gramps.

oh, my Iowa farm boy,
how I’ve missed you.

I’ve seen you some times.
some nights floating,
an apparition in the space
above my head, dancing
like a firefly in the garden
next to the zinnias
on the first warm night of may.

and it is only for a moment.
just a bolt of lightning,
touching the land
and leaving.

oh, but it is beautiful.
you are there, clear
standing long and lean and tall
like the corn in the field,
or Clark Gable.
overalls, and rough hands
touching the land,
letting the dirt run through your fingers.
always singing it a song,
uplifting it with your hymn every morning,
and bedding it at dusk with your lullaby.

your pale skinned, dark haired
beauty by your side.
arm in arm, hand in hand
a faded apron and a floral cotton dress
that breathes on those days
in the middle of the prairie-desert.
children at it’s hem,
and love in her pure sparkling eyes.

in a lawn chair sipping a beer with a
wide brimmed hat to cover
your German skin on
your German nose. lazily
ambling down to the pier to fish
or back to the garden to pull some carrots.
it is spring, the peonies
are in full bloom
and haven’t been heavy
with rain yet.

tending the fire,
poking and coaxing the embers
to shine, and settling
back to your favorite plaid easy chair.
stew on the stove, and heat from the hearth
and the kitchen,
encircling, enveloping.

sunday sermon,
rows and order,
chapters and verse,
your deep voice crawling
along those words loyally,
“from dust we are,
and to dust we shall return”.
and for a moment, 
you the savior,
and I the forsaker, wish nothing
but for you to be kind to yourself. 

And I know you wouldn’t even if you could.

So, my Iowa farm boy,
slip into the sweetest afternoon nap,
in your big chair, white-haired,
and get back to those fields.
back to that wide open plain
of golden nothingness.

working it out.

daddy, do you remember that night? that one, that january, almost 5 years ago, in that foot of snow where I let go?  it was such a perfect night. the kind of midwestern night that is simple like an Edward Hopper painting, and tinted like an Ansel Adams photograph. easy lines. perfectly juxtaposed. the air so black and the earth so white and everything else just pale. your face, mine.

…

Normally, this time of year is really hard for me. Call it seasonal depression, call it lack of daylight, call it genetic, call it the blues…I don’t really think it’s any of those things. I think it’s the holidays, that somehow force my attention to my family, or my overwhelming lack thereof. 

It’s the way that White Christmas brings me back to being snuggled between cushions on the brown plaid sofa in our old house on Linn Avenue with candles going and warmth everywhere you could touch.

It’s the way that the first snowfall makes me think of Veteran’s Acres sledding, and wandering through the woods behind that bear our name, hearing my dad talk about our family like it had a legacy.

It was spending Christmas in a hotel room, making my mom Old Fashioneds, ordering pizza, listening to oldies, singing into hairbrushes, staying up all night and playing poker with my brother who always cheated.

I know that none of that probably makes sense to anyone. Because it’s not decorating the tree, or Christmas carols by the fire.  It’s not opening presents at the ass crack of dawn, and it’s not Santa, or lights, or anything standard. But it was mine. And I shared it with the people I loved the most. The way that it should be. And I miss it. And them.

For the longest time, I never complained about the way that I was raised. And I guess I still won’t, because this isn’t a complaint. It’s not the kind of thing you write on a scrap of paper and throw in a suggestion box.  In terms of intentions, my parents are probably two of the best people I can think of. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel like I didn’t have a say in any of this, and that it’s just not fair. Not because I didn’t get to do any of that normal stuff, but because sometimes I just want to stop by my mom and dad’s for no reason, or call them just to say hi, or share a meal, and some memories, and some gratitude over a glass of wine. But that just isn’t the way my world works.

And now, I have wonderful friends and another family that has taken me in, that allowed me to be a part of their traditions, and their memories. I can’t really be grateful enough for that. But, at the same time, it’s just not quite the same.

