Collections of stamps and coins in an old album, collect old blue jeans to repurpose the denim, collect peppery foil stars as a means of meaningless decorations. Bothersome little frills and cut angular speech. Matching shotgun covers for the children, of course, how else can they be kept safe.
Tag: Hope
Dear Tomas
Why don’t you talk like you write?
I don’t know, maybe I’m subconsciously trying to sound normal? I don’t want to be pretentiously throwing around metaphors I don’t understand?
So you don’t understand the metaphors you write?
I don’t really think them through, they just feel right.
I think that maybe, you’re a lot more pretentious than people think.
Why are you here?
Quite unexpectedly, you like to show up in my dreams. That is fine by me. Last night, I showered around 1 o’clock in the morning after mopping the store, and I thought about the way you used to sing. I didn’t believe in tone deafness until I met you.
During the night, I dreamt about a gathering of all our friends, and somehow, I was in New York, the yellow house, and you wouldn’t go away. I was happy to see you, I think. Mostly, I was relieved. I mean, you were clear and coherent, and you were here.
But in my dream, I knew you were gone. So I think I might have been a little mad. Because I knew that the person in my dream, the very persistently there and bizarre Tomas, was not the real one.
I don’t like telling people about my friend who overdosed; pity is not something I deal well with. You know how much I shrink and fluster under pitying stares. At the same time, I want the attention. It feels awkward to admit: I want people to feel sorry for me.
What did we even do together? We talked some. We laughed a lot, but only because we didn’t have anything else to do in the discomfort. We played with lighters and matches and candles. We complained endlessly.
Yet I don’t want to be found out to be a fraud. That I didn’t know you as well as I make it out. That’s what I’m left with, about 2 years later. A sense of loss that seems somehow incomplete. Now, it’s fading, and I don’t know how that really feels. I think everything is much quieter.
Candle flame
I would rather flowers strewn in my hair
Than a string of diamonds around my neck
I would rather the words of the neighbor
Than of the people who gain confidence behind backs
I would rather hold my candle high to spread hope
Than sit in the sunlight with nothing to do but mope
Flickering in the dark wind
Quivering from my hands which shake
There’s something courageous about a candle flame
Tainted hope
I am a stranger in a familiar land. Some pass me with narrowed accusing eyes; others pass with bewilderment while they struggle to remember which dream I am from.
As I reach out with this relentless fever inside my fingers, I touch everything in reach. The boy’s old baseball mitt, his spelling bee trophy, his father’s laugh, his mother’s smile.
I touch them all, though fleetingly.
It’s not perfect, what I do; I have hurt before. But at least I keep on reaching out with my blackened wet fingers to touch and spread this tainted hope.
Bright eyes
There you are
On the worn gray road
Shuffling along
Carrying burdens you owed
One pantoufle after another
Following your long drawn shadow
A canary bird
Yellow as crime scene tape
Flies ahead
And sighs
A fleeting darkness
That crosses yours
Before it passes by
You look up
The sun is white, so bright
It’s warm and clean and there
The source of shadows
And all you can do is stare
mortiflying 