An Alarming Turn Of Events

You kept hiding behind corners to take pictures of me reading.

I never take pictures, and I hate having them taken of me—

Because I don’t like how I look in them, or having a reminder of times,

Because nostalgia, to me, is an enemy of progress,

Holding me back,

Obfuscating movement forward.

And I’m scared of it.

But I let you snap some pictures,

And I acted like I wasn’t looking.

Because you said you wanted to look at them when you got sad.

Now my memories are starting to fade,

And I can’t remember what your eye shadow looked like,

Or exactly how your hair was styled,

But you have those pictures, preserved,

Pinned to a wall,

Like a butterfly’s wings.

And I have these memories that are fading to a sun-bleached orange,

Because I’ve left them in the sun too long.

You have me in a moment,

But I have a memory.

That’s all I ever wanted from you.

I keep having this dream.

It’s unlike the other ones that keep coming back.

“Dream” is the wrong term, I think,

because the dream lives in a dream itself,

the dream is a vision,

Our future.

I dream about dreaming it,

and holding you from behind in a penthouse

and whispering it into your ear while I kiss your neck.

I dream about a dream.

In that dream,

not my dream but my dream’s dream,

you’re there,

and I’m there,

and I’m not sure where there is but I know this;

wherever it is, it is a white house

with white linens

on a cliff

overlooking something beautiful.

What that something is changes often;

sometimes it is cobblestone streets with tiny fruit markets you attend in your khaki shorts

and your tied flannel tops

and sometimes it’s an open ocean

with seagulls

and the sounds of the slurring, intoxicating waves beating sense into the rocks.

And we live there, or vacation there, and it’s European and hot and we sweat and swear but thats okay.

There is no TV. There is no Online. No Connections.

It is an impossibly sustainable state of just us.

I think I imagine it because I saw it as a little boy on tv and thought,

“That’s where lovers go.”

And the really exciting, really beautiful thing about it for me,

(The Dream Me)

 is that now that I have you,

now that your mine,

I can help decide just where lovers go

and what they do when they get there.

A cardinal is a red bird and it is known for its appearance.

“Oh, how lovely,” My grandmother chirped. “Look at his comb.”

                The comb of a bird is on top of his head. It’s a trait only found in males. It’s a bit of leverage in mating for male birds, as a larger comb is an attractive feature to have. Birds, I’m told, are very vain animals. Appearances are so important.

                “He’s such a beautiful shade.”

                My grandmother is the type of woman who clutches her purse as she speaks. She has a distinct idea of glamour and a notion of perfection she strives for. Most of the time, it’s an endearing trait.

                She did not notice the cardinal on her own. About two minutes ago, I pointed the bird out to her, perched on the corner of my rooftop. We were seated on the patio, in the rusted green outdoor furniture, under a broken awning that cracked under the weight of a summer storm.

                I’ll admit I’d been waiting for the bird to arrive, hoping even. I was curious to see her reaction, if her age would dull her enthusiasm about the bird. I was wrong; instead, I think her age somehow sharpened her excitement. The bird was a red reminder of happier times for her, and her face lit up the second she saw him. It was a stark contrast to her expression just five minutes ago.

                I was glad the bird showed up at that moment. I had nothing else to say by the time the cardinal swooped in. My grandmother was engaging in a smoldering rant, spit flying, and I prayed for the cardinal to arrive. My grandmother is unhappy about her neighborhood. She is unhappy, moreover, about her neighbors. This is primarily because she feels they don’t share her culture, her idea of glamour. They stain the notion of perfection that she’s working towards.

“One of them tried to rent a room from me, can you believe it?” The grip on her handbag tightened. “She came to my door, and she asked for a room. I told her no and she looked up. Just looked at the rooms above mine. Unbelievable.”

I believed it. The cardinal was probably gathering twigs for a nest.

                My grandmother is angry about the president. She’s worried that he’s changing the nation for the worse, and that it’s his fault. Sometimes she compares him to other politicians she doesn’t like. “Adolf himself, come back. Running the country.”

                The cardinal is singing on a branch.

                My grandmother taught me what it means to feel ambivalence. She didn’t sit down and teach me the meaning of the word or the spelling or the origin; she taught me how it feels. It scares me, and I worry that something will make me that angry someday. Sometimes, I wonder what caused it. I know there’s an extremist radio talk-show host she listens to, and I think about how he feeds her lies for money, and the bile rises in my throat. I blame him more than her for a lot of the same reasons people blame the devil and not themselves.