…

so daddy, I forgave that night. I forgave for our imperfections, and the world’s imperfections, that for so long, I solely attributed to you.  I know you tried your best, and I hope you know that I tried mine too. and I promise that instead of thinking about the memories we can’t make, and the ways that we don’t know each other, I’ll dwell on the ones I already have, and the way that I already do. because they are pretty beautiful in their own silly, “rhubarb in cans”, imperfect, sometimes dysfunctional way. just like us. and know that even though I’m crying, my heart is full.

leaving the streets of laredo, and my lack of skill.

it is early and I am awake.  the kind of early awake, that is mottled and unspecific, just lights and colors, like a Monet painting up close. nothing is too sharp, or too detailed…
it is all a thought,
a moment,
reactive.
I stumble down the stairs and into the early morning city dusk.
the air is cool and hits my face like the other side of the pillow.  

there is something.
it isn’t the dewy pavement eeriely reflecting the light from the faint glow of the streetlights.
it isn’t the golden sprinkling of fall leaves dotting the sidewalk and the tips of the trees silhoutted against a perfectly clouded sunrise.
it isn’t the sleeping cars, and sleeping houses, and sleeping people.

it is some change that is perceived in a solely intangible manner.

it is me. and you. perhaps it is us.
it is hope. in the most innocent and vulnerable context.
from an unexpected sign. at an unexpected hour. in an unexpected place.

it is time and it is place and it is fate.  I think. and maybe even a little faith.

and it is foreign, and frightening, but beautiful.

maybe…

you sit there with your green eyes.
all I can really think of is that coldplay song.
“honey, you are a rock, upon which I stand…I come here to talk I hope you understand…green eyes, the spotlight shines upon you…and how could anyone deny you…I came here with a load, and it feels so much lighter that I met you…”

but you are none of those things.
if anything, you are the absolute opposite.
you aren’t the rock, you are the sea.
you are the load, not the burden lifter.

there is really nothing new to say. there are no unexpressed sentiments left.
there is the same discontent, and disappointment, and confusion, and what the fucks rolling off my tongue at the end of the night.

I think I just need to run away from it like I always do. not in a bad way. just in a way that provides some perspective.  the last time I felt like this I flew to Vegas, drank what seemed like an olympic sized swimming pool of vodka, didn’t sleep, made a best friend who a year later is still like aloe for my soul, and met a man that did more than an adaquate job of diverting my attention from the pain in my chest that I have been  told was heartache.  I just let it roll me up in it’s whirlwind, until everything else was just a blur passing by so quickly.  

it was reminiscent of playground days…spinning a swing all the way to the top and then just letting go and allowing natural forces to unwind you. all the while you are watching the same scenery spin quicker and quicker to the point where it is unrecognizable. and you know it’s fun, but you’re not entirely sure why. 

in any case, I am back to that mindset. that one that is continually searching for a new place.  that one that puts so much faith in places unseen to help me sort myself out. like these cities are my soulmates, my revealers, my friends, my rocks, my burden lifters. really, they are so much more dependable than people.

I hope that somewhere on those cobblestone streets of Rome, in the mortar, and the cracks, I find a foundation. maybe some pieces of ancient wisdom could have slipped below and are now waiting for me to catch them in my shoe soles and take them home with me.

or maybe I can just get lost in those beautiful blue humming waves of Marbella, and lose all of my bitterness in them.  just sweep them out with the tide, like a message in a bottle for someone else, some other day. 

or maybe the City of Lights will just make my soul incandescent. Maybe my eyes will hold the reflections of all those tiny shimmering lights on the Seine, and they will just stay there.

and then maybe, I will just forget all about you.

maybe…

god, God.

I suppose I don’t know much about religion. which I suppose is pretty ironic considering I’m a minister’s daughter, and I went to church 3 times a week for the first 20 years of my life. I think I’ve been three times total since then. and since I’ve left, religion and God, not that the two are synonomous, but that I’ve left them both, I really don’t know how to feel about either.

I don’t think religion is necessarily evil. I don’t necessarily think it is great either. I think it is whatever you make it. if it helps you to be a better person, then so be it.  but like anything with influence and power, paticularly of an emotional nature,  it can corrupt and destroy, under the guise of something moral and noble.

and from what I know about God, he’s a pretty good guy. I know he created us, and gave us life, and all that jazz. I think I could tell you what I was told I’m supposed to believe, and maybe what you were told you were supposed to believe. I could recite a hundred passages about his  goodness, and his loving-kindess, and his magnanimity, but to be honest, the only time I think I’ve ever really felt it, known it, was in solitude, a long, long time ago.

there is a just big empty void in my heart, where there used to be something. and that something, I don’t know whether it was real or imagined, the cure or just a placebo, my savior or just a crux…but I do know that whatever it was, it’s gone. and I do know that I hardly notice it, unless I’m forced to.

