and before long a nervous eye-twitch developed from 60-hour workweeks.

**Let's come back to this.

[zampan0]

The favorite part about the drive from Augusta to Milledgeville are the lazy, bending roads after departing the interstate. It feels like something is left behind, the silence of trees and empty asphalt, that turning left could be diving into fresh water, flooding the nose and ears. I keep the windows rolled down, today letting the warm sunlight and cool springtime air help keep me awake.

Last night I slept on a couch, unplugged electric blanket across me, with my mother's stovetop light peaking around the corner of the kitchen. It felt like fever dreams all throughout the night. I would feel a woman in my car, her voice like the distant sounds of traffic. I would awake with an erection, the bottom of my feet clammy from sweat. Drinking one, then two glasses of water, I would try focusing on the colors and feelings of that dream. Through the window above the sink, all that stood out there was darkness. I waited, watching to see if anything would appear.

[zampan0]

I always enjoyed the names of beachfront restaurants. High Tides at Snack Jack, Surfing Rays Beach Days, Sand Dollar Club; you get it. They can't help but embrace what they are, while anything typical sounding, like Roasted Grille, just sounds weird. The outliers are easier to spot, and whether that is a good or bad thing, who's to really say. I usually just bring a sandwich and some chips to the beach, so maybe I'm not the target audience.

I'm not currently at the beach, but it's something I daydream about whenever it gets cold in my home-office or the traffic noise outside my window gets to be too destructive. It's a busy two lane road that cuts through i-20 near the heart of Atlanta. I hate it. Sometimes I think the constant noise of rigs and roaring Chargers will expediate any dementia waiting to creep its way out, like a demon released of its seal. Anyway, I'm only thirty and our family has a good track record of being very aware to the very end when dying of old age.

Breakfast today was a lox bagel. I first started eating lox after reading an interview with Jeff Bridges. He described it as his favorite meal to make. I think of him as I layer thin sheets of smoked salmon on a whole wheat bagel, with some sort of chive cream cheese sandwiched between the two. Finally, sprinkle fresh dill weed on top, for color and taste. Keep it simple.

I sit down for work with black coffee and my lox. These days I am a software engineer, a corporate daydreamer, which is a big jump from college town bar manager a couple years prior. I always hated applying myself, but it was sink or swim after the pandemic swept across our little rock. Now, I sit cozy, making enough money to live comfortably without wearing out my back lifting kegs of Bud Light to get underage undergrads drunk. Sometimes I get stoned while creating collections in databases, sitting through mindless meetings, or watching YouTube videos wondering if someone will actually document an actual ghost one day; but the weed doesn't mix well with my anxiety medication, so I've been trying to pump the brakes on that.

My coworker recently moved to the beach, which is why I am daydreaming about sand, craving waves. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, the traffic outside can sound like the ocean breaking. It's a long-shot and takes some focus, but I can get there if I really try. I never wanted to live in the city, or at least it never attracted me. Before here, it was Milledgeviille, middle-Georgia, where Flannery O'Connor spent her final days dying in Andalusia.

I never understood the detest for small communities. Maybe it comes from an underlining history of racism along the antebellum trail, to which I completely understand, but oftentimes I believe people cannot sit still with their thoughts. Jung, in his later years, would be deeply disturbed to hear a radio playing in the corner of a tavern. The noise was too unsetting. Have we just become accustomed to the noise? Who's to say, all I can hear is the ocean.

[zampan0]

scraping by on the rooftop, four years ago i had a bad night, and my boss, worrying i might jump off, offered me a five-hundred bar tab; so i turned to this woman, the love of my life, although i doubt she knew it at the time, and asked if she could be my plus one.

we danced in a circle of a cafe, her hair was like golden sunlight, shimmering off her shadow, but soon she recomposed and said, ”I can’t.”

i ended up taking my roommate, a drunk irishman, who did too much cocaine watching the fast and furious movies.

sunlight baby brown bagged a tallboy, stopping by the next day and apologized for saying no, where she calmly explained that she was in love with me and the ring glimmering on her finger was not to prevent old men hitting on her in our cafe.

we made love against a magnolia tree, and then again on the deck of someone’s house, after squeezing through a fence in the hazy gloom of a Savannah summer; it felt like the chaos of heaven danced in my head, and all i could do was let it pour over my soul.