                It doesn’t matter what the cardinal is doing. What matters is the cardinal is somewhere else.

                After my grandmother reaches the peak of her yelling, she settles in, and there’s a calm. Two things can happen then; it could be the eye of the storm, and she could start up again, or it could be the end. It all depends on what happens next, in that particular minute. And in that minute, the cardinal flaps and flaps and appears just in the frame of my vision, just in the top corner, and I point at the bird, and I say how the bird has been living in our yard, and I go all in, hoping the cardinal will be enough for her.

“Oh, how lovely,” My grandmother chirped. “Look at his comb.”

What my grandmother doesn’t know, of course, is that the cardinal is a girl. A female. She has no comb; only one feather that sits on her head like a showgirl’s headdress. And I love her for that.

“He’s such a beautiful shade.”

Aren’t we all? 

My dreams have been folding in upon themselves lately. 

It’s a strange experience that isn’t so strange to explain. I will wake up from a dream only to find that I am inside of another dream. Usually, I’ll have a goal, some menial task that needs to get done, and I will dream of accomplishing it only to realize I haven’t done it at all, something simple like sorting through the fridge or moving a chair from the dining room to the living room. 

It’s not so much terrifying as it is maddening. If Sisyphus was happy, it was because his hands were on the rock. Every time I’m close to beginning, every time I reach out in anticipation of cool granite and rough, porous stone, the dream folds, and I fall again, and I tumble back down the hill. 

I am not an expert on the mind, but I have a few ideas about my brain’s folding dreams.

Purpose is a slippery concept. It’s a hard thing to grasp. One day, it rolls out in front of you like a big carpet, lining the walk ahead. The next it’s a jumble, a maze, and try as you might, you just can’t keep your hand on the wall. You just can’t find your way.

Sometimes purpose is found in an old auto manual, between sketches of carburetors and sidebars about oil changes. 

Sometimes purpose is found in the margins of a notebook.

Sometimes purpose is found in a saucepan, tightly covered with cellophane and put into the fridge for tomorrow. 

I looked for a little red purpose in the branches of an evergreen. Why I thought I’d find anything there, I’ll never know. But you can’t blame me. A little bit of red-tinted life flies past your window, you’ll chase it regardless. You can’t overthink it. It can fly away if you do. 

When you’re desperately looking for something, anything, to tell you why you’re here, why you should bother, you can start to look in some pretty crazy places. 

A cardinal has taken to nesting in the evergreens by my house.

“Yeah, that’s pretty unusual,” My father responded, hauling chrome from one end of the garage to the other. I sat perched on a tool bench, staring out the open garage door, waiting for the bird to flutter back into frame. “Well, not too unusual. But we don’t see them a lot, huh?”

It’s true; I can’t remember the last time there was one living so close. Birds have always fascinated me, and something as vibrant as a cardinal would certainly stick out in my memory if it was lodged in there somehow. I have one memory pertaining to cardinals, and it’s a young one-not a young memory, but a young thought, and it’s hazy, though I remember what’s important about it. What’s important is that I was about five or six and I was staying with my older cousins in Chicago, walking with the eldest, a teenager at the time whom I looked up to, when he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and, in a hushed tone, he pointed out a bit of crimson hiding in a bush. It was a little cardinal, going about her business, building or eating or what have you. But to him, it was an event. I related this story to my father, to which he replied:

“Yeah, not so common in the city.” He chewed on this thought for a bit, tinkering, then added, “Heh. Probably hadn’t ever seen one in real life.”

I wondered if I should tell my cousin about our new feathered neighbors. I wondered if he’d share that old memory with me. I read somewhere that most of our childhood memories are fabricated, or faded, like an old Polaroid. I read they can’t be trusted.

My cousin just returned from military service. He does not seem to have the time nor the patience to think about birds.

I have time for birds. I don’t know if I have the patience, but I certainly have the time. I’ll look up from my book to spot her perching or roll down my car window to spot her vigorously flapping her wings and I can’t stop thinking about her and I don’t know why.

The cardinal. They don’t migrate, I heard. They stay. They sit through the cold and they live through the unbearable ice and they staunchly defend their evergreen fortifications. A cardinal is unlike other birds, and I think what I’m feeling towards the cardinal is respect, but it might be envy.

A cardinal has taken to nesting in the evergreens by my house, and I seem to be the only one who cares. 

I cried today on the hardwood floor

In a way I wasn’t still sure was in me. 