I do know that there is something in words that makes me forget.

there is this moment when I crack a spine, and they roll off my tongue, and I feel… holy. like psalms on the lips of apostles.  like many books could be my bible. there is this feeling, when the red wine hits my palate, and the pen touches the paper, and I feel…more.  more human.  more vulnerable. more desperate. more beautiful.

and maybe putting faith in words is like cheating. because they can always be exactly as you’d like them to be…and at the same time, sometimes you can’t make them exactly what you’d like them to be, and you can’t be exactly as you’d like to be. but, they don’t fail you. you fail them.

they keep you reaching for that one perfect stanza. that one that you want to shout from mountain tops. that one you want to whisper in the ear of your one true love. that one you want to impart to your first born. that one that you want for your stone when you are gone. 

words can be tangible. but that doesn’t mean they aren’t spiritual. that doesn’t mean they aren’t sacred.
words can be intangible. but that doesn’t mean they aren’t real.

they are real.

poems are my prayers and all the forewords are genesis, and all the epilogues are revelations. and they are my saints, and my demons.
my accusors and my witnesses.
my salvation and my damnation.

fold now. unless you take my advice.

so you say that you want this. you say that you’re putting all your chips in the pot and all your cards on the table and that you are going to play this hand until you can’t. and that you are appreciative of me just as I am.

but you also say you could take it or leave it. and you also say that you’ve invested too much “emotional capital”, and that you don’t understand why it’s such a big deal that you’re asking me to skip from 23 straight to 30.

you say, ”whatever makes you happy, sweetheart”, but it comes with all these stipulations like, whether or not what makes me happy coincides with your plans, and your life, and your fucked up overly detailed plan of how the next ten years are going to go. or my personal favorite, well, you can’t be with me and do what feels good, you have to do what works.

you say that you appreciate my individuality, but really the only way you’d like me to see the world is the way you do. and for the record I don’t. I don’t view the world like you. I think that you make everything more complicated than it needs to be. I think you spend too much time overanalyzing situations to ever enjoy yourself. and I think that living life to it’s fullest is the only way to do it, and that sometimes that means breaking rules, and not being “reasonable”, and not being “prudent”, and maybe betting it all on the dark horse, or letting go when you know you shouldn’t, or fighting for something you believe in when no one else does, or maybe even having cocktails before 10 a.m. sometimes you just have to do those things. maybe you can see in your head that the probability of the outcome being the way you’d like it to is slim to none, maybe youre actions even cause ” a foreseeable risk of harm”. but sometimes you just have to try. sometimes you just have to live. outside the confines of what feels safe. I will always push myself to that, if for no other reason than that those who have never known defeat can never know victory.

but, my biggest disagreement with your thought process is that you think that love is something that can be planned, and controlled, and you think that you can chose who you fall in love with and how. and you can’t. you can’t do any of those things, no matter who you are, or how powerful you are, or what youve accomplished. you think that love is a guarantee. and it isn’t. it’s a gamble.

and you think that you are always right…and I’d like to remind you that as soon as you realize you know nothing you learn a lot more. and life is what happens while you are making plans…so I prefer to skip the plans part.  Life is too short to skip any of it. And it’s too short to allow people into your microcosm who say one thing but really mean another. It’s too short to skip the trip of a lifetime, the adventure I’ve been dreaming about, or even the smallest adventure, because you have shit going on and you’d like me to wait for you to do it.

and shame on you for saying that I’m not looking for something meaningful. in fact, fuck you for saying that. because I am looking for love. in all it’s glory and manifestations…or at the very least someone who I can stand for more than 3 weeks. someone who doesn’t talk down to me like my dad used to. someone who does actually appreciate who I am in the present, not just who they think they can mold and shape me into, or who they think I can become, or what opinions they can force down my throat and expect me to accept as my own. I am looking for someone to share my life with. The good and the bad, I want to remember it all. But I am not looking for someone who would ask me to put my life on hold until they are available. what could possibly be more meaningful than that?

