This Is Home

A cataract moon in a lazily cloud-painted sky, stars peeking through all the you-missed-a-spots, overlooks Broadway. The only snow to be found on this January street are glowing flakes hanging from streetlamps, defiant leftovers from the month before. The silently strumming statue on the corner of Broadway & Pine is the first black person I see on my walk, and I know I probably won’t see another. This is Seattle.

The bus cables hang above me as I cross the street, their shadows spun across the intersection like giant webs for Tolkien-sized spiders. I step over the ditch in the pavement in front of Seattle Central, the ground cracked from countless tires bearing the weight of busloads of students. The school faces the Bonney-Watson Funeral Home, an ironic contrast I muse upon while walking through the small crowd of late-night students and the haze of their cigarettes.

Leaving the thoroughfare behind, I make my way further up the Hill. The angle invites my gaze upward, and I’m reminded again of the city’s newness. Seattle’s infancy shows in its architecture. The buildings have little in the way of ornamentation; austere functionality is the rule, with few exceptions. The same can be said for the North Faced folks walking ahead of me. I overtake them, passing through their conversation expounding the virtues of organic food.

Their earnestness fits the city’s youth: expressed by turns through its citizens’ idealism, naïveté, self-righteous arrogance. Seattle is like a spoiled and gifted child, precocious and proud, with adulthood still some years off. These thoughts carry me past T.T. Minor Elementary. The empty schoolyard a nocturnal playground for three dogs playing together, their human companions each wrapped up in the glowing screens of their smartphones, probably reading HuffPo online.

Arriving at the corner of my block, I make up stories for each lit window I see and all the neighbors I’ll never meet. A newly arranged bookcase in one window catches my eye, and I imagine having tea with its owner, as we politely debate the literary status of bestsellers. My key turns in the lock to my building, the door swings closed behind me. This is home.

I See You

You open the door and you reach inside. Inside your mailbox, there is a package. You remove this package and take it up the stairs. Entering your home, you set the package that used to be in your mailbox on top of the kitchen counter.

You turn around, opening your refrigerator, removing two eggs from their carton placed on the top shelf. You crack the eggs into a skillet, their jaundiced gaze tracking your movements across the kitchen as you gather seasonings to sprinkle in their yellow eyes and make them run.

The package sits on the kitchen counter waiting for you to grab a sharp object and slice into it, peeling back the tape, ripping off its paper skin. Inside the package, still on the kitchen counter, opened with the knife that's still in your hand, you find two eyes looking up at you. There's no movement for them to track, as you stand, fixed in place, engaged in one of those staring contests from childhood.

The note to the side of the eye on the left, the eye that's the same brown as your lover's, reads, "I can love you now, with all your flaws."

You reach out to your lover's eyes and take one in each egg-grimed fist, and hold them to your chest, thinking, "Perhaps these eyes can hear my heart beating faster at being so loved."

Mama's Smile

I love it when Mama sings me to sleep. Her voice calms me until my body feels like it’s falling down, down through my feather pillow, down through the depths of my water bed, down, down, down, all the way down to dreaming.

I wake up to the sound of Mama. She’s not singing.

She sounds really happy and I wonder what she and Mommy are doing having so much fun this late at night. I like it when Mama is happy, ‘cos she’s usually so serious and Mommy and I take every chance we can get to make her laugh. To see Mama’s teeth when she smiles is like seeing a double rainbow: it doesn’t happen all the time, and I always look forward to seeing it again.

Mama used to smile all the time, and her teeth looked like they belonged on one of those toothpaste commercials. But, that was before she got attacked by the bad man. I was so scared she wasn’t ever coming home from the hospital, but Mommy and Uncle Devin both promised me Mama would be all right and she was. Well, almost.

When Mama came home a few days later, she was missing her front teeth just like me. I asked her what the Tooth Fairy brought her and she almost smiled and said the Tooth Fairy brought her home to me and Mommy. At first, I was glad that me and Mama were both waiting for our teeth to grow back. But then, when my teeth grew back and hers didn’t, I felt bad. Mama said not to worry. She and Mommy were saving money to get her smile back the way it was before.

That was months ago. Since then, Mama’s been staying home a lot more. Mommy says it’s ‘cos Mama’s embarrassed to go out and have people see her missing teeth. I asked Mommy why she couldn’t get Mama’s teeth fixed with her insurance like she did when I broke my arm last summer, and she said it didn’t cover Mama ‘cos they’re not really married. I must have looked confused ‘cos Mommy said she’d explain it to me later.

Anyway, it’s so nice to hear Mama in a good mood right now. Almost as good as her singing, but still good enough to make me fall all the way down back to sleep.

Tell Me, Venn

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
John 1:1

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…"
John 1:14

---

It didn't begin here. You weren't always being held so high. There was a time…there was a time when you bedded down with ox and ass not even three feet away. There was a time when you benefitted from the charity of three old men. There was a time when you were the student, a young man of only three and ten.

Three…

There are two others with you, but you are all alone, arms spread wide in an empty embrace. It's lonely being king. Your subjects are at your feet, but it's a long way down. You consider getting down, think about being among them again. Were you ever a part of them?

You see your mother below. Surely you were a part of her. Surely? A child's mother is never in doubt. But, what of the father? What of your father? Where is he now? You can't see him. Yet, there are things you've felt, though never seen. You've seen what got you here; you're feeling it now. This experience is a part of you.