‘Cause my cat has a habit 

When I open the door

Where he slips between my legs to greet me. 

And I want him to love me,

For what I provide, 

I don’t want him to 

Just want what’s outside,

I want a wild thing to need me.

I put his food in my palm, 

And I called and I claimed

That I loved him more than anyone else.

But then the tears hit my eyes

As he turned to outside

He’ll scratch at the window, I’ll melt.

And I don’t hate you because you call me a liar,

I don’t hate you because of your dreams.

I’m just jealous of the thought that you found admiration

But you still get a full night’s sleep.

I don’t want to be normal but I can’t be myself

Because the only real thing I am’s crazy

And I don’t want to write poems, I don’t want to get help

But I don’t want you to think I’m lazy. 

And if you’re mom sees me at the grocery store, 

Then I hope I won’t remember her face.

I have to keep running,

But you want me to stay in one place. 

You’re too pretty to know what it’s like to be not,

You’re too pretty for me, but I gave it a shot

And I hope that sometime

You’ll find

You get what you needed. 

I hope you never find yourself on a hardwood floor,

I hope your cat never tries to escape through the door, 

And I hope when you think of me,

You think I’m conceded. 

And I was sure you were

just another girl

in a string of endless heartbreak

But getting kicked while your down

Is just a shitty excuse 

So you can keep crying on the ground.

Getting kicked while your down is just a shitty excuse 

To keep crying on the ground.

I got kicked while I’m down,

So it’s time to get up off the ground.

The couch like my own secretary

Takes notes on my compulsories

My stretch marks, burn marks, growing thighs

Can’t argue with these curly fries 

I’m getting big, but that’s ok

Like Martha I’ll learn not to bray

I’ll snag a girl too good for me 

By praying on her entropy, yeah

The bathroom stall is far too small 

I feel like I’m trapped in a wall

I’d try to get up, try to leave

But there’s four feet right next to me

Of course the feeling’s rising doom

A female spy in the men’s room

And I can feel resentment grow

At the notion of fellatio, oh

The notion of fellatio

The notion of fellatio

Broken condoms, broken pride

It’s not a thrill, but what a ride

He said he’d stand here by my side

I know it’s just the ties that bind

Pills in a ring are Kafkaesque 

And make me wish we’d not undressed 

What a reference, I’m impressed. 

What a reference, I’m impressed.

Hold my hand I’ll take you there

I’ll pull on more than just your hair

We’re in this now, and there’s no doubt

This is what making life’s about

I have to stay but I’ll admit

The more I start to ponder it

More and more attraction grows

At the notion of fellatio

The notion of fellatio

The notion of fellatio

The notion of fellatio

The phone will ring, they told me. Just wait for the phone to ring.

The lobby is full of people. It’s been that way since 9 AM, which surprised me because it was exactly what I expected. Sometimes, when I get a picture of something in my head, I get to thinking, “There’s no way it’s really like that. I’m just imagining it like that.” So I’m shocked when I find out I’m right, and it’s the strangest sensation, being so right you’re wrong about it. This is one of those times. The lobby is an epicenter of motion and so much life happens in it. So much life. The phone does not ring.

The carpet is green with little red diamonds pattering it. Something about the room hints at gold but I’m not sure what it is. Right after the entrance is a small staircase of about 4 or 5 steps of what looks like marble that lead to a fireplace and a few fountains. In this area people sit on benches, talking and eating breakfast and reading newspapers, newspapers that, come tomorrow, they’ll be in, probably. It is now 9:43 and the phone does not ring.

Above the little indentation is a glass partition with a brass railing, and about 6 feet away from that is the front desk, which is made of the same marble-like material as the staircase. I say marble-like because personally I doubt the authenticity, mostly because in my head I pictured a marble front desk and I still cannot accept that that imagined picture was even remotely correct. There are two women behind the front desk. One is an older blonde woman wearing caked make-up and sporting exposed gums. I amuse myself by imagining her name is something like Tammy or Debbie and picturing her private life populated by people looking like characters from “Dallas.” I’ve never seen that show myself, but I remember my mother watching it a lot when I was young, and Tammy-Debbie looks like the sort of debutant that thrived in that program. The other woman is different. Her name is Pamela and I think she’s very pretty. Her hair is pulled back tightly into a bun and her lips aren’t thin but they aren’t prominent, either. She looks like she had a lot of fun as a kid, in high school and in college, and now she has to settle down in a job and pull her hair back, but it doesn’t quite work because she can’t be tamed still. I bet myself she had a nose ring before. It’s 9:50. The phone doesn’t ring.