and maybe someday I will find all of that.  but I can guarantee that it won’t be because of careful planning. or organizing. or analyzing. or being careful. or prudent. It will happen because it just does. that is how it works.

life and love really aren’t that complicated. they are simple. which is different than easy. life and love are simple, but they are still hard. I think that Regina Spektor said it best:

this is how it works
you’re young until youre not
you love until you don’t
you try until you can’t

you laugh until you cry
you cry until you laugh
and everyone must breathe
until their dying breath

no, this is how it works
you peer inside yourself
and take the things you like
and try to love the things you took

and then you take that love you made
and you stick it into some
someone else’s heart
pumping someone else’s blood

and walking arm in arm
you hope it don’t get harmed
but even if it does
you’ll just do it all again

he is wonderful. really.

So for once, I meet this man. This fabulous man. He is smarter than me. He is attractive, and has dark hair and green eyes, which I love. He is a Taurus, which is not a Virgo, which I love. We look good together. He is nerdier than I am, which somehow makes me feel more comfortable in my skin. He has his shit together. He has his priorities straight. Fuck, he acts like a man- because he is one. Which I respect…a lack thereof usually being one of the biggest issues that I have with males in general.  They don’t act like men, and I don’t respect them.

He explains to me, that when encountering a new situation, he can’t help but logistically take the said situation to it’s end.  It’s a byproduct of law school. (That’s right, law school….way smarter than me.) And I counter, saying, that I usually just go with things, because if you spend all your time predicting the potential disastrous outcomes of how something might turn out, you’re dooming it from the beginning, not to mention just one depressing individual.

And then it hit me yesterday. It hit me, half way through the second beer I shotgunned on a bus ride to a basball game. It was approximately noon. It hit me that, there is no way this will ever work. It’s all logistics.

If a bus leaves from ZJs Mine in Fox Lake at 11:45 a.m. and is heading south at 55 mph, and a scrappy old Honda leaves Downers Grove at the same exact time and is heading west at 70 mph, when will they intersect, and where?

Never.

Because the people on the bus are too busy shot gunning beers at noon, and getting inappropriately drunk, and wasting their lives and their livers away at any bar with the best deal on tappers.  But, those people are my people.  They make sense to me. Their wrinkles may be deeper, and their lives may be shorter, but they get it. Most of them at least.  And the guy in the old Honda has way more important things to do on a Sunday. He is young, and smart, and idealistic, yet realistic, and has a cold, calculated plan to acheive greatness, and is ready to move and shake, and looking to change the world, to make a mark on his era. AND somehow, he thinks I should be a part of it. He is clearly, not as a smart as I give him credit for.

Logistically, I think the timing may be all off.  A good friend, and even better professor and I were having a conversation a few days ago, and he said to me, “Amy, we all have to grow up some time”. Which, I’m not sure that I agree with entirely…but even if it is true, some time is not now. And now, right now, I don’t think I’m quite ready.

But, he is wonderful. really. and he’ll go on changing the world one class-action law suit at a time. And, I am wonderful. really. and I’ll go on changing the world one shotgunned beer at a time. And maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the bus and the old Honda will find some common ground that they both can tread on, and get a GPS and reconcile the vast differences between the two and their journeys. Or maybe not.

unrequited love.

There is that one stretch of highway, miles long, and no matter how many times my tires race it, or my feet pace it, it doesn’t answer. Maybe it’s because I still find myself trying to articulate the question. out loud. to myself. when I think no one’s watching, and no one’s around to see me furrow my brow.  I try to form the words and I find my tongue heavy, and stuck to my palate, and they just won’t come.

I miss the feeling of unrequited love. I miss the feeling of wanting someone so bad it hurts. Or rather, I miss the hopeful feeling that goes along with it, that only exists before the first kisses and the last embrace.

Time, the proverbial healer, really fucked me on this one. It’s like I’ve had to trick myself into believing that you don’t exist. I know you are out there, somewhere, in that place you chose, so far away from me. In a life, so different from the one I live.  But I had to choose to only see  a one-dimensional version of you- a photo in an album, a postcard with a half-assed signature, a life-size, fleshless, bloodless, cardboard cut-out version of you.  