[zampan0]

the grey tom stood waiting, with my car headlights shining on him, the yard, and the moonlight against the house; he was still hungry, waving his lemur tail as he followed me to the door.

I sat with him as he ate, petting his coat, picking his scabs, talking to him:

Today my uncle died, Leukemia, ain't that something? I would ask him about the green suit he would wear, working the recycling plant: "You look like some hero."

the tomcat never replies, he just continues eating, the grey in his coat looking like the moonlight reflecting off cement.

[zampan0]

traffic sounds like the ocean, shifting its weight across the city; we lay in bed, marveling at how the house carries all that noise.

we share everything, our frustrated tears, those insecurities clawing their nails against our window; the stars reflect off its age, stacking atop themselves into infinity; we become so grateful hearing a familiar voice.

[zampan0]

slowly growing more round in the middle, the twilight of my twenties, something content and uninspired, i roll around my floor attempting to make my back believe it is young again.

watching old clips of Mad Men, trying at feigned human interaction; it's been some time now that i have stepped into a bar.

i used to become so eager at filling my life with experience, shoveling garbage into a wagon, listening to the bells ring against the alleyway, stunned by the beauty of Summer nights.

i would cry so often over things i have now forgotten, no hope for salvation for the things i have given away for where i am now.

is this what i deserve? quiet discontent in my absolution, or the smoldering flame of a man without purpose, so content to play with his imagination with dreams no longer existent.

[zampan0]

the magnolia tree outside our home bloomed with white petals; the sunlight marked it golden, shimmer-bright, like the world was becoming itself once more.

today i see them, yellowed decayed scattered about our yard, they remind me that all is shifting, the same way you stretch your arms above your head, back towards your feet; a thousand salutations for each passing moment we spent among each other.

[zampan0]

We found a fledgling robin blending into the front lawn, Syd heard the parents' cries first, encouraging it to continue moving; one of its eyes was closed, seemingly lost, and the rest of it quivered, unflinching within shock.

Some hours later, it found the nerve to move, creeping beside the house and being led to the backyard, through the driveway, where it might have more room to stretch.

When I looked out of my window and saw its parents cawing at one-another, bumping each other like how we argue, I decided to see if the baby didn't make it.

I found it down the basement steps, fallen almost six feet, it stared up at me, almost asking, "Why this?"

I built a miniature staircase out of the bricks of our walkway, stacking them enough for him to climb out; if he could make it up, then maybe he could make it.

That night I dreamed of feathers, tussling in the wind, and the voices of birds filled my ears, until the nondescript tones morphed into pleading melodies: "Let us live, live, live."

When I checked on those steps during the early morning, I saw the baby climbed three out of six steps, and his parental robins continued to bring him food, watching over him.

[zampan0]

She painted me some flowers on a large sketch pad, muted colors tied together; they looked like wildflowers, something casually picked up passing from one field to another.

Summertime heat always reminds me of being twenty and broke, walking through dried grasses, too tall to be seen from the cars off the highway; a girl I loved, she led me, orange dress and black hair rippling the way water flows.

Time does its work, and memories, despite their best efforts, are reconstructions.

I stretch twenty times a day, feeling the floor with my fingertips, wondering each plunge if I would make it back up.

[zampan0]

I’m trying to say that our words are defined by how we use them.

I tried to call someone, walking through Brownwood Forest, thinking of each person pulled and pushed apart from myself; nobody answered, the weather was humid, pressing down upon me like another sinking thought: is this where you imagined it would all end up?