You are the sum of your experiences: every day lived, every word read. You've lived your words. You're dying for them.

What else are you dying for?

You're dying for a dream; for an ideal; for a people. You're dying because you've decided your death will accomplish more than your life. You're dying because your flesh is real, like theirs, and this is something they can understand, something they can relate to.

Look down again. Do you see yourself among them? Or just your reflection in their skycast eyes?

---

"And God said, Let us make man in our image…"
Genesis 1:26

Iris

Beautiful eyes see beautiful things:
You see eyes in a mirror, framing
Your face, which frames your beauty
Dutifully giving the frame a place,
A reason to exist, to reflect
Upon the beauty it contains

Malo Mori Quam Foedari

Oh, you little king, checked and filled with momentous rage! Ponder your next move… Bound to lateral dimensions, you long to break free from your bored existence, surrounded by squares who view the world in black, in white, never your spectrum. Alas, the fight has gotten stale and you've tired of waiting for a better end to this game; now, part of you longs to occupy their terror, story it as your own. No, far more preferable to resign on your terms, before you conform to further defeat at their unseen hands, to fall with pride and not after dishonor.

Synæsthesia

What color, joy, to paint a smile on one's face? What sound, love, to throb and thrum with beating drum? What taste, desire, to tease tongue 'til reason's undone? What smell, happiness, to waft aromatic with memories of home?

What touch, to feel you?

I see what//I hear//what//I taste//what I smell

May I feel, too?

Babylonian Waters

• Miracles are what happen when we forget to remember reality as we know it, when we allow our schemas to topple, crumble, and fall away into dust.

I performed a miracle today. Twin rivers of saltwater streamed from dry eyes, washing away the hurt I felt inside.

• Miracles need to be observed, recognized, confirmed. They need a body to witness them, to go forth and testify.

I cried in public today. This miracle was chronicled in the consciousness of another, perhaps to be forgotten in the days to come; perhaps to be remembered when the waters rise again, when I forget to remember what I think I know.

A Stone's Throw

You still don't know how he got in, or even if he got into your cell at all. He might've just gotten into your mind to do some time. He brought light with him but it wasn't strong enough to cover you. You remained in darkness listening to his soft, sibilant voice. The conversation between the two of you still has you locked up in those moments, even as you're being strapped in.


LB: How do you feel?
You: How the fuck do you think I feel?
LB: You're angry. You think you don't belong here.

You're silent. Perhaps he'll leave if you don't respond. However, you're lonely. He's the only person you'll see before the morning crowds your vision with uniforms and cameras.

You: Why are you here?
LB: Why are you?
You: I'm not guilty.
LB: Aren't you?
You: Look, man, everybody fucking changed their story!

Now, it's your visitor that's silent. You look over at his glowing form, wondering what it would be like to cast no shadow, to always walk in the light. Funny how your mind has time to dwell on such matters. Funnier still when you remember that all you have, for these fleeting moments anyway, is time.

You: You know. You know I didn't do it.
LB: You're right. I do know that.
You: You're not going to say anything, are you? You…you could get me out of here.
LB: I could. But, I also know everything else that you did.

To end the story here would mean…well, you know quite well what it would mean. And to go on would mean more opportunities, more validation for your sentence. Wouldn't it be better to end it here? Before you run out of stones to cast? That is, if you ever had a pile to begin with…

Noh Way

You smile because the fist up your ass unfolds into a hand, bowing the corners of your mouth into a tense parody of good humor. You are simultaneously puppet and manipulator, molding your own expressed emotions to obscure the tempest within.

Gute Nacht

Your bed is an untethered island, floating on a dream sea. Peering over the edge, the waves reflect nothing, forcing you to look deep within them, and ultimately, within yourself. You're distracted from your marine reverie by stars unseen, beckoning you from outside the blanketing clouds above: "Come, hear our whispered secrets. Sleep no more; awaken this night before the sunrise wipes the sky again and you forget our love."

You're alarmed by the rising strains of music from your speakers. Spotlighted in sun, you wipe the sleep from your eyes, trying—and failing—to focus on the blurred images of your rest. Your day begins again with another cycle of messages mixed and missed, as your fingers rhythmically flow across the keyboard, spilling words across your laptop screen. Done, your mouse scurries across your desk closing some windows, minimizing others.

The now empty screen seems to take up too much space; you feel claustrophobic. Turning away, motes of dust floating in a sunbeam remind you of something. Your bedroom window? You walk over, looking out at a paned view of the world. Muffled sounds tease your ears as your pupils contract in the glare of the sun. Your eyes wander with your mind while you wonder aimlessly about bullied stars being chased from the sky's playground by the sun. How strange that you can't see what you know is there.

Con-CERN

Moving from one event horizon to another, it's easy to get trapped in the moment, eternally staring back at where you came from even as your feet are pointing to where you'd like to be going. You twist 'round, watching the halo of light in front of you, and wondering when you lost yours. Far above Terra, Heaven is still nowhere to be seen and the only thing felt is a vacuum matching the void inside you. But, don't worry, all things in good time and everything in its right place: Eventually, abhorrent Nature will fill you up, feel you up, fill you in, color within your lines, scribble outside and past the boundaries of your yesterday. Eventually. For now, enjoy the still life. You're still living, after all. This is just one page out of the biophysics textbook describing your life.