But then lately, it’s all come back to me in swells and rushes. In dreams. In insomnia. In restlessness and restfulness. In strange places. In my mind.

You were the first man that I had a real school girl’s crush on. In the most innocent, lovely, simple, even juvenille way.
I wanted you to like me, and think I was pretty.
I wanted you to notice me, and pick me first when we played dodgeball.
That was part of it. After spending so much time in a “grown-up” world, I somehow had forgotten how much holding someone’s hand could mean. how much a first kiss could take your breath away.

And then there was how much you fit my silly ideal description of what a man should be right down to the last detail. Not just physically. I mean you were tall, and dark, and handsome- not in a pretty way, but in a rugged, rough around the edges way.  And you were so strong, and bigger than me, yet somehow a vulnerability emanated from you. In a way that made me feel like only I was special enough to see it. In a way that made me allow myself to let you see mine.  It was like your being such a man, just made me want to be a lady. and oddly enough, I enjoyed it. Sand and glass, you and me. You polished me, and made me smoother, and softer, and more delicate, but also more fragile. You refined me, and defined me in ways that you still don’t know.

you still don’t know.

the spring sucks

you in.

with all of it’s moisture, and fragrant blooming, and warm cloudy days that turn to rainy sun, and all it’s contradiction, and it’s perpetual feeling of promise. Like there is something coming. Like the change in the season and the change in the weather is bound to bring some other change. The change that I’ve been searching for… or rather just waiting to stumble across.

I speak to you after not having seen you in years. And it is cordial, and brief, and we talk about the way things are, the way things have been. And you have the life I dream of. You have your sweetheart, and your country, and your discipline, and your autonomy, and a measured level of success.  And it was all a mistake of sorts.  It was all just something that happened for you.

It hits me that, that is it.
I want to find it, but I don’t want to look.
I think mostly just because I’m scared of what is actually there.
I want to be taken, but I don’t know to where, and I don’t know by whom, and I’m not sure that it matters.
To everywhere and nowhere, and all the places in between, that are exactly the same as this one, with the same characters, just different names.

Is it that I’m helpless, or hopeless, or just that I’ve lost all hope?
When the heart searches for contentment, where is it supposed to look?
How do you know that you’ve found what you’re looking for once you find it?

But it worked for you, so why can’t it work for me?
And why should I look, when I can just wait for it to find me? They say you’ll never find it if you do.
I want to stare it in the face. I want to look at it the way you’ve seen it, but from my own angle, and know it just the same.

The Way Things Are.

how do you put into words that everything someone thinks about you is wrong?

how do you redraw yourself from the beginning?

how do you make them understand that just because you seem distant and shatterproof, doesn’t mean that they can treat you like you don’t care, or like they don’t?

I wouldnt know what to do with another chance…if you gave it to me

somedays I just want you to grab me by my face and tell me that you absolutely know for sure without a doubt that I am the one that you want. I want you to be a man. I want you to be the strong one so that for once I don’t have to be. I want you to convince me that I need you. Not because I need convincing that I need you, but because I need convincing that I need you. Because I have spent so many years, not needing anyone. And after spending so much time self-sufficient it just doesn’t seem reasonable that it could ever be any other way. I think I’ve completely forgotten how to depend on anyone else. I think about it sometimes, but in the abstract, “I wonder what that is like” way.

I couldn’t take the embrace of a real romance…it’d race right through me

I want you to understand that what you’re asking of me is not something I can take lightly. Because I can not take matters of the heart lightly anymore. I am not 16. I am not invincible. I am not that little girl that is in love with the idea of love. I mean, to a certain extent, I suppose she is still trapped in me somewhere.  But, I can’t give myself away like I used to. I can’t just let everyone in, like my heart is a one-ticket ride. I know the hurt all too well. I want to let go. I want to love like this is my only life, because it is, but I just can’t. I need some stabilty, and some structure, and someone to hold my hand through the whole goddamn thing, because the only thing that I can’t do on my own, is not be alone.

I’m much better off the way things are…Much much better off, better by far, by far