It is so quiet I want to shout. It’s an immature impulse but I feel it nonetheless. I think of how my screech would resonate in the room and settle inside people’s ears for the whole day. I think of the balding men adjusting their ties nervously as they eye me, wondering what’s wrong. I think of the effeminate manager raising his nose in the air as he sends a lackey to see what’s the matter. I imagine Pamela crying out in liberation and letting her hair fall and frame her face. I imagine her grabbing my face and kissing me, grateful to be freed from her corporate captors. I imagine all this and realize that when the room does get loud, right after the phone call, they won’t have time to react in these ways, and I feel a pang of what might be regret but is probably actually a lot of pity. I imagine the phone ringing, piercing the silence and swelling with each bell. But it’s 10:03, and the phone doesn’t ring.

In reality, I haven’t been in the lobby that long. It’s only been an hour. But to me-the way it feels, that is- it feels like it’s been ages. I have been staring at the men in the lobby for so long they now seem to be stuffed with straw and strewn about a field, huddling together but at the same time, not; a hive, collective, with strong sticks keeping their posture staunch and their guts convex. These men are fat in the way women are fat in classical paintings. They sit like Hitchcock’s outline and worry about the stock market, nodding to acknowledge each other only when totally necessary. Not a one notices me. Not a one acknowledges me. I blend in, as usual. I always seem to blend. I wonder if I will stand out when the phone rings. It does not ring. It is 10:15. It does not ring.

I notice two men towards the very center of the lobby, two men I haven’t noticed before. One is very old, and the other is very young. One is wrinkled, and the other is smooth. One has stubby arms that barely reach over the table and the other has gnarled branches that twist and turn every way. They sit together, at a small square knee-high coffee table, and they play chess. They puzzle over the pawns and question every move. They value the queens higher, not because the queens are good company, but because they can move anywhere, and they are more powerful. They use their bishops until they get in the way. They castle their kings and they start with different openings but end the game always the same, in the middle, with one man standing. I watch two generations play games of war as the phone bleeds silence. It is 10:28.

“Whatever you do,” he told me over the phone, “Don’t look at them. In the eyes.”

A man tries to make eye contact with me. He sees me sitting on the bench, by the phone, and I think he thinks I’m homeless. Suddenly, I become fascinated with the ground as I avoid all contact with him. I stare at the grout holding the tiles together and I count the dust resting safely in the spaces in between. I am so close to them; so close to everyone here and I sit in a disguise even though they don’t know me because I’m not anyone of importance and if all goes as planned I never will be. I’m starting to sweat at the idea of it. The coat I have to wear doesn’t help. It’s the heaviest weight I’ve ever felt. It’s 10:40 and it’s the heaviest weight in the world.

There is no music playing. When I imagined this, I thought the lobby would have crackling notes spilling from the overhead speakers. That detail, I suppose, I didn’t predict, and I should take comfort in it but I just can’t. You can hear the fountains and the newspapers rustling and the scratching of knives on toast but you can’t hear any music. I didn’t want it to be silent for this, I think to myself, then I realize it isn’t silent-there’s the sound of life everywhere, and I realize I didn’t want silence, I just wanted the sounds of life to be drowned. It’s 10:43 and they float.

In the lobby they serve breakfast, I think until 11. At 11, I think they start to serve lunch, but I don’t know and I probably won’t find out. A man in a tightly tailored suit and apron brings one of the Hitchcockian straw men an omelet. If they do stop serving breakfast at 11, this man is cutting it extremely close and there’s a grim sort of humor at the thought of his whole life being filled with cutting it close. All I know of him is how he would cut it close. A saying I’ve heard many times is, “You can’t make an omelet without cracking a few eggs.” I agree with that idiom. The man looks at the omelet for a second before taking a bite, and though he looks satisfied, it apparently isn’t enough. He picks up the pepper and sprinkles it on before reaching for the saltshaker and pouring a liberal amount on the eggs. The shaker slips in his hand and in a deafening blow it strikes the side of the false marble table. The man’s face turns beet red as he hustles to gather the shaker back up. Of course, it’s bad luck to spill salt. The sound of the salt shaker is a liberating break from the oppressive silence. I watch the grains fall to the floor and they seem to vanish into the tiling. I imagine the man scrambling to pick up every individual grain and unsalt his Earth and there’s something about the futility of it that affects me in a way I’m not used to. At 10:47 the phone doesn’t ring.

I close my eyes for what feels like a second but is really three minutes and in that time the sounds of life continue without my observation and without my blessing and without my thoughts.

At 10:50 a bell sounds. It sounds again and again and again. I look at Pamela. I look at the war games played by two generations. I look at the spilled salt on the ground and I look across the hall, just across from me, just by me, and I see a mirror. A reflection looks back at me. The bell sounds. It shouts at me and screams and yet no one looks and no one thinks of it and in that moment I have total control over the room. I can feel it. I can feel the straw men bowing to me and I know that all their wealth is nothing and all their lives are nothing and even the salted earth can’t produce life after I’m done. A bell sounds at 10:50 all the way until 10:51.

There’s silence again. I have made a choice, yet at the same time I haven’t done anything at all and that fact is so laced with power I can’t stop shaking. It is a sensation unlike any other. I have only one order, and that’s to pick up the phone, and if I do that, everything happens, then suddenly, nothing happens, and if I don’t, nothing happens and everything keeps happening suddenly. I am the only thing between the two worlds. I am a portal between two futures and I haven’t ever felt a responsibility like that. It dries out my mouth and hollows my eye sockets. I breathe sharply.

At 10:52 the bell resonates again and I hear it so clearly I could weep. I know the tone doesn’t change but in my mind the bell is mad at me; irritated that I didn’t follow up on my end of the deal, but there’s no turning back now; the power I get from hearing the bell as silence is intoxicating; I can’t let it go. I won’t let it go. Not when there is salt on the ground. Not when both kings are still standing. Definitely not while Tammy’s mascara stays caked on her aged face and never, ever, ever while Pamela’s hair stays taught in a bun. If she’s to be tied up, I am as well. The bell goes off again and again and again and again and I can say, with almost certainty, it will keep going off into the next minute and the few minutes beyond that. Then, who can say. Anything can happen. So long as the choice remains in my hands, anything will happen. It is 10:53 and the bell goes off but the phone only rings when I say so.

“I’m not scared to die alone anymore," 

I told her.

"I’m scared of growing old 

With someone who isn’t you.”

When I was younger my friend and I would skip school and spend time lounging on the beach.

Once, we went down there during our lunch hour. We had planned to wade in the water and maybe lay on the beach or smoke cigarettes or whatever it is you can do on the beach to rebel in high school. But when we got there, we were not alone.

There was a man, an older man, a man who was balding and wore coke-bottle glasses. There were a few strange things about him; firstly, he was dressed in a black suit that was not well-tailored. His shiny dark loafers stood out among the grains of sand as they bathed in dull browns and reds. Secondly, he was struggling with the lid of some sort of receptacle. It was a blue Folgers’ brand coffee can that seemed to have been opened before and for some reason he couldn’t get the repackaged lid off. The final odd thing about him was his demeanor; he seemed somber and upset and his frustration seemed to be more overreaching than just the coffee can.

We walked past him intentionally, partially curious, partially amused, completely hoping that he would talk to us. Sure enough, he did.

“Excuse me,” he asked. “Do either of you have a knife? I can’t seem to get this open.”

I produced my keys and began to explain that they were all I could muster when my friend interrupted, whipping out a switchblade and handing it to the elderly man.

“Thank you,” he said, fumbling with the knife. He began to carefully pry at the edges of the can, ever-so-slightly, as if there was precious cargo inside and he was afraid to spill it. After his hand slipped once, he placed the can in the sand, wedging it in a dune and using both hands to work the lid better. Slowly I began to piece together what was happening; however my blade-toting friend didn’t catch on quite as quickly. He asked the man:

“What’s in the can?”

The man looked up from his work with a frustration that evolved into bashfulness in a short moment.

“My wife,” he said, looking out to the waves. “She was cremated.”

We were silent.

“She always wanted to be buried at sea,” he told us. “She use to say that to me all the time, but only when we were alone. She loved the water. Her family was very religious, though. They wanted her cremated. They wanted me to keep the ashes on my mantel.”

“But I know what she really wanted,” he said, finally opening the can with a tug. “So I took her from the urn and I put her in this can and I left the urn on the fireplace. They’ll never know. It’s the last secret we’ll ever share.”

He stood up and walked towards the waves, letting the ashes fly out onto the breeze of the sea, watching them swirl and dance and finally rest in their new home, in the water, where they found peace as they sunk to the bottom.

And we stood there, silently, arms folded, heads bowed, the only attendants of a funeral that wasn’t meant